A second coming
Carlin, David R. Jr.
appear self-serving, Levine invited local Catholic, Lutheran, was cut, and 1986, when not cutting AFDC became the issue and Jewish leaders to join him at each meeting. They did. for...
...for gubernatorial candidates as well as legislators, are instrucSoon afterward, Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner, Archdioce- tive...
...proach is attractive, especially to liber- a liberal society...
...Some will be genuinely new ideas, others old notions tricked out in the suddenly 9 May 1986: 263...
...This year, he says "we had women and children took place at the Capitol rotunda, one of our act together," a situation he believes was helped by the which drew 1200 people...
...Even as middle-class All this, I think, is very good...
...If the well be a vital first step toward the next York focuses on the American family American family has been weakened in revival of the most fragile yet most angenerally, not simply on poor black the past few decades, as I believe it has, cient of human communities...
...emergence of the ancient city-state...
...We changed the terms of the but, "This activity [speaking up for the poor] antedated the debate...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...have occurred out of are not mere isolated individuals, a la ever since the breakup of kinship-based wedlock, the great bulk of them involv- Robinson Crusoe or Rousseau's pristine societies...
...revivals, as this remarkably durable inthan his report of twenty-one years ago...
...Yet for the most life, the situation of lower-class blacks Robert Bellah et al., represents the most part they are not the product, not even the has been growing more and more desper- encouraging intellectual change of pace unintentional by-products, of governate...
...Two rallies of Monsignor Boxleitner agrees...
...the leaders of our them to support a family, thus raising family image in recent years, and any- relatively decentralized political system their esteem in the eyes both of them- thing that can turn that image around is have scant impact on the cultural system...
...MoyniMoynihan's, people are reluctant to thusiasm for saving the American fam- han's call for a national family policy, withhold honor from him at his second ily, we should keep in mind that in this inadequate though that surely is as a procoming...
...Unworld...
...The Moynihan ap- Such are the glories and the limitations of family stability a fighting chance...
...impact on growing children, and (what should be obvious but hasn't been for most people) that government, therefore, has a compelling interest in promoting strong and effective families...
...In far larger part it is omit...
...However, Boxleitner points out, Sedgwick) was held...
...It's going to be spread that by March 19 the legislature dissolved, leaving the tough...
...among them of the two-parent nuclear only a very strange philosophy could Lest this word of caution sound like a family...
...If the DFL agenda echoes the church's cutting the deals, that's just politics,' we said, `This isn't a concern, you should know that we in the church were there time for politics as usual...
...Left alone, the situation would speaking, Democrats should profit from like, say, the Soviet Union, where the grow even worse...
...Among the most important of these secondary causes was the relative DANIEL Patrick Moynihan is one of appeared in 1965, both the report and its weakness of a disproportionate number those rare prophets without honor author were denounced - "trashed" of black American families...
...Unhappiness over the issue was so wide- "We've only won the battle, not the war...
...Since he increasing numbers of poor black chilenough to see the honor at first denied was a sociologist of some reputation, not dren were $rowing up in households him granted at last...
...United Way broke a long-held tradition of political bishops' pastoral on the economy which, "sensitized a lot of neutrality to oppose the cuts...
...matter, as in most other matters, there is gram for the salvation of the family, may This time the senior senator from New only so much government can do...
...Blaming the victim" was the indict- als, because - unlike the conservative Consider, for example, the rising diment leveled against Moynihan by the pro-family position, which tends to see vorce rate, the sexual revolution, the streetcorner orators and their political, government and family as locked in a soaring incidents of out-of-wedlock journalistic, and academic fellow- zero-sum contest (as government grows, births, the greatly increased numbers of travelers...
...Large and who has managed to live long might be a better word for it...
...He argues (what is obvious) this is only in small part due to failures of events, it is a step we can hardly afford to that families have an enormous educative government policy...
...The DFL won its point, and no cuts increase...
...But before we out-Moynihan Moyni- stitution continually adopts new forms in When a prophet has a track record like han, getting carried away with en- adapting to new circumstances...
...press...
...a streetcorner orator, it occurred to where the father was absent, a circumWhen his notorious "Moynihan Re- Moynihan that to explain the plight of stance which, even if racism were to disport" on the black American family, black Americans purely and simply in appear overnight, would leave these 'written for the Johnson administration, terms of white racism might be less than children at a serious competitive disadCommonweal: 262 vantage when they entered the adult stylish "pro-family" look...
...to speak out...
...And at the heart of this deterioration to hit American politics in quite some ment policy...
...and even less are they reverhas been the virtual disappearance time...
...The legislators remarked that in the state concede it made them look foolish...
...The new conspicuous but by no means the only blacks were increasing in numbers and Moynihan book, taken in combination factors tending to weaken the contempoentering the mainstream of American with last year's Habits of the Heart by rary American family...
...These are the more his prophecy...
...white racism had been and still was as the ultimate source A SECOND COMING of black disabilities and black-white inMOYNIHAN & THE FAMILY equalities, still, Moynihan believed, this ultimate source worked through secondary causes...
...and that to act on assumptions that ignore thing that has spent that long a time dying Not surprisingly, then, Moynihan's these facts of life, as Americans at the is not likely to expire anytime soon...
...tion of sex roles...
...selves and their wives, thereby giving bound to be helpful...
...The members of Catholic Charities' Board, conference of former AFDC recipients (including Secretary of many of whom are Republican, voted unanimously to write to State Joan Growe and Appeals Court Judge Suzanne the legislators on this issue...
...The key to reversing it this new fashion more than Republicans, rulers of a highly centralized political was to see to it that black adult males largely because Democrats have been system also pull the strings of the cultural could get jobs paying enough to permit suffering from something of an anti- system, in the U.S...
...NANCY AMIDEI were made in General Assistance in 1986...
...a special session of the legislature...
...Both books remind us of something sible through government action...
...Anystatus...
...DFL members on a budget What changed things for welfare families in Minnesota this conference committee refused to consider any cuts in AFDC spring is due in some measure to a role being assumed by benefits, while IR members were equally insistent on some church leaders in matters of social justice...
...But two decades later the family diminishes, and vice versa) - it households with both spouses employed sociologist-turned-senator has been vin- sees a very positive role for govern- outside the home, the changing definidicated by the disastrous realization of mental action...
...Nancy Amidei frequently reports on poverty, hunger, and The differences between 1985, when General Assistance human services issues in these pages...
...the Catholic bishops' Commis- people to this and other justice issues...
...not just by suggest a high number, knowing you'll settle for less after years but by centuries...
...As a result, people in sion on Social Justice analysis of the cuts and "Call to Action" the pews "basically supported" the church's vocal opposition appeared on the front page of the Catholic Bulletin...
...perfectly illuminating, especially after Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...it's wrong to gang up on women and kids...
...But, more the churches were being "unknowingly used by the DFL" in important, according to Sam Horowitz of the Joint Religious the welfare controversy, that the churches should do more for Legislative Coalition, was the role of the religious communithe poor on their own, and that they should not "mix govern- ty's effort in setting the tone: "They may not like welfare, but ment with religion...
...The IR members That same afternoon, Monsignor Habiger fired off an angry stressed welfare, and we [the JRLC] stressed what the cuts response...
...While it's true that mothers with children tend to enjoy san Director of Catholic Charities, and Monsignor James greater public support than other people who get General Habiger of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, attended a Assistance, this year's proposal was so harsh that Republicans meeting with five IR members...
...When some moderate IR members said, `You always Democratic party [and] the Republican party...
...state without a budget until Governor Rudy Perpich convened We ought to be there...
...major editorials appeared in the local strong response of Archbishop Roach, and by the U.S...
...that is, at least since the ing mothers and fathers of lower-class savage, but social beings to the very core...
...Not only were they not unknowing dupes, he said, would do to women and children...
...Protest continued to arise across the state...
...latest book, Family and Nation [Har- political and especially the personal level If the history of the family is a history court Brace Jovanovich, 207 pp., $12.95] have tended to do in recent years, is to of decline, it is also a history of repeated has been given a far friendlier reception invite disaster...
...Over the next few years, I predict, a hundred proposals to improve the American family through government action will bloom...
...May their tribe reduction, however small...
...But we're talking about justice, about a moral issue...
...that explanation had been repeated for the ten-thousandth time, as it had been by 1965...
...Important though...
...you can't first...
...Politically due to changes in American culture...
...AFDC is above politics...
...Accounts of the meeting later appeared under headlines play politics with children's lives.' " Catholics in particular, which read: "Five legislators tell church to mind its own Horowitz feels, helped establish the sense that this was a time business...
...appear self-serving, Levine invited local Catholic, Lutheran, was cut, and 1986, when not cutting AFDC became the issue and Jewish leaders to join him at each meeting...
...At all families...
...For a few years now, for in- have made us forget: that as a matter of counsel of despair, however, let me note stance, more than 50 percent of all black social-psychological fact, human beings that the family has been "in decline" births in the U.S...
...My hunch is that Moynihan's words will fall on fertile political soil...
...and a press to the welfare cuts...
Vol. 113 • May 1986 • No. 9
