Editorials
COMMONWEAL What's in a name? ick-and-choose Catholicism is a bad idea whose time, unfortunately, has come. Ironically, it has been the pope's visit which has focused so much attention on what...
...This dude's got the threads," said one young Catholic, and 95 percent of his cohort evidently agrees...
...It is a long way to and from Siberia, and a longer way to arms control^ especially when the rules change...
...Again, since last year, the Soviet government has allowed the National Resources Defense Council, an independent group of U.S...
...security agencies...
...LONG-RANGE SIGNALS News reports of the visit earlier this month by three U.S...
...Compare the vigorous condition of the church throughout the globe a quarter century after the council to its shattered condition an equal number of years after Luther initiated the Reformation...
...government demonstrate clearly that it supports the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people and that it intends to back no political favorite...
...and that its mysteries are never encapsulated in our neat formulas...
...But they add to the perception that the dimensions of glasnost may be more farreaching than once thought possible...
...In an age that often thinks itself secular, such a massive affirmation shouldn't be taken for granted — nor overshadowed by a difference over birth control...
...Altogether too much history speaks against such a view...
...that the life of grace takes as many forms as there are individuals...
...Considering the backlog of questions the Catholic church has had belatedly to confront since Vatican II, the astounding story may be the degree of agreement rather than disagreement...
...and men on the controversial question of cassock hemlines...
...The disagreements so widely noted are significant ones...
...These photographs will be gone over, print by print and dot by dot, by U.S...
...Smorgasbord Catholicism...
...Still, the question remains, why did the Soviets open this highly secret and controversial site to Western observers, particularly when these observers' report was likely to undercut previous Soviet dismissals...
...Catholics who like to recall that Paul, when necessary, withstood Peter to his face should also recall Paul's admonition, "Do not be conformed to the spirit of this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God's will, what is good, pleasing, and perfect" (Rom...
...But millions of other American Catholics are evidently determined not to be kept in swaddling clothes...
...and their entourage, with the Politburo's approval, swept down in Soviet helicopters to inspect and photograph what the U.S...
...Given the media's weakness for polar opposites, it was probably inevitable that labels like these would be glued to any departure whatsoever from the rulebook Catholicism of pre-Vatican II...
...Despite the very real possibility of chaos, \Vashington_needs to state publicly, forcefully, and soon that it takes the coming Haitian elections so seriously that economic assistance will be cut off if fair elections are not held as scheduled...
...indifference to Haiti's crisis, and suggested that an international trusteeship be set up to provide some framework for order...
...The congressmen not only walked through parts of the thirty-story receiver building and its adjacent elevenstory transmitter, but they took videotapes and over a thousand photographs of the facility...
...government cannot ensure a peaceful transferrence of power in Haiti, neither can it afford to take a wait-and-see position...
...Y.), Carr (D-Mich...
...Give the new labels their due...
...Too much is at stake...
...economic assistance has not changed these perceptions, 25 September 1987: 517 partly because military aid included crowd control devices that have been used to break up lawful strikes and sabotage peaceful political protests...
...Adolescent Catholics were even more enthusiastic than their elders...
...There was no significant difference between women 516: Commonweal far more serious allegation...
...But fear of chaos, or worse, has too often shaped U.S...
...By and large, Catholics are not picking a random four of the seven sacraments, six of the Ten Commandments, and three out of four Gospels...
...Can you imagine Lee laccoca or Ed Koch dressed like that?'' asked one bishop...
...Arms Control Today, April 1987), the administration's review "continues to distort the overall compliance picture, exaggerating problem areas of little military significance while ignoring the undisputed positive record of Soviet compliance with most treaty provisions...
...Technology, and even on-site surveillance, will never provide absolute certainty of full compliance...
...As confidence-building measures, these agreements contribute to nurturing that minimal trust on which effective arms control depends...
...The labels themselves, however, should be rejected...
...In other words, there will always be the need to be sober and watchful: of the other, but also of ourselves...
...Still, the challenge is not to slip from that oversimplification to its opposite...
...In fact, given the divisions among the opposition parties, the extent and volatility of mob violence, and the general unreadiness of an illiterate, superstitious, and impoverished population to undertake the responsibilities of building a democratic state, chaos is not an unrealistic scenario for post-election Haiti...
...Without such a framework, it is difficult to hold any Haitian government, elected or not, accountable for failing to implement agrarian reform programs, to attract foreign investors and employers, to stem capital flight or to allow union activity — all reasonable expectations for a strong Haitian democracy...
...Of course, many of the limitations could be rectified in a final push to outfit the station...
...But the chances of sufficient compliance improve as openness and mutual selfinterest are deepened...
...Furthermore, in August, as the result of a 1986 treaty, a team of American military officers for the first time inspected Soviet conventional troop maneuvers onsite...
...In other words, can Haiti begin to be governed by the constitution it overwhelmingly approved earlier this year...
...While the U.S...
...and the USSR...
...To begin with, pick-andchoose Catholicism, cafeteria Catholicism, and smorgasbord Catholicism vastly exaggerate the disagreements American Catholics have with official church teachings...
...But the new labels are deceptive and potentially destructive, and defenders of a legitimate Catholic pluralism should be the first to say so...
...More than 60 percent of the 4aity and an almost equal number of priests said they approved of wearing patterns with patterns, "if done tastefully.*' Among Catholics under thirty-five, the percentages were even higher, with those under six in virtually unanimous dissent from traditional doctrine...
...involvement, and the Haitian people deserve to know it...
...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., warned in the September 9, New York Times against U.S...
...It will take mutual wisdom and honesty to translate them into a favorable message for humankind...
...A significant increase in U.S...
...There is, of course, a conservative rejoinder — that for Catholics one of those "core truths," indeed practically the core truth, is: "the pope decides...
...more and more it approaches the American model of the church as'' voluntary association.'' The new labels may also remind us that faith must be individually assimilated, often over many years...
...This is surely misguided...
...has considered the Soviets' most flagrant violation of arms control agreements...
...Not even this pro-papal sentiment, however, can patch over the bare facts...
...That agreement, signed this month in Washington, is an important measure to reduce the risk of an accidental or unintended nuclear war...
...It was recently reported that a businessman, fearing political foment, said he'd leave Haiti the moment Namphy left office...
...It would be naive to think that such decisions have never been shortsighted or surreptitiously self-serving...
...But .support for the pope .seems to be more than just a matter of wardrobe...
...Still, none of the human texture is captured in the consumption images of lunch lines and dinner parties...
...The inspection indicated that the plant was not wired for such purposes, and that the general construction techniques were quite shoddy, reminiscent of descriptions from Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich...
...As one of the American experts reported, "If you turn it on, it is probably a violation, but not a very good one...
...But liberals, conservatives, and centrists can nonetheless agree to refuse the media labels now being thrust upon American Catholicism...
...Those familiar with the history of the church's moral declarations on political and social affairs know that going one's own way on such matters, sometimes for good reaspns, sometimes for bad, is hardly unprecedented...
...On the other hand, the inspection indicated that the plant is something less than the hardened battlemanagement station some Westerners have claimed it to be, a Poll finds mix-&-imitch Catholics growing number of American Catholics are in sharp disagreement wilh long-standing Catholic teaching on wearing solids with patterns...
...It is true but not enough, in our eyes, simply to respond to all indications of widespread Catholic dissent by saying that "the moral law is not subject to majority rule," or by asserting an ahistorical immutability of teaching...
...Pick-and-choose, cafeteria, and smorgasbord are images suggesting an individualistic, almost offhand approach to making decisions of conscience, one based on personal convenience or taste, if not even whim...
...The church can't change with the fashions...
...The new labels not only exaggerate the scope of disagreement among Catholics, they caricature it...
...There is arestless, questing, incomplete, and even contentious faith that deserves to be respected and engaged...
...Curiously enough, the pick-and-choose, cafeteria, and smorgasbord images level and equate all church teachings in a manner mirroring the rulebook approach of some conservatives...
...The same sentiment cannot be true for U.S...
...There is a long and real history of Soviet violations of arms control agreements...
...A country of five million people lives in misery 700 miles from Miami, and anti-American sentiment is festering dangerously...
...But as a detailed analysis of that report indicates (cf...
...Psychologically speaking, the Soviets' opening of the halfcompleted giant radar may have been the equivalent of an addict's indirect appeal for help...
...foreign policy — and not merely in Haiti — as the U.S...
...companies pulled out and cut back, and no sign of new U.S...
...The three congressmen—Downey (D-N...
...American Catholicism is no longer a seamless garment...
...In May, a tentative agreement was reached to establish joint nuclear risk reduction centers in the U.S...
...congressmen to the Soviet Union's highly controversial Krasnoyarsk radar station in Siberia read something like a script for a TV miniseries...
...So is the consistent and uncritical U.S...
...While it is true that on-site inspection may not be crucial* for verifying compliance with the total elimination of short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons, that is not the: case for monitoring the gradual reduction of long-range strategic forces, the real heart of arms control...
...That was one of the striking findings of the recent Commonweal- Women's Wear Daily News Poll...
...The most recent irony is that the U.S., the perennial advocate of on-site inspection, has now indicated it is backing away from its former insistence on such inspection...
...The problem is, of course, that elections themselves cannot insure either stability or democracy...
...Catholics of that stripe should never be rejected'along with the images that have been coined to label them...
...has opted to side with unscrupulous and squanderous leaders to the detriment of generations of the entire native population...
...Neither the old nor the new picture recognizes the controlling role of "core truths," as Father Curran put it, on which the church must insist, and from which it extends its teaching to other matters...
...Liberals, conservatives, and centrists may disagree on numerous aspects of diversity and change in the church...
...Untangling the motivations for the Soviet opening at Krasnoyarsk may prove illusive, but it is not unreasonable to view the initiative in light of other concurrences in U.S.-Soviet relations...
...These instances have their limitations...
...Only 30 percent recognized the term as designating a piece of clerical garb...
...About 20 percent of both sexes supported raised hemlines, and an equal percentage favored lowered ones...
...The Soviet Union has long denied that Krasnoyarsk would serve as part of an earlywarning system, thus breaching the 1972 ABM Treaty...
...Even "core truths" themselves may have to be examined, rethought, reformulated — that is the burden and the glory of Catholic "development of doctrine'' — but the process is a demanding, disciplined, and communal one, a far cry from "pick-andchoose...
...investment — is at the root of the strong anti-American rhetoric...
...and Moody (D-Wise...
...In the long run, there is much more to be done, including not only continued economic assistance, but also vigilance about how that money is spent...
...There is a kind of subtext to the media's susceptibility to these images — a self-congratulatory note that the church, too, is subject to the laws of a consumer society...
...Asked to comment on the Commonweal-WWD survey, a leading archbishop warned...
...They alert the Catholic church to a sociological reality: less and less can it count on religious affiliation as a matter of cultural, ethnic, or family inheritance...
...In this latter case, on-site inspection —with its rigors and embarrassments—will be an essential component of verifying treaty compliance...
...Ironically, it has been the pope's visit which has focused so much attention on what serious observers of the church have been reporting for years: high proportions of American Catholics consider themselves perfectly loyal members of the church while disagreeing with some of its official teachings...
...The economic chaos that has continued since the Duvalier ouster — including the loss of 12,000 assembly jobs when U.S...
...Father Charles Curran, for example, did exactly that on national TV, stating his opposition to "pick-and-choose Catholicism'' on the MacNeil/Lehrer broadcast the evening of the pope's arrival...
...They have agonized, they have struggled, they have reached their conclusions not to suit personal convenience but to resolve conflicts they perceived between particular teachings and what seemed to be more central impulses of the Gospel...
...inspection made it clear that Krasnoyarsk is such a component...
...It is urgent that the U.S...
...Pick-and-choose Catholicism, the media call it...
...12:2...
...A small number said it depended on the color of the priest's socks...
...nonetheless, they deal with a relatively restricted and specific set of church positions, primarily related to sex, marriage, and the treatment of women...
...During the papal visit, millions of Catholics have been affirming their belief that, despite the suffering and cruelty witnessed on 25 September 1987: 515 every side, this universe is created and sustained by a God of love, who, in Jesus Christ, has joined the human journey and promises victory over death, and whose Spirit enlivens us daily in the church's words and sacraments...
...PONDERING CHAOS Will Haiti have free and open presidential elections this November as the Namphy provisional government has promised and the Haitian people have every right to expect...
...Cafeteria Catholicism...
...scientists and arms control advocates, to monitor Soviet nuclear tests with their own seismic equipment and staff in the Soviet Union...
...This time the gamble must be played differently...
...This indicates a Soviet willingness for some forms of on-site inspection/verification...
...But caricature may quickly become reality if these images are allowed to establish themselves not only as a dubious description but as the legitimate norm...
...The opening at Krasnoyarsk produced a mix of signals...
...support of the Namphy government, which, since the violence this summer (see page 518), has been likened to America's thirty-year infatuation with the hated Duvaliers...
...The new images threaten a Catholicism with few resources to resist the pull of social pressure...
...An observation team should be sent to monitor the process, which could properly include representatives of several nations (since the U.S.-Haiti relationship is currently so tense...
...Over 80 percent of American Catholics felt that John Paul II deserved to be ranked among the world's best-dressed men...
...But the U.S...
...This is scarcely fair to millions of Catholics who have often departed from official teachings only reluctantly, after prayer and conscientious reflection, and not before they realized that many fellow Catholics shared the same moral intuitions...
...The telephone survey of a random sample of the nation's approximately 53 million Catholics turned up these other surprising results: • Most Catholic priests identified a "biretta"' asdther a television program or a small handgun...
...These were reiterated last March in the president's Report on Soviet Noncompliance of Arms Control Agreements...
Vol. 114 • September 1987 • No. 16
