Editorials

...Will border patrols, more powerful weapons for police, a "just-say-no" moral campaign, diplomatic carrot-and-stick policies really work—even if all are implemented together...

...As a focus of shared experience, some films offer a rare and important opportunity for mutual discovery...

...It seemed at the time—in light of the fearsome consequences of AIDS, the regrettable language used in the Vatican instruction which appeared to countenance violence against homosexuals, and the positive achievements of Dignity itself—that a more creative avenue for dealing with the situation ought to have been possible...

...If we find such inhumanity revolting or even blasphemous, we ought to ponder its widespread prevalence in our time and our lack of protest against it...

...The Middle East begs for serious and sustained diplomatic action...

...The suffering of Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, of which the Passion was only one element, demonstrates how deep and tightly entwined is the bond between heaven and earth...

...Paul is here transformed into a religious con man, his actual words and historical convictions turned upside down...

...The piercing eyes of the reproachful Jesuses of the iconostasis send Kingsley into a terrifying nightmare in which he is crucified by his Christian tormentors...

...It had witnessed not only a man's temptation but his torture...

...Here is our preliminary list: What about the budget deficit...

...It's time to have a real political campaign...

...How can the president attack the drug problem at its core: pervasive domestic demand...

...Turn back before it is too late," declared a leaflet with a Pat Buchanan attack on the film...

...What, indeed, had all these people on the banks of Sixth Avenue come out to see...

...A REAL CAMPAIGN A good issue nowadays is hard to find, especially when the media have heard it all before hundreds of times...

...What will the U.S...

...to be left only to the theologians and the church...

...From icons to holy cards, from movies to plastic statues, art has proved a remarkably independent force in shaping the Christian idea of Jesus—a matter, as Jaroslav Pelikan observes in Jesus Through the Centuries (Harper & Row),"too important...

...The success of this latter effort led the hospital to set up a research program to see whether anencephalic infants (infants born only with brain stems), who otherwise die very shortly after birth, would prove to be a dependable source of transplantable organs for other infants...

...This kind of coverage debases the political process...

...Just how do the candidates propose to rein in the deficit...

...We may even learn something unexpected from them about the imageless but living God...

...The shortage of nurses...

...Peabody in a remarkable press conference (Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1988) reported other reasons for suspending the program, including the emotional reactions of her staff in caring for these dying infants, a growing sense that they were on a slippery slope when requests were made to enter other, non-anencephalic infants in the program, and the fear that respirating anencephalic infants would promote their survival in a vegetative state...

...But by the time we got through the theater's doors and found a seat, we felt the Final Trumpet might not be long in sounding...

...Higher productivity...

...Does either candidate dare offer a plan...

...It is not the first, nor will Scorsese' s The Last Temptation be the last attempt by an artist to deal with the beautiful, elusive, and demanding figure of Jesus...

...foreheads...

...User fees...

...Instead of accepting this solution, the local Dignity chapter split over the issue, the majority voting to move the Mass to the premises of another denomination...

...But tolerance and efficiency prevailed inside, and once the film began, the audience was immediately and intensely attentive...

...Why and how was the Messiah allowed to suffer...

...After entering twelve infants into the research protocol, the hospital and the chief of its neonatology unit, Dr...

...To forestall such an occurrence while assuring the continuity of the special Mass at St...

...Maimonides taught that "the most perfect development" of the imaginative faculty was in fact prophecy—the power to challenge our own behavior and our own idols...

...In this brief dream segment, the film graphically telescopes the pogroms and religious wars that we easily forget are also part of our religious history...

...Another problem of a theological sort: God is not mocked, the Ziegfeld protesters insisted...

...The Wall Street Journal (August 11) advised these folks that they "probably should avoid this picture" because the temptation scene in particular, while tame by today's movie standards, is still "quite vivid...

...Motion pictures are an unparalleled means of self-discovery and cultural understanding...

...There can be a tendency to become self-absorbed or atomized, and thus ultimately separated from communion with the broader worshiping community of which the group is a part...

...In Brooklyn, for example, Dignity would no longer be allowed to use church buildings for meetings or group-sponsored liturgies...

...Nowhere is this distortion more evident than in his representation of Paul of Tarsus...

...Sebastian, and in light of an increasingly critical stance on the part of Dignity's national leaders toward the church's teaching on homosexual practice, in May Cardinal Bernardin instructed the Chicago parishes themselves to coordinate sponsorship of the Mass...

...Sebastian would have constituted "a serious pastoral mistake...

...Having lost its place as the world's largest creditor and now firmly established as the world's largest debtor, the U.S...

...We do not share these objections (see Commonweal, September 9) nor offer that advice...

...Sebastian liturgy continue as an essential element of the pastoral ministry of the archdiocese...

...Wedidn't...

...Will Ed Koch and Jesse Jackson stay in harness together...

...Bringing back nuclear energy...

...But the movie does present serious theological problems whose challenge should not be evaded out of either a desire to stay clear of people who favor censoring the movie or a condescending appreciation for Scorsese's sincerity...

...For more than seventeen years, first under the auspices of the Legion of Mary and then under the sponsorship of Dignity/Chicago, a Sunday Mass specifically for gay and lesbian Catholics had been offered at St...

...Nor does the God who leads him there, a God who seems to require human degradation to appeaase his own ill-defined anger...

...Nevertheless, there is a tension inherent in all interest-group Masses...

...Now that the campaign is in full tilt, Americans should insist that major issues be discussed and debated, by both candidates, in some detail and at some length...

...What about soaring health-care costs...

...What plans are there for raising revenue...

...Dignity members, however, were encouraged to attend regularly scheduled Masses, and Bishop Francis Mugavero instructed they be fully welcomed "within the community of Christ...

...freezes and cuts in defense and domestic programs...

...Has either candidate viable plans for cooperative action with regional parties and allies in Central America and the Persian Gulf...

...750), in the midst of the iconoclast controversy, recommended that artists "draw pictures and set forth, for all to see, him who has chosen to let himself be seen...

...As the tempest over The Last Temptation shows, we are no exception...

...A BETTER COURSE In response to the Vatican statement on homosexuality published in October 1986, a number of bishops in the U.S...

...If not, what will...

...Affordable housing and effective primary and secondary education...

...For some, Temptation is another outrageous instance of an ongoing attack on the moral fabric of society itself...

...But Jesus was...

...More importantly, they have provided a generous table to return to...

...do to clean up the environment...

...In the mind of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, to have canceled the Mass at St...

...Where do the candidates stand on raising auto emission standards, implementing tougher controls on coal burning...

...It was here that Baby Fay was transplanted with the heart of a baboon back in 1984...

...We made our way through a labyrinth of police barricades, security forces, and protesters...

...But what about those believers the Journal advises to protect themselves from the movie...

...What about drug abuse...

...The line we joined was the veritable New York melting pot—with every race, age, faith, and gender represented...

...It reveals not an avenging, scornful deity, but the incarnate, redeemer God, full of compassion and responsive to creation's deepest groanings...

...was a humanity suffused with the presence of divinity...

...Adrenalin was running so high, in fact, that a bomb threat might have come as a relief...

...More important, both the film and the controversy signal a moment for scrutinizing our own images and ideas of Jesus...

...For example, relying on Nikos Kazant-zakis's novel, Scorsese heightens tension by simultaneously utilizing and distorting elements of the New Testament...

...Acid rain, polluted air and water, chemicals in our soil, and the depletion of ozone threaten to destroy our forests, farm land, the health of our citizens and that of our neighbors...

...If today it is difficult to render faithfully or effectively a sense of that divinity, is it because we have debased our humanity...

...The movie isn't much help here: despite the outcries about the all-too-humanness of Scorsese's Jesus, this Jesus is never a deeply convincing or inspiring human figure, and in that context his death on the cross makes no sense...

...What about foreign policy and the U. S. penchant for single-handed action...

...The perennial effort to depict Jesus has let loose both imagination and instinct...

...This interpretation plays to the view that Paul knows better than Jesus what Jesus is all about...

...Some people feel they have had enough of the movie industry's mocking or patronizing treatment of religious beliefs, persons, and practices...

...This penchant constitutes an equally grave, self-defeating mistake...

...Sebastian Church...

...The dog-like chomp-and-hold of TV and print reporters on Dan Quayle's National Guard enlistment dominated the post-convention campaign news...

...Others take the film more personally, as an assault on the substance of their own deepest-held beliefs...

...is living on borrowed money and borrowed time...

...However, Dr...

...We hope her good sense prevails and the program is not simply suspended but ended...

...It was here that the heart of an anencephalic infant was transplanted into an infant with a defective heart in the autumn of 1987 (Commonweal, January 15, 1988...

...Joyce Peabody, have announced the suspension of the program...

...that Paul, not Jesus, is the real founder of Christianity...

...Ben Kingsley, an Ottoman Turk, experiences the anti-Islamic feelings of the Orthodox Greeks, whose Good Friday service he has been forced to attend in his capacity as a guide...

...The Last Temptation is one of them...

...Until recently, one such alternative avenue seemed to be emerging in Chicago...

...For them Scorsese's treatment of Jesus' life is but another example...

...But that in no way should detract from the wisdom of Cardinal Bernardin and the Chicago pastors...

...Both as Christ-hero and Christ-sufferer, cornerstone and stone of contradiction, the image of Jesus is central to Western art and culture...

...The impact of AIDS on its victims and on the entire health-care system...

...Should the Pledge of Allegiance be carved on the candidates' chests...

...GOOD SENSE PREVAILS Loma Linda Hospital in California has acquired a reputation for the fantastic and terrifying...

...Which raises the deeper question about the nature of our redemption and salvation...

...Scorsese, whatever his artistic failures and theological limitations, has at least attempted to bridge that great divide...

...That no transplantable organs have come from their efforts would seem to have counted a great deal in the decision...

...John Damascene (d...

...We would do better to engage in vigorous debate those writers, theologians, and artists who most challenge our beliefs...

...Neither will The Last Temptation be the last occasion for questions and controversy about the person of Jesus and the roots of our religious beliefs...

...Is a cabinet-level drug czar part of the answer...

...The crucifixion of Jesus plays a significant, if ancillary role, in Pascali's Island...

...instructed the priests of their dioceses to withdraw support for the group of gay and lesbian Catholics known as Dignity...

...There are few options, none of them particularly popular: a variety of possible tax hikes...

...What about pressing domestic needs...

...Promoting conservation and renewable sources of energy...

...The mere act of entering the Ziegfeld proved as bracing as some of the film's more unsettling scenes...

...The sad fact is that for the moment the house being put in order appears to be in a worse state than before...

...It may still be political suicide for a presidential contender to mention the "T'' word, but no candidate can be taken seriously who promises economic stability but fails to lay out what drastic measures lie ahead...

...Though we believe there are other legal and ethical reasons to bar this practice, Dr...

...But as Pelikan notes in his discussion of that fierce period,' 'The humanity of Jesus depicted in the icons...

...By maintaining the special liturgy at St...

...Peabody's will do for the moment...

...Selling Hawaii to the Japanese...

...we found the crowds at the Ziegfeld Theater, a short subway ride away in the canyons of Manhattan, gathered there for a screening of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ...

...In his quest for the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer wrote, "each successive epoch [has] found its own thoughts in Jesus," that each of us creates him "in accordance with one's own character...

...With that wrung out, other nonissues are avidly being covered: Has Dukakis lost momentum...

...The controversial temptation scene is in fact a hallucination induced by the Romans' officially sanctioned authoritarian brutality...

...For the last two-and-a-half years as well, the pastors of five Chicago parishes have met to assure that the St...

...Serious people in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact are joined in substantive discussion on conventional arms reductions: what are the candidates' positions...

...Scorsese's treatment of Paul, for all of its shortcomings, not only exposes a facet of contemporary religious hypocrisy illustrated by the travails of several TV evangelists...

...Doesn't avoidance finally amount to capitulation...

...but "Paul's" denial of the Christ-message brings each viewer face to face with the most demanding question Jesus asks each of us: "And who do you say that I am?'' Perhaps, finally, that is why—in contrast to the protesters outside—the audience that left the Ziegfeld was remarkably reflective, almost subdued...

...If so, what will be that individual ' s role and what powers will he or she have...

...It is not even the only such effort to appear on the screen this summer...

...It also helps the Republicans, who as incumbents have the most to gain from issue-dodging...

...Sebastian under a wide parochial sponsorship, they have not only managed to keep the welcome mat firmly in place...