Editorials
Half a loaf. . . There has always been a Polish crisis and there will always be one. The sense of exasperation expressed in that line colors the West's under-standing of Polish history and...
...The bottom line: these young workers, even after all this struggle, are unlikely to have decent housing any time soon...
...U. S. officials assisted in the arrest of an Arias supporter charged with laundering drug money...
...The success with which Arias has maintained his balance has enabled him to emerge as a distinctive Central American leader...
...I am doing it for you...
...Nor did we join fully in the international acclaim for Alias's Nobel Peace Prize...
...and in his ambivalent approach to reform and renewal in the church...
...pressures were exerted by the U.S...
...In contrast to his challenging and compassionate deeds in the world, John Paul sends out conflicting signals on many church issues...
...But, by definition, they are a rebuke to any false sense of authority...
...Another form of Soviet intervention...
...Mikhail Gorbachev's public show of support for Jaruzelski notwithstanding, Russian intervention is highly unlikely: the Soviet press has accused the Polish government of mismanaging the economy and urged compromise with Solidarity...
...While the U.S...
...And it is on the political front that the capacity for compromise may serve the long-run interests of Poland...
...As Scorsese began to speak very simply about his faith and the struggle to make the film, they clearly didn't believe he was serious...
...Homosexuals are assured they must be respected, while a Vatican document seems to excuse violence against them...
...Like the journalists, the paparazzi, the movie stars, and even the waiters at the Excelsior Hotel, we did what everyone seemed to be doing during the festival...
...Women are told that they have equal dignity, but can only be admitted to secondary levels of ministry...
...Does it make any difference...
...reaction to Arias's peace plan was critical...
...In their enthusiasm for John Paul's Sollicitudo, several members of the U.S...
...Such people are a mark of the church's growing maturity...
...His efforts to end the strikes and to begin talks should be judged in that light...
...A sign of the General's imminent departure...
...actions seem to be undercutting Arias's domestic policies and the health of the Costa Rican economy...
...We stood around talking about Jesus...
...Simultaneously, at UN Headquarters in New York, members of that world body met to discuss his recent encyclical, Sollicitudo...
...In Paraguay earlier this year he told the country's dictator, Gen...
...Are they the normal expressions of political disfavor used by the Reagan administration in the face of Arias's refusals to join its anti-Sandinista campaign...
...UNDERMINING ARIAS...
...he is reported to be a less-than-able administrator (the Financial Times of London, in a lengthy analysis, describes the recent reform of the Roman curia as a "damp squib, offering only minor and cosmetic changes...
...Unexpectedly the interview became an occasion for personal religious testimony...
...Perhaps...
...He has overcome an attack on his life, traveled the world, and deeply affected the development of the Catholic church...
...Even in its most nearly autonomous moments, Poland's internal political life has often been heavily conditioned by the exigencies of relations with Germany and/or Russia...
...Even the relatively higher wages of miners and shipyard workers are not enough to buy scarce goods...
...While Okun praised the "vigor, force, and eloquence" of the letter, he took exception to the pope's pessimistic assessment of third-world development, to his conclusions concerning the negative effects of the cold war, and to his apparent "moral equivalency" in comparing the Eastern and Western blocs...
...his ambivalence in church affairs seems to stem from a personal desire for clarity and commitment that overemphasizes conformity...
...It is the young, including many of these workers, who are paying the highest price for Poland's abysmal economic performance...
...Lech Walesa has been called a violent (read: fiery) defender of moderation...
...The novelist Maureen Howard, a Catholic, had to remind them that his attitude toward dissent was not in accord with PEN's principles of freedom of speech...
...Official U.S...
...Married couples must live apart and put off starting families because they cannot find a place to live together...
...Are these actions calculated assaults by the U.S...
...As the peace process seems to be regaining momentum, recent reports of escalating tension between Costa Rica and the U.S...
...For better and for worse, not a few Catholics today find themselves in the same situation...
...The Finnish woman acknowledged that she'd had very little religious background and found herself looking at what she had assumed was a bankrupt myth in a new way...
...A year later, on December 13,1981, the government declared martial law and suppressed Solidarity...
...In this economy the most basic human needs and rights are violated...
...funding agencies favor private business and promote private enterprise over the cooperatives encouraged by the Costa Rican government...
...Thirteen months ago, when Arias initiated the peace plan known in Central America as the Esquipulas II Accord and signed by Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, the U.S...
...aimed at undermining the Costa Rican president...
...The encyclicals and the journeys indicate the pope's ability and readiness to challenge those who wield power and bear the greatest responsibility for the state of the world...
...But perhaps a signal to Soviet bloc governments that their domestic conflicts are their own business and their own responsibility...
...One of his strong points, however-his ability to deal with competing parties in dispute-has also led to persistent tensions between Costa Rica and the U.S., beginning with Alias's refusal to give asylum to the fleeing Ferdinand Marcos and going on to his closing a clandestine airstrip built to supply the Nicaraguan contras...
...The nation had suffered for this, but because of this it had also survived" (The Struggles for Poland, Random House...
...he refuses to call for sanctions against Nicaragua or to aid the contras by allowing Costa Rica to serve as a base for their operation...
...The Arias plan specifically prohibits outside intervention in the region, thereby challenging U.S...
...to undermine-wittingly or not-the region's most stable democracy and its most able political leader...
...He has set a double course for the church, and it is an assignment that at least does not allow for complacency...
...They were waiting for him to deconstruct himself, as it were...
...But an even more eloquent tribute came from my fellow moviegoers at the 1:40 A.M...
...The sense of exasperation expressed in that line colors the West's under-standing of Polish history and politics-and for understandable" reasons...
...The Dutch reporter asked how the Catholic Scorsese and the Dutch Reformed, Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, were able to find common ground...
...Howard, they take their responsibilities seriously...
...On the other hand, an incident that took place at the same time on a different continent, though minor in comparison, illustrates the pope's conflicting stands...
...Cardinal Etchegaray delivered a spirited presentation of the encyclical, drawing special attention to its "guidelines for development" (those dealing especially with reform of the international trade system and the world's monetary and financial systems), guidelines that, the cardinal noted, have received too little attention...
...For me," he said, "Everyman is a New Yorker,"-thus the streetwise performance of Harvey Keitel...
...But there is another way to look at this history...
...TEN YEARS, TWO DIRECTIONS October 16 is the tenth anniversary of the election of Karol Wojtyla as bishop of Rome...
...Peace talks between the guerrillas and Nicaraguan officials have resumed, tentatively, and a five-nation summit meeting is scheduled for mid-November...
...showing, added to take the overflow-in other words, real devotees- from the midnight show...
...In assessing the 1980 compromise between the government and Solidarity, Neal Ascherson deftly sums up an alternative interpretation: "[T]he nation and its leaders had never pushed any confrontation to its logical extreme...
...Arias's methods run counter to U.S...
...in words Archbishop Rembert Weakland addressed to the pope last year in Los Angeles, they "are more inclined to look at the intrinsic worth of an argument proposed by the teachers in the church than to accept it on the basis of the authority itself...
...Loyola University's James Fuerst, who knows Arias and has interviewed Biehl at length, reported to us several such practices: U.S...
...Half measures" and "hesitant deeds" are a curse in an economy where decisive and concerted action must be taken to dissolve the administrative and financial sludge that impedes the production of both new entrepreneurial efforts and established state enterprises...
...When we left the Palace of Cinema in the near-dawn, nobody went home...
...This is most apparent in two distinctive areas: in his outreach and outspokenness on behalf of the world's poor...
...Adequate housing, even for rental, is beyond the means of the average worker...
...withheld its support...
...With the Soviet government preoccupied by its own reforms, with Western groups and nations prepared to help with debt reduction, and with the prodigious patience of the Polish people, perhaps Walesa is right, there is now "a chance to let Poland be Poland...
...There seems to us a cumulative weight in the following U.S.-sponsored actions: the Costa Rican ambassador to the U.S...
...For him Judas represented Everyman...
...In individual cases, the pope himself may be at the mercy of Vatican bureaucracies and entrenched custom...
...representative to the UN...
...humanitarian" aid has been spent-under the auspices of various front groups-on costly, full-page, anti-Sandinista ads in La Nacion, contesting the regional peace efforts of Arias and the other signers of the accord...
...until Arias confidant John Biehl was dismissed from his post in the UN Development Program, also for lobbying against contra aid...
...Arias then turned to Fidel Castro, asking him to persuade Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to return to the bargaining table...
...Last month, both facets of this achievement were shown at the same time...
...policy...
...and, finally, U.S...
...Howard was quick to point out the humor of her situation-"the idea of a little old Catholic girl saying 'No, the pope can't join our club...
...To his critics in Solidarity, he replies,' 'I am not naive...
...support of the contras...
...It is a tragedy for the region and short-sighted for the U.S...
...Collegiality and subsidiarity are commended, but decision making is increasingly centralized: episcopal appointments, for example, are too often made without consultation of local bishops and without consideration of local church needs...
...In that task Poland's history of "inner tolerance" is both a curse and a blessing...
...But this double and sometimes discordant course increasingly threatens to drive the church decisively into a narrow, defensive understanding of its mission...
...That night at the official, midnight, premiere, an elegantly dressed audience would applaud the actors and cheer the filmmakers...
...John Paul visited southern Africa...
...The encyclical's most vocal critic at the seminar was Herbert S. Okun, deputy U.S...
...But it didn't take...
...It is important that Mr...
...The strikes of this past spring and late summer, and the continuing challenge by the Polish people to the government's very legitimacy, are also proof that General Jaruzelski has failed to relieve Poland's economic problems-things are getting worse not better-and has thereby lost whatever authority he gained in 1981 by seeming to stave off Russian military intervention...
...Alfredo Stroessner, that human rights are "not a matter of political convenience...
...because there was no way to force compliance, we declared the plan naive...
...This criticism was repeated when talks between the Nicaraguan government and the contras broke down completely in June...
...The country's enormous foreign debt-much of it left from the Giereck years-and the IMF-imposed austerity measures soak up hard currency that should be going to capital investment and to retooling Poland's aging industrial base...
...Like Ms...
...deserve careful scrutiny...
...Since his election in 1986, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias Sanchez has walked a tight rope: positioning himself as an ally of the United States, without being-in fact or in reputation- a yes man...
...The fact is that on its first anniversary, the Arias peace plan has proved a partial success...
...It was also responsible for initial negotiations in Nicaragua, which broke down when the Sandinistas jailed domestic opponents during June and July...
...He won the [Nobel] prize for defunding the contras and taking an anti-American stance," is the view of one top State Department official (New York Times, August 7, 1988...
...They certainly do not trust the government and their initial refusal to follow Walesa in ending the strikes indicates as well their distrust of him simply for agreeing to talk with the government before securing recognition and legalization of Solidarity...
...The four journalists were well-known critics and European intellectuals of the kind for whom serious discussion of traditional religious belief is, by definition, either right-wing or embarrassing...
...AID money is channeled through private banks in direct competition with Costa Rica's centralized banking system, impeding the government's access to and control of the funds...
...ET CETERA SCORSESE: LAST VISITATION Mary Pat Kelly, who interviewed Martin Scorsese in these pages (Commonweal, September9,1988), reports on the reception of The Last Temptation of Christ at the Venice Film Festival: The day The Last Temptation had its premiere, I sat in on an interview with Martin Scorsese and four journalists-from France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Finland...
...And, indeed, when the reviewsappeared the next morning, the critics treated the film as a serious work of art...
...In 1988, the situation has changed...
...Jews are welcomed and heard, but promised efforts for improved relations fail to materialize...
...In agreeing to begin talks with the government in October, Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, faces his own test-on two fronts: with General Czeslaw Kiszczak representing the government and with the miners and shipyard workers of Solidarity who have been both backbone and flashpoint of the movement...
...He sees the present moment as a "chance, for the first time in Poland, to talk seriously about what can and should be done...
...president of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Commission, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray...
...From his own experience he found that remarkable...
...As we pray for the pope on this anniversary, we hope the church can continue to live with Karol Wojtyla's two orientations...
...Welcome words and gestures are often followed by instances of distressing insensitivity...
...The power of John Paul's social concerns has been etched in our consciences, particularly through his travels to the underdeveloped world and by the publication of his two social encyclicals, Laborem exercens (1981) and Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987...
...chapter of PEN wanted to invite the pope to join their society...
...Without the Soviet big stick, however, that spirit of "inner tolerance," which Ascherson sees as a focal element in Polish politics, will be deeply and sharply tested...
...The process has achieved a regional cease-fire (though civil strife continues in Guatemala and El Salvador...
...These ten years have had both their inspiring and disquieting moments, marked always by John Paul II's powerful intellect, personal courage, immense energy, and the sharp contrasts in his character...
...The Arias plan has yet to achieve a permanent peace in the region, but neither have our unilateral interventions...
...This inner tolerance, which had made Poland such a mature society in comparison to Germany or Russia, had led to a history of half-measures, of belligerent words and symbols accompanied by only hesitant deeds...
...I am not doing it for myself...
...and ambassadors from seven nations representing the world's major regions, religions, blocs, and stages of development...
...Solidarity has survived-proof in itself of the government's preference for half-measures...
...His deeds have engaged the imaginations of Catholics and non-Catholics alike...
...As he spoke, the journalists lost their reserve...
...the wait for new housing units is now calculated to be fifty years...
...Overinvestment in prefabricated housing and poor site planning a decade ago have created a critical shortage of new apartments and houses...
...Walesa and General Kiszczak get it right this time...
...These stands challenge us all...
...The Reagan administration is giving the appearance of trying to undermine Arias and derail an important official effort at joint peacemaking in Central America...
...Later, in Bolivia, he instructed a massive gathering that they must all fight drug trafficking as a matter of Christian duty...
...It can hardly be in anyone's interest to continue the present political and economic impasse in Poland, not the people's, not Solidarity's, and certainly not government leaders...
...Though the government is likely to balk at political measures that would threaten the hegemony of the Communist party, it is the workers who may be Walesa's more formidable challenge...
...What is alarming about the present situation is that because of past economic mistakes any political compromise between Solidarity and the government will have to weather continuing austerity measures before the fruits of cooperation can be harvested...
...Why such a negative reaction...
...Though many question his tactics, no one has seriously challenged his leadership-for the moment...
...Geography, internal crisis, economic underdevelopment, ethnic dissension, the ambitions of larger and more powerful neighbors have all colluded to make the Polish national existence repetitively precarious (Yogi Berra: "It's deja vu all over again...
...was acting within its rights, the timing and pressure in each of these instances raise troubling questions...
...Never mind that Arias has voiced disappointment and even criticism of Sandinista restrictions on human rights and political freedoms, and that the limitations on outside intervention are also directed at the Soviets...
...I am not making life easy for myself...
...And these are difficult times of unsettling change...
...Nonetheless, it is clear that the pope has set the tenor of his papacy in both its defense of human dignity in the socio-economic-political realm and its tightening of the reins in ecclesiastical matters...
...military aid to the contras...
...Castro did, and momentum seems to be picking up again...
...had to be replaced when a Congressman complained that the ambassador was lobbying against U.S...
...his words have consistently challenged our minds and hearts...
...Real economic change inevitably challenges party apparatchiks (part of the sludge factor) and current political arrangements...
...Other U.S...
...In Mozambique, seeing the deadly,effects of civil war, he was moved by "the intensity of the suffering lived by this nation...
...He is willing to strike compromises with the Sandinistas, whom the Reagan administration has tried consistently to oust...
...Are they based upon justified grievances...
...There he praised the region's efforts at self-development and called for the developed nations to offer greater assistance...
...His appeal for and to the poor seems to spring from his deep compassion and his sense of the singularity of each human person...
...Instead he insisted upon his personal connection to the story of Jesus...
...Sponsored by the Vatican Mission to the UN, the gathering included Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar...
Vol. 115 • October 1988 • No. 17
