Editorials

...He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed...

...But its logic is irrefutable...

...We do not have to look beyond our own East River...

...In fact, our desperate attachmen t to upward mobility, and the growing sway of materialism now enveloping both West and East, has become so obsessive it may even displace our longstanding infatuation with the bomb as humanity's clearest form of death wish...

...He too has played a part, particularly in emphasizing the complex nature of the relationship between law and morality...

...A genuine runic inscription, pronounced the author...

...Here is moral wisdom married to rhetorical power...

...Democratic political theory and jurispru dence offer sound reasons for contending that abortion belongs in the political arena...

...his prochoice votes have never been a problem, he says, because "I've never involved myself in the abortion debate on the Senate floor...

...that, despite a growing sense of the need to reverse this deterioration, no coherent vision has been developed in that period to challenge the patterns of our throwaway culture...

...For it is given at precisely that moment in history when human beings most need to be reconciled to the earth...

...Indeed, material progress and problem solving are the absolutes to which the so-called "human context" must conform...

...Among them were the following: Counseling: The governor wrote that if strengthened regulations are needed to assure that clients of family planning clinics understand "the full range of options" available to women, he would favor their enactment...

...Lincoln, Mario Cuomo has the oratorical skills to enlighten and persuade the public...

...There is scarcely a more evocative narrative sentence in the Gospels...

...At Easter we have no fuller intimation of how transforming and powerful God's beauty is...

...M.I.T...

...On abortion itself, Mr...

...Public opinion is where it has always been, mostly in the middle, unwilling to have all abortions banned, yet troubled by the availability of abortion virtually on demand, the practical consequence of Roe...

...Doesn't the limp phrase "human contexts" illustrate how squeamish the value-free academy is with the idea that something outside of technical mastery might command authority...

...We'll do our own temporizing, thank you, the students seemed to say...

...As in 1857 with the Dred Scott decision, so in 1990 with Roe: our political culture is again caught up in a fierce struggle over whether some human lives can be placed beyond the protection of the law...

...Should we bemoan this lack of idealism...

...In For All Mankind, the new film-documentary on the Apollo mission to the moon, the photographer's eye is focused primarily elsewhere-not on sunrise or the heavens but on the planet earth itself, "this bath of blue and slake," as Gerard Manley Hopkins called it...

...But such environmental disregard is hardly limited to the East...

...rashly queried the rueful editor...

...What does the governor think...

...on the contrary, he has done more than some of his critics to keep abortion from being treated as a settled question...

...Casting about for an entry point, we turned to another great national debate and read these words: "He who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions...

...they also effect change through their powers of persuasion and their use of the public platform they are accorded for purposes of political leadership...

...We need to rouse ourselves not only to earth's glory but to its need...

...It was hoped the seminars would enlighten students to "the way in which social values influence the work we usually think of as purely disciplinary...

...Out of the ambivalence shared by a majority of Americans, some consensus needs to be formed-a consensus that will be shaped in part by the intelligence and persuasive skills that political leaders bring to the public debate...

...for example, measures to discourage unwanted pregnancies and to offer alternatives, as the governor recognizes...

...beyond these, steps to insure that the woman considering abortion is fully and honestly informed...

...Commonweal suggested not only counseling that would point to abortion alternatives, but counseling that "fully describes...what we now know about fetuses and their development...

...Students soon learn questions of morality are by definition outside the intellectual enterprise of disinterested academic inquiry...

...World Watch might have been echoing John Paul IPs recent World Day of Peace message, "Peace with All Creation...

...ET CETERA A RUNE OF OUR OWN Rummaging through our last Cuomo-filled issue we came upon an unfortunate runkle...

...The governor expresses gratitude to the Catholic bishops for keeping abortion from becoming a non-issue...

...As already indicated, we were less than satisfied with the governor's treatment of certain sub-issues within the debate, as raised by Commonweal...

...Senator Daniel Moynihan has hinted as much...

...In our times, there is perhaps no more beautiful and captivating an image than the one transmitted back to us by the astronauts, the image of the earth as seen from space...

...Is it possible that Cardinal O'Connor's personal feelings toward Mr...

...But we are not clear where the governor stands on the matter...

...First it must be said that much of what Mr...

...he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law...

...Yet the planet has become a poorer place in these past two decades...

...The press attention given to Cuomo's letter highlights another aspect of the situation: the low tolerance of most reporters for serious discussion of the abortion question and the prochoice bias of New York newspapers...

...There is something sacramental about the image as well...

...Between New York's episcopacy and New York's press, the governor has his problems...

...We now know the sterility fabricated by Communist architecture pales in comparison...

...Roe supporters pay Roe similar reverence...

...But our response will not deal only with some substantive disagreements and one major disappointment...

...If indeed he takes abortion seriously as a direct assault on life, the tenor of his finely calibrated comments do not finally seem to connect with that reality...

...Reason once again must be seen to serve humankind, not just those who can manipulate it efficiently...

...New York Newsday made a reasonable stab...

...Human Contexts of Science and Technology" was the general topic explored in a group of elective interdisciplinary courses on the social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of science and engineering...

...We all make nistakes...

...If colleges want moral questions to be taken seriously they need only make their students and faculty accountable...

...Although, in the face of social and cultural pressures favoring abortion, legislation cannot prohibit it, other legislative measures can help reduce the number of abortions...

...The city's other tabloids, the Post and the Daily News, downplayed Cuomo's ideas and stressed the conflict between him and the bishops, thereby attributing to him the stance they wanted him to take...

...Simplicity, moderation, and discipline, as well as the spirit of sacrifice, must become a part of everyday life...

...Cuomo writes is a welcome contribution to the all but intractable debate over abortion: his civil tone above all, but also his continued willingness to address the moral, political, and legal questions the issue raises...

...but some who opt for oversimplification have in our view done greater damage to the body politic...

...Since the value of human life cannot be proven empirically, how could it be any other way...

...It is good to know that he will carefully consider any bill that comes before him on the matter...

...Douglas treated Scott v. Sandford as sacrosanct, the law of the land...

...There are those who suspect him of complexifying the matter for the sake of obfuscation...

...He who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions...

...A fitting octave for Easter, any year...

...Viability testing: hi supporting the viability testing allowed in Webster, we were not arguing for measures that would insure treatment for fetuses born alive after an attempted abortion (that goes without saying), but rather for a ban on third-trimester abor tions...

...Those of us who believe abortion is wrong-and we accept that Governor Cuomo so believes-need to do many things...

...He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed...

...Parental notification/consent: It is reasonable to stress, as the governor does, the real-world complexity of any such require ment applied to all cases...

...In the realm of social policy, the rhetoric of science and problem solving consequently prevails...

...In "Binsey Poplars," Hopkins described the devastation of a grove of favorite aspens: "Aftercomers cannot guess the beauty been...

...But the failure of M.I.T.'s attempt to bridge the gap between moral decision making and technical competence comes as no surprise...

...An education in ecological responsibility is urgent: responsibility for oneself, for others, for the earth...

...This April 22, the Sunday following Easter, marks the twentieth anniversary of the first Earth Day...

...Well, perhaps...

...We all make nistakes.e runic inscription, pronounced the author...

...He notes that on the one hand, "the seriousness of the ecological issue lays bare the depth of man's [sic] moral crisis," while on the other, "Our very contact with nature has a deep restorative power...

...It is an image that can help effect such a change...

...And yet, and yet...

...By way of reply We begin this promised reply to Governor Mario Cuomo's letter (Commonweal, March 23) by announcing that he is right: We do not agree with everything his letter said, and the letter does not contain everything we wish it would have...

...Yet with each new sunrise of each new earth day, our responsibility for living and sharing that intimation is wound inextricably more tightly with how we care for the earth itself...

...Testing at twenty weeks insures that the law would give the fetus the benefit of the doubt...

...The March-April issue of World Watch concludes that "ecological degradation has reached global proportions...

...Note his words on child care in the State of the State message: "No infant should come into a world that does not care if it is fed properly, housed decently, educated adequately...

...The purely instrumental rationalism that is the modern academy's creed leaves little room for any serious discussion of ethics or of anything as difficult to define as human value...

...But, with the Webster decision of last July, a question that had seemed closed now appears to be open...

...FIRST LIGHT "And very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb" (Mark 16:2...

...As deadly as the possibility of nuclear war remains, the relentless pace of consumption on this finite orb has become even more threatening to human survival...

...In our rumination on Andy Rooney's rehabilitation (March 23) a typo smeaked into the hemline...

...It would not be stretching the thought of St...

...Ruination and Rumania, rumbled the senior writer...

...Paul to say that at this hour nearly all of nature is groaning and in travail...

...His letter to Commonweal is only one example of his willingness to wrestle with the effort to reconcile a set of conflicting obligations as he sees them...

...It may be that abortions at twenty-three weeks represent a small percentage of all abortions, but 1 percent of 1.5 million is 15,000 abortions...

...To ask the question is emphatically not to suggest that he has done nothing...

...Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle," wrote the pope...

...Of the papers we've seen, only the Washington Post reported what Cuomo actually said...

...Apparently, students could care less...

...Tedious as they may become in explication, these are not mere matters of detail...

...and the sacramental character of nature itself...

...But secular universities (and religious schools as well) will have to speak more explicitly about objective moral value if they hope to promote any kind of ethical literacy...

...Is it possible that Bishop Vaughan's "prophetic" stance not only does not help to reduce the number of abortions but also prevents the emergence of a middle-way consensus that would...

...And now our question, our principal question: Why hasn't Governor Mario Cuomo stepped forth as a molder of consensus...

...Was Judge Douglas personally opposed...

...Some states are testing on the far limits-trying to ban all abortions except in cases of rape or incest or a threat to the life of the mother...

...Such has been the environmental degradation in Eastern Europe during the Communist decades that Vaclav Havel addressed head on in his first presidential address...

...But public officials do not affect public policy only through legislation and regulation...

...Like Mr...

...Lincoln bore in on Douglas's silence about the content of Dred Scott because Lincoln not only opposed the decision but feared it would lead to a second one extending slavery to the states that prohibited it...

...Perhaps...

...Cuomo offers less of both...

...Some professors have incorporated a discussion of values into their more traditional classes as a result of the well-meaning experiment...

...certainly it would give substance to the phrase, "fully informed consent...

...And then he's got us...

...Grace, wrote Hopkins, is "God's better beauty...

...According to World Watch, "Because of the strain on resources it creates, materialism simply cannot survive the [necessary] transition to a sustainable world...

...He does not give any opinion on that-but, because it has been decided by the Court...

...where the blind or retarded child is condemned to exist rather than empowered to live...

...It is stunning, iconic even, in the sense of making us more aware of God's own perception of creation, letting us sense its glory in a way we had not before, as if we were seeing the earth on the very first day of creation...

...OUT WITH CONTEXTS The New York Times reported last week that M.I.T., the Vatican of scientific triumphalism, was abandoning a bold and potentially subversive three-year experiment in curriculum reform...

...There are no perfect historical analogies, but this one is close...

...But we reserve our greatest emphasis for what we've described as our chief disappointment with his response...

...A university identifies its hierarchy of values in its requirements...

...We hope so...

...The New York Times' s Albany reporter, as she has done previously, got an imprimatur for her interpretation by quoting a prochoice advocate...

...Where does the governor stand...

...It must, in other words, be seen to have a human face, not the soul of a machine...

...A ruse or a rumpus...

...Would this give some women second thoughts about their decision...

...The governor's amicus brief: We did not criticize the brief the governor co-signed in Turnock v. Ragsdale because it was an argument for expanded abortion rights, as the governor sug gests, but rather because it explicitly (and unnecessarily) asked the Court not to overturn Roe v. Wade: "It would be unprecedented for this Court, having recognized a fundamental constitutional right, to withdraw that right and throw the abortion issue back into the political arena...

...The sun goes forth, in the words of the psalm, "as the bridegroom from the bridal chamber," and "runs its course from one end of the heavens to the other...

...World Watch spells out this need more concretely and offers viable goals and possible means to achieve them...

...Cuomo have foreclosed a more constructive discussion between the governor and church officials...

...Cuomo has not only been found mistaken, but has been personally assailed by some of New York's bishops...

...But it is equally reasonable to ask him to describe what bill he would sign into law, what provisions for individual circumstances he would ask...

...Is it because the governor has overstepped his place by presuming to articulate his position as a Catholic and a public official...

...Thus Abraham Lincoln, joining Judge Stephen Douglas in debate over the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which permitted the extension of slavery to the territories of the United States and determined that slaves had no constitutional protections...

...None of the courses was required for graduation, and with keen insight those being coaxed with contexts saw little of consequence in such work...

...An open mind too often means a mind unprejudiced by any convictions at all...

...For his trouble, Mr...

...is to be commended for its valiant effort to bring intellectual commerce in touch with what one professor called "real life...

...Shaping new state laws and regulations is a long, arduous, and conflict-filled process...

...In most universities, morality is understood to be a purely private and subjective judgment...

...But the pope touches on two points that he and believers are uniquely positioned to provide: insight into the ethical dimension of the ecological crisis...

...the states are in a position to test how far the Supreme Court will reshape its 1973 ruling...

...Similarly, there is scarcely a more stunning natural moment than sunrise...

...others are testing at the near margins, trying to end third-trimester abortions, requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions, and introducing fuller counseling and informed consent procedures...

...No other public official addressing this or any other controverted issue has been treated with the disdain shown the governor...