Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 22 Correspondence 738 Editorials 739 Let civilians govern: Robert E. White 741 Oy! Koumenism: John Garvey 742 i i i i Awaiting this year's revelation: Paul...
...infant mortality (40,000 babies under age one die each year...
...Who of us, appropriating the images of frescoists and painters, has not conjured up a grander scene: at least, a featherbed feed box...
...And worse, ithas given the Salvadoran peace process, now at a crucial juncture, only lukewarm encouragement...
...or a star-studded heaven...
...Yet, down to this very moment the U.S...
...Those crimes must not be forgotten...
...Emilio Ponce as one of the senior officers most directly implicated in the 1989 murder of the six Jesuit priests...
...ET CETERA ANY QUESTIONS...
...officials still indulge in ritual condemnations of Cuban and Nicaraguan support for the FMLN...
...After more than a decade of U.S.-sponsored war in E1 Salvador, a UN-supervised cease-fire is tentatively scheduled for shortly before Christmas...
...and certainly a more generous response: if only we had been citizens of Bethlehem...
...The present dreaded internal security forces, which have strong links to the THE GRAYMOOR PRIZE Yes, once again, the COMMONWEAL editors, displaying the decisiveness that makes the party of reform sing Hosannas in our name and the Vatican tremble before our querulous indictments, have decided to award not one but two Graymoor Prizes...
...That is not all...
...Today, the Bush administration is turning away, consigning the place to a convenient memory hole...
...No government can love a child and no policy can substitute for a family's care, but clearly families can be helped or hurt...
...Letters should not exceed 250 words and are subject to editing for clarity and spacing limitations...
...This past November, the Catholic church in E1 Salvador, after years of investigative research that met with government obstruction right up to the end, issued an eighty-one-page report listing 794 people by name, all murdered by the Salvadoran Army in Mozote, Cerro Pando, and La Joya...
...REPORT ON EL SALVADOR LET CIV .Tq...
...The spirit of Herod lives...
...the subtle shadings of Mary's rich velvet gown...
...The grim data speak for themselves: abortion (1.6 million annually...
...In training the Atlacatl Battalion and in continuing to supply the Salvadoran nailitary with nearly unlimited resources, the U.S...
...The odds are otherwise...
...STAND...
...Catholic bishops narrowly averted a transmogrification of the Christmas classic to "Away in the feed box/ No crib for a bed...
...It analyzes the struggles of families not only to feed 20 December 1991:739 and shelter their children, not simply to secure good schooling and adequate health care, but also to feed the spiritual, psychological, and intellectual hungers of childhood...
...20 December 1991:741...
...04106 (207) 799-4387, classified adverrising correspondence to 15 Dutch St...
...Tens of thousands of Salvadorans have met torture and death merely because they sympathized with change...
...It laments the racism and discrimination that blight the lives of African-American children, especially those who live in inner cities, but reminds us that most poor children are white and most are from working families...
...o'S GOVERN WHERE DOES THE U.S...
...At their annual meeting in November, the U.S...
...Peace holds few attractions for the swollen Salvadoran army...
...There were exactly four questions about what the president planned to do to strengthen the public schools, four about AIDS, three about U.S...
...The merry season brings on merry thoughts of Christmas pageants and parties, parody versions of songs and stories, and exuberant indulgence---of children especially...
...The Salvadoran military insists that the members of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Movement (FMLN) lay down their arms in exchange for govemmental commitments...
...The FMLN first proposed total demilitarization...
...There were forty-one questions dealing with the qualifications of John Tower to serve as secretary of defense, more than ten times the number of questions concerned with specific military pro740: Commonweal grams...
...New York, N.Y...
...In the Salvadoran military, rank order goes: major, colonel, millionaire...
...In fact, a poll in Minneapolis showed most youngsters quite conversant with the word "manger" but foggy about "feed box...
...could break the deadlock...
...Keep that manger...
...Ponce, who is still a CIA favorite, has bragged, "This war can yet be won...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Moakley concludes, "I personally find [the task force's] version of events more credible than the alternative," namely, that one lower officer, acting on his own, was responsible for the killings at the Jesuit university...
...As Archbishop Oscar Romero remarked before his own assassination: "Our missing ones are not missing to God's eyes, and those who have taken them away are present also to God's justice...
...bears a major share of responsibility for the crimes committed over the last twelve years...
...has identified Gen...
...That military, and its unrepentant, lawless leadership, remain the chief obstacle to peace in E1 Salvador (see Robert E. White, p. 741...
...The report's grim statistics show that greater and greater numbers of children are in need of more than Christmas indulgence...
...dependence on foreign oil, two on campaign finance laws, one about the problems of the B-2 bomber, and none about homelessness...
...As for the forlorn hope that the U.S...
...The report talks not just about the destitute and the working poor, but of the middle class...
...Each essay demonstrates the strength of particularity as well as the Christian faithfulness that calls us to ecumenism...
...But not the Reagan administration...
...Our winners this year are an effervescent and cartooning anonymous author(s) from the Poor Clare Colettine Community of Ty Mare Duw in North Wales, and Theodore Pulcini, an Orthodox priest from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania...
...And so we are happy the bishops have indulged the children in this matter of mangers...
...Those present included Gen...
...Commenting on the report, Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez of San Salvador called on the courts to take action in the case...
...Government can either support or undermine families as they cope with the moral, social, and economic stresses of caring for children...
...Emilio Ponce, the chief of staff and now minister of defense...
...The hope is that this armed truce will serve as a prelude to a full-fledged peace agreement...
...With these two avenues closed, the UN came up with an ingenious formula that meets the FMLN demand that its combatants be protected...
...one-fourth of all children live in single-parent homes...
...If only...
...Congressman Joe Moakley (D-Mass...
...it is war that buys the condominium in Miami and puts the Mercedes in the garage...
...In the ever-revelatory "For the Time Being," a Christmas oratorio by W. H. Auden, Herod reflects on the necessity and the burden of ridding the world of this infant Jesus: "Civilization must be saved even if this means sending for the military, as I suppose it does...
...One of the subtexts of the Christmas story has always been the negligent air in which the world received its savior--"She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn...
...By Bennett's count, they asked twice as many questions (twelve) about the president's health as about health care or health education for the rest of America...
...The Moakley report also describes the efforts, at the highest levels, to cover up that meeting and to obstruct the investigation of the murders...
...It received no support from any quarter...
...10038...
...In public statements, U.S...
...In January 1982, New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner traveled to Mozote...
...Orlando Zepeda, deputy minister of defense...
...The second, and by far the more important, is between Cristiani and the army...
...there are also ancillary causes and effects: In the Western world, the United States has the highest divorce rate, the highest adolescent pregnancy rate, and a teen-age suicide rate triple that of thirty years ago...
...Thus do tired phrases about external interference left over from the Reagan days undermine the peace process the Bush administration claims it supports...
...Only then, he reasoned, would the nation have the right to ask the families of the victims "to pardon the assassins and open their hearts to reconciliation...
...Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be considered or returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...This was no idle search...
...The Flack Pack," an article by James Bennett in The Washington Monthly for November, records that reporters asked a total of 1,865 questions at the 103 formal presidential press conferences held from the beginning of the Bush administration till mid-September of this year...
...The first is the official one, between President Alfredo Crisfiani's government and the FMLN...
...The FMLN, understandably, wants to see not just promises but real compliance before disarming...
...In a flurry of common sense, they retained "manger" in a new edition of the Bible simplified for children...
...10038...
...Properly understood, there are two negotiations underway...
...Within days, the president had certified to Congress that the Salvadoran government "is making a concerted effort" to comply with human rights requirements, and that it had achieved "substantial control over all elements of its own armed forces...
...As if to reinforce Ponce's thesis, the Bush administration argues that military aid is needed to strengthen the hand of the government in its negotiations with the FMLN...
...Portland, Me...
...individual responsibility and local initiative are irreplaceable, but so is national policy...
...mothers and children are an increasing proportion of the homeless...
...Another item on the bishops' agenda, a report, "Putting Children and Families First," deserves more attention than the feed-box fracas, and certainly much more than it has received...
...But in relation to Central America, our government is still mired in cold-war thinking...
...We have a school dropout rate of 25 percent...
...Based on confidential testimony by "credible members" of the Salvadoran armed forces (some of whom were eyewitnesses), the report says "the decision to murder the Jesuits was made at a small meeting of officers held at the Salvadoran Military School on the afternoon prior to the murders...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Another FMLN initiative called for the integration of the FMLN combatants into the army...
...Oh dear, Why couldn't this wretched infant be born somewhere else...
...In another chilling report issued last month, this one in Washington, Congressman Joseph Moakley (D-Mass...
...The citizens of Bethlehem have nothing on the citizens of the United States, as "Children and Families First" lays out in some detail...
...The $1,000 prize has been divided between the two winners...
...Military assistance simply strengthens the army hard-liners in their determination first to limit the agreements as they are negotiated and then to gut the agreements Cristiani and the FMLN leaders reach...
...military would teach professional conduct to the Salvadoran army, the influence has, if anything, run the other way...
...How dreary...
...In the several months when the nomination of Clarence Thomas was newsworthy, correspondents asked four times as many questions about him as they asked in three years about affirmative action or civil rights...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...chairman of a special House task force on E1 Salvador, linked the murder of the Jesuits and their helpers to the highest levels of the Salvadoran military...
...Koumenism: John Garvey 742 i i i i Awaiting this year's revelation: Paul Baumann 744 Prickly pears and peace talks: Patrick White 746 Screen: Richard Alleva 748 Stage: Gerald Weales 750 Poetry: Anne Porter 75 l A Christmas alphabet: Neville Braybrooke 752 BOOKS The Virgin and the Mousetrap/The Joy of Insight: Nancy M. Haegel 754 An Alley in Chicago/Geno/ The Last Priests in America: John C. Cort 756 Locos/Chromos: llan Stavans 758 IIII STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Movies: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...More teen-age boys die of gunshot wounds than from all natural causes combined...
...and Gen...
...Juan Rafael Bustillo, head of the Air Force...
...SAT scores are down by 70 points in the last thirty years...
...Skilled UN diplomats searched for months for the elusive formula that would guarantee the safety of the guerrillas after they laid down their arms and reentered civilian society...
...Flanked by Deputy Secretary for Human Rights Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders told Congress: "There is no evidence to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operations zone...
...The UN softened that proposal but could never get the backing of the Bush administration...
...What he reported startled the world...
...I Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Refigion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas, New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...Christmas present nd they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a feed box...
...Under this plan, agreed to by the Cristiani government, the military of El Salvador would no longer have power to enforce its will inside the country...
...The bishops speak not just of the desperate needs of so many children, but the need of all for a "secure and stable family life...
...hungry children (5.5 million...
...MURDEROUS AID In December 1981, U.S.-trained soldiers in E1 Salvador, members of the Atlacatl Battalion--the same battalion that murdered the Jesuits and their helpers in 1989--massacred virtually everyone in three villages in rebel-dominated Morazon Province...
...government continues to train and support the Salvadoran military...
...The essays will be published in our January 17, 1992 issue...
...poverty (one in five...
...The church document now clearly substantiates Bonner's original report and puts the lie to the Enders/Abrams testimony...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...officials, for who can deny the obligation of an army to stamp out subversion by any means...
...Pressure from the U.S...
...Salvadoran army hard-liners delight in these statements by U.S...
...The bishops' statement reflects an admirable culling of Catholic social tradition and turns an attentive ear to a growing national consensus: We must support parental responsibility for children while insisting on societal and governmental responsibility to "put children and families first...
...We would especially like to thank the Friars of the Atonement for sponsoring the essay contest, which has the important goal of encouraging new ecumenical ideas and perspectives...
...Bush whether his views on broccoli had cost him any votes...
...Programs are important but so are values...
...On the other hand, one alert reporter did ask Mr...
...It would confine its role to the defense of the nation against external threats...
...nly a few short years ago, Central America was the major foreign policy focus for the United States...
Vol. 118 • December 1991 • No. 22
