In the footsteps of Micah

...and we sense at the same time that everything we say falls so far short of the fullness and strangeness of what we are aiming at, what we try to comprehend, that we are often quite uncomfortable with our generaliza- tions...

...Absorbing one or two million Jews, or ruling over two million Palestinians...

...A well-known saying from our elder sages teaches that it is "never early nor late for the Torah...

...He took all this in with the eyes of mercy, as St...

...By morality, I should make it clear, I mean the way people are called on to behave...

...Like the prophet Micah, however, diary we find these words: "Father Arrupe is a very holy man...

...In Romero's new disappear little by little...

...Concern for the survival of Israel, including the removal of strategic threats against it, dictates a regional peace agreement...

...This is important, because otherwise good and bad forms of behavior begin to loom larger than forgiveness, or the relationship with God that forgiveness reveals, or the life revealed in Jesus' Transfiguration and Resurrection...

...However, even those who would like to "punish" Arafat (the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Syria) cannot sweep the Palestinian issue under the carpet...

...Before 1975, we had tensions with his advisers as we began taking our first steps working for justice...

...There is an inherent connection between successful absorption and a fruitful peace process...

...From a strictly American interest, there are advantages and disadvantages to both...

...If a lot of people find this teaching difficult to accept, the difficulty should be approached the way the church approaches the situation of married people with ill spouses, or invol- untarily single people, or anyone else wh~b faces the difficulty of a celibacy imposed by circumstance...

...THE EDITORS t is no easy thing to say in a few words who Pedro Arrupe was...

...Israel will have to decide between klitah (absorption) and shlitah (rule...over another people...

...The poor in our countries, the crucified peoples, may not I want to end with words far better than my own, the words know his name...

...On the other hand, to illus- trate the awkward thing I want to get at, I want to look at the boring, but maybe parallel, issue of contraception...

...However, the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion revived the classic Palestinian syndrome, which since 1947 has been rooted in extremist illusions, misconstruing their own true interests, and resulting in disaster after disaster for the Palestinian people...

...But after those early misunderstandings, Arrupe always supported us and encouraged us...

...This is not to say 186: Commonweal...

...IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MICAH A J'ESUIT'S WITNESS FOR JUSTICE Pedro Arrupe, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983, died in Rome on Febrary 5,following a long illness...

...YAIR TZABAN Yair Tzaban is a member of the Knesset representing Israel's Democratic Socialist MAPAM party...

...To the extent that choice has no more to do with someone's being homo- sexual than with someone's being hetero- sexual or, for that matter, with someone's having red hair, it isn't really a moral issue at all...

...JON SOBRINO religious congregation and let in light, fresh air, and the breath Jon Sobrino, S.J., is professor of philosophy and theology of the Spirit...

...Almost everything else having to do with sex is in this strange, more than moral category...

...They saw in him the presence of God among his God...

...This in turn helped provoke controversy within the Jesuits and led to tensions with the Vatican...

...We also cannot ignore the massive emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel...

...This is not simply a question of financial assis- tance...

...We know this very well in E1 Salvador...

...There is no doubt in my mind that the kind of lovemaking that leads to a new life is, in some objective way, powerfully won- derful, more wonderful than the kind that rules it out...

...We know them to lack something essential...

...When some prominently placed church people say that homosexuality is "an objective dis- order" they certainly go beyond their com- petence...

...The whole idea of a "right" here is, from a Christian point of view, misplaced...

...After two years of repeated, if not completely unfailing, attempts at adopting new policies that include full recognition of Israel and the denunciation of terror, the leadership of the PLO should be commended...

...or, as Christians, we ignore the fullness of what is meant by humanity's fall...

...It is also important to see that morality, as important as it is to our being together, is not to be equated with Christianity...

...As superior general of the Jesuits, Arrupe's job was to look at the totality of our world...

...And Archbishop Romero, who went to visit Arrupe at the University of Central America in San Salvador...

...We can no longer avoid these decisions...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey GAYS & STRAIGHTS TOGETHER IN ADAM'S FALL, WE SINNED ALL here are a number of issues that believers seem to engage in a vacuum, or address as if they were only morally problematic, with- out seeing that they exist in a larger land- scape than a merely moral one...

...It is a matter of wisely utilizing our limited national resources to fulfill our destiny as a home for the ingathering of exiles, a secure haven for the Jewish people, and a light unto the nations...

...At a time when Islamic fundamentalism casts its eyes not only to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but also to the AI-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it would be political blindness at its worst to take revenge on the Palestinians, thus dooming the region to yet another cycle of violence...

...I think we do something oddly contra- dictory where moral matters are concerned: we talk a lot about them, making all sorts of distinctions, or too few...

...but his years as superior general were years he of two Salvadoran believers and martyrs, Ignacio Ellacuria and lived for them...

...Under his leadership, Jesuits around the world became more involved in service to the poor and working for justice...

...I don't know anyone who has a comer on that desirable condition, and I think it important to say that the homosexual W.H...

...Without a political res- olution of this conflict, Israel will not succeed in raising the tens of billions of dollars, from America and the international community, necessary to absorb at least one million immigrants...

...But he did not only demand...

...What he saw was a world dehumanized in a thousand ways, especially by the terrible poverty and injustice of the third world...

...PEDRO ARRUPE, R.I.P...

...Ignacio Ellacuria put it well: "Arrupe was a man of God, a man for men and women, and a man of history...

...The following article, which was translated by Gene Palumbo, is based on a sermon given by Jon Sobrino, S.J., at a memorial Mass for Arrupe held in the Archbishop Romero Chapel at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador, on February 9. Ignacio Ellacuria and five other Jesuit martyrs lie buried in the same chapel...

...How do they know...

...No one, not even a eunuch, is objective here...

...Recent articles about homosexuality by Richard Rodriguez, in Harper's (October 1990), and Andrew Sullivan, in the New Republic (December 17, 1990), made me think of the lives of gay friends...

...The choice for us is living together in peace and security, or in a shared hell...

...tenderly in the midst of a changing history, even if it meant, as Today, Arrupe is in the hearts of many people: the martyrs, it did in his last years, that it be done in personal obscurity...

...These territories are part of the Jewish homeland, engraved in our consciousness, our culture, and our collective memory...

...One is the fact that while homosexuality may not be "an objective disorder," it may also not be the most wonderful way to be a sex- ual human being...

...As such, he made his way into / all our hearts...

...It is interesting that the root of the word lies in the Latin word for "custom," rather than in any word having to do with truth or goodness...

...In January 1976, 184: Commonweal joyful, to move from the traditional and familiar to the new and on June 25, 1978...

...As general, he served during the closing session of Vatican H and the turbulent years of postconciliar reforn...

...Concern for a normal and more humane life, for Israelis and Palestinians, requires an immediate solution to the Palestinian problem...

...We must use all that is at our disposal to pursue this principle for the teaching of peace...the Torah of peace...

...But the fact is that the Palestinian people also live there and we cannot continue to rule over them...

...Auden or Gerard Manley Hopkins was in most senses a healthier (and less "objectively disor-dered") person than is the heterosexual Donald Trump...

...Ellacuria said that Arrupe was "the John XXIII ye~s he lived both for them and like them: in silence, and in of the religious life," that he opened the windows of a stagnant impotence...

...And his last ten years, after his stroke, were Oscar Romero...

...It is only one conse-quence of what Christianity means...

...Israel, too, shares responsibility for the collapse of the peace process last spring by undermining its own initiative for elections in the occupied territories and driving the PLO into a political cul de sac...

...During the society's general congregation in 1975, over which he presided, Arrupe demanded that all of us take up "the defense of the faith and the promotion of justice...

...But other things are involved here...

...Still, sisters and priests, Christians, and men and women of good faith like Micah, he kept going forward, always humbly and with all over the world...

...The son of a Basque architect, Arrupe worked in Japan for nearly three decades before being elected superior general...

...he offered us encour- agement...

...Of course, Israel will have to pay a price by withdrawing from most of the territories it conquered in 1967...

...The United States will probably weigh an American-Soviet aegis, with Egyptian support, against the five permanent members of the UN Security Council...

...The Israeli peace camp must remain loyal to its principles: Peace begins at home, and our common home is that ancient land, which over the centuries became the homeland of two peoples...

...The idea that homosex- uality is a moral issue that is somehow rad- ically different from these others seems faulty to me...

...Ignatius instructs in his meditation on the Incarnation, and asked the world's Jesuits to react...

...In 1979, Pope John Paul H publicly reprimanded the society, and when Arrupe suffered a stroke in 1981, the pope took the extraordinary step of appointing a personal delegate to run the order until a general congre- gation could elect Arrupe's successor...

...It is too early to determine under what international auspices negotiations for peace will take place...

...It seems to me that all the church can say about this one of many human mysteries is that the church does not accept the idea that people have a right to sex outside of marriage...

...There are those in the Israeli peace camp who would conclude that we must wait before taking steps to rekindle the political process...

...I want to take an almost blind stab in a direction I haven't seen addressed yet, and say that we don't deal with some of these things very well because we lack, as a cul- ture, a sense of the tragic...

...Arrupe saw clearly what he had to do: Practice justice and love you can see how the spirit of God enlightens him...

...He was looking for consolation and encour- unknown, it was even harder to accept the pain of seeing the agement during his own difficulties with the Vatican...

...We act as if we could make our choices freely, acting with a clarity which may not, in fact, be present in us or in our world...

...and as important and necessary as the sexual expression of love between married people is, when it is separated from the possibility of a new life beginning a limitation has been introduced into some- thing essentially holy...