Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 15 ...
...For ex- Jamaica before arriving in Mexico and then love was palpable...
...Apart B yy the time you read this the coming stressed the misgivings of some from the fact that no reasonable reporter pope will have been long young people...
...A greater progressivity has been reintroduced into the tax code, raisCommonweal welcomes letters on subjects ing the marginal rate of income tax for the top 2 percent of wage earners from 31 treated in its pages...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to almost all the money to finance deficit reduction will come from the wealthiest Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...THE EDITORS al problems...
...Moreover, the budget's failure to attract even one Republican vote in either the House Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan or the Senate was a sober reminder of the continuing strength of antitax sentiment Associate Editor: Paul Baumann nationwide...
...Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Ross Perot's folksy, demagogic campaign against the budget bill obviously took Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt its toll...
...Bud Johnson remembers Pope John Paul II's visit to Denver last month for World Youth his loyal Catholic grandfather (page 9 and then on to pages Day caused a great deal of media interest in things Catholic...
...4: 10 September 1993 Commonweal have been comic if it weren't so appalling...
...The near failure of the budget-even after being stripped of its stimulus packSTAFF age and energy tax-was a vivid sign of the Democratic coalition's fragility...
...Queried, one after the ample, James L. Franklin, writing in the Denver, I was appalled at being approached other, whether they came from the varied Boston Globe (August 8) predicted that by a prominent woman lawyer asking, in regions of the United States or were youth "there may not be as much enthusiasm for the pope's visit as there was at his first U.S...
...But I hope college student, "you slip out of the dorm- take issue with any specific Clinton stance...
...We were less pleased with the tax credit will supplement the income of working poor people, general quality of discussion surrounding the pope's visit...
...My research shows...," misspokesman Archbishop John Foley astonished at least some Greeley writes, "that a confidant relationship between a celiviewers of "This Week with David Brinkley" by telling Cokie bate priest and a married woman produces a payoff in marital Roberts of ABC News that some parishes where priests have happiness and sexual fulfillment for both her and her husband...
...If you go to church," said one to "defend life," and he certainly did not have faded from our memories...
...Frank Macchiarola, jogging from page 9 to pages 10, 11 , and 12, sees something in campus ministry he'd like to bring home to residential parishes...
...For better hard-pressed to come away from the media coverage with the or for worse, the budget's effect on the $6-trillion-a-year U.S...
...Educating the public is the task of every president, and Once again Commonweal devotes an entire September this president has yet to master that skill...
...and of most of the adults who came with reports of ribald night club acts as well as Meanwhile something very different them) was unexpected...
...While the pope was still in teraction with the pope, for whom their with the teachings of the church...
...04106 (207) 799- care reform...
...that the absence of contention there and you don't tell anyone where you're going...
...In the present knee-jerk antigovernment atmosphere, Clinton can expect Business Manager: Richard Haas no help from Republicans eager to piggyback on the Perot phenomenon...
...are running out of patience with the pace of change should conReflecting the vibrant and sprawling reality of the laity...
...13 and 14), while Brian Doyle reports on the physical And by that, of course, we mean sex, sexism, and pedophilia...
...Regina Plunkett Even we here at 15 Dutch Street were inundated by calls Dow] ing (page 1 1) gives the phrase "cafeteria Catholic" from "major" media outlets such as CNN, "The MacNeil-Lehrer a whole new meaning, and manages to do it in just one News Hour," the BBC, and ABC's "Good Morning America...
...Such anecdotal comment would catastrophic than we had feared...
...Unwittingly, per- a virtual field day of criticism on the radio was happening in Denver, something the haps, we have accepted the attitude adopt- talk shows...
...All you have to do to we have chosen a vibrant and sprawling graphic layout envision the alternative is to take a long hard look at Mr...
...That future must The fervent reception accorded the pope surprised us...
...molested children have produced a higher number of vocations If this is indeed the case, the priest shortage may prove more than parishes not so afflicted...
...somehow foster a growing awareness among the middle class Despite a certain instinctive skepticism about mass public specthat the problems facing American society-problems of struc- tacle, the sincerity and enthusiasm of the 300,000 who greettural unemployment and widespread economic insecurity, of ed the pope in Denver also impressed us...
...In fact, at one point he seemed to have made the determination to celebrate that which There were to be demonstrations by pro- a tactful decision to eliminate the final binds all Catholics will stay with us...
...Many of the young crime, race, drugs, and health care-will not be solved through people were especially touching as they spoke of the isolanarrow interest-group politics, even if that interest group is the tion they feel in a culture often eager to dismiss Catholicism populous middle class...
...In the book section, where the layout is more con- Some of you might have seen Commonweal Editor Margaret tinuous, Dennis O'Brien...
...God may work in mysterious ways, but not, we trust, in this way...
...1997 as the U.S...
...Expanding opportunity for all Americans as a historical curiosity or an authoritarian affront...
...Perot to match...
...The tortuous and histrionic politicking The Education of an American Catholic: surrounding the passage last month of his $496-billion deficit reduction Dennis O'Brien 21 and tax bill was manifest evidence of that political reality...
...Some of us were formidably commentators and anchors were missing ed by much of the media-an attitude fed reminded of the old saying, "anti-Cath- but something very apparent to those by a recent Gallup poll documenting the olicism is the anti-Semitism of the intel- watching the crowds and seeing their indisagreement of many American Catholics lectuals...
...On counteracting incentives in the current welfare system that dis- the television interview shows, the tendency was to cast libercourage people from working...
...Neither were Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, the Democrats above gerrymandering the truth when it came to what was a tax inAbigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...As if we had no probing, any expansion of domestic programs will be held hostage lems of our own...
...Display advertising rises...
...Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Not a pretty picture...
...4387, classified advertising correspondence to 15 Despite cries about how the Clinton budget surreptitiously taxes the middle class, Dutch St...
...But the Republicans, especially Senate Minority Leader Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Bob Dole (R-Kans...
...Finally...
...Still, even this budget is a step in the right direction...
...Clinton must build on the modest step his budget victory emAbout this issue: bodies...
...choice Catholics, gays and lesbians, and words of a 1987 speech to which he reFor many of us the quality of the re- the Women's Ordination Conference...
...We, like all Catholics, were happy to have John Paul in America, impressed by his robust health, and humbled by his equally robust moral certainty...
...seemed to relish the prospect of further legislative stalemate Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor in Washington...
...Thus Clinton is right to insist that the nation now turn its attention to healthcorrespondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Eventually the need for "sacrifice," a concept Clinton Catholicism embodies, at its best, the pope deserves our broached in his inaugural address but subsequently abandoned thanks...
...economy will be small...
...ET CETERA FATHER KNOWS BEST...
...Meanwhile, those who issue to the current status and future prospects of the laity...
...John B. Breslin, and Dennis O'Brien Steinfels on "Good Morning America" complimentM. Doyle bring us up to speed on the supernatural, col- ing the pope on his exchange of scriptural readings with lege Catholics, and lay ministry, respectively...
...Americans agree that the wealthy, who by any measure did extremely well thanks to the policies of two Republican presidents responsible for quadrupling the naUnsolicited manuscripts are welcome but must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed tional debt, are in the best position to help put the nation's public finances in order...
...Franklin quoted Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., author of The Vatican and the American Hierarchy: "He comes at a time of a certain amount of demoralization in the American church, part of which was due to his conservatism and part due to a very low priestly morale, which is in turn due to the problem of sexual abuse...
...Elected College Catholics: John B. Breslin 25 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, the president remains politically vulneraMinistry: Dennis M. Doyle 26 ble...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal ing...
...Among the budget's more enlightened programs are the increase in funding for the earned-income tax credit and the 4.3-cent-a-gallon gas tax...
...population ages and entitlement spending, especially health care, Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Portland, Me...
...Defending celibacy in Newsweek, the Reverend Andrew Greeley revealed the rather THERE'S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY Vatican startling results of yet another survey...
...Energy taxes, used the people...
...sider how much worse things might be...
...Clearly, the pope is the answer to most of our promotiononce...
...Good-and it's about time...
...Based on realistic assumptions about economic growth, it should lower the annual deficit Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of from this year's $300 billion to $200 billion by 1997, or from 4.3 percent of GNP Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is to 2.7 percent...
...page...
...Advocates of increased spending for Somewhat worrisome, however, is the suspicion that conflict social programs will have little to cheer about...
...A disinterested viewer would be tax increases will derail the recovery are spurious...
...what I suppose was an attempt at humor, OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy what I thought the "perp" was up to "lecturing us about violence...
...on page 9 and skip to 15 and 16...
...New York, N.Y.10038...
...ferred: "and protect the human person sponse of the young who came to Denver Hostile cartoons appeared, and there were from conception to natural death...
...crease or a spending cut...
...Politically most chance of being published...
...Around the television dial, conservative Catholics throughout the rest of the industrialized world, are a spur to intoned solemnly and erroneously about the "unchanging" naeconomic efficicency and an obvious benefit to the environ- ture of truth and Catholic practice, while liberals spoke exment...
...envelope...
...That should introduce a measure of stability to government spendpublished biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...to the deficit debate for the foreseeable future...
...10038...
...The gas tax, though small, is a als against conservatives, Rome against America, the pope against step toward a broader-based energy tax...
...Shrewdly sab- within the church merely mirrors the predictable divisions and otaged by the Reagan administration's military and deficit spend- antagonisms of contemporary culture...
...Arguments about the economic efficiency of such taxes, especially 250 or 300 words naturally have a better in a weak economy, are complex and largely inconclusive...
...Not only did they take would expect the pope to avoid the issue, gone and the joyous, lov- issue with the church on sexual issues but it was apparent that the pope's reference ing faces of the young they felt that it was not "cool" to be was almost oblique, only urging Americans people in Denver may Catholic...
...idea of a monolithic Catholic church...
...and spiritual findings of his annual self check-up (start Just kidding...
...pansively of a Holy Spirit that seemed capable of inspiring the It is safe to say that the Republican charge that the budget's most contradictory impulses...
...Here's the roster: Commonweal Editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels leads off, and with Chicago-bred frankness issues marching orders to the troops (begin on page UPON THIS ROCK STAR 8 and jump obediently to page 16 and on and on...
...And if you President Bill Clinton...
...CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 15 COMMONWEAL moo Correspondence: 2 Editorials: 3 -mow, `A civilization of love': Abigail McCarthy 5 Going, going, gone: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Americans...
...I t I 1 Other stories anticipating the pope's "All I can say is, we didn't have this crazy weather when the pope was Italian...
...in his BBC "soundbite," which was filmed here on the premisEnjoy, but don't put too much on your cafeteria tray at es...
...For now...
...6 The laity & the leadership crisis: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels 8 Give it that old college try: Frank J. Macchiarola 9 That old-time religion: Bud Johnson 9 I'm ok, I'm ok...aren't I?: Brian Doyle 9 A Catholic in the cafeteria: Regina Plunkett Dowling 11 It could be worse Poetry: Kit Thompson 14 Sanctity certification services: Adrian J. Reimers 22 President Bill Clinton went to Washington promising "change," but it is doubtful that the majority of American voters are ready for the kind BOOKS of change Clinton represents...
...The earned-income Commonweal 10 September 1993: 3 for fear of its political costs, will have to be faced...
...Commonweal 10 September 1993: 5...
...visit in 1979....Crowds were smaller when he returned in 1987 for a visit to the South and West...
...To be Design: Emil Antonucci sure, the administration allowed the Republicans to define the budget as a "tax Screen: Richard Alleva and spend" issue and failed to build bridges to moderate Republicans...
...Even as the pope was being hailed by happy hundreds of thousands, newspaper 'A CIVILIZATION OF LOVE' headlines and TV news reports strove to THE POPE IN DENVER make much of the pope's supposed surprising of President Bill Clinton by referring to abortion during their meeting...
...Letters of not more than to 39 percent...
...Despite these efforts, however, the deficit is expected to start climbing again in Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...For our overseas readers, we eagerly think Catholics have to worry only about the four last await news of how Managing Editor Patrick Jordan appeared things, check out Adrian J. Reimers's piece on page 22...
...That isorequires an expanding economy, and an expanding economy lation will not be cured by a papal rally, but if such a gathrequires public investment in education, job training, and in- ering offered a glimpse of the social and spiritual solidarity frastructure...
Vol. 120 • September 1993 • No. 15
