A sedan is not a home:
Kirp, David L.
unilateral actions to become a reality, and George Bush recip- of mass destruction, yet according to Richard Barnet (Harpers, rocated in kind. The fact that the dramatic reductions...
...A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS REPORT FROM THE STREETS Much to our joy and relief, Richard Haas, a Fordham graduate, has joined Commonweal as business manager...
...of the first rank...
...But they were not places where the small minority (a process facilitated by a a society overwhelmingly non-Catholic...
...The inscripkind of responsibility for her but the police weren't volunteer- tion promises a loaf of bread each week to the poorest family ing a name...
...ly in the United States, the pations: medicine, law, education, busi- 2. The moment finally arrived when history of American Catholic ness, government, etc...
...famously liberal San Francisco, busloads of the homeless were Since the Mexican polity, itself economically hard-pressed, moved out like so many sheep during a recent travel agents' mostly ignores these people, they face a Hobson's choice: ei- convention...
...public good-about why we acknowledge a social responsiShortly after this episode, I spent several weeks in the colo- bility to the poor, not just a grudging personal duty...
...Clearly, this is a man Then the police called again...
...But the mark of Cain abides: 25, 1992), half of the equipment licensed by the U.S...
...for until then intellectualism had been such a stranger to American Catholic Like the history of (non-His- they elevated children of blue-collar, life that hardly anyone noticed it was abpanic) Catholicism general- immigrant stock to higher-status occu- sent...
...Or else the beggars crouch in the shadows cast by the baroque cathedrals frequented by the pious and the curious...
...A SEDAN IS NOT A HOME Richard comes to us on a tidal wave of glowing recom- CAN YOU SPARE SOME LOVE...
...These poor people seem not to inhabit the same moral universe as the adolescent refugees from the suburbs who cruise my San Francisco neighborhood...
...According to the New York Times (November of nonviolent conflict resolution...
...A hundred peso coin brings a smile...
...A thousand-peso coin, about thirty-three U.S...
...tional weapons that most need tough, multilateral controls...
...and the former Soviet Union agreed bilat- it is here that the "conversion of hearts" the bishops called for erally to halt the production of chemical warfare agents and to will be most difficult to achieve: A well-established pattern for reduce their stocks of these weapons...
...icans at their own game...
...As I walk down Haight Street, bearing its corroded memories of the Love Generation, one of them sticks out a foot to stop me...
...She wasn't doing too well, dur- away...
...The mayor, ex-police chief Frank Jordan, is now ther live off the small kindnesses of strangers or accept the prospect of starvation...
...Their faces were far and away, the most miserly among industrialized nations, weathered like cracked leather and some bore the bitten-off look at least we do not ask poor people to surrender every bit of their of lepers...
...tender minds from exposure to such hea- came all the more dramatic a dividing line (2) the era of integration, which has run thens as John Dewey and Sigmund Freud, because it roughly coincided with Vatican from the mid-1960s to the present...
...est sailboat survived undamaged...
...but they produced relatively few at the same time, and virtually in the same 6: 12 February 1993 Commonweal...
...It wasn't until Did we say afloat...
...and they didn't burden them with the con- II and was quickly followed by the great 1. In the era of the "ghetto," Catholics fusing results of modern biblical scholar- cultural revolution of the late-1960s...
...In this respect, the CWC itself builds on the This move, coupled with the Gulf War, led to a December 1991 1987 U.S.-USSR intermediate-range nuclear treaty that set strin- UN General Assembly call for a voluntary register of all ingent standards for verification...
...The coins sagged in my pockets when I walked around the Mexican streets...
...would sell 18 billion dollars' worth Weapons Convention, the most stringent agreement of its kind...
...but formed an "operation bootstrap...
...When my car I am absolutely unmoved by the demand...
...and the sheer force of habit creates a vicious circle...
...Yet that realThis mother-to-be needs concrete gestures of caring, emotion- ization only reframes the issue...
...The Haases worn blanket, a package of chocolate chip cookies, a box of lost both their cars, but no one was hurt and their mod- cereal, a metal container of aspirin...
...self-respect to stay alive...
...lations...
...I try hard to imagine just how this determination plot-line from Grand Canyon...
...Anchors away...
...They preserved Kennedy (1960-63...
...They had caught the thief and who knows how to keep his-and our-head above wanted to know if I was going to press charges...
...A generation ago, we regard- University Press...
...had been found, undamaged...
...Pressing charges In a country English church I once visited-all shiny brass was the furthest thing from my mind...
...While a few of ioners...
...pital wards and undesired adults on the streets...
...But In 1990, the U.S...
...I imagined myself taking some small plaque dating from the eighteenth century...
...Are there Jane Addamses for al hand-holding, and practical skills for survival in what will our time, secular saints for whom the very idea of a public equivsurely be tough times...
...I asked the police to tell me name but a statement about my supposed wealth, "gimme a buck...
...priests and In this long and difficult period, Amer- stitutions...
...pected country...
...They had a social function to nuns, who had hitherto constituted the great ican Catholicism had three great social perform, and they performed it to perfec- majority of teachers, were reduced to a goals: (a) to retain a Catholic identity in tion...
...Besides, that felt like someone else's gesture, the in the parish...
...whether this is what compassion fatigue means...
...I vowed instead to write larger used to be made...
...But my shadow encounter with that An American doctor would have to refer to old medical books sixteen-year-old pregnant girl makes me wonder about the naor texts concerning the third world in order to diagnose the mal- ture of that achievement...
...tensions that all but defy solutions drive detions are suspected of having them...
...It is cruregulation and better coordination need immediate attention...
...Although the U.S...
...were largely out of touch with American As a result, faculties at Catholic colleges Catholic colleges played a critical role intellectual life...
...life of the mind always flourished...
...As a result, by this April, all tions...
...The fantasy catches me short, makes me think about ing her ninth month of pregnancy, and the doctors were unsure whether I am turning into my habitually indignant parents, how the newborn would make out...
...In 1990, The Conventional Forces it establishes the most complex international verification regime in Europe Treaty brought significant cutbacks in these arms in ever designed, one that includes challenge inspections of a sus- Europe and created greater "transparency" of arms transfers...
...I thought a lot about the fittings, sprays of gladiolas at the altar that have been left by girl-woman, still nameless to me, with no better place to go the church ladies, gravestones suitable for rubbing-there is a than the back seat of my car...
...Even in the phenomenon we call homelessness...
...but-not-quite-poorest family make do...
...What weekly self-abasements did those poor checks to charities that help the needy and to spend the occa- families endure to ward off starvation...
...colleges were extraordinarily pragmatic in- their faculties with Ph.D.s...
...Come on, richie," he says, not a nickCommonweal 12 February 1993: 5 promoting a ballot measure that would punish "aggressive pan- ed deinstitutionalization-shuttering these places, sending peohandling...
...Now, some the dismantling of all production facilities within ten years...
...Their limbs were twisted like the branches of trees, ly but rather that we give too little, take comfort from programs their fingers curled arthritically into hooks, their backs were like AFDC, food stamps, and Medicaid...
...In spite of having an official philoso- they now found themselves deprived of Compared with other Americans of phy (Aristotelianism) and an official the- their traditional social function...
...He also wears a very nifty fedora...
...On the other hand, (non-Hispanic) Catholics caught up with higher education can be di- they sheltered these upwardly mobile the rest of America, a moment symbolvided, very roughly, into two periods: (1) young Catholics from a world of non- ized by the election and presidency of John the era of the Catholic "ghetto," which ran Catholic high culture...
...It's while back, my car was stolen from in front amazing the number of things Richard has done, and done of my house in San Francisco...
...It has been able to do this because governments which The bishops were correct a decade ago when they observed ought to know better lack vigilance and the international agen- that the demand for weapons will disappear only when the earth's cies meant to monitor such matters do not have the means or the various tribes and factions have developed more effective means backing they need...
...those asking for money were young mothers carrying infants, Those of us whose chief complaint about how the United mostly they were men and women whose ages I couldn't begin States treats the poor is not that we are being taxed too heavito guess...
...That is, countants...
...us jobs, lived in poorer neighborhoods, had always had a capital T in those days), these Beginning in the mid-1960s, they loaded higher crime rates, etc...
...But many of those on the streets really need more and frozen out the unwanted, dumping undesired infants in hosthan dollars impersonally transferred by an indifferent state...
...lescent angrily demanding a dollar needs too-something that DAVID L. KIRP might be called the public equivalent of love...
...that received the least scrutiny of all arms transfers...
...It's what the orphanages, asy- by Heart: AIDS and Schoolchildren in America's Communities, lums, reformatories, and homes for wayward girls were supposed and AIDS in the Industrialized Democracies (both Rutgers to, and mostly failed to, deliver...
...The police well-almost as amazing as the number of things he will called a few days later to inform me that it have to do to keep Commonweal afloat...
...mendations and testimonials...
...extensive and efficient suppliand Iraq admit to having chemical weapons, twenty other na- ers maintain it...
...and teachers were increasingly despite inferior social status...
...It is tum-of-the-centu- of California, Berkeley, and author, most recently, of Learning ry progressivism, warmed-over...
...unilateral actions to become a reality, and George Bush recip- of mass destruction, yet according to Richard Barnet (Harpers, rocated in kind...
...and hint of change is finally afoot...
...Over what must have been a encountered, transposed to eighteenth-century England, would very long time, so familiar to everyone were the patterns of be- have received their weekly loaves of bread from the good parishhavior, begging had become institutionalized...
...It is convenhave been thought impossible even two years ago...
...scholars and scientists, and almost none OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr...
...about the thief and they did so, a bit sheepishly...
...By the 1950s John Tracy Ellis and others were asking, "Where are the Catholic intellectuals...
...ternational arms sales...
...were predominantly immigrants and the ship...
...Iraq flaunts the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to which major 1992 arms transfers are to have been reported to the UN...
...The fact that the dramatic reductions proposed February 1993), at least 20 million people died during the coldin START II were formulated in less than six months would war period in more than 120 conventional wars...
...He worked as a newspaper reporter, marketing director, and circulation manager before venturing out on his own as a consultant specializing in marketing and management assistance for religious publications...
...The fact that the question FROM GHETTO TO HILLTOP was finally being asked was an indication OUR COLLEGES, OUR SELVES that the change was just around the corner...
...Stronger The next ten years will be both critical and dangerous...
...Commerce In the last ten years, more than 70 percent of those who died in Department for sale to Iran in the past four years was considered wars were unarmed civilians, victims of conventional weapons...
...The law-abidwater...
...is, bent as if bearing an impossible weight...
...cial that world leaders attend to the control of conventional arms, Conventional weapons do not evoke the same fear as weapons including the bishops who should speak out again with the same principled specificity that marked "The Challenge of Peace...
...Even in the poorest hollows of the rich with its poor, the American ritual-in-the-making for encounnation we live in there is nothing remotely comparable, noth- ters with the homeless, goes something like this: We will spend ing to prepare the visitor who imagines himself accustomed to modest sums of money and they will stay out of sight...
...But the U.S.-Soviet initia- mand...
...Going to nial cities of Mexico...
...Some of European ancestry, mainly Protestants, ology (Thomism), both of which scorned them simply went out of business...
...More than 150 nations, not including But nations do not necessarily abide by their treaty obliga- China, approved the resolution...
...The tacit bargain this country has made adies of these people...
...Now we realize things are much more complicated, her free hospital care-and it will help others who are in des- that the communities in question have mostly zoned and gated perate straits...
...cents, is just about enough to live on for a day...
...And so they come, one by one, to the zocalos, the plazas where the inhabitants pass their idle hours drinking licuadas, reading the daily paper, getting their shoes shined...
...The street poverty I encountered there Mexico made me feel like a time-traveler, as if the beggars I had its own distinctive rhythms...
...David L. Kirp is professor of public policy at the University I know what is wrong with this idea...
...was the Gulf War ended, for example, when President Bush Last month in Paris, more than 120 nations, including the U.S., reversed his own call for proscribing arms transfers to the Middle Russia, Israel, and Iran, began signing the new Chemical East and announced the U.S...
...nuclear weapons relevant" by the Energy Department...
...They were magnificent at today are academically far superior to in this process...
...Catholic colleges had worked so well that children or grandchildren of immigrants...
...On the one hand, they per- producing doctors and lawyers and ac- those in the far-off days of the ghetto...
...Maybe that's what the Haight Street ado- alent of love is not an embarrassment and an irrelevance...
...Because she was in pain, not moving much, the the truant officer or a welfare caseworker, who can haul him police took her to the hospital...
...No, I did not want to press charges, I said...
...and (c) to Ph.D.s, they were overloaded with priests hired on the basis of academic merit, recatch up to or even surpass old-line Amer- and nuns of narrow education, and they gardless of religious affiliation...
...While only the U.S., Russia, worldwide arms trading exists...
...The great December storm here in I paid the towing fees and got the car home the New York area flooded Richard and his family out that I noticed the back seat was piled with dirty laundry and a of their rented home on the New Jersey shore...
...Others Catholics were socially inferior...
...In this act of imaginI wondered when the memory would fade, and wondered too ing, I learned something about why we think of welfare as a at my own moral incoherence...
...This moment befrom the nineteenth century till the 1960s...
...Wordlessly, they extend a hand to passers-by...
...it is a party, and has made a sieve of international nuclear regu- It is a modest, necessary step...
...In gen- sharp decline in numbers of priests and (b) to maintain a sense of collective pride eral, their faculties had few members with nuns...
...Indeed, I sense the had been spotted, in the Tenderloin District of the city, some- stirrings of a contrary instinct to seize him by the tuft of his one had in fact been living there: a sixteen-year-old, visibly Mowhawk, toss him in a shower, and call some adult-in-charge, pregnant girl...
...ing voice inside me would normally have replied "of course," but all that stuff, and the implication that someone had been 4: 12 February 1993 Commonweal living in my car, held me back...
...How did the almostsional morning serving breakfast at the shelter down the road...
...of arms to its allies in the region It not only outlaws the development, production, and use of During the cold war, it was control of conventional weapons chemical weapons, but calls for the destruction of existing stocks...
...They had pragmatism and exalted the ideal of pure, decided to plunge at long last into the mainless income and education, held lower-stat- disinterested truth (or rather Truth, which stream of American academic life...
...Hardly tive gave rise to a new, multilateral chemical weapons accord...
...The latter are mostly spacedout, looking to score their next high, and their panhandling technique can be aggressive...
...ple back to their communities-as a good deed of a humane This social bargain surely helped the sixteen-year-old-it got society...
Vol. 120 • February 1993 • No. 3
