Editor's notebook:

...tenance...

...As Helen Alvare, director of the NCCB's prolife office, put it, "killing in the name SODOM & BEGORRA of prolife makes a mockery of the prolife cause...

...Its capacious definition of whom to in- Reasonable and well-meaning people can disagree, I think, clude among the living (everyone) and its generous reading of about the public status of homosexuality...

...IT RAINED ON THE PARADE Unfortunately, the murder of Dr...

...Among the spectators, green plastic leprechaun hats and small SCHOOLS WORTHY OF KIDS shamrock face-stickers were popular...

...Killing to save the lives of the unborn is still murder...

...Gunn was an act of violence waiting to happen, and neither the church nor the mainstream prolife movement has fully come to grips with that fact...

...By focusing on this aspect of the church's obligation monarchical and abject in tone...

...by the statues and candles, the cavernous space reaching far In the parade itself, which got under way promptly at 11, the above our heads, the priests scuttling down the aisles in their Police Department's Holy Name and Emerald societies took theatrical capes, or (most amusing of all) the meek attendants the lead...

...For government to intrude upon by expressing a virulent animosity toward all but the most tra- such private decisions would restrict "free expression" and ditional of women...

...tions, is the safeguard for all our rights and the only likely means It was a wet, cold day, gray and uncomfortable, somewhat for ever reversing the abortion status quo...

...The bagpipes of the Emerald Society, and the woeful countenances of two stately, but rain-bedraggled Irish REPORT FROM THE SOUTH BRONX Wolfhounds were the highlights...

...ly quoted the next day for a remark he made in his Saint Patrick's Need anyone feel excluded from all this...

...You might as well feel ignored by the sun or the starsrespectable or politically correct, it nevertheless moved with or on this day, by the rain...

...the life of the unborn...

...The demonstrators marched north simply not self-evident to everyone in the same way as are the on Fifth Avenue in the rain only to be stopped by rights of Dr...

...I'm the new As time passed, and the parade stood still, the intensity of principal...

...This is nothing but vig- gent...

...in keeping with the dreary controversy about explicit homoBy ignoring these complexities in its workaday vocabulary, sexual participation in the parade...

...If the parade wasn't Face...

...I tend Avenue, from Yale and Harvard and Greenwich, Connecticut...

...3,000 years ago...

...If there was rowdiness I SAINT ANGELA :S NEEDS HELP didn't see it, although various small groups of pasty-faced young men sauntered up and down the sidewalk eyeing equally pallid platoons of giggling young women...

...Unfortunately, not all prolife advocates have emBLOODY PENSACOLA braced the consistent ethic...

...Rescue" ed, and the parade's traditional sponsors, the Ancient Order of groups disrupt and destroy clinics, intimidate clinic personnel, Hibernians, were not compelled to include the ILGO continand harass women arriving at clinics...

...But the effort to turn what it means to favor the lives of the unborn and the condemned, the Saint Patrick's Day parade into a celebration of "incluthe dying, the poor, the vulnerable, along with the lives of the sion" is, I am sure, more a symptom of liberal individualwhole and the hearty, implicitly recognizes the social nature of ism's misplaced ambition than its rightful regard for equality the human person and the social solidarity that sustains its main- before the law...

...Is there anything the shine on their buttons and badges, the silk stripe running stranger than the tenacity of such aspirations in a culture so deddown their trousers...

...Indeed, in principle I am a big fan of public rituals of finally reduce the numbers of abortions along with the violence almost any kind...

...rade, held in honor if not in imitation of a Catholic saint, was Out of a misplaced sense of solidarity, the mainstream pro- largely a religious celebration...

...The time is overdue for drawing some clear lines...

...Initially the city awarded the the prolife movement disarms itself before groups such as parade permit to an "inclusive" group that would have permitted Operation Rescue and Rescue America that drive a simplified ILGO to march with its own banner...

...For you alone are the Holy One, cases covering 80 to 90 percent of our schools' operating costs...

...the rain increased...

...O' Connor was wide- behind velvet ropes, reviewing the parade...

...The state-in this case New life movement has refused to take a clear distance from such York City and its mayor-had no right dictating who should groups, who also often undermine their concern for the unborn or should not be included...

...Shortly before noon I slipped into the cathe- Catholic education in the inner city is no longer a monolith: dral to get dry...

...I'm not kidding...

...They have tolerated, and in some cases fostered, a rhetoric and imagery about killing babies that achieve stark simplicity at the The Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) cost of overlooking much of what makes abortion the morally protesters, more than 200 of them, were arrested embattled issue that it is...

...In my school, about six out of ten are baptized Catholics, uled, despite the cacophony of band music wafting through the and a smaller proportion attend weekly Mass...

...Yet here we were, modem New Yorkers all, But the problem facing Cardinal John O'Connor, the arch6: 9 April 1993 Commonweal...

...Cardinal O'Connor greeted the marchers from under hurrying by with refreshment for the dignitaries, quartered off a plastic tent on the steps of the cathedral...

...done to children, women, and men by poverty, drugs, and unemployment...

...PAUL BAUMANN ten blocks...

...Truth be told, however, this was my first Saint Commonweal 9 April 1993: 5 Patrick's Day parade...

...I was seated behind a broad-shouldered critics unhappy...

...As for the music, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of the Marine Corps Hymn...

...Behind me was a woman in a mink coat, a rosary held Catholic...

...From the Altar of the Holy cultural a Saint Patrick's Day parade can be...

...This makes some open transept doors...

...Perhaps those are the the self...

...Here, the deets of the prayerful dropping coins into the tin boxes conspic- scendants of Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, uously displayed at each altar...

...Second, on the basis of a line of police at 44th Street...

...David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida...

...fer over $20 million to cover the expenses of inner-city This, when you think about, is a most peculiar petition-so schools...

...Must have been an ably resting on my building, Saint Angela impostor...

...to agree with this, although I'm not sure exactly how counter- But from the one "Lord Most High...

...Should the church invest such capital-ecoHaitian, who recited his responses in beautifully accented nomic and spiritual-on a population at best nominally English...

...My initiation began when two smartly praising in the most clamorous of settings the unfathomable dressed policemen got on the subway at 66th Street...

...By the this ambiguity, abortion has been rendered legal and protect- time I got to 50th and Fifth, just outside Saint Patrick's Cathedral, ed by the same constitutional system that, for all its imperfec- the demonstration was over...

...offers the most serious and solid ground on which to defend Such lofty sentiments, soaked in arsenic, rarely persuade...

...It was a pity, for example, that nowhere did freedom of association, said the Times, and "play havoc with this topic emerge on the agenda of a recent conference of Catholic the Constitution...

...Gunn...

...Your metaphorical forefinger is probon the back of his frightfully simian skull...

...you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Yet last year alone, the Archdiocese of New York had to transChrist," hundreds mumbled...

...descent...

...Gunn's killer the Catholic community wanted to be troglodytes and bigots, had a good case...

...Who could not be struck by the baldly anachronistic names of every cop in New York, or at least I suspected as much nature of this gathering, by the preposterous claims of the Mass, by the end of the day...

...Gunn, or of any woman...

...It just didn't seem very Christian, reThe logic and policy agenda of the consistent ethic of life marked the more supercilious...

...But that decision was voidargument about "killing babies" to its logical extremes...

...Though the democracy of the church the lethargy we associate with both...

...First, the moral status of the unborn, about an hour before the Saint Patrick's Day and the right of the fetus to equal protection under the law, are Parade began...

...ilantism...

...For inexplicable reasons, there all look to the church to provide an educational alternative in was a particular logjam at the Altar of the Holy Face, better the nation's poorest congressional district...

...Neither respectability nor political correctness cluded from the Century Club, from Wall Street, from Park is worth one comma in the Apostles' Creed," he said...

...I admired justice of an omnipotent yet invisible God...

...I didn't see any of that...

...It can't be all that different from to serve the poor, the archdiocese has been a blessing to my what the Egyptian faithful chanted in the temple of the Sun God students and to tens of thousands of children all over the city...

...O'Malley" and "Donovan" were the names icated to the disenchantment of the world and the exaltation of on the brass nametags...

...Merici School, in the South Bronx...

...There can be no way to justify, defend, mitigate, or excuse the AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK shooting of Dr...

...It was crowded, with a steady stream of people stern sisters backed by strong pastors and children of European circumambulating past the devotional altars surrounding the nave...

...The defense of such actions-that they stop baby killing On this narrow legal point even the ACLU and the New and stop the work of "baby killers"-slides naturally into the York Times editorial page grudgingly agreed with the kind of justification for even further violence that a few of their Hibernians and New York's Cardinal John O'Connor: the paspokesmen toyed with in the case of Dr...

...The faiths of our kids are nearly as diverse as their skin Much to my surprise, the noon Mass proceeded as sched- tones...

...I must have watched for demands something different from each of us, I suspect there fifty minutes, but doubt if the marchers advanced more than is shelter here for all...

...no one could stop them...

...intellectuals at Saint Louis University on abortion and public So, not to put too fine a point on it, the Times, along with policy...

...A somewhat more fearsome and Visualize a map of the United States and point boisterous band of young men included one skinhead in T-shirt to the area where excellent schools are most and bermuda shorts who had a large green shamrock painted needed...

...We-this most unremarked upon of democ- sacrifices to send these children to Catholic schools, in most racies-recited the Gloria...

...You can be exDay sermon...

...Instead, in mounting logically impressive arguments nearly every liberal columnist and politician in the city, smugagainst the Supreme Court's abortion rulings, some of the par- ly concluded that if the Hibernians, Cardinal O'Connor, and ticipants came perilously close to saying that Dr...

...known as Saint Veronica's Veil...

...Today, the face of the Catholic presence in places like Business, for lack of a better word, was booming, with pock- the South Bronx is of many colors and heritages...

...So, it goes without saying, I did not find the parade a moral Preserving this web of responsibility, we believe, is what will affront...

...The parents and guardians of our students make great lightly in her hands...

...One tall, boorish fellow shouted, "Yeah, no fags," but this barbaric yelp elicited no response from the crowd...