Editorial
STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Business Manager: Gregory...
...With Joseph Fitzmyer and Roland Murphy he edited The Jerome Biblical Commentary, which, perhaps more than any other single volume, signaled the coming of age of Catholic critical scholarship...
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...But it was precisely the salaciousness of the Lewinsky matter--and its consequent political explosiveness--that the independent counsel's office has manipulated...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...Such reactions are tribute to the distinctive place Raymond Edward Brown occupied for some forty years among Roman Catholic biblical scholars...
...The burden of doing that rests largely with him...
...Even so, history and literature instruct us that in any given case, from the austere Torquemada to the philandering Oskar Schindler, the link is likely to be clear to God but not to mortals...
...At least for the moment...
...Canada, $47...
...His long partnership with J.L...
...an end to the deficit but tax cuts...
...For ourselves, we think it's time to wait and watch...
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...They are convinced that he is guilty of multiple crimes, the first of which was getting elected in the first place...
...Likewise, there has been a disturbing equivocation at the heart of the Starr investigation ever since the independent counsel decided to use the leverage of the Lewinsky scandal as a means to try to substantiate what he had been unable to prove in the Webster Hubbell case...
...Nixon on Cambodia and Watergate...
...It will be injected into the presidential primary cycle...
...The president's sex life was subject to legal scrutiny and subpoena, while his privacy and that of his family's were effectively deprived of the legal protections-most obviously the possibility of remaining silent-that the ordinary citizen would have enjoyed...
...It's enough to give heterosexuality a bad name...
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...If this alone is the smoking gun, we are strongly inclined to leave the president in his embarrassment to be punished by the historical record-and no more...
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...He could not have done all that without considerable cunning...
...for many scholars, the imprimatur sought and given for his books indicated a mind too little liberated...
...He wrote for ordinary people as well as other scholars...
...His legendary flexibility will inevitably be interpreted not as a means to a policy but as a substitute for one...
...Don't we also cringe for ourselves over temptations so easily succumbed to and human weakness so starkly exposed...
...For some conservative Catholics he was far too liberal...
...LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON Luke Timothy Johnson, author of The Real Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco), is the Woodruff Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University...
...Lewinsky was done with a calculated gaze into the TV camera and a bald-faced assertion of innocence...
...The president's sexual infidelities and continuing deception, the independent counsel's dogged pursuit into semen stains and the hidden meaning of presidential neckwear, the media's mindless repetition of every d e t a i l have had all the marks of a production by The Ridiculous Theatrical Company...
...If enough influential voices insist that the president can no longer effectively govern, that may assure that he can't...
...On matters, then, of far greater consequence than Ms...
...This legally coerced exposure of sexual secrets humiliating to both Mr...
...At least as significant as his individual publications were his collaborative efforts...
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...In 1941, he misrepresented the nature of Lend-Lease to save Britain from Nazi defeat...
...His scholarship was universally acknowledged as learned, responsible, and preeminently fair...
...And what many resent about his shiftiness is simply that it prevailed over their own opposing agendas...
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...When he meticulously argued for the fundamental historicity of the Passion accounts, he received like disfavor twice over from ideologues...
...Although no fan of Clarence Thomas's candidacy for the Supreme Court, we warned back in 1991 that the last-ditch effort to block his appointment by leaking Anita Hill's charges of sexual accusations, and forcing testimony and potential perjury under oath, was introducing a new toxicity into American politics (Commonweal, October 25, 1991...
...By his lifelong effort to unite loyalty and criticism, he left us an example of what scholarship within the church might mean...
...The "wag the dog" speculations about the missile strikes against Afghanistan and the Sudan are only the beginning...
...Starr's report, it is assumed, will be a brief for impeachment...
...Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest, and Book Review Index...
...This is regrettable, and in the case of Nixon (and maybe less directly, of Johnson) sufficiently outrageous that they were driven from office...
...As the news of the eminent scholar's death spread among the participants, it struck me that no one needed to be told "which" Raymond Brown was meant, even among scholars in disciplines far from his own specialty in New Testament...
...Will a man who betrays his marriage vows also betray his office and the expectations of those who voted for him...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...The president has steadied the national budget and with it the economy, staved off the gutting of social programs, negotiated some better-than-expected outcomes in Bosnia and Haiti, governed half his first term with a Gingrich Congress, and achieved a second term...
...Nevertheless, the president's ability to govern and his motives are called into question...
...About the p r e s i d e n t ' s lies there is only slightly less of a consensus...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, OH 44691...
...Less visible but no less important were the ecumenical studies of Mary and Peter that Brown and Fitzmyer produced together with Protestant colleagues, his collaboration with John Meier in the study of early Christianity in Antioch and Rome, and his participation and leadership in translation and lectionary projects...
...They are split between those focused on the past and those focused on the future...
...Even before the special counsel has presented his report to Congress, there is a rising chorus of editorial writers and Republicans calling for the p r e s i d e n t ' s resignation, a clear signal that Mr...
...And the prospect of another stretch of downtime while serious issues confront the nation is deeply discouraging: Child poverty, educational failure, inadequate health care, the festering inequality within and among nations, regional conflict in the Middle East and ethnic atrocities in Africa and Europe, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the economic meltdown of Russia, a one-currency Europe, a tumultuous Islam, a global market in money and culture...
...Commonweal 7 September11, 1998...
...foreign, $87...
...Given what is now known, that report can probably make a moral case, if not an airtight legal one, that Clinton perjured himself and obstructed justice in the Lewinsky chapter of the Paula Jones case, now dismissed...
...he had been visible and important for so long that they thought of him as "at least eighty...
...Appalling and shameful...
...It is, we suggest, the most prudent course to follow...
...Also middle-age...
...They have been lying to us as long as we can remember...
...Lewinsky...
...Brown's prodigious gifts of scholarship surfaced early and continued to the end...
...The most persuasive arguments that Clinton should resign rather than preside over gridlock to the twenty-first century come not from those who never approved of him in the first place but from those who did...
...Canada, $81...
...Well, possibly...
...Every major White House decision will be subject to speculation about the president's motives...
...I was there for a consultation on world religions...
...The Lewinsky case is only the smoking gun...
...Clinton and Ms...
...Except in the further reaches of libertarian advocacy, there is a consensus about the p r e s i d e n t ' s sexual misdeeds...
...We are sympathetic to this argument...
...human rights abroad but no military risks), while facing no urgent challenges of the sort that concentrate the national mind and compel choices...
...Clinton's lying is complicated by four things...
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...If he had waited longer to act or not acted at all, would the president have been charged with subordinating national security needs to personal political considerations...
...Reagan on Iran-contra...
...There is, unfortunately, a circularity to this argument...
...When Brown identified as Jewish midrash the poetic beauty of the birth narratives, he found little favor with historicists...
...Such a mediating position inevitably involves stress and real suffering...
...Political life frequently requires some degree of dissembling...
...Undoubtedly attitudes and actions in personal matters are linked to attitudes and actions in matters of state...
...The first two of those items raise issues of character and of politics...
...Despite the danger of adding to the clamor, here are some of our thoughts...
...His output was enormous: It includes his major commentaries on the Gospel and Letters of John, his influential studies on the birth and death of Jesus, and many smaller studies of issues in New Testament history and theology...
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...Also youth...
...Centrist Christian scholarship has lost one of its most visible, articulate, and credible practitioners...
...Second, it is said to culminate a pattern of dissimulation and "slickness" that have been Clinton's stock in trade...
...http://www.commonwealmagazine.org ~ N ~-,,,,~ i i l l l J The president o date, Commonweal has said very little about the national hog wallow...
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...Those focused on the past believe his deeds simply disqualify him from continuing to lead the nation, regardless of how well he might be able to do it...
...To turn over the government to a vice-president with a creditable r6sum6 but who is also being pursued by investigators would be no guarantee of stability in government...
...Like John Kennedy, FDR hid both his physical disabilities and his sexually fractured marriage from enemies and voters...
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...Here we come to the great divide among those now calling for the president's resignation...
...Fourth, it was initially done in a deposition, under oath...
...The independent counsel is given his very considerable powers in order to insulate the law from politics, to insure that high officeholders are not above the law...
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...Is it that understanding that has tempered public reaction...
...But throughout his long time in the public eye, Father Brown responded to controversy by consistently employing the craft of the scholar: compiling the minute data pertinent to the issue, assembling the points for and against every position, arguing with constant and dispassionate judiciousness for the conclusion that seemed most probable, or as close as we might get to the truth with our frail instruments of learning...
...Politicians lie...
...To remove a president, twice democratically elected, by resignation or impeachment, is a very serious business...
...For five years Clinton has led a nation, and a party, demanding contradictory goals (social services but smaller government...
...And if he isn't careful, he will lead the country astray on Social Security...
...If only it could be shown that these are unmitigated vices in a politician...
...Leering and moralizing, low humor and high-minded pronouncements, pratfalls and grandiose gestures, limp apologies and loose l i p s - - all news, all the time, all shameless...
...He had a distinctive ability to take on a complicated issue, sort through every opinion ever expressed on it in the history of scholarship, and render a judgment that, if neither revolutionary nor brilliant, was always reasonable...
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...11, 26, 34, 38, 39, Valerry...
...He showed it was possible to unite the highest standards of scholarship and the highest devotion to the faith...
...When the public cringes in embarrassment, it isn't only because the children are watching...
...He thus functioned as an indispensable bridge between those skeptical of Catholicism's willingness to engage Scripture critically and those skeptical of critical scholarship's willingness to engage the New Testament as Sacred Scripture...
...Lewinsky in order to gain political advantage, or to bolster a nonrelated legal case, or both, seems an ominous exercise of state power that should trouble liberals and conservatives alike...
...p. 14, Charlot...
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...8, 23, Baloo, Rothco...
...It is time," said the president, "to move on...
...Again, possibly...
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...The shadow won't disappear...
...In 1932 Franklin Commonweal 5 September 11, 1998 Roosevelt campaigned on a pledge to balance the budget...
...ews of the death of Raymond E. Brown was carried to the Wabash Center for the Teaching of Religion and Theology by Gustav Niebuhr's obituary in the New York Times (August 11, 1998...
...Spin has been indelibly revealed not just as an attribute of his character but its essence...
...Depending on your agenda, he can be blamed for a long list of nonaccomplishments, very few of which would have been achieved by a less shifty leader...
...First, the lying about Ms...
...Third, it had to do with a matter that should never have been the subject of a special counsel's probe...
...STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Business Manager: Gregory Wilpert Poetry: Rosemary Deen Design: Emil Antonucci Screen: Richard Alleva Media: Frank McConnell Stage: Celia Wren Columnists: John Garvey, Abigail McCarthy, E.J...
...Martyn at Union Theological Seminary in New York was perhaps the perfect expression of the rapprochement between Catholic and Protestant biblical scholars in America...
...p. 31, Michelle Giuliani...
...21, 41, Ross, Rothco...
...And will a man who keeps his marriage vows also betray his office and campaign promises...
...And everyone expressed surprise that he was "only seventy" at the time of his death...
...Those who say that cunning and deception have been defining traits of Clinton's career are not wrong...
...they are also split between those, not surprisingly, who always opposed him and those who generally sympathized with his efforts...
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...It is, however, a very troubling smoking gun...
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...Of course...
...It will play a role in November...
...Desperate, deluded, driven, dumb, and just plain sad...
...Waiting won't be fun...
...Eisenhower on U-2 flights...
...And most r i d i c u l o u s - - n o one has known how to bring down the curtain...
...Its proponents deplore the president's behavior, but, repelling as it may be, they do not think it belongs on any list of high crimes and misdemeanors...
...All this keeps us from the ranks of those calling upon the president to resign--what columnist Mark Shields has called the "Kevorkian solution...
...For in an era when biblical scholarship increasingly turned toward the academy, Father Brown's work, while meeting the highest scholarly standards, was nonetheless rendered as a service in and for the church...
...Commonweal articles also are available at many libraries and research facilities on CDROM and in electronic data bases...
...Furthermore, the matter will not be dispatched swiftly...
...Telephone: (212) 662-4200...
...But would the military and intelligence services really pull Clinton's chestnuts out of the fire...
...But there is another case for resignation that looks less to the past and more to the future...
...bank...
...Presidents lie...
...Nothing less will justify the extent of his probe and the distaste it has provoked...
...Clinton is in deep trouble...
...It was under liberal auspices, remember, that descriptions of pubic hairs on Coke cans first made network TV...
...Primaries, after all, are fought among militants...
...Clinton may have maneuvered the country into a quagmire on welfare reform (any serious economic downturn will show just how serious this could be...
...Through articles, books, countless lectures, statements, and conferences, he popularized the findings of scholarship for the church...
...President Bill Clinton's admission on August 17 of "lapses in judgment" and the question of presidential manipulation raised by the antiterrorism strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan may mark the beginning of the last act...
...His protean talents, his ability to mix government activism with conservative moral appeals, his sensitivity to public moods, and his very skill at seizing from conservatives some of their favorite causes--all bespoke, in the judgment of these observers, an ability to rescue liberalism from the dogmatic hardening of the arteries that appeared to overtake many in both its Great Society and civil-libertarian ranks...
...Very unlikely...
...Week by week, or month by month, it will work its way through the congressional digestive tract...
...Commonweal 6 September 11, 1998 He can never again be an effective spokesman for government assistance allied to moral discipline...
...But now, they argue, Clinton has become an albatross around the neck of whatever was positive in Clintonism...
...Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin...
...Europe, $89...
...RAYMOND BROWN, R.I.P...
...Well, that is no longer quite the case...
...Dionne, Jr., Sidney Callahan, William Pfaff Interns: Christian Zwahlen Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen P. Alava, Sandra Smith Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher Emeritus: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...3, 29, 30, David James...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
Vol. 125 • September 1998 • No. 15
