Mistaken identity

...We can argue that this is an individualistic, potentially self-deluding direction, and we might well be right...

...noted, they voted "to put our country in suspended animation for months and months...

...There are no evidentiary issues here," Kristol said...

...The most subtle temptation for church-prone people, really a dangerous one, is to love the church in an esthetic way--to be in love with ritual Commonweal ~ October 23, 1998 itself, to delight in the feelings we now have about being part of the church, to belong too easily--dangerous, because it lulls us into forgetting that during the liturgy we are taking the bread of the kingdom that is still to come...

...At the other, the congressional majority couldn't even agree to set time limits on the Clinton inquiry and restrict the investigation to the matters Ken Starr put on the table--even though it is Starr's referral that launched the inquiry...

...Where corruption really sets in is where the church, fearing for its position, is uncritical of power, or wealth, or (perhaps even more corrupting, because it is so much more subtle) when it fears loss of the good opinion of others, for seeming to be foolish...

...As Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich...

...According to a recent New York Times report, his office was tipped off in advance about Linda Tripp's allegations, which raises many questions about how the two cases got intertwined...

...Church politics resembles academic politics in its dishonesty...

...Looking at us Christians from the outside, it is hard to see what would draw people to do what Jesus invited his first followers to do: Come and see...

...I have worked around real politics, and it is more or less clear (at least among its participants, when journalists aren't around) about the fact that what it really cares about is power and money and how they are spread around...

...Our life in the church is either seriously an effort to realize what Paul meant when he said "to live is Christ," a life that looks forward to his coming, or it is nothing...

...There is a more recent addition to this, a harvest from self-help and twelve-step programs, plus popular angel lore and dumbed-down Buddhist literature: "But I am very spiritual...

...As Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass...

...There's no time limit...

...The market later recovered, but I couldn't help ruminating on the clich6: To compare this to fiddling while Rome burns may be unfair to the Romans...

...One Republican who believes this is William Kristol, the editor and Republican adviser who wants Clinton thrown out of office...

...argued, with a debt to Jesse Jackson, Republicans "keep hope alive" that new charges will turn up to make impeachment easy...

...While the people who say "I am a spiritual person" or "I believe in spirituality" are headed in a terminally cloudy, feelings-led direction, the sad example of the churches makes it clear why they head that way...

...The right, for its part, is too eager to get Caesar on its side...

...When the church forgets that its only reality is the Lord whose return we await, when it loses this eschatological sense of itself, it loses its truest vocation...

...ICs important, he said, "that Republicans not be the party of dragging it out...

...And we're here because the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, decided that a civil lawsuit that could lead to questions about the president's sex life couldn't possibly disrupt the president's work...

...There is a profound cluelessness there...

...Does anyone believe that the gravest threat to our republic is the possibility that we'll settle the Clinton matter too quickly...

...What they are likely to see in too many cases is bishops fighting with other bishops or with clergy and laypeople...

...The concern for power and position applies across the board: The liberal and the conservative have their own versions...

...The church made its peace with power, and to some extent that was inevitable...

...s the House droned on to a its inevitable conclusion on October 8 on the impeachment inquiry for President Bill Clinton, the little box at the bottom corner of the television screen kept reporting the bad news...

...There has been an arch and unhelpful response to this from people who are involved in churches: "Would you rather be involved in a disorganized religion...

...The idea of spirituality itself is a problem: It gets mixed up with all the stuff that makes you feel good about yourself, with therapy, with a sense of things having changed in your life because of something wise you decided to do...

...Our work is to realize that "here we have no lasting city...

...It isn't pretty, and it certainly isn't good, but it is more honest and refreshing than a form of politics which pretends to be about God's work, or academic freedom, and is still really about money and power...

...Anything that comes across the transom canbe added to the committee's investigation...

...To take the second question first: We're here because the president had an astonishingly irresponsible sexual relationship that, according to Monica Lewinsky's testimony, he knew could get him into trouble...

...We are to live (as the letter to Diognetus put it) as if we are at home in any place, and aliens everywhere...

...But that's exactly the course they've chosen...

...Then he lied about it for seven months...

...But what do we do now...

...But it isn't only money, power, or prestige...

...At one end of town, the folks at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were trying to find ways to avoid a global economic catastrophe...

...I heard once about an old monk who said that what he would miss most, when he died and went to heaven, was the Mass...

...The Dow Jones was down more than two hundred points when I was watching...

...We've only been at this, in one way or another, for more than four years...

...What will the historians make of us...

...He jeopardized himself, his supporters, and, most importantly, whatever hopes he had of making enduring changes in American political life...

...But let me suggest that the church has its own problem here, and it doesn't have to do with the failure of all those barbarians or insensitive, post-Enlightenment, individualistic folks to appreciate a more communal sense of the Christian community...

...Paul makes room for this peace, but it is, or should be, provisional...

...The church goes drastically wrong when it sees itself as an insttufion, one of many needed for a civil society...

...We are not, above all, to make the church a part of our lives...

...We're also here because the independent counsel decided to veer off his inquiry into Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate and cross his investigation with the Paula Jones lawsuit...

...There's a chunk of Republican opinion that doesn't want to give up the hope of new scandals and new smoking guns," Kristol said in an interview...

...I'm happy to confine it to the scope of the Starr referral...

...It can seem part of a self-help program in a time when helping yourself is all-important...

...The notion that elaborate hearings will turn up new evidence is also suspect...

...It has to do with the fact that we have come to see the church as something that exists in addition to what has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ...

...The inquiry approved by the House is open-ended...

...The danger to Republicans is that "the strongest argument with the middle of the body politic" appeals to "the desire to get it over with...

...The result was a highly partisan diviCommonweal 8 October23,1998...

...His letters make clear a wrong direction that happened before Constantine but probably got even worse afterwards, and that is the thought of the church as an institution that involves Christ, somehow includes Christ--among other things...

...It's ludicrous to think Starr will come up with something on Filegate" or the other matters in question, Kristol said...

...It is easier for some liberal Christians to criticize Pat Robertson than to criticize the editorial board of the New York Times, despite the moral and spiritual bankruptcy in both places...

...I plead guilty to having edited a book called Modern Spirituality: An Anthology...

...Paul's letters to the Corinthians and the Galatians make it quite clear that the church has always had a problem, but Paul's emphasis---everywhere---is that for the Christian "to live is Christ," that we are baptized into Christ, that the extent to which we can call God our Father is because of Christ, and that anything that distracts us from this relationship is deluding...

...If the Republicans had been smart, they would have agreed to Democratic proposals to limit the inquiry...

...This is unfair, because all of our churches have a lot to answer for...

...And this really is the devil's work...

...To paraphrase the good Admiral James Stockdale: Who are we, and why are we here...