Small steps
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...
...That would betray the encyclicars spirit and squander an opportunity for productive discussion rather than polemical squabbling...
...E-mail: commonweal@msn.com...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...It will take courage and fortitude and yes, even some trust--on both sides if the promise of peace envisioned in Oslo is ever to come to fruition...
...Special two-year rate: U.S...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...However, the alternative to peace--the continued disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people and a bloodier Israeli occupation--is no real alternative at all...
...The human heart is haunted by fundamental questions about life's meaning that cannot and should not go unaddressed...
...p. 28, Tom Gibb, Rothco...
...Human reason, especially when expanded and perfected by faith, is capable of revealing the deepest truths about life and human destiny...
...Telephone: (212) 662-4200...
...8, 24, Baloo, Rothco...
...7, 20, 38, Ross, Rothco...
...Placing the CIA in the middle of such an inherently difficult and politically delicate situation is fraught with risks...
...foreign, $50...
...The encyclical could have added that this shift was also due to the abstract, enclosed, and self-satisfied character that marred too much of this thinking in preconciliar years...
...POSTMASTER: send address changes to Commonweal, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 405, New York, NY 10115...
...That explains the crucial and expanded role played by the United States over the last year-anda-half...
...The pope's message to the church...
...Unwilling to trust Palestinian assurances, Netanyahu insisted that the CIA monitor and verify the Authority's antiterrorist efforts, and this Arafat also agreed to...
...Fides et ratio, in other words, is a frontal challenge to the cult of meaninglessness which may have legitimate roots in the bloodshed and cruelty of the twentieth century but which has often become as much the fashionable, unexamined stance of our time as sentimental optimism was of the nineteenth century...
...Netanyahu's decision was obviously a political gamble he thinks he can win, but it was still a gamble...
...The Wye Memorandum was one such step...
...Europe, $89...
...King Hussein of Jordan, brought to Wye at the last moment and visibly suffering from the effects of treatment for cancer, introduced a note of eloquent and sober realism to the discussions...
...Commonweal 6 November6,1998...
...The philosophical dimension of theological training must be strengthened because the complicated interaction between faith and reason requires a mutually supporting relationship between theology and philosophy...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...It is clear, however, that guaranteeing Palestinian antiterrorist efforts was the linchpin of the agreement, and hands-on U.S...
...Canada, $47...
...bank...
...p. 16, Valerry...
...Moreover, both Netanyahu and Palesfinian Authority President Yasir Arafat face severe and even potentially violent opposition within their own ranks...
...In return for Palestinian cooperation, the Israelis will release more than 700 political prisoners, will guarantee safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank, and will permit the opening of an airport in Gaza...
...It is almost certain that extremists on both sides will try to sabotage the Wye agreement by resorting to terrorism or assassination...
...involvement had become a necessity...
...In agreeing finally to fulfill the Israeli promise at Oslo to turn over another 13 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu received commitments from Arafat that the Authority would (1) remove language in the PLO covenant calling for the destruction of Israel, and (2) clamp down on terrorist groups, such as Hamas, that continue to operate from Palestinian territory...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Fides et ratio stops well short of spelling out practical strategy...
...Single Copy, $2.25...
...News reports detailing the volatile and contentious nine-day negotiation confirm the obvious: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu committed his right-wing government to Oslo's fundamental principle of land-for-peace only after making what seemed like every effort to scuttle the process...
...Netanyahu, backed by his hawkish foreign minister Arik Sharon, has publicly signed on to the Oslo process...
...Fax: (212) 662-4183...
...foreign, $87...
...Copyright _9 1998 Commonweal Foundation...
...Nevertheless, a compliant and evidently imperturbable Yasir Arafat, and a determined and resourceful American team of negotiators led by President Bill Clinton, defused Netanyahu's singular combination of bluster, political timidity, and personal ambition...
...Precisely because of this memory, some Catholics may be wary of the pope's call...
...Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional offices...
...Both messages provide the kind of common ground that could unite Catholics, not in unanimity perhaps but in fruitful dialogue and initiative...
...And in finally committing himself to the land-for-peace principle, Netanyahu has also turned away from an important segment of his own political coalition, one that continues to believe in a so-called greater Israel and refuses to contemplate peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestinian people...
...The road to liberation, for both Palestinians and Israelis, leads in only one direction and has to be walked in small steps...
...As a result, the Wye Memorandum, despite its more worrisome details--especially the expanded role envisioned for the Central Intelligence Agency--did achieve at least one significant breakthrough...
...Fides et ratio notes that such rigorous analytic and speculative thinking, rooted in a long tradition, has been overshadowed since Vatican II by the renewal of Scripture studies and interest in sociology, psychology, comparative religion, and history...
...auspices at Wye Mills, Maryland...
...Catholics are pretty much of one mind in rejecting this stance...
...Dionne, Jr., Sidney Callahan, William Pfaff Interns: Christian Zwahlen, Andrew Rosato, Maurice Timothy Reidy 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...
...He will now have a political and personal stake in its success...
...There are social activists who shrug off doctrine as inconsequential and seekers who reduce it to therapeutic and meditative practices...
...Nonetheless, there is a growing sense, at least in the United States, of the need for what could be termed a "re-intellectualization" of Catholicism...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $44...
...Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, was defiant: "It is an illusion to think the agreement will put an end to our military activity...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...They vary only in the degree of their awareness of the stark gulf that can separate them from some of their cultural peers or, if equally aware, in the particular mix of empathy, adaptation, and confrontation with which they think it best to communicate the Good News...
...As many observers note, the price for making peace in the Middle East, for both Israelis and Palestinians, is often violent death...
...The pope's message to the world...
...BACK TO BASICS Fides et ratio, the encyclical with which John Paul II marked the twentieth anniversary of his papacy, has a message for a searching, thinking, believing church and a searching, thinking, sometimes believing, sometimes doubting, sometimes despairing world...
...other parts of the world, $99...
...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...
...Because of the persistence of terrorist bombings against Israel and the belligerence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government, little trust exists between the Israelis and the Palestinians...
...To be sure, there are Catholic fundamentalists (either of Scripture or Vatican decrees) as well as those whose faith and spiritual life seem organized around apparitions and special revelations...
...Here, then, is common ground for fruitful dialogue among Catholic thinkers...
...Portland, ME 04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 475 Riverside Dr...
...Not that all those who share this longing would necessarily agree on exactly how the church's intellectual fitness can be achieved, or how a venerable and rich philosophical tradition can be maintained and invigorated...
...Given his own political vulnerability, to what extent Arafat can deliver on anCommonweal 5 November 6, 1998 titerrorist promises is also a legitimate question...
...and, like most papal documents, it could even be read and used in authoritarian ways fatal to the very enterprise the pope urges...
...p. 3, Peter C. Howard...
...Right-wing Israelis have issued only slightly more veiled warnings...
...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...
...It is, in short, almost a certain recipe for turning the United States into an object of mutual Palestinian and Israeli mistrust...
...Netanyahu's last-minute attempt at blackmail in demanding that the United States release the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard epitomized the prime minister's overall strategy...
...http:Hwww.commonwealmagazlne.org Small steps ~ o euphoria greeted the painstakingly arrived at agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, hammered out late last month under U.S...
...Canada, $81...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M148106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, OH 44691...
...405, New York, NY, 10115...
...p. 14, Attila Dory...
...Illustrations: Cover, Aleman...
...Web: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org...
...In this regard, the greatest potential for "original new, and constructive" thinking lies with efforts to build on a tradition of Christian philosophizing, relating contemporary thought to a long and living heritage...
...Most important of all the Wye Memorandum keeps Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the path to the final-status negotiations promised in the original Oslo accords...
...p. 3, Jerry Bauer...
...Serials Data program No.: ]SSN 0010-3330...
...p. 18, Giovanni Giovannetti...
...Annual rates for air-mail delivery outside U.S.: Western Hemisphere, $84...
...In short, despite the modest nature of what Netanyahu and Arafat agreed to in what is called the Wye Memorandum, much was on the line...
...None of the parties involved is under any illusions about the difficulties that lie ahead or the potential consequences, should the peace process begun in Oslo five years ago break down completely...
...Commonweal articles also are available at many libraries and research facilities on CDROM and in electronic data bases...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...Between these extremes, however, a great many Catholics long for a tuning of the church's intellectual muscles, a stretching and strengthening of the sinews of belief, and a more demanding standard of discourse, whether from the pulpit, in religious education programs, from conservative and liberal protagonists, or in the pages of Catholicinspired journals like this one...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 19
