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...
...Nicholas Kristof, who reports from Japan for the New York Times, has written two stories that point up the Japanese dilemma in dealing with their recession: their sense of social solidarity means that no one is allowed to sink in bad times...
...W any economies are in trouble, perhaps none more than Japan's...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...p. 3, Chariot...
...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...
...E-mail: commonweal@msn.com...
...POSTMASTER: send address changes to Commonweal 475 Riverside Dr., Room 405, New York, NY I0115...
...In a nation of small shops and small factories, businessmen and civic leaders consider themselves duty-bound to keep things going, even when they are losing money hand over fist...
...Living the Gospel of Life" condemns the seemingly irreversible tide of abortion, the increasing drift toward legalized euthanasia, and the popular resort to capital punishment...
...405, New York, NY, 10115...
...In the small town of lchinosetakahashi, there is a primary school with one teacher and one principal that educates one child, Daiki Saito, at a cost of $175,000 a year (New York Times, October 26,1998...
...Fax: (212) 662-4183...
...Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional offices...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...Do we have something to learn from Japan...
...In short, Catholics must "work peacefully and tirelessly" to change current abortion law and to oppose efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...It is the first NCCB document explicitly to call Catholic politicians to account on these issues, and as a consequence it was the subject of intense debate within the conference and some significant last-minute revision...
...But maybe we should turn the question around: Why aren't Americans, Brazilians, the Russians, etc., more like the Japanese in our sense of giri-ninjo, duty and responsibility...
...Clearly their notions of democracy and equality have been linked to an older and still vibrant sense of civic virtue---social solidarity and social harmony...
...Abortion and euthanasia, the bishops argue, are not merely private matters...
...To promote his "cause" and goad law enforcement into arresting him yet again, Kevorkian presented "60 Minutes" with a videotape, which the program dubiously decided to air, of the consenting victim's final moments...
...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...
...Kevorkian, who has been acquitted in three jury trials on charges of assisting in the suicide of his "patients," is determined to "broaden" still further this culture's definition of permissible killing...
...ECONOMICS A LA TOKYO Foreign concepts...
...Even more puzzling: the Japanese people put up with it...
...Commonweal 5 December4,1998 The rejection of recent state referenda criminalizing lateterm abortions shows that most Americans remain suspicious of the perceived religious and absolutist tenor of the prolife movement...
...Having once visited Tokyo and been mightily impressed with Japanese diligence, I would have thought that energy and hard work alone would have ended their recession...
...Commonweal articles also are available at many libraries and research facilities on CD-ROM and in electronic data bases...
...Takahiro Tanaka admitted to Kristof that he went out of the jewelry business because he could neither layoff employees nor ask them to take a pay cut, even though he believed that they would accept one: "I just couldn't bring myself to do such a thing" (New York Times, April 21, 1998...
...Furthermore, there is no guarantee or historical evidence that, if Brazil overcomes its current crisis, the gap between rich and poor will be significantly narrowed...
...But neither do the bishops mince words in constructing what Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore called the statement's "theology of persuasion...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...On November 22, five days after the NCCB spoke, Doctor Jack Kevorkian appeared on "60 Minutes" to confirm the bishops' diagnosis in grisly detail...
...foreign, $50...
...Explanations abound: corruption, interlocking directorships, too little consumerism, and too much fish-eating...
...Inherent in the Japanese practice of social solidarity, there seems to me a finely honed sense of social justice, which, if emulated elsewhere, would make the human costs of globalization easier to bear...
...What a contrast to Brazil, where the gap between rich and poor, the largest in the world, continues to grow, even as the government takes on another $42 billion in loans from the IMF...
...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...
...Telephone: (212) 662-4200...
...secretary of the Treasury, loves to hector...
...While spearheading salvage operations in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil with the seeming benevolence of a rich uncle, he scolds the Japanese for not pulling themselves out of the doldrums...
...occupation forces...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...The Brazilian economy has been deemed too large to fail--except, of course, for the human losers, exactly those whom the Japanese act to protect...
...Portland, ME 04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 475 Riverside Dr...
...The bishops are most persuasive when they place abortion and euthanasia within the context of the church's "consistent ethic of life," condemning any resort to violence to defend the unborn, voicing opposition to the death penalty, and reiterating their support for the poor and other victims of injustice...
...They urge Americans to see how the rights of the unborn and the infirm are grounded in this nation's great historical and constitutional commitments to democracy and human dignity...
...We urge those Catholic officials...to consider the consequences for their own s p i r i t u a l well being, as well as the scandal they risk by leading others into serious sin....no appeal to policy, procedure, majority will, or pluralism ever excuses a public official from defending life to the greatest extent possible...
...Single Copy, $2.25...
...foreign, $87...
...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 the economy that Robert Rubin, U.S...
...Web: http: / / www.commonwealmagazine.org...
...No self-righteous indictment, the statement also calls to account the bishops' own failures: "We need to redouble our efforts to evangelize and catechize our people on the dignity of life and the wrongness of abortion...
...The same practices are at work in municipal government...
...Catholic public officials who disregard church teaching on the inviolability of the human person indirectly collude in the taking of innocent life," they write...
...According to Kristof, the Japanese see these practices as part of their democratic and egalitarian way of life (a way of life, let us recall, introduced to them only fifty years ago by General Douglas MacArthur and the U.S...
...Rights of conscience are too easily abused by such tactics...
...What appears to Americans as inefficiency and even failure to take account of the bottom line is in Japan respect for giri-ninjo--duty and empathy, for example, to one's employees and conversely to one's employer...
...Tanaka's principles may have bankrupted his business, but Japan's low unemployment rate suggests that many other companies are keeping people who are no longer productively employed...
...As liberal prolife Catholics know, absolutism is very much alive on the prochoice side as well...
...3, 16, courtesy, A Good Machine Releasing...
...In fact, the man euthanized by Kevorkian identified himself as a Catholic...
...Kevorkian, already responsible for assisting in the suicides of 130 people, now boasts of having taken the inevitable next step: he claims to have directly killed someone...
...http://www.commonwealmagazine.org O Bishops & pols iminishing respect for the inalienable right to life and...the elimination of legal protections for those who are most vulnerable" threaten American society...
...taxpayers nuts...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...bank...
...Canada, $47...
...That is unfair and unfortunate...
...Annu4~l rates for air-mail delivery outside U.S.: Western Hemisphere, $84...
...The Catholic bishops want to be more optimistic than Hauerwas about American society, but as "Living the Gospel of Life" argues, that won't be easy unless American Catholics rise to the challenge...
...Special two-year rate: U.S...
...The document wisely avoids issuing any broad sanctions against individual politicians...
...Of course, it is more than a curiosity that the miracle economy of the 1980s has fallen so low, and stayed low for so long...
...These questions cannot be finessed by claiming to be privately opposed to abortion or euthanasia, but supportive of the right of others "to choose...
...Europe, $89...
...Copyright _9 1998 Commonweal Foundation...
...Kristof writes, "Japan seems troubled by economic changes that are beneficial overall but that make losers out of some people...
...This would drive U.S...
...Illustrations: Cover, Baumann, Aleman...
...But perhaps these qualities turn out to be part of the problem...
...p. 24, Ray Rothco...
...8, 26, Schwadron, Rothco...
...Canada, $81...
...other parts of the world, $99...
...That was the warning issued late last month by the National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) in its statement, "Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics...
...Let me enter here the usual disclaimers about the insularity of Japan, its history of racism and xenophobia, and its high demand for conformity and compliance, and yet ask whether the Japanese have something to teach us in the context of the current economic crisis...
...14, 22, Ross, Rothco...
...11, 20, Valerry...
...But in the principal's view, "If we just pursue efficiency, the world would become a very dry place, with no sensitivity...
...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS Commonweal 6 December4, 1998...
...My own view," the theologian Stanley Hauerwas recently noted, "is that within a hundred years, Christians may be known as those odd people who don't kill their children or their elderly...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $44...
...They re-elect the same politicians, and corporate leaders seem immune from stockholder wrath...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...6, 9, 18, 26, Baloo, Rothco...
...When Western bankers and officials call for an end to Japanese inefficiencies and cronyism, aren't they saying be more like the Brazilians, more like Americans, lay people off, close schools, and end subventions to small farmers and marginal businesses...
Vol. 125 • December 1998 • No. 21
