Continuing the conversation
not be imputed. Presumably even cardinals can be extended this courtesy. As any fairminded reading of "Gather Faithfully Together" makes clear, Mahony's discussion of the distinct but...
...Or, "Abortion is a sacramental moment for a woman...
...Commonweal's working policy is to sell ad space to those who request it...
...Murder" in my understanding is constituted by a malicious and calculated intention to kill a human being recognized as such...
...we would not run an ad for an abortion clinic...
...Legalized abortion on request is bad enough, as a dreadful practice of unjust killing, without rhetorically upping the ante...
...Here are some of the worst arguments on abortion I've ever heard-and to be fair about it, I include both sides...
...On the one hand, we consider advertisers innocent until proven guilty...
...Since I don't believe in the pre-existence of souls, I can hardly worry about frustrating yearnings to be incarnate...
...Yes, and we have: ads that are in themselves hopelessly tasteless or tawdry, regardless of the merits of the advertised products...
...In seeming to emphasize the priest as "presider," the cardinal's letter supposedly encourages an effort to cast the assembly as "co-celebrants...
...I answered," Newman recalled, "that the church would look foolish without them...
...I'll start with a few of the awful arguments from prolife circles...
...And if we started refusing ads for ideas we disagree with, will readers assume that we agree with the ideas promoted in the ads we do accept...
...Moreover, juxtaposing, as Adoremus does, the ideas of sacrifice and meal, priest and assembly, the socalled "vertical" and "horizontal" dimensions of the Eucharist, is itself a rather truncated understanding of the essentially dialectical nature of the Eucharist...
...Our reasons are both practical and principled...
...To identify abortion with murder, for instance, or with genocidal holocausts, is incendiary hyperbole that can trigger violence in the mentally unhinged...
...And in genocidal "holocausts" the goal is to wipe out whole races, whole families, whole sects or tribes by any illegal or violent means...
...Consequently, a recognition of the assembly's liturgical authority need not be regarded as a move in a "horizontal" direction and the slighting of the liturgy's "vertical, or transcendent dimension," as Adoremus charges...
...On the other hand, horrible prochoice arguments can be even harder to take...
...It also seems presumptuous to assume that difficult circumstances in life can be solved with the pious claim that "each baby is born with a loaf of bread tucked under its arm...
...God will provide...
...This is a pitiable ploy, if not an outright pathetic fallacy...
...As any fairminded reading of "Gather Faithfully Together" makes clear, Mahony's discussion of the distinct but complementary roles of assembly and priest, the nature of the eucharistic elements, the meaning of the eucharistic prayer, and the use of inclusive language, are uncontroversial...
...ads that directly urge actions (not ideas) that we consider immoral...
...Of course, to prolife ears this sounds just like Raskolnikov's act of killing that bothersome old woman in order to assert his freedom from conventional morality...
...This strikes us as an impossible and self-defeating route to pursue...
...Much of Adoremus's critique focuses on Mahony's alleged blurring of the liturgical roles of priest and assembly...
...More than any conceivable shortcoming in Mahony's pastoral letter, it is the intemperate charges of Adoremus and Mother Angelica that increase "the liturgical confusion already pervasive in the church...
...Another opponent tells me that "old souls," waiting to begin Commonweal 7 January 30, 1998...
...Only the most tendentious reading can conclude, as Adoremus incomprehensibly does, that the letter offers a "strikingly truncated theology of the Eucharist" and a "defective, functionalist view of the priesthood...
...Most of the time in these debates I seek common ground, but goaded by the twenty-fifth anniversary of Roe v. Wade and recent rationalizations of partial-birth abortion, I'm going to give way to spleen...
...Although present in the bread and wine in an exceptional way, Christ is also present in the assembly...
...The sacredness referred to seems to be the woman's assertion of self in taking control of her life...
...Contrary to Adoremus's seeming longing for a return to the days when the distinction between priest and people was given exaggerated importance, the reformed liturgy returns us to a more venerable Catholic tradition that unites all the baptized in one act of sacrifice and remembrance...
...One beautiful young woman on a TV program assured me that it "was not her karma to be aborted," so presumably those who go down the tubes just don't have the right spiritual stuff...
...Who are the laity...
...A desire to encourage the full participation of all Catholics in the liturgy--Mahony's stated goal--might seem naturally to begin with a proper regard for the assembly...
...Would we reject some ads...
...Correction | In the December 5, 1997 issue, an editing error in the Last Word column led to an incorrect Internet address for The Bible Gateway...
...We feel strongly about this policy when it comes to "idea" advertising--for books, tapes, and conferences...
...Practical: It would be unrealistic for us to try to evaluate all the ideas that are directly or indirectly promoted through proposed advertisements...
...full documentation can be provided on request...
...It seems to us condescending to protect you from ideas we reject, and all too reminiscent of past unhappy practices of the Catholic church...
...Unfortunately, after thirty years, I can only echo Eliza Doolittle's "there's not a word I haven't heard...
...Principled: Our readers are adults...
...ads that, insofar as we can tell, are fraudulent (it is not always easy to detect this sort of thing until readers alert us...
...The liturgical reform has reminded Catholics that the Eucharist is an act of the entire church, not something the priest "does...
...More important, presiding in the assembly should not be seen as a denigration of the priest's sacerdotal powers...
...And readers too can make their views known in our correspondence columns...
...Could we read ahead of time all the books we advertise...
...I've heard a lot of them in debates with both stars and footsoldiers of the radical feminist abortion "rights" movement...
...Would we advertise a seriously argued prochoice book or a thoughtful case for assisted suicide...
...Another assertion was made that no woman's decision for abortion could ever be morally questioned...
...Finally, we would certainly reject some ads even for ideas when we find the ideas indisputably and overwhelmingly immoral, for example, books that are unquestionably racist or that blatantly deny the Holocaust or justify torture or are pornographic...
...From time to time, we get complaints about specific ads we run, and from time to time we get out our policy and dust it off...
...We have our editorial space and our choice of articles to make clear, forcefully in many cases, where we stand, and our readers, we believe, know the difference between that and paid ads...
...a bishop once condescendingly asked Cardinal Newman...
...Recent complaints about advertisements for conferences on homosexuality brought out the dust rag...
...Abortion is wrong, I've been told, because "There are little souls in heaven waiting to come down to earth and abortion refuses them a chance for life and happiness...
...You can always have another, and too many people in the world are having far too many...
...Although some popular misunderstandings about the priesthood should be a matter of concern, this specific charge is baseless...
...We would not run an ad recruiting mercenaries or raising funds for the contras during the Nicaraguan conflict...
...All these elements exist in tension...
...We believe we would...
...we would not run ads for organizations carrying out anticlinic violence...
...Commonwee...
...As "Gather Faithfully Together" demonstrates, Cardinal Mahony shares Newman's sound instincts about the faithfulness and credibility of the laity...
...Nor am I moved by purported dialogues in which embryos, or "babies," are depicted as saying, "Please, mommy, please, don't abort me...
...6 Janua~ 30, 1998 Complaints we have received from both liberals and conservatives persuade us that in a world of political correctness, there are very few questions beyond debate...
...we would not run incendiary ads urging discrimination against blacks, immigrants, women, gays, workers, evangelicals, etc...
...We thought readers might be interested in knowing how we think about these matters...
...Even the eucharistic prayer, after all, does not belong to the priest alone, but is the prayer of the whole assembly...
...Rather, "Gather Faithfully Together" recognizes that priesthood finds its culmination and truest expression precisely in leadership of the worshiping community...
...A dogma of gender infallibility, if you will...
...Obviously, certain folks on the prolife side can err in sentimental exaggeration or pathologies of hope...
...on the other, we do not consider that publishing an ad constitutes an endorsement by us...
...But here we would be careful to draw a wide boundary of what can be debated...
...Would we refuse to advertise it...
...The correct address is : http://www.gospelcom.net/bible...
...Nowhere does Mahony minimize the role or status of the ordained...
...Do we strongly reject much of the thrust of Herrnstein and Murray's Tile Bell Curve...
...I'll maintain anonymity as to my sources...
...Other problematic prolife arguments, made by a few extremists, are less forgivable, because they're dangerous...
...More recently, I'm meeting New Age arguments for abortion...
...Advertising: One of the pillars of Commonweal's financial semi-solidity is advertising...
...amn, damn, damn--to quote Rex Harrison playing Henry Higgins--I've let a friend persuade me to review a new book on abortion...
...they are not mutually exclusive...
...Often enough, these are the very questions that have raised more questions and are in search of further answers...
...Abortion is said to be morally good because "Men have always killed, so why shouldn't women be able to...
...A self-identified Catholic in another abortion debate justified society's preservation of seals and eagles but refused protection to fetal life, since "humans are a renewable resource...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 2
