Notebook Eye on Sudan
Jordan, Patrick
science," Larch tells Homer, "should seize these moments lose sight of our innate limitations and the hard-won wisdom when we can play God." "I'm not sorry for anything I've of...
...teem in which The Cider House Rules is held is any indication, The Catholic bishops of East Africa, in a joint statement our common moral vocabulary may well be atrophying...
...Abortion, whatever one thinks outposts in southern Sudan...
...President clandestine airfield, and as he baptizes, confirms, and wit- Omar Bashir ousted longtime radical Speaker of Parliament nesses the marriages of scores of people, some of whom Hassan Turabi...
...still missing...
...Certain Mexican crucifixes come with far too much blood and gore...
...I replied that as a rich mystery, and transcendence aren't pre- mass-produced art spoiled the effect...
...And when the father meets his own violent end, Christian and animist tribes in the south...
...all," he tells us...
...Commonweal 6 March 24, 2000 The Hidden Gift is a compelling film...
...The bishop informs the congregation to remain (Ethiopia and Eritrea...
...And if we absolutely couldn't it's also one I don't know how to fix...
...While in church for people to light...
...My reasons are tion...
...For its part, the SPLA remains unpredictable Christmas Mass, held beneath a panoply of shade trees in a and divided...
...I'm not sorry for anything I've of moral tradition...
...It concentrated on the work view is...
...Olga, a II folks in the pews, I miss something in worshiping in the small wooden summember who grew up in an Eastern our spare, modeme churches...
...That con- the government in Khartoum has intensified its drive to cern is usually dismissed as idle speculation...
...Fourteen children, some of them Muslim, and spurred on by our scientific mastery of nature, that "men their twenty-two-year-old teacher were killed...
...seventeen othand women of conscience should seize these moments when ers were critically wounded, and Reuters reported ten were we can play God...
...toum, enabling it to prolong the war...
...calves are slaughtered...
...The Dinka and their civilization are being Opponents of abortion have long worried that in a society systematically destroyed by aerial bombardment, famine, where 1.4 million fetuses are disposed of every year, respect and enslavement...
...But since then they have made overtures of have not seen a priest in thirty years...
...morally responsible for the deaths of women who resort to Last July, ABC's "Nightline" ran a half-hour segment on knitting needles is just one example of how extreme Irving's Sudan, "Making a Difference...
...The 1999...
...Warmth, bience, but the dreadful quality of the certainty of theft...
...the bishop converses with Is there hope for an end to the war...
...Humility, awe, and a willingness to quesdone," he goes on...
...It follows Gassis, a native of Sudan Sudanese government but the SPLA for sponsoring miliwho speaks fluent Arabic as well as idiomatic American, as tary groups "whose target of operation is usually the civilhe is welcomed home...
...They open eyes...
...won't do...
...The documentary ers hostage, and kidnapped young boys, forcing them into was made on location during two surreptitious visits by the armed service...
...The sense of controlled ter- sanctions against Sudan as a terrorist state and cozies up to ror is palpable...
...Larch's death, by an accidental drug overdose, is ple's Liberation Army...
...You have to choose...
...no one is really responsible...
...During the joyous reconciliation...
...of Dr...
...The funds flow to Khardents killed in last month's attack...
...Allowing legal access to abortion in cases sis introduced the documentary The Hidden Gift: of rape, incest, or when a mother's life is in danger, is a W War and Faith in Sudan at its premier at Fordmorally defensible position...
...Certainly we must not "seize" these moments oil industry, and it would rather that people didn't know with the utilitarian fervor of Dr...
...Last December, Khartoum seemed the north...
...Larch's words, "Someone's going ern tribe, the Dinka, a herding people, among whom Nagele to get hurt, and it's no one's fault...
...In February, days before Bishop Gassis that soft-pedals the crime of incest and elevates abortion to addressed his New York audience, BBC News Online caran absolute moral duty "a tribute to the human spirit...
...In short, in Dr...
...Nagele, and of films like The Hidden Gift and "Makheart-breaking incident is yet another piece of evidence...
...To do so would be to about places like this and the crimes that are committed...
...The pastor cited the dan- Catholic tradition's witness to material admired the excess and the feminine amger of fire, the cost of insurance, and the sacramentality seems faint...
...Two million people have diedintended to seal the case against moral rule-making of any more than in Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia sort...
...as the photographs of Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher in The catastrophe in Sudan is as complex as it is bloody their stunning two-volume African Ceremonies (Abrams, (see, Commonweal, December 16, 1994...
...It will have to come priests and catechists, a local SPLA commander, moderate from a combination of outside pressure and internal change...
...But how we approach the scene...
...which no one need confront and for which there is no final ABC's cameras vividly conveyed the plight of one southanswer...
...Then he added: "This and Dr...
...Some of Sudan's neighbors have turned from dry riverbed, government bombers are reported to be on working on a solution to fighting among themselves the way...
...and inauthentic to me...
...Commonweal 7 March 24, 2000...
...This month its planes When Bishop Gassis introduced the documentary in New bombed a hospital in the south, killing two and injuring a York, he told his audience that the school had been the only dozen, and also the compound of an Irish aid group...
...The conflict pits an Islamcoyly undermines the idea that there can be any strict ac- ic fundamentalist regime in the north, intent on imposing counting for-or any "rules" concerning-what the father strict Islamic law on the entire country, against black African has done...
...Throngs greet him with drums and ian population...
...At last year, described the Sudanese war as one of "truly genoa minimum, it is bewildering that some critics call a movie cidal dimensions...
...If this is a problem without a name, Even the monumental Marian shrine in for free...
...A Washington, D.C., replete with a plethohave real flames and smoke, electric can- simple-minded imitation of the past ra of elegant Byzantine images, feels cold dles would be better than nothing...
...Incest is also violent, yet the movie have been engulfed in civil war...
...But none of these hard cases ham University Lincoln Center last month, he logically commit one to abortion on demand...
...Like a lot of other post-Vatican counter excessive sentimentality...
...At the opposite extreme, we enL that we have vigil candles simple...
...science," Larch tells Homer, "should seize these moments lose sight of our innate limitations and the hard-won wisdom when we can play God...
...The rules don't mean nothing at violence...
...Someone's going tion our own motives are essential moral attitudes...
...wants investors for its potentially lucrative harm or good...
...has ministered...
...January 17,1997...
...The movie's in- said the eighty-four-minute film was "an eye opener to the sistence that physicians unwilling to perform abortions are catastrophe that is happening in Sudan...
...We canto get hurt, and it's no one's fault...
...Muslims, and ex-slaves he has helped free from bondage in Both are in short supply...
...Some of the color the war in Sudan is a religious and ethnic war launched by footage assembled by director David Tlapek is as vibrant Khartoum and aimed at the destruction of my people...
...Nor would I want to import the mural I saw in a Spanish BETTER TO LIGHT A CANDLE chapel which shows a female martyr's chopped-off breasts flying away in the Bare churches, cold hearts air...
...not "make up the rules every single day," for that, as The The same message is also put into the mouth of the father Cider House Rules unintentionally reveals, is an invitation to who has committed incest...
...Opponents of abortion on demand are frequently confronted with questions about incest and dangerous back-alley EYE ON SUDAN procedures...
...Tlapek couples live-action shots-some of them made SPLA, no shining peace force, has repeatedly split into fratat the very school that was later bombed-with exquisite ricidal factions, skimmed off relief supplies, held aid workblack-and-white stills by James Nichols...
...Fi- fighting contingent is known as the SPLA (Sudanese Peonally, Dr...
...In its commentary, the BBC stated: "The governsuch decisions will in large part determine whether we do ment of Sudan...
...We make our own rules-every single day...
...Susan Nagele, an Illinois-born Maryknoll lay misMore disturbing is the movie's sentimental fatalism about sioner who has spent the past nine years working in remote the inevitability of violence...
...That ried live footage on its Web site of the immediate aftermath its promoters imagine it to be an "American classic about of a February 8 government bombing of a Catholic-sponfamily" is simply macabre...
...With fresh discoveries of oil in the south, for all life will inevitably coarsen and diminish...
...one operating in the entire region: "This is our life," " he said, Thus, the importance of voices like those of Bishop Gassis "this is the reality of our children...
...But where Irving's story is most sored primary school in Kauda, in the SPLA-controlled Nuba dangerous is how it taps into the growing moral sentiment, Mountains...
...While the United States maintains calm and the Mass continues...
...It also captures-for the last time some of the stu- firm from extracting Sudanese oil...
...The camera rolls as Gassis unloads supplies at a to be moving toward a more moderate stance...
...The camera records the people's resolute the SPLA, Canada declines to restrain its Talisman Energy dignity...
...They often mer chapel at Lake George, I counted Catholic church, agreed with me, but our feel downright chilly...
...The main rebel the same dynamic is at work...
...Someone who don't live here made those rules...
...parish we could afford to offer candles sent...
...dancing...
...In calling for a negotiated settlement, the exiled Bishop Gassis to rebel-held areas during Christmas East African Bishops' Conference condemned not only the 1998 and Easter 1999...
...I request fell flat...
...These, like ast week, at our Altar- The pastor voiced surprise that I felt the display of Saint Catherine of Siena's Rosary Society meeting, I so strongly about keeping up this tradi- severed head, err in too grisly a direcmade a heartfelt request tional Catholic devotion...
...But if the es- crush the Dinka and other rebellious tribes...
...Sudan is Africa's largest counof it morally, remains a violent act, and it lies at the dra- try, and for the past seventeen years its 28 million people matic center of the story...
...Too often the fourteen images of Mary and her baby...
...that ing a Difference...
...There are no easy answers to such challenges, The forgotten war although it is useful to be reminded that incest is involved in a minuscule number of abortions and that the number of deaths caused by illegal abortions before Roe has been wild- hen exiled Sudanese Bishop Macram Max Gasly exaggerated...
...Evil, it seems, is an impersonal force loosed in the world combined-and 4 million more have been displaced...
...Immediately after the bombs struck, a student There is no avoiding moral dilemmas in which all the grabbed a battered camera and microphone and recorded choices may seem unsatisfactory...
...PATRICK JORDAN I could not join Camille Paglia's riff praising her childhood parish church with its statue of Saint Lucy offering her SIDNEY CALLAHAN eyeballs on a plate...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 6
