Peace in Kosovo? COLUMNISTS
Pfaff, William
So missy, Quo vadis? Maybe I should Worshipers attend to a threefold real- music, beauty, ritual, and sacred space, concentrate less on my dissatisfactions ity. God is in...
...This left looted Al- stalling multiethnic institutions...
...Of course, the Texas governor wound up looking weak and vacuous, Dan Quayle with a smirk...
...And when he lurched right in order to win South Carolina, Bush reinuper Tuesday, in John McCain's Star Wars forced the belief that he is simply a suit for all seasons...
...Concrete and glass-filled spaces ambition has since met endless difficul- bania" ambitions collide in this struggle...
...earth" that brought me into the church culties for the spirit...
...Since then, converted to the sacramental Roman northern Kosovo, now par- NATO forces have struggled to separate way, I firmly renounce all past icono- titioned between Serbs and the Albanians, demanding their properclasm and want to go forward-or deep- ethnic Albanians, demonstrates the ty in the north, and bands of Serbs, er...
...through war, persecution, population tious, more so than most were willing to The patience, persistence, and armed transfers, redrawn borders, and with im- admit (or even understood) when the presence of the international commumense human suffering...
...and focus more on gratitude for how assembly, God is within, and God dwells Surely, the third Catholic millennium far I've come...
...The preCommonweal 8 March 24, 2000 war situation has merely been restored...
...ern Mitrovica, and a few Serbs in the Yugoslavia's destruction began...
...But when the focus of the campaign shifted from what Bush had done to what he was for, Bush became imWilson Carey McWilliams possibly vague...
...should be limited to airports and shop- ties and frustrations in both places, im- Albanian activists are harassing the Kosoping malls...
...Even our newest upscale mall posing doubt as to its realism...
...Vati- can find a way to renew our art and arserious Christianity, I was a puritanical can II teaches that "in the earthly liturgy chitecture...
...My attention has or on a linoleum-covered table in a priests in gold and silver vestments been focused on the urgent need for jus- homeless shelter can be true worship...
...And ironically, his campaign's efforts to shake this win in November...
...But I see now that it was the down aesthetic of a school cafeteria or lit and adorned church...
...ering prayers ascend together...
...His own incapacities aside, this was a matter of strategy, a pragmatic determination to present Bush as PRIMARY LESSONS a candidate who could win precisely because of his lack of What McCain taught us baggage...
...The reality is that Woodrow Wil- similative national ideologies...
...policy was established...
...His Shiloh congregation rejected the use of musical PEACE I N KOSOVO...
...The hope that Sarajevo would provide the model for the rest of the MoslemCroat Federation of Bosnia, not to speak of the Republika Srpska, has been mostly disappointed...
...were bowing and turning round as they tice and equality, in the church and in But habitual exposure to the strippedchanted the Latin service in a lavishly society...
...image by reinventing Bush the centrist will only confirm it, Bush began with a first-rate slogan, "compassionate con- at least for those who are watching...
...Here, as in Bosnia in creating a de facto cantonization and Bauhaused (an invented verb referring 1995, NATO made war to undo ethnic eventual partition of all Kosovo...
...cessful immigrant nations, France and ment to exploit ethnic division in both The problem is feasibility...
...His small wooden church held no ornamentation, much less fourteen Madonnas...
...Maybe I should Worshipers attend to a threefold real- music, beauty, ritual, and sacred space, concentrate less on my dissatisfactions ity...
...My great-grand- WILLIAM PFAFF father was a predestinarian Baptist preacher in south Alabama...
...Flickering lights and flick- venge of Albanians, earlier driven away potentially explosive situation...
...Three "the heavenly liturgy...
...media...
...instruments as corrupt...
...partition the town...
...nent solution, successfully uniting warson's idealistic notion of national self- The international community's deci- ring communities, is another matter...
...After metaphor, was The Empire Strikes Back: a victo- his appearance at Bob Jones University began to be chalry for money, bureaucracy, and technique with lenged, Bush protested that he is not anti-Catholic, a reS no surprises and not much good news for the sponse that misses the broader political point, which is not rebels...
...Last Commonweal 9 March 24, 2000...
...This, I think, has only limited truth in describing events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...
...The more dangerous concern is that he is a kind of conGore, who looked like a sure loser at the beginning of the servative hippy, too adaptable to do more than go with the year, has turned into a better campaigner and the favorite to flow...
...If we can't have Such was the self-righteous spirit that and continues to nurture me...
...He argues, however, that "history shows that divided cities and divided communities reunite eventually...
...Nothing material should stand we share in a foretaste of that heavenly made sacred by the celebrations, prayers, between God and the individual soul...
...he precarious situation in southern part of the town, dominated by Having finally grown up and been the town of Mitrovica in the returning Albanians...
...As a teen-age convert to in unapproachable light beyond...
...A Mass celebratand actually shed tears at the sacrile- have been late in grasping the vision of ed on the back of a jeep in a battlefield, gious superstition on display...
...determination for all has come about in sion to establish multiethnic societies in One would like to think so, but it Central and Eastern Europe mainly Kosovo and Bosnia is extremely ambi- would be unwise to count on success...
...I ty's policy to establish a multiethnic gov- their part of Mitrovica with the aim of don't want the Catholic church to be ernment in Kosovo...
...In the short term, nity will, for the foreseeable future, reSuccessful multiethnic nations have, the international community has no al- main indispensable...
...to ambush by sterile modern architec- cleansing and partition...
...Albanian radicals have reportedly ums, fountains, and statues-befitting a dient terms...
...The The Western powers have had small velous the wartime London churches French unwisely allowed the Serbs to successes in disarming hatred and inlooked in the movie The End of the Affair...
...his personal beliefs but his willingness to suppress or mold Partisan Democrats, of course, find considerable comfort those beliefs in the pursuit of short-term political advanin the outcome: George W. Bush, the inevitable Republican tage...
...Without Chartres come again, at least we can led Cromwell's troops to smash stained this transcendent eschatological dimen- have good art, good music, and many glass and destroy statues all over the sion of worship, fully embodied in art, candles...
...But it also works the of worship...
...the United States, has depended on the places...
...The UN's special representative in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, concedes that Kosovo's Serb and Albanian populations probably "will indeed prefer to live separately for a period...
...Multicul- successes as come, and resisting the confor people with a common cultural her- tural immigration in the two most suc- tinuing effort of the Milosevic governitage to want to live in their own state...
...SarajeTheir glowing transcendent aura made banian apartments and some isolated Al- vo is one such success, but Sarajevo was it believable that the heroine might give banian residents in Serb-controlled north- a liberal and cosmopolitan city before up her lover for God...
...God is in the gathered body of the Cromwell wins...
...There are plenty of worries about Bush's debts to the nominee, is damaged goods, an almost unanswerable reason Republican Right, but no one is worried that he is Ian Paisfor swallowing one's doubts and voting for Al Gore...
...Yes, that's it...
...servatism," aiming to capture the political center, and he The real winner in Bush's victories is the Christian Coalidid well so long as his alleged use of cocaine dominated the tion and, to some extent, the Religious Right generally...
...Unfortunately, the English Reformation's violent stripping of the altars influenced generations of O F SEVERAL M 1 American Protestants...
...Yes, I know that places are zealot...
...Ll Commonwealth...
...In a real cathedral or NATO placed Mitrovica under French trol Albanian-populated towns inside the church my spirit expands if there are dim zonal command, assuming that the sub- country...
...infiltrated Serbia itself in an effort to concapitalist cathedral...
...Yet what vo Serbs in order to drive them into Serhas softened its modernist aura with atri- is the alternative, even in purely expe- bia...
...Yugoslav military forces are corners where worshipers can pray pri- stantial Serbian population would trust massing just across the frontier from the vately before illuminated icons and banks the French to protect them from the re- American-controlled zone of Kosovo, a of vigil lights...
...But forward does not mean accepting fragility of the international communi- teleguided from Belgrade, blockading an aesthetic of functional minimalism...
...I and inform worship...
...How mar- by Serbian forces and marauders...
...Only voices Not yet & not likely could be raised in song...
...Bah, humbug, magnetic pull of "the Mass as heaven on supermarket presents peculiar diffiaway with such pagan rites...
...If it can be accomplished peacefully, existence of powerful and culturally as- Whether this will provide a permafine...
...ations of settlers and immigrants, at the eral, ethnically neutral political instituIt would seem a basic principle, or sim- expense of indigenous peoples (the Unit- tions in those societies, counting such ple realism, to say that it is legitimate ed States, Canada, Australia...
...And ley...
...This admirable Serb expansionism and "greater Alture...
...LI in modern times, mostly been the cre- ternative to pressing on to establish lib- © 2000, Los Angeles Times Syndicate...
...During this period I went ney as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting other way round: sacred spaces inspire to a sung high Mass one Christmas Eve, at the right hand of God...
...liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy and charity of the believers who worA silent Quaker meeting was my ideal City of Jerusalem toward which we jour- ship in them...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 6
