Sarge

...Jimmy Carter brought him back to government as secretary for Health, Education, and Welfare, then fired him for no apparent reason when Carter's administration needed a change...

...He finally made it to a national ticket, replacing Thomas Eagleton as George McGovern's running mate in 1972...

...Robert stopped Johnson's move to make Shriver vice president in 1964, Ted and his entourage sabotaged Hubert Humphrey's interest in Shriver in 1968...

...Both books say more about the constructive projects of the period than they do about its tragic errors...

...19.99p "For those unfamiliar with the influence of Scheler on the thought of John Paul II, this book is a welcome introduction...

...When Shriver accepted appointment as ambassador to France and declined to leave to help Robert's 1968 presidential campaign, he was in permanent trouble with his Kennedy relatives and their friends...

...Urban riots are not forgotten, nor is Vietnam, but both men were more concerned with poverty programs than foreign policy, and their personal pain comes through when they remember that there was never enough money...

...he expects they may some day be canonized together...

...He finds them in the familiar nexus of family, friendship, and faith...

...Church officials, terrified of strong Communist parties, had few complaints as Catholics like Konrad Adenauer governed increasingly secular societies...

...David O'Brien is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross...

...Here was a truly Catholic public servant, determined to do good, a quick study and a talented leader, listening to many voices, making decisions, building teams of talented and trusted administrators, pushing the envelope, imagining a better world...

...In the 1960s, natural law and the John Courtney Murray/John F. Kennedy language of dual religious and civic obligations seemed to split the world, but these Christian Democrats of the postwar generation were as integrated as any church-man...

...The translation of moral principle into public practice is always complicated...

...The nuns taught Califano "right and wrong in stark colors," he recalls, but "the dominant color of politics is gray...

...Sarge's talented, enchanted biographer notes that they were "cooperators" of Opus Dei...

...Shriver never lost his innocence, in part because he was a partner with Eunice in her chosen commitment to retarded children and adults...

...Califano wants us to know he is a good Catholic...

...BrazosPress Be Tradition Alive Subscribe to "Border Crossings," the Brazos monthly electronic newsletter, at www.brazospress.com At your local bookstore, www.brazospress.com, or call 1-800-877-2665 leaders had an important article in Foreign Affairs challenging the escalation of the arms race, and Hehir was working with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin on the U.S...

...It wholly avoids the cliches of left and right and offers an unremittingly theological perspective on our troubles—that is to say, a perspective that obliges us to look to God, and then to our sins, and then to our gratitude...

...Califano saw the political struggles up close and had few illusions...

...He tells us much about the people he worked with, less about the policies, little about the failures...

...Califano and Shriver share a brighter, more hopeful memory of the 1960s than the usual bleak images of division and decline...

...hriver was enormously energetic, magnetic, optimistic, filled with "passionate conviction," the competent idealist that reformers dream about...

...There are few who can negotiate politics with integrity as these men did...

...He specializes in the history of American Catholicism...

...Shriver's Catholic formation was culturally and intellectually rich, less linked than Califano's to the immigrant Catholic subculture and the competitive working-class desire for respect...

...These American Catholics were ambitious, politically astute, unevenly educated, and remarkably innocent in their combination of faith and patriotism...

...Across the ocean a new generation of American Catholic politicians also came forward in the postwar era, among them Joseph Califano and Sargent Shriver...

...Out of government, Califano practiced law in Washington, later on Wall Street, until, needing a cause that would ex-press his idealism, he became the nation's leading advocate and fundraiser for research on addiction...

...He fought bravely as a naval officer in World War II, then began work as a protege of Joseph P. Kennedy...

...He was a staff man for powerful patrons, so there was little space for his idealism...

...They might be re-minded that politicians, like everyone else, deserve respect...

...Running in 1976, Sarge made clear his determination to do all in his power to limit abortions while opposing a constitutional amendment and promising to uphold the law of the land...

...Sarge The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver Scott St)5>cl David O'Brien mong the problems with the recent statements by bishops on Catholic politicians is that they were written without much dialogue with people who have some knowledge of politics...

...Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School God Is Not .. . D. Brent Laytham, editor 1587431017 • 160 pp...

...Califano and Shriver embody "Faithful Citizenship" with one large caveat—they talk back...

...Bryan Hehir...

...Later, when the nuclear arms race heated up in the early 1980s, Shriver invited important national security figures like McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, and Robert McNamara to dinner, with a few thoughtful friends like Fr...

...What would bishops learn if they listened to these stories...

...Commonweal 29 July 16, 2004...

...Like Shriver, Califano tells us more about his trusting faith in the church than his prayer life, expressing the self-effacing spiritual reticence of his generation...

...So the good bishop or pas-tor listens, sometimes reminds people of a principle, sometimes nudges them to look at something or someone not noticed, sometimes backs off, always affirms constructive efforts, when necessary criticizes inaction...

...For example, the years after World War II were a sort of golden age for Catholics in politics...

...Robert Louis Wilken, University of Virginia Hope among the Fragments Ephraim Radner 1587430843 • 240 pp...

...These men are grownups, neither children nor sheep, prepared for dialogue, respectful of their pastors, convinced that their experience matters...

...Work on John Kennedy's New York campaign led Califano, still in his twenties, to a job with Cyrus Vance in the Defense Department, where he was in the front ranks of the administration's civil-rights confrontations with South-ern governors...

...After an agonizingly long courtship, he married his boss's daughter, Eunice, in part because they shared an extraordinary Catholic faith which deepened over their long years together...

...But the Shriver story, not so well known, is interesting, even a bit inspiring...

...Among his books are Public Catholicism: American Catholics and Public Life and Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic...

...Still, even the best can get caught up in the problem at hand and miss important moral challenges, as Califano and Shriver both did...

...With his wife Trudy, Califano began his law career in New York, where they spent much time with the intellectual, social-activist, lay-apostolate wing of the local church...

...He tried for the Democratic nomination four years later, but his time had passed...

...The Shrivers had their own way of confronting problems: get smart people together who know something about the problem, pick their brains, then make a decision and do something about it...

...God was at work out there, in the world, the same God who worked on them in church...

...Along with assorted urban mayors and congressmen, the Kennedys, and Eu gene McCarthy, they shared many of the values of the European Christian Democrats but had none of their experience of Catholic authoritarianism, political or religious...

...Griffiths is a clearheaded and rigorous defender of Augustine's treatises on lying, yet he gives objections a full and fair hearing, and at the same time offers a meditation on language as a gift of God by which we speak the truth to one another...

...Contributors Rodney Clapp, D. Stephen Long, Michael Baxter, Michael Budde, William T. Cavanaugh, and D. Brent Laytham offer a lively, necessary, and intelligently reverent read...

...It is a deeply necessary book at this time...

...And he never forgot the call to service that echoed from parents through the Sisters and Jesuits and Trudy to the tough idealism of the Kennedy/Johnson wing of the Democratic Party...

...He found friendship in school and in the shared work of politics and law...

...Kennedy made him the founding director of the Peace Corps, where he won the undying admiration of a remarkably talented staff (people like Bill Moyers), the support of hard-bitten conservative senators, and the respect of his brother-in-law...

...Holy Cross gave Califano a grounding in philosophy and academic skills that served him well in law school...

...readers will agree he al-ways was...

...Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury Defending Human Dignity Derek S. Jeffreys 1587430924 • 240 pp...

...That shaking would come later, with marriage problems and the ambiguities of politics and the law...

...His parents fell on relatively hard times after moving to New York, but Sarge went off to prep school and Yale, where he found men-tors well versed in the Catholic intellectual tradition...

...As Joseph Kennedy's man in Chicago he managed the Merchandise Mart office building, led the Chicago school board through dramatic social changes, and gave outstanding leadership to the local Catholic Interracial Council...

...It rescues the call to be a `biblical' church from polemics and point-scoring...

...Califano's memoir is an insider's story, filled with interesting anecdotes about American politics, some of which he told in earlier books...

...When one considers how retarded people were treated in the 1950s and how they are regarded today, one can say yes, this determined woman and her family did change the world...

...In a moving conclusion, the author describes the eightyfive-year-old Shriver in China, shooting baskets with retarded children, then telling veteran Communist bureaucrats what he learned about life and love from retarded people...

...Califano and Shriver were well-loved children, proud of their family heritage, and completely at home in their worlds...

...Then they will be better able to speak to the wider public, on be-half of the community, and they will be heard...

...18.99p "This is a challenging and rewarding book, unlike any written in modern times on the topic...

...In the Shriver household there were always priests around...

...Born, bred, and branded Catholic," Califano was brought up to be "American with a capital A and Catholic with a capital C." So was Shriver, and in their later years both men are grateful for the gift of faith which, in memory, integrated and gave meaning to their long and enormously productive lives...

...Someday, perhaps, bishops will learn again how to engage in genuine pastoral dialogue with mature lay people on important public issues...

...He then loyally served Lyndon Johnson by turning the war on poverty into programs that changed America: Head Start, Community Action, Legal Services, the Jobs Corps...

...Each received excellent Catholic formation, Califano by the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits in Brooklyn, Shriver by family and friends in the thick Catholic culture of Maryland...

...Indeed Cardinal James Gibbons was his childhood friend and died in a Shriver family bed...

...bishops' 1983 pastoral letter on peace...

...He learned natural-law ethics, which served him well, but higher education did not shake the "dot every 'i' and cross every 't' religion that left little room for the exercise of individual conscience...

...Here he searches for threads of meaning to bind his life together...

...Through it all he trusted in God in that taker-for-granted way once so common among Catholics...

...It will displace all earlier works—except Augustine of course...

...His family gave him the gift of an unshakable faith packaged in loving affirmation...

...24.99p "This is potentially one of the most important contributions you are likely to read on the current tensions and conflicts over the church's limits and identity...

...When Jack was killed, Sarge took charge of funeral arrangements...

...Then he became a top aide to Robert McNamara until Lyndon Johnson brought him to the White House as coordinator of domestic policy, troubleshooting jack-of-all-trades, and John-son intimate...

...14.99p This provocative book takes on culturally formed misconceptions about who God is by boldly stating who God is not...

...When Richard Nixon took charge, Califano joined Edward Bennett Williams's law firm and served as attorney for the Democratic Party through the Watergate crisis...

...He stayed close to the church through sacramental practice and net-works of friendly priests...

...be-fore long there were the Kennedy Institute for Bioethics at Georgetown and a network of Eunice-sponsored Life Sup-port Centers for pregnant women across the country...

...Along the way, his overwork for Mc-Namara and LBJ helped wreck his marriage, but he remained close to his Commonweal 27 July 16, 2004 children, found love again, married, and eventually was reconciled with the church through the annulment process, an experience important and positive enough that he tells the story in considerable de-tail...

...Before long, the three cold-war S Commonweal 28 July 16, 2004 The Tradition Alive Lying Paul J. Griffiths 158743086X • 256 pp...

...When the Shrivers worried about abortion, as early as 1964, they had experts in to talk with the Kennedy family...

...However, Jeffreys also helpfully puts his account of the pope's moral and political thought in conversation with the realist school of international relations, No doubt some will challenge his account of real-ism, but at the very least he has begun a conversation that needs to take place...

...Bishops would do well to reflect on that experience today...

...The Jesuits taught Califano to think about everything except religion...

...Christian Democratic parties, whose predecessors had often been betrayed by bishops or the Vatican, now enjoyed church support as they took control of governments across West-ern Europe...

...These pronouncements might have been stronger if they considered the experience of Catholic politicians, past and present...

...He served John-son too loyally as far as Robert Kennedy was concerned...

...He was on his way to high office in Illinois when Kennedy family priorities called him to Jack's campaign, later to his administration...