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t was the prettiest of my mother’shybrid irises. I snapped it off andcarried it protectively to my desti-

nation. When I gave it to her, shesmiled and winked. I suspect she knewI had snatched it. She put it on herdesk and class began. I looked at thatiris all day, fearing what my motherwould say. At the bell she put it in frontof the Mary statue and said, “You cantell your mother that her flower is hon-oring the mother of Jesus.” And withthat, Sister Mary Edwarda, B.V.M., mythird-grade teacher, saved my skin—not for the last time.

My paean to religious women wastriggered by a recent trip to Iowa for a50th high school reunion and the occa-sion to visit some of my boyhoodhaunts. Like many of you I have beenblessed by the presence of “the nuns” inmy life; hence this reminiscence.

Two of Sister Edwarda’s colleaguesmade lasting impressions on me. SisterEugenio was my eighth-grade teacher,principal, moderator of the altar serversand disciplinarian. I knew her in allthese roles. When I was caught tastingthe leftover altar wine after Mass, I wasless than happy with my punishment: Iwas not allowed to carry the cross atthe Easter Sunday high Mass.

The other Dubuque B.V.M. wasSister Grace Ann. She was overseer ofthe motherhouse property where Iworked on the grounds crew. She likedthe way I trimmed hedges but was lessimpressed with my precision in settingheadstones in the cemetery. She gaveme responsibility and special tasks thatbuilt both my confidence and my workethic.

Our high school was a consolidationof four Catholic academies; so we weretaught by a platoon of religious women.There was the duet of DubuqueFranciscans who merited an eternalreward for trying to instruct me in alge-bra, geometry and physics. To this day Ido not know how Sisters Rebecca andElvira survived that Sisyphean venture.

Sister Florette, a Visitation nun, wasthe librarian; she was constantly break-ing the library’s code of silence. Shechatted with every student who enteredthe room, while I was responsible formonitoring the noise level.

Her comrade, Sister Constance, wasvery special. She moderated the speechand debate programs. It was here that Ifashioned my high school persona.Given my need to hold down severaljobs, I did not participate in sports. So Ijoined the speech and debate clubs. Theproblem was my lisp. After months ofpatient practice, I entered my first con-test against a Jesuit school inWisconsin. That contest resulted in thefirst of many gold medals, trophies andcertificates gleaned over three years ofspeech and debate. I even ventured intotheater. Sister Constance was just that,a constant presence during those forma-tive years.

This was before Vatican II.After the council, my life has also

been graced by the presence ofwomen religious. During theology,graduate school and universitywork—as both faculty member andadministrator—there were womenwho were wise philosophers andfaithful theologians, as well as minis-ters in student affairs and campusministry. Over time, women religiousseriously undertook the council’s callfor renewal. The nuns gradually dis-appeared from the parish schools.They found other ministries with thepoor and outcast, with prisoners andabused women, and in health care andcommunity development.

Over a few beers, my reunion bud-dies agreed that what we experienced,the ways we were enriched by the pres-ence of the “good sisters” in our educa-tion, was not the experience of theirchildren or grandchildren. It was some-thing never to be experienced again.That made all of us more grateful forthese extraordinary women.

JOHN P. SCHLEGEL, S.J.

PUBLISHED BY JESUITS OF THE UNITED STATES

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www.americamagazine.org Vol. 207 No. 15, Whole No. 4991 NoVember 19, 2012

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CONTENTS

A R T I C L E S

13 POLLUTING THE FUTUREWe are leaving our children a toxic world. Gary Chamberlain

17 LESSONS IN PEACEThe relevance of Mozambique’s peace agreement 20 years later Mario Marazziti

21 DEFENDING HYDEAn abortion policy most Americans can embrace Richard M. Doerflinger

C O L U M N S & D E PA R T M E N T S

4 Current Comment

5 Editorial Changing the Climate

6 Signs of the Times

10 Column Unfinished Business Margaret Silf

28 Poem Ambition Charles Hughes

36 Letters

38 The Word Living the Kingdom Peter Feldmeier

B O O K S & C U LT U R E

24 THEATER “Detroit” FILM “Detropia” BOOKS The Pathof Mercy; Dickens and the Workhouse; Pity the Beautiful; God’s Right Hand

Robert Sullivan, right, talks about his book My AmericanRevolution. Plus, clips from the documentary “Detropia”and video reports from Catholic News Service on HurricaneSandy. All at americamagazine.org.

O N T H E W E B

4 America November 19, 2012

CURRENT COMMENT

Inhuman WarfareDrones are finally on the national radar, thanks to a ques-tion posed by Bob Schieffer, the moderator of the finaldebate of the presidential candidates. And not a momenttoo soon. When the United States launched the war inAfghanistan, only a handful of aerial drones were in use.Today the number exceeds 7,000. In the Middle East, theword drone has become synonymous with a uniquelyAmerican instrument of terror.

Consider, then, this illuminating fact: The number ofaerial drones in Afghanistan is actually surpassed by thenumber of remote systems on the ground: over 12,000 inall. Most of these devices are used to detonate roadsidebombs and other explosives. (Think of the opening sceneof the film “The Hurt Locker.”) Yet the military is clearlyhoping that robotics will play a larger role both in the airand on the ground in future conflicts. The Pentagonrecently offered a $2 million prize to the developer whocan engineer a humanoid-type robot. They say the productwould be used in emergency situations like the Fukushimanuclear crisis. Yet it is not difficult to imagine scenarios inwhich such robots could be put to more sinister use.

Robotics will have a profound effect on modern militarycampaigns—as important, perhaps, as the advent of gun-powder. Yet the international community has failed toassess adequately the ethical ramifications of their use.That needs to change quickly, lest humanoid robotsbecome as ubiquitous, and as deadly, as their airbornecounterparts.

No PowerPoint, PleaseFew Americans have embodied the meaning of the wordintellectual in the 20th century more thoroughly thanJacques Barzun, the cultural historian who spent most ofhis career teaching and writing at Columbia University andwho died recently at the age of 104. Far from being an“armchair” or “pseudo-” or otherwise detached intellectual,his wide-ranging enthusiasms included the relationshipbetween European and American art, history and litera-ture; the “great books” curriculum for which ColumbiaUniversity is famous; detective fiction; the ninth-inningcollapse of the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1951National League playoff series, which he compared toGreek tragedy; and the educational reputation of theSociety of Jesus.

Mr. Barzun’s Teacher in America (1945) is a classic bookfor educators, and its author was often asked for advice on

how to cure the ills of U.S. education. He answered in alecture, “What Is a School?” published in 2002. His adviceis basic: learning demands listening, memorization and dis-cussion. Students should learn to draw with pencil or char-coal and read sheet music. Multiple-choice exams do harm.Schools teach morality by example. Teaching aids are of“dubious use.” Classroom technology should consist of apiece of chalk and a blackboard eraser.

In his 877-page masterwork, From Dawn to Decadence:1500 to the Present (2000), he laments the decline of theWest, but adds: “Meanwhile, by care and thought and con-tinually revised methods, the Jesuits shone as schoolmas-ters—unsurpassed in the history of civilization. Theytaught secular subjects as well as church doctrine and didso with unexampled understanding and kindness towardtheir pupils.” For Mr. Barzun, the intellectual life and basichuman kindness were friends.

From Roma, With LoveU.S. Catholics can be forgiven for missing an article in theVatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pub-lished on Oct. 31. Between the serious ravages ofHurricane Sandy, the travails of a presidential electioncampaign and the lighthearted revels of Halloween,Americans had much on their minds. But the 50thanniversary of the James Bond franchise did not go unno-ticed in Rome. No less than a full-page spread was afford-ed to Ian Fleming’s most famous creation, who is also thehero of the new film “Skyfall,” starring Daniel Craig.L’Osservatore’s film critic, Gaetano Valini, praised Mr.Craig’s portrayal of the character known as 007 as “less ofa cliché, less attracted by the pleasures of life, much darkerand more introspective.”

L’Osservatore has been venturing more and more oflate into the world of pop culture. In recent years, thenewspaper has opined on everything from the BluesBrothers to “Avatar” to the Harry Potter series. In 2010,they memorably pronounced Homer J. Simpson (and hisdysfunctional family) to be crypto-Catholics. Admit-tedly, the newspaper devotes most of its pages to weight-ier matters, suffering and salvation among them. But theeditors of L’Osservatore also recognize the need to seekGod in all places, including the realm of film and televi-sion, and to interpret that world for believers as part ofthe new evangelization. The paper’s editor noted that thechurch needs to “pay attention to the popular culture ofour time.” And to shake things up, we would add—butnot stir them.

urricane Sandy left a trail of destruction and mis-ery in its wake as it barreled its way onto theEastern Seaboard and ground through the north-

eastern part of the United States. Perhaps hardest hit wasthe coast of New Jersey, where Sandy tore through beaches,demolished boardwalks, swept away houses and depositedoceans of sand in resort towns. Gov. Chris Christie called thedamage “incalculable.” The New York City subways wereclosed for the second time in their 108-year history, as waterswamped underground stations. At one point power was lostto upwards of 8.2 million households in 17 states.

Could anything have been done to prevent the dam-age? In most places, no. There is not much defense possibleagainst such a titanic storm, which caused damage fromNorth Carolina to Vermont. On the other hand, Sandy wasthe latest in a series of extreme weather events that the over-whelming majority of scientists say is related to global cli-mate change. Warmer temperatures, the result of severalhuman-made causes, lead to increased evaporation of water,which leads to more moisture in the air, and thus to morecatastrophic weather. One recent example of acceleratedevaporation: Greenland’s surface ice cover experienced agreater thaw during a three-day period last July than innearly 40 years, according to three independent satellitemeasurements analyzed by NASA and university scientists.

With at least 179 deaths attributed to the storm in theCaribbean, the United States and Canada, and immeasure-able misery visited on millions, it is time to turn our atten-tion to how human actions influence these death-dealingevents. The environmental activist Bill McKibben calledSandy a “wake-up call,” noting ruefully that “one wreckedsubway system, I fear, equals a thousand academic studies.”That may turn out to be true. In the days after the hurri-cane, politicians on the East Coast began to call for greaterattention to climate change, citing the alarming frequency of“once in a generation storms.”

The decision not to address climate change at all inthe presidential campaign now seems foolish. BothRepublicans and Democrats deserve blame for this state ofevents. The former have embraced climate change skepticswhile the latter underplayed the urgency of the issue in anelection year. The media are at fault too. As the unfairly vil-ified Al Gore tweeted during the final presidential debate,“Where is global warming in this debate? Climate change is

an urgent foreign policy issue.”The sad irony: Now that a

horrific storm has battered theEast Coast, home to the businessand media establishments(including this magazine), there will be growing pressureupon the U.S. government to turn its attention to the prob-lem of climate change. It seems the suffering of the people ofHaiti, devastated by Sandy and so many other storms, wasnot enough to merit action.

There will be a temptation to politicize the events ofOctober 2012, to blame the opposing party for failing to actor anticipate what was essentially a random and unpre-dictable event. Yet on that road lies failure. Trying to makepolitical hay out of the destruction caused by Sandy willresult only in more of the same: disagreement and stale-mate. Until climate change is seen as an issue that affects allAmericans, indeed the entire international community, wewill fail to make progress in addressing its effects. Climatechange is an issue that is vital to the common good andshould be treated as such.

Here is where the Catholic community can help. In anaddress in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that cli-mate change is not a political issue but a human one: “Todaythe great gift of God’s Creation is exposed to serious dan-gers and lifestyles which can degrade it. Environmental pol-lution is making particularly unsustainable the lives of thepoor of the world.... We must pledge ourselves to take careof creation and to share its resources in solidarity.” Thatsame year, the U.S. bishops helped launch the CatholicClimate Covenant to bring climate change to the attentionof all people of faith. The church directs our attention towhere it should be focused: on the poor, who suffer the rav-ages of climate change more than anyone else.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, cities near the coastwill discuss how to protect themselves from the next storm.Levees, gates and dikes may need to be built in majormetropolitan areas, but they cannot turn the tide of globalopinion. Climate change is an issue that transcends bordersand demands an international response. The United Statescan and should play a key leadership role in this effort.Perhaps, moved by the plight of the storm’s victims andprompted by a renewed commitment from people of faith,it will finally assume that responsibility.

Changing the Climate

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November 19, 2012 America 5

EDITORIAL


mean the church looks upon theworld’s religions with rose-coloredglasses. In an essay published on Oct.11, the 50th anniversary of the open-ing of the Second Vatican Council,Pope Benedict XVI wrote about theongoing importance of “NostraAetate” for Catholics in increasinglymultireligious societies: “A weaknessof this otherwise extraordinary texthas gradually emerged: It speaks ofreligion solely in a positive way and itdisregards the sick and distortedforms of religion which, from the his-torical and theological viewpoints, areof far-reaching importance.”

“In a religion that gives prevalence,in an unquestioning way, to the letterof its texts and does not leave room”for questions that seek deeper under-standing, the value of the individualconscience is diminished, Benedictsaid. And where a religion is imposed,violently or not, personal dignity iswounded.

ifty years after the Second Vatican Council launched anew Catholic commitment to interreligious dialogue,work continues to clarify the church’s attitudes toward

other religions. While some Catholics still look on otherreligions with disdain, other Catholics seem to believeVatican II taught that all religions are equally valid paths toGod and to the fullness of truth. The new prefect of theCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently saidboth extremes are wrong.

Proposing that all religions are basically similar means“negating or doubting the possibility of real communicationbetween God and human beings,” because the truths ofJudeo-Christian faith are not human inventions, but theresult of God’s revelation, said Archbishop Gerhard Müller,the Vatican’s doctrinal chief, in a speech at Assisi on Oct.29. Not believing that Christ’s death and resurrection makeChristianity unique among religions is, in essence, the

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

equivalent of denying that Godbecame human in Christ or of sayingthat Christ’s divinity is “a poeticmetaphor, beautiful but unreal,” thearchbishop said.

For decades, popes and Vaticanofficials have taught that the aim ofinterreligious dialogue is not to cometo some sort of agreement on reli-gious or even moral principles thateveryone in the world can accept. ForCatholic leaders, the goal of such dia-logue is for people firmly rooted indifferent faith traditions to explaintheir beliefs to one another, grow inknowledge of and respect for oneanother and help one another movecloser to the truth about God andwhat it means to be human.

A societal consequence of such adialogue should be respect for eachindividual’s conscience, more socialpeace and joint efforts to defendhuman dignity and help those inneed. Among church leaders, con-cerns for dialogue are not simply aca-

demic. Several members of the Synodof Bishops on the new evangelization,held at the Vatican in October,described on-the-ground Catholic-Muslim relations in terms that rangedfrom true friendship and collabora-tion to efforts to restrict the freedomof Christian minorities or to exertstrong pressure on people fromMuslim families not to convert toChristianity. Synod membersresponded with a formal resolutionasking Christians “to persevere and tointensify their relations with Muslimsaccording to the teaching of the decla-ration ‘Nostra Aetate,’” the councildocument that expressed “esteem” forMuslims, particularly because of theirbelief in the one God and their devo-tion to submitting themselves com-pletely to God’s will.

The Catholic Church’s commit-ment to interreligious dialogue andits affirmation of things that are goodand holy in other religions does not

I N T E R R E L I G I O U S D I A L O G U E

Doctrinal Chief ClarifiesChurch’s Intent

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Hindu prayers on the Ganges River


C A T H O L I C S O C I A LT E A C H I N G

The EconomicFoundation for‘Peace on Earth’

lessed Pope John XXIII pub-lished “Peace on Earth” onApril 11, 1963, in direct

response to the Cuban missile crisis,which threatened global thermonucle-ar war during the tense days of Oct.16-28, 1962. The Holy See markedthe upcoming 50th anniversary year of“Pacem in Terris” on Oct. 24 at theUnited Nations in New York. TheMission of the Holy See to the UnitedNations, along with two co-hosts, theSovereign Military Order of Maltaand Pax Romana, sponsored a sympo-sium titled “The Encyclical Pacem inTerris: Its Fiftieth Anniversary and itsRelevance to the 21st Century.”

A great deal of attention has been

paid to the focus on human rights, dis-armament and the call to world com-munity in “Peace on Earth.”Archbishop Francis Chullikatt,Apostolic Nuncio to the UnitedNations, noted that Blessed PopeJohn’s encyclical was addressed for thefirst time in papal history to “all menof good will.” Many of the participantsat the Holy See’s symposium remind-ed us that in addition to goodwill, aneconomic system that is grounded inthe common good is also indispens-able to global peace.

Accordingly, of particular interest,and the source of some controversy,was the focus on global economicissues in “Peace on Earth.” JoeHolland, president of the Pacem inTerris Global Leadership Initiativeand professor of philosophy and reli-gion at St. Thomas University inMiami Gardens, Fla., addressed what“Peace on Earth” recounted as theerrors of “liberal capitalism” and “sci-entific socialism” that resulted fromthe individualism of Adam Smith andthe materialism of Karl Marx.Holland argued that in “Peace onEarth” Pope John breaks new groundwhen he “recognizes that a new globalera has emerged for the human familywith a new global economy. Inresponse, he calls for global gover-nance [a ‘worldwide public authority’commensurate in scale with the globaleconomy] directing the global econo-my to the global common good.”

Likewise, Angus Sibley, author of“The ‘Poisoned Spring’ of EconomicLibertarianism,” lamented the influ-ence of the Austrian Schooleconomists Ludwig von Mises andFriedrich von Hayek, which led toMises’ twin errors that “nothing is leftof government if one denies the law ofthe market” and “liberty is always free-dom from government.” To the asser-

tion that free-market capitalism isbased on the “laws of nature,” Sibleysaid that Pope John denounces thistype of error. “Many people,” PopeJohn says, “think that the laws thatgovern man’s relations with the stateare the same as those which regulatethe blind, elemental forces of the uni-verse.” On the contrary, he says, politicsand economics must observe thosedivine laws that “clearly indicate how aman must behave towards his fellowsin society.”

Sibley believes that Pope John’s callfor an international public authoritymust “promote the worldwide com-mon good in matters of economics,society, politics and culture.” In hisremarks, Archbishop Chullikattfocused on the encyclical’s ground-breaking call for an “international pub-lic authority,” founded on a “newjuridical order” that could most effec-tively bring peace to a troubled inter-national order. Clearly, church teach-ing holds that subsidiarity is a goodgovernance principle that at timesrequires larger entities to solve prob-lems that cannot be solved at the local,or in this case, the national level.

JOSEPH J. FAHEY is a professor of religiousstudies at Manhattan College and the authorof War and the Christian Conscience(Orbis Books).

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES

present if they can believe it will leadto a better future. They are not seekingjust to improve their financial, social orpolitical condition, the pope said.People who leave their native countriesare hoping to “encounter acceptance,solidarity and help” from those in theirnew country who can recognize thevalues and resources they have to offer,he said.

Ceasefire Fails in SyriaMore than 500 people were killed inSyria during what had been proposedas a four-day ceasefire to mark theMuslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Thetruce never took hold as fighting con-tinued even as humanitarian agenciesstruggled to deliver relief to thosetrapped by the conflict. The Syrian

Observatory for Human Rightsreported that Syrian warplanes strucka rebel-held town on the Damascus-Aleppo highway and that fightingcontinued in a Palestinian refugeecamp near Damascus. Heavy fightingaround the Syrian city of Homs pre-vented a U.N. aid mission from deliv-ering food and other relief items tofamilies trapped in the city. “All partieson the ground contacted in advance ofthe mission expressed in principlewillingness to allow aid through thefront lines,” said a U.N. spokesperson.“However, immediate delivery wasprevented by active conflict and logis-tical complications, such as lack of safelocation to off-load the goods.”

As Catholic Charities USA responds tovictims of Hurricane Sandy, donationscan be made online at www.catholiccha-ritiesusa.org or by calling (800) 919-9338. • Hospitals in the UnitedKingdom have received £12.4 million(nearly $16 million) for implementing acontroversial end-of-life patient-careprotocol that critics say is a “euthanasiapathway.” • “Conscious of the devastation caused by the hurricanethat recently struck the East Coast of the United States of America,I offer my prayers for the victims and express my solidarity with allthose engaged in the work of rebuilding,” Pope Benedict XVI said onOct. 31 at the end of his weekly general audience. • A ruling inOklahoma that stopped an attempt to amend the state constitutionto define personhood in order to ban abortion will stand after the U.S.Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on Oct. 29. • Songs inQuechua and Spanish filled the Cathedral of Santo Domingo asthousands celebrated the 475th anniversary of the Diocese ofCusco, Peru, the first Catholic diocese in South America, on Oct.27. • The 2012 Pax Christi International Peace Award was pre-sented on Oct. 31 to Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Nigeria.

N E W S B R I E F SThe Baltimore Agenda Statements on preaching and waysthat bishops can respond to modern-day challenges to church teaching byusing new technologies are among theitems the U.S. bishops will considerwhen they gather in Baltimore fortheir annual fall assembly. Scheduledfor Nov. 12 to 15, the assembly alsowill consider a statement on work andthe economy proposed by itsCommittee on Domestic Justice andHuman Development as a way toraise public awareness of growingpoverty and the struggles experiencedby unemployed people. The bishopsare also scheduled to vote on a docu-ment encouraging Catholics to seeLent next year as an opportunity toreturn to regular celebration of thesacrament of penance and reconcilia-tion. A statement on work and theeconomy, titled “Catholic Reflectionson Work, Poverty and a BrokenEconomy,” is expected to advance thebishops’ priority of human life anddignity to demonstrate the new evan-gelization in action.

Journeys of Faith and HopePope Benedict XVI chose“Migrations: pilgrimage of faith andhope” as the theme for the 2013 cele-bration of the World Day of Migrantsand Refugees. On Oct. 29 he issued amessage on the global phenomenon ofmigration. “Faith and hope are insepa-rable in the hearts of many migrants,who deeply desire a better life and notinfrequently try to leave behind the‘hopelessness’ of an unpromisingfuture,” Pope Benedict wrote.Migration by its nature involves thepain of being uprooted and separatedfrom family, country and possessions,the pope said, but faith and hope allowthose who emigrate to face a difficult

Sandy Aftermath: Breezy Point, Queens

From CNS and other sources.

I think, did God. What he was reject-ing was not God, but merely a seriesof flawed and sometimes damagingimages of God. Such is my convictionon this point that I often feel veryaware of his continuing presence inmy life, and that presence is alwaysclose to another Presence.

I had a powerful reminder of thisconviction not long ago during Mass.Nothing in the liturgy was sparking inmy soul, until the cantor, ayoung girl, began to sing“The Holy City,” and all atonce I was spellbound. Myfather had always played thisbeautiful hymn onChristmas Eve. Almostwithout thinking I walkedforward to receive Commu-nion, just as the hymnreached a crescendo and thecantor’s powerful voiceechoed around the church:“and all who would might enter, and no-one was denied.” And there was mydoubting, questioning father, so vividlypresent to the moment. It was an unfor-gettable experience of communion. Inmy heart I was not only able to rejoicein the resounding inclusiveness of grace,but also to become profoundly awarethat that sacred moment enfolded notonly my father and myself, but also mymother, my daughter and her child,their great-granddaughter. Somethingunfinished had reached its moment ofripeness.

Thirty-year-old Claire Squires wasdenied her moment of completion.She participated in this year’s LondonMarathon; but just a mile short of thefinish line, she collapsed and died.Claire had been running for theSamaritans, a charity that offers sup-

friend is reminiscing. Achance remark reminds her ofher mother’s sudden death,

many years earlier. At the time, sheherself had been far from home; buther mother had stayed in touch bymeans of regular letters. She pauses inmid-sentence. “There’s something Iwould like to show you,” she tells me.She opens a drawer of her desk andbrings out a yellowing envelope. “Mymother was actually writing this letterto me when she had a stroke, whichproved to be fatal a few days later.” Hervoice falters as she hands me the half-written letter. The poignancy of thislegacy stuns me into silence. I think ofhow death took its author without amoment’s warning, leaving a grievingdaughter with half a letter.

As we think, in this season, of the“last things,” I will be carrying thismemory especially in my heart, notonly in prayer for my friend and hermother, but also because this incidenthas made me think about some of thethings I would still want to say andwrite to people I love, or even to peo-ple with whom I have had serious dif-ferences. But of course, none of us everthinks that time may suddenly runout, leaving us without even thechance to finish a sentence.

My reflections eventually take meback to the memory of my ownfather. His death was not a suddenone, but there was unfinished busi-ness in his life, nonetheless. Healways described himself as an athe-ist. I never believed him, and neither,

port to those who are contemplatingsuicide or are otherwise in the depthsof despair. Her sponsorship promiseswould have raised £500 for this verydeserving cause. But when peopleheard the news of her untimely death,hearts were stirred all around theworld. Within a week, £1,000,000 hadbeen pledged to the Samaritans, inmemory of a girl who had steadfastlyrun the race but not quite finished.

Perhaps such amemorial could standfor each of us, in ourown way. We run therace, we do our best, wetry, but so often we fallshort of completion.We don’t quite getthere. We fall at the lastfence. We want to bringa masterpiece to God,but all we manage is achild’s drawing, a rough

sketch, an unfinished dream. If wethink of our shortcomings as a failure,then thinking of the “last things” maywell fill us with dread. But what if wecould think of them not as somethingwe didn’t finish, but rather as a seedwhose blossom and fruit we cannot yetsee or begin to imagine?

Seen in this light, my friend’sunfinished letter becomes an invita-tion. Is there a letter I need to write,or a call I need to make, to tell some-one how I really feel, before it is toolate? Advent is a very good time forturning vague regrets into consciousacts of love. And we can be sure thatwhatever we bring to God in thesmall change of our lives will be mul-tiplied over and over in the flow ofgrace with which God responds tothe slightest stirring in our hearts.

Unfinished BusinessA

Advent is agood timefor turning

vagueregrets intoconscious

acts of love.


MARGARET S ILF

MARGARET SILF, who lives in Scotland, is theauthor of Companions of Christ, The Giftof Prayer, Compass Points and, mostrecently, Just Call Me Lopez.



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PollutingThe Future

BY GARY CHAMBERLAIN

lthough Mississippi voters defeated an amendment lastyear that would have defined life as “beginning at concep-tion,” efforts to end or limit abortion continue. Earlier thisyear the state legislature passed and Gov. Phil Bryantsigned a law that requires doctors who perform abortions

to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and to be board-certifiedin obstetrics and gynecology. Sociological and psychological data onabortion are commonplace, as are moral and political arguments over theright to life and freedom of choice. But the environmental factors thatadversely affect the health of women and developing children garner lit-tle attention, even though these factors offer areas of possible agreementbetween the pro-life and pro-choice camps.

A recent study at the University of California, San Francisco revealedthat women in the United States had at least 43 chemicals in their blood-streams, including cancer-causing agents like PCBs, flame retardants,pesticides and phthalates. Due to a biological process called “biomagnifi-cation,” by which chemicals in one organism move up in greater concen-trations into the next connected organism, it is probable that when anyof these women become pregnant, their fetus and newborn will be sub-ject to these contaminants in greater concentrations.

This result appears in the findings of an extensive study of women andchildren in the Arctic regions. In her book Silent Snow: The SlowPoisoning of the Arctic (2005), Marla Cone, a reporter for The LosAngeles Times, followed the trails of contaminants banned in the 1960sand 70s; she discovered their ubiquitous presence among peoples in theArctic Circle. Far from disappearing, PCBs, DDT and flame-retardantsmigrate. Winds carry the contaminants east then north to the Arctic

A

WE ARE LEAVING OUR CHILDREN

A TOXIC WORLD.


GARY CHAMBERLAIN is professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Seattle University in Washington.

Circle through a process in which they rise in warmer tem-peratures and fall in cold weather. In the Arctic some152,000 pounds of these toxins arrive yearly in the air, snow,ice or fog and settle in soil, seawater and ocean sediment.Through biomagnification the women who feed on seals,walruses or bears as their main source of nutrition carryconcentrated toxins in their blood and breast milk.

In Greenland, Ms. Cone reports, Inuit women carry with-in their bodies contaminants classified as hazardous wasteand more mercury and PCBs than women anywhere else onearth. The Inuit infants are more susceptible to infectiousdiseases and damage to their developing brains. The alterna-tives for the women of the Arctic are stark: they have beenadvised to stop eating whalemeat and blubber, their princi-pal dietary food, and to pur-chase infant formula importedfrom abroad, which is expen-sive for them.

“The Arctic’s indigenouspeoples have become theindustrialized world’s lab rats,the involuntary subjects of anaccidental human experiment that reveals what happenswhen a boundless brew of chemicals builds up in an envi-ronment,” writes Ms. Cone. She calls this situation a “moralinjustice.”

Dire Situation at HomeIn the continental United States, the situation for pregnantwomen and those who nurse their newborns is also dire.Although the Environmental Protection Agency has issuedguidelines and regulations for many of the most toxic chem-icals, there are some 80,000 registered for use. Of these,fewer than 10 percent have been tested, and many areknown carcinogens. In addition, waste dumps and facilitiesthat emit harsh chemicals are often located in poor commu-nities and primarily among people of color. The result istoxic damage.

Native American and Hispanic women are especially atrisk. Farmworkers exposed to toxins in pesticides have ratesof infant and maternal mortality much higher than thenational average. From exposure to uranium and other ele-ments from the mining process, Navajos of the Southwestsuffer above-average rates of lung cancer, kidney damageand bone disease. Exposure is also the suspected cause ofbirth defects among their children.

Newborns among Hispanics in Brownsville and Laredo,Tex., have shown rates of anencephaly, a rare birth defectinvolving a fetus’s failure to develop a brain or skull, threetimes that of the national average. Possible culprits are pol-lutants from agricultural and industrial sites along the bor-

der with Mexico, particularly from maquiladores, factoriesthat produce items for import to the United States andother countries.

Cancer Alley, an area along the Mississippi River border-ing Louisiana, stretches 85 miles from Baton Rouge to NewOrleans. It is home to over 160 industrial waste sites, sani-tary landfills, chemical factories, waste incinerators andother hazardous facilities, all of which affect the African-American communities nestled along the river, writesBeverly Wright in “Living and Dying in ‘Cancer Alley,’” acase study in The Quest for Environmental Justice: HumanRights and the Politics of Pollution (2005). In 2002, 10 dis-tricts along the Mississippi chemical corridor reported emit-

ting over 169 million poundsof toxic chemicals into the air,land and water, according toLouisiana's Toxic ReleaseInventory. The results includeincreases in a variety of dis-eases among newbornsincluding eye, skin and respi-ratory problems, along withbirth defects.

All of these cases, and many more throughout the world,provide vivid examples of environmental racism: the place-ment of waste disposal facilities, chemical factories withtheir toxic waste and even coal plants among communitieslargely made up of the poor and people of color. Faced withthe everyday struggle to provide for themselves and theirfamilies, these people often lack the power and representa-tion to assert their right to a healthy environment, inherentin the concept of full human dignity and the common good.

In two encyclicals, “On Labor” (1981) and “On SocialConcern” (1987), Pope John Paul II wrote of the “heritage ofnature” being “intolerably polluted” as the “direct or indirectresult of industrialization…with serious consequences forthe health of the population.” In his view, the human conse-quences of such pollution violate the moral laws regardingthe full dignity of each person and of all persons. Such situ-ations are instances of what John Paul calls “the structures ofsin,” sin present in the very social structures of society.

Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist and biologist, reportsfrom her own experience as a pregnant woman on theincreased risks to the fetus in her book, Having Faith: AnEcologist’s Journey to Motherhood (2001). (“Faith” is herdaughter’s name.) Ms. Steingraber notes: “If the world’senvironment is contaminated, so too is the ecosystem of amother’s body. If a mother’s body is contaminated, so too isthe child who inhabits it.” She challenges the long-held viewthat the placenta serves as a barrier to toxins and reveals thatpesticides with low molecular weights can cross from moth-er to fetus.

Mercury is one of the most toxic chemicals affecting

pregnant women, the fetus and the newborn.



In addition, carbon monoxide in cities, released fromindustries, cars and trucks, furnaces and other sources,interferes with the circulation of oxygen in the body and cancause fetal growth retardation. Other major pollutantsinclude PAH (polycydic aromatic hydrocarbons) releasedinto the air from coal burning, diesel, oil, gas and even tobac-co, which, if experienced in utero, can result in low I.Q. laterin the child’s development (Environmental Health,1/29/10, and Pediatrics, 7/20/09).

The chemical BPA, or bisphonel A, has been used forover 40 years in the manufacture of hard plastic food con-tainers, including baby bottles, sippy cups, baby formula andbaby food containers. If the fetus is exposed to a toxic formof BPA during development, the exposure produces possi-bly harmful effects even at low doses. Senator DianeFeinstein of California added a ban on BPA to the federalfood safety act, but withdrew it after intensive lobbying bythe chemical industry made certain that other members ofCongress would block it.

Even tuna, a rich food source for millions, often containsheavy doses of mercury, a neurotoxin that can damage thebrain and nervous system, particularly in fetuses and youngchildren. In the bloodstreams of pregnant and nursingwomen, mercury can result in birth defects like learning dis-abilities, reduced I.Q. and cerebral palsy. Each year coal-fired plant smokestacks emit some 100 million pounds of

mercury into the air. Another pervasive airborne pollutant,nitrogen dioxide, is correlated with low birth weight.

Joining ForcesSixty years have passed since Rachel Carson’s warnings oftoxic pollutants in Silent Spring; it has been almost 40 yearssince the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Roe v.Wade. Yet the contaminants banned largely because ofCarson’s work are still around, and the ramifications of thecourt’s 1973 decision still reverberate.

Ironically, Mercury, the Roman messenger of the gods,has returned in the 21st century as a danger, one of the mosttoxic chemicals affecting women, pregnant women, the fetusand the newborn. Why can’t pro-choice, pro-life and othergroups concerned with women and children’s health joinforces to stop mercury and other toxic 20th-century cre-ations that fly through the air, flow in the waters and findhome in the soil?

The tragedy underlying our failure to protect vulnera-ble populations and to care for the environment is that wehave known about the results for years, sometimesdecades, yet have taken little action. Some attempts haverun up against a wall of vested interests. Although protec-tion of the most vulnerable includes protection of thefetus, we must expand our view to include women likely tobecome pregnant, pregnant women, the fetus, the newbornand the young child—particularly among poor, isolatedand marginalized people.

What Marla Cone saw as massive, insidious “moral injus-tice” and Pope John Paul saw as the “structures of sin” inrelation to the consequences of environmental damage areviolations of the common good of all. As the late popenotes, the virtue of solidarity means that we are called tocommit ourselves “to the good of all, and of each individual,because we are all really responsible for all.” Perhaps in thisrespect all the parties involved in the abortion battles couldfind common ground through solidarity.

Pro-life advocates interested in fetal and maternal healthcould expand their concerns to include the environmentalfactors that impede fetal development. Pro-choice advocatesconcerned that motherhood is freely chosen could expandtheir concerns to embrace the long-term health of women,lest their choices be “contaminated” by environmental fac-tors in fetal and early childhood development. Let Mercury,whose caduceus of two intertwined serpents symbolizeshealth, become the messenger who awakens us to hazardoushuman invention and production. By joining forces toaddress environmental contamination, these advocatescould promote common ground and push for stronger reg-ulations, for the abolition of carcinogens and for continuedvigilance over existing contaminants. The messenger couldthen bear good news to humankind once again.


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he signing of the Mozambique general peaceagreement was planned for Oct. 1, 1992. SeveralAfrican heads of state and government ministerstraveled to Rome to join several members of the

Sant’Egidio Community, a group of lay people dedicated toprayer, evangelization and solidarity. After 11 rounds of nego-tiations at Sant’Egidio over 26 months, there remained onebasic problem: Who was to control the territory during thetransition before the first round of democratic, uni-versal elections? This issue prompted many morequestions: Who had sovereignty? How could theguerrillas be assured that the cease-fire would berespected? And how could the government be assuredthat the areas still under guerrilla control would notbreak up national unity or signify reduced sovereign-ty? For three days international mediators workednon-stop with the leaders of each side in Rome.

Many people who offered support—especially inMozambique, where people were still suffering,dying and hoping—were waiting to find out if therewas going to be a true peace or if this was just adream. Finally, late on Oct. 3, agreement came on thelast protocol, and the signing took place the next day,a Sunday. The Mozambique government main-tained sovereignty over the entire territory. In prac-tice, the government assigned administration of separateregions to local administrators, whether from Renamo or thegovernment, according to the actual distribution of power.And a commission of Sant’Egidio mediators and representa-tives of the two sides was created to settle controversial cases.

In those days all you could hear on the streets inMozambique was uninterrupted radio broadcasts as thesilent population waited desperately for good news. On Oct.4, after evening prayer in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria inTrastevere with Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of thePontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the joy and singingwent on for an hour. In Mozambique the nightmare thathad claimed one million lives and resulted in millions of dis-placed and starving people was over.

The Sant’Egidio MethodIt all started in July 1990 after years of civil war, famine, suf-fering, refugees and international failures in Mozambique.The Community of Sant’Egidio had not “chosen” to be adirect player in international diplomacy. It loved the peopleof Mozambique and was interested in peace as the onlychance to interrupt a spiral of violence that claimed so manyvictims, including some young people of Sant’Egidio.

Sant’Egidio had worked to mitigate confrontation and theproblems faced by the Catholic Church and other Christianworshippers as well as the missionaries based in the country.Sant’Egidio was instrumental to Pope John Paul II’s firstmeeting with President Samora Machel when the presidentstopped in Rome on his way back from the United Nations.Sant’Egidio passed the “exam” of the Mozambique govern-ment when it launched aid programs for the populationthrough the Mozambican chapter of Caritas and localChristians—gaining personal credit with the leadershipclass trained in Europe at the Sorbonne and the sociologydepartment of the University of Trent, Italy, where the RedBrigades had studied for “revolution.”

But the Pax Romana—as the French newspaper LeMonde called it—was not conceived at a table. For yearsSant’Egidio had said that “everything is lost in war” and thatwar was truly “the mother of poverty.” Sant’Egidio hadexplored the possibility of a national effort of dialogue withsome Mozambican government representatives when the

Lessons in PeaceThe relevance of Mozambique’s peace agreement 20 years laterBY MARIO MARAZZITI

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MARIO MARAZZITI, a board member and spokesman for theCommunity of Sant’Egidio, played a leading role in the 26-month-longnegotiations between the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo)and the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) in Mozambique.This article is translated from the Italian. p

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A health center in Mozambique

two sides still branded each other “bandits” and “murderers.”Sant’Egidio established a relationship with the leadership ofan anomalous guerrilla group that had very few internation-al contacts and, therefore, little international bargainingclout.

Sant’Egidio facilitated the first meeting, when each sideagreed to the method proposed by Andrea Riccardi, thefounder of Sant’Egidio: “Leave aside what divides and startworking on that which unites,” echoing Pope John XXIIIbut at a diplomatic level. When the first joint protocol wassigned, the sides saw each other as adversaries in the conflictbut also considered themselves “brothers of the commonMozambican family” and publicly announced the desire tostart negotiations. A Ferrari Spumante wine bottle and afirst photo together celebrated the event.

Again in August 1992, during the second round of nego-tiations, when the two sides could not agree on the choice ofone or more governments to act as mediators, Sant’Egidiowas officially asked to carry out the role. Along the way the“Sant’Egidio method” gained ground as a practical and his-torical necessity. The group had many strengths: a mix ofknowledge of the problems on the ground; credibility that ithad no ambition other than peace and reconciliation; com-bined action with others and with interested governments,keeping their roles distinct; attention to the human factor asa primary issue in the negotiations; the art of co-existenceand friendship; and the ability to decipher languages. Thesefactors developed a common language between the twosides through which mutual demonization gave way to thediscovery of a political field to replace military confronta-tion as a solution to differences of opinion and the forces on

the ground. It was not easy. The 26 months of negotiations seemed

long. At the beginning it seemed as though it would beresolved in a matter of months. But a mentality of peace hadto be created, a trust that was not yet there. A warrior hadto be transformed into a politician. There were militaryproblems of security. Deaths were still occurring. The peo-ple were dubious. The missionaries, close to the suffering ofthe populations, were tempted by impatience. Why so slow?Paradoxically that slowness was one of the secrets of thesuccess of peace and its duration. (Sant’Egidio andMozambique recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of thepeace agreement.) The negotiations themselves were a keyto success. To negotiate is to pay attention to the details.The very method of negotiating was a school of democracyfor both sides: language, rules, mechanisms and mentalities.And it would become still more useful in the two decadesthat followed.

Promises, Challenges AheadWas this experience a once-in-a-lifetime case? We must askourselves this question, because it seems as though it is notpossible to automatically apply, with similar effectiveness,the “method” created in Mozambique to other African andinternational conflicts. Or, we must ask, what conditions areneeded to repeat it or make it possible to repeat it? The warsof the past two decades are less often conflicts betweenstates and more often wars inside countries, with many peo-ple and governments involved. This increases the complexi-ty and the number of players involved in the peace process.

One complicating factor is the fact that the resolution of

Signing of the Mozambique PeaceAgreement, Rome, Oct. 4, 1992,

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combined actions and components of the “method” demon-strated their effectiveness.

Niger and Guinea, two cases of “preventative peace” cre-ated in several rounds at Sant’Egidio in Rome, showedanother possible itinerary: emerging from dictatorship andcoup d’etat, the first steps with mutually agreed upon rules,

elections, the establishment of checks andbalances in society and assurances for theopponents and the “losers” in the processof democratization.

This path created two “successful fail-ures.” The first was in Algeria, where theRome Platform and unilateral surrenderof arms by the armed faction of theIslamic Front offered some hope andbecame the foundation, too late and aftertoo many victims, on which Algerian soci-ety experienced a reduction in extremistviolence. The second was in Kosovo. Theinitial agreement between SlobodanMilosevic and Ibrahim Rugova was a suc-cessul attempt to create the conditions ofpeace before the outbreak of the civil war,but there was no international support toimplement it.

The “method” also proved decisive forputting an end to more than 30 years ofcivil war in Guatemala, creating contactgroups and an agenda that revived theofficial negotiations in the mid-1990’s. Itmay turn out to be useful again today inthe matter of Casamance, a Senegaleseterritory fighting for independence, andother “forgotten” wars. And it may lessendamage from existing crises, as happenedin Liberia, avoiding a final battle inMonrovia. Or it may offer an increasinglynecessary political, more democratic wayout in the terrible Syrian Civil War,haunted by Al Qaeda’s shadow.

Even when the international communi-ty risks standing on a slippery slope that,in the end, looks toward external military

intervention as the apparent solution to complex problems,the Sant’Egidio method may prove useful. Unfortunately weknow that at least in the most sensational cases, fromAfghanistan to Iraq, and recently in the development of theArab Spring, there is no shortage of problems. There is nodoubt the method can help with intermediate solutions, likefinding ways to offer relief to civilian communities caught inthe grips of violence. But it might also prove useful in far-reaching international crises.

conflicts has become a new field of research. University pro-fessorships, research institutes and independent and gov-ernment-connected research centers have multiplied. Whenthe subjects multiply, there are more available means, butthe complexity heightens. There is a sort of “bureaucratiza-tion” of paths to peace. It is hard to take into account all thelevels that made the “Mozambique case”the model for possible negotiations andsuccess.

In Burundi a path similar toMozambique’s was taken. When thereserved talks started in Rome, the chancesfor success looked very good, and the pathseemed to lead to rapid results. The pub-licity made it inevitable to transfer thetalks to Africa, where all countries inter-ested in peace were given an official role—first Tanzania, then the African Union,South Africa and the European Union.The number of participants on both sidesin the conflict grew from two to 18. As canbe imagined, the procedures becamestymied. Even prestigious and credibleinternational pressure, represented by thevisit of then President Bill Clinton toArusha, with the collaboration of NelsonMandela, proved insufficient.

In time, delay itself became a criticalfactor in an official international context.When divisions take place inside an armedgroup—a likely event due to communica-tion problems, a shift of power on theground and personal factors—it is possiblethat a group originally accredited to sit atthe bargaining table becomes too weak onthe ground, and the strongest faction is nolonger present at the negotiations. Thisjeopardizes the effectiveness of the wholenegotiation process. A signed agreementleaves important problems unsettled anddoes not guarantee a true end to the warand the safety of the population. This isjust one example, but a very real risk. Thedevil is in the details. In the case of Burundi, there were stilla lot of details to clear up.

But there are also cases in which the “Mozambiquemethod” becomes timely again, and this is not only becauseSant’Egidio has become “African.” (It has thousands ofmembers in sub-Saharan Africa.) The reunification of IvoryCoast and the negotiations conducted before the crisis in2010 by Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré, withthe help of Sant’Egidio, were part of events in which the


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MOZAMBIQUEFormer Portuguese colony.

IndependenceJune 25, 1975

Population23,515,934 (July 2012 est.)

ReligionsCatholic 28.4%Protestant 27.7% Muslim 17.9%Other 7.2%None 18.7% (1997 census)

Median ageTotal: 16.8 yearsMale: 16.2 yearsFemale: 17.5 years (2012 est.)

HIV/AIDSAdult prevalence rate11.5% (2009 est.)World rank: 8

Source: The World Factbook,cia.gov


e are told that abortion is one of themost divisive issues in American politics,but one thing has remained remarkablyconsistent: Most Americans oppose tax-

payer funding for abortion. Therefore I was startledrecently to see an article by Jessica Arons of the Centerfor American Progress (The Daily Beast, 9/30)deploring the 36th “unhappy birthday” of the feder-al abortion funding ban known as the HydeAmendment—and tagging it as “the amendmentthat started the war on women.”

“War on women” is the slogan now used to labelobjections to the Obama administration’s mandatefor contraception and sterilization coverage inalmost all private health plans, including plans pro-vided by many Catholic employers. The slogan hasalways shed more heat than light. The mandate inquestion is as much an imposition on women who donot want to be forced to pay for these items as it is ontheir employers. And objections arose preciselybecause the mandate itself is an unprecedented inno-vation in federal law, threatening to derail a long-standing balance between “pro-life” and “pro-choice”voices in our society.

Since the Supreme Court cases in Eisenstadt v.Baird (1972) and Roe v. Wade (1973), the govern-ment has not had legal authority to prevent womenwho want contraception, sterilization or even abortionfrom choosing them. But those who disagree have notbeen forced to facilitate or purchase these drugs andprocedures, or to pay taxes for them in the case ofabortion. The breakdown of that balance—symbol-ized in the current Democratic platform’s pledge touphold women’s right to abortion “regardless of abili-ty to pay”—is increasingly visible.

The Hyde Amendment, in particular, is an oddchoice for emphasizing the extremism of the pro-lifeside. It first took effect on Oct. 1, 1976, sponsored byRepublican Henry Hyde of Illinois, but passed by a

House and Senate that were overwhelmingly Democratic.As a rider to the annual appropriations bill governingdomestic federal health programs, it has been renewed withlittle change for 36 years, supported by congressionalmajorities and presidents of both parties as well as by pub-lic opinion. It would be difficult to name an abortion-relat-

Defending HydeAn abortion policy most Americans can embraceBY RICHARD M. DOERFLINGER

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RICHARD M. DOERFLINGER is associate director of theSecretariat of Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of CatholicBishops, and adjunct fellow in bioethics and public policy at theNational Catholic Bioethics Center.

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ed policy that has garnered more bipartisan support over alonger period of time.

Challenges to the AmendmentThe amendment was not always so secure. When firstenacted 36 years ago, it faced three objections or challenges:It was said to endanger women’s lives, conflict with the rightto abortion defined in Roe v. Wade and even impose anunconstitutional “establishment of religion.”

First, in the years following enactment, government offi-cials and private researchers who opposed the amendmentscoured the nation, seeking evidence that it had drivenmany low-income women to unsafe “back alley” abortionsthat endangered their lives. They could not find that evi-dence. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionfound “no evidence of a statistically significant increase inthe number of complications from illegal abortions,” butrather a decrease in reported complications from legalabortions.

Second, opponents filed suit against the amendment toclaim that it violated the newfound constitutional “right”to abortion—and specifically that it nullified that right forlow-income women who cannot otherwise afford to payfor an abortion. But in the landmark case of Harris v.McRae in 1980, the Supreme Court explained that theabortion right, like most constitutional rights, is a right tobe free from government interference. In other words, itdid not translate into a right to demand active governmentassistance to obtain abortions.

Third, these suits argued that the amendment rested onnothing but theological ideas about “when life begins” andthe moral wrongness of abortion—ideas that could not bewritten into law without violating constitutional guaranteesagainst an “establishment of religion.” But here, too, theSupreme Court showed a great deal of common sense. Thecourt said it could not find all laws against larceny uncon-stitutional just because the Bible has a commandmentagainst stealing. Whatever views may be held by differentreligions, the Hyde Amendment served a legitimate secularinterest—that of “encouraging childbirth over abortion” inall but the most extreme circumstances. After all, said thecourt, “[a]bortion is inherently different from other medicalprocedures, because no other procedure involves the pur-poseful termination of a potential life.”

In later cases the court has moved away from the bio-logically uninformed term “potential life.” In PlannedParenthood v. Casey in 1992, for example, the justices saidthe government may regulate (though not prohibit) abor-tion in ways that “express profound respect for the life ofthe unborn” (emphasis added). Such regulations have beenpassed in many states and have had a real impact on abor-tion rates.


Even more remarkably, some studies have concluded thatunintended pregnancy rates are lower in states that banpublic funding of abortion: When abortion is more expen-sive, or harder to access in other ways, men and women takemore care not to begin a pregnancy in the first place.

By contrast, programs to expand access to contraceptionhave often failed to reduce unintended pregnancies or abor-tions. An apparent exception, a new study in St. Louis calledContraceptive Choice, claims to have reduced both preg-nancy and abortion rates among low-income women. But itrequired persuading 75 percent of the subjects to accept ahormonal implant or an intrauterine device that can beremoved only by a physician; participants were then regu-larly followed throughout the study to make sure theystayed with the program.

For 36 years the Hyde Amendment has reduced abor-tions, encouraged men and women to be more responsibleabout risking pregnancy and respected the consciences ofthe majority of taxpayers who morally object to abortion.More broadly, it has implemented a federal policy of seekingto respect unborn life and prefer live birth to abortion, evenwhile abortion remains legal. It is the most positive federalpolicy to be maintained on abortion since Roe was handeddown almost 40 years ago. If abortion advocates want toattack it as part of an alleged “war on women,” that may onlyhighlight the extreme nature of their own agenda.

Reducing AbortionsAs for Hyde itself: If it has not endangered women, violat-ed Roe or established Catholicism as the official religion ofthe United States, what has it done? Chiefly, it has donesomething that people on all sides of the abortion debate saythey want—it has reduced abortions.

Before Hyde went into effect, the federal Medicaid pro-gram was paying for almost 300,000 abortions a year forlow-income women. Legal authorities had concluded thatonce abortion was permitted as a medical procedure underRoe, the Medicaid statute’s general requirement for fundingall “medically necessary” procedures covered any abortionthat a woman and her physician agreed on—unlessCongress passed a law stating otherwise. Under Hyde, thenumber of federally funded abortions plummeted to a frac-tion of one percent of this figure, and has stayed there.

This does not mean that the amendment has prevented300,000 abortions a year nationwide. Seventeen states pro-vide their own public funding for abortion for Medicaid-eli-gible women, usually because state judges have declared anabortion “right” in state constitutions that goes beyond Roe v.Wade to demand public funding. And many women coveredby the amendment have used private resources to have abor-tions. But by conservative estimates, a ban on public fundingof abortion in programs like Medicaid reduces abortionsamong women in the program by about 20 to 35 percent.

Some estimates go further. In 2002, astudy in the journal of the GuttmacherInstitute (formerly the research arm ofPlanned Parenthood) found that theabortion rate among Medicaid-eligiblewomen is twice that of other women instates that do not provide public fund-ing for abortion. If the state does fundabortions, these women’s abortion ratedoubles again, rising to four times therate of other women.

Mother and ChildA question has circulated amongCatholics for some time about reducingabortions: Do we achieve this by combat-ing poverty or by passing abortion fund-ing bans and other pro-life laws? Theanswer to the question is: Yes. We need todo both, especially because we reverencethe dignity of both the mother and herchild. But if you want to reduce abortionrates, even while abortion remains legalunder Roe, laws like the HydeAmendment provide an important part ofthe answer.


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very now and then, a good filmor play can gain an added res-onance when it coincides with

current events. Lisa D’Amour’s por-trayal of two destructive marriages,Detroit, is enjoying a sold-out off-Broadway run at a time when itseponymous city is in the public eye.The Tigers made it to the WorldSeries; one of its native sons ran forpresident; and a documentary aboutits challenges is playing in movie the-aters (see pg. 26). At the same time,Edward Albee’s classic portrait of toxicmarried couples, “Who’s Afraid ofVirginia Woolf?” has returned toBroadway in another revival.

Unfortunately, the play is not reallyabout the city of Detroit; it could justas easily be called “Tulsa,” “KansasCity” or “Jacksonville,” and the setting

could be the suburbs of any of thesecities. Nor does it achieve the catharsisthat Albee’s absurdist domestic dramacontinues to deliver even 50 years afterit first shocked Broadway audiencesand filmgoers. “Detroit” does, howev-er, dwell on the effects of the jobless-ness that both presidential candidatespromise to address if elected. And theclosing scene of the play—involvingactual fire on stage—deals with thedemons in many a family these days.As such, “Detroit” is an important andrelevant addition to American theatertoday.

The play opens with the same situ-ation as “Who’s Afraid of VirginiaWoolf?”: a married couple invitesanother couple over to their house. Butinstead of the genteel-shabby resi-dence of a college professor that serves

as the setting for Albee’s play, “Detroit”begins in the backyard of a home inwhat is now called the “first ring” ofsuburbia, a subdivision built in the1960s that is in serious decline. Thehost couple, Mary (Amy Ryan) andBen (David Schwimmer) have invitedtheir new next-door neighbors, Kenny(Darren Pettie) and Sharon (SarahSokolovic), over for a barbecue (intro-ducing the fire motif ). Their awkwardconversation is suddenly exploded bySharon’s lengthy and manic observa-tions about the disappearance of theconcept of neighbor in society today.Meanwhile, Mary and Ben’s typicallysuburban glass sliding door tends toget jammed and the umbrella of theirpatio dining table keeps unfolding,finally inflicting a wound on Kenny’shead (domestic dysfunction looms).We soon find out that Ben has beenlaid off from his job as a loan officer ata bank. The housing loan-default cri-sis has apparently affected the lendersas well as the borrowers. Mary works p

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BOOKS & CULTURE

Darren Pettie, Amy Ryan, David Schwimmer andSarah Sokolovic in Lisa D’Amour’s “Detroit.”

T H E A T E R | MICHAEL V. TUETH

DREAMS DEFERRED‘Detroit’ examines relationships in troubled times.

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Each character is given at least onepowerful monologue. Sharon gets sev-eral, including those early observationsabout neighbors, her extremelydetailed accounts of her nightmaresand her angry tantrum in reaction toanother neighbor’s complaint abouther dog. Sharon concludes her rant byshouting, “I don’t even have a dog!”Mary offers alengthy descriptionof her unhappinessin a marriage to herunemployed hus-band who spendsevery day working on creating his ownWeb site. A drunken Ben finallyerupts in a confession that there is noWeb site and never will be, whileKenny reveals a hostile macho deca-dence in his description of a “boys’night out” that he invites Ben to enjoywith him.

The performances by the superbfilm actress Amy Ryan and the formertelevision star David Schwimmer flesh

out the play’s depiction of marital frus-tration, and the newcomer SarahSokolovic displays an impressive rangeas a comic hysteric, sexy swinger anddesperate druggie. The admirablydetailed set gradually turns the realisticscenery of a typical suburban dream-house into a horrifying disaster scene.

The most original image in the playis provided by Kennywhen he and Sharonhost the barbecue attheir house. Whilethe burgers are reallycooking onstage,

Kenny describes his own version ofthe traditional meal. He confides thathe makes the hamburgers with a ballof cheddar cheese inside. He warns theguests to be careful when they bite intothem. “You might burn your mouth.”The suburban lifestyle can have unin-tended and painful consequences.

“Detroit” would benefit from moreof this originality in its language andsymbolism. Perhaps it isn’t fair to com-

as a paralegal, while the other coupleclaim to have low-level jobs, which wesoon come to suspect are fictional. It isthen revealed that Mary has a drinkingproblem and Kenny and Sharon aredrug addicts in recovery (maybe).

As the couples’ relationship contin-ues, Ben and Mary begin to take onKenny and Sharon’s philosophy of life.As Sharon says to Mary, “You’ve got tolive this moment; that’s all you can do.”This traditional carpe-diem attitudeacquires new meaning in the currentatmosphere of disillusionment withthe American dream and the bleakeconomic prospects of so many fami-lies today. This view proceeds todarken both couples’ lives, turninginto a dangerous hedonism and cul-minating in a Bacchanalian return tothe backyard where the play’s actionbegan. This time the party is fueledby excessive alcohol consumption,includes some inappropriate sexualactivity and concludes with somemajor property destruction.


ON THE WEBRobert Sullivan talks about his book,

My American Revolution. americamagazine.org/podcast

of the three other viewers in the theatersaid with sarcasm as the film conclud-ed. “It could be,” I thought, “If you’vefallen in love with the city.” “Detropia”illustrates that it is still possible to fall inlove with Detroit, but, as with any truerelationship, the process includes riskand pain.

The Raven Lounge and its owner,Tommy Stephens, are featured promi-nently in the film. The Raven is a clas-sic Detroit blues bar and restaurant that

pare this solid drama with the theatri-cal couples whose company it wouldlike to join. The play’s emotional vio-lence never approaches the monstrousfun and games of “Who’s Afraid ofVirgina Woolf,” the poetry of “A LongDay’s Journey into Night,” the wickedhumor of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ” orthe primal sadness of “Death of aSalesman.”

“Detroit” succeeds, however, in itspersonalization of the discouraging

thrived when the nearby GeneralMotors Detroit/Hamtramck AssemblyPlant—a three million square footfacility—was running shifts around theclock. The creation of this plant in theearly 1980s was very controversial, as itdisplaced hundreds of residents fromtheir neighborhood, known at the timeas Poletown. Polish Americans hadmonopolized the neighborhood inyears past, but by the late 1970s thearea was racially diverse and stable.Construction of the G.M. plant devas-tated the neighborhood, still evidencedtoday by the burned-out houses, board-ed-up businesses and overgrown vacantlots. Most of the jobs at the plant werelost in subsequent years as the autoindustry declined, and the economicadvantages promised to the city werenever realized. In the film, Stephensholds out hope that his business can beresurrected by G.M.’s recent decision tobuild its electric car, the Volt, at theplant. He also buys up cheap homes inthe neighborhood, hoping to contributeto its revitalization.

By chance, I stumbled upon theRaven Lounge with a friend a fewweeks before seeing “Detropia.” Wewere dining at a venerable establish-

ment located just blocksfrom the Raven—anotherone of the few places leftover from the old Poletowndays, trying to stay viable asthe neighborhood around itliterally crumbles andburns. Oddly, this restau-rant did not have a singleperson of color inside, eventhough the neighborhoodin which it is located is pre-dominantly, if not exclu-sively, African-American.After dinner, when myfriend and I investigatedthe Raven Lounge, just theopposite was true. Bothestablishments, fighting itout in a devastated neigh-borhood, have nothing to


situation of many American familiesat this time. One can only hope that itwill someday be seen as a documentabout life in the early 21st centurythat, like the dramas of CliffordOdets in the Great Depression, servesmainly as a depiction of a painfulAmerican memory.

MICHAEL V. TUETH, S.J., is associate profes-sor of communication and media studies atFordham University in New York.

F I L M | DAVID NANTAIS

AN AMERICAN CITYFalling in love with Detroit

My wife and I own a house in Detroit,a city of 139 square miles with 700,000residents but only one first-run movietheater. I missed the two-week windowduring which the theater was showingDetropia, so I had to drive 50 miles,round-trip, to a far western suburb tosee this documentary about theimmense challenges confronting mycity and the people who, either bychoice or necessity, are facing them headon. “That was a real ‘feel good’ film,” one

Steve and Dorota Coy, in the documentary ‘Detropia” ph

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hard work of these young adults.There are more houses being cared for,more small businesses starting up,more money beingspent and more sus-tained excitement beingcreated about the citythan at any other pointin my lifetime.

The film’s greatest gift to the resi-dents of Detroit and, perhaps, toeveryone in the United States, is that itshows how intertwined our lives are.Yes, the white guy working atAmerican Axle and living in a neigh-boring suburb is connected to theblack man who owns the blues bar in a

depressed Detroit neighborhood, whoin turn is connected to the young hip-ster artists who have fallen in love with

Detroit becauseof the vastpotential itoffers. There arethriving, stableneighborhoods

in Detroit, but there are abandoned,devastated ones as well. And the peo-ple in each are our neighbors, blackand white. And no matter how bad wethink we have it, we can’t forget them.

DAVID NANTAIS is director of university min-istry at the University of Detroit Mercy.

do with each other. Segregation likethis is unfortunately all too commonin Detroit.

One cannot understand Detroit orits problems without examining race.The directors of “Detropia,” RachelGrady and Heidi Ewing (“JesusCamp”), clearly understand this; andthey approach the topic without beingheavy-handed, preferring to presentthe human stories and facts withouteditorializing. Racism has been a diffi-cult and thorny issue in Detroit for along time, going back before the 1967riots, which many people mistakenlypoint to as exhibit A, for evidence ofracial tensions in the city. But therewas rioting between blacks and whitesin 1943 in Detroit, and the high-pro-file Ossian Sweet trial in 1925 alsoillustrated the ugly reality of racialhatred. Contemporary racism is some-times more subtle, but no less virulentor destructive.

“Detropia” points out that there ishope, however, as hundreds of subur-ban young adults are reversing thewhite-flight of their parents andgrandparents and are moving into thecity. These hipsters are hungry forurban life and for opportunities to becreative, to test their entrepreneurialskills and not have to worry about fail-ing, given the low cost of living in thecity. But this phenomenon carries withit some complex sociological quan-daries. The majority of these youngadults are white, and at times theirurban pioneer attitudes irritate thepeople, primarily African-Americans,who have been here for decades.

Urban agriculture, for example, isnothing new in Detroit—it has beengoing on in some form for well over100 years, and several AfricanAmerican neighborhoods have quietlyled the way. Now it is in vogue, and thefaces that appear in newspapers and ondiscussion panels are mostly white.Frustration about this is understand-able, but at the same time the city hasimproved in many ways because of the


B O O K S | LAURA M. CHMIELEWSKI

A WOMAN IN FULLTHE PATH OF MERCYThe Life of Catherine McAuley

By Mary C. SullivanCatholic University of America Press.419p $49.95

I came to Mary C. Sullivan’s biographyof Catherine McAuley with severalentrenched assumptions about thelevel of interest a 19th-century Irishfounder of a women’s religious ordercould possibly inspire. These assump-tions were handily challenged by thenarrative sweep that Sullivan maps outfor the subject, who founded theSisters of Mercy in 1831. Sullivan’shighly focused, though somewhatuneven exploration of Catherine’s lifeand times reveals that CatherineMcAuley was socially shrewd yetintensely spiritual, fragile yet capable,forceful yet full of warmth and humor.This book thus invigorates the manydimensions of Catherine’s character,spirituality and work of serving thepoor and outcast.

Sullivan conveys these ideas with arichly detailed prose record of

Catherine’s activities, made possible bya wide variety of primary sources andwritten reflections by those who knewher. And those who knew her weremany. From the moment the mature,unmarried Catherine came forwardwith her plans to turn a building shewas constructing on Dublin’s BaggotStreet into a sanctuary for the poor,

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the idea attracted other laywomenwho wanted to help implement theplan. How she attained the means tomake this happen is one of the mostintriguing, and perhaps elusive, pas-sages in the book. Orphaned by age18, Catherine spent much of her adultlife as a dependent in the homes ofothers. At first her hosts were rela-tives, but when they found themselvesin strained circumstances, Catherinewent to live with family friends,Catherine and William Callaghan,

who were wealthy, loving, indulgent,supportive—and not Catholic. In theirhousehold, Catherine kept her grow-ing commitment to Catholicism quietout of respect for her hosts, a Quakerand an Anglican.

It was an inheritance from WilliamCallaghan that underwrote her activi-ties as a social activist in the name ofGod. In her 40s at the time ofWilliam’s death, Catherine was for thefirst time mistress of her own life andthe possessor of a handsome fortune

in cash and property—a situation thatraised some eyebrows, especially inlight of the fact that Catherine hadcontinued to live with WilliamCallaghan after his wife died. It wouldnot be the last time that the proprietyof Catherine’s activities was called intoquestion. Another, far more notableoccurrence was the actual founding ofthe Sisters of Mercy as a religiousorder, a pragmatic response to the gen-der-based realities of laywomen pub-licly ministering to Ireland’s needy.

As a social historian of religion, Iread this book in the constant hopethat the author would fully contextual-ize her subject’s remarkably eventfullife. After all, Catherine was not onlyan important figure in her own right,but crossed paths with other 19th-century notables, including the Irishpolitical activist Daniel O’Connell, theeminent architect and Catholic con-vert Augustus Pugin, the celebratedTemperance Priest, TheobaldMathew, and Princess (later Queen)Victoria.

She was also a woman who built—literally—large, task-specific build-ings, interacted regularly with and attimes vocally disagreed with men whoanswered to the Roman hierarchy,established her order in overwhelm-ingly Protestant England as well asCatholic Ireland and saw adored asso-ciates, friends and family members diein droves from terrible diseases andstarvation.

What was it like to be a 19th-cen-tury woman in these circumstances?Unfortunately, this book does not tellthe reader, at least not consistently.Similarly, the level of detail focused onCatherine’s immediate activities oftenobscures this larger story. I finishedthis book knowing many specificsabout Catherine McAuley, but notvery much about the Ireland in whichshe lived and worked.

Yet this book succeeds in otherways, chiefly in its ability to inspire apersonal connection with Catherine


AMBITIONFor Bunny

His, at the age of six, was to be Zorro.

Black hat and mask, a sword held in reserve—

He’d pull them from their closet pile, then swerve

Big figure eights around the houses, borrow

Whatever came to hand (they needed nerve

Those daylight raids), and take some puerile stabs

At self-disclosure—monogram, make Z’s.

The mystery of stray baseball bats in threes

Puzzled clean lawns. Likewise, both up for grabs

Wet laundry and mere mud left scattered keys

To who he was inside. He doesn’t try

These days; time’s shorter now, and he’s got less

And less to hide. His love’s his best success:

She thinks there’s more to him than meets the eye.

C H A R L E S H U G H E S

CHARLES HUGHES, a recent retiree from a Chicago law firm, tutors in thewriting clinic of St. Leonard’s House. His poems have appeared in literaryjournals and in the 2010 anthology of the Georgia Poetry Society.

and friendship of numerous clerics,Catherine too had her frustrations anddissonances with the church hierarchy.Even in the months before her ownlingering death, she strenuouslyobjected to changes made to theSisters of Mercy’s official, approvedrule—and the fact that the final docu-ment had been prepared and present-ed to the Sisters in Italian, not English.As presented in this book, CatherineMcAuley’s conviction that she knewbest for the people she organized andthose she served was worthy ofpatient, good-humored defense.

LAURA M. CHMIELEWSKI is an assistantprofessor of history at Purchase College, StateUniversity of New York. She is the author ofThe Spice of Popery: ConvergingChristianities on an Early AmericanFrontier (University of Notre Dame Press,2012).

Who can forget the bumbling, ineffec-tive teacher with the apt name, Mr.M’Choakumchild? In Bleak House,Dickens took on the corruption ofgovernment and the penal system. Itseems that he was prescient, as we stilllive with these problems, and in somerespects, they have gone unchanged inthe varieties of their corruption andinhumanity since Dickens’s era.

Ruth Richardson’s fascinating newbook takes Oliver Twist as its subjectand tells the story of her recent discov-ery that Dickens grew up only a fewdoors from the major London work-house that inspired both the noveland, likely, the novelist’s passion forsocial justice. Showing a deep under-standing of the history of cities, thehistory of city planning, architecture,sociology and even sight-lines, thisbook is a detailed account of the boyDickens’s neighborhood and its possi-ble influences upon him.

Everyone knows the basic outline ofOliver Twist. Oliver is a poor, illegiti-mate orphan raised in a workhouse(Richardson’s definition of workhousesis: “publicly run institutions funded by

local taxation, whichprovided minimalaccommodation andsustenance for the des-perate poor”), thenapprenticed to anundertaker, who escapesto central Londonwhere he falls in with aband of ruffians led byan unreliable character,the Artful Dodger. Thegang teaches Oliver tolive by his wits on thestreets, including how topick the pockets of

unsuspecting Londoners. Oliver Twist was shocking in its day

for the realism with which it portrayedorphans, criminals and the under-world. With the novel Dickens almostsingle-handedly raised internationalawareness for the cause of taking bet-

and a sense of awe at what she was ableto achieve in her lifetime. Sullivan’sskills in reconstructing a life shinewhen she assesses the forces, inspira-tions and challenges that shapedCatherine’s spiritual life. Described inparticularly beautiful prose is one ofthe animating influences of Catherine’sspirituality: her belief in “humanacceptance of one’s ‘portion of theHoly Cross.’” Sullivan demonstratesthat Catherine lived this belief almostdaily and bore it with unflagging con-viction and grace.

Mary C. Sullivan does not stateexplicitly that Catherine’s story holdslessons for our times. But reading thisbook against the backdrop of recentpronouncements from the Vaticanabout the work and priorities of someAmerican nuns cannot help butinspire parallels. Despite the support


JON M. SWEENEY

THE ARTFUL CRITIC

DICKENS AND THEWORKHOUSE Oliver Twist and the London Poor

Ruth RichardsonOxford University Press. 240p $29.95

My enthusiasm for Charles Dickensbegan in the eighth grade, when alongsuffering English teacher forced usto read A Tale of Two Cities. I remem-ber it as tough going. Much of thevocabulary, historical allusions andhumor required adult explanations.But I also remember thoroughlyenjoying it. Three-plus decades later, Iread and reread him and regret thatmy own kids never experiencedrequired Dickens in school. Sadly, forthem, Oliver Twist is a Disney charac-ter (from the 1997 television movie).

Working people used to crowd thedocks around Boston Harbor the daycopies of a new Dickens novel were

due to arrive. Whatmade this author themost popular of his dayon both sides of theAtlantic? His charac-ters were memorable,his stories well-plotted,but perhaps mostimportant, he spoke tosocial concerns in waysthat no one else, evenand especially in thechurch, did. Dickenswas no Trollope; one ishard-pressed to find aclergyperson in one ofhis novels who is not a windbag orfaulty in some other way. He was nev-ertheless the conscience of his century.

In Nicholas Nickelby, DavidCopperfield and Hard Times, Dickensportrayed the inadequacies of primaryeducation, and he did it very well.

ter care of society’s underprivilegedchildren.

Richardson begins by examininghow Dickens only reluctantly revealedcertain personal details about his lifeto his best friend and first biographer,John Forster. Forster’s biography waspublished in 1870, almost immediate-ly after Dickens’s death. He quotedfrom autobiographical writings thatwere subsequently lost or destroyed,telling us that Dickens spent timeworking as a boy in a factory manufac-turing shoe polish and that his fatherspent time in debtor’s prison. Thesedetails illuminated the novels, includ-ing David Copperfield, as the readingpublic understood that their authorwas writing from firsthand experience.But Richardson asks: If Dickens onlyreluctantly revealed these details to hisbest friend, could it be that he alsodecidedly did not reveal that he’dgrown up in close proximity to a noto-rious workhouse in London? It is thishypothesis that Richardson works outconvincingly.

At dozens of points in Dickens andthe Workhouse, Richardson tells thereader in minute detail about early19th-century London only to wonderwhy Dickens seems to have been silentabout it in his novels, letters and auto-biographical fragments. She makesthese points to explain that Dickenswas familiar with many aspects ofLondon poverty from direct experi-ence. For example, she writes, “Londonis a curious city. One can go a couple ofblocks from an area that is down-at-heel and be in the most exclusivestreets. Local inhabitants know wherethe divisions fall. It may be thatNorfolk Street fell on the wrong sideof the divide…. Dickens’s silence aboutNorfolk Street may show a Londoner’stender sensitivity to such territorialmarkers.” This comes 15 pages aftershe discusses the “social geography” ofNorfolk Street and its general dodgi-ness, and 61 pages after she first tellsus how young Charles’s first childhood

home in London was on the sameNorfolk Street.

Most readers of Oliver Twist wouldnever know details like these or thefact that the novel was Dickens’s wayof protesting a law passed by the Whiggovernment in 1834. The Poor LawAmendment Act radically altered theway Londoners cared for their poor.This new law did away with much ofwhat we today refer to as the “safetynet” set in place by the principles ofChristian charity and made the poormore akin to criminals requiring safehousing in these notorious workhous-es. They were dreadful places. Families

were usually split up upon enteringthem, and forced labor was the rule.Don’t let Disney fool you; Oliver Twistis appropriately brutal at times. In theearly going of Twist, Dickens mentionsthat Oliver might have hanged him-self, if the authorities had allowed himto have a handkerchief. Later on, thedescriptions of the deaths of the poor,from hunger, for instance, are harrow-ing. Dickens was angry, and for goodreasons.

JON M. SWEENEY is an author and criticwhose most recent book is The Pope WhoQuit: A True Medieval Tale of Mystery,Death, and Salvation.


ANGELA ALA IMO O’DONNELL

REDEMPTION SONGSidiom of his readership, enablingGioia to create poems that speakpowerfully of our universal loves andlosses and address our deepestdesires. Pity the Beautiful does all ofthis, offering 35 poems that are com-pelling, haunting and, in fact, beauti-

ful.The narrative arc

traced in the course ofthe volume is one of pil-grimage. Gioia is amodern-day Dante,moving poem by poemthrough the stations ofHell and Purgatory,bringing us to the gatesof a Paradise that ispromised but not yetgained. The poems takeus, inevitably, to darkplaces: the special treat-ments ward of a hospi-tal filled with dying

children, the box of letters written bythe poet’s beloved dead (revenantswho haunt this collection) and, in awry twist, to the shopping mall, withits glittering altars to the false god ofcommerce we (un)wittingly worship.

PITY THE BEAUTIFULBy Dana GioiaGraywolf Press. 80p $15.99

Dana Gioia’s new book of poems, Pitythe Beautiful, offers a series of power-ful meditations on loss and theredemptive power ofbeauty to sustain thesoul through the mostharrowing of hells.This is Gioia’s fourthbook of poems and hisfirst collection in 12years. The long hiatuswas occasioned byGioia’s six-and-a-half-year service as chair ofthe National EducationAssociation underPresident George W.Bush. His long and suc-cessful foray into therealm of public servicehas served Gioia well as a poet. Hissignature public project—to take artout of the realm of academics andaesthetes and restore it to ordinarypeople—brought him into close con-tact with the preoccupations and the

Blessed is the pain that humbles us./Blessed is the distance that bars ourjoy.” The poem gives thanks for ourabsences and privations, obstacles andafflictions, our longings and our griefs,finding in trials that typically lead usto desolation a circuitous route to con-solation. In its biblical diction andinsistent repetition, the poem acts aspowerful incantation, a counter-spellto the sorrow and losses that befall thepoet (and us), the beauty of the lan-guage itself redeeming the agonies itblesses.

Those agonies are considerable,ranging from the superficial wound(the lost moment, the lost argument,the lost illusion) to the scarring (a lostlover, one’s lost youth) to the mosttransformative of all, the lost child. In“Majority,” the final poem of the book,the poet addresses his first son, whodied long ago in infancy. Tracing thetrajectory of a father’s quiet grief overtwo decades, he imagines the son hehas lost come alive in the bodies ofother young boys as they learn toswim, play the piano or simply growinto their own stature. After years ofthis consoling fantasy, the poet finallyrecognizes the necessity of letting go:“How splendid your most/ mundaneaction seemed in these joyful proxies./I often held back tears./ Now you aretwenty-one. Finally it makes sense/that you have moved away/ into yourown afterlife.”

The quality of understatement inGioia’s work, wherein he addresses themost exquisite of griefs in the plainlanguage of ordinary speech, under-scores our helplessness in the face oftime and necessity and yet somehowasserts our extraordinary strength.That a father can speak—or write—such words and live makes us marveland reminds us of the central symbol-ic act of Judeo-Christian tradition.Redemption somehow comes of afather’s and a mother’s sacrifice (weimagine Abraham at the altar, Mary atthe cross), terrible and irrational as

Gioia’s vision, however, is ultimate-ly a hopeful one. An unspoken beliefin the theological gift of grace pervadesthe poems—a suspicion, if not an out-right conviction—that there is a divin-ity that shapes our ends, rough-hewthem how we will. The poems, then,become impassioned acts of beauty,sacramental gestures toward a hiddenGod who might be guessed but notknown, and we the readers accompanyhim on his salvific journey.

Gioia channels a series of powerfulvoices in the poems, as well as speak-ing in his own. Earliest among thesedramatis personae is “The Angel withthe Broken Wing,” a presence whoserves as the tutelary spirit—or theVirgil—of the volume. (In fact, thecover of the book features an angel,suggesting his pre-eminence.)Designed by a master carver in an eraof belief, the angel has outlived hispurpose. Shut away on account of hisspiritual ferocity, desecrated by sol-diers in a by-gone revolution, heappears a broken, impotent relic, “acrippled saint against a painted sky.”

The angel’s uselessness in a secularculture and his obvious imperfectionin a world that worships superficialbeauty have relegated him to the far-thest margins, yet he conveys a capa-cious and syncretic vision, one thatembraces the past and present, thehuman and divine, eternity and now,and speaks with an elegant authoritythat moves us. We look in the wrongplaces for both truth and beauty, theangel warns us. The real sources ofthese are hidden from view.

In “Prayer at Winter Solstice,” oneof several outright prayers in the col-lection, the poet maps the human spir-itual journey as a via negativa. Echoingthe Beatitudes, he delivers a series ofunexpected blessings: “Blessed is theroad that keeps us homeless./ Blessedis the mountain that blocks ourway./... / Blessed are the night and thedarkness that blinds us./ Blessed is thecold that teaches us to feel./ ..../



The National Catholic Weekly

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CAROL K . COBURN

A MEDIA MASTER

GOD’S RIGHT HANDHow Jerry Falwell Made God aRepublican and Baptized theAmerican Right

By Michael Sean WintersHarperOne. 448p $28.99

The name of the Rev. Jerry Falwelltends to excite and/or rile the emo-tions of American Christians in a waythat few other 20th-century clergymencan claim. Michael Sean Winters pro-vides an even-handed and insightfulbiographical exploration of the leg-endary pastor, who began with meagerresources but built a fundamentalistjuggernaut that influenced and shapedAmerican political life in the late 20thcentury and set the stage for the divi-sive political battles of the early 21stcentury.

Describing Falwell’s somewhat dys-functional family and childhood inLynchburg, Va., Winters traces histransformation from the son of anangry, drunk father who professedatheism, into a charismatic ministerwho used biblical literacy and a

this may seem. This father’s renuncia-tion of his own agony concludes withthe assertion of an afterlife, not as apossibility, but as a fact of faith, ownedand claimed, a final reality that “makessense.”

I had occasion to hear Gioia recitethis poem during a reading he gave inNew York recently. As he prefaced hisrecitation with the circumstances ofthe poem, I saw a woman seated infront of me place her arm around theshoulders of the woman beside her,marking her companion as a motherwho had lost a child. I could not takemy eyes from this bereft mother as shelistened to the poem, her head nod-

ding in assent, tears streaming sound-lessly down her cheeks and, strangely, agentle smile on her lips. Here was pub-lic witness to the power of poetry tospeak the unspeakable, articulate forus what we cannot and redeem ourmost piteous losses through beauty.The community poetry makes of ourbrokenness somehow makes us whole.At the end of the reading we all stoodup, applauded and streamed out intothe rainy night, stricken and tri-umphant

.ANGELA ALAIMO O’DONNELL is a poet, pro-fessor of English and associate director of theCurran Center for American Catholic Studiesat Fordham University in New York City.

parochial theology as a weapon againstthe evils of social change and pluralismthat exploded in the 1960s. AsAmericans wrestled with their socialand cultural demons of race, sex andclass inequalities, Falwell watched withhorror and disdain as mainstreamChristianity reinforced calls for socialjustice, while the more homogeneousaspects of Chris-t i a n i t y—pe r s on a lpiety, patriotism andtraditional socialmores—seemed indecline. In his view, itwas time for funda-mentalism, historicallyisolated from the pub-lic realm, to enter thepolitical fray to suc-cessfully influence theprocess to bring Godback into the civic dis-cussion.

Conciding perfectly with the con-servative resurgence in the RepublicanParty, the marriage of traditional con-servative Republicans and social/reli-

gious conservatives, Falwell built alocal, regional and national movement,the Moral Majority, that eventuallyhad influence in the White House,beginning with the Reagan adminis-tration. It embedded itself intoRepublican politics, serving as a modelfor like-minded conservatives and cler-gy who hoped to save the nation fromperceived ruin and liberal policies.

Falwell became a master of thesound bite, whose media savvy madehim the “face of televangelism” and apopular guest for a variety of radio andtelevision talk shows and news pro-grams. Winters provides a nuancedaccount of how Falwell built his evan-gelical empire, which eventually wel-comed political alliances with conser-vative Catholics and conservative Jews.Besides his media and political influ-ence, Falwell created a generation ofwell-educated adversaries to challengethe “liberal elites” by founding LibertyUniversity, an institution that pro-duced some of the first conservativelegal experts. These began to challengethe courts and eventually influencedthe judicial system directly when theywon judicial appointments to state andfederal courts.

Using and promoting his brand ofbiblical and moral certainty, Falwell

never lets facts or logicimpede his analysis orevaluation of the socialor political arena. Theauthor refers to Falwellas “morally rigorous butnot intellectually curi-ous.” Falwell seems tohave been immune, forexample, to the knowl-edge that the Americannation and itsConstitution were creat-ed and written by deistswho were highly influ-

enced by the ideas of theEnlightenment and saw reason as theepitome of the new republic. ForFalwell, patriotism and evangelicalism


draw from the same well, and one can-not exist without the other.

Upon final assessment, Wintersbelieves Falwell’s legacy is “mixed.”Falwell “created a platform for engage-ment,” and provided a generation ofconservative Christians with talkingpoints and national logistics to engageand make changes in the Americanpolitical system. But Winters also cred-its him with transforming theRepublican Party but being too success-ful, “succeeding so thoroughly... they areseen as too white, too southern, tooconservative, and too Christian.”Although Jerry Falwell died in 2007,one has to ask, in light of currentnational dialogues and debates thatseem to be throwbacks to issues thatappeared resolved generations ago, ifFalwell’s legacy isn’t more long-lastingand powerful than Winters believes.

CAROL K. COBURN is professor of Americanreligious history at Avila University, KansasCity, Mo.

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The Society of Jesusin the United States

Responding to theCall of Christ.

Everyone has a great calling.Let us help you discern yours.

“The Church needs you,counts on you and continuesto turn to you with confidence,particularly to reach thegeographical and spiritualplaces where others do notreach or find it difficult to reach.”

Pope Benedict XVI, address tothe Society of Jesus, GeneralCongregation 35, February 21, 2008

www.Jesuit.org

Too Right?The editorial “Obama’s Scandal”(10/22) begs for response. I am per-sonally aware of the pressures on theeditorial board—financial, civil andecclesiastical—in this confoundingelection season. Nonetheless, whyGuantánamo a week before the elec-tion? Why no mention of Mr. Obama’sexecutive order “Ensuring LawfulInterrogations”? Why no mention ofthe administration’s attempts to movethe prisoners to American soil—stri-dently repudiated by public opinion?Why no mention of attempts to bringthe cases before U.S. courts—bullishlyrejected by several courts?

You note that Mr. Latif was cleared

in every issue, I still read it. “DeliverUs,” by Anna Nussbaum Keating(10/22), on the sacred moment of giv-ing birth, should be in the hands ofevery prospective Catholic mother.

But there is so much that is bad, orat least off-putting. So much attentionis paid to women’s complaints (see“Why Not Women?” by Bishop EmilA. Wcela, 10/1). It is the mischief of“liberal” Catholic magazines likeAmerica to sow these seeds of discordand put ideas into the minds of theirreaders.

The editors have surrounded them-selves with yes-men and yes-women; itis all too apparent in letters to the edi-tor. But don’t you realize that flattery isthe sure sign of a false prophet? So if Irefuse to flatter you in this letter, Iwonder if it will be accepted for publi-cation.

PETER MILWARD, S.J.Tokyo, Japan

Becoming Who I AmRe “Whiskey’s Wisdom” (10/8):When Margaret Sill writes, “God isconstantly distilling the essence of whoI truly am,” I think of the story ofRabbi Zusya, who said on hisdeathbed that God was not going toask him why he was not more likeMoses, but why he was not more likeZusya. I’d like to get to that kind ofessence someday. At the very least, I’dlike to simplify. The metaphors ofwater, barley and yeast help. Theimage of whiskey just sitting in a caskalso helps; I don’t have to do anything,just let life and the Spirit happen. Andit really helps to think of all the waste(up to 25 percent) as an “angels’ share.”Wonderful images. Thank you. I’mgoing to use your article in an older-adult Sunday school class.

JOHN KOTREAnn Arbor, Mich.

Spirit Amid Weakness Re “A Change of Season,” by Robert J.Nogosek, C.S.C. (Web only, 10/1):Vatican II was a much needed look at

LETTERS


CLASS IF IEDBooksADULT FAITH STUDY. Faith and reason togeth-er: www.WordUnlimited.com.

PositionsPRINCIPAL, CORPUS CHRISTI SCHOOL,Pacific Palisades, Calif. Corpus Christi School(www.corpuschristi-school.com), a Catholic parishelementary school (K-8), is searching for a dynam-ic and visionary Principal to lead the school com-munity in academics, faith, and child growth anddevelopment. Corpus Christi educates 270 chil-dren in an academic program considered to beamong the finest in the Archdiocese of LosAngeles. Technology is integrated into the teach-ing/learning process through computers, smartboards in every classroom and a groundbreaking1:1 iPad program. The successful applicant will bean experienced Catholic elementary school leaderwith exemplary communication and collaborationskills and an exceptional ability to forge strongrelationships with the Pastor, students, parents,faculty, staff, parishioners, community leaders andhigh school admissions personnel. Applicantsmust be practicing Catholics possessing a stateteaching credential (California or comparable),master’s degree and minimum of 3 to 5 years ofexperience as a Catholic elementary school admin-istrator with a proven track record of accomplish-ment. Position is available July 1, 2013. Salary iscompetitive and commensurate with experience.Qualified candidates should submit electronically:(1) letter of introduction; (2) résumé; (3) state-ment describing “The Role of Today’s CatholicElementary School Administrator in SustainingCatholic Values and Academic Excellence”; (4)names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail

addresses of five professional references to: CorpusChristi School—Principal Search, CatholicSchool Management, Inc., Attn: Jennifer C.Kensel, at [email protected] of applications begins Nov. 1, 2012.

RetreatsBETHANY RETREAT HOUSE, East Chicago,Ind., offers private and individually directed silentretreats, including dreamwork and Ignatian 30days, year-round in a prayerful home setting.Contact Joyce Diltz, P.H.J.C.; Ph: (219) 398-5047; [email protected]; bethanyre-treathouse.org.

NEED SILENCE AND PRAYER? Come to OneHeart, One Soul Spirituality Center, Kankakee,Ill. Peaceful wooded river-front setting with her-mitages, private rooms and meeting facilities. Ph.:(815) 937-2244; www.sscm-usa.org/ohos.html.

America classified. Classified advertisements areaccepted for publication in either the print version ofAmerica or on our Web site, www.americam-agazine.org. Ten-word minimum. Rates are per wordper issue. 1-5 times: $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28; 12-23times: $1.23; 24-41 times: $1.17; 42 times or more:$1.12. For an additional $30, your print ad will beposted on America’s Web site for one week. The flatrate for a Web-only classified ad is $150 for 30 days.Ads may be submitted by e-mail to: [email protected]; by fax to (928) 222-2107; by postal mailto: Classified Department, America, 106 West 56thSt., New York, NY 10019. To post a classified adonline, go to our home page and click on “Advertising”at the top of the page. We do not accept ad copy overthe phone. MasterCard and Visa accepted. For moreinformation call: (212) 515-0102.

“multiple times” between 2004 and2008. Why “Obama’s Scandal” andnot “Mr. Bush’s Scandal”? You pointout that Americans are complicit byindifference, and “we have failed toacknowledge and repent of our sins.”Why not “Americans’ Scandal”?

A summary question, urgent butnot cynical: Why didn’t the editorsjust go ahead and endorse Mr.Romney? The new editorial board’searly work is starkly disappointing.

JOSEPH A. TETLOW, S.J.St Louis, Mo.

Too Left?If my Jesuit community did not sub-scribe to America, I wouldn’t. Yetpartly because I am a Jesuit, and partlybecause I find one or two good articles


America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 14combined issues: Jan. 2–9, 16–23, Jan. 30–Feb. 6, April 16-23,June 4–11, 18–25, July 2–9, 16–23, July 30–Aug. 6, Aug. 13–20,Aug. 27–Sept. 3, Sept. 10–17, Nov. 26–Dec. 3, Dec. 24–31) byAmerica Press, Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019.Periodical postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailingoffices. Business Manager: Lisa Pope. Circulation: (800) 627–9533.Subscriptions: United States, $56 per year; add U.S. $30 postageand GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $56 per year forinternational priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to:America, P.O. Box 293159, Kettering, OH 45429.

who we are as a church, what webelieve and what that means in ourcurrent times. When one actuallylooks at the documents, their beautyand value are hard to dispute. Theaccount by Father Nogosek actuallyhighlights the work of the Spirit in thecouncil despite human weakness. Fiftyyears later we are only beginning to seethe full implementation of the council.Pope John Paul II and Pope BenedictXVI, each in his own way, have madeit their mission to implement thecouncil.

Those of us who are most involvedin the life of the church need to makemore of an effort to understand whatthe council documents actually con-tain and cooperate with our leader-ship, both lay and ordained, to contin-ue to make the vision of the council areality.

GERALD MCGRANEDyersville, Iowa

Return to Earth Re the “Moral Theology Today” issue(9/24): Many American theologiansand the Congregation for the Doctrineof the Faith appear to be ships passingin the night. The theologians areclaiming for themselves the unlimitedright to “explore” doctrines by the sim-ple magic of declaring them question-able. This vision of theology is rela-tivism on steroids.

The C.D.F. is saying to the the-ologians that once they step outsidethe realities described by fundamen-tal, settled doctrine, the explorationitself is destructive. This is becausetheology done publicly in the nameof the church cannot be separatedfrom catechesis. The world perceivesit as catechesis, regardless of the

theologian’s intent. Doctrine matters. It is the well-

spring from which come the ideas welive by. But if the wellspring is closedoff in favor of passing showers, theearth becomes barren and the spiritstarves. The theologians are becom-ing Icarus. They need to recognizethat the earth is a fixed point andreturn to it.

JAMES CRAFTONKettering, Ohio

Call to Perfection Having read America’s religious edu-cation issue (9/10), I realized thatthe perspective of a younger person(I am 17) might be advantageous inbringing about necessary changes inreligious education. As a Catholicstudent in a public school system, Iam surrounded by atheists, agnosticsand nonpracticing Catholics. I have

an intimate knowledge of why peoplemy age choose not to be Catholic.

The church needs to give youngpeople good reasons to be Catholic:first, by encouraging young Catholicsto find an answer to “What is the pur-pose of human life?”; second, by high-lighting the faith of its devoted follow-ers, which will perplex the staunchestatheist; and third, by discussing moral-ity in religion classes to help peopleunderstand that morality is universaland objective. One of the main purpos-es of Catholicism is to make it easier tobe a moral individual, so any personwho wants to be moral should alsowant to be Catholic. If we do thesethree things, we will create the nextgeneration of Catholics who will bringthe Catholic Church closer to the per-fection to which God calls us.

JOSEPH GRANEYLouisville, Ky.

WITHOUT GUILE

CARTOON BY H

ARLEY SCHWADRON

“...and we also thank the F.D.A. for this genetically engineered food.”

To send a letter to the editor we recommend using the link that appears belowarticles on America’s Web site, www.americamagazine.org. This allows us to con-sider your letter for publication in both print and online versions of the magazine.Letters may also be sent to America’s editorial office (address on page 2) or bye-mail to: [email protected]. They should be brief and include the writ-er’s name, postal address and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited forlength and clarity.

he church comes to the closeof the liturgical year by cele-brating the solemnity of

Christ the King. As Blessed John PaulII once reflected, this solemnity is “asynthesis of the entire salvific mystery.”The Scriptures we use are both tri-umphal and paradoxical. In our firstreading, from the Book of Daniel,Daniel envisions the “son of man com-ing on the clouds of heaven, receivingeverlasting dominion, glory and king-ship.” This image is also reflected inthe second reading from Revelation:“Behold, he is coming amid theclouds.”

But our Gospel reading, whichbrings us through a portion of Jesus’trial with Pilate, presents us with aparadox: the king is simultaneously thecrucified one. This is a regular theme inJohn’s Gospel, where the cross is para-doxically Jesus’ place of glory (17:1).The cross is the place where he revealshis divine status (8:28) and draws all tohimself (12:32).

Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the kingof the Jews?” He responds, “My king-dom does not belong to this world.”Jesus’ response is an instance of a kindof dualism in John, where sharp divi-sions are often raised, such as spiritversus flesh, light versus darkness.Given this kind of framework, Satan isthe “ruler of this world” (12:31, 16:11)and Jesus of another. These contrastsplunge us into making a decision on

where we stand: With the flesh or thespirit? With darkness or light? Withthe ruler of this world or the king ofGod’s world? While the language issharp, it has to be understoodrightly. This is not a decisionbetween our bodies and oursouls or between the creat-ed world and heaven.Indeed, “The earth is theLord’s and all it holds” (Ps24:1), and “God so lovedthe world that he gave his onlyson” ( Jn 3:16). Rather, it is a deci-sion about what rules our lives: sinand evil or virtue and Christ. Thisfeels like another paradox: to rejectthe world (worldliness) is to lovecreation, to renounce the flesh (dis-ordered desires) is to honor thebody, to reject the ruler of this worldis to live here and now as a free childof God.

There is plenty to reflect on here.When Pope Pius XI instituted thisfeast, he wanted to address a worldsuffering under the illusions of suchfalse lords as consumerism, free-mar-ket exploitation, nationalism, secular-ism and mass injustice. In contrast to“strife and discord and hurrying alongthe road to ruin and death,” he wrotein his encyclical “Quas Primas” (1925,No. 4), he envisioned “a dominion by aKing of Peace who came to reconcileall things, who came not to be minis-tered unto but to minister” (No. 20)with us “as instruments of justice untoGod” (No. 33).

Paradoxically, to follow the saviorwhose “kingdom does not belong to

this world” is to engage the worlddeeply and lovingly. Pope John Paul IIreferred to the “interior dynamism” ofthe kingdom as “leaven and a sign ofsalvation to build a more just, more fra-ternal world, one with more solidarity,inspired by the evangelic values of hopeand of the future happiness to which weare all called” (Address, Nov. 26, 1989).Here the pope reflects the teachings ofthe Second Vatican Council that onthis earth, the kingdom is already pre-

sent and that expectations of“a new earth must notweaken but rather stimu-late our concern for culti-vating this one.... Whenthe Lord comes it will bebrought into full flower”(“Pastoral Constitution

on the Church in theModern World,” No. 39).


Living the KingdomCHRIST THE KING (B), NOV. 25, 2012

Readings: Dn 7:13–14; Ps 93:1–5; Rv 1:5–8; Jn 18:33–37

I saw one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven (Dn 7:13)

T

PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE

• Consider ways you live the kingdom.

• Ask the Lord to reveal what’s holiestabout you.

• Consecrate each person you meet todayto God.

ar

t:

ta

d d

uN

Ne

THE WORD

PETER FELDMEIER is the Murray/BacikChair of Catholic Studies at the University ofToledo.

There is an additional image intoday’s readings. The Book ofRevelation teaches us that Christ hasmade us all into a kingdom of priestsfor God. The First Letter of Peter saysthe same as we all “offer spiritual sacri-fices” (2:5). Within Christ’s kingdom,we consecrate and sanctify the world,offering it to God through the highpriesthood of Christ. The world is ouraltar; and our acts of love, justice andcompassion are gifts we place on thataltar, made sacred by our intention andby God’s presence within them. Theuniverse is holy, and so are we.

PETER FELDMEIER

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