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The Word
I Long to Be in That Number
Dianne Bergant
Too often saints are depicted as people who are so extraordinary that we could never identify with them Their commitment to God and virtue is unwavering their trust in divine providence unshakable and their unselfish service of others puts everything that we do to shame Such a depiction is unfor
Editorials
Exit From Hell
The Editors
How long, O Lord, how long? As blood continues to flow, this prayer must be daily on the lips of both Israelis and Palestinians. After two weeks of the latest Israeli military invasion of northern Gaza, more than 90 Palestinians lay dead, hundreds maimed or wounded, most of them civilians. Every day
Observations on Abortion and Politics
John Langan
For the last generation, no issue has generated more sustained controversy, and none has produced more anguished appeals to conscience than has abortion. In churches, courts and political conventions, as well as in families, professional associations and universities, it is a reliable “sign of
Faith in Focus
Taste of Faith
Hugh Gallagher
Raised Catholic, I went to church on Sundays and served as an altar boy. I was spiritual, but I sought an intensity of experience I did not find in the Catholic tradition. Communion was my main problem. If this wafer truly were the body and blood of God’s Son (so I reasoned), I would receive i
Abortion & Politics: From October 25, 2004
John Langan
In These Pages: From Oct. 25, 2004
Books
Mass Killer
Robert F. Walch
The influenza pandemic that erupted in 1918 was unlike any other disaster in history Estimates set the number as high as 100 million deaths around the world as influenza killed more people in a single year than the Black Death did over a century in the Middle Ages Granted the plague of the 1300
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Pope Asks for Greater Unity in U.S. ConferencePope John Paul II asked U.S. bishops to engage in frank dialogue and informed discussion to build greater unity and consensus within the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In a message to New York bishops, the pope praised the bishops’ conference
A Catholic Family Story
Patrick J. Ryan, S.J.
Excommunication is much in the news these days. A few American bishops have declared that any politician who supports the so-called “right” to legalized abortion may not take Communion in their particular dioceses. Such a ban from Communion is the visible part of what excommunication mea
Books
Through Nature and Spirituality
Joseph J. Feeney
Diamonds and dross compete in this book all for a good cause The diamonds the sparkling poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins along with some less known but splendid prose The dross the preface introductions and commentary which are inaccurate overreaching and based on outmoded sources The good c
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Vatican Tells U.N. War Did Not Make World SaferAddressing the United Nations, a leading Vatican official said the war in Iraq did not make the world safer and that defeating terrorism will require multilateral cooperation that goes beyond short-term military operations. Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, t
Where Do We Go From Here?
Thomas P. Rausch
The scandal caused by the sexual abuse of young people by members of the Catholic clergy has made the laity take a new and critical look at the way their church operates. While the vast majority of Catholics have remained loyal to the church, many have a clear sense that something is seriously wrong
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Posture, Not Policy

I have become increasingly confused by the demand of Catholic thinkers like Germain Grisez (Catholic Politicians and Abortion Funding, 8/30) that we should be steadfastly opposed to abortion. I am appalled at the widespread practice of abortion in the United States, but I find Grisez’s arguments, like those of many church officials, abstract to the point of emptiness.

Does being opposed to abortion mean that they wish to re-criminalize abortion? If, as Grisez suggests, abortion was wrongly made legal by an act of raw judicial power, I assume he would wish it made illegal by reversing that decision. But a simple reversal of Roe v. Wade would not have the effect of making abortion illegal. Roe undercut state legislation on abortion by claiming a constitutionally protected privacy right. Absent the constitutional ruling, the issue would be back with the states who have primary jurisdiction over criminal law. It is almost certain that in the absence of Roe, some state legislatures would establish laws legalizing abortion.

Specific legislation might range from highly restrictive to more permissive. In short, the realistic outcome of reversing Roe would not be the abolition of abortion as a legal option within the United States. Women seeking permissive abortion conditions would choose a particular state. Easy access to abortion would be as it was in the good/bad old days, when couples went to Reno for a quick divorce.

To make abortion illegal in the United States in an effective way, one would need a constitutional amendment banning the procedure, an act akin to the Prohibition amendment. There are those who opt for such an amendment. All one can say is that it is quite improbable that any such amendment could be approved, given the general if troubled support for some sort of legal abortions within the United States.

But let us suppose that somehow abortion would be made illegal. What would the legal penalty be for violating the prohibition? One would think, judging from the rhetoric about the killing of the innocent (Grisez), that abortion must be tantamount to murder, or at least voluntary manslaughter. Would the normal, severe penalties be exacted in that case? Against the abortion provider? Against the woman? If the death penalty or long prison sentences seem too severe and one settled for fines or limited jail terms, what does that say about the moral/legal status of abortion? If not murder, what? Do circumstances count?

Proclaiming opposition to abortion without examining the very real and difficult problems of specific legislation that are presumed to follow from that stance may warm the moral sensibility, but it remains a posture, not a policy.

Dennis O’Brien

Books
Fervent Servant
Daniel J. Harrington
Now that the recent flood of books about the quest of the historical Jesus has subsided somewhat it seems inevitable that New Testament scholars should turn to the quest of the historical Paul Two new books about Paul represent serious attempts to write a scholarly biography of Paul and place his
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Smoking began for me at 16. My friends started then too, and because it was forbidden on school grounds, the incentive of rule-breaking made it all the more attractive. After starting with Pall Malls and then Marlboros, I went on to Salems in graduate school, where any nonsmoking student was viewed
Columns
Immoral Bingeing
Terry Golway
What do you call a politician who supports incentives to buy and drive fuel-efficient vehicles, even if they happen to be made in Japan? One can easily imagine Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California curling his lips and referring to such a goody-goody colleague as, well, a girlie man. Schwarze
The Deep Mystery of God
Michael McCauley
The Hubble Telescope recently peered as deep into space as humans have ever looked. Officials of the Space Telescope Science Institute traced light that has been speeding toward the space we now occupy for 13 billion years, to within a stone’s throw of the beginning of the universe. In order t
Books
The Great Western Upheaval
John W. OMalley
ldquo In its field it is the best book ever written rdquo That was the most enthusiastic of the many enthusiastic assessments that greeted MacCulloch rsquo s book when it appeared in Britain last year It is an assessment with which I agree The book is a monumental achievement that takes readers
The Word
God, Am I Good!
Dianne Bergant
We probably all have long lists of things we would never do I would never rob a bank or attack a helpless person or run off with the pool man It is beneath my dignity to cheat on a test or purchase clothing I intend to wear only once and then return for refund God am I good But then I have n
Editorials
The Catholic Mind
The Editors
In a famous essay published in Thought in 1955, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis lamented the lack of intellectual achievement on the part of second- and third-generation American Catholics. Conditions have changed markedly since Ellis wrote. Today Catholics can be found on the faculties of the best American
What Has the Charter Accomplished?
Harry J. Flynn
When the Catholic Bishops of the United States adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in June 2002, they included a provision calling for a review of the charter in two years. An Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse (A.H.C.S.A.), established for this purpose by the U.S. Conf