On March 16, 1998, the Holy See’s Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews published "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah." This document is only one of a long series of statements that have come from official Catholic sources. In 1990 the same commission issued the "Declaration of Prague," in which it acknowledged that some traditional Catholic teaching and practice had contributed to the spread of anti-Semitism in Western society.

In the movie "Fiddler on the Roof," the villagers of the Jewish enclave Anatevka, which is being overrun by Orthodox Christians, strive to maintain the traditions of their forebears, which have shaped their lives and given meaning to their society. But the new culture is too aggressive, too sophisticated to be ignored or resisted by the ingrained traditions of Anatevka. In the end, the existence of the Jews is "balanced as precariously as a fiddler on the roof."

I am grateful to the conference organizers for suggesting the word "glimpse" in the title of this talk, because I have to admit at the outset that I do not have a vision of a fully formed new feminism rising like Botticelli’s Venus in all her glory from the sea. But that word "glimpse" got me thinking about the story of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy. Moses, as you know, never did enter the promised land. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, however, he "glimpsed it from afar." And that glimpse was so satisfying that he died happy.

When high priests of America’s political right and left as articulate as William F. Buckley Jr., founding editor of National Review, and Anthony Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed page, peddle the same drug legalization line, it’s time to shout caveat emptor--let the buyer beware. For the boomlet to legalize drugs like heroin, cocaine and marijuana that they--and magazines like National Review and New York--are trying to seed among the right and left ends of the political spectrum, is founded in fiction, not fact. And it’s our children who could suffer long-lasting, permanent damage.