Inside
NCR Searching for sense up above
We have no words adequate to explain
what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado, just as there are no words
to explain the horrors of Kosovo.
Children leave flowers, messages, embrace, pray, weep. Making
gestures in the void beyond words. Our conversations reflect the media
commentaries groping and asking. One of the recurring words is
senseless. There is sense but it is beyond us. Despite all our progress
we dont know ourselves or our world well, not yet.
Our sympathies and prayers go out to all those affected by the
Colorado tragedy. Tomorrow well ask what failed and what can be done. And
well try again, try harder to be good humans. Meanwhile, we could use
light and help from on high.
The welfare to work crusade, it
turns out, has been better public relations than social success, as Arthur
Jones, editor at large, shows in his story (see also editorial).
And word is getting out that the non-rich have been conned again.
A front-page story in The New York Times April 20, tells of Michelle
Crawford who went from 10 years of welfare to regular work and was paraded
around Wisconsin by Gov. Tommy Thompson, who told her he plans to run for
president. But gradually we learn that Crawford, at $8.20 an hour, not to
mention other shortfalls, is having a tough time in Thompsons new
non-welfare paradise.
A recent article in The Boston Globe relayed the euphoria
propagated in our national media. The astonishing success and giddy
exuberance of the U.S. economy this decade, intones the Wall Street
Journal. The unparalleled strength of the economy and the dominance
of the world economy stage by American corporations, The New York
Times calls it. And more of the same.
But its not true, and somebody needs to say so. While some
politicians made political hay out of the half-baked welfare to work slogan,
the Catholic lobbying group Network set out to examine the reality. Its report,
outlined in the Jones story, deserves the nations attention.
This is not a whining reminder of the homeless under a bridge near
you. Its much closer to home.
The underpinnings of the market are slowly getting whittled
away, the Globe quotes an expert. The same can be said about
the human condition, the paper goes on. A Boston group called United for
a Fair Economy reports that the boom has enriched only the top 5 percent
of households in America. An astounding 95 percent of households have seen a
decline in net worth. That should shake us up. Furthermore, the
richest 1 percent of U.S. households now hoard 40.1 percent of Americas
wealth. That is double the 19.9 percent of wealth the top 1 percent held in
1976. Welcome to reality. Wrote economist Lester Thurow, The great
American middle class has become a nonparticipant in the American
dream.
Money does matter. NCR plans a series of occasional
articles that monitor the nations material success: whether it is getting
spread around or whether it is subverted by greed at a time when there should
be enough for all.
With Northern Ireland finally poised
on the brink of peace, the March 15 murder of Rosemary Nelson was not only a
tragedy but a warning. Nelson, a lawyer from Lurgan in County Armagh, was a
high-profile defender of human rights whose clients, including IRA members,
were not always the most popular members of the community. She had received
threats, including death threats, from the police, the Royal Ulster
constabulary. She also had death threats from the local Orange Order for her
defense of the residents of the now notorious Gervaghy Road along which, though
it is an entirely Catholic enclave, the Orangemen insist on marching and have
placed the surrounding Drumcree area under a bizarre permanent siege until they
get permission to march there in memory of the victory of King Billy at the
Battle of the Boyne, which was in 1690. It smells like the Serbian claims on
Kosovo.
A bomb attached to her car exploded and killed Nelson. The police
are investigating. This is seen by the minority community as a bad joke. The
police have a dismal record on human rights in Northern Ireland -- a telling
example can be found in John Stalkers book The Stalker Affair: The
Shocking True Story of Six Deaths and a Notorious Cover-Up, reviewed by
NCR in its Sept. 9, 1988, issue.
Now the law offices of Rosemary Nelson are circulating a
Petition for justice calling for an independent United Nations
investigation and inquiry into the circumstances of Nelsons death.
The words of the petition are as follows:
In the aftermath of the assassination of Lurgan solicitor
Rosemary Nelson, we, the undersigned, call upon the United Nations to undertake
a fully independent investigation and enquiry into all the circumstances
surrounding Rosemary Nelsons death.
Readers are invited to draw up their own petition forms, to
circulate, sign them and send them to: Offices of Rosemary Nelson, Solicitor,
8a William St., Lurgan, Craigavon, Co. Armagh BT 66 6JA, Northern Ireland.
With this issue we inaugurate a new
feature, Moments in Time, a contribution of Gary Macy, historical
theologian at the University of San Diego and former chair of the department of
theology and religious studies there. Macys favorite pastime is sleuthing
around Europe on the trail of dusty medieval documents that shed light on
issues and controversies in the contemporary church.
For more about Macys lively career, return to our profile in
the Jan. 9, 1998, issue. For a taste of what his occasional pieces will be
adding to our editorial mix. Come to think of it, the word taste in
light of his contribution for this issue may be a groaningly bad pun.
The drawing was done by our own ever-whimsical Pat Marrin, editor
of Celebration.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, April 30,
1999
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