COMMENTARY: Is Henry Hyde our new John the Baptist?

c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ There has to be a point at which critical moral mass is reached in America and, as in a Hollywood disaster movie, the nation disgorges large chunks of itself into outer space. Our biggest problem is that we don’t have anybody to play the Bruce Willis role, that […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ There has to be a point at which critical moral mass is reached in America and, as in a Hollywood disaster movie, the nation disgorges large chunks of itself into outer space.

Our biggest problem is that we don’t have anybody to play the Bruce Willis role, that is, the strong, morally informed observer, who first warns of the danger and then rescues the nation from it.


We would even settle for someone to take on the Alan Greenspan part, overseeing the Moral Reserve of our Spirit rather than the federal reserve of our cash and commerce.

Perhaps we could settle for somebody comparable to Paul Tagliabue, commissioner of the National Football League, who monitors that sport’s rules and regulations and applies its practical ethics. He actually dares to say there is such a thing as right and wrong and to issue fines and penalties.

Has the nation’s moral concern been drained away by so focusing it on the ambiguous calls of football referees that there is little left with which to evaluate the ambiguous morality at the center of our civic life?

If the machines hooked up to the economy send out the slightest blips that something may be wrong, the ever attentive Greenspan, invested by us with a secular infallibility, clears his throat and issues a warning that the markets quickly heed.

In short, speak but the word, Mr. Greenspan, and our balance sheets shall be healed.

But let the Commandments be shattered on the White House steps into more pieces than they were at the base of Sinai and everybody, including those charged with defending our public morality, smiles and readily accepts the P.R. handout explanation: The Commandments aren’t being smashed, they are being de-constructed to be more”accessible.” This also allows us to inspect our scale of values. Cash is king in America. Wherever money is concerned, we heed alerts and take action immediately. Indeed, we pay more attention to smoke alarms than moral alarms.

As far as our values go, there is nothing in second place, which may explain why, at a time of moral crisis, we lack a common voice or conviction on how to honor the moral order at least as much as we do the financial order.


In fact, however, we aren’t even scheduling auditions for someone, or some group, who could slash across poll results as boldly as John the Baptist did the dead stalks of the debased religious sentiments of his time. If we held a casting call for this job of Prophet-in-Residence, would anybody apply?

Those who remind us of our moral responsibility, such as Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, have been hurried to the same beheading that was the fate as John the Baptist.

Hyde, a Roman Catholic who speaks for his religious tradition when the bishops themselves are conspicuously silent, has been one of the few leaders who have been willing to sacrifice their political futures in order to preserve the rule of law and our moral standards in the present.

His manner has been judicious and unhurried, his moral sense unassailable, and his pronouncements ethically lucid. The man we have been looking for, perhaps, or why else would the White House Death Ray have been turned on him? Why has he been ridiculed, caricatured, called an old crank, and reportedly has popularity ratings lower than those of pornographer Larry Flynt?

Because that is the fate but also the sure sign of a genuinely moral man in this last dark corner of the century. One could hardly miss the strange juxtaposition of images in the last week.

While Hyde stood in the public forum trying to raise the conscience of the country, the president was holding the pope’s arm and grinning knowingly over the heads of the country’s Catholic bishops. No need to behead them. They are not going to say anything anyway.


DEA END KENNEDY

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