There is a living theology abroad in Latin America, with its own characteristics, its own conditions and its own needs. The development of this theology is of interest for what it means to our Church and our continent, and what it may provide as reflection upon the efforts of the Church in the only predominantly Catholic area of the so-called “third world.”

Few periods in history have left observers more unsettled and anxious than our contemporaries about the sufficiency of prevailing moral and political diagnoses. The din of public debate drowning out quiet thought and reflection may explain some of the confusion. Yet the strident clashes that break out between right and left, and with increasing frequency and fervor between radicals and liberals, compound but have not created the problem. Instead, the core of the problem appears to be a widespread questioning sweeping across society and sowing seeds of doubt about the sufficiency of all past and present social and political doctrines. For the first time in their lives more and more people express uncertainty that any prevailing doctrine meets our needs and on this there is less of a generational gap than is sometimes assumed.

Whenever Americans have gone to war, the problem presented by the conscientious objector (CO) has always arisen. Various solutions have been tried but until the present war in Vietnam the problem has always focused on men who were opposed to bearing arms in any war. Today, as in the past, there is no dearth of such men, but in addition to the traditional pacifist, a new type of CO has arisen—the selective conscientious objector (SCO) whose scruples do not extend to all wars, but only to particular wars that fail to meet certain moral norms. These norms are usually derived from the just war doctrine.2 The SCO has figured prominently in several important cases in the federal courts. He raises the interesting constitutional question of whether the government's present policy of exempting from military service only those conscientious objectors who oppose all wars is not a violation of the free exercise of religion of the “just warriors” who oppose only certain wars.

When the American people wrote and ratified the Constitution they were the heirs of a tradition of opposition to a standing army. The tradition was derived from tales of Stuart tyranny and was strengthened by the recent victorious contest with the professional soldiery of Great Britain and Germany in the War for Independence. This attitude was carried into the Constitutional Convention and the ratification controversy. Even the friends of the Constitution were doubtful of the military power it granted to the Congress and where friends of the Constitution had reservations, enemies had hostility. Opponents of the Constitution almost unanimously attacked the army clause. Some attacked the power to raise and support an army because they preferred to rely upon the state militia. Others accepted the necessity of a national force but thought of it as a dangerous tool which should be fenced about with legal limitations.

Congress in 1971 will again turn to the renewal and extension of the much-amended and much-contested Sugar Act. Certain changes from the last go-round are worth noting. A new administration is in the White House and Harold Cooley, to whom a journalist once attributed “princely power” in the area, no longer presides over the House Agriculture Committee. But in this area, as in so many others, the changes are not nearly as striking as the continuities. Cooley has been succeeded by the likeminded W. R. Poage, and turnovers in the Department of Agriculture have scarcely reached the Sugar Policy division of the Stabilization and Conservation Service. More importantly, the groups and decision-making bodies in the area have changed little in their interests, their relative power, or their modes of interaction. It is the intention of this essay to tell the story of the 1965 renewal of the Sugar Act in such a way as to illumine the nature of this policy-making situation, with particular attention to the lawmaking roles of the congressional committees that handle sugar legislation, House Agriculture and Senate Finance. A by-product of the analysis should be an understanding of the form in which the Act comes up for renewal in 1971 and of how and why it got that way.

If eamon de Valera were an ordinary politician, the question of to what extent his behavior conformed to any given principle would be insignificant, for we expect all ordinary politicians to clothe their actions with high principled rhetoric. But Eamon de Valera is more than a politician. He has become a nearly mythic figure in Irish political history. Quite consciously, he has contrived to present himself as the premier statesman of post-British Ireland. De Valera is different from any politician presently on the North American or British political stage, for he has projected his actions not on the silver screen of the possible, but against the hard wall of principle.

Valery has written that “A great man is one who leaves others after him in a state of embarrassment.” Certainly, the eighteen-month-old era of aprés de Gaulle has been characterized by an unexpected sense of confidence, not the oft-predicted chaos. But embarrassment persists. The enigma of de Gaulle himself remains. We have many and varied chronicles of his long political career. We have his speeches, his early books, his war memoirs and the first volume of his new Mémoires d'Espoir. But we have only begun the long process of sifting and reconciling the varied and contradictory facts at hand. The final analysis, as with so many other political leaders who left an ambiguous mark upon their contemporaries, will be left to the judgment of history—So subjective, yet so precious to de Gaulle himself.

Institutions of higher learning fulfill important functions and are, in a sense, symbols of universalism. The future of mankind may depend on the orientation and effectiveness of their work.

The forces of universalism confront many problems today. The universal, regional and technical international organizations have many uses, but are handicapped by and reflect the shortcomings of a political system based on so-called sovereign states. This system has become unrealistic in the age of radio, television, rapid air transportation, nuclear power, missiles, communication satellites and space ships, and in an age of world-wide problems such as hunger, unemployment and enormous population growth. Other circumstances impede the development of a co-operative world society. Besides political and ideological rifts, there is the North-South chasm caused by important differences and conflicts of interest between the developed and developing nations. Instead of concentrating on farsighted policies and meaningful co-operation, the developed nations have produced dangerous weapons systems and are, in addition, polluting the air, water and soil as if driven to self-destruction by an evil spirit. They may also—often with the purest motives—run the risk of simply exporting these problems to the Third World under the guise of development aid, in the mistaken belief that industrial and technological 'growth' and educational systems as we know them in Western countries constitute a panacea for the ills of developing societies.