by Tom Wicker.
A handful of American thinkers several decades ago sought to revitalize political liberalism by ridding it of platitudes and cant, and instilling an appreciation of the real world’s contrarieties. Over the years this critique of liberalism has been distorted and misinterpreted, and in our own time it has been used—wrongly—to justify the attitudes and policies called to mind by the term “neoconservative.”It is time, the author argues, to recover the original ideas.
When the bishops' synod on the Christian family convened in Rome last fall, there were hopes that the Church would reform its position on such crucial issues as birth control and divorce. But, despite pleas from liberal prelates around the world, the Vatican-dominated synod reaffirmed the precedence of law over compassion.