Insight on the News

Pentateuch in Russian

● The Communist revolution in Russia took place in 1917. Since then no Bibles have been published there. Now, Viktor N. Titov, deputy chairman of the Soviet Union’s Council for Religious Affairs, has announced that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, will be reproduced in Russian. Some religious leaders view this as a sign of “detente” extending to the religious sphere. It remains to be seen in what quantity these copies become available and how the government regulates their distribution. At any rate, a little is better than nothing.

High Cost of Sainthood

● Next month, on September 14, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Elizabeth Seton will formally be declared the first U.S.-born “saint.” The road to sainthood has been long and costly.

In 1882, Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore began pushing Mrs. Seton’s candidacy. Since then, thousands of workers have been involved, including some 12,000 nuns. As “The Wall Street Journal” reports, these have raised money and labored in a project that has “been more arduous than any political campaign and certainly just as expensive as most.” Priest Francis X. Murphy, an authority on Catholic sainthood, “believes that millions of dollars were spent on Mother Seton’s cause.” Why all the expense?

Those backing the candidacy had to pay for Italian translations of all Mrs. Seton’s personal documents so that Vatican theologians could study these and see if the candidate had any ‘serious personal flaws.’ Claims of miracles attributed to her were reviewed by Church investigators and then by doctors. All of these had to be paid. The “beatification” ceremony (an intermediate step in making a Catholic saint) brought a $10,000-rental fee for the use of St. Peter’s Basilica. The candidate’s body was exhumed and bones were removed (one went to the pope; fragments of others were boxed and sent to those who labored most on behalf of the candidate’s sainthood). This, too, cost money. The actual canonization ceremony in Rome will involve “enormously expensive pageantry.” The bill goes to the new saint’s supporters. They have $100,000 set aside for that.

But more than money is involved in becoming a “saint.” Despite all efforts, a candidacy can fail if it “doesn’t fit into the world political situation,” according to priest Francis Litz, who is working on sainthood for two other American candidates. The nearness of Mrs. Seton’s canonization to the U.S. bicentennial in 1976 seems more than coincidental to many observers. Joel Wells, editor of a Catholic quarterly, says that the Vatican’s choice of Mother Seton is designed to “lift sagging morale in the U.S. church,” but he doubts that it will.

Talk Peace​—Arm for War

● Leaders of the world’s “superpowers” periodically issue calls for reduction of arms and similar steps to assure peace. “Ceilings” limiting the number of nuclear missiles have been agreed on by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. More recently, pacts to outlaw techniques for changing the weather for military purposes and also to ban new systems of mass destruction have been urged. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev recently described these latter as “more terrifying” than existing nuclear weapons. But along with all the talk, what actually goes on?

Last year alone the world spent more than $210 billion on arms​—most of this by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to build arms stockpiles that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute terms “wildly in excess of any conceivable need, military or political, of either power.” The U.S. now has over 8,000 strategic weapons deployed and the Soviet Union has 2,800 missiles (individually more destructive than those of the U.S.). The weakest of these is at least three times as powerful as the bomb that devastated Hiroshima, Japan; some are 16,000 times as powerful! Yet, research, production and deployment of still more weapons goes right on. Speaking of the “losing race between human needs and military madness,” an editorial in the New York “Post” asks: “How much hunger in the world could be overcome if sanity prevailed?”