shows ranks of these young peoplecresting a rise, winding down a hill-side and singing to a haunting guitarmelody: "You gotta be a baby to goto heaven."

Your judgment on all this will de-pend in part on what you think ofJesus Himself. The dangerous limita-tions of these new evangelicals areobvious enough. Only time will tellwhether they can be outgrown. Cer-tainly Arthur Blessitt's converts haveto discover that getting high on Jesusis no insurance against fatigue andboredom. In fact, the Children of Godare critical of this hunger for "highs,"and their stiff regimen has other aims.The Jesus Trip has a poignant scenein which a sobbing young man in jeanstestifies to his desire for the Lord,while some Children of God pray withhim. But if he chose to join one oftheir colonies, he was put through atough, antihumanistic training devotedlargely to austere living and the mem-orization of Bible verses. ProfessorEUwood was told by a young womanwho is the daughter of David Berg, theChildren's founder, that tbey are in-deed absolute fundamentalists and thatthey believe every generation needs agroup tbat "drops out all the way."

Fanatical? Yes. But the tone hassomething in common with Francisof Assisi, and with Teresa of Avila,who wrote in her Way of Perfection:"O miserable world! Give heartythanks to God, daughters, that youhave left so wretched a place." I amreminded of what a learned priest withwide experience in spiritual directiononce said: "The saints certainly don'tact the way we do. So somebody iscrazy. Either they're crazy or we'recrazy."

Of course, there is a valid distinc-tion between holy crazies and justplain crazy crazies. But in things ofthe spirit it is wise not to apply thatdistinction too quickly. In any case,those who confess that Jesus is theOne who is authentically God andauthentically man can hardly watchThe Jesus Trip without suspecting thatthese American young people have bada genuine encounter with Him. Whatthat may finally mean, both for themand the nation, remains to be seen.

iJOHN w. DONOHUE, s. J-, is an as-sociate editor of AMERICA.] •

JOHN F.X. SHEEHAN

Amnesty forPresident Nixon?

Another six months of harassment, followed bypunishment, might be good for Mr. Nixon. But the

soul and psyche of the country cannot bear it

Nearly three decades ago, a rathersober and unimaginative Republicanfound himself in the center of awhirlwind. While the self-righteousamong us—always large in number—were anticipating the Nuremberg trialswith pleasure. Senator Robert Taftsuggested that there might be a biggerissue at stake than the guilt or inno-cence of the Nazis at the bar. He wor-ried aloud that there might be no legaljustification for the trials and arguedthat to do things without legal justifi-cation is a sorry business.

The American public recently hasfound itself repeatedly invited to"think the unthinkable": the impeach-ment of the President. Sometimesthinking unthinkable thoughts servesto prevent unthinkable realities. Butthinking is hard work, often donebadly or incompletely. In the presentproblem, I suggest, another truism hasbeen ignored: to do something simplybecause there is a legal justification forit can be a sorry business.

For the record, I am a registeredDemocrat who, while voting frequentlyfor Republicans, has never voted forMr. Nixon. I make no case for his guiltor innocence in l'affaire Watergate.My argument holds if he is guilty upto the tip of the most famous nosein American politics.

I believe American politics is on aperilous course, leading toward Presi-dential paralysis. "Ab!," say today's

self-righteous, "this is precisely thepoint we are making. If Nixon has ashred, of the patriotism he so oftenavows, he need only resign and allwill be well again." This is a simplesolution. Like most simple solutionsit is, sadly, false.

To move toward impeachment evenwith grave cause (and I am willing topostulate grave cause for a moment)would be to open Pandora's box. Forthere exists in the nation today a num-ber of factors that the wisest of theFounding Fathers could never haveforeseen. One of them is tbe existenceof a spirit of "floating anarchy" amonga certain, let us say, five percent of theAmerican population. The s pirit is afloating movement since it adheres onprinciple to neither the Left nor Right.This point is to be stressed. It mayseem to some that joy in anarchy is aspecial prerogative of the Left. Butthis is a notion that affords false com-fort to Left and Right alike. If it hasrecently been associated with the Left,it has been because the Left is "Out."Should the Left succeed in replacinga Right or Centrist President, today's"Ins" would then be "Outs," and theLeft would discover that anarchy isa game any number may play.

What an anarchist five percent cando today is to destroy a President. Itcannot—by democratic means—electa President likely to satisfy its feltneeds. Using a route other than im-

America / August 4, 1973 67

peachment, the five percent hastenedthe destruction of Lyndon Johnson.Then they sat at home rather thanvote for Hubert Humphrey. Thus, in1968, did they make Mr. Nixon Pres-ident.

In recent decades, with the rise ofthe mass media and their insatiableappetite for "hard," i.e., exciting, news,the five percent came to have powerbeyond their numbers. This flowedfrom no conspiracy among the media,no secret covenants; but the result wasnonetheless the same. Their power wasalso enhanced by the development of asteadily more complex and consequent-ly more fragile society. (The Model Twas never impeded by a failure in itsautomatic transmission.)

At the same time, the Presidencyevolved into an elected monarchy.This is stated as a fact with little hand-wringing. It flowed from a number offactors including a growing complexityof foreign affairs and a passive Con-gress. But to say that the President isan elected monarch is to say boththat he is a monarch and that he iselected.

If Mr. Nixon has come to be moremonarch than elected monarch, howdid this come to pass? It is my judg-ment that he is not solely responsible,that most of us are dimly aware of thisand that we have deflected a numberof rages onto this unattractive person-ality. First, there is the undeniablefact that Mr. Nixon was re-elected bya landslide. Those who voted for Mr.Nixon share a large measure of re-sponsibility for his hubris even duringthe campaign. It would have beendifliicult for a more temperate manthan Mr. Nixon to remain sober.

Senator McGovern shares the re-

sponsibility. With a skill in inner poli-tics that was an improvement onLyndon Johnson, he managed to wrestcontrol of the party apparatus and soto load the deck as to make inevitablethe nomination of the party's weakestcandidate. Having won the nomina-tion, he put his cards down. He neededhis hands free so that he could wringthem often in public while assuring usin a stern, nasal voice that he wasGoodness and Mr. Nixon was Badness.Is it really a surprise that he could notget anyone excited about Watergate?

The Presidential campaign, pre- andpost-convention, has been much criti-cized. It has many poor features, butIt is the Presidency in microcosm. Atired and harried man must regularlymake serious decisions under pressure.In no Presidential campaign does thebuck stop in the campaign manager'slap.

Even as Senator McGovern's weak-nesses became all too apparent in thepast campaign, Mr. Nixon's weak-nesses would have—if he had beensmoked out. His deepened image ofthe President as monarch tout simple,his reliance on the insulated staff andhis growing disregard for due processwould inevitably have been revealed.But he was not smoked out and vot-ers in 1972 knew very little aboutMr. Nixon's weaknesses that they didnot know in 1968. His growingstrengths (and they were real) wereregularly transmitted to us suffusedwith the Presidential aura. The respon-sibility for Mr. Nixon's posture ofnoncombatance in this past campaign(and our consequent ignorance) restsnot on him alone but on the opponentand voting public that let him get awaywith it.

Whither? With the dangers inherentin developing the habit of governmentby impeachment, with the convictionthat most of us share some measureof responsibility for the present mud-dled state, I am calling for an Act ofPopular Clemency. I am suggestingthat the President be forgiven for allthose faults of which the Court ofHearsay has most solemnly found himguilty. Moreover, in virtue of publicclemency, Congress could even in-struct the federal prosecutor that hisinvestigation stop short of the OvalOffice. It is conceivable that anothersix months of harassment, followedby stern punishment, would do won-drous things for Mr. Nixon's soul andpsyche, but I say the psyche and soulof the nation cannot bear it.

Is this to place the President "be-yond the law"? To some extent it is.It is for this reason that I judgeharshly all of us who cooperated inthe events that placed the incumbentin the White House. Still prescindingfrom questions of guilt or innocence,one may well look at the President'sadministrative gaffes and suggest thatin a nation of two hundred millioncitizens we could have elected a morecompetent man. But once elected, ina certain sense, the President is be-yond the law.

But amnesty places any recipient ofit beyond the law. One of the mostvalid arguments for a universal am-nesty in the matter of those citizenswho fled military service in the recentconflict is that the nation cannot en-dure the soul-wrenching question ofwho deserves punishment and whodoes not. I suggest that the argumentis at least equally valid in the matterof the President's actions.

How will popular clemency cometo manifest itself? I frankly expect itto be a steadily emerging consensus inthe next few weeks. The polls willcome to reflect it.

But I could be wrong. Senator Taftfound little support for his suggestion.Self-righteousness is a heady brew,especially for those who half suspectthey share the guilt.

[JOHN F. X. SHEEHAN, s. J., is chair-man of tbe theology department atMarquette University and author ofThe Threshing Floor (Paulist Press,1972).] •

68 America / August 4, 1973