David J. 0' Brien
Signs of Hope If we wish to duceTn signs of hope, a rneasuc;-ing device may be pmvided by those tmditional dernocTatic values which the ChuTch is finally coming to Tecognize as heT own. "This time, like all times, is a very good time, if we but know what to do with it." Ralph Waldo Emerson's words could stand for us today as a fair statement of our situation. We American Catholics have experienced some tumultuous changes in recent years, in our country and our Church and in our own lives. Once-stable communities have been rent ass under; long honored traditions have been undermined and destroyed; cherished beliefs have come to seem fictions, and fictions, however beautiful and meaningful they may once have been, lose their power to command our loyalty and affection. Many of our best thinkers, people in touch both with our theological tradition and with the major currents of social thought and action, have abandoned their people, turning their attention to highly specialized research or, more frequently, indulging in a nostalgiac autobiographical rendition of the ongoing fluctuations of their sensibility which, however amusing or sad, gives us little help in locating ourselves and framing personal and collective plans for the future. I have been charged with the enormous task of pointing out elements of hope amid the signs of the times, and yet I cannot but offer William Irwin Thompson's apocalyptic reflection of southern California as the future of us all. " ... more people lose their way than find themselves in this new world. As they become lost, they will fall into the artifical subcultures of Right Wing Americanism, Black Nationalism, Maoism, hippiedom, and the cults of the flying saucer contac146