Remember one by one:

As God created

		Notes from the  Vicar General  Msgr. Paul J. Swain

Each day The New York Times has been publishing "glimpses" of victims of the September 11 attack.

With pictures, they are heart wrenching remembrances from family and friends which capture each person's uniqueness.

Some are upbeat: "A face promising friendship," "Wit that won people over," "The love of her life." Others are sad: "I'm lost without him," "Two brothers, always close," "A hero once again."

One was about Frank Palombo, a fireman who died saving others. "It was hard to dislike Frank, but he sure could get on your nerves, chuckled his brother-in-law. He always was trying to do the right thing. His moral outlook was shaped by studying for the priesthood; his degree in philosophy; the Roman Catholic prayer group with whom he worshipped twice a week; his wife Jean and their eight sons and two daughters, ages one to 15.

"Mrs. Palombo would look down the dinner table and catch him weeping, 'I'm so fortunate to have all these children,' he would say." Ten children now without their father, a widow alone.

Newborns and terror victims

We talk about the victims of war and terror and accidents as numbers. But in death we remember them one by one, as God created them. As those who mourn, we pray for them and for us.

In striking contrast was the recent "New Baby News" supplement in the local paper from St. Marys Hospital Medical Center. It included pictures of over a hundred newborns, identified by name. At birth and at baptism we remember them one by one as well, as God created them. Their innocent faces lift our spirits and give us hope.

In November when the Church remembers those who have died and as a nation we celebrate Thanksgiving, the haunting mystery of life from conception and birth to death and beyond should give us pause.

St. Augustine wrote, Listen to relatives and friends at a baptism speculating on the future of the baby: will he be famous? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Will he be happy? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Will his life be long and healthy? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But no one ever asks, Will he die? Or answers perhaps so, perhaps not. We know he will. We might ask will he have eternal joy? Perhaps so, perhaps not.

Haunting mystery of life

For Christians death is not just a fact of nature, like leaves dropping from a tree. We do not believe that we were made for such an impersonal, abrupt end.

With no hope for eternal joy, the unborn, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the poor, the different are expendable because they do not meet someone's definition of value. That is not so for Catholics. All lives and all deaths are not just normal acts of nature, nor ours to decide or control.

The newspaper remembrances of Fireman Palombo ended, "The family is well. They believe that God is providing and that good is flowing from the tragedy. As a point of view it is quite Frank-like." As a point of view it is quite Catholic. Thanks be to God.

Response to budget woes:

Test of commitment to common good

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Barely three months after the legislature and the governor wrapped up work on the 2001-03 state budget, they must confront and address the fact that their work needs to be redone.

An economic slowdown made worse by the economy's reaction to the terrorism of Sept. 11 and a budget that was probably out of balance when enacted have combined to place a fiscal mess on the Capitol doorstep just in time for the 2002 election year.

The task of repairing the leak of red ink will require both bipartisanship and a willingness to look beyond one's parochial self-interest. Neither has emerged yet.

Fiscal brinkmanship

As the Wisconsin Taxpayer's Alliance has observed, Wisconsin has engaged in fiscal brinkmanship for nearly a decade. Over this period, Wisconsin's leaders simultaneously reduced taxes, engaged in a prison-building boom, and pledged to pay for two-thirds of elementary and secondary school costs.

A healthy economy and occasional fiscal gimmickry of delaying state aid payments to local governments from one budget period to the next served to cloak the long-term fiscal effect of these decisions.

Too big to ignore

Now the problem has become too big to ignore. Estimates of the budget deficit approach one billion dollars. Some say it is even greater. A budget gap of that magnitude can only be met by inflicting pain on some powerful constituencies.

On the spending side, school aids, health care, prisons, the University of Wisconsin, and shared revenues claim the lion's share of state tax dollars. The education lobby has already said that any retreat from the promise to fund two-thirds of school costs is not acceptable.

The UW leadership has also urged lawmakers to look elsewhere. No one wants to irritate senior citizens by backing off on health care or by delaying the new program to help defray the cost of prescription drugs. On the revenue side, those who advocated for tax cuts have made it clear they will resist efforts to raise taxes or scale back recently won tax breaks.

By now you have the idea. No one wants to close the budget gap with dollars taken from programs that benefit their interests.

What to do?

So what is a politician to do?

The expedient, but least just, possibility is that the legislators will try to cut programs important to those least able to retaliate at the ballot box. This puts programs that aid low-income individuals at risk.

But these programs have already received less in the way of increases in recent years and it is hard to make the case that they have contributed to the budget deficits. Moreover, cutting services to the needy won't produce nearly enough money to solve the problem.

No easy choices

A more hopeful scenario has the leaders of both parties agreeing to make decisions that may irritate some of their supporters in order to meet the overall needs of the state.

Thus GOP lawmakers would open the door to some adjustments in tax rates or modify tax cuts that have not yet been fully implemented. Democrats, for their part, might agree to some adjustment in the school aids appropriation.

Such statesmanship may not be popular. But given the scope of our problem and the decisions that created it, the easy choices are no longer available.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.