Sinking a Name

The Navy surrenders

House Speaker Tip O'Neill and the President were involved in a second round of negotiations that concluded last week--not on the budget but on theology. O'Neill phoned Deputy White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver to warn that the situation was looking grim. Deaver then convinced the President that policy had to be changed. An order went out through Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who obediently bowed: a Navy attack submarine initially christened Corpus Christi (which means "body of Christ" in Latin) will be renamed, probably City of Corpus Christi. That persuaded Christian Activist Mitchell Snyder, 38, to end a 64-day protest fast during which he had taken only water and lost 59 of his 185 Ibs. Said Snyder: "We won. We secularized the name."

The sub's name, chosen by Texas Senator John Tower, was always intended to refer to the port city of 332,000 rather than the sacrament of the Eucharist. But many Roman Catholic priests and bishops insisted that selecting such a name for a warship that may well be armed with nuclear-tipped missiles was, in the words of Bishop Thomas Drury of Corpus Christi, "very nearly sacrilegious." Lehman, a Catholic, replied that church doctrine recognized the "unavoidable necessity of building and operating deterrent systems." Nonetheless, the protests swelled, and Representative Tony Hall, an Ohio Democrat, introduced a House resolution demanding a name change. That, and Snyder's fast, apparently prompted O'Neill, a Catholic, to appeal to the White House--and convinced Reagan, a Protestant, that he needed no more trouble with religious leaders, who are pressing him hard on the far more vital issue of nuclear arms reductions. qed

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