MICHAEL NOVAK, noted theologian, author, recipient of the 1994 Templeton Award for progress in Religion, and former U.S. Ambassador of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission will be the guest lecturer for Holy Name Cathedral's 1997 Gaudete Lecture. Mr. Novak currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religious Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He also serves as Director of Social and Political Studies.
   Mr. Novak graduated Summa Cum Laude from Stonehill College (B.A., Philosophy and English) in 1956 and the Gregorian University in Rome (B.A. Theology, Cum Laude) in 1958. He continued theological studies at Catholic University, and then at Harvard, where he received an M.A. in 1966 in History and Philosophy of Religion.
   Mr. Novak has written some 25 books in philosophy and theology of culture. He has authored numerous monographs and over 500 articles and reviews. His essays have been published in The New Republic, Commentary, Harpers, The Atlantic, The Yale Law Review, and The Notre Dame Journal of Law, as well as many journals both in the U.S. and overseas.

   Clearly, people draw a line about what they will accept. But where they are drawing it in this case is a source of concern for those who see an erosion of American moral standards.
   The Rev. Anthony Brancken, a Roman Catholic priest on the southwest side of Chicago, said he was already worried by the loss of guilt and shame in American culture, the loss of clear distinctions between right and wrong, the drift toward "moral relativism" even in the Catholic church, where a school of thought known as proportionalism holds that there are few "illicit or immoral acts in themselves," and much depends on the circumstances.
   It is a view, he said, that tends to mitigate sinful behavior.
   And now, Father Brancken asked, "Have we as a nation become so corrupted that, as long as we get what we want, as long as times are good and the money rolls in, that we don't care what the hell goes on?"
   Steven Klein, an independent anthropologist based near San Diego who studies American culture, sees the Clinton scandal as not only reflecting the trend away from strict morality, but accelerating it.
   "We're really relinquishing the fundamental Judeo-Christian values and reverting more to the legal understanding that so long as you don't violate any laws or hurt anybody, it's O.K.," he said. "Although what's extraordinary to me in this case is that people are even ignoring that, and saying, 'Who cares if he committed perjury?"
   'It's become a question," Dr. Klein added, "of how far down the public is willing to ratchet their standard of acceptability - is there a floor? - to be able to perpetuate the economic status quo they're enjoying, and Clinton's putting them into a squeeze play."
   "Have we as a nation become so corrupted that as long as we get what we want, as long as times are good and the money rolls in, that we don't care what the hell goes on?"