O sole Mia.

I hereby announce that Mia Farrow has won the first annual Richard Nixon Moral Philosopher of the Year Award. (It is named for Nixon because of his immortal words, "But that would be wrong.") Let me explain.

Though I have seen my share of Woody Allen movies over the years, I have never been a cult follower. The early movies seemed to me the kind that would have been made by a talented sophomore, and since I have always had something of a prejudice against sophomores, I stayed away from his films for years. By the time I broke down and returned, in the era of Annie Hall, I discovered to my delight that Woody had become a sort of American Chekhov. Unfortunately, this was the moment he was overdosing on Diane Keaton, a little bit of whom goes a long way. I found I could not take Diane playing Diane for the umpteenth time, so again I discontinued visits to Woody Allen movies.

I say this not by way of criticism but in order to confess my own inadequate knowledge of his oeuvre. Plainly I am no authority on Woody Allen the artist.

Nor am I an authority on Woody Allen the family man. At first I tried to ignore his legal dispute with Mia Farrow, but to no avail. I discovered it is not possible to live in America and remain successfully ignorant of the domestic troubles of Woody and Mia.

Nowadays when I think of Woody Allen, I am reminded of Pascal and his Provincial Letters. More precisely, I am reminded of Pascal's lampoon on Jesuit casuists of the seventeenth century. One of my favorite items in this work is Pascal's satirical account of the Jesuit who found a way to justify dueling, which was proscribed by the church but prescribed by the aristocratic code of honor. The good father explained that a Christian gentleman may not accept a challenge to a duel; but he may pretend to accept, at the same time making the appropriate mental reservation. Further, he may keep up this pretense until he finds himself on the field of honor facing an enemy who is armed with sword or pistol. But that alters the whole moral nature of the situation; in such circumstances one is morally entitled to defend oneself. For this is no longer a duel, which the church says is morally wrong; it is now a case of self-defense, which of course the church says is morally permissible.

A common-sense interpretation of Woody's affair with Mia's adopted daughter would say that the relationship is incestuous. After all, Allen's relationship with Mia Farrow was a virtual husband-wife connection, even though they were not officially married. Hence he was related to the daughter as a virtual stepfather. And when stepfathers have sexual relations with stepdaughters, that's incest. What could be more clear?

Enter Woody the casuist, resembling one of those tragicomic Chekhovian characters from his movies. No, it is not incest, he explains, his jesuitical logic running something like this: A virtual stepfather is not the same as a real stepfather. Had he and Mia officially married, then his relationship with the daughter would have been nothing less than a horrendous crime. But absent the formality of marriage, the relationship is simply a charming romantic adventure between an older man and a younger woman. A lovely May-and-December story. ("Oh, it's a long, long time .... ") So thin is the crucial line between moral turpitude and true love. Very similar, is it not, to the equally thin line dividing damnable dueling from meritorious self-defense?

Allen missed his century and calling. He would have made a good seventeenth-century Jesuit casuist, one of those who gave both the Jesuits and casuistry bad names.

At this point I should note that some members of the Nixon Award committee wanted to give the prize to Woody himself because of the great value he obviously attaches to the formality of marriage. In an age in which so many dismiss marriage as no more than a "piece of paper," Woody has demonstrated the vital importance of that document. It has the magical power of preventing one from doing the perfectly natural thing of going to bed with one's girlfriend's daughter.

But wiser heads prevailed, and the award went to Mia. The citation reads: "In an age of moral subjectivism; in an age in which moral codes are considered to be matters of personal preference, not matters of objective obligation; in an age in which we have learned to persuade ourselves that certain forms of inhuman conduct constitute a higher and more enlightened morality, provided they are done in the name of 'conscience' and 'honesty'--in such an age Mia Farrow is to be commended for having rediscovered an ancient truth, namely, that some things are just plain wrong, no matter how much you finesse and sophisticate them."

The trouble with contemporary America is not that we are morally corrupt. No doubt we are terrible sinners, but probably not much worse than most people at most times. No, the real trouble is that we have a theory of morality (or better, a theory of no-morality) which, if consistently acted upon, will eventually lead to immeasurable corruption. To date, we are a long way from having carried out all the implications of the theory, but we are making rapid progress. Abortion-on-demand is one implication, one we have thoroughly carried out. Euthanasia is another, which, thanks to Dr. Kevorkian's pioneering work, we are just learning to carry out. Incest between consenting adults is a further implication, which Woody Allen gets credit for discovering.

What Mia Farrow gets credit for is having sufficient moral intelligence to scream in pain. You may say it doesn't take much in the way of moral smarts to object to incest. Maybe not. But once upon a time it didn't take much moral intelligence to object to euthanasia and abortion-on-demand either. Let's give Mia credit for not being a good sport.

She can pick up her award at the Commonweal office. It is an old photo of Nixon as a senator and Checkers as a puppy. The dog is about to make a mess on the carpet, while the future president chides him, saying, "But that would be wrong."