March 10, 1983

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger said today that, despite the steady expansion of Soviet military power, ''I think we have begun to catch up.'' ''We've improved our readiness and we have laid the foundation, although it takes longer than I would like, to regain our strategic modernization and strength,'' Mr. Weinberger said at a news conference. In seeking to justify the Reagan Administration's proposals for a large military budget, Mr. Weinberger added that ''it's absolutely necessary that we continue because it will take us a good five years to regain the strategic and conventional strength and readiness that I think we need to be able to assure the American people that we still have a very credible and effective deterrent.'' A New Pentagon Report As the Defense Secretary spoke, the Pentagon made public a new, 107-page version of a booklet entitled ''Soviet Military Power'' that outlined advances in Soviet forces over the last 18 months. It was also intended to justify the Administration's military budget.

Cecil Andrews called the local television station four times last Friday threatening to set himself on fire in the town square to protest unemployment in America. At 11:18 P.M., he did it. Apparently drunk, the 37-year-old unemployed roofer stood near the edge of the square and fumbled with a matchbook. The first match went out. Mr. Andrews staggered to a container of charcoal lighter fluid on the ground and liberally doused his worn blue jeans and cowboy boots again. Cupping his hands over a second match, he held it to his knee. A small flame sprang up.

Foreign debts of the less developed countries - both oil-producing and not - now total more than $550 billion, and they clearly carry the potential to disrupt the world financial system. Plainly, if some significant portion of this huge indebtedness goes into default - because of recession, disinflation, lower oil prices or any other reason - some of the largest American banks could easily be in trouble. Should government, in the United States or elsewhere, foot part or all of the bill for cleaning up the mess in international credit markets? Yes, say some influential investment bankers and economists. They maintain that government intervention is essential, including the creation of new agencies to assume some of the credit risk and impose new controls. One way or another the public will inevitably be involved, they say, noting the general interest in the functioning of major multinational banks.

The House of Representatives gave final approval tonight to a rescue plan designed to restore the Social Security System to financial stability, in part by gradually raising the retirement age in the next century, first to 66 by 2009 and then to 67 by 2027. The bill now goes to the Senate. The plan, approved with heavy bipartisan support by a 282-to-148 vote, was closely patterned after the recommendations made in January by the National Commission on Social Security Reform. It would provide $165.3 billion in additional revenue, mainly through expanded payroll taxes to the system through the end of the decade. The Social Security rescue plan, which moved through committee and to the House floor with unusual speed and rare bipartisan support, would increase payroll taxes, take all new Federal employees into the system, postpone cost-of-living increases in benefits for six months and make some benefits received by higher-income retirees subject to Federal income tax for the first time.

Terence Cardinal Cooke, appealing for a resolution of tensions surrounding the choice of a supporter of the I.R.A. as grand marshal of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, has assumed the role of a pastor trying to bring harmony to a divided flock. The Cardinal yesterday not only repeated his condemnation of ''indiscriminate violence'' in Northern Ireland, a position he took in a statement on Feb. 24, but also linked the Provisional Irish Republican Army to such destruction, calling it ''futile and immoral.'' Church officials read this as strong disapproval of the parade committee's choice of Michael Flannery as the parade's grand marshal. But they also saw the Cardinal's statement as leaving the door open to compromise when it urged the parade committee and the ''Irish-American community'' to seek ''reconciliation.'' Officials said it was in the hope that a settlement could be reached that the Cardinal had refrained from announcing whether he would take part in the parade.