While We’re At It

· From the beginning, Father Ernest Fortin was a member of our editorial advisory board. He suffered a major stroke in 1997. On October 22, 2002, he half sat up in bed and said in a low voice, “I see something beautiful,” and then laid back and died within the hour. He was seventy-eight years old. An Assumptionist priest of French-Canadian extraction, Fr. Ernest was quiet, erudite, intellectually mischievous, and a sworn opponent of every form of dogmatism. At the funeral Mass, his provincial superior Fr. John L. Frank said, “I remember Ernest once teaching us that the Christian virtue par excellence was not a theological virtue like faith, hope, or charity, nor was it a cardinal virtue like fortitude, temperance, justice, or prudence. No, the Christian virtue par excellence is humility–a virtue that stands in stark contrast to any classical ideal: humility first of all of a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many. But humility as well for the believer–to understand that all is grace; that we have no right to claim anything as our own-not our life, not our gifts, not even our faith. We are at every moment God’s creation.” I can hear Fr. Fortin saying that. His superiors sent him off to Paris to study French literature, but there he struck up what would be a life-long friendship with Allan Bloom and, through Bloom, became a student of Leo Strauss. Strauss, he said, freed him from the dogmas of the modern era. Fr. Ernest’s intellectual passion was for the Church Fathers, Augustine, Thomas, and Dante—especially Augustine and Thomas. A week before his death, he was presented with a remarkable festschrift, Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach, edited by his students Michael P. Foley and Douglas Kries. Also just published, in a translation from the French, is Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and his Precursors. The festschrift includes Foley’s extended and utterly engaging interview with Fortin on his life and work, in which the “Christian virtue par excellence” is everywhere evident. In his conversation with Foley, as in his later writing, he is respectfully but sharply critical of the political pronouncements of the U.S. bishops. He believed the bishops had forgotten, or were simply ignorant of, the tradition of political thought that they nominally represent. Nor, on that score, were the writings of John Paul II spared Fortin’s gentle but often incisive criticism. Straussians are famous-some would say notorious-for building a wall of separation between “Athens” and “Jerusalem,” between reason and faith, and some thought Fr. Ernest too reluctant to challenge that divide. Perhaps so, but, if he was reticent in asserting the doctrinal specifics of the faith in his scholarly work, I expect it is because he thought that was not his task as a philosopher, and that the specifics are best asserted in liturgical celebration and the living of the truth they contain. “The truths of theology,” he wrote, “are at the same time speculative and practical, something that cannot be said of any purely human science. The knowledge of these truths represents the good, not of the mind alone, but of the whole person. One cannot grasp them as ‘truths’ unless one undergoes a root-and-branch change, a genuine conversion.” Now we may pray that the conversion will be complete as choirs of angels welcome Fr. Ernest to the “something beautiful” that is the Feast of the Lamb.

· Among United Methodist bishops, too, “collegiality” means that bishops do not publicly criticize other bishops. But Bishop Joe Sprague of Chicago appears to have gone a heresy too far in questioning the eternal deity of Christ, his virgin birth, his bodily resurrection, and his atonement for the sins of the world. Bishop Marion Edwards of Raleigh, North Carolina, says that Sprague’s statements “strike at the heart of our ecumenical and United Methodist Church doctrine.” Other bishops are also speaking up. Without mentioning these bishops, Sprague says that his critics are “narrow-minded,” “theologically bankrupt,” and tools of “the well-heeled religious right.” He is definitely out of sorts. But perhaps his provocations will spur a reexamination of what is meant by collegiality, and not only among United Methodists.

· The first thing to be said about religion and public life is that religion and public life— especially as the latter is taken to mean politics—is not the first thing. That maxim appeared in the first issue of this journal in March 1990, and I hope it has guided us ever since. There are things such as the gift of life, the wonder of being, and of Being, the joys and duties of love, devotion to the truth, and the awareness of mortality. These are the permanent things that we expect to be brought into focus on solemn occasions, such as a memorial service for a friend who has died. That is no doubt why there was such a negative reaction when what was billed as a memorial service for the late Senator Paul Wellstone was turned into a raucous political rally. More than twenty thousand people turned out for the event in the stadium of the University of Minnesota; when Walter Mondale and Bill Cinton were shown on the huge television monitors, the crowd cheered; when Senator Trent Lott and other Republicans were shown, the air was filled with booing. One speaker brought the crowd to frenzied shouts of approval when he told the Republicans present that they should support Democrat Mondale for the U.S. Senate in order to “honor” Wellstone. The treasurer of Wellstone’s campaign gave voice to sacralized politics by declaring, “We can redeem the sacrifice of his life if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.” Almost all the commentary on the event was critical, but most commentators limited themselves to the atrociously bad manners and partisan meanness on display. But behind the manners and meanness was something more ominous, something like idolatry. These people really do believe that politics is the first thing. People who believe that are typically liberals rather than conservatives. The left is prone to the view that politics can fix what is wrong with the world. Politics, they believe, is about power, and the problems of the world are the result of the wrong people with the wrong ideas having power. The remedy is that they and their ideas should have the power. Conservatives, by way of contrast, are inclined to speak of human nature and what they call the human condition, the latter being marked by glories and foibles, and by a propensity for madness, mistakes, and evil. Politics is not a utopian project, never mind a religion; it is simply the necessary task of restraining wrong, incrementally advancing an approximate justice, and the deliberative accommodation of differences within the bond of civility. One columnist referred to the Wellstone memorial/rally as a sacrilege. I expect that many, perhaps most, of the people there would simply be puzzled by that assertion. Sacrilege assumes an understanding of the sacred, and they were celebrating what is sacred for them. The occasion was an unabashed, full-throated, vulgar declaration that politics is the first thing. They were there not to honor but to use the memory of Paul Wellstone in the service of their highest good, political power. It was wrong, it was sad, it was ugly; but at this point in the long history of politics-as-religion, it was not entirely surprising. We may draw a measure of satisfaction from the evidence, acknowledged by almost everyone, that the partisan memorial service contributed substantially to Walter Mondale’s defeat. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Mondale and his politics, the outcome suggests that a sense of decency is not dead.

· Hong Kong came under Chinese rule in 1997, and nervousness about the mainland imposing its oppressive rule has been heating up in recent months with Beijing proposing laws against “subversion” that could clamp down on political, civil, and religious freedom. An official recently declared that the only people worried about the new law must have “devils in their hearts.” The new head of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, is an outspoken leader in defense of Hong Kong’s liberties, including religious liberties. “A religious leader,” he observes, “should be careful in deciding when to remain silent and be sure to say something useful when deciding to speak.” The Chinese government does not recognize Rome’s leadership of the Catholic Church on the mainland and it is estimated that half of China’s twelve million Catholics belong to the prohibited underground Church that acknowledges the Pope. Bishop Zen obviously thinks it is “useful” to address this question. “What if the mainland government says the Catholic Church is a threat to the nation?” he asked in a television interview. “We will admit we belong to the same Church as the underground [Catholics] in China,” he answered. Beijing’s hopes of quietly and easily extinguishing Hong Kong as a light of freedom has met a new and formidable obstacle in Bishop Joseph Zen.

· In a column titled “A Jew Defends Evangelical Christians,” the formidable Dennis Prager notes that liberals–Christian, Jewish, or other–are offended, and insist that others should be offended, by evangelical Protestants who say it is necessary to believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. Prager says Jews should not be offended. “Since all non-Christians are unsaved, this doctrine is in no way anti-Jewish. It is pro-salvation, not anti-anybody. The evangelical view of who is not saved is applicable, by definition, to all non-Christians. There is, therefore, no reason whatsoever for a Jew to be personally offended. It is no more applicable to Jews than to Hindus. When most evangelicals single out Jews, it is only to support them and Israel, and to reaffirm Jewish chosenness. It takes paranoia, ignorance, and ingratitude for a Jew to join the anti-evangelical critics.” He goes on to observe, “All those who condemn evangelicals for their belief in the necessity of affirming Christ for salvation are doing exactly what they accuse these Christians of doing–judging and condemning people solely for their beliefs. Here is the liberals’ rule: Christians may not judge others by their religious beliefs, but liberals may judge Christians by their religious beliefs.” Finally, there is this: “Evangelical Christians, almost alone, affirm that America has a divine mission, that this country has better values than Europe, that the United Nations is a moral wasteland, that God’s law is higher than international laws devised in New York or the Hague, that secular ism is wonderful for government but fatal for society, that Israel must be protected against those who wish to exterminate it, that the jews have a divinely chosen role in history, and that America must remain a Judeo-Christian country. If the only way a Christian can hold these precious beliefs is to maintain that faith in Jesus is the only way to salvation, here is one Jew who says: More power to you. Keep your faith strong. And thanks.”

· Mary Eberstadt has about had it. You may remember she wrote “The Elephant in the Sacristy,” pointing out the obvious, namely, that the priestly sex scandals are, with few exceptions, about homosexual priests. Her Weekly Standard article elicited vigorous objections to the making of such a linkage. “The only way to argue that gay priests are not largely responsible for the Church’s man-boy sex crisis,” Eberstadt responds, “is to choke the life out of ordinary language itself.” She cites one of the most quoted experts on the scandals, who says, “The involvement with boys is homosexual activity, but that doesn’t mean the person who’s doing it is homosexually oriented.” A Jesuit psychologist opines that “a significant number” of those who seduce or rape boys are in fact “straight.” Eberstadt comments, “George Orwell, Catholic America hath need of thee.” She continues: “Bad as all this is for the Church, it is worse for the contemporary ideology of gay rights. If there is a single, extra-Catholic meaning to the Church’s current disgrace, it is that the gay-rights dogma of our time— the notion that homosexually active men can be placed in close contact with adolescents and young boys without some significant portion of those men feeling and acting upon sexual attraction to those boys–has been toppled by the facts of the priest scandals. Any institution that pretends otherwise is simply rolling the dice toward the moral, financial, and—not least— actuarial disasters lately visited on the American Catholic Church.” Think back to the not-very-long-ago uproar when the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America was not unconstitutionally irrational in not allowing gays to be scoutmasters. Funny, but we’ve not heard anything in the past year about the bigoted homophobia of the Boy Scouts. Actually, it is not funny at all. But it is moderately encouraging that even the most contrary-to-fact ideologues seem to be capable of recognizing the connecting of the dots when the dots connect themselves.

· It seems nobody is paying much attention, but in the last three years six thousand Nigerians and ten thousand Indonesians have been killed as a consequence of militant Islam’s campaign to impose sharia law. And, of course, two million people, mainly Christians, have been killed under the Islamic regime in Sudan. Regarding the last, both Houses of Congress passed and President Bush signed the Sudan Peace Act, which provides very specific and severe measures if Khartoum does not mend its ways. The act is in large part the result of the hard work of Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom, which is associated with Freedom House. Regrettably, the Bush Administration does not seem to be sufficiently alert to unintended consequences elsewhere. For instance, the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan is sometimes cited as an example of democratic–or at least somewhat more democratic–nation building. The chief justice of the new supreme court of Afghanistan recently explained his approach to dealing with Christians under Islamic law: ‘First, a man should be politely invited to accept Islam. Second, if he does not convert, he should obey Islam. The third option, if he refuses, is to behead him.” It is shocking,” says Ms. Shea, “that the administration is reconstructing Afghanistan—with hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars–as a hard-line Islamic state.”

· I am frequently asked whether there is much Catholic criticism of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT). The answer is in the negative. Not that all Catholics are terribly enthusiastic about it, but most think it is no big deal that Catholics are in productive dialogue with evangelical Protestants. After all, the Catholic Church is in dialogue with almost everybody. It comes with being catholic. But there are exceptions. Catholic Apologetics International (CAI), for instance, devotes forty-three pages to criticizing an address I recently gave at Wheaton College in Illinois and concludes: “Father Neuhaus has shown himself to be an enemy of Christ, with a soothing voice and a flowery tongue that masks the Serpent’s hiss. He wears the clothing of a sheep, but like a ravenous wolf he seeks to dissolve the Holy Church, and like Esau, to sell Her precious pearls of truth for a bowl of false and unholy ecumenical porridge.” So you can see that some Catholics are not entirely approving of my work with ECT. I was not aware of CAl’s somewhat pointed reservations until they were brought to my attention by that notable blogger Mark Shea, who is concerned about what he calls the Lidless Eye Crowd on the rightmost fringes of Catholicism. In my Wheaton address I, as usual, drew on the documents of Vatican Il and statements of this pontificate such as Dominus lesus (Jesus the Lord) and Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One), but that, in the view of CAI, is just the problem. In another long essay from CAI, we are told that “it appears that Vatican II, in intention but not in fact, did redefine the perennial teaching of the Church.” “That is to say that ‘the Spirit of Vatican II,’ as it is interpreted and applied by the more progressive innovators. appears to be exactly in line with what the Council itself intended to present.” The Church teaches that Protestants are damned; Vatican II says they have means of grace and may be saved. The Church says that Jews are collectively guilty of the death of Christ; Vatican II says not. The Church says that religious freedom is a pernicious heresy; Vatican Il affirms religious freedom. On each point, the CAI document cites earlier councils, popes, and saints in order to establish the “perennial teaching” of the Church. The unavoidable implication is that Vatican II was a false council and the pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II are devoid of magisterial authority. Like his soulmates on the far left, the CAl author has no use for Newman’s understanding of the development of doctrine, an understanding explicitly endorsed by the Magisterium since Vatican II. Every so-called development is, in fact, a radical change, a contradiction, and an effort to reform the irreformable. That Vatican II and subsequent pontificates are heretical is a thought not to be entertained lightly by a Catholic. Our author writes, “Please God, may I be wrong about this. If ever there was a time that I wished to be corrected and proved wrong, this is it.” As it happens, in the essays on my work and on Vatican II, there is not the slightest indication that the author wishes to be corrected, never mind to be proved wrong. He entered into full communion with the Catholic Church only recently, believing he had found the rock (as in monolith) of inflexible and sedentary truths. It seems he was not prepared for the Church of ongoing pentecostal stirrings of the Spirit leading into the fullness of the truth that will not be exhaustively understood until “we know even as we are known.” He seems to be saying, to paraphrase St. Augustine, “So late I knew you. So soon must I say good-bye.” Where he might go from here, God only knows. Having put the burden of proof on those who believe that the Catholic Church has not fallen into heresy, we hope he will stop presenting himself as a Catholic apologist. In any event, the answer to the question whether there are Catholic critics of ECT is yes, but they are not very. If they are very Catholic, they are not very critical; and if they are very critical, they are not very Catholic.

· Columnist Maggie Gallagher points out the obvious, because it obviously is not obvious to some politicians: most doctors don’t want to do abortions and abortionists want to make money. So the abortionists locate their “services” in urban areas where the traffic is brisk. NARAL, the radical pro-abortionist lobby, complains that “84 percent of counties in the United States do not have an abortion provider.” Instead of a campaign to raise money in order to subsidize charitable rural abortion clinics, NARAL and its allies are campaigning to force hospitals to do abortions. Catholic hospitals are often the only ones in rural areas, and they spend an unreimbursed $2.8 billion per year in providing health care to the rural poor. In addition to its anti-Catholic appeal, the NARAL campaign aims to make abortion respectable as a “reproductive health service,” although most people might think abortion is not a boost for reproduction and does not improve health. In response to the campaign, Congress has taken up the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act. It states quite simply, “No hospital should be forced by government to perform abortions that violate its core beliefs and tenets.” It might be dubbed a pro-choice law, but of course NARAL and the ACLU are fighting it tooth and nail. They are pro-choice only about some choices. But they are very dependably anti-Catholic.

· Garry Wills, one reluctantly concludes, is a deeply dishonest man. I say “deeply” dishonest because in the fever-pitch of rage with which he writes about the Catholic Church and related matters he seems incapable of recognizing when he is lying. In the New York Review of Books he wrote a long two-part “rant with footnotes” (Kenneth Woodward’s phrase) on the current scandals in which he assaults, inter alia, Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University, who is also a contributor to these pages. Wills asks, “How did this praiser of pornography and boy-love become a hero to reactionary Catholics?” In response to what he calls this “monstrous and wholly false charge,” Jenkins challenges Wills to find one supporting sentence in his many books and articles. Wills, in turn, refers to an earlier book, Beyond Tolerance, in which Jenkins observes that age of consent laws have varied in history since “sexual behavior with teenagers has been considered normal in most societies.” That makes Jenkins a praiser of pornography and boy-love? But Wills is not really out to get Jenkins but to score yet another point against the Catholics, and the Catholic Church, with which he so passionately disagrees. After citing the above line by Jenkins, Wills writes, “I was not contesting this view, just wondering why Catholic conservatives, of all people, suddenly found it attractive.” Of course Wills does not and cannot cite even one Catholic conservative who finds it attractive that sex with teenagers should be considered normal. In his letter, Jenkins suggests that Wills’ animus toward him is related to his deeper animus toward the Catholic Church. Wills retorts that this is an ad hominem criticism, that he would not have even deigned to notice Jenkins were it not that the bishops like what he has written about the sex abuse scandals. Some bishops are in favor of “protecting pedophiles,” and it follows that “that must be why they find him [Jenkins] so useful.” Now that is ad hominem, and viciously so. In the same essay in which he slandered Jenkins, Wills attacked Kenneth Woodward of Newsweek, who responds with a long letter pointing out Wills’ inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Along the way, Woodward mentions his own experience with a man who told him that, as a sixth-grade student, he had taken the initiative in sexual relations with a priest. Ignoring all of Woodward’s criticisms, Wills responds that, by mentioning that experience, Woodward “seems to suggest sympathy with the seduced priest, rather than the seducing sixth-grader.” So much for Woodward, so much for Jenkins, so much for anyone with whom Garry Wills disagrees. It is a great pity that his louche and mendacious commentary is the New York Review‘s magisterium on all things Catholic. It may be a sign of long overdue change that Mr. Wills’ most recent book-length rant with footnotes, Why I Am a Catholic, was so devastatingly reviewed in, yes, the New York Review of Books.

· Had the vote gone the other way, you may be sure it would have made the front pages and evening news. As it happened, there was nary a media mention of Nevada’s overwhelming approval of a state constitutional amendment making it clear that marriage means the union of a man and a woman. Nevada is the thirty-sixth state to take this step, just two short of the thirty-eight states needed to ratify the Federal Marriage Amendment. Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage, says, “As we’ve seen repeatedly, our side wins every time the debate over marriage is taken out of the hands of the activist lawyers and the courts. Let’s all look forward to the day when the Federal Marriage Amendment will allow the democratic process to finally settle this struggle for future generations of Americans.” But, of course, the gay activists and their lawyers are not about to give up. They are expecting a court victory in Massachusetts and have declared their intention to use it as a wedge for forcing same-sex “marriage” on the other forty-nine states. The friends of representative democracy should not be planning on an early retirement.

· Some of the most intelligent writing about physician-assisted suicide has been done by Wesley J. Smith. He says he is asked by liberals why they should oppose the practice. “I can summarize a big reason in just three letters: HMO.” He notes that liberals usually hate HMOs. The drugs used in assisted suicide cost about $40, while the care required to help suicidal patients not want to commit suicide may run to $40,000 or more. ‘Reporters, who are usually eager to expose potential financial conflicts of interest in other public policy issues, tend to be blind to the economic stakes in the assisted suicide controversy,” Smith writes. “Yet the realization that assisted suicide will, in the end, be largely about money is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.” He notes that the Oregon assisted suicide law does not compel any doctor or HMO to participate in killing people but only Catholic HMOs have emphatically said no. Indeed, some of Kaiser/Permanente Northwest’s doctors are participating, and a Kaiser executive memo urges its doctors to lend a hand in the suicide of people who are not their own patients, which would seem to be in violation of the Oregon law. “If assisted suicide ever became nationalized and a routine “medical treatment,” Smith writes, “significant money could be saved- and hence made—by the HMO industry.” He quotes Derek Humphry, cofounder of the Hemlock Society, who in a recent book asserts that money is the “unspoken argument” in favor of legalizing assisted suicide. “Hundreds of billions of dollars” could be saved, Humphry says, making economics the driving force behind the push to give the old and debilitated a final push. When Midge Decter was on our staff, she would listen patiently to my theories about why somebody or the other was advocating this or that obvious wrong. Finally she would say, “The problem with you is that you don’t think low enough.” Thanks to Wesley Smith for helping us to think low about the advocacy of physician-assisted suicide.

· Many pacifists urge us to emulate “the historic peace churches,” meaning such as the Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker movements. Dr. Scott Holland, who teaches peace studies at Bethany Theological Seminary (Brethren) and Earlham School of Religion (Society of Friends) in Indiana, contends that pacifism is a minority position in those communities. Abandoning a “nuanced two-kingdom theology,” modern pacifists betray a desire for one kingdom, and they want it now. Holland writes: ‘The Christian theological imagination has a long and diverse tradition of thinking about God, world, self, and others within the contexts and categories of a two-kingdom theology. Although the theological constructions of Tertullian, Augustine, Luther, the Anabaptists, Bonhoeffer, or Niebuhr differ greatly on how the kingdoms of this age and the Kingdom of our Lord and God might be imagined in their interrelationships, a productive theological and political tension between the two kingdoms remains in these diverse proposals. This tension helps guard against all easy theocratic temptations by reminding the faithful that although the world is blessed, it remains broken. It likewise signifies that although God’s kingdom has in one sense come into history, it also remains a future hope waiting for fulfillment, inviting the believer to live in the creative tension of the ‘already but not yet’ eschatological reality of God’s presence–and absence—in space and time. Classical Christianity in its many denominational expressions can thus proclaim a vision of the reign or kingdom of God with a surplus of meaning: ‘The kingdom has come; the kingdom is coming; the kingdom will come? This assertion functions as a creative limit-language, reminding us that no historical theology or political theory can contain the fullness of God’s kingdom. All doctrines, ideologies, and institutions are thus subject to a process of constant critique and revision.” It is not sufficient to cry, Peace! Peace! when there is no peace. Holland addresses the uneasy conscience of today’s pacifists: ‘The decision or the historical necessity to become more personally and professionally engaged in broader cultural expressions of life creates an intellectual and spiritual dilemma for most modern sons and daughters of Menno Simons, Alexander Mack, and George Fox, especially around the ideal of pacifism. Many find it intellectually dishonest to live happily in the company of the mass of humanity with the full benefits of citizenship, and then pretend to be ‘married monastics’ only when it comes to the doctrine of pacifism. One cannot live fully in the midst of the art, industry, education, institutions, and civility of the commonweal and then retreat to a cultural-linguistic cave to drag out a sectarian, nonresistant deity to speak on behalf of a pacifist public ethics. Many are finding such a strategy for voicing their peace concerns and witness increasingly irrelevant, even irresponsible.” All people of good will desire peace. People who have something relevant and responsible to say on questions of war and peace know that peace is the product of a good, or approximately good, order that is grounded in justice and freedom, and that that order must be protected, sometimes by military means.

· I see Pilgrim Press is bringing out Queering Christ: Beyond “Jesus Acted Up.” The author is Robert E. Goss, who Publishers Weekly describes as a “queer Christian theologian who identifies gay content in theology, the Bible, and Christ.” In some circles, it appears, Jesus Acted Up was thought altogether too tame. The older gay line is that Jesus was gay. Queer theory contends that to speak of people being gay or straight is unacceptably “essentialist.” Everybody has “gay content” —and should act on it. Bringing to your attention what is on offer from putatively Christian publishing houses is but one of the many services we are pleased to provide.

· Sociologist Alan Wolfe writes about the differences between evangelical Protestant and Catholic colleges. Evangelical academics, he writes, tend to be enthusiastic about postmodernism because it debunks the rationalism that was once used to debunk faith. “The postmodern evangelicals with whom I talk believe that one can be skeptical of all truths while maintaining the truth of God’s existence. Catholics are more likely to hold that the truth of God’s existence must mean the truth of man’s reason, art’s beauty, or universal morality.” Wolfe, who teaches at Boston College, is critical of Father James Burtchaell’s thesis about “the dying of the light” —meaning the ways in which church-related higher education, including Catholic higher education, has lost the religious inspiration that brought it into being. Wolfe argues that what Burtchaell sees as failure is in fact success. Catholic colleges and universities are engaged with the culture, attract bright non-Catholics, and are highly rated in the academic community. “If such success constitutes failure,” he writes, “I would hate to know what failure must be.” “What upsets me most about the views of writers like Burtchaell and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is their lack of recognition that a Catholic education can be as valuable for those outside the tradition as those inside. If you have something that you believe makes sense, you ought to want to share it. If you restrict it, you cheapen it.” Mr. Wolfe is needlessly upset, for we—and I know I speak for Fr. Burtchaell on this–are not at all interested in restricting Catholic education to Catholics. What an utterly alien notion, and one wonders where he picked it up. The question, rather, is what constitutes a Catholic education. As Fr. Burtchaell has documented in detail, most Catholic colleges today have no clear answer to that question. An institution cannot share a Catholic education with others unless it is offering a Catholic education to be shared. Mr. Wolfe, like his liberal Catholic colleagues, suggests that the choice is between the status quo and going back to the bad “good old days” when a Catholic college was, as he puts it, “all male, nearly all Irish, and overwhelmingly Catholic in the composition of its faculty?” But Mr. Wolfe has a better excuse for holding to this wrongheaded view than do his colleagues. A secular Jew who had previously taught at the New School for Social Research in New York and Boston University could not help but think a place such as Boston College is very Catholic indeed. Of Boston College he says, “But it remains recognizably Catholic, perhaps more recognizably Catholic for those who are not Catholic than for those who are. If that sounds like a paradox, perhaps my appreciation for the Catholic intellectual tradition has taught me the importance of paradoxical things.” Paradox, however, has nothing to do with it. The most religiously vacuous Reform synagogue undoubtedly seems more Jewish to me than it does to my more observant Jewish friends. The question is not whether Boston College is recognizably Catholic in the view of Alan Wolfe but whether it is recognizably Catholic in the view of Catholics who are faithfully Catholic. The pity is that Catholic educators, heirs to a long American tradition of not being appreciated by their academic betters, are confirmed by Mr. Wolfe in their belief that they’re doing just fine.

· “I was astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative. And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people’s definition, the more they were losing.” So says the director of the decennial study of church membership conducted by the Glenmary Research Center and sponsored by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. His surprise is surprising. Way back in 1972, a dear friend and contributor to these pages, the late Dean Kelley, explained the phenomenon in his book Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: People are attracted to churches that offer clear teaching and require a high level of commitment. The fastest growing bodies in the past decade are the Mormons (up 19.3 percent since 1990), the Churches of Christ (up 18.6 percent, and not to be confused with the United Church of Christ), Assemblies of God (up 18.5 percent), Catholic (up 16.2 percent), followed at a distance by Southern Baptist (up 4.9 percent) and Jewish (up 2.7 percent). The Jewish figure is misleading since, unlike all the other groups, it reflects ethnic identity rather than membership in a religious institution. I have been challenged when I say that Catholicism is the fastest growing religious community in America. After all, it comes in fourth in terms of percentage of growth. But, of course, the base from which you begin makes a big difference. A group that had 100 members in 1990 and has 200 now has grown by 100 percent, but it would be very misleading to say it is the fastest growing. So it is that the Mormons have 4.2 million, the Churches of Christ 1.4 million, and the Assemblies of God 2.5 million, while the Catholic Church has 63 million (for some reason, the Glenmary study says 62 million). In terms of gain in new members, the Catholic Church is far and away the fastest growing in the country. The big losers are the liberal mainline groups such as the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ, with 11.6 percent and 14.8 percent declines, respectively. The study found that there are 1.5 million Muslims, which is in line with other studies and, as frequently noted here, a long way from the five to eight million claimed by Muslim organizations in this country. As for the Christian communities, it is useful to have the confirmation by the Glenmary study, but the news is that there is no news. There are a few new wrinkles, but Dean Kelley pretty much told us what is happening, and why, in 1972. People are attracted by clear teaching and a challenge to commitment. The sociological reality is that those who claim that religion, in order to survive and flourish, must be constantly updating itself in order to stay in step with changing times have it exactly wrong. One doesn’t need religion to stay in step with the times.

· Whether or not you have money burning a hole in your pocket, if you asked me for a cause truly worthy of your support, I would not lack candidates to recommend. For instance, the Human Life Review, an invaluable journal started by the late Jim McFadden way back before Roe and now edited by his daughter Maria (our erstwhile Managing Editor). On abortion and all the other life questions, there is simply no other source as comprehensive, intelligent, and consistently readable. You can subscribe for only $20 per year, although Maria tells me that contributions above that are accepted, even welcomed. For more information, write Human Life Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

· An April Falcon Doss writes to the Washington Post about sending her daughter to a private school: “For a card-carrying liberal, I was surprisingly unapologetic about our decision. Why should I sacrifice our daughter’s future to an abstract principle? I wasn’t up to battling the school system about class size, curriculum, and extracurricular activities. And by the time any changes could be made, our daughter would have already missed out on a vibrant education.” In the online OpinionJournal, James Taranto comments that this is the very definition of an American liberal, someone who is willing to sacrifice the future of other people’s children to an abstract principle. Of course that’s not fair to all liberals, but …

· It is precisely when we are confident that our cause is just that we need to be reminded that final judgment is not ours. Here, writing in the Torah u-Madda Joumal, is Shalom Carmy, who teaches Jewish thought and philosophy at Yeshiva University: “God’s ways are not always our ways. The believer in a living God cannot take it for granted that God judges our cause righteous, or that He is deaf to the prayers of our adversaries. Even our father Jacob, to whom the Almighty had promised assistance, was anxious about the outcome of his encounter with Esau. To be of good courage and overcome fear when faced by the enemy is a commandment. To assume that we are worthy of His unqualified support and that He cannot show favor to our enemies (even when our cause is righteous) is not the fulfillment of a commandment. Too much certitude about the operations of Providence (alias the radical nationalist’s ‘destiny,’ alias the Marxist’s ‘historical dialectic,’ alias the progressive’s ‘progress’) is the mark of the idolator. One reason that Lincoln’s religiosity rings authentic is that he recognizes the inscrutability of God: ‘Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other…. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully? After the excesses of the previous century, after all the shameless manipulation of ideals, including religious ideals, such humility is more important than ever.”

· Liturgy Training Publications is a huge enterprise based in Chicago. For years, LTP has been keeping Catholics beyond number in liturgical training pants as they are pushed along an ever-changing course of orchestrated spontaneities. Among LTP’s many publications is Rite, a liturgical newsletter edited by Mr. David Phillipart, who, it says here, spent ten years in “parish pastoral ministry.” In the current issue, he suggests introducing a “water rite” before Morning Prayer, and offers a water-blessing of his own composition:

We give you thanks, O God,
for the gift of water
boundless seas and mothers’ wombs
morning bath and sink of warm suds
cool drink and misted gardens
snow drifts and icides frozen sharp!
…
As we have been washed in baptism’s bath,
unseal for us the Spirit-fountain
the Wisdom-geyser that streams and sprays
trickles and truckles
flashes and floods. …
Drench us with love, yet make us thirst for justice
when we see you suffer in the poor and oppressed …

To which the editors of Adoremus Bulletin, a newsletter hung up on the notion that liturgy has something to do with continuities, as in Catholic, comments: “While this blessing’ is drenched with colorful language and dripping with metaphors, it more closely resembles a greeting-card than a sacred text for Catholic prayer.” What a very good idea. Next week, boys and girls, let’s all write greeting cards to be read before Mass. And don’t be embarrassed by accidents. That’s what liturgical training pants are for.

· The author is anonymous. Writing in Christianity Today, he says he has been happily married for twenty-five years, has two teenage sons, is president of his ELCA Lutheran parish council, and leads the youth group. Only his wife knows about the strong same-sex desires he has experienced since childhood. He dare not tell others because he fears what they would think of him, and maybe they wouldn’t let him do what he does in the church. He writes: “The debate on homosexuality is tearing at the fiber of almost every mainline Christian denomination, while also leaving many of us who actually are homosexuals feeling misunderstood, marginalized, and ignored by the ‘dialogue.’ I am not trying to argue in favor of my homosexuality, but to simply acknowledge the reality of my condition. I am broken, and I acknowledge my homosexuality as a manifestation of this brokenness. But I do not believe I am any more broken than the person who sits in the pew next to me. The greedy, the liars, the drunkards, and the single yet sexually active heterosexuals— they all share in equal portion with me in this brokenness. Sin is sin, and grace is grace. We are all sinners and we all–whether heterosexual or homosexual–are offered the same grace. Ours is no easy victory. It would be a whole lot easier if our churches would try to understand, and accept, those like me who claim victory nonetheless.” It is a poignant article, and yet somehow wrongheaded. The only way he could be part of the “dialogue” is to drop his anonymity and, as they say, “tell his story.” In fact, the dialogue dividing the churches is not so much a dialogue as an agitation to get Christians to agree that for two thousand years they have been wrong about human sexuality. If the writer surrendered to the pressures of a tell-all culture and spilled the beans, his testimony would immediately provide ammunition for one side or the other in the agitation. He says he resents the fact that his male friends are ever so much more tolerant of heterosexual sins than of homosexual sins. But that is to resent the fact that somewhere around 98 percent of men are heterosexual. The yearning to have others know and love us for who we really, really, really are is an obsession to be surrendered upon attaining adulthood. God knows and loves us through and through, better than we know and love ourselves. As for his same-sex attractions, his wife also knows, as does, if he has one, his spiritual director. And what would it mean for his fellow parishioners to understand and accept? What if the guy in the pew next to him finds sex with his wife distasteful and has a terrible time resisting the allures of his sexy young secretary at the office? Should he tell the congregation about his temptations, seeking their understanding and acceptance? The cardinal virtue of prudence may suggest that he should probably forgo the satisfaction of telling even his wife. In a world where self-exposure as an appeal for sympathy is pandemic, reticence and privacy about some things support personal dignity and are not unrelated to the very adult virtue of fortitude. How would our author’s fellow parishioners, never mind his wife and children, deal with it if he told all? One might argue that he has not the right to find out. All in all, it is a very good thing–and no judgment on the culture, his church, or anyone else–that this anonymous author remain anonymous.

· I don’t know whether he really said it, but I’ve liked the story that John Calvin, asked by a friend what he has been up to, replied, “I have today sent off my book to the printer, there to be dropped, like a beautiful rose, into a very deep well, never to be heard of again.” Of the seventy-five thousand or so trade books published each year in the U.S., it may be just as well that many are never heard of again. But it would be a very great shame were that to happen to A. James Reichley’s The Values Connection (Rowman & Littlefield). Reichley, who is senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University, writes with uncommon wisdom about the foundations of a free, democratic, and virtuous society. He packs a great deal of historical and philosophical learning into a survey of the various value systems that have been espoused for securing such a society. There is, for instance, the egoism proposed by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and contemporary libertarianisms. Here he also, mistakenly I think, puts Adam Smith. Then there is collectivism and its champions such as Rousseau with his “general will,” Hegel with his realization in history of the divine Idea, and Marxist totalitarianism. His third system, monism, is the identity of the self with the All suggested by sundry Eastern spiritualities, and is in sharpest contrast to the absolutism promoted by authoritarian forms of Christianity and, as we are all learning these days, Islam. ‘Ecstatism” comes in many forms, from Nietzsche to the Woodstock Nation, and all its forms license Dionysus run amok. Civil humanism is very sympathetically considered but finally found wanting for its inability to ground morality in truth. All of which leads him to the conclusion that the only thing that will sustain the kind of society we cherish is “transcendent idealism,” by which he means the Judeo-Christian moral tradition that, he convincingly shows, motored the founding vision of the American Republic. The Values Connection is a calm and judicious book and, while I have my quibbles—as is to be expected in such an ambitious synthesis —it provides a remarkably comprehensive account of the ways in which human beings have tried to provide a moral rationale for a decent society. Reichley’s thought and sensibilities are deeply Augustinian, joining reformism to a keen appreciation of how even the best can go wrong. Perhaps because he wants to invite conversation, he sometimes avoids or states softly the more polarizing questions. For instance, in 284 pages, abortion is not mentioned. The great merit of the book, however, is in its demonstrating that every social order, or proposed social order, entails certain understandings, explicit or implicit, of human nature, history, destiny (or the lack thereof), and assumptions about how we know such understandings are true. The Values Connection is a noteworthy achievement and, having been sent off to the printer, deserves to be heard of again and again.

· Professor Kenneth Miner, a reader in Lawrence, Kansas, suggests that the problem of faithless clerics is endemic to religion. Time goes by and clerics discover they have lost their original motivation, and maybe even their faith, but what else are they to do? He cites John Mortimer who, in Rumpole and the Age of Miracles, has Rumpole speaking of his father: “It is true that my old father was a cleric, so I was, to that extent, a child of the manse; but his increasing doubts about the Thirty-nine Articles were only just balanced by his certainty that he was unequipped to earn a living in any other profession. So he clung on to his draughty vicarage in East Anglia as a man might to a small raft in stormy seas.” Innumerable people in other professions discover in mid-life that they have lost interest or faith in what they set out to do, but they can usually plod along practicing the technical skills pertinent to their craft. It is a different and altogether more poignant thing when someone whose calling is to call people to faith no longer hears the call or has the faith. Were it not for the promise of ex opere operato, he might fear he is faking it. He clings ever more tightly to the promise, despite his doubts about the One who made the promise. Remember the whisky priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. And fondly recall the days when whisky was the great occasion of priestly scandal.

· Dr. Bernard Nathanson, once the country’s foremost abortionist and then, finally, tracked down by grace and baptized into the Catholic Church, sends a letter of glowing praise for my most recent book, As I Lay Dying. Modesty forbids my reporting what he says about the book, but I can tell you that he thinks you’re making a big mistake if you don’t take immediate steps to get it, read it, and recommend it to friends. With his permission, I do quote this from his letter: “I visited you in hospital shortly after your first surgery. You were pale, shrunken, and feeble. With my irrepressible clinical eye I silently consigned you to an advanced Duke classification and estimated six months to a year. As I left your bedside I turned and asked you of what use I could be. You murmured: ‘Pray for me.’ As it happened, I was then busy reviewing a book by Larry Dossey, M.D. called Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. Having set out his arguments for and against prayer as a therapeutic modality, Dossey concludes thus: ‘The use of prayer will become the standard in scientific medical practice in most medical communities. So pervasive will its use become that not to recommend the use of prayer as an integral part of medical care will one day constitute medical malpractice.” Dr. Nathanson says Dossey failed to convince him at the time, and he gave the book a negative review. He adds, “But, as Baron Bramwell (1873) put it: ‘The matter does not appear to me now as it appears to have appeared to me then.’ Prayer is the ultimate weapon in the arsenal of the faithful.”

· From the “Quote… Unquote” Newsletter, this observation by one Robert Wilensky: “We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”

· A R. Dykes, a British engineer, said it of engineering, but, with only the slightest effort of imagination, I expect you might find the following is applicable to a wondrous range of human expertise: “Engineering is the art of modeling materials we do not wholly understand into shapes we cannot precisely analyze, so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.” You say it might apply also to Editors-in-Chief? Now you go too far.

· We will be happy to send a sample issue of this journal to people who you think are likely subscribers. Please send names and addresses to first things, 156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 400, New York, New York 10010 (or e-mail to subscriberservices@pma-inc.net). On the other hand, if they’re ready to subscribe, call toll free 1-877-905-9920, or visit www.firstthings.com.

· Sources: while we’re at it: The religious gap, Public Interest, Fall 2002. What’s meant by collegiality, Institute on Religion and Democracy press release, October 30, 2002. Catholics in Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, October 27, 2002. Connecting the dots, Weekly Standard, July 22, 2002. Nina Shea on sharia in Afghanistan, personal correspondence. Catholic Apologetics International on RJN and Vatican II, www.catholicintl.com, October 16 and 24, 2002. Maggie Gallagher on abortionists, www.townhall.com, October 21, 2002. Garry Wills vs. Philip Jenkins et al., New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002. Wesley Smith on physician-assisted suicide, Pro-Life Infonet, August 25, 2002. Alan Wolfe on Catholic education, Boston College Magazine, Spring 2002. James Taranto on liberals and private schools, www.Opin-ionJournal.com, September 9, 2002. Liturgical training pants, Adoremus Bulletin, July/August 2002. The anonymous author, Christianity Today, March 11, 2002. A. R. Dykes on engineering, Quote… Unquote Newsletter, October 4, 2002.