An Invitation to Our Times

...My own judgments of the Church are of course affected by my experience of it, which is d i f f e r e n t , although nor distinct, from Mr...

...But with a difference...

...Eliot, and Arnold Toynbee, among others, which are brilliantly done, in the g r e a t Hook tradition...

...This opening chapter is a witty intellectual Baedeker to the four regions of the United States incapsulated by New York, San Francisco, Detroit, and the South in general...

...Hitchcock does not despair, of course...

...But I do think we can join in expressing unqualified admiration for the new Pope, who is able to communicate a loving heart vividly to the world while at the same time proclaiming traditional moral principles with inflexible logic...

...Abandoning the stonewalling tactic which he used so effectively at the 1979 CBS Annual Meeting, Mr...

...In reality, An Invitation to Our Times is a quirky intellectual autobiography more often entertaining than enlightening...

...CBS does not accept that as a valid reason for other individuals or organizations to bar TV cameras from covering events open to the press...

...CBS also admitted that it was wrong to imply that Baum's appeal of his suit to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado after it was dismissed for lack of evidence in the Federal District Court in Utah, reflected on the integrity of the Federal District judge in Utah...

...10001 James Hitchcock is presented to us here as "the leading spokesman for traditional moderates within Roman Catholicism...

...over the protests of Reed lrvine, Chairman of Accuracy in Media, who still had several questions he wanted to ask about serious uncorrected errors in CBS programs...

...I should be fascinated to know what Mr...

...Its wideranging didacticism and vast selfassurance are oppressive...

...The abrupt termination of the meeting was obviously engineered to spare Mr...

...I must leave it to American Catholics to dispute with him the accuracy of his diagnosis...

...These are words worthy of being tatted and hung on any young educator's office wall...

...The Church I know is British and Irish...

...As an Irishman active for many years first in the academic and then the public life of England, and as a Protestant for 34 years and a Catholic for 40, I am as ready to hold forth as he is about the Catholic Church in 1980...

...Despite the willingness of bishops and priests to visit individual prisoners the Church as a whole has done little to press for a more Christian system...

...Hitchcock would, for the most part, frighten me...

...Paley said that CBS "did not consider it right or fruitful for us to have this kind of expert advice available to us.'" He said "it would be a waste of money, a waste of time to have special scientists of the type you refer to come in and try to interfere with the way CBS is conducting its news...

...Send for free, illustrated 40-page brochure H-80 Vantage Press, 516 W. 84 St., New York, N.Y...

...The liberal tendencies which horrify Mr...

...Hitchcock's next book to find out...

...Paley simply adjourned the meeting to avoid having to respond to most of the questions that Accuracy in Media had come prepared to ask...

...Abortion stands out as the one great social cause+ apart from religious education, on which it might be thought that Catholics would have no option but to stand firm...

...20005 S-2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1980 41 If only the standard doses of school reminiscence had been eliminated, bits of juvenilia about "Moose" the teacher who would rather talk baseball than history and "Big Ed" the authoritarian athletic director, the section on public education would be a small masterpiece...

...New authors welcomed...

...When the great surge of enthusiasm for abortion law reform swept over Britain in 1967, the Catholic Church was caught napping...

...Paley, the winner of the Stellar Stonewall Award in 1979 for his skill in refusing to answer shareholder questions, rose to a higher level in this year's competition...

...Paley had taken all the CBS directors and a large number of CBS officials all the way to New Orleans at considerable expense for this meeting...

...Declaimers and firebrands, kindred souls to the talented Ross, will flock about him...

...The mean-spiritedness aside, such passages suggest that Ross has not yet decided who his audience truly is...

...Well, perhaps there is...

...Hitchcock stems from his seeming to have had a much less fortunate Catholic experience than I. Given the differences between Britain and America, this is understandable...

...It is too bad that Mr...

...But in any worldly sense his opinion of the future of Catholicism is depressing...

...Hitchcock gives a scathing account of the American failure...

...England is a much less church-going country than America: The typical non-Catholic Christian in Britain seldom goes to church...

...And yet there are few school-teachers, good or bad, who do not imagine that they are engaged in a noble task: the creation of souls...

...In light of those admissions, why hasn't CBS publicly apologized for airing this slanderous program, as well as correcting the other serious e~ors in the program...

...But no one could say that of Catholics in England...

...Ross returns now, still under 30, still as fractious as before, offering what seems at first like a connected series of essays on American schools, politics, morals, religions, sexual ethics, and social customs...

...Let me make myselfa little plainer...

...English Catholics constitute only about 10 percent of the population, American Catholics almost 25 percent...

...Hitchcock, he possesses an unshakeable belief in the mercy of God...

...The meeting was convened at 10:00 A.M...

...But taking his picture as correct, for the sake of argument, can there really be so much contrast between the Catholicism of the two main English-speaking nations...

...The audience for Ross's f u t u r e , undoubtedly more mature, books will be those who a p p r e c i a t e , indeed require, unclich~d anti-receivedwisdom essays on American life...

...It was abruptly adjourned at 11:00 A.M...

...But again, one wishes the blue pencil had removed an embarrassing reflection about suburban shopping malls peopled by the likes of"Farmer Boob," "Mr...

...B a n a l , " "Miss Ernestina Crud," and "Mrs...

...i= = n To: AIM, 777 14th St., N.W., Washington, D.C...

...England...

...Hitchcock talks a good deal about the tendency of American Catholics to substitute social concern for piety...

...Hitchcock's...

...Paley displayed consumate hypocrisy in banning TV camera coverage of the CBS Annual Meeting, even though the meeting was open to the print media...

...Even so with Ross...

...Wells...

...Paley went on to give a masterful display of haughty highhandedness...

...Typical day: Breakfast with Lloyd George, Lunch with Diaghilev, Tea with Scan O'Casey, Cocktails with George Gershwin, Dinner at the Garrick Club with H.G...

...Perhaps then we would have another book by America's leading philosopher, entitled "The Twilight of Socialism," which would explain why capitalism seems to be indispensable to political democracy...

...60 Minutes" aired a segment on an obscure legal case in Utah in an effort to show that the legal profession and the judges in Utah were intimidated by the Mormon Church...

...In England, Catholics have There is opportun, ity in America...

...HYPOCRITE Mr...

...Since CBS claims that the Illinois Power Company s videotape, "60 Minutes/Our Reply, "' inaccurately charges CBS with serious errors that have not been corrected on he air, why had CBS refused to send a representative to show0n~,s of this highly damaging expose of CBS errors to debate the issues raised...

...For years many people (myself included) have been urging the Catholic Church to take a much more active interest in, for example, penal reform...

...42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1980...

...We should simply relax and enjoy the development of this fierce original, r Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts of all types : fi ~'ion, non-fiction, poetry, scholarly and juvenile wt k s , etc...

...In youth the temptation is to preen as one expounds and the result is most often a painful stridency...

...Paley had refused to deal with a similar question at the 1979 annual meeting when he was asked why CBS News had avoiding reporting the evidence of Jones's dedication to the communist cause...

...There are recent signs, however, that this may be changing...

...The Church we both belong to is supposed to be, and Frank Long ford, the Ear/of Long ford, has served in many distinguished posts in Britain's government...

...The social p r e s s u r e on Catholics to do likewise is responsible for a large measure of lapsing, which is bound to have an e f f e c t on the vitality of the Church, including its doctrinal debates...

...AN INVITATION TO OUR TIMES Mitchell S. Ross Doubleday & Co...

...E3 Sarkes Tarzian Inc...

...Like my g r e a t non-Catholic friend, Malcolm Muggeridge, whose views at many points resemble those of Mr...

...He proved himself an adept polemical guerrilla fighter in that book, with the proper killer instinct, even if somewhat lacking in finesse...

...There are other differences between the two Churches...

...Undoubtedly, he is a powerful writer whose pronouncements in Catholicism and Modernity lack nothing in clarity or boldness...

...The importance of Catholics politically in America has no counterpart in Britain...

...Having won the hypocrisy contest hands down, Mr...

...I suppose, then, my only real disagreement with Mr...

...Paley displayed his awesome arrogance by categorically rejecting the Kemeny Commission recommendation that the media employ knowledgeable experts to advise in coverage of such serious technical matters as nuclear accidents...

...But his Church is geographically and, it would seem, spiritually remote from mine...

...Hitchcock thinks the effect of Pope John Paul II on American Catholicism will be...

...Later he publicly acknowledged the mistake and began to work d e s p e r a t e l y to undo the mischief...

...The Church he writes about is primarily American...

...Since his d e a t h Catholics have adopted a much more militant anti-abortion line...

...CBS subsequently admitted that the plaintiff in this case, Garn Raum, had hired numerous lawyers to pursue his case, a fact not revealed in the %0 Minutes" program...

...There is a p r e c e d e n t for such a book from such a tender shoot...

...Bloomington, Indiana simply not been numerous enough to function collectively in politics, except on two issues: Catholic schools and abortion...

...By that time Nichols had published his first novel and interviewed and published sketches of most of the leading public figures in Michael C. Brown is an editorial assistant at the San Francisco Chronicle...

...Given even this considerable freight of experience Nichols' book is barely tolerable...

...As indeed, for example, would the section called "The National Landscape," were it not for similar errors...

...The theme was that it was difficult for a person suing the church to obtain competent legal counsel or justice in the courts in Utah...

...Paley the ordeal of having to respond to additional embarrassing questions about badly flawed CBS programs But before that happened, Mr...

...But while they can be detected in Britain, they in no way dominate the Church as they do in America...

...I f the modern church is to have anything to say which is worth listening to, it must be willing at least to risk offending nonbelievers...

...But then I suppose I shall just have to wait for Mr...

...Says our guide, "I am a city man by temperament...

...The revolution in brief [since the Second Vatican Council, whose teachings he considers to have been much distorted] was an emanation from an elite center--the use of authority to undermine authority...

...Nellie Fishface...

...Paley said that several years ago when cameras had been permitted, they had been "disruptive...

...As for now, we must not be excessively boorish about method and style...

...8.95 Michael C. Brown M i t c h e l l Ross is the bumptious young fellow who made his writing debut several years back by bushwhacking Buckley, Vidal, Mailer, and several other lions in a lively book of literary and personal criticism called The Literary Politicians...

...Paley curtly declined to even discuss after the meeting, were these: Why did the CBS docu-drama, "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim )ones," ignore the incontrovertible evidence that Jones had been a dedicated Stalinist-Maoist communist for many years, not the well-meaning believing Christian portrayed by CBS...

...Hitchcock's view of the Church may be summed up in six monosyllables: It is in a bad way...

...Beverley Nichols, British aesthete and gardener, and now 80 years of age, wrote his first autobiography at the age of 25 and called it, not endearingly, Twenty-Five...

...I only wish he would reexamine his economic philosophy so that it would conform with one of David Hume's conditions of mathematics: that it be concerned only with truth and falsity, not with preferences...

...Among the questions which Accuracy in Media was prevented from asking, and which Mr...

...In England the story is more complex...

...Paley closed the meeting before those questions could be asked...

...CBS had refused to submit a resolution favoring implementation of the Kemeny Commission recommendation to a vote of the shareholders...

...Ross is also a first-class aphorist: "Fundamentally, after all, the reason for sending children to school is similar to the reason for domesticating cats: it is b e t t e r than listening to them go shrieking through the alleys...

...And, " . . . the purpose of mass education is to benefit the masses and so it is hardly surprising that this adds up to little more than the provision of an anodyne for the mediocre...

...Their statistical position has affected their religious life very little, except in one r e s p e c t , which is worth mentioning...

...It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the two...

...I contemplate three hours in the companionship of a fishing pole with horror...

...indeed is, universal...

...Here is a fair sampling: " I n the popular mind virtually all the teachings of the Church are now in doubt...

...Cardinal Heenan, a real hero of mine but not beloved of all Catholic intellectuals, was persuaded that it would be unwise for Catholics to lead a strong opposition...