Correspondence
Correspondence Ecstasy-rated celibacy Youngstown, Ohio To the Editors: Thank you for presenting Adrian Hastings's trenchant reflections [Oct. 13] on celibacy and ministry. He focuses the issue...
...As a result our polity offers no way to help individuals have a sense of self that is not alienating—it becomes a political necessity for everyone to understand that politically they are but units of arbitrary desire...
...Father Hastings's article shows how far the Catholic Church has strayed from these simple guidelines, and it documents some of the "nastier things" that can happen when celibacy becomes more a matter of control than charism...
...To the Editors: I was struck by how similar the cogent analysis of William B. Hixson, Jr., is to some of the late sixties literature that dealt with the "bias of pluralism...
...I say this out of the fear that the present attack on democracy is only a symptom of our present crisis...
...For if we continue to describe the political problem as "restraining power," whether it be the power of government or "interest groups," as Hixson does, then we simply have no basis for trying to develop a language or experience for the pursuit of a common good...
...STANLEY HAUERWAS...
...Alienated from both sources, modern socialism often accepted the temptation of creating only the triumph of one piece of the linear-fragmented social machine—the unaccountable party exercising power through a non-organic state...
...Fox offers some simple rules to safeguard against the loss of ecstasy in our use of a strategic means such as celibacy...
...The Catholic model, of course, proved reactionary on its own in the face of the modern experience and, at least initially, was young liberalism's main enemy...
...The model stresses the whole over the part in the form of tradition on its temporal axis and collectively on its spatial axis, while its thought/action leaning is toward cognitive vision...
...It seems to me that the critique of liberal democracies leveled in that literature was never sufficiently answered, nor has Hixson answered his own darkest thoughts about liberalism...
...The liberal tradition, in contrast, offers a linear-fragmented social model, guided by the mechanistic principle of countervailing power and emphasizing the negative responsibility to restrain power and to resist a clear center to the social system...
...joe HOLLAND Center of Concern Notre Dame, Ind...
...I suspect, again, that an exploration of supplementary resources from classical Catholic social thought could prove fruitful in the creation of an authentically humanistic socialism as the only adequate response to the crisis of mature liberalism...
...This is idolatrous at best and can lead to "even nastier things...
...The liberal model stresses the part over the whole in the form of liberation from tradition in its temporal axis and individuality on its spatial axis, while leaning in thought/ action toward voluntarist decision...
...For the irony is that the political philosophy that promised to free men from the shackles of ascribed social orders and economic servitude has become our fate...
...The classical Catholic social model is that of a cyclical-organic society, guided by the biological principle of subsidiarity, emphasizing the positive responsibility to create an environment favorable to the common good...
...its root may be the erosion of community at every level of the social system...
...In truth Hixson feels there is no alternative to liberalism...
...Only then can we be assured that we have an adequate basis for maintaining the rules of fair play between competing interests since all interests count equally irrespective of the content of those interests...
...Rather it is a positive act linked to a vision of the common good and flowing from organic social interaction...
...A further thought: I think one of the tragic aspects of the dominance of liberalism is that it has caused us to ignore or misdescribe the really remarkable form of truth in our society...
...He focuses the issue most sharply when he says that compulsory celibacy of priests in the Western Catholic Church is a matter of power and control more than anything else...
...Specifically I find myself attracted again to classical Catholic social principles transposed into a new synthesis with the liberal tradition...
...REV...
...He lists celibacy as one of the "tactical" ecstasies available to us in our attempt to experience divinity...
...we must continue to try to form a social order based on distrust and to rely on abundance and technology as substitutes for community...
...As a result we have increasingly tried to substitute procedure and competition for the absence of virtue, but the substitution only continues to undermine the virtues necessary to make a free society viable...
...Our problem is that we have lost any idea of what that could possibly mean...
...To the Editors: William B. Hixson Jr.'s article, "Liberal Legacy Radical Critique," [Oct...
...In the crisis of mature liberalism, however, we may well ask whether the linearfragmented thrust does not need centering and organic balance from the presence of some elements of the classical cyclical-organic model...
...Americans, as often pointed out, are good people or at least want to be good people...
...Indeed, the "idealists" among us are reduced to fighting to get "freedom" or "rights" for others to realize their "self-interests'' more fully...
...Another rule tells us that a "tactical" ecstasy such as celibacy can never be regulated by rule or fiat...
...While it would be premature for any of us to offer final judgments on the liberal tradition, it is precisely this kind of exploration which needs to be encourI am inclined to agree with Hixson that any attempt by American radicals to abandon totally the liberal tradition would be unfaithful to our own heritage...
...The re-creation of community, and the rendering of capital and technology accountable to community, may thus be a complementary element of strategy alongside new coalitions aimed at restraint of unaccountable power...
...I also agree with his (and Goldstene's) suggestion for new coalitions to defend freedom as democracy comes under attack...
...But then there seems to be no answer to the liberal dilemma: namely, Madison assumed that for the system of competing factions to work required virtuous people, yet he gave no sufficient institutional basis for the development of such people...
...But even so, I still fear that the failure to introduce other, non-liberal resources into our cultural tradition will leave us severely handicapped in the coming crisis...
...13] points to a deepening dilemma as the American experience enters a period of fundamental crisis in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century...
...If the American tradition is to weather the crisis which is coming upon us, it will need, I suspect, to move beyond liberalism alone, however renewed its negative energies, and beyond its radicalized child of Enlightenment, socialism...
...An observation by Father Matthew Fox may be appropriate here...
...At its best the socialist vision pointed toward such an integration of the classical sense of the common good and the liberal defense of personal initiative...
...JAMES E. JOHNSTON Hixson & liberalism Washington, D.C...
...Thus, the melancholy of Hixson's "alternative," the call for new coalitions of interest groups, continues to avoid the central question: what is it that any of us should want...
...Where socialism has failed so badly, however, is precisely by remaining only the radicalized child of liberalism, alienated from the wisdom of the classical model with its insistence on subsidiarity, and often vicious toward its own liberal roots...
...Thus, the despair of Hixson's conclusion: he can only fall back for an alternative to liberal strategies that he knows cannot help us to become a better (Continued on page 799) society or a better people...
...So we make "freedom of the individual" an end in itself and ignore the fact that most of us do not have the slightest idea of what we should do with"our freedom...
...As a result it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the more we politically learn to distrust the more we become distrustful, ironically even of ourselves...
...Creation is more than the negative act of restraint of power...
...One rule reminds us that these "tactical" ecstasies axealways a means, and that treating them as ends is indicative of a control-oriented spirituality...
...But the liberal tradition of itself cannot recreate Commonweal: 770 community...
Vol. 105 • December 1978 • No. 24
