Catholicism and Modernity

...But the tragedy is, Hastings concluded, "that, for all his fireworks, Dr...

...When Hitchcock writes, for example, that "news accounts of meetings of the Canon Law Society suggest a near unanimity among its members as to the desirability of the 'experimental norms' for annulling marriages" (p...

...Some of Hitchcock's sweeping generalizations are, by the nature of the accusation and thanks to escape hatches planted in the wording, totally unverifiable...

...Would it have reflected poorly on the accuracy of his many other examples if an erratum slip had been inserted in the present volume...

...That's as far as he is willing to go in criticizing so-called conservative recalcitrants...

...As for returning the Crown of St...

...By contrast, throughout the rest of his book he severely criticizes, indeed excoriates, any number of socalled liberals and does so in considerable detail...

...After Hitchcock made this charge in that earlier booklet, he was, to my personal knowledge, informed that it was completely untrue...

...This crisis, he says, "has accompanied, with few people being aware of it, an almost cosmic shift in Western cultural and moral attitudes occurring at so basic a level that their full impact has been little appreciated...

...By actual count, he devotes approximately one page to so-called "conservatives" and 240 pages to socalled "liberals...

...of protesting injustice only in Western nations, never behind the Iron Curtain, and in effect distinguishing "good" dictatorships from "bad" ones...

...He has addressed himself to a crucially important subject...

...14 March 1980: 153...

...Unfortunately, Hitchcock's attempt is so consistently superficial and so lacking in objectivity as to be almost ludicrous...

...As Hitchcock himself warns when advising the other side how to conduct itself in an intellectual dialogue, polemicists should not cast their argument "relentlessly in terms of a conflict between 'progressives' and 'reactionaries,' " or between "the respective forces of light and darkness...

...Again, I take no personal satisfaction (quite the contrary) in saying that that's exactly the way I feel about Hitchcock's terribly pessimistic analysis of the current crisis in the church...

...dissertation...

...This is not to say that polemical tracts must be held to identically the same standards of scholarship that history professors normally demand of their students...

...Analogically, in current usage, a procrustean is one who is harsh and inflexible in fitting someone or something to a preconceived idea or system...

...This choice example of ecclesiastical Newspeak reflected a habit, widespread in religious circles...

...Hitchcock that I took on this assignment with the complete approval of church authorities both in Hungary and at the Vatican...

...Procrustes was a legendary highwayman of Attica who tied his victims upon an iron bed and stretched or cut off their legs to adapt them to its length...

...I trust it will not be too great a shock to Mr...

...Regrettably, however, he also distorts and, in some cases, completely misrepresents the views of a number of other Catholics...

...I provide only two examples, concerning which I happen to have particularly good knowledge...

...Louis University were to try to palm them off in Commonweal: 150 a Ph.D...

...At one point, Hitchcock declares that "the needs of blacks, Chicanos, and other culturally distinct Catholic groups are being defined by those 'leaders' who are themselves closest to being assimilated into the dominant culture...

...Unlike Hitchcock I am personally acquainted with the majority of the black and Chicano "leaders" referred to in this passage, and it strikes me as meeting the traditional definition of libel: malicious misrepresentation...

...In 1976, for example, a staff member of the United States Catholic Conference told a committee of the United States Senate that the Senate should reject a proposed American treaty with Spain lest it be construed as "an accolade of legitimacy" for the Spanish government of King Juan Carlos...

...At heart, he says, they are schismatics...

...It is replete with tendentious statements designed (unwittingly, I CATHOLICISM AND MODERNITY: CONFRONTATION OR CAPITULATION...

...Are they, too, victims of the "triumph of the therapeutic" or willfully blind to Communist injustices...

...He manages to persuade himself that almost every bishop, priest, religious or lay person with whom he happens to disagree, is, whether wittingly or not, addicted to the ' 'therapeutic mentality...

...In any event, it must be said that Catholicism and Modernity is woefully lacking in objectivity...

...He then mentions by name only two groups in particular—the Catholic Traditionalist Movement and the followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre...

...The subject of Hitchcock's new book—the tension between Catholicism and modernity—is admittedly very imCommonweal: 152 portant and very timely...

...It's a tragedy, however, that for all his fireworks and for all his literary talent, he has done it so badly...

...116), perhaps, he should also mention that the same news accounts suggest a near unanimity among the American bishops on the same subject...

...On closer examination, many of these individuals proved to be isolated mavericks...

...A year later the same priest turned a deaf ear to Hungarian-Americans agitated over the United States government's intention of returning the Crown of St...

...or M.A...

...His guru, Philip Rieff, he informs us, "perceives a fundamental shift from the 'inhibitory' to the 'remissive' mode of behavior, that is, from a culture whose dominant symbols convey moral and religious affirmations, which include interdicts or prohibitions, to a culture which systematically grants permission to the individual to transgress these interdicts in the name of personal freedom and fulfillment...

...The fact is that Hehir has authored, for the bishops of the United States, an extremely forthright criticism of injustices behind the Iron Curtain and, in dozens of other ways, has clearly demonstrated that Hitchcock's reference to him is a hollow caricature...

...Norman has done the job so badly...

...I take no satisfaction in saying that that's a perfect description of Hitchcock's personal style of argumentation, not only in the volume under review, but in some of his other publications as well, notably, for example, in a booklet entitled On The Present Position of Catholics In America...

...The USCC priest referred to is Father Bryan Hehir...

...This means, among other things, that only certain kinds of social injustice are recognized and responded to...

...I doubt that Professor Hitchcock (as opposed, again, to Hitchcock the polemicist) would consider this an objective balance in a dissertation submitted by one of his students...

...An objective attempt to apply Rieff s basic thesis to the current crisis in the church might conceivably serve a useful purpose...

...In other cases Hitchcock's failure to check his sources with the principals involved leads him to give credence and credibility to statements which are demonstrably contrary to fact...

...To be sure, at the very end of Catholicism and Modernity, as a kind of afterthought, Hitchcock concedes that "just as there are many liberal Catholics whom the Church will find it impossible to placate, no matter what its policies, so there are traditionalists the validity of whose beliefs cannot be admitted without doing severe damage to the fabric of the Church...

...Nor is it to say that full-time professors of history are barred from moonlighting as polemicists...

...The act of transgression becomes 'endlessly attractive,' and a reflex attitude develops in which no fixed moral or religious belief enjoys authority or commands obedience for any appreciable length of time...

...Stephen, most sacred of Hungarian symbols, to the Communist government of Hungary...

...Books: THE HISTORIAN AS POLEMICIST EARLY ON in Catholicism and Modernity, Professor Hitchcock complains that' 'a standard history of modern theology, by a Dominican, polemicizes openly on almost every page...

...As previously noted, he also repeatedly generalizes from isolated and altogether unrepresentative examples or citations...

...Given the impossibility of reprinting extensive examples, the best way to characterize Hitchcock's style of argumentation is with the term procrustean...

...If Commonweal had as much linage at its disposal as, say, the New York Review, I would be prepared to cite at least twenty examples of what I consider to be egregiously misleading statements which Hitchcock, in his workaday role as a Professor of History (as opposed to his part-time role as an angry polemicist), would presumably reject out of hand if one of his graduate students at St...

...Religion is not one of these.'' This may or may not be a valid generalization on his part...

...Perhaps Hitchcock simply believes he has hold of some general truths about minority leaders or church staff members, including what motivates them "consciously or unconsciously...

...delegation which did so...

...And so on...

...At another point Hitchcock writes the following: The desire to bear moral witness in society, although it involves much that is noble and genuine, is part of the general process of middle-class "liberation" by which certain people, consciously or unconsciously, learn to transcend the narrow boundaries of their culture in order to take' 'enlightened'' and "advanced" positions on controversial questions, positions on which they are certain history will vindicate them...

...162...

...I might add that not a single entry in his extensive series of footnotes is directed at conservatives...

...Stephen to Hungary, I might add that I was a member of the U.S...

...Let me not exaggerate in this regard...

...Hitchcock, unfortunately, has recklessly violated this injunction in trying to prove that while "virtually every ecumenical council has been followed by a crisis, usually stemming from the refusal of a major segment of the Church to accept its decrees...

...But here it is again...

...George G. Higgins assume) not to persuade the neutral reader by stating the pros and cons of a given argument, but simply (and simplistically) to disparage and discredit the opposition...

...James Hitchcock Seabury, $12.95, 261 pp...

...Did the correction, which should have been unnecessary in the first place, come too late for this printing...

...Hitchcock makes a number of valid points and very properly blows the whistle on a scattering of people who have expressed silly and even dangerous opinions or conclusions concerning theological, pastoral, and related matters...

...He writes, for example, "Despite the fact that many of their own fathers probably belonged to labor unions, members of the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry in 1977 rejected a proposal that they seek closer ties with the labor movement" (p...

...This, for example: "To an extent which is still not fully appreciated, the drive for social justice in the past detade has been a metaphor, in the lives of many of those participating in it, for their own sexual liberation" (p...

...To put it negatively, they should not manipulate their "evidence" to "prove" a preestablished thesis...

...As Adrian Hastings noted recently in The London Tablet with reference to a similar book which Hitchcock quotes very favorably in his own study (Christianity and the World Order by Edward Norman): "I can think of few more important subjects for Christians to ponder today...

...I lost count, for example, of the number of times he supports some generalization by citing "a priest," "a nun," "a theologian," "a Catholic bureaucrat," "a catechetical director," or what have you...

...To the uninformed that passage may appear telling...

...In short, I think his belated and perfunctory show of evenhandedness at the tag end of his book is 14 March 1980: 151 window dressing and not to be taken seriously...

...and that it doesn't matter whether his illustrations of these generalizations are accurate...

...the Second Vatican Council is perhaps the first council to be followed by a crisis in which its teachings have been distorted into meanings contrary to their original intention...

...He polemicizes fiercely on almost every page—indeed in almost every paragraph and every sentence in his new book—and not infrequently, alas, harshly judges other people's motives after the manner of a hyped-up college debater who is hell-bent on scoring points and completely demolishing the opposition...

...Hitchcock, by his aggressively polemical style of writing, amply confirms his own contention that "objectivity is a fragile thing, possible perhaps only with regard to subjects which do not engage the scholar's own personality...

...Commonweal readers familiar with Hitchcock's previous polemical writings will not be surprised to learn that ninetynine percent of his criticism in this regard is directed very aggressively at so-called "liberals'' and that less than one percent is directed at so-called "conservatives," and even then in rather muted terms...

...If I understand Hitchcock correctly, his own preconceived idea in Catholicism and Modernity is that it is "the triumph of the therapeutic mentality'' (as defined by the sociologist, Philip Rieff, whom he quotes more frequently than any other author) that largely accounts for the post-Vatican II crisis in the church...

...in fact, it is outrageously tendentious...

...It is to say, however, that if and when they do so, they, of all people, ought to strive for a decent minimum of fairness and objectivity even in the heat of the fray...

...Repeatedly, Hitchcock indulges without restraint in sweeping and, for the most part, one-sidedly polemical generalizations supported, at the most, by his fragmentary "evidence,'' which is culled in large part from second-, third-, and fourth-hand sources and which Hitchcock seldom seems to have doublechecked by interviewing or even talking to the persons being quoted...

...But that is exactly the problem of Procrustes's bed: Hitchcock simply stretches or cuts off his victims' legs to adapt them to his preconceptions...