Lighten up, guys
Carlin, David R. Jr.
new religious studies Ph.D. may be a master of one sect or Epistle--and may or may not believe in God. There are three ways in which Catholic colleges might revitalize their Catholic...
...The trouble is, I am not aware that there is any significant bigotry directed against Catholics in present-day America...
...I am for choice in education...
...I have spent so many years in local and state politics, where abuse, whether veiled or open, is the stock in trade, that I must have developed a thick skin...
...The cartoon bishop then adds: / "I am for the state giving your tax money to parents to give to me so I can teach their kids to be against choice in abortion...
...So when the bishop puts together his campaign to reject "bigotry and insult" against Catholics, he can sign me up...
...instead you punch back...
...I can't get the point...
...I see...
...358: Commonweal No, what we're complaining about are the more subtle forms of prejudice--for instance, the offending cartoon in the Philadelphia Daily News...
...But moral leadership becomes more complex and difficult every day...
...In such an exchange you would have to score a point for the bishop...
...It is only the other day, remember, that Catholicism emerged from several centuries of hostility to intellectual freedom-centuries marked by the Inquisition (both Spanish and Roman), the trial of Galileo, the Index of Prohibited Books, the "Syllabus of Errors," and a general spirit of defensive authoritarianism...
...If I were to make the same request today, it might be for someone with expertise in the ethical issues raised by Centesimus annus...
...His question highlighted one of the problems of all journals of opinion--how to provide continuity in discussion when there is a significant time lapse between the ini1 June 1991:359...
...The April 4 cartoon pictures a Catholic bishop saying, "Yes...
...Then why don't you direct your attention to elementary and secondary education, where choice is very limited...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Nevertheless, the hiring process is the key to identity, and the chair or dean or president who will follow up on this is as rare as the philosophy candidate who has read Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson and plans to put them on the reading list...
...There are three ways in which Catholic colleges might revitalize their Catholic character...
...In fact it is arguable that it has become too tolerant about certain matters of elective behavior...
...Yet, would anyone argue against that idea...
...They feel that bigotry is so rampant in the land that strenuous campaigns to intimidate others from speaking their minds are warranted...
...not fire an incompetent like Professor Friendly...
...For instance, the Wilkinson cartoon cuts both ways...
...And such campaigns often succeed: witness the great number of writers, politicians, and academics who bite their tongues lest their words be misunderstood and they find themselves accused of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, etc...
...No, no...
...Let's not toss the charge of antiCatholicism about too casually, thereby adding Catholics to the list of those who refuse to debate, who prefer to silence their critics by charging them with some psychological infirmity or moral depravity...
...Of course...
...Thus, the problem is often not a lay-clerical split, but a lack of common vision within a religious order...
...If this sort of thing is going on, I haven't noticed it...
...You don't shout "low blow" every time someone lands a punch...
...Score one debating point for Signe Wilkinson, the artist who drew the cartoon...
...If Catholics and others who are prochoice on schools while being antichoice on abortion can be called to account for their apparent inconsistency, so they in turn can call to account for those Americans who are in favor of choice in abortion but not when it comes to schools...
...Provided we are free to respond, we should relish attacks made on us by our critics...
...The bishop could defend his apparent inconsistency by saying: "I consider choice to be a very great value, but not so great that it should take precedence over what I believe to be a human life...
...But in the United States...
...Third, achieve some minimal agreement on curriculum wherein all students would read a few fundamental primary texts--Luke, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Newman---central to the Christian tradition...
...that kind of thing pretty much died out earlier in the century...
...Why don't you crusade for parental choice among public schools and vouchers for children going to private schools, including Catholic and other denominational schools...
...I think it's high time that Catholics mobilized themselves to reject bigotry and insult...
...At The College of the Holy Cross, for example, where I was academic dean, 1981-85, one of the most traditionally "Jesuit" faculty members was a young, non-Catholic political scientist, Maurizio Vanicelli, who died suddenly this winter...
...Which brings us back to where we began...
...Let American Catholics be happy intellectual warriors, l I OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy CIVILITY REVISITED CATHOLICS UNITED FOR THE FRAY friend who had been out of the country called me from New York the other day to ask, "Whatever did you write to bring on those letters to the editor in Commonweal...
...He was referring to letters from the Reverend Robert Hyde [March 8, 1991 ] and James A. Sullivan, vice-president of Catholics United for the Faith [April 19], commenting on my column, "Mending Catholic Manners," in the issue of January 11...
...A Roman Jew, who often put more effort into critiquing student papers than students put into writing them, he would draw the students into long debates and pump them about what "Jesuit" education meant--something we Jesuits seldom do...
...At all events, it seems to me that America today is on the whole a remarkably tolerant country...
...The former can challenge the latter: "I see you support the right to abortion because you believe choice to be something like an absolute value...
...Perhaps I lead too sheltered a life...
...In the vigorous give-and-take that ought to characterize public debate in a democratic society, the blow delivered by the Daily News cartoon falls well within the Marquis of Queensberry boundaries...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., is a journalism professor in the communications department at Loyola University in New Orleans...
...This means that just as they seek to hire blacks and women, they would seek religious order priests and nuns, and laypersons who, regardless of their religious commitment, are concerned about the ethical dimensions of the arts and sciences...
...Bishop McHugh, instead of complaining about dirty pool, might have responded with something along these lines...
...Now, I'm as opposed to anti-Catholicism as the next fellow, and I want to go on record as being particularly opposed to "crass" anti-Catholicism, which sounds like an especially unpleasant variety of the species...
...let others disgrace themselves by resorting to intimidation...
...A good number of the faculty took this as an invasion of their prerogatives, an assault on their academic freedom...
...But (pardon me for saying this) the cartoon does not strike me as being insulting or bigoted...
...You miss the point," someone will tell me...
...What we are complaining about are not the gross forms of discrimination you just itemized...
...The real-life bishop was not amused...
...Priest-presidents, if they are not careful, tend to identify with their secular, fund-raising peers, and put as much energy into their own self-protection as does any politician...
...You don't have to be anti-Catholic to say that...
...First, the faculty, freely and collectively, would have to decide that it is essential for their future for the college to stay Catholic and, according to its own tradition, different...
...This is a more convincing reply to the inconsistency charge than the reply the abortion prochoice person would have to make: "I believe choice to be so important a value that it even takes precedence over what may possibly be a human life--though of course choice is not so great a value as to take precedence over the public school monopoly of elementary and secondary education...
...Six years ago, as Holy Cross dean, I proposed that the economics department search for a new faculty member who to some degree either shared or saw the relevance of those basic principles of economic justice developed in the American bishops' pastoral letter on the economy--for example, the need to consider the human consequences of economic decisions...
...In Northern Ireland, yes...
...Tell me where Catholics are discriminated against in housing, employment, admission to schools and colleges, access to government services, etc...
...Second, the trustees and president must reinforce the college's identity through vigorous leadership---through eloquence, handson management, and, above all, governing with unquestioned fairness and integrity...
...LIGHTEN UP, GUYS GIVE AS GOOD AS YOU GET read recently that Bishop James T. McHugh of the Catholic diocese of Camden, New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia, has accused the Philadelphia Daily News of "crass anti-Catholicism" after the newspaper printed an editorial cartoon ironically contrasting the Catholic position on choice in abortion with its position on choice in schooling...
...American Catholics, including bishops, ought to be the friends of rational debate...
...Because the Catholic church dares to speak out against abortion--thereby confronting the press bias in favor of abortion on demand---Catholics become the victims of mockery and contempt," Bishop McHugh retorted...
...But some people see things differently...
...Holy Cross was one of the "best" Catholic schools in the country, but I had badly misjudged the degree to which the faculty--many hired from top graduate schools in the last ten years--shared the mission of the institution...
...Otherwise, faculty and student critics, with some justification, will seize the unoccupied moral high ground and demand: "How can a university call itself Catholic and/or Jesuit and still (fill in the latest controversy): fire Professor Friendly...
...while priestfaculty identify with their professional peers and think they owe their fellow religious no more loyalty than they do their fellow laymen...
...The proper response to a hit made in a debate is to attempt a counter-thrust...
...When it comes to being a prejudicedetector it helps to have a very thin and sensitive skin,, like the princess who felt the pea under ninety-nine featherbeds...
...Faculty politics and priorities being what they are, it would be an extraordinary accomplishment to teach every student something as brief and basic as the Four Gospels within four years...
...In fact, I think it is rather clever, pointing out, as it does, an apparent inconsistency in the Catholic position on choice: pro when it comes to schools, con when it comes to abortion...
...By way of atonement, it might be a good idea to spend the next few centuries on the other side of the fence...
Vol. 118 • June 1991 • No. 11
