Correspondence Paul Baumann and columnist David R Carlin, Jr, engage in colloquy with their critics
O'HARE, PADRAIC & DONOHUE, WILLIAM A. & HALE, JOHN P. & JR., DAVID R. CARLINI & Baumann, Paul & Horowitz, Irving Louis
CORROSPONDENCE Re: Baumann on Carroll Paul Baumann's piece [May 23] on James Carroll's New Yorker article, "The Silence," is so gratuitously nega-tive, so distorting, and so harshly and...
...It is, however and obvi-ously, no ultramontane tract...
...I fear it will come as something of a shock to most readers of James Carroll's New Yorker essay that O'Hare found it a "remarkably respectful, even affec-tionate" portrait of the pope, since both those who praise Carroll and those who criticize him do so for the same reason: because he repeatedly links John Paul II's theological conser-vatism and exercise of papal authority to the Holocaust as well as to a host ol other evils...
...So, too, did Paul Tillich, who said that...
...The writer is professor of religious studies and faculty associate of the Center for Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Merrimack College, North Andover, Mass...
...here we beat our dogs...
...In any event, I do have some bad news for Mr...
...But I will say this much: I do not know one black or Jew who ever thought it was un-American for his people to establish a civil rights organization...
...They should rebut the criticism, fight back, retaliate, boycott, etc...
...But the crucial issue of which Baumann is ignorant, and which leads him to the shameful assertion that Carroll has "trivial[ized] the Holocaust" to win "intra-Catholic battles," is the rela-tionship between religion and faith-fulness...
...PADRAIC O'HARE Medway, Mass...
...By the way, I don't deny that Mr...
...If Carroll and O'Hare want to cash in 2,000 years of Christian theology for the pottage of "in the depth of every living religion...that to which it points breaks through its particularity, ele-vating it to a spiritual freedom," etc., they are free to do so...
...and there are some people-secular-ists on the one hand, Protestant fun-damentalists on the other-who believe this system of ideas is erro-neous, even dangerous...
...Clearly he is...
...to justify Carroll's and O'Hare's abandonment of a Christocentric understanding of "the ultimate meaning of man's exis-tence...
...I doubt it...
...That's what O'Hare's high-sounding phrase, the "repudiation of triumphal-ism and the love of the Holy One," means...
...An unbalanced appraisal I write to take exception to David R. Carlin, Jr.'s critique of William Donohue...
...Finally, since O'Hare doesn't bother to define his terms, it is impossible to decipher what his brief discussion of God, religion, faith, and dogma means, or how he reconciles the first commandment of monotheism- "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"-with what he characterizes as the tension between "religion and faithfulness...
...But they shouldn't claim that their civil rights have been violated, Become a Commonweal Associate for in so doing they will have a chill-ing effect on free speech...
...The tempta-tion needs to be resisted given the importance of the issues, but a fair-minded assessment of the Baumann article must be so condemnatory as to seem itself intentionally harsh...
...JOHN P. HALE Poughquag, N.Y...
...Something is possible because something must [Rahner's emphasis] be possible, if it is a matter of the inexhaustible riches of God's presence with us....Every formula transcends itself...
...A relative of mine recently resided six months in a place outside the United States...
...Carlin warns that, unless the League backs off, those who reject Christianity will go "underground," shifting from open criticism to "cam-paigning against traditional Christian moral rules and values" from behind trees and bushes...
...The remedy, Carroll's so-called "lesson of the Holocaust," is to "de-absolutize Christian claims...
...Simply put, the League seeks to vindicate the right of Cath-olics to enjoy the same privileges as other citizens...
...A week later she protested again when she discovered that he was beating his wife, and he offered the same justification: "In our culture we beat our wives...
...Donohue seems to believe that I am a "progressive" Catholic...
...What does O'Hare think Hans Kiing's indictment of the church as "co-responsible" for the Holocaust means, if it does not equate Catholic dogmatism and Nazi totalitarianism...
...And it will challenge an educational institution which per-mits a demeaning, vulgar display of a caricature of the Virgin Mary and then seeks to silence those who object...
...At the same time, I don't believe they have a monopoly on folly...
...Suffice it to say, I gener-ally consider it a mistake to juxtapose the terms God and religion or faith and dogma in the way O'Hare evi-dently likes to...
...The battleground has shifted-not so much to philo-sophical issues, which are indeed de-batable, but to the cultural domain in which belief and act intersect, such as the display of religious symbols on public grounds at Christmas or of the Ten Commandments in a courtoom...
...And certainly the memory of the Holocaust does...
...So what...
...Now, we're all opposed to "abso-lutism," we're all opposed to "the de-monization of the other," and we're all opposed to "triumphalism...
...That prize is the exclu-sive preserve of Catholic malcontents...
...Rahner, like John Paul II, de-serves better...
...As a matter of policy, the League does not engage in the public philo-sophical debates on abortion, homo-sexual marriage, condoms in schools, or the other issues that are ripping at the fabric of our society...
...Under the rules of the American game, such peo-ple are free to criticize Catholicism...
...CORROSPONDENCE Re: Baumann on Carroll Paul Baumann's piece [May 23] on James Carroll's New Yorker article, "The Silence," is so gratuitously nega-tive, so distorting, and so harshly and disrespectfully polemical that it is tempting to reply in kind...
...Surely he doesn't intend to join the legions of multicul-turalists who say that any belief or practice that can be brought under a cultural umbrella is therefore immune to criticism...
...In doing this they keep alive the good old American tradition of free speech...
...He should know that we have grown from 11,000 members four years ago to 350,000 today, and with no end in sight...
...If one read only Baumann on Carroll's New Yorker essay, the impression would be taken that the latter equates "Catholic dog-matism and Nazi totalitarianism," which is utterly false...
...And in fair-ness I should admit to a grudging re-spect for his willingness to stand up and fight for his religion-a willing-ness all too lacking among American Catholics today...
...One may argue with his stance toward different groups within the church-for exam-ple, the business of gay and lesbian rights in relation to the Saint Patrick's Day parade, or his concerns over an insensitive anti-Catholicism in evan-gelical and fundamentalist varieties of Protestantism...
...the same is not always true of Catholicism...
...Horowitz says that "[t]he battle-ground has shifted...
...In short, Christ must be regarded as just one of many religious truths and ways...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...Abraham Joshua Heschel apparent-ly had the same itch, writing: "God is greater than religion...
...Baumann writes: "Has it occurred to Carroll that his itch to 'de-absolutize' religion is incompatible with monotheism...
...The writer is Hannah Arendt Distin-guished Professor of Sociology and Politi-cal Science at Rutgers University...
...It has become increasingly clear to me that many progressive Catholics detest the church as it exists and love only some abstract church that exists solely in their minds...
...So I won't even try...
...there you will learn that the "false pride" O'Hare refers to is not triumphalism or absolutism as or-dinarily understood and disingenu-ously used in his letter, but instead refers to the insistence of "traditional theologians," such as Karl Rahner, "upon the primacy of Jesus as a means of salvation...
...For Christianity," Carroll quotes O'Hare, "the fundamental fact of absolutism, the false pride on which it rests, and the demonization of the other to which it leads, is the Holocaust...
...When she discovered that a neighbor was maltreating his dog, she protested...
...he is incorrect to claim that only those forms of discrimination that entail so-cial or economic deprivation (jobs, schools, clubs, housing) are legitimate targets of protest...
...Donohue's efforts are legitimate and laudable...
...The author replies I am unhappy to find myself on the opposite side of this question from John Hale, for whom I have high re-gard, and Professor Horowitz, who has been one of the truly great figures in American sociology during the past few decades...
...He and the once-dor-mant organization he has been instru-mental in vitalizing have called attention to everything from Holly-wood efforts to paint clerics en masse as guilty of homosexuality and ped-erasty to stereotypical presentations of papal rulings on abortion by advo-cates of birth and population control...
...Carlin got it wrong I hope David Carlin, for whom I have affection and respect, will take a fresh and closer look at the "semiparanoid" Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights...
...and name dropping (Newman, Heschel, Tillich, Rahner), but evidently he can'1 remember either what he's read or what he himself has written...
...That suggests that, if Catholics will shut up when demeaned, the long-standing high-pressure drive to im-pose new rules and values on society will be suspended or moderated...
...The League does not challenge the right of any person to proclaim, "I do not believe...
...In fact I regard the so-called progressives as foolish...
...Carlin is correct to note a difference between types of discrimination...
...But it will fight any at-tempt to restrict one who would pro-claim, "I believe...
...Donohue is a talented publicist and organizer...
...Almost everything Baumann writes is either objectionable, inaccurate, or transparently, but not forthrightly, neoconservative...
...The writer, an attorney, is a member of the Catholic League's advisory board...
...I urge readers to turn to page 67 of the April 7 New Yorker...
...Donohue and his group surely deserve a more bal-anced appraisal...
...Carroll identifies O'Hare, however, as a theologian whc has moved beyond such supposedly antiquated attachments...
...On this last point, had Baumann followed Cardinal Newman's injunction to seek "in-quiry" rather than "dispute," he might have honestly engaged Carroll's theological liberalism and some light might have been shed...
...I don't say that Catholics should not resent insulting and unfair criticism of their religion...
...But it will challenge a manager in a government agency who directs an employee to wipe the ashes off her forehead on Ash Wednesday...
...But how we come to know God outside of revelation and the tra-ditions and teachings of the church is a more subtle question, one hardly il-luminated by the incantation of phras-es such as "the inexhaustible riches of God's presence...
...The writer is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights...
...One last point...
...But leave the victims of Nazi genocide out of it...
...But O'Hare merely brandishes these load-ed terms to distract attention from his radical theological agenda...
...But Catholicism is, among other things, a system of ideas...
...Indeed, O'Hare equates "'universalist Christian claims' about Jesus with 're-ligion as a source of brutality.'" As Carroll and O'Hare see it, "Catholic universalist claims" inevitably lead to "the age-old Christian impulse to make devils of those who beg to dif-fer...
...Catholics can easily avoid the dan-gers of triumphalism while professing what Rahner rightly called "the abso-lute religion," by which he meant a re-ligion that proclaims the salvation won by Christ is "intended for all men...
...that to which it points breaks through its particularity, ele-vating it to a spiritual freedom and with it to a vision of the spiritual pres-ence in other expressions of the ulti-mate meaning of man's existence...
...The author replies: Padraic O'Hare has a small talent for name calling (neoconservative...
...He worries that the Catholic League "may actually succeed...
...Finally, it may not be such a bad idea for those who would malign Catholicism "to hide behind trees and bushes"-or would Carlin prefer loud and raucous attacks on the church and its vicars as proof that democracy perseveres...
...But Mr...
...That "God is greater than religion" is a statement no theo-logically literate person would dis-agree with...
...to the cultural domain...
...He doesn't merit being dismissed as an "entertaining character" with a "very sensitive nose"-an anti-Irish carica-ture, eh what...
...Carlin...
...WILLIAM A. DONOHUE New York, N.Y...
...PAUL BAUMANN Donohue for the defense It is not easy to defend yourself against charges of being "semipara-noid" and "un-American," and this is especially true when the accuser cites not one example to buttress his case [David R. Carlin, Jr., "Donohue's Crusade," May 23...
...Donohue's far-fetched notion that the Catholic case is somehow analogous to the case of blacks makes me think my criticism may well be on target...
...Nor does the Catholic League merit being termed a "semi-paranoid" organization...
...While I am a lifelong reader of and sometime contributor to Commonweal, Bill Donohue is a longstanding friend and colleague...
...Set aside as comparatively minor such unprofessional and unkind char-acterizations of Carroll as "itching" and "insinuating," and as "trotting out" Hans Kiing (of all people), but before doing so ask when a journal of such distinction started allowing con-tributors to speak so...
...I know of not a single instance in which secularism as such has been at-tacked by Donohue...
...They most definitely should resent it...
...But nothing in the Catholic League's brochures and bul-letins can be construed as identifying anti-Catholic sentiment with secularist beliefs as such...
...Needless to say, it is especially sad-dening to see Karl Rahner now trotted out (there I go again...
...Not bad for a "semiparanoid" organization...
...And our beloved and great Catholic father of this century, Karl Rahner, said even of the doctrine of Christ: "Let none say that nothing more is re-ally possible...
...that, as noted, Hans Kiing is merely "trotted out," when in fact the interview portion with Kiing is lengthy, substantive, and bracing...
...Whatever else is at work in Baumann's assessment of Carroll's narratively rich, theologically challenging, and morally prophetic essay, surely the greatest defect of the author in this instance is his failure to understand the defining link between the repudiation of triumphalism and the love of the Holy One...
...and the right to criticism includes the right to satirize, lampoon, etc.-in other words, the right to create unfair and offensive caricatures...
...Baumann leads the read-er to the further erroneous impression that Carroll's essay constitutes an "in-dictment of the pope," when, in fact, the tone and substance of Carroll's work are often and remarkably re-spectful, even affectionate, toward the Holy Father...
...In fact, the high regard in which the current pope is held by leaders of other religious communities is a good example of how to strike that balance, and that's what really galls O'Hare and Carroll...
...But, then, O'Hare knows exactly what Carroll is up to, because Carroll relies on O'Hare's own words to make his case...
...anymore...
...The neighbor de-fended his conduct by saying, "Our culture is different from yours...
...in the depth of every living religion...
...not be-cause it is false but because it is true...
...faith is greater than dogma...
...Catholics are treated very well in America...
...IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ New Brunswick, N.J...
...De-absolutizing religion is precisely the path to monotheism...
Vol. 124 • July 1997 • No. 13
