Correspondence Garry Wills et al
DiSTEFANO, ANTHONY J. & BAKER, TOM & CODY, GEORGE D. & HEUTTE, ANNE & BORST, JOHN & WARD, GEORGE E. & BRUMMEL, DICK & Wills, Garry & Steinfels, Peter
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors The final secret In his review of my book Why I Am a Catholic ("Where's the Beef?" July 12), Peter Steinfels proves that he is an ideal subject of the current pope...
...July 12), Peter Steinfels proves that he is an ideal subject of the current pope when he writes that I have "discreetly" avoided having a Catholic public identity...
...When, on the other hand, he has occasionally identified himself as a Catholic in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere, the context has almost always been some sharp critique of the church...
...But that potential, in these times and for an author of Wills's gifts, is almost by definition unrealizable...
...More, please The editors' response to Patrick Connor's letter was a little abrupt, and I think he deserved either no comment or a longer one...
...This silence reflects our adherence to a long-established maternal admonition, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all"-advice we follow from time to time...
...If I am not mistaken, there are many great non-Catholic Christians who do not subscribe to our creed...
...For these reasons, Wills says, the Catholic Church is the voice of God in his life, and he chooses to remain a Catholic...
...And where does Steinfels get the strange idea that one's explanation for choosing to be Catholic is inadequate, unless others are "satisfied" with it...
...I followed a weird strategy if I meant to cover up my faith...
...It can't be the "rights" language itself, because Commonweal inevitably uses that language about the current state of affairs in the church...
...Perhaps the editors would explain when rights talk is or is not appropriate...
...I published a book on the very Catholic G. K. Chesterton, served on the advisory board of the Chesterton Quarterly, and I quote from Chesterton, consciously and profusely, in almost every book I write...
...Euler's equation was a product of human reason-not observation-but its constants are critical to the fundamental relativistic quantum physics that has been experimentally shown to underlie our material world...
...tom baker Princeton Junction, N.J...
...Granted, the book does fall short of its potential in several ways...
...I have one small addition to Richard Alleva's review of Richard Appig-nanesi's Introducing series, "Comic Erudition" (July 12)-specifically the Diderot and Euler encounter in the Mathematics volume...
...But I remain regretful that unlike his heroes, Newman and Chesterton, when Wills explicitly avows his Catholicism, he rarely does so in a way that might cut against the grain, that might challenge, rather than assuage, the preconceptions and prejudices of the secular liberal audiences with whom he enjoys considerable authority...
...If he believes that, he can believe in anything, even John Paul's Fatima secret...
...a celibate priesthood...
...Either Wills or his editor probably erred in titling his book, Why I Am a Catholic, because it enabled Steinfels to erect a straw man and then beat it to a pulp...
...Proof...
...The editors reply: Three points: First, our June 1 editorial, "The Do-Nothings," refers to a Vatican canonist's view that the rights of priests would be violated by some of the measures the U.S...
...Instead he rearranges the two quoted words from the next sentence to say that I have accused him of avoiding having a Catholic public identity or, later, of "hiding" his Catholicism...
...Steinfels concludes that Garry Wills's explanation of why he is a Catholic is not "satisfactory and candid...
...As for the rest of Wills's testimonial, it is misleading...
...What John W. O'Malley, S.J., had somehow cottoned onto remains a mystery to Steinfels...
...Our reply was meant simply to suggest that our silence about ARCC has nothing to do with a superior attitude (after all, some of our best friends belong to ARCC), but with general disagreement about its approach...
...Wills clearly does...
...Having since read the book and eight other reviews (in both the Catholic and secular press) I must admit to still being puzzled over the anger in the Steinfels piece...
...I have written many articles on Dorothy Day, and the Berrigan brothers (with the latter of whom I demonstrated against war...
...Or was it Wills's maddening refusal to be easily labeled...
...treatment of the Jews...
...Steinfels's anger When I noticed that Peter Steinfels had reviewed Garry Wills's new book, I went immediately to the article...
...ANTHONY J. DiSTEFANO Alexandria, Va...
...I have published four books on the Catholic Church, and a fifth (Confessions of a Conservative) in which I discussed at length my Catholicism, connecting it with Saint Augustine, on whom I have published two books, with a third to appear in November...
...DICK BRUMMEL Kansas City, Mo...
...Be fruitful & multiply I am delighted with Rodger Van Allen's essay: "Bishops Should Marry" (July 12) and would like to add to its insight another dimension: the American Catholic Church needs more bishops...
...This is all that I meant by Wills's discreet disclosure of his Catholicism and his distance- until recently-from more overtly Catholic intellectuals...
...He writes these books because he cares deeply about his religion...
...My correspondents clearly have other standards...
...They must have very shifting sensitivities toward what is angry or not...
...I do not recall that Wills identified his own stance as Catholic anywhere in his brilliant little books on Augustine-nor need he have...
...In fact, an America review Steinfels quotes says, elsewhere in the review, "[Wills] is one of the few Catholics who has made it big in the broader stream of American culture and still remained a practicing Catholic...
...the role of women in the church...
...JOHN BORST Dryden, Ont...
...Of course, (-1) is defined through the symbol for nothing, the quantity 0 and the real number 1, by the strange equation -1+1=0 (see http://mathforum.org/dr.rnath/faq/ faq.euler.equation.html...
...Catholics who believe that the church is in need of reform and renewal in the wake of the pedophilia scandal should take the learned and devout Garry Wills very seriously...
...Third, the fighting word in Patrick O'Connor's letter was not "rights," but "condescendingly," as in, "my perception was that Commonweal looked rather condescendingly on ARRC's efforts...
...Wills...
...So what's wrong with this as an explanation for Wills's personal decision...
...The advantages are obvious: this would promote subsidiarity, enhance communication among bishops, pastors, and communicants, and allow for the development of collegiality among bishops who could then bring to the table a more intimate and authentic experience of their dioceses...
...The very first sentence of my review, directly preceding the one from which he lifts two words, says quite clearly: "Garry Wills...has never concealed his Catholicism" (italics added for Mr...
...Frankly, I didn't know whether that was good or bad, just that it was different from the stance he has now taken as a Catholic publicly engaged with his church...
...GARRY WILLS Evanston, III...
...It struck us as ironic that during a pontificate when the needs and interests of many Catholics have been treated summarily (or sometimes trampled upon) by the Vatican, a canonist would fall back on a "rights" argument to thwart the bishops' efforts to deal with the criminal behavior of priests...
...PETER STEINFELS Right about rights I was a little surprised by the editors' reply to Patrick Connor, S.V.D, vice president of The Association for the Rights of Catholics (ARCC), regarding the use of "rights talk" in the church (Correspondence, July 12...
...None of these things fools Steinfels, who knows I am hiding my Catholicism-yet others have penetrated my disguise, including those who gave me the Edmund Campion Medal and six honorary degrees from Catholic institutions of higher learning...
...As an alternative to Steinfels's caricature of him, Wills could be considered as something of a prophet: he points to the problems that the Catholic Church needs to honestly address in today's world-for example, the proper relationship among the pope, clergy, and laity...
...GEORGE E. WARD Plymouth, Mich...
...Between the appearance of Bare Ruined Choirs in 1972 and Papal Sin in 2000, the better part of three decades during which Wills published at least a dozen books and innumerable essays, only in Confessions of a Conservative did he discuss his Catholicism, and there more in connection with his politics than his religious faith...
...ARCC's text is certainly convoluted and tiresome enough...
...I also assumed that if an author claimed, in a book so devoted to history, that the papacy, when properly functioning with other elements of the church, could not only best preserve the essentials of the Creed in theory but had actually done so in fact, the claim should be supported rather than contradicted by the book's text...
...If it is "often misleading," when is it not...
...I have not seen the book, but I would be surprised if "Euler's mathematical proof for the existence of God" was based on (a+b)/n=x...
...This remarkable equation involves two irrational numbers, n and e; the symbol of nothing, 0; the unit imaginary number i; and of course the whole sequence of negative numbers based on (-1...
...Explanation enough I was disappointed in Peter Steinfels's review of Why I Am a Catholic...
...If we want to talk about rights in the Catholic Church, we need to conceive a new form, a challenge now more important than ever...
...It may be a "sign of the times" to recapture a sense of intimacy of service that is supported by a return to married bishops in their small communities...
...contraception...
...This, among other structural changes, seems to beckon us into a church of our age...
...It has consequently always been for me, and for many others familiar with it, a surprising connection between human thought and fundamental reality-and could perhaps be even a "mathematical proof of the existence of God" for Diderot, george d. cody Princeton, N.J...
...ANNE HEUTTE Washington, D.C...
...Unlike Anthony DiStefano, I took the book's title seriously...
...the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle) and the imaginary number i=-1...
...I assumed that an adequate explanation of why a man of Wills's (Continued on page 28) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 6) stature, experience, and intellect is a Catholic would reflect, first, some personal grappling with the tests of faith all flesh is heir to and, second, some intellectual grappling with objections prevalent in the intellectual milieus he inhabits...
...What a surprise...
...What can one make of the fact that admirers of Garry Wills's recent polemical writings on the papacy and the church were distressed to find my review "angry...
...Wills doubtless could have answered this question with a single sentence: I am a Catholic because I choose to be one, despite what has, or has not, happened since Vatican II...
...Is it just ARCC's idea of there being a U.S.-inspired church "constitution" that Commonweal takes a dislike to...
...Was the lack of more self-revelation by Wills the cause...
...If he had acknowledged that sentence, most of his aggrieved protest would have instantly evaporated...
...From the editors: You can say that again...
...Is he too orthodox (or not orthodox enough...
...Wills's explanation certainly seems candid enough: he accepts the early church's creed...
...I rejoice that so many Catholic institutions have recognized them...
...Rather, I would suspect it was the remarkable consequence of "Euler's equation" that leads to the surprising formula that ent=(-l), where the term eni means "raising the irrational number e=2.718...etc...
...Perhaps Steinfels could write another piece giving us some insight into why he is so angry with Wills...
...In reality, the sentence said simply that he has worn his Catholicism "discreetly," as opposed to "self-consciously 'Catholic' intellectuals who made their church too much of their public identity...
...There is a big difference between saying "using the language of 'rights' within the church...is misleading" and saying "we disagree...
...I don't know what I expected, but it was not the double-barrel blast leveled by Steinfels...
...In the 1960s I wrote a Catholic column syndicated to ten diocesan newspapers...
...Second, ARCC's mission to extend those kinds of rights to the Catholic Church has always seemed misconceived...
...Bottom line: whatever "rights" may lurk in canon law to be sprung on us when they suit the Vatican's views, we doubt they are the kind of rights we enjoy as citizens of the United States, which generally seem to be the kind of rights ARCC promotes in urging reform of the Catholic Church...
...Steinfels refers to Wills's main critics as "Catholics who equate their faith with the papacy...
...and, despite knowl-(Continued on page 6) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) edge of a historical record which makes Pius IX's claim of papal infallibility problematic, Wills seems to believe that the interplay-when allowed to function properly-between the papacy, Catholic theologians, and the laity is positive, and best calculated to keep organized religion in service of the gospel...
...The reviewer replies: If readers wanted an example of how Garry Wills handles texts, he has certainly supplied one...
...Learned & devout Garry Wills deserves better from Commonweal than he gets from Peter Steinfels...
...bishops were proposing to take (and did take) at their Dallas meeting...
...I stand in awe of Wills's gifts as a writer and his scope as a thinker...
...This is so, not only because of historical, cultural, and structural differences between the church and the United States, but because "rights talk" in this country is usually short on talk about responsibility and obligation, which is part and parcel of any understanding of the Christian life...
...I thought we equated our faith with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Gospels...
...This era begs us to move to more connection, more humility in our service to each other...
...As important as it is to Catholicism, do we really equate our faith with the papacy...
...to the power %i and where the irrational number k=3.14159...
...The large "empires," like the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where I live, should be broken up into clusters of smaller bishoprics, under an archbishop where appropriate...
...Now Peter, about that Fatima secret...
...And just as you don't have to be Jewish to love rye bread, you don't have to be Catholic to write about Saint Augustine or quote Chesterton...
Vol. 129 • August 2002 • No. 14
