_____Letters__________________________________________________________
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Thankful for Tolkien
Thank you; thank you for your wonderful feature on Tolkien and his Middle Earth (December 2001).

I grew up in the sordid cultural wasteland of the 1970s. My Catholic catechism was the eviscerated “rainbows and butterflies” version. If it weren’t for Tolkien’s subcreation, his myth of truth, my life and faith would be much poorer.

In Tolkien’s works I experienced beauty, love, truth, sacrifice, nobility, and meaning. I learned how to fall in love with goodness (which preserved me from falling for many other less worthy objects). I learned to see these virtues in everyday life, like the hobbits returning to their own Shire.

Tolkien didn’t lead me into escapism. Instead he showed me the beauty in our own human relationships and in our relationship with God.

Elves, dwarves, and magic are only the props. I found that out when my interest in Middle Earth led me to sample other fantasy writers. Their worlds and characters were flat and often sordid. Their world views didn’t ring true.

Thank you for featuring Tolkien’s genius and contribution to Catholic literature. I hope, as a result, more people will discover that beautiful world.

—Catherine R. Lindgren  (No address given)

Hannity’s reservations
Your introduction to your interview with Sean Hannity (December 2001) stated: “In the world of broadcast journalists, Sean Hannity is distinguished not only by his provocative style but also by his unapologetic defense of his pro-life principles and his Catholic faith.”

If Hannity had been forthright, as he normally is on his weekday talk show, you may have ended the interview when you asked this question: “Are there any issues on which you find tension between what you believe and what you hear taught in the Catholic Church?” For example, Hannity has repeatedly said, “No Church can tell me I can’t make exceptions on abortion.” However, that is mild compared to Hannity’s response to the Catholic Church’s teaching on artificial contraception. Hannity has absolutely no compunction when the subject comes up, in enlightening his millions of listeners that he is in total disagreement with the Church on the birth-control issue. Just in case some of his audience may not be aware, he always prefaces such remarks with: “I am a Catholic, but . . .”

Sean Hannity is a political conservative, a likable young man, who is astute in the political arena. However, as for his knowledge concerning Church teaching, he would be a textbook case, illustrating the failure of catechetical instruction of the last 35 years. In any event, Sean Hannity is a big boy now, and it’s time he read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and then attempted to undo the scandal he has caused, either by his ignorance or his blatant disobedience to Church teaching.

—John Hemhauser - Middletown, New Jersey

Since we are not regular talk-show listeners, we were not aware of Sean Hannity’s statements on contraception, or his willingness to tolerate abortion in some cases. Had we known his views on those issues—which were promptly brought to our attention by several readers—we would have questioned him more vigorously on those matters. We plead guilty to having failed to do our homework before the interview. Nevertheless, while we would vigorously disagree with him on those points, we still find Hannity a refreshing change from the usual run of talk-show hosts. Having said that, we’ll let a few other critics have their say: —The Editor

Conservative or simply shallow?
About the article on the “rising star” in talk shows, Sean Hannity: While I suppose he can be considered a kind of “pro-life” and “conservative” voice, surely we can do better.

My impression is that, when all is said and done, he is simply shallow. He really doesn’t understand what is going on about him. What do you think of someone who brags about his many years of Catholic education, and then proceeds to conflate the Virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception? (Fortunately, a couple of priests phoned in to straighten him out, gently.)

As for doing something about the abortion holocaust, he says: “I don’t believe that yelling at people or proselytizing works.” That indicates that he knows nothing about what goes on at the front line of this deadliest of wars. This statement is an insult to all the brave souls who have picketed and sidewalk-counseled for years on end outside these hell-holes. Before he shoots off his mouth again, I would suggest that he go down to an abortion mill and see what the reality is, instead of depending on the pro-abortion media’s orchestrated version. Like many others, I have been outside these mills for the past 25 years. I know what goes on there; Hannity doesn’t.

—Joseph Wall - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In need of persuasion
Sean Hannity is one of very few high-profile Catholics in the media who has the guts to defend and explain the pro-life position. So I was glad to see the interview with him in the December issue, and I read it with great interest.

However, there is something about Sean that your readers should know, and which your interviewer failed to challenge him on. Sean is a passionate defender of abortion in cases of rape and incest (unless he has changed his mind very recently). Once a caller gets him on that topic, he goes from Jekyll to Hyde, calling the unborn child an “evil seed” that can be destroyed. Listening to him, I get the impression that in his mind, helping a woman get an abortion when she has been raped is not only right, but in some way rescuing her from the rapist.

I think that Sean is basically a good person who has gone very far in his search for the truth, so I recommend we pray for him and do everything we can to persuade him to defend life just as passionately in the tragic cases of rape and incest as he does in every other case. For my part, I mailed him the best book on the subject, Victims and Victors by David Reardon. Maybe others will want to do the same, or will write to him drawing on the evidence and arguments presented in that book.

—Father Peter R. Pilsner - Bronx, New York

Accepting responsibility for pedophilia
Your article on the resignation of Archbishop Ward in Wales for failure to curb clerical pedophilia (“Bishop resigns, problem endures,” World Watch, December 2001) reminds us, unfortunately, of the enduring problem here in the United States. The most visible current case, that of Father John Geoghan, persists in Boston, aggravated by recent episcopal mishandling. The New York Times of August 8, 2001 juxtaposed photographs of Cardinal Bernard Law with the alleged serial pedophile Geoghan, accompanied by an article recounting Cardinal Law’s denial of negligence in the repeated transfers of Geoghan during his administration. Cardinal Law had admitted in June that he had been notified by letter in September 1984 that the priest had molested seven boys; Geoghan was thereafter transferred and re-transferred. He was “defrocked” in 1998, two years after the accusations had become public.

Any sympathy for Cardinal Law—which might have been engendered by the perception that he had perhaps been too preoccupied with international policy pronunciamentos of the bishops’ conference to focus on the nitty-gritty of governing his archdiocese—evaporates when one reads of his appalling reaction to the Geoghan scandal. Law himself implied that pedophile victims should seek comfort from the Church rather than report to law-enforcement authorities. In the archdiocesan newspaper he wrote, in discussing his policy for handling sexual abuse of minors, “Obviously, there are instances when the victim chooses to go first to a lawyer or to the police. Even in such cases, the policy can go into play with regard to the priest, even though we may be inhibited from doing all we would like to do with regard for the victim by the victim’s own choice.”

This is far worse than laughable; it has consequences for the evangelization effort—furnishing grist for anti-Catholic mills and ammunition for the devotees of the “separation of church and state” concept (however unenshrined).

Should Cardinal Law follow the example of Archbishop Ward and resign? Yes, obviously. Acceptance of responsibility is appropriate and would acknowledge the gravity of the enduring problem and some resolve. Will Cardinal Law resign? No. Clericalism (with us still) kicks in; the wagons are circled. Another prince of the Church complacently assured me a few weeks ago that, “It’ll be worked out.”

Clerical pedophilia must be taken seriously: seminary selection, training, episcopal governance, criminal prosecution. The waffling must end.

—Charles Molineaux - McLean, Virginia

Grateful for Holy Land coverage
It is refreshing to see that at least one Catholic magazine considers extensive and regular reporting on the Holy Land worth their time, especially as it pertains to the Christian community. We who work to try to keep the “living stones” in the Holy Land and to build up the Christian community there are in your debt—and that of your reporter, Nicholas Jubber—for providing regular exposure of a Palestinian Christianity that is often forgotten by Christians in the West and silenced by non-Christians in the Middle East. Thank you for giving them a voice.

—Father Alex Kratz, OFM - Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, Southfield, Michigan

Sons of St. Bruno
Your outstanding article, “Silence and Solitude” (November 2001), was a special joy to me. I venerate the Carthusians—probably the most perfect order in the Church—because they are so firmly rooted in the supernatural that through centuries, the waves of secularization have been incapable of battering its holy ramparts of faith.

I consider myself privileged to have been close to the late Prior, Father Raphael, whom I met in the fall of 1946 in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s class at Fordham University. Neil Diamond was Jewish, talented, artistically gifted, sensitive, and a searching soul. Both his teacher and my older sister were instrumental in bringing him into the Church; he was baptized on January 3, 1948. He was dating my sister, and I nourished the hope that he would become my brother-in-law. But God had better plans for him. Soon he realized that he had a religious vocation, and his noble and generous heart responded to God’s calling. He entered the Grande Chartreuse in 1952, stayed in France for several years, was sent to England, and from there to the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in Arlington, Vermont. He was prior there for 25 years.

When, according to Carthusian regulation, he could no longer be re-elected, he wrote me a letter full of joy, saying, “Finally I can be again a true Carthusian, and obey.” We remained in close contact; I treasure the many letters he wrote me. Because my husband was his godfather, he considered me to be a member of his (spiritual) family, and I was allowed to visit him several times. My sister (who had moved back to Europe) was graced by paying him a visit a few weeks before his death.

There is a minor inaccuracy in your article. The Carthusian who “was a member of the British nobility” and whose name “was mentioned in gossip columns as a possible marital partner for Queen Elizabeth II” was not British. He was a German: the brother-in-law of Otto von Hapsburg. I was also privileged to see him twice—once when I was visiting Don Raphael, and he was called away on some emergency and sent Don Marianus to keep me company. I visited him again in the hospital a few years later. He had had a stroke, and was partly paralyzed. But he managed to say, with a beaming face, “If you only knew how happy I am!” He died shortly afterward, and is reaping the glorious reward granted to the true sons of St. Bruno.

—Alice von Hildebrand - New York, New York

Thank you for the correction. Don Marianus was a member of the European nobility. He could not have become a member of the British royal family unless he renounced his Catholic faith. —The Editor

Standing firm against Communism
In “Solidarity, RIP” (December 2001) the writer says, “The party didn’t help itself by employing heavy-handed tactics like its 1999 law to ban former Communist officials from public posts for ten years.” We must not forget that people who participated in the National Socialist government in World War II Germany are banned forever from participating in public posts. Remember the international outcry when a right-leaning politician in Austria was elected governor of one of the Austrian states, and the outcry when he presented a Christmas tree to the Holy Father? He himself was not a Nazi and was not even alive when Hitler was in power.

To ban the Communists from leadership now is not a “skeleton of a deeply undemocratic conviction that freedom is only for the supporters of the Solidarity-rooted parties.” Your writer laments that the Church “has not fully mastered the art of politics in a democracy.” It appears to me that this type of politics is to compromise with the international Socialists (Communists), and not to take a strong moral stand against what Communism stood and stands for. Communists were and are the chief sponsors of the culture of death in all its aspects.

There are certainly complex reasons as to why Solidarity lost the election, and it is good to look at them. But they were absolutely right when they wanted to ban all Communist and Communist collaborators, who were guilty of unspeakable crimes, from holding public office for ten years.

—John J. Alpar - Amarillo, Texas

Could we find some middle ground? Our writer was not suggesting that either the Solidarity movement or the Catholic hierarchy should cease to oppose Communists and their ideas. Her quarrel was with the means chosen to pursue that end—which seemed to play into the hands of leftist critics, giving them an opportunity to portray both prelates and Catholic political leaders as authoritarian. There is admittedly a double standard here, under which the historic foes of Communism are bound by restraints that do not apply to, for instance, the foes of the Nazis. That undeniable political reality is a testimony to the enduring success of Communist propaganda. —The Editor

Where’s the Duke at Mass?

I thought of Peggy Noonan’s article (“Welcome Back, Duke”) from the December issue at Sunday Mass, after yet another distracting and uncomfortable Lord’s Prayer. I wonder how the Duke would handle someone grabbing and trying to hold his hands while praying?

—Michael Barnes - Spearfish, South Dakota

The just-war tradition
In the December 2001 Catholic World Report, the article, “No Just War?” shows a rather fair-weathered and irritating position which could not possibly be held by anyone with a sense of right reason on the subject, especially after September 11, 2001. Thank goodness the Catechism of the Catholic Church takes a different position.

It is a duty for free nations who have the capability to defend innocent life and freedom, just as it is a duty for individuals to protect themselves and others, when possible, against an unjust aggressor. I find it rather ironic that the example of the Nazis was used, especially since “a just war” brought about the end of the Nazi agenda, in France and elsewhere.

—Father William C. Keebler, Jr. - Penfield, Illinois

For the record, the “article” in question was a 4-paragraph item in our World Watch section, summarizing an argument put forward not by a CWR author, but by a prelate working at the Vatican. We did not, and would not, endorse the view that a just war is impossible. On the other hand, it is certainly possible to question whether the military strategy employed by the Allies in World War II fit the moral criteria for just and limited warfare. A just cause is not the sole measure of a just war; the conduct of the military campaign must also be just. —The Editor

Silence the critics!
I think the letters critical of the editor in the latest (December) issue are outrageous! Some reflect run-of-the-mill anti-Catholic “thinking.” CWR is the best source of information that I know of concerning the persecution and slaughter of Christians by Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists.

Being “nice” or “ecumenical” by pretending that persecution of Christians does not exist is for empty heads. Facts about increasing anti-Christian activism appear to be censored in other publications. Furthermore, CWR seems to be the only source of accurate reporting concerning Israeli savageries in Palestine. I know persons who have lived there, and they testify to the accuracy of your reports.

I hope you will not publish any more letters from the Anti-Discrimination League, in view of the fact that I consider it to be one of the most vicious anti-Catholic hate-groups in existence. Its letters belong in your rubbish bin.

I have been with Catholic World Report ever since its first issue. I intend to continue with it. I recommend it to everyone who will listen to reason.

—Father D.G. Kennedy-Warley - Dewey, Arizona

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