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An unbalanced columnist
C.J. Doyle’s article (“Vichy Catholic,” March 2000) is long overdue. I have long suffered James Carroll’s columns in the Boston Globe, but my greatest distress has been missing an answer as straightforward as this. Bravo!
I was first introduced to Carroll’s Catholic-baiting with the publication of his novel Mortal Friends. That has remained his Mein Kampf for me. His depiction of Cardinal Richard Cushing as a mere alcoholic, in the face of all that Cardinal Cushing did in cementing good Catholic-Jewish relationships in Boston and all his other accomplishments, gives me an insight into Carroll’s unbalanced mindset—which would take Hitler off the hook and put Pope Pius XII on it.
I came across a book review of Mortal Friends, done by Cathleen N’Houlihan in the Boston Irish News of May 1978. I would like to quote the ending from her incisive review:
Would that Mortal Friends could be “banned in Boston” without causing Carroll to pick up more pieces of green than he deserves. And there is the movie that eventually will be made. I wonder who will get to play Cushing “the alcoholic” or Curley with his Mafia connections. . . . Ex-Paulist Carroll has read many a treatise on evil; too bad he didn’t read Aristotle on ethics or Aquinas on truth.
Basically, I feel that in Carroll’s case, “Nothing ever really changes.” It just gets worse.
—Ann P. Murphy
Quincy, Massachusetts
Striking at the root
Thank you for your March cover story on “The Deconstruction of Marriage.” It is depressing to me that so many of our fellow citizens, and even so many of our fellow Catholics, have been sitting by idly and watching while a small minority endangers the very foundation of our civilization. Your correspondent Matt McDonald is right; if same-sex marriage (or the legal equivalent) does not become a legal reality in Vermont this year, it will happen somewhere else—and although it might not come in the year 2000, it will come soon enough.
We as Catholics should blame ourselves, at least partially, for this problem. We have been too quiet. We did not complain when “no-fault” divorce was introduced. We did not complain (at least not too loudly) when contraceptives began to appear on the drugstore shelves instead of hidden behind the counter—and we didn’t even complain very much when those contraceptives were handed out to our children in public schools! So we keep sliding down that slippery old slope—still not complaining too much —until now we are waiting for some state government to say that the traditional family based on marriage between a man and a woman is just a myth.
If marriage can mean a temporary contract between two men or two women, then really marriage means nothing. If marriage means nothing then the family means nothing. And if the family means nothing, then that trend strikes at the root of our society. A country can live without a healthy stock market, but it can’t live without healthy families.
Where is the Catholic leadership that should be crying out against the homosexual agenda, warning all Catholics to wake up and get involved before it is too late to defend themselves and their families? Thanks again to CWR for at least trying to wake up the sleeping American Catholic giant.
—Carol Schumacher
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Boston’s bane
When I left my native Boston a bit more than two years ago to take a new job in a warmer climate, my friends told me that I would miss the old neighborhood. They were right, but there are three things I do not miss: the February weather, the annual breakdowns of the Boston Red Sox, and the anti-Catholic editorial policies of the Boston Globe. I was happy to see C.J. Doyle’s candid analysis of the Globe columnist James Carroll in your March issue.
That Doyle article made me wonder: Is there any other city in the United States where the leading daily newspaper would hire a columnist whose only real claim to fame is his hostility toward the Catholic Church? I doubt it. And how can the Globe get away with this kind of editorial policy in a city where (unless I am mistaken) the majority of citizens still describe themselves as Catholics?
Ten or fifteen years ago I don’t think the Globe would have dared to keep an anti-Catholic columnist like Carroll on the full-time staff. At that time—for a little while, at least—the Boston Catholic newspaper, the Pilot, was not afraid to criticize the Globe when the paper’s anti-Catholic bias showed. I even recall that at one point the Pilot dared to suggest that Catholics might want to boycott the Globe. Maybe your editor can explain why the Pilot has changed its tone in the 1990s.
—Andrew S. Brady
Atlanta, Georgia
Our correspondent is evidently alluding to the fact that from 1986 to 1988 I served as editor of the Pilot. I cannot answer for the paper’s editorial policies since my departure.
— The Editor
Mixed up theologian
The opinion of Father Richard McBrien, cited in your report on “Defiance among theologians?” (Follow Up, March 2000)—objecting to a theologian’s needing clearance from the local bishop for teaching religion in a Catholic college or university—does not seem well founded.
There is no infringement on institutional autonomy here. It would be no more violated by this than by the present acceptance of supervision of standards by the American Association of University Professors. We should also note, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that just as the married professor as family man is not under the president’s jurisdiction, so also the priest as priest is subject to the bishop and not the president. The stress here is on the priest as priest rather than as an academic professor.
Furthermore, it is orthodoxy that is in question here, and that is not within the purview of the college official’s area of expertise; it is not for him to judge. It is the prerogative of the Catholic Church, which allows the use of the term “Catholic” in the college’s or university’s title, and must justify that decision if and as needed. That title is used by the colleges and universities to garner students and financial support. But it is not to be a pretense to cover a lack of orthodoxy.
What does a college called “Catholic” stand for, if not for that? I think a Catholic priest is a bit mixed up if he does not see that.
—Father James P. Kelleher
Fort Myers, Florida
More on “ad orientem”
The controversy over Bishop Foley’s decision to forbid his priests to celebrate Mass ad orientem (Editorial, December 1999; Letters, February 2000) is problematic. It is a fallacious decision based on pseudo-liturgical concepts, which has greatly damaged the true meaning of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. People who favor Bishop Foley’s decision suffer from the propaganda of those who have been Protestantizing the liturgy since Vatican II.
In the older rite, the Holy Mass had a strictly vertical dimension to it. It was Christocentric as opposed to “community” centered—which is characteristic of the current Mass. The priest’s back was turned to the people not to show rudeness or disunity, but the priest was acting in persona Christi and led the faithful into the Holy Sacrifice. The priest and the faithful worshipped in union, toward the same direction—toward the East. There is a strong theological significance to this that must be respected. The direction of prayer in the Eastern and Western Church was never versus populum but rather facing East, conversi ad dominum. When the faithful turned toward the East, this was a great symbolic action. Praying toward the East showed a sign of unity. The faithful were united with the same Lord who, having ascended to the East (Ps 67:34, Zech 14) will come again from the East (Mt 24:27, Acts 1:1).
Changes such as Mass facing the people and the demolition of traditional altars are Protestant in origin. Nicholas Ridley, the 16th century bishop of London and Protestant revolutionary, has this to say about the Catholic Mass:
The form of a table shall more move the simple from the superstitious opinions of the popish Mass unto the right use of the Lord’s Supper. For the use of an altar is to make sacrifice upon it; the use of a table is to serve for me to eat upon.
The above words sound similar to what the ICEL people would say. Keep in mind that if you scratch an ICEL translator hard enough, you will find a neo-Protestant.
—Kevin D. Della Iacono
Scituate, Rhode Island
A pagan publicity stunt?
The Last Word department in your March issue (“Pagans in Action”) caught my eye because I got into Catholic journalism more than six years ago because I was familiar with Neo-paganism. I went on to write about it for the National Catholic Register, Twin Circle, the first two Steubenville “Defending the Faith” conferences, and the International Congress of Medieval Studies. To my knowledge, I am the only Catholic commentator who has done this from the perspective of comparative religion, history of religion, and popular religion—and who knows Neo-pagans socially.
First, I think the pagans’ manifesto should be viewed as a publicity stunt, designed to tweak people like Diogenes. They like flamboyant gestures, and exotic titles are part of the Craft’s appeal. Probably many of the signatories realize that the Inquisition didn’t burn witches or pagans, although prelates certainly did. (One prince-archbishop of Cologne, circa 1600, burned 2,000 people, including small children, for witchcraft. It would be nice if someone would apologize for that, wouldn’t it?) Neo-pagans are very slowly starting to admit that they aren’t the direct continuation of Paleo-paganism, and that their notion of witchcraft is a modern invention. (Isaac Bonewits—and that is his real name as far as I know—was a leader in this “revisionist” view.) But with the romanticism over “indigenous peoples,” they know they can have it both ways.
If you would like to learn more about this odd subculture, try Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, and Paganism Today, edited by Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman. For entrée into contemporary history of witch-persecution, try Witches and Neighbors by Robin Briggs. All are readily available in paperback editions at major bookstores. And while you’re shopping, count the titles on witchcraft and paganism; I am noticing that they take up about 30 feet of shelf space in stores here, not counting other kinds of occult titles.
—Sandra Miesel
Indianapolis, Indiana
Correction on Romania
In your March 2000 article, “The Calvary of Romania,” you mention that “from 1940 to 1944, Hungary occupied parts of Romania.” This is an erroneous statement. The Hungarians simply got back what Romania stole from them in 1918. Transylvania was not a part of Romania in the past, nor was it independent of the Duchy of Transylvania, nor belonged to the Hungarian kingdom. I just wanted to set the record straight.
—John J. Alpar
Amarillo, Texas
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