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Legacy

James Ross should be commended for placing a spotlight on prison abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantnamo Bay in Bush, Torture, and Lincoln’s Legacy (8/15). But he loses credibility when he extols our 16th president as a model of restraint and humanistic principles. Has he never heard of Sherman? Of Lincoln’s abolishing of habeas corpus? His issuing of an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (after the 84-year-old judge decided that Congress, but not the president, can suspend habeas corpus)? His instituting of the draft (followed by draft riots)? His jailing of tens of thousands of dissenters without due process for reasons of criticizing the Lincoln administration (including the mayor of Baltimore, a Maryland congressman, an Ohio congressman and scores of newspaper editors)? His belief in the inherent inequality between the black and white races?

Leading Catholic thinkers of the time were very troubled by the precedents set by Lincoln. Since then, whatever constitutional safeguards remain reflecting restraint and humanistic principles in government have been trampled to such an extent that presidents can no longer be bothered with requests for declarations of war. Today, the military serves as the sitting president’s private army, while actions taken in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are justified with the same logic that Lincoln used to circumvent constitutional (and moral) constraints of his day. The military doctrine of Shock and Awe has 19th-century roots.

A frank discussion of the restraint and humanistic principles of U.S. presidents would be fascinating. Unfortunately, I am still waiting to see one.

Christopher Westley

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A Shared Belief

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The Islamic Society of North America, the Managing the Atom Project of the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy convened a group of 24 religious leaders and scholars, with equal representation

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Potential Abuse

Your bias is showing again in your editorial The Patriot Act and Civil Liberties (8/1). The various points you raise allow for easy correcting responses. I’ll use one as an example, namely, the potential abuse you apparently see of the right/prohibition against unreasonable search. The act requires that a search warrant be obtained from a federal court by convincing a judge of the reasonableness of a search in the particular circumstances.

I presume you must have known that related relevant fact. I also presume you would agree there could be a number of good reasons for the need to search the living quarters of a suspected terrorist.

You reference your contributing authority citing the need for changes in the act to provide a notion of checks and balances. What changes? I think it would be generally agreed that a search warrant approved by a federal court provides such a notion of a check and balance.

This is the type of slanted editorial opinion which detracts from your image of objectivity and seems inconsistent with the test of intellectual honesty.

John J. Van Beckum

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Diverse Ecclesiologies

I read Christopher Ruddy’s review of volume two of my Christian Community in History with some surprise (8/1). The whole two-volume work is a history, not of the church, but of ecclesiology, the understanding of the church. Thus I was pleased when he wrote of the author’s largely evenhanded expositions of diverse ecclesiologies and recommended it as a text and reference work for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. This was the goal of the work. The surprise came with the harsh criticism which followed, and I sought an explanation.

I have formulated a theory. I wonder whether Mr. Ruddy thinks that Volume Two of C.C.H. is the systematic theology that I promised when I indicated that the two-volume work C.C.H. was itself the first part of a two-part ecclesiology from below which I hope will be followed by a more systematic and constructive essay. As a theory it accounts for several things about his review: first, he seems to want a history from above, something that is at least paradoxical. In this historical ecclesiology, the transcendent dimensions of the church, especially the roles of Christ and the Spirit, appear in all the examples that are analyzed, thereby suggesting historically a normative, ecclesiological constant. Second, he asks many questions that can be answered only in a systematics. And third, his review reads as though he thinks my lack of a long conclusion means that Volume Two of C.C.H. is the end of my ecclesiology. Actually, the promised concluding systematic volume which, will address many of his questions, is under construction. It will draw out in an explicit way the transcendent dimensions that appear in the comparison of ecclesiologies among themselves and with the sources of Christian theology.

I do not know whether this theory is true, but it accounts for much if not all of the data. I think that my long sentences may be due to the early influence of Karl Rahner! In any case, if it is true, it would mean that Ruddy did not recognize the difference between the history of ecclesiology and a systematic ecclesiology, something that would subtract from the value of his judgments.

Roger Haight, S.J.

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Ignatian Perspective

The article A Veteran Remembers, by James R. Conroy, S.J., (8/1) offers an excellent perspective on the war in Iraq. By calling attention to the disproportionately large number of African-Americans and Hispanics who are serving and dying there, he asks us all to consider whether or not this really is our nation’s war. In addition, his reflections on his experience in Vietnam (first as a soldier and recently as a pilgrim) are the clearest examples I have seen of an Ignatian perspective on one’s own experience. If we are immersed in the work of living in the present, it will always be messy. I appreciate Father Conroy’s reminder of this.

Thomas J. Brennan, S.J.

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Culture of Absence

As one who has spent 10 years of his academic life in Germany, I simply could not relate to the essay by James Youniss, I Know It When I See It, (7/4). Such public policies as universal health care, efficient rail transportation, easy access to high culture, Saturday-Sunday closing laws and cradle-to-grave financial security may be compatible with Christian social teaching, but to suggest that they are inspired or motivated today by distinctive Christian commitments ignores public opinion polls and other empirical evidence of contemporary Germany’s loss of faith. Germans today would insist that these and related social programs are rooted in secular values associated with their country’s social democratic tradition.

Christian influences, particularly Catholic natural law teaching, were strongly represented in postwar West Germany, but with increasing secularization these influences have virtually disappeared from the nation’s public life. Two examples may suffice. German constitutional law, like the nation’s intellectual culture, has grown increasingly positivistic over the years. The same is true of German politics. The Christian Democratic Union (C.D.U.), founded explicitly on Christian principles in 1946, has lost its raison d’etre, while its main competitor, the Social Democratic Party (S.P.D.), is well known for its history of militant secularism.

During the Weimar Republic and in the early years of the Federal Republic, a vibrant Catholic intellectual tradition, centered on the church’s social teaching, flourished in Germany, but no equivalent of this exists today. Christian scholarship in the social sciences is notable for its relative absence. Religious studies, mainly the products of theological faculties, have little resonance in the larger society. Yet literary attacks on Christian belief and piety, such as The Da Vinci Code, seem never to leave the best-seller lists. Secularthat is, non-Christianvalues seem clearly regnant in Germany, the predominance of which has been extended and deepened by the nation’s reunification.

Pope Benedict XVI, a native of Germany, has often agonized over his country’s loss of faith. In book-length interviews with Peter SeewaldSalt of the Earth (1997) and God and the World (2002)the then-Cardinal Ratzinger repeatedly spoke of Germany’s increasingly de-Chistianized society and a public culture characterized by the absence of transcendence. In one of these interviews he observed with regret that only eight percent of the people in Magdeburg [an East German city] are Christians, and that was probably a generous estimate because, as sociological studies have disclosed, even the memory of Christ has almost totally disappeared among East Germans, particularly the young. Finally, and interestingly, Ratzinger makes no mention in these interviews of the connection between Christianity and the comforts, satisfactions or rewards of living in present-day Germany.

Donald P. Kommers

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Major Source

I commend C. Colt Anderson for acknowledging the action St. Peter Damian took regarding the crime of clerical sexual abuse of children in the 11th century (6/6). The time has come for Catholic scholars to give voice to the hundreds of saints and sinners who have done the same. Peter Damian’s notice to the pope is available in English translation, called the Book of Gomorrah. This is one of the rare major sources of the history of clerical sexual abuse that is available to all.

Patrick J. Wall

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Many Best Years

I have read America for more than half a century. It has always been an excellent journal of opinion and many of its best years were under the editorship of Thomas J. Reese, S.J. Father Reese is an extraordinarily balanced, well-informed, faithful priest and Catholic leader, and I have had the pleasure of knowing him for the last 10 years.

Tens of millions of Americans had the opportunity to see Father Reese at work during the extended period of television coverage from the end of one papacy to the beginning of another. The timing of his departure could not have been worse!

The Jesuits can be wonderfully proud of Father Reese and America. May God continue to bless your great work. Onward through the fog.

(Most Rev.) John McCarthy

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Challenging Times

In his article Is This Transparency? (5/16), Russell Shaw asks whether the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is operating in a public and transparent manner. He suggests the answer may be no. Unfortunately, I think the answer is a definite yes.

Could it be possible that the secrecy of the American bishops is not really an effort to hold on to power, but rather an indication that they may very well have little or none in the first place? The danger of doing business in public is that people must take stands and give reasons for their positions. A plenary council or even a synod would have to address some of the serious problems facing the American churchfor example: the shortage of priests, the status of women, of divorced Catholics and of gay men and women in the church, and the role of Catholic politicians in a pluralistic society. The list could go on and on.

As Mr. Shaw indicates, however, according to canon law, plenary councils are held at the discretion of the pope, and their decisions are subject to papal approval. Can you imagine the leadership of the American church openly discussing these issues and taking stands knowing that their actions would undergo review by a higher authority with the possibility of a public rejection of their positions?

The situation, therefore, may be more transparent than we’d like. We know as lay Catholics that ecclesiastically we have no power. Now we have a pretty good idea that the leaders of the American church are powerless as well. Where are the courageous shepherds of the past: St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Augustine of Hippo? These are challenging times for us all.

F. Philip Johnston

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Providing Maps

I enjoyed Jesuit History: A New Hot Topic, by John W. O’Malley, S.J., (5/9). Your readers may be interested to know that there is a particularly hot spot within this theme, and that is the story of Jesuits as mapmakers, particularly in the Americas. From the late 17th century until the suppression of the order in the late 18th century, many Jesuits from central Europe sought to enter the mission field, and so went to serve in the overseas possessions of the Habsburgs in what is now Spanish America. These Jesuits had been exceptionally well trained in mathematics, geography and even cartography; and once they arrived in the New World, they were often sent to remote mission stations. These areas were almost always unmapped by Europeans, and so the Jesuits’ training was by chance, as it were, put to good effect all over the continent, from Mexico to Patagonia (and indeed in Canada, another story). The resulting work covered very extensive areas of the Americas, and would not be rivaled in extent until the coming of the national governments in the 19th century.

David Buisseret

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