Compassionate Critic

Thanks to Richard R. Gaillardetz for the kind things he said about me and others in Do We Need a New(er) Apologetics? (2/2). I am pleased that he can appreciate the love and passion of someone’s work, even as he disagrees with that person’s methods. I would find few things so valuable as the insights of such a compassionate criticif only he would support his criticism with evidence that corresponds to something I have actually done.

I understand the problem of space limitations. But Professor Gaillardetz should not make assertions, like placing me at the far right of the contemporary Catholic theological continuum, without providing some example of the work that would situate me so far to starboard. (I honestly cannot figure out what that might be.)

Mr. Gaillardetz does mention two titles of my works, both of which were published well over a decade ago. Since then I have published four books with Doubleday, three more in the Catholic press and six volumes of the Ignatius Study Bible. He shows no awareness of these. My most recent book bears a warm endorsement by the former vice-rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Romehardly an immoderate man, a Jesuit who has taught there for some 40 years.

Finally, I would like to respond to Mr. Gaillardetz’s only specific criticism. On the basis of listening to one tape series, he accuses me of having avoided studying the textual history of Dei Verbum and of focusing exclusively on the final text. One might respond that only the final text is binding. But I need not do that. In the very series Mr. Gaillardetz mentioned, I was arguing, in fact, not from the final text but from the textual history, which I discussed in great detail, based on the accounts of Cardinal Augustin Bea, S.J., and others. The textual history made my case far better than any ahistorical reading could have done.

Scott Hahn

Long Trail

Your editorial in the Jan. 19 issue, like your other editorials, is biased and not balanced. The Kyoto Protocols did not require multinational controls on pollution. Only the United States was required to submit to tighter environmental guidelines. China, one of the worst environmental offenders, was let off the hook.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty was not signed by China, North Korea or Pakistan. Would you have those countries in control of nuclear weapons while the United States, France and England are forced to relinquish theirs?

I always heard that journalism should be fair and balanced. Obviously you never went to journalism school. If I practiced medicine the way you practice journalism, I’d have a trail of dead bodies a mile long.

William J. Somers. M.D.