Facts, Fiction and Faith

The refutation by your reviewer Gerald O’Collins, S.J., (12/15) of the mass of misinformation in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is probably useful. But why do we need a distinguished scholar like Father O’Collins to refute a work of fiction? Fiction is just that, fiction. Why do we sense the need to refute Brown’s Code when we don’t take on the facts in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz or a thousand other imaginative pieces?

When Brown replies on his Web site to questions about how much of his novel is based on fact, he writes, The paintings, locations, historical documents, and organizations described in the novel all exist. Read his answer carefully. Places and articles are real. The book is a novel. Add only that a novel is fiction, which is literally not true.

Brown is an excellent writer despite his lack of basic character development. His Code is a page-turner thriller. For the development of his story, he dredges up every sort of half-truth, supposition and myth from the past 2,000 years.

What about those who may accept Brown’s fiction as truth? Many look for any and every justification for their prejudices or diminished faith. They jump at reports of the priest who fondles young boys, or of a cardinal who dies in the bed of his mistress or the reduction of the female to less than the male. Are any of these acts worse than God’s chosen Apostle who gave that kiss of affection as betrayal? These people may need a reminder that fiction is no more than fiction, no matter how it is written, how it is packaged, how it is hyped. Wishing fiction to be truth does not make it so.

What about the age-old allegations that Christ was in love with a woman or even married? We need to recall that Jesus was both human and divine. We believe that Christ was human like us in all matters except sin. Is it a sin for a man to love a woman, to be married? Surely our faith does not hinge on the celibacy of Christ.

Most of us in this day and age are blessed to have sufficient background and understanding to cope with the multitudinous challenges to our faith. Conspiracies, secret revelations, false doctrines, all pepper church history. But we do not allow them to degrade our gift of faith. Our theology is sacred and secure.

Brown’s novel is not to be missed, but to be enjoyed and accepted for what it is, fiction.

Rex Reynolds

False Problems?

Frederick W. Gluck’s article, Crisis Management in the Church (12/1), is flawed by several statements that are not supported by the available data.

The church’s traditional sources of revenues are drying up. Some weeks ago I finished writing a report that analyzed contributions to Sunday collections and diocesan annual appeals in the years 2001 and 2002. I found that Catholic household giving in the Sunday collections increased from $5.573 billion in 2001 to $5.846 billion for 2002, an increase of $273 million or 4.9 percent. This increase happened in the midst of high unemployment, a recession and the painful and lengthy revelation of the sexual abuse tragedy.

Catholic giving to diocesan annual appeals declined from $650 million in 2001 to about $635 million for 2002. About half of that national drop happened in Boston. The decline in the other 175 geographic dioceses averaged a more modest 1.1 percent, not surprising in a troubled economy.

The church’s ability to recruit has declined dramatically over the last 40 years. I happened to be working on church staffing data recently and found that the number of professional parish ministers increased from 54,055 in 1995 to 63,065 for 2002.

In addition, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University, has reported that there are approximately 35,000 students in graduate programs of religious studies and religious education.

I think that we need to find some negative numbers before we can rightly declare a staffing crisis.

A number of other statements in the article mystified me. Mr. Gluck stated, for example, that the plant is rapidly becoming obsolete. Perhaps so, but I would like to see the data supporting such a statement. I am familiar with the current rebuilding program in Chicago, where the archdiocese raised in excess of $200 million to repair its buildings.

While discussions of management issues in the church can be fascinating, we should be careful that we are discussing solutions for problems that do in fact exist.

Joseph Claude Harris

Church Management

I appreciate the observations of Frederick W. Gluck in Crisis Management in the Church (12/1). There are, however, some special circumstances that should be kept in mind in discussing management policies in the church.

First, church members and clergy are volunteers, and they cannot be managed by the same principles as those applied to salaried employees.

Second, shortly after the Second Vatican Council, a number of religious orders made use of management firms to attempt to plan their future ministry, but the results of careful planning by consultants unfamiliar with the church brought great disturbance to parishes and schools that were left out of the planning process. (They were often consulted, but with no real input).

Third, the theology of the church, which supports both our present hierarchical structure and the special character of the clergy, militates against the kind of accountability that good corporate management sees as necessary.

Finally, a national conference of bishops, according to Canon Law, cannot make the strong public commitment to managerial change that Mr. Gluck suggests. There is only one C.E.O. of the church, and he resides abroad and will not share his authority with the U.S. bishops.

I hope, nonetheless, that the church in the United States can begin to take steps toward better management in this difficult time. There are many initiatives that could contribute to a turnaround.

(Msgr.) Frank Mouch

The Path to Peace

The interview by George M. Anderson, S.J., with Claudette Habesch, Obstacles to Peace, A Palestinian-Christian Perspective (11/17), demonstrates how the Israeli security wall is really a weapon of war. When completed, this wall, referred to by some as the apartheid wall, will be 220 miles long, 25 feet highthree times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall. Instead of guns, tanks and planes, cement and steel are used as weapons of dispossession and human brutality.

In the words of Neve Gorday, a teacher of politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University, It will stand as the largest open-air prison known in the world. It will separate villages from water supplies, children from schools, farmers from their lands. Families will not have access to some of their ancestral cemeteries. Other Palestinian parents will even be cut off from their adult children. The tens of thousands of trees that are being removed in the process will have disastrous effects on the watershed.

This wall does not separate Israel from Palestine; rather it divides Palestine from itself, and will imprison more than 210,00 Palestinians, 76 villages, towns and cities, according to the Israeli human right group B’tselem. Bulldozers are building barriers between the sick and their hospitals. More than 10 Palestinian women have already been prevented from getting to hospitals to deliver their children. A human rights group reports that Israeli soldiers would not let an ambulance, just 10 meters away, transport a woman giving birth to the hospital. This resulted in her delivering the child at the checkpoint.

Does anyone really believe that this will add to the security of Israel or promote the waning road map of peace plan? Former President Reagan shouted: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, referring to the Berlin Wall. President Bush and our elected officials raise little more than a whimper against this wall. Each day the media adeptly reports single acts of violence committed by the Israeli military or a Palestinian terrorist while failing to report the longer-term and far more severe human consequences of building this wall. Could it be that the blood and body count over so many years has rendered us too numb for any sensible reaction? Or worse, have we been conditioned to think that Palestinians are less than human and deserve such treatment? The silence of churches and citizens and governments is deafening.

This week the Red Cross announced that it will end its food program to the Palestinians, stating that it is now the responsibility of Israel. The United Nations declared that Israel has created an inhumane disaster. When will it stop?

Israel’s desire for security is understandable, but imprisoning the Palestinian people and degrading their human dignity will only prove a source of more violence. Only a just peace will provide security both for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples now, and for their children in the future. Only a sensible and sane plan that is based on a just solution will ensure a peace that will last.

(Rev.) Richard Broderick

The Housing Challenge

Your editorial Low-Income Housing Crisis (11/10), uncritically accepts the conclusions of a housing advocacy group, responding to a supposed crisis, that are based entirely on arbitrary standards. They state that minimum acceptable housing is a modest two-bedroom unit, and for that people should pay no more than 30 percent of their income. The authors say these standards require an income of $15.21 per hour. That would amount to more than $31,600 per year, not including benefits, even for entry-level workers.

While decent housing should be available at affordable prices, these are totally unrealistic standards. Why do you support them? Had I written such an article for my high school Jesuit teachers, they would have put my youthful idealism into realistic perspective. What would Jesus do? Surely he would help the truly needy. But might he not ask, for example, what is wrong with a one-bedroom apartment for a single occupant? Or for two or more roommates to share housing? Or for unmarried young adults to remain with their parents a while longer? What about living in a boarding house? (It would be useful for America to explore why boarding houses are virtually extinct, despite the apparent need.) Jesus might also ask married couples, what is wrong with both partners working and halving the housing percentage bite? Jesus might go further and ask whether high minimum wages help some people but result in fewer employed, and whether rent control laws help the needy or the savvy, while such laws play havoc with housing markets.

As a faithful subscriber for over 40 continuous years, I have become increasingly distressed over your leftward drift. While the church and faithful expect you to be an advocate for the poor, you have moved into the Looney Left, rarely tempering social concerns with those of individual responsibility. I just cannot bear any more of this addlepated thinking, so please cancel my subscription.

Larry Dacunto

Season of Remembrance

The sensitive reflection by George M. Anderson, S.J., about renewing on each November day, with deep gratitude to God, the memory of some recently deceased friend (Of Many Things, 11/3) constituted, I am sure, his daily act of faith in life eternal. As a valued fringe benefit, his column nudged me and, no doubt, many other readers back to basic sanity. Yes, Frank Sheed’s striking observation in The Church and I came to mind: By sanity I mean seeing what’s there. Who doesn’t? you ask. Who does? I answer. If a man starts seeing things that are evidently not there, we call him insane and do what we can for him. But a man may fail to see the greater part of reality and cause no comment at all. He may live his life in unawareness of God, of the spiritual order, of the unnumbered millions of the dead, and nobody thinks of him as needing help....

Thank you, Father Anderson, for nudging me back to spiritual sanity. My Novembers will be a bit different from now on.

Larry N. Lorenzoni, S.D.B.

Rightly Ordered Loves

The headline of your interview with Archbishop Sean O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., of Boston, To Love and to Pray (10/27), is inaccurate. The archbishop actually said, To pray and love. Getting our loves in order, keeping the sequence of the two tablets of the Commandments and remembering that first we love God and then all our neighbors is the heart of the religious endeavor. The bishop was quoting the office of the day and, if you check, you will see that St. John Vianney devoted his whole sermon on the prayer part of to pray and love. I think the good saint knew the order was important. I suspect a Franciscan archbishop appreciates the same.

David Pence, M.D.

Educational Values

Thank you, Thomas McCarthy, for your direct and honest comments on our schools in Swimming Upstream (10/6). The amount of time, energy and implied worth that is given to supporting the prevailing cultural values has increased at a disturbing rate, and in direct opposition to what we say Catholic education is all about. Using fund-raising rather than stewardship as a model, we are doing little to model the Eucharist, countercultural values or the creative awe and wonder that are so significant to a child’s faith formation. You are not alone in your reactions, simply more courageous than far too many parents and administrators.

Mary Therese Lemanek

Catholics and Politics

Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, in his article Vatican II and American Politics (10/13), evokes a most interesting interlude in American history involving the candidacy of Al Smith. If many Americans wondered whether Catholics would impose an official religion if they became a majority, Catholics themselves had no need to speculate concerning their Protestant neighbors in that regard, since they already knew the answer. As Martin Marty, Robert Handy, Philip Hamburger and others have shown so well, Americans for more than a century had imposed a de facto establishment of nondenominational Protestantism that denied true religious liberty to Catholics and other outsiders.

What James Madison feared actually came to pass. He knew that a Bill of Rights represented only parchment barriers against majority oppression. However, the advent of Catholics in great numbers brought what he saw as the necessary pluralism of opposite and rival interests that would inevitably supply the checks and balances necessary to preserve true liberty. By their fidelity, opposition and persistence, Catholics contributed immensely to the creation of modern religious liberty, and in doing so they transformed this country. In 1960 the United States, by a hair’s breadth, acknowledged that transformationthat Catholics could be and were truly Americans.

Catholic scholars appreciate the development of doctrine and the fact that Catholicism is a historically conditioned religion. But they have not yet been able to apply the same thinking to American religious liberty, which they tend to see as springing full blown from the First Amendment. In the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty (1965), the church declared that it would not impose an official religion if Catholics became the majority. But with the election of John F. Kennedy, America had already affirmed that it would not and could not continue to maintain the official religion it had established when the majority of Americans were Protestant.

Historians can see how the United States influenced Catholicism, but they can perceive much less clearly how Catholicism transformed the United States. When American Catholic historians are able to grasp the interrelationindeed interdependenceof these two developments, they will be far better able to find a significant place for Catholicism in the history of the United States than is currently the case.

(Most Rev.) Thomas J. Curry

Right Here

One of my duties as a newly ordained religious priest working in another diocese was that of offering the Eucharist and hearing confessions every Saturday morning in a state-run institution for about 1,300 troublesome girls, age 13 to about 25. I was reminded of those years, 1950 to 1954, as I read the review of The Magdalene Sisters by Richard A. Blake, S.J., and recalled that right here in the United States the girls in those state-run institutions had their heads shaved for major infractions of the rules, as in Ireland. For lesser violations, and far worse in my eyes, they were forced to take a pill that would make them sick to their stomachs for three or four days. Moreover, if the state officials decided that the girls were unfit to bear children, they would mutilate the girls’ bodies to that end. If someone wants to make a movie about the misuse of authority in such institutions, is it really necessary to go to Ireland and pick on Catholic sisters who, by and large, gave their lives for the well-being of young girls?

Edward V. Griffin, O.S.A.