CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editors

Honesty is best policy Two aspects of your May 23 issue seemed to me especially commendable, and revelatory of the magazine's urge to be an honest journal. One, Paul Baumann's refreshingly candid piece about James Carroll, which hammers a superb writer (who is interviewed and lauded elsewhere in the same issue) for a shoddy piece of writing elsewhere; and, two, Michael Garvey's review of Garry Wills's John Wayne's America. Wills is a terrific scholar and a deft writer, but Garvey correctly sums up this particular book of Wills's as unfortunate.

It is refreshing, to say the least, for readers to be able to count on a magazine's honesty. Perhaps in the end that honesty is the single most important reason that we lend reading-time, money, and the compliment of close attention to a journal. Bravo.

BRIAN DOYLE Portland, Ore.

Charity & clarity

I greatly appreciated Paul Baumann's commentary on James Carroll's New Yorker article regarding the church and the Holocaust. It certainly demanded a response, and your writer met the challenge with charity, clarity, and close analysis. Congratulations!

JOSEPH A. BRZEZICKI, S.J. Ottawa, Ont.

The son also razes

John Spalding's interview with James Carroll and Paul Baumann's comment on Carroll's New Yorker piece complement each other well. Whatever problems Carroll had with his air force general dad, it is clear from the younger Carroll's attempt to pin direct responsibility for the Holocaust on the Catholic church that he is quite a warrior himself--a scorched-earth warrior at that.

Anyone regularly exposed to Carroll's musings on the Op-Ed pages of the Boston Globe understands that his published views on the church and religion are always depressingly predictable, betraying an overriding obsession with power and authority in the church. When, for example, he urges the church to liberalize its stand on abortion, his language is more political than theological.

In his analysis of Carroll's New Yorker hatchet job, Paul Baumann exactly diagnoses what Carroll is really about: "But worst of all [Carroll's essay] finally trivializes the Holocaust, reducing it to another gambit to be played in intra-Catholic and intra-American culture wars.... But all of this, I think, sounds suspiciously like an argument about the nature of authority in the church advanced in the guise of moral outrage over the Holocaust."

In keeping with the scorched-earth policy he deploys against the church, Carroll defines John Paul II's papacy as "tragic." What's really tragic is the tendency of some on the right and the left, including Carroll, to place the demands of ideology well ahead of the requirements of charity and truth.

MARK E. RONDEAU North Adams, Mass.

Carroll on JPII 

I was pleased to read Paul Baumann's commentary on James Carroll's New Yorker article about silence, absolutism, and John Paul II. Baumann helped me sort out some of the discontent I felt with Carroll's article. And, along with the John D. Spalding interview with Carroll, Baumann also helped me clarify my discontent with John Paul II.

The question of the historical significance of John Paul II has become important for me, especially when I hear him described as the monumental Catholic personality and presence of our century. If I were to compare the current papacy to an icon, I would say that the pope's exaltation of human dignity is the gold background, a wash of divine brilliance. I think, however, that his face will quickly fade. He has never been able to speak the truly daring, to talk of new roles and responsibilities: for women, the divorced, gays, married priests, challenging intellectuals. Thus, I can understand why James Carroll hears only silence in the Vatican and stumbles into self-protecting absolutism everywhere within its walls. I find this experience of silence and absolutism the frightening part of the story.

Baumann asks us to review the facts, and so I do. But I am still uneasy.

JOHN SHEKLETON Minneapolis, Minn.

Defining comes second

In his column for May 23 John Garvey provides a poor argument for exclusion from Communion of those not sharing the same definition of Christ's sacrament. The real differences about the meaning of the Eucharist among the various churches ought not be denied or trivialized, but that should not be allowed to obscure the underlying experience of community through reception of the sacrament by all who call themselves Christians. To do so is to put the definitional cart before the sacramental horse.

It is perhaps useful to remind ourselves that nowhere among the beatitudes is one proclaiming blessedness for those who correctly understand and properly define their religious experience. The doers rather than the thinkers have primacy of place.

G. MICHAEL MCCROSSIN Corpus Christi, Tex.

Stress what unites

John Garvey's description of the disunity of the Christian churches, exemplified in his opinion by differing views of Holy Communion, emphasized what divides us at the expense of what unites us.

Every Christian unites in proclaiming what the Eucharistic Prayer terms "the mystery of faith": "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." But not even every Catholic believes in transubstantiation.

It is by eating the bread and drinking from the cup that we proclaim the mystery of faith. Faith is not an "either/or"--it's a lifelong journey. Far from being a starting point, our shared understanding of the faith is the culmination of our pilgrim journey. It's the end, not the prerequisite!

BILL MCMURRAY Saint Joseph, Mo.

The writer replies:

It seems likely that the phrase "sacramental horse" appears in print for the first time ever in Mr. McCrossin's letter.

More substantively: Doing and thinking aren't divided. Orthodox spirituality calls for "the descent of the mind into the heart." People who think without correct action aren't even thinking correctly--but that's the sadness of the fall.

We aren't talking about "Christ's sacrament," as if there were a division between the Lord and his presence, but about the Body of Christ. What the church is, and understanding this correctly, matters. Paul says (I Corinthians 11:29) that anyone "who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks condemnation upon himself." I know few people believe in condemnation these days, but it certainly is scriptural, and I fear it myself. An Orthodox prayer before Communion asks, "May I not be burned." The body Paul refers to is the body of Christ, the church, and the church and its Lord are not separate. It matters what we think about them.

Since those places we agree about are fairly well defined, what matters even more--if we are to move toward real unity--is genuine clarity about what separates us. Pace Mr. McMurray, faith is at the beginning an either/or thing: "Do you believe in the Son of man?" "Who do you say that I am?" It is the beginning of a journey, this tough thing, and not the end. These are hard sayings in a society which thinks that "Whatever" is a real answer to a real question, but there we are.

JOHN GARVEY