To the Editors.

Right balance

Kudos to Commonweal for your editorial on the sad subject of the handling of pedophilia in the church ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8). It was the best and most thoughtful I've read anywhere. I only wish it could have been published in the New York Times. Lisa Sowell Cahill's op-ed piece in those pages ("A Crisis of Clergy, Not of Faith," March 6) didn't do half the job Commonweal did.

SIDNEY BLANCHET-RUTH
South Bend, Ind.

Carelessness

Your reviewer, Christopher Ruddy, has so misread my book, Pope John XXIII, as to attribute to me opinions I do not hold and points of view I have never expressed ("Good Pope, Bad Pope," March 8). For example, "He dismisses the Assumption as an 'oddball' belief and an 'ecclesiastical "F--- you,"' thereby scorning the devotion of Catholics and Orthodox alike." I, in fact, do not discuss the Assumption itself nor do I give any indication of my position on that doctrine. What I characterize as oddball is Pius XII's decision to define it ex cathedra. Since this stands as the only ex cathedra definition since the doctrine of papal infallibility (1870) and since it concerns a matter hardly central to Christian faith, to call it "oddball"--that is, atypical and eccentric--is a sensible characterization, and a very long way from "scorning the devotion of Catholics and Orthodox alike." To say that I further dismiss the Assumption as "an ecclesiastical 'F--- you,'" goes beyond simple misreading and approaches calumny. What I say is that Pius's definition of the doctrine came on the heels of Humanae generis, which "solemnly condemn[ed] every theological development of postwar France," and therefore, "was interpreted by the French [emphasis mine] as Pius's deliberately retrograde challenge to their despicable modernity, a sort of ecclesiastical 'F--- you.'" Again, I never touch on the substance of the doctrine itself, nor do I scorn anyone's belief. If I were to have done so, I would be writing theology. But I am only writing history--and that the French church so received Pius's definition cannot be disputed.

Ruddy goes on to assert: "When Cahill states that Yves Congar would be 'certainly please[d]' by the idea that the church is 'whole and complete wherever it manifests itself...even in communities not expressly Christian,' it is clear how theologically careless Cahill has become." Well, someone has been careless. The phrase after the elipses comes from my thumbnail sketch of the French theologians of the post-World War II period and appears on page 146 of Pope John XXIII. The earlier part of the quotation comes from a note on page 240, in which I explain why I have capitalized the word Church throughout the book! Should we term such reworking of another person's words carelessness, or as Pope John called it, the result of "malignant scissors"?

I cannot deal with each of Ruddy's distortions without taking up far too much space. I hope those I have dealt with may persuade your readers that my book has not been fairly reviewed. Your reviewer ends by chiding me for lack of charity toward the current pope. While I am not sure that charity is an appropriate virtue to demand of an historian, I do think we should demand truthfulness of a reviewer.

THOMAS CAHILL
Riverdale, N.Y.

The reviewer replies:

Thomas Cahill rightly notes that his use of "oddball" and "ecclesiastical 'F--- you'" refers to Pius XII's declaration of the Assumption as dogma. I thought the word "ecclesiastical" suggested as much, but I admit that my wording could have been clearer on that point. Cahill's wording, though, is not as theologically innocent or as historically helpful as he claims. A writer knows the distinction between denotation and connotation: "oddball" will likely be taken not as "atypical" but as "weird" or "bizarre," with the effect of tainting the substance, not merely the ex cathedra nature, of Pius's declaration. In fact, the dogma's substance is based not on "pious legends" (page 150), as Cahill claims, but on Scripture, liturgy, and such theologians as John Damascene and Aquinas.

As for Cahill's second complaint, I did not distort his meaning by conflating the two quotations in question. Taken together or separately, his sentences on Congar and the church are demonstrably false. They read: "If it leaves the impression that the church is whole and complete wherever it manifests itself, my usage [of church] would certainly please Yves Congar, the principal theologian of Vatican II, and, uti mihi videtur, Pope John himself" (240); and "[Congar] explored the nature of the church, which could be expressed in its plenitude in the church of any locality, in non-Catholic Churches, and even in communities not expressly Christian" (146). My point remains incontestable: neither Congar nor Vatican II would support either of Cahill's assertions. First, only those validly baptized are properly called Christian and members of the church (Lumen gentium, 11, 14, 15; Unitatis redintegratio, 3). Second, only those communities (like the Orthodox) that preserve a true Eucharist and episcopate are properly called churches (UR, 14-15; LG, 26; Christus dominus, 11). Third, only Catholicism presently manifests the "plenitude" of the church (LG, 14). Ecumenical dialogue has built and even advanced upon Vatican II, but Cahill clearly errs in attaching positions to those who do not hold them, especially the "principal theologian of Vatican II." As to my other "distortions," I welcome Cahill's evidence.

CHRISTOPHER RUDDY

Promises kept

John Garvey seems to identify the biblical motif of promise/fulfillment with "supersessionism," which he defines as "the belief that Christianity is the fulfillment of what is looked for in the Old Testament ("Facing Anti-Semitism," March 8).

Would it not be better to keep fulfillment and supersessionism separate? The two are not the same. Supersessionism carries with it the nuances of annulment, displacement, banishment, etc. Like Jonah's attempt to set aside the Lord's loving concern for the inhabitants of Nineveh (Exodus 43:6, Jonah 4:2, 11), supersessionism implies that Judaism is outside divine interest and love. Sadly, this mentality has prevailed in Christian thinking, and only recently is being corrected. Saint Paul pondered the fate of his people in Romans 9-11, and was confronted with mystery, but he recognized that "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29). The church is the fulfillment of Old Testament promise(s), but it does not exhaust them.

ROLAND E. MURPHY, O. CARM.
Washington, D.C.

Exclusive heirs?

John Garvey writes that Christianity is "necessarily supersessionist" in believing that it "is the fulfillment of what is looked for in the Old Testament." I find the usually nuanced columnist incautious in his warm approval of the term "supersessionism," which has become an embarrassment to Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants. In the literature, supersessionism (sometimes called displacement theology), is commonly understood to mean replacement of the Jews as God's people, and has been repudiated because it forms the core of anti-Judaism. In the claim that the new covenant "fulfilled" the old, there is always danger of implying that God's relationship with the Jewish people ceased and that Christians are the exclusive heirs of all of God's promises. As Garvey knows, only certain fundamentalists maintain this kind of exclusivism. So why flaunt a word that is such a red flag to Jews and especially to such a fierce critic as Daniel Goldhagen, who famously rails against "the disparagement of the Jews" by Christianity?

NICHOLAS J. CARROLL
Crofton, Md.

The writer replies:

Both writers make a good point, and Father Murphy is right to speak of fulfillment. I was responding not to the form of supersessionism they rightly deplore, and to the extent that supersessionism means the replacement of the Jews it is of course a wrong and even lethal idea. As I said in my column, the Jews are still God's chosen people; Christ's coming did not cancel God's covenant. I was referring to supersessionism as Carroll, and by extension, Goldhagen, seem to understand it, as any claim made that Jesus redeems all human beings, and that the cross was the instrument of that redemption. There are Christians who would advance the idea that Jesus is the redeemer for Christians, but that Jews and others have their own separate paths; and they would no doubt consider me supersessionist for having to say that if Jesus did not redeem all, he did not redeem any; but that is what Christianity has said, consistently, and must say.

JOHN GARVEY

Episcopal paralysis

Some months ago, in a letter to Commonweal (Correspondence, June 15, 2001), I deprecated "the growing paralysis of authority and abdication of responsibility in the postconciliar church."

I fear the present crisis of the priesthood ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8) tragically confirms that discernment. Indeed, since your editorial appeared, still further damaging evidence has emerged, even implicating a bishop. In an avowedly hierarchical church, it is the bishops themselves and Rome who must bear ultimate responsibility for this crisis of moral authority and credibility. The consequences for the whole church, priests and lay people alike, are simply devastating.

Origen, an early father of the church, once exclaimed: "If Jesus had good reason to weep over Jerusalem, he will have much better reason to weep over the church...He comes looking for fruit to gather and discovers only a few pitiful bunches of shriveled grapes." The lament seems all too relevant today.

(REV.) ROBERT P. IMBELLI
Newton Centre, Mass.

Confronting history

Regarding recent exchanges about the history of Christian anti-Semitism: thank you to Luke Timothy Johnson for pleading that all participants in the debate "do some serious reading" of recent scholarship on Judaism and early Christianity. Anyone intending to publish on these issues ought to engage fully the excellent body of scholarship of the last thirty years or so on medieval Christian-Jewish relations and the problem of medieval anti-Semitism.

I am thinking of the work of Gavin Langmuir and Jeremy Cohen, just to mention two outstanding historians. Goldhagen's superficial and sensational account should be seriously challenged, for example, by David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1996), a complex treatment that's very accessible to nonspecialists (I assign it to first-year undergraduates). Nirenberg offers an elegant and persuasive argument against the assumption that medieval and twentieth-century anti-Semitism are essentially the same thing, part of a continuous tradition of persecution--an assumption that underlies Goldhagen's argument.

This is not Catholic or Christian apologetics, but serious and sophisticated scholarship. It does not absolve medieval or modern persecutors of their guilt, nor does it dismiss the challenge to Christians presented by the darker aspects of our history. As Christians and Catholics we are bound to confront honestly this history. And so it is endlessly frustrating to see the terms of the public debate set by writers who pretend to have discovered this history, but really know very little about it.

F. THOMAS LUONGO
New Orleans, La.