To the Editors.

Resurrecting Powers

I'm very happy to see that J. F. Powers is again coming into his own (John Garvey, "Not a Wasted Word," October 12).

He was a wonderful writer and certainly a light shining in and on the U.S. Catholic Church of the forties and fifties. Thank you, John Garvey, for an updated view of Powers's writing gifts.

In my distant youth, J.F.P. taught a creative writing course that I took. I was, perhaps, too young to get what was available in that classroom but I remember someone asking him, "Why do you always write about priests? Do you consider yourself anticlerical?"

Powers thought very carefully about those questions, looked at his student, and said in his deliberative way: "I'm not anticlerical. I simply look for a story that elucidates truth. If a human being buys an insurance policy, that's not much of a story. But when a priest buys an insurance policy, there's something going on that needs to be said and I want to say it."

I especially remember Powers's deep blue eyes. He could look at you as if he saw where your soul's energy originated. R.I.P., J.F.P.

ANNE LAURANCE
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Kudos to Pfaff

Just wanted to let you know that many of us appreciate the quality and clarity of William Pfaff's analysis of the motivation of Islamic fundamentalists ("Seeds of War," October 26).

LYNNE HELLEBUST
Topeka, Kans.

Quoting Acton

In Dennis O'Brien's admirably lucid discussion of "Power and Powerlessness" (October 26), there is a minor flaw deriving from of a common misquotation. What Lord Acton actually wrote was "Power tends to corrupt." This wording, implying that power does not necessarily corrupt, aligns comfortably with O'Brien's eloquent response to some leftist critics of U.S. policy.

EDWARD CALLAN
Kalamazoo, Mich.

Roots of terrorism

The conclusion of your October 26 editorial ("So far...") leaves a dangerous impression, which we hope you did not intend. You urge the intellectual community, and especially liberals, to reject explanations of the terrorists' motives which seem to justify their murderous actions. If you are referring strictly to Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. diatribes, then your point is well taken.

But your warning against "explanations" (which you put in scorn quotes) seems more general, giving the impression that you scoff at all attempts to understand the root causes of terrorism in the world.

Surely you don't include, among explanations to be rejected, those like the analysis of Archbishop Renato Martino, the Vatican's permanent observer at the United Nations, in his October 16 address:

"We do a disservice to those who have died in this tragedy if we fail to search out the causes. Here a broad canvas of political, economic, social, religious, and cultural factors emerge...Though poverty is not by itself the cause of terrorism, we cannot successfully combat terrorism if we do not address the worsening disparities between the rich and poor... Poverty along with other situations of marginalization that engulf the lives of so many of the world's people, including the denial of human dignity, the lack of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, social exclusion, intolerable refugee situations, internal and external displacement and physical or psychological oppression are breeding grounds only waiting to be exploited by terrorists. In searching out the root causes of terrorism, we are in no way condoning terrorism. But any serious crime reduction effort cannot be confined only to intensified police work. Any serious campaign against terrorism needs to address the social, economic, and political conditions that nurture the emergence of terrorism."

This short excerpt doesn't do justice to the depth and breadth of Archbishop Martino's remarks, which move into complex issues of world conflict reduction. Your editorial calls intellectuals to a "sense of responsibility" in this crisis. We'd be grateful to find Commonweal sharing in that responsibility by, for instance, reprinting the whole of Archbishop Martino's address.

(REV.) JOHN COLACINO, C.PP.S.
GEORGE DARDESS
(REV.) ROBERT J. KENNEDY
MARVIN MICH
PEGGY ROSENTHAL
Rochester, N.Y.

The editors reply:

The best information available at this time indicates that the "motives" of those responsible for the World Trade Center bombings had nothing to do with the amelioration of poverty or the expansion of political freedom. Their self-proclaimed rationale was based in religious absolutism and political fanaticism, thus in this instance the search for the "root causes" of terrorism points more to the need to combat evil in the world than to the question of economic injustice. But, as we assume our letter writers agree, even if the terrorists' actions were rooted in the disparities between rich and poor, that would still not in any way justify what happened on September 11.

The full text of Archbishop Martino's address can be found at www.zenit.org.

False dichotomy

Congratulations to Mary Ann Glendon for her enriching article on "The Sources of 'Rights Talk,'" (October 12), an article I will certainly use in my own classes in ethics. There is, however, one point I should like to enlarge on. "Many Catholics," Glendon writes, "were surprised, and some were even shocked, at the extent to which the documents of Vatican II, and John XXIII's encyclicals...seemed to reflect a shift from natural law to human rights."

The surprise or shock some Catholics experienced would have been less, or nonexistent, if they were aware that the "shift" in question was only terminological. A consistent philosophical effort since the Enlightenment tried to retire the supernatural from the human sphere and to found human values on the natural alone, hence it was an effort to dislodge "natural law" in favor of "human rights." The church documents cited clearly reject such a separation; it is a false dichotomy. For Saint Thomas, natural law is the human being's participation in the eternal law and is not to be thought of as a changeless Platonic entity to be contemplated and then translated into human action. It is quite the other way around: When we see that an action is right, that it befits what it means to be human, it is thereby understood as a dictate of our nature, a natural law. It is, in short, our understanding of the rightness or oughtness of an action that is the natural law. Human rights, because they befit our nature, are dictates of our nature and are therefore encompassed by the natural law. That's why there is no dichotomy between the two.

ALBERT B. HAKIM
Summit, N.J.

Robert McAfree Brown

There are great teachers and people who influence your life, but Robert McAfee Brown stands out as a star in a world of trouble and confusion. His death is such a sad note.

In my own life as a Roman Catholic he taught me to look at my own tradition and to see our two traditions (Bob's enlightened and evangelical Presbyterianism and our own sometimes haughty Romanism) as in a joyful, embracing, complementing, pilgrimage.

In my book, The People versus Rome (Random House), Bob was one of my heroes whom I asked to add to the pages his philosophy and wisdom.

Bob Brown: pastor, theologian, teacher, novelist, friend. We will miss him. The wit and the wisdom.

JOHN A. O'CONNOR
Port Angeles Wash.

From the editors: Robert McAfee Brown died on September 4, 2001. Throughout the 1960s, Professor Brown was a regular contributor to Commonweal. In addition to reviews and articles, he wrote a column, "A Protestant Viewpoint," the first installment of which appeared in the issue dated January 4, 1963. It was a sign of the times that an editorial took note of the column's first appearance: "There was a time, not many years ago, when the appearance of a Protestant theologian in the pages of a Catholic journal would have been unthinkable." Well, the unthinkable was attempted and proved successful.

Brown began that first column by professing to be in a state of "fear and trembling" at the prospect of writing for Catholics but, ecumenist that he was, he concluded by noting that one function of the column was his "writing not primarily as a Protestant to Catholics, dealing with points of difference, but writing rather as a Christian to fellow Christians, presupposing points of conviction we already share, and examining some problem or issue in the name of our common allegiance to Christ, as we face together, whether as Catholics or Protestants, a world that is tragically torn asunder precisely because it does not share the perspective we share--that the resources of both wisdom and grace are manifested through a cross and an empty tomb."

A teacher, activist, and public intellectual, Brown participated in the great struggles of his lifetime, serving as a freedom rider during the civil rights movement, a protester during the Vietnam War, a solicitous friend of Central American theologians and pastors in the 1980s, and, at the invitation of John XXIII, as an official Protestant observer during Vatican II.

May he rest in peace.

Catholic anti-Semitism

Marc Saperstein's review ("An Indictment: Half Right," September 28) of my book, The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, argues that two books coexist uneasily here. He characterizes the first, which shows how the Vatican treated the Jews where it had the power to treat them as it liked (in the Papal States 1814-70) as "a compelling work of scholarship." He dismisses the second--aimed at showing that the Catholic Church contributed to the rise of modern anti-Semitism beginning in the last two decades of the nineteenth century--as polemical.

My argument is summarized in the introduction: "As modern anti-Semitic movements took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, the church was a major player in them, constantly warning people of the rising "Jewish peril." What, after all, were the major tenets of this modern anti-Semitic movement if not such warnings as these: Jews are trying to take over the world...Jews are rapacious and merciless, seeking at all costs to get their hands on all the world's gold, having no concern for the number of Christians they ruin in the process; Jews are unpatriotic, a foreign body ever threatening the well-being of the people among whom they live; special laws are needed to protect society, restricting the Jews' rights and isolating them? Every single one of these elements of modern anti-Semitism was not only embraced by the church but actively promulgated by official and unofficial church organs."

Saperstein takes issue in particular with the brief chapter dealing with "race." This is significant because a major basis for the church's claim not to have been involved in the rise of modern anti-Semitism is the church's opposition to racial thinking of the sort embodied in Nazi anti-Semitism. I clearly state, however, that the pseudo-scientific theory of Jewish racial inferiority had always been in conflict with the church's position on human universality and on the desirability of converting the Jews. What I did argue is that most of the grounds for hatred of the Jews incorporated into modern anti-Semitism had nothing to do with race. Hence, it is a logical and historical mistake to exclude from the sources of modern anti-Semitism those groups or institutions that did not attribute the Jews' evil to race.

Once Jews came to be demonized by the church it became hard to convince people that there was no difference in nature between Jews and Christians. With Jews described by the Vatican as drinkers of the blood of Christian children, plotting to enslave the Christian population, eager to cheat, rob, and murder Christians at any opportunity, it was a short step to the belief that the Jews were sinister by nature.

Saperstein maintains that I provide no evidence that such racial thinking had any influence within the twentieth-century church. Yet what are we to make of such episodes as the following? As papal envoy to Warsaw, Achille Ratti, three years before becoming Pope Pius XI, reported to the Vatican secretary of state that "the most evil" influence in Poland was the Jews. The final report of his mission, penned by his assistant--whom he would shortly make an archbishop--characterized Poland's Jews as follows: "Not only do they differ visibly from Poles owing to their racial characteristics (shortness of stature, large nose, prominent ears, bags under their eyes, etc.)..." Saperstein disputes my argument that the Jesuit ban (in effect until 1946) on accepting any candidate for membership contaminated by Jewish blood up to five generations back was used by Nazis and Italian Fascists to bolster their own case for anti-Semitic practices. Yet I discuss one of the major Fascist proclamations issued in support of the anti-Semitic racial laws, a speech (subsequently widely distributed) by Roberto Farinacci, one of the highest ranking members of the central Fascist Grand Council, that relies heavily on exactly this Jesuit racial policy. Farinacci cited the great influence the Vatican-supervised Jesuit biweekly, Civilta Cattolica, had in teaching people "that Judaism still aims for world domination," and observed that "the Aryan racism of the Jesuits is thus more severe than that of Germany itself." If the Nazis and Fascists could be faulted for anything, he concluded, it was "for not having applied all of their [that is, the Jesuits'] intransigence in our dealings with the Jews."

Saperstein complains that I nowhere show that the Catholic Church played any role in making the Holocaust possible. In fact, this is not a book about the Holocaust. It is certainly true that the Holocaust was the brainchild of the Nazis, and that the Nazis were a fundamentally pagan, anti-Christian movement. Yet the truth is that underlying the Holocaust was the widespread, deep hatred of the Jews found in large segments of the European population. Saperstein criticizes me for not offering any quantification of exactly what proportion of responsibility Christian anti-Semitism bore for these widespread views, or for the murder of the Jews of Europe. Should historians ignore the major role played by the Catholic Church--and various Protestant churches--in instilling deep hatred of the Jews because we cannot quantify the impact this had on making the Holocaust possible? Is Saperstein really denying that this underlying mass anti-Semitism was unrelated to the Holocaust?

DAVID I. KERTZER
Providence, R.I.

The reviewer replies:

Professor Kertzer misrepresents some of the points in my review, and fails to respond to others.

"[Saperstein] dismisses the second [component of the book] as polemical." This part of the book is indeed polemical. But is it dismissive to write, as I did, "After this book it will be considerably more difficult to defend the sharp demarcation between the church and modern anti-Semitism that the 'We Remember' statement maintains"?

"Saperstein maintains that no evidence is provided in the book that racial thinking ever had any influence within the twentieth-century church." No such assertion is in my review. What I maintained is that there is no evidence that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spanish "purity of blood" legislation--the foundation of Kertzer's claim that "the church was involved in the development of racial thinking about Jews"--had any influence on the development of nineteenth-century racist doctrine. The issue is not, as Kertzer puts it here, whether some leading churchmen held "that the Jews were sinister by nature." The issue is whether they taught that even after baptism, this uniquely sinister nature remained, and was transmitted to future generations genetically.

Kertzer cites at length the Italian Fascist Roberto Farinacci to substantiate his claim that Jesuit practice was "used by Nazis and Italian Fascists to bolster their own case for the Christian basis of their own anti-Semitic practices." My point was that he provided no documentation for the assertion that this precedent was "used by Nazis." The Italian Fascists produced discriminatory legislation; they did not produce the "Final Solution." Indeed, Italy--the only country where most of the inhabitants could read the periodicals cited so extensively in the book--was one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe, and the survival rate of its Jewish population was one of the highest.

"Saperstein complains that I nowhere show that the Catholic Church played any role in making the Holocaust possible." My point was actually different: Kertzer's claim that the teachings and actions of the church "helped make [the Holocaust] possible" is a nebulous innuendo rather than a testable historical assertion. I did not ask for precise "quantification" of the role of the church. I asked for clarification as to whether he is claiming that it would have been impossible for the Nazis to have risen to power in Germany, and to have put their genocidal program into effect, without the material documented in his book, or just a bit more difficult. To this question, which strikes me as not at all insignificant, we have still not received an answer.

The formulation of the question "Is Saperstein really denying that this underlying mass anti-Semitism was unrelated to the Holocaust" is so convoluted that I would not attempt an answer. Let me, instead, suggest a different question. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Polish population harbored a deep hatred of the Jews, and that this was instilled by the Catholic Church. Is Kertzer really asserting that had the local population not been anti-Semitic, the Nazis would have been unable to murder millions of Jews in conquered and occupied Poland, where the penalty for aiding a Jew was summary execution?

Kertzer states that "this is not a book about the Holocaust." Yet the author makes the Holocaust hover over the book--from the introduction to the final pages, especially in part 3, which he titles "On the Eve of the Holocaust," though (except for the last two pages) its story ends in 1922. The Holocaust is prominent in the book's promotion. Kertzer's work has many strengths that my review praised, but indictments of the leadership of a religious community for complicity in mass murder should be made with a precision I find lacking in The Popes against the Jews.

MARC SAPERSTEIN

Peter & the Volf

We noticed, in the November 9 issue, that the "barque of Peter" became the "bark of Peter" (woof, woof!) in Tilley's review essay, and that in Lawrence S. Cunningham's review of Doyle's book, the theologian "Miroslav Volf" was renamed "Miroslav Wolf" (another howler?). May we suggest a vacation for your spell-check program? dennis doyle

TERRENCE W. TILLEY
Dayton, Ohio

From the editors: The American Heritage Dictionary now prefers "bark" to "barque," so we have it on higher authority. Our apologies to Mr. Volf.