To the Editors.

Open dialogue

I want to congratulate you on Archbishop Rembert Weakland's January 11 article ("The Liturgy as Battlefield"). I really like the fact that he and Commonweal respect the readership so much that you dare to publish an article of such a high caliber. It was excellent.

On so many levels, we must keep serious dialogue open. Congratulations and thanks.

(REV.) ERNEST RANLY
Lima, Peru

Manna from chant

Regarding the January 11 issue: The evening before I read Rembert Weakland's essay on matters liturgical, I listened to Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, so, though I have not heard the composers Weakland mentioned, I am well aware that the twentieth century produced music of transcendence. A year ago, I attended a Tridentine Mass in which the Epistle and Gospel were read in Latin by a priest facing the altar--as though God had to have his word announced to him. There was, indeed, room for reform.

However, the day after I read the article was Sunday, and the hymns chosen for the 12:30 Mass were contemporary--unsingable tunes and words of such banality that they were hardly worthy of being spoken. Thus, when we sang the parts of the Mass devoted to Gregorian chant, we were blessed with manna from heaven. There are beautiful English hymns, many of them donated to us by Anglicans, some American, and some quite contemporary. But please, until a few more gifted composers dedicate their talents to the liturgy--and find acceptance from the editors of the missalettes--let us not banish the chant. Who knows? With its rhythms in their ears, some of the wannabes might even figure out how to be.

MARIAN BURKHART
New York, N.Y.

Haught avoids the issue

Reading John Haught's latest paean to Darwinism ("The Darwinian Universe," January 25) and its purportedly wholesale ("without undergoing any editing") compatibility with Christian theology is like listening to one of those political speeches that promise the moon without specifying where the money's coming from. Haught waxes eloquent on Darwin's "portrait of life" yet once again (see Commonweal, January 28, 2000), offers not a single intrinsic argument in its theological defense, and limits himself to pointing out the shortcomings of Darwin's critics.

He also continues to be self-servingly selective in his references to Scripture, citing the "God who makes all things new" but omitting the far more numerous (and earlier) references to the original creation, thereby conflating the standard theological distinction between the first and the second creation, and, on a metaphysical plane, being and becoming. And once again, the argument from intelligent design, whose proponents are dismissed with a derisive acronym ("IDers"), is lampooned by caricature. We are left wondering if Haught is ever going to offer (to Commonweal readers at any rate) not just rhetorical assertion but an intellectual explanation of "why an evolutionary account of complex design in life" does not "exclude a theological explanation"--specifically, an explanation of how Darwinian biology can make room for the reality of spirit, and with it the world of intellect, freedom, and self-sacrificing love, without undergoing some radical editing.

DENNIS FERRARA
Washington, D.C.

The author replies:

As Paul Tillich once wrote, it is disastrous for theology to embrace scientific ideas for theological reasons. Nor should theology oppose science when the latter seems at first to challenge religious beliefs. It is simply not the job of theology to dictate to scientists what they should be saying about the natural world. What theology is permitted to do, however, is oppose antitheistic ideologies, such as materialism, in which some prominent biologists and intellectuals (such as Frederick Crews) embed their understanding of evolutionary biology. One objective of my article was to reject the altogether unnecessary conflation of biology with materialist metaphysics.

Unfortunately, Dennis Ferrara, in company with evolutionary materialists and Intelligent Design (ID) proponents, implicitly protects this unhappy union even while repudiating it. It is only because he is convinced that evolutionary science is married inalienably to materialist belief, that he wants me to explain how Darwinian biology can be compatible with theology. However, claiming that theology is incompatible with materialism is one thing; claiming that theology is incompatible with evolutionary science is quite another. What needs editing is not Darwinian biology but evolutionist materialism.

(By the way, ID is not a derisive designation, since even IDers use it.)

JOHN F. HAUGHT

Take more risks

I am a Catholic writing from Alexandria, Virginia, and I wanted to commend you on both the November 23 and the December 21 covers. I have read some of the negative letters regarding these covers, and so I thought you could use a voice of support. I did "get" the poking fun that you intended with the "Buddy Christ" cover, and I also thought that the detail of Francisco de Zurbaran's painting was a great choice to accompany the Jack Miles review. (Actually, now that I know this painting adorns the British version of the book, I think I will order that copy rather than the U.S. edition.) Well done! I look forward to many more thought-provoking and potentially risky covers.

TREVOR JAMES
Alexandria, Va.