To the editors. (Correspondence).

The final secret

In his review of my book Why I Am a Catholic ("Where's the Beef?" July 12), Peter Steinfels proves that he is an ideal subject of the current pope when he writes that I have "discreetly" avoided having a Catholic public identity." If he believes that, he can believe in anything, even John Paul's Fatima secret.

I followed a weird strategy if I meant to cover up my faith. I have published four books on the Catholic Church, and a fifth (Confessions of a Conservative) in which I discussed at length my Catholicism, connecting it with Saint Augustine, on whom I have published two books, with a third to appear in November. In the 1960s I wrote a Catholic column syndicated to ten diocesan newspapers. I have written many articles on Dorothy Day, and the Berrigan brothers (with the latter of whom I demonstrated against war). I published a book on the very Catholic G. K. Chesterton, served on the advisory board of the Chesterton Quarterly, and I quote from Chesterton, consciously and profusely, in almost every book I write.

None of these things fools Steinfels, who knows I am hiding my Catholicism--yet others have penetrated my disguise, including those who gave me the Edmund Campion Medal and six honorary degrees from Catholic institutions of higher learning. In fact, an America review Steinfels quotes says, elsewhere in the review, "[Wills] is one of the few Catholics who has made it big in the broader stream of American culture and still remained a practicing Catholic." What John W. O'Malley, S.J., had somehow cottoned onto remains a mystery to Steinfels. Now Peter, about that Fatima secret...

GARRY WILLS
Evanston, Ill.

Learned & devout

Garry Wills deserves better from Commonweal than he gets from Peter Steinfels. Either Wills or his editor probably erred in titling his book, Why I Am a Catholic, because it enabled Steinfels to erect a straw man and then beat it to a pulp. Wills doubtless could have answered this question with a single sentence: I am a Catholic because I choose to be one, despite what has, or has not, happened since Vatican II. Steinfels refers to Wills's main critics as "Catholics who equate their faith with the papacy." As important as it is to Catholicism, do we really equate our faith with the papacy? I thought we equated our faith with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Gospels. If I am not mistaken, there are many great non-Catholic Christians who do not subscribe to our creed; Wills clearly does.

As an alternative to Steinfels's caricature of him, Wills could be considered as something of a prophet: he points to the problems that the Catholic Church needs to honestly address in today's world--for example, the proper relationship among the pope, clergy, and laity; the role of women in the church; a celibate priesthood; contraception; treatment of the Jews. Catholics who believe that the church is in need of reform and renewal in the wake of the pedophilia scandal should take the learned and devout Garry Wills very seriously. He writes these books because he cares deeply about his religion.

ANTHONY J. DISTEFANO
Alexandria, Va.

Steinfels's anger

When I noticed that Peter Steinfels had reviewed Garry Wills's new book, I went immediately to the article. What a surprise! I don't know what I expected, but it was not the double-barrel blast leveled by Steinfels.

Having since read the book and eight other reviews (in both the Catholic and secular press) I must admit to still being puzzled over the anger in the Steinfels piece. Was the lack of more self-revelation by Wills the cause? Or was it Wills's maddening refusal to be easily labeled? Is he too orthodox (or not orthodox enough)?

Granted, the book does fall short of its potential in several ways. But that potential, in these times and for an author of Wills's gifts, is almost by definition unrealizable. Perhaps Steinfels could write another piece giving us some insight into why he is so angry with Wills.

DICK BRUMMEL
Kansas City, Mo.

Explanation enough

I was disappointed in Peter Steinfels's review of Why I Am a Catholic. Steinfels concludes that Garry Wills's explanation of why he is a Catholic is not "satisfactory and candid."

Wills's explanation certainly seems candid enough: he accepts the early church's creed; and, despite knowledge of a historical record which makes Pius IX's claim of papal infallibility problematic, Wills seems to believe that the interplay--when allowed to function properly--between the papacy, Catholic theologians, and the laity is positive, and best calculated to keep organized religion in service of the gospel. For these reasons, Wills says, the Catholic Church is the voice of God in his life, and he chooses to remain a Catholic.

So what's wrong with this as an explanation for Wills's personal decision? And where does Steinfels get the strange idea that one's explanation for choosing to be Catholic is inadequate, unless others are "satisfied" with it?

GEORGE E. WARD
Plymouth, Mich.

The reviewer replies:

If readers wanted an example of how Garry Wills handles texts, he has certainly supplied one. The very first sentence of my review, directly preceding the one from which he lifts two words, says quite clearly: "Garry Wills...has never concealed his Catholicism" (italics added for Mr. Wills). If he had acknowledged that sentence, most of his aggrieved protest would have instantly evaporated. Instead he rearranges the two quoted words from the next sentence to say that I have accused him of avoiding having a Catholic public identity or, later, of "hiding" his Catholicism. In reality, the sentence said simply that he has worn his Catholicism "discreetly," as opposed to "self-consciously 'Catholic' intellectuals who made their church too much of their public identity." Frankly, I didn't know whether that was good or bad, just that it was different from the stance he has now taken as a Catholic publicly engaged with his church.

As for the rest of Wills's testimonial, it is misleading. Between the appearance of Bare Ruined Choirs in 1972 and Papal Sin in 2000, the better part of three decades during which Wills published at least a dozen books and innumerable essays, only in Confessions of a Conservative did he discuss his Catholicism, and there more in connection with his politics than his religious faith. And just as you don't have to be Jewish to love rye bread, you don't have to be Catholic to write about Saint Augustine or quote Chesterton. I do not recall that Wills identified his own stance as Catholic anywhere in his brilliant little books on Augustine--nor need he have. When, on the other hand, he has occasionally identified himself as a Catholic in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere, the context has almost always been some sharp critique of the church. This is all that I meant by Wills's discreet disclosure of his Catholicism and his distance--until recently--from more overtly Catholic intellectuals.

I stand in awe of Wills's gifts as a writer and his scope as a thinker. I rejoice that so many Catholic institutions have recognized them. But I remain regretful that unlike his heroes, Newman and Chesterton, when Wills explicitly avows his Catholicism, he rarely does so in a way that might cut against the grain, that might challenge, rather than assuage, the preconceptions and prejudices of the secular liberal audiences with whom he enjoys considerable authority.

What can one make of the fact that admirers of Garry Wills's recent polemical writings on the papacy and the church were distressed to find my review "angry"? They must have very shifting sensitivities toward what is angry or not. Unlike Anthony DiStefano, I took the book's title seriously. I assumed that an adequate explanation of why a man of Wills's stature, experience, and intellect is a Catholic would reflect, first, some personal grappling with the tests of faith all flesh is heir to and, second, some intellectual grappling with objections prevalent in the intellectual milieus he inhabits. I also assumed that if an author claimed, in a book so devoted to history, that the papacy, when properly functioning with other elements of the church, could not only best preserve the essentials of the Creed in theory but had actually done so in fact, the claim should be supported rather than contradicted by the book's text. My correspondents clearly have other standards.

PETER STEINFELS

Right about rights

I was a little surprised by the editors' reply to Patrick Connor, S.V.D, vice president of The Association for the Rights of Catholics (ARCC), regarding the use of "rights talk" in the church (Correspondence, July 12). There is a big difference between saying "using the language of 'rights' within the church...is misleading" and saying "we disagree."

Perhaps the editors would explain when rights talk is or is not appropriate. If it is "often misleading," when is it not?

JOHN BORST
Dryden, Ont.

More, please

The editors' response to Patrick Connor's letter was a little abrupt, and I think he deserved either no comment or a longer one.

Is it just ARCC's idea of there being a U.S.-inspired church "constitution" that Commonweal takes a dislike to? (ARCC's text is certainly convoluted and tiresome enough!) It can't be the "rights" language itself, because Commonweal inevitably uses that language about the current state of affairs in the church.

TOM BAKER
Princeton Junction, N.J.

The editors reply:

Three points:

First, our June 1 editorial, "The Do-Nothings," refers to a Vatican canonist's view that the rights of priests would be violated by some of the measures the U.S. bishops were proposing to take (and did take) at their Dallas meeting. It struck us as ironic that during a pontificate when the needs and interests of many Catholics have been treated summarily (or sometimes trampled upon) by the Vatican, a canonist would fall back on a "rights" argument to thwart the bishops' efforts to deal with the criminal behavior of priests.

Bottom line: whatever "rights" may lurk in canon law to be sprung on us when they suit the Vatican's views, we doubt they are the kind of rights we enjoy as citizens of the United States, which generally seem to be the kind of rights ARCC promotes in urging reform of the Catholic Church.

Second, ARCC's mission to extend those kinds of rights to the Catholic Church has always seemed misconceived. This is so, not only because of historical, cultural, and structural differences between the church and the United States, but because "rights talk" in this country is usually short on talk about responsibility and obligation, which is part and parcel of any understanding of the Christian life. If we want to talk about rights in the Catholic Church, we need to conceive a new form, a challenge now more important than ever.

Third, the fighting word in Patrick O'Connor's letter was not "rights," but "condescendingly," as in, "my perception was that Commonweal looked rather condescendingly on ARRC's efforts...." Our reply was meant simply to suggest that our silence about ARCC has nothing to do with a superior attitude (after all, some of our best friends belong to ARCC), but with general disagreement about its approach. This silence reflects our adherence to a long-established maternal admonition, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all"--advice we follow from time to time.

Proof!

I have one small addition to Richard Alleva's review of Richard Appignanesi's Introducing series, "Comic Erudition" (July 12)--specifically the Diderot and Euler encounter in the Mathematics volume.

I have not seen the book, but I would be surprised if "Euler's mathematical proof for the existence of God" was based on (a+b)/n=x. Rather, I would suspect it was the remarkable consequence of "Euler's equation" that leads to the surprising formula that [e.sup.si]=(-1), where the term [e.sup.si] means "raising the irrational number e=2.718...etc." to the power si and where the irrational number s=3.14159... (the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle) and the imaginary number i=--1. Of course, (-1) is defined through the symbol for nothing, the quantity 0 and the real number 1, by the strange equation -1+1=0 (see http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.euler.equation.html).

This remarkable equation involves two irrational numbers, s and e; the symbol of nothing, 0; the unit imaginary number i; and of course the whole sequence of negative numbers based on (-1). Euler's equation was a product of human reason--not observation--but its constants are critical to the fundamental relativistic quantum physics that has been experimentally shown to underlie our material world. It has consequently always been for me, and for many others familiar with it, a surprising connection between human thought and fundamental reality--and could perhaps be even a "mathematical proof of the existence of God" for Diderot.

GEORGE D. CODY
Princeton, N.J.

From the editors: You can say that again.

Be fruitful & multiply

I am delighted with Rodger Van Allen's essay: "Bishops Should Marry" (July 12) and would like to add to its insight another dimension: the American Catholic Church needs more bishops.

The large "empires," like the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where I live, should be broken up into clusters of smaller bishoprics, under an archbishop where appropriate.

The advantages are obvious: this would promote subsidiarity, enhance communication among bishops, pastors, and communicants, and allow for the development of collegiality among bishops who could then bring to the table a more intimate and authentic experience of their dioceses.

This era begs us to move to more connection, more humility in our service to each other. It may be a "sign of the times" to recapture a sense of intimacy of service that is supported by a return to married bishops in their small communities. This, among other structural changes, seems to beckon us into a church of our age.

ANNE HEUTTE
Washington, D.C.