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White House WelcomePope Benedict XVI blows out a candle on abirthday cake presented to him at the WhiteHouse on April 16.Pope Benedict XVI, meeting at theWhite House with President George W.Bush, said it was important to preservethe traditional role of religion inAmerican political and social life.Religious values helped forge “the soul ofthe nation” and should continue toinspire Americans as they face complexpolitical and ethical issues today, he said.The pope spoke April 16, his 81st birthday,at a ceremony on the South Lawn ofthe White House, where he was warmlywelcomed by the president and thousandsof cheering well-wishers. It was thepope’s first official encounter after arrivingin Washington, D.C., the day before.The pope smiled and beamed as thecrowd sang an impromptu “HappyBirthday.” The two leaders stood and listenedto their respective nationalanthems, then a fife and drum corpsplayed a medley of “Yankee Doodle” andother patriotic songs. The presidentgreeted the pope with the Latin phrasePax tecum (“Peace be with you”), and saidthe entire country was moved and honoredto have the pope spend “this specialday” with them.Benedict in AmericaPope Meets Privately WithVictims of AbusePope Benedict XVI held an unannouncedmeeting with victims of sexual abuse bymembers of the Catholic clergy, shortlyafter pledging the church’s continuedefforts to help heal the wounds caused bysuch acts. The Vatican said the pope metprivately in a chapel at the apostolic nunciaturewith “a small group of personswho were sexually abused by members ofthe clergy.” The group was accompaniedby Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., of Boston, which was the center ofthe abuse scandal. “They prayed with theHoly Father, who afterward listened totheir personal accounts and offered themwords of encouragement and hope,” aVatican statement said. “His Holinessassured them of his prayers for theirintentions, for their families and for allvictims of sexual abuse,” it said. FedericoLombardi, S.J., the Vatican press spokesman,told journalists the meeting involvedfive or six victims, men and women fromthe Archdiocese of Boston, and lastedabout 25 minutes. During the encounter,each of the victims had a chance to speakpersonally to the pope, who spoke some“very affectionate words,” he said. Accordingto Father Lombardi, it was a veryemotional meeting; some were in tears.Dialogue Leads to TruthPope Benedict XVI encouraged interreligiousleaders to work not only for peacebut for the discovery of truth. The popeurged about 200 representatives of Islam,Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism andJudaism at the Pope John Paul IICultural Center in Washington April 17“to persevere in their collaboration” toserve society and enrich public life. “Ihave noticed a growing interest amonggovernments to sponsor programsintended to promote interreligious dialogueand intercultural dialogue. Theseare praiseworthy initiatives,” PopeBenedict said. “At the same time, religiousfreedom, interreligious dialogueand faith-based education aim at somethingmore than a consensus regardingways to implement practical strategies foradvancing peace....The broader purposeof dialogue is to discover the truth,” hesaid. In a ceremony in the two-story mainlobby of the cultural center, Milwaukee’sAuxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba, chairmanof the U.S. bishops’ Committee onEcumenical and Interreligious Affairs,introduced the pope to the interreligiousleaders, who wore traditional garmentsidentifying their faiths.At New York Synagogue,‘Bridges of Friendship’The pope stands with former New York MayorEd Koch, left, and Rabbi Arthur Schneier at thePark East Synagogue in New York.In a brief and moving visit to a NewYork synagogue, Pope Benedict XVIexpressed his respect for the city’s Jewishcommunity and encouraged the buildingof “bridges of friendship” between religions.The encounter on April 18 markedthe first time a pope has visited a Jewishplace of worship in the United States,and occurred shortly before the start ofthe Jewish Passover. The pope said hefelt especially close to Jews as they “prepareto celebrate the great deeds of theAlmighty and to sing the praises of himwho has worked such wonders for hispeople.” He was welcomed at the ParkEast Synagogue by Rabbi ArthurSchneier, 78, who called the visit historicand “a reaffirmation of your outreach,good will and commitment to enhancingJewish-Catholic relations.” The rabbialso used the opportunity to wish thepope “mazel tov,” or best wishes on his81st birthday two days earlier. A choirfrom the Park East Day School performedduring the meeting, which waskept brief because the Jewish Sabbathobservance was to begin at sunset.4 America May 5, 2008

Benedict in AmericaHuman Rights Cannot Be Limited, Pope Tells U.N.Pope Benedict XVI touches a United Nations flag at theU.N. headquarters in New York April 18. The flag was flyingover the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug.19, 2003, when a truck bomb killed 17 people.Neither government nor religion has aright to change or limit human rights,because those rights flow from the dignityof each person created in God’simage, Pope Benedict XVI said in hisApril 18 speech to the U.N. GeneralAssembly. The pope insisted thathuman rights cannot be limited orrewritten on the basis ofnational interests or majorityrule. But he also said the roleof religions is not to dictategovernment policy, but tohelp their members strive tofind the truth, including thetruth about the dignity of allpeople, even if their religiousviews are different. U.N.Secretary General Ban Kimoonwelcomed the popeand met privately with himbefore the pope addressed theGeneral Assembly. In hispublic welcoming remarks,the U.N. leader said: “TheUnited Nations is a secularinstitution, composed of 192states. We have six officiallanguages but no official religion.We do not have achapel—though we do have ameditation room. But if you ask thoseof us who work for the United Nationswhat motivates us, many of us reply ina language of faith.... We see what wedo not only as a job, but as a mission.”He added, “Your Holiness, in so manyways, our mission unites us withyours.”where some 3,000 bishops, priests, religiousand seminarians gave him a standingovation. The crowd broke intoapplause when the pope’s secretary ofstate, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, delivereda Spanish-language “happy anniversary”message and wished the pontiffmany more years. The pope took themicrophone and, looking out on the seaof faces in the neo-Gothic cathedral,smiled and spoke in a soft voice. “I canonly thank you for your love of thechurch, for the love of our Lord and thatyou give also your love to the poor successorof St. Peter,” he said. “I will do allthat is possible to be a real successor ofthe great St. Peter, who also was a manwith his faults and some sins, but heremains finally the rock for the church,”he said.At Ground Zero, SolemnPrayer and ComfortYoung Adults EnjoyImpromptu MeetingSeveral hundred young adults holding avigil behind the security perimeteraround the house in New York Citywhere Pope Benedict XVI was stayingwere rewarded April 18 with a papalhandshake. Helen Osman, director ofcommunications for the U.S. Conferenceof Catholic Bishops, said more than1,000 people had gathered throughoutthe evening near the residence of theVatican’s permanent observer to theUnited Nations, where the pope wasstaying. “Some just came out of curiosity,”but there were also others, playingguitars and drums. The young peoplefrom three New York parishes had beengathered by the Sisters of Life of NewYork, the order founded by the lateCardinal John O’Connor to promote the“Gospel of life.” At about 8 p.m. the U.S.Secret Service began allowing smallgroups to pass the traffic blockade andapproach the residence. Pope Benedictcame outside “after dinner” at about 9p.m., said Federico Lombardi, S.J., theVatican spokesman. The pope spentabout 10 minutes shaking hands withyoung religious and other young adultswho got the Secret Service nod.Americans Thanked forTheir Love and PrayersDescribing himself as “the poor successorof St. Peter,” Pope Benedict XVIthanked Americans for their prayers andlove on the third anniversary of his election.The pope made the imprompturemarks at the end of a Mass April 19 inSt. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York,Pope Benedict XVI offers prayers at groundzero in New York.In the most somber moment of his sixdayvisit to the United States, PopeBenedict XVI knelt alone at ground zeroand offered a silent prayer. The cheeringcrowds were far away as the popeblessed the ground where the WorldTrade Center stood until terroristscrashed airplanes into its twin towers onSept. 11, 2001. While the extraordinarysecurity measures that surrounded theMay 5, 2008 America 5

Benedict in Americapope’s entire visit tangibly demonstratedhow the attacks have changed theUnited States, the ground zero visit gavethe pope an opportunity to speak to andconsole those whose lives were changedmost directly that day. Twenty-fourpeople stood around a candle, a plot ofearth and a tiny pond as the pope kneltin prayer, including family members ofthose killed, some of the survivors andrepresentatives of the first respondersfrom the New York Port Authority,police and fire departments. At the bottomof the 70-foot crater where thetowers had stood, surrounded by steelconstruction rods, forklifts and steelbeams, Pope Benedict looked up pastthe skyscrapers shrouded in fog and reada prayer.Pope Meets WithTheologian Avery DullesDuring his whirlwind U.S. visit, PopeBenedict XVI took a few moments outfor a private meeting with one ofAmerica’s preeminent theologians,Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J. Thewheelchair-bound scholar traveled fromhis residence at Jesuit-run FordhamUniversity’s Rose Hill campus in theBronx to St. Joseph’s Seminary inYonkers, N.Y., April 19, for a prearrangedprivate meeting with the pope,just after the pontiff met with disabledyouths. “It was a lovely meeting,” saidAnne-Marie Kirmse, O.P., who has beenthe cardinal’s executive assistant for thepast 20 years. She was present to helpfacilitate the get-together, held at theseminary. “The pope literally boundedinto the room with a big smile on hisface,” she told Catholic News Service onApril 21. “He went directly to whereCardinal Dulles was sitting, saying,‘Eminenza, Eminenza, Eminenza, I recallthe work you did for the InternationalTheological Commission in the 1990s.’”States amid a cheering crowd of 4,000people who had come to see him off.“It has been a joy for me to witness thefaith and devotion of the Catholiccommunity here,” the pope said April20 in brief remarks to those gatheredin Hanger 19 at John F. KennedyInternational Airport. “It was heartwarmingto spend time with leadersand representatives of other Christiancommunities and other religions,”Pope Benedict added. Among thosepresent were Cardinal Edward M.Egan of New York; Bishop William F.Murphy of Rockville Centre;Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolicnuncio to the U.S.; and BishopNicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, whosediocese includes the airport. Also inattendance were Mayor MichaelBloomberg of New York and VicePresident Dick Cheney and his wife,Lynne. “It has been a memorableweek, and Pope Benedict XVI hasstepped into the history of our countryin a special way,” Cheney said.Multicultural Mix ofAncient and ModernThe liturgical celebration of Mass byPope Benedict XVI on April 17 inNationals Park reflected the diversity ofCatholic heritages and sensibilities foundin the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.,where the Mass was held. It acknowledgedboth the roots of tradition and thebranches that have sprouted from thoseroots. The prayer of the faithful wasrecited in six languages—English,Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalogand Igbo. The sung response to theintentions incorporated three languages:English, Latin and Spanish. The firstreading—the account of how the apostlesstarted speaking in tongues unknownto them at Pentecost—was proclaimed inSpanish. Music composed in the 40 yearssince the conclusion of the SecondVatican Council was included, as wereancient Latin texts set to chant—and aLatin-language Gloria written in the pastdecade.Pope Reaches out to Disabled ChildrenFaith of U.S. Catholics‘A Joy to Witness’Thanking Americans for their hospitality,Pope Benedict XVI left the UnitedFrom CNS and other sources. CNS photos.Pope Benedict XVI greets a girl during a gathering with young people with disabilities at St.Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., on April 19.6 America May 5, 2008

EditorialPastor and ProphetTHE ENDURING IMPRESSION Pope BenedictXVI left with most Americans followinghis recent visit to Washington, D.C., andNew York was of a pastor ministering tohis flock. In repeated gestures, from meetingwith the victims of sexual abuse to blessing the disabledand speaking with the survivors of the terroristattacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he showed his desire to healthose who are wounded and broken.His numerous comments on sexual abuse by membersof the clergy demonstrated awareness of the depth of thehurt to victims and their families as well as to theAmerican Catholic Church as a whole. From his confessionof shame to reporters during the flight to the UnitedStates to his spontaneous acknowledgment of his ownhuman weakness at the Mass at New York’s St. Patrick’sCathedral, he signaled that like Peter, he is an ordinaryChristian who struggles to be a disciple.Though commentators have often depicted hisGerman heritage as a source of rigidity and heavyhandedness,Benedict’s Bavarian Gemütlichkeit revealed itself witha relaxed smile, and it projected warm joy throughout hispublic appearances. His natural graciousness enabled himto look those he encountered in the eyes and to listen tothem attentively. Though he is known to prefer more traditionalliturgical styles himself, he appeared to relish themultilingual, multiethnic liturgical events prepared forhim, which are so characteristic of the United States today.His prayer at ground zero was a gem of quiet commemoration,and the visit to the Park East Synagogue on the eveof Passover was a gesture of undiminished goodwill towardthe Jewish community.Just as he came to heal, Pope Benedict also came tounify. His homilies and addresses allowed no gloating byone church faction over another. In addressing the bishops,for instance, he balanced pro-life issues with socialjustice concerns. “Is it consistent,” he asked, “to professour beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the weekto promote business practices or medical procedures contraryto those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicingCatholics to ignore or exploit the poor and marginalized,to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moralteaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right tolife of the human being from conception to naturaldeath?” Though Pope Benedict’s critique of American culture—ofindividualism, secularism, materialism and thecult of untrammeled freedom—was clear, his reproof wasconsistently gentle: questioning rather than condemning,edifying rather than hectoring.With his gentle voice and peaceful demeanor, Benedictdid not fail to offer a prophetic word to the world. At theUnited Nations General Assembly, he upheld the necessityof the organization for the defense of human rights andgave new prominence to “the duty to protect,” that is, theresponsibility of the international community to intervenewhen a government either fails to protect its own peopleor is itself guilty of violating their rights. He made clearthat the United Nations serves human solidarity by makingthe strong responsible for defending the weak.Pope Benedict also extrapolated a seldom discussedteaching of Pope John XXIII in the encyclical Pacem inTerris—that the legitimacy of governments depends ontheir respect for and defense of the rights of their people.It is not “intervention,” he argued, that should be interpretedas “a limitation on sovereignty,” but rather “nonintervention”that causes harm out of indifference to the victimsof oppression. With international missions founderingin long-lasting conflicts like those in Congo andSudan, however, the pope’s remarks place the burden onthe international community to build the capacity to dealwith major humanitarian emergencies.WHILE POPE BENEDICT SHOWED APPRECIATION for American culture,especially for the flowering of liberty, and for U.S.Catholics, he also laid bare our temptations and failings.He spoke to young people about the “callousness of heart”that leads to “drug and substance abuse, homelessness,poverty, racism, violence and degradation—especially ofgirls and women.” He also warned against relativism,“which, in disregarding truth, pursues what is false andwrong,” leading to “addiction, to moral or intellectual confusion,to hurt, to a loss of self-respect, even to despair....”This portrait is unflattering. Americans may find ithard to look in the mirror Benedict held up to us. We maywant to avert our eyes. But the challenge of the visit is tolearn from Pope Benedict’s criticism as well as his praise,take it to heart and find new ways to redeem the shadowside of our American character. For, as he reminded us,with our eyes fixed on the saints whose lives enable us to“soar freely along the limitless expanse of the horizon ofChristian discipleship,” we too can live the Gospel life in21st-century America.May 5, 2008 America 7

Morality MattersAgainst All Odds‘In Eastern Congo, motherhoodis still a risky business.MOTHERHOODdemandsrisk, personal danger andcourage. When Marysaid yes to life, to becomingthe mother of God,she risked everything. As a young, unwedmother in a patriarchal society, she riskedlosing her family, her place in the communityand thus her means of survival.Joseph’s first instinct to the news of herpregnancy was to break with her, untilangels interceded and the Holy Familywas begun.As we celebrate the month of Maryand Mother’s Day, motherhood is still arisky business. For the women of EasternCongo, where atrocities against womenare routinely committed, motherhoodrequires great courage. In the past 10years 5.4 million people have died fromthe war and violence in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo; 47 percent of theseare children. In a huge country, the sizeof the United States east of theMississippi, rebel groups supported byforeigners fight with each other and thegovernment, largely over the D.R.C.’srich natural resources.“Conflict coltan” mines in EasternCongo are particular targets, as coltan isused in our cell phones, laptops and computerchips. Rwanda’s génocidères remainin Eastern Congo, where they and otherscontinue their brutality. The largely collapsedD.R.C. is at best unable to protectpeople; at worst the untrained and unpaidtroops and police themselves prey on thepeople.Women and children suffer most.Alan Goss, the U.N. special representativeto the D.R.C., laments that the rates ofinfant and maternal mortality in Congoare among the worst in the world. InMARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE serves on theadvisory board of the CatholicPeacebuilding Network.‘Eastern Congo, with its coltan mines andforeign fighters, violence continues longafter peace accords have been signed.Women are routinely raped andmutilated as an instrument of war, as documentedby the U.N. special rapporteuron violence against women, Ms. YakinErturk. She notes, “The scale and brutalityof the atrocities amount to war crimesand crimes against humanity.” Girls asyoung as 5 and grandmothers as old as 80are not immune to gang rapes, some ofthem committed with tree limbs, guns ormachetes. Mothers are raped while theirhusbands and children are tied to treesand forced to watch. In many cases thevictims are shunned, blamed for theattacks on them, because the rapes humiliatethe family, or because they are infectedby the attacks with H.I.V./AIDS andother diseases, or because many areimpregnated with the children of thesecriminals and enemies.Although the D.R.C. made rape andviolence against women illegal in 2006,few perpetrators are ever arrested or prosecuted.The filmmaker Lisa Jacksonshows in “The Greatest Silence,” a chillingrecent HBO documentary, theimpunity of these rapists, who brag oncamera of their crimes.What do women do in the midst ofsuch horrible suffering? They try to raisetheir children and hold their familiestogether, against all odds. They see theseoffspring of rape not as children of theenemy, but as children of God.Archbishop Francois-Xavier Maroygrew up in these areas and now presidesthere. His three predecessors were murdered.He was recently in the UnitedStates to attend Catholic PeacebuildingNetwork conferences, and to urge actionby the U.S. government, in particular bySenators Sam Brownback and JosephBiden and Congressman Barney Frank,who are promoting legislation on theseissues. “All of humanity are attacked whenwomen are attacked,” he said, and continued:“Women are sacred, the mothers oflife, the pillars of the family, she that educatessociety through her children. Theseare attacks against the whole human family,aimed at the extermination of theCongolese people of the east.”He explained that with the collapse ofthe state almost all social services are providedby the church, from trauma healingto health care. But this is difficult to do,and resources are scarce. For women withmore severe injuries, there is only onedoctor able to treat them, Dr. Mukwege ofthe Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. Accordingto the archbishop:We work on reintegration of thewomen back into families andsocieties, and in the reintegrationof their children. The problem isthat after rape they are marginalizedby their own family members,evicted and their household goodsstolen as well, so the church triesto give other means to establishlives and become useful again. Wealso work with the children whoare born of these rapes, as they areinnocent victims too.What we would ask theAmerican church is first, for yourprayers. Prayer is the strongestforce, and can change hearts ofstone to hearts of flesh. Second,we ask American Catholics to tellthe U.S. government, which is thefirst power of the world, to help usbring peace back to Congo, and towork to return the Rwandan fightersback to Rwanda. We ask thatthe U.S. government be a forcefor reconstruction, not destruction.And third, we ask for financialassistance as well.Despite the suffering of the people towhom Archbishop Maroy ministers everyday, he maintains a positive outlook andgentle smile. “As a church, we must alwayskeep hope and never be discouraged.”This May, let us pray together with thepeople of Congo, “Deliver us Lord fromevery evil, and grant us peace in our day.”Maryann Cusimano LoveMay 5, 2008 America 9

May 5, 2008 America Vol. 198 No. 15, Whole No. 4814T h e N e w A t h e i s mIn recent years religious fundamentalism and disputesover the relationship between faith and science haveprovoked a wave of publications known collectively as“the new atheism.” Following the Second VaticanCouncil’s observation that “believers can have morethan a little to do with the rise of atheism,” the editorshave asked five prominent theologians to explorewhich expressions of contemporary Christianity supplywhat the council called “the secret motives” ofatheism. We also asked our experts to reflect on howChristians might respond to both the legitimate criticismsoffered by the new atheism and the distortionsof faith found within it.May 5, 2008 America 11

Catholicism andThe New AtheismBY RICHARD R. GAILLARDETZRICHARD R. GAILLARDETZ is the Thomas and Margaret Murrayand James J. Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies at theUniversity of Toledo.ONE OF THE LESS NOTED contributions of theSecond Vatican Council is its brief treatmentof atheism in its “Pastoral Constitution onthe Church in the Modern World.” In thatgroundbreaking document, the council avoided the shrillcondemnations of atheism that were so common in preconciliartexts. Instead, the council acknowledged thediverse motives for modern atheism, from the overreachingclaims of the positive sciences to modern atheism’slegitimate rejection of “a faulty notion of God” (No. 19).The bishops invited Christians to go beyond condemnationand “seek out the secret motives that lead the atheisticmind to deny God” (No. 20). By way of contrast, theso-called “new atheists”—figures like Richard Dawkins,Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and SamHarris—engage in an aggressive and decidedly nondialogicalattack on religion. They insist that religion is fundamentallytoxic to human society and must be directlychallenged and eradicated where possible. Consider thesecond part of the title of Hitchens’s volume, God is NotART BY STEPHANIE RATCLIFFE12 America May 5, 2008

Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.Islamic and Christian fundamentalism receive the lion’sshare of criticism, but Catholicism does not escape attack.Harris skewers Catholicism for its anti-Semitic history, theevils perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition and theCatholic leadership’s scandalous protection of clerical childabusers. Hitchens joins Harris in mentioning the scandal ofsexual abuse but also lampoonsCatholicism for itsWe must ask ourselveswhether there is anything inour Catholic culture thatinvites these attacks andmight be avoided withoutabandoning what is essentialto our faith.supposed reliance onsuperstition and condemnsits pursuit of power inorder to control the livesof others. Almost all ofthese critics challengeCatholicism’s dogmatismand overbearing exerciseof authority, which theysee as directly opposed tothe use of human reasonand the primacy of conscience.The committed Catholic(indeed, the committed practitioner of any great religioustradition) is bound to bristle at the aggressive tone andthe tendency toward caricature and sweeping generalizationthat runs through these works. It is tempting simply to dismissthese attacks. Yet the Second Vatican Council’s mandatefor respectful engagement with the critics of faithinvites an alternative course of action. We must certainlydefend the integrity and reasonableness of our deepest religiousconvictions, but an adequate Catholic response mustgo beyond traditional apologetics; we must also ask ourselveswhether there is anything in our Catholic Christianculture that invites these attacks and might be avoided withoutabandoning what is essential to our faith. I focus onthree elements in the Catholic faith that call for our attention:Catholic practices that suggest a naïve theism; thenature of Catholic truth claims; and the exercise of churchauthority.Naïve TheismAs Michael Buckley, S.J., pointed out in his classic study ofatheism (At the Origins of Modern Atheism), all forms of modernatheism are parasitic upon a particular form of theism.The proponents of the new atheism presuppose a naïveform of theism that perceives God, as Karl Rahner put it, asan individual being, albeit the Supreme Being, who is simplyanother “member of the larger household of reality”(Foundations of Christian Faith). Yet the god of this naïve theismmore closely resembles a benevolent Zeus than the godof the Judeo-Christian tradition. One imagines a god standingon the sidelines of human history but occasionally interveningin the course of human events. Still, we should askourselves whether there are popular Catholic beliefs orpractices that may, however unintentionally, support suchnaïve theism.As one example, consider the procedures for the canonizationof saints. Vatican regulations require that for beatificationone verified miraclebe attributable to the“servant of God”; for canonizationtwo arerequired. In these rules,miracles are described asevents attributed to theintercession of the servantof God and certified asinexplicable according tomodern science. Withoutdenying the possibility ofsuch events, I wonderwhether the emphasis ontheir scientifically inexplicablecharacter risks givingthe impression that God’s action in the world cannot bereconciled with a scientific account of the workings of ourphysical universe. Does this interventionist view of divineaction invite accusations of superstition and caricatures ofdivine activity by those outside the community of faith? It isvital that our religious beliefs and practices affirm a fundamentalcompatibility between divine action and scientificaccounts of our world.It may be opportune to consider revised procedures thatwould focus less on the scientifically inexplicable and moreon diverse testimony to the continuing influence and impactof the servant of God on those who remain on their earthlypilgrimage. Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical on hopemakes effective use of the lives of select saints as movingembodiments of Christian hope. I suspect that it is thisevangelical witness rather than the verification of miraculousinterventions that the contemporary skeptic is morelikely to find compelling.Catholic Truth ClaimsWe have not been left on this earth to wander blindly insearch of the divine. Catholics believe that God communicatesthe divine self to us in revelation. This revelation hasbeen mediated in various forms throughout human historyand has achieved its unsurpassable form in the person ofJesus of Nazareth. The Spirit-inspired testimony to thisdivine revelation is found in Holy Scripture and continuesto unfold in the tradition of the church. Within that tradition,the revealed message of God’s offer of salvation hasMay 5, 2008 America 13

een given formal expression in dogma.Unfortunately, the presentations of church teaching thatone sometimes hears from catechists and clergy can succumbto what Juan Luis Segundo, S.J., has called a “digital”view of dogma (The Liberation of Dogma). This understandingdivests dogma of its analogical, imaginative and transformativecharacter and renders it strictly informational.One can easily get the impression that by learning churchdogma one has somehow “mastered” God, much as a chemistrystudent masters the periodic table. Presentations basedon a fundamental misunderstanding of the gift of infallibilitycan create the impression that Catholic dogma is static,as if the very language of dogmatic statements is immune tohistorical, philosophical or cultural influence.For Catholics, dogmatic statements symbolically mediaterevelation without exhausting our encounter with God.Although dogmas play a valid role by affirming the truth ofour most central convictions, they are not the only, nor evennecessarily the primary way in which we encounter divinerevelation. The narrative power of Scripture, the symbolicefficacy of the liturgy, the moving testimony of the lives ofsaints and ordinary believers—all of these can mediateGod’s word to us. Moreover, the charism of infallibility,which Catholics hold is active when the church believes andteaches that which is central to the divine offer, does notexempt church teaching from reasoned inquiry and critique.Catholic teaching on infallibility proceeds from our confidencethat the Spirit of God so abides in the church that ourmost central convictions about God are utterly reliable andwill not lead us away from God’s saving offer. Insofar as theyremain human statements, subject to the limits of languageand history, dogmatic pronouncements, although not erroneous,are always subject to reformulation. No human statement,however much its formulation may be assisted by theSpirit and protected from essential error, can capture theholy mystery of God. Religious authority figures shouldresist presenting dogma as if it brought all theologicalreflection to a close.The church’s teachers should also continue to acknowledge,clearly and without apology, that not all official churchteaching has the status of dogma. In many instances theteaching office of the church proposes as formal churchteaching or binding church discipline its best insight, hereand now, regarding the application of the faith to often complexissues, even as it acknowledges the possibility of error.Pope Benedict has noted that in today’s world the possibilityof revealed truth is itself under attack. If that is thecase, then the church has a particularly pressing obligationto offer a credible account of divine revelation. For thisaccount to be credible, it should include the following threepoints: the acknowledgment that church dogma does notexhaust the holy mystery of God; the recognition thatchurch dogma, although not erroneous, is not exempt fromthe linguistic and philosophical limits to which all humanstatements are subject; and the unambiguous admission thatnot all church teaching is taught with the same degree ofauthority and that noninfallible teaching remains open tosubstantive revision. These steps might go a long waytoward thwarting the tendency of the church’s critics tolump Roman Catholicism together with the various religiousfundamentalisms that succumb to simplistic andseemingly irrational conceptions of divine truth.Church LeadershipThe Catholic Church is a human institution that hasalways embraced the need for authoritative church structures.Yet often it is not church authority itself, but theparticular manner in which church authority is exercisedthat opens the Catholic Church to such harsh attacks fromcontemporary critics. Many who observe the CatholicChurch from the “outside” see an institution prone toheavy-handed and arbitrary wielding of authority. Theysee ecclesiastical pronouncements on complex ethicalissues and wonder how church officials can pronounce onthem with such certitude. Some outside the church see anunwillingness on the part of church leadership to considerthe wisdom of ordinary believers or to entertain theinsights of contemporary scholarship when these insights14 America May 5, 2008

might challenge official church positions. They also seetoo many church leaders obsessed with the trappings ofrank and privilege, titles and prerogatives, leaders more athome in the court of a 19th-century monarch than in amodern institution. There are, of course, many Catholicleaders whose style of leadership is far removed from thesestereotypes, but they are often better known to thoseinside the church than to those outside.If truth be told, the deepest wisdom of our great traditionpresents a vision of church authority often at odds withchurch practice. Scripture teaches that authentic churchauthority is always to be exercised as a service, not as aninstrument for control (Mt 20:25-8). Voices within our traditionlike St. Paulinus of Nola or Cardinal Newman haveinsisted that church leaders consult the faithful, not becauseit was politically correct to do so but because of an ancientconviction that the Spirit of God might speak through thewhole people of God. We can appeal to great figures of thepast like St. Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great or tothe more recent teaching of Vatican II and find remindersthat the exercise of church authority must be subject tohumility. This humility presupposes that we belong to a pilgrimchurch that is being led by the Spirit but that has notyet arrived at its final destination and is therefore always inneed of reform and renewal.Can we afford to overlook the popularity of Pope JohnXXIII throughout the world, a popularity based largely onhis humble and self-effacing style of leadership, the exerciseof which was for that very reason all the more effective?Later, Pope John Paul II would exemplify authenticChristian authority in his resolute determination, oftenagainst the wishes of his closest advisers, to admit the mistakesand grievous sins perpetrated by Catholics past andpresent. In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint (Nos. 95-96), PopeJohn Paul II even invited other Christian leaders to explorewith him new ways of exercising his papal ministry as a ministryof unity and not division. Is it a coincidence that thesetwo figures were the most widely admired popes of the 20thcentury by those outside the Catholic Church? Theirs wasan exercise of authority that seemed credible even to thosewho did not share the faith of the church.Many of us become frustrated when we read atheists’attacks on religion, because we do not recognize ourselvesand our religious communities in their scathing portraits.Yet we must resist channeling our frustration into equallyvicious counterattacks. Instead, let us search our own faithtraditions and purge them of all that obscures what is mostprecious to us. For we remain convinced that our deepestreligious convictions do not “poison everything” but affirmall that is good and gently invite all into communion withthat Holy Mystery “in whom we live and move and haveour being.”AA Symposium -Apostolic Religious Life since Vatican II....Reclaiming the Treasure: Bishops, Theologians,and Religious in ConversationStonehill College, Easton, MassachusettsSaturday, September 27, 20088:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.Keynote speakers:Franc Cardinal Rode, C.M.Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes ofConsecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic LifeSister Sara Butler, M.S.B.T.Member of the International Theological CommissionHomilist:Sean Cardinal O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap.Archbishop of BostonCost: Free, compliments of Stonehill CollegeRegistration Deadline: May 31, 2008For schedule and signup, visitwww.stonehill.edu/rlsIn Celebration of the200th Anniversary ofthe Archdiocese of BostonHosted byThe Diocese ofFall RiverStonehill CollegeContact: Rev. Thomas Looney, C.S.C.tlooney@stonehill.edu or 508-565-1551May 5, 2008 America 15

True BelieversHave the new atheists adopted a faith of their own?BY JOHN F. HAUGHTThe atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appearsshamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.– Sam HarrisJust those who feel they are...most fully objective in theirassessment of reality, are most in the power of deep unconsciousfantasies.– Robert BellahJOHN F. HAUGHT is senior fellow of science and religion atWoodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University,Washington, D.C. He is the author of God and the NewAtheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.THE BESTSELLING BOOKS by Richard Dawkins,Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and ChristopherHitchens provide colorful portraits of the evils ofreligion. Theyappeal especially to themoral sensitivity of readersand easily awaken outrageat the “poison” associatedwith the various faith traditions,not least those thatclaim descent fromAbraham. Ultimately,however, as our “new atheists”would surely agree, itis not in the name ofmorality alone, but especiallyin the name of reasonthat they must convincetheir readers of the wrongnessof religious faith. Inthis essay I shall show howthey fail to do so by posingthree sets of questions tohighlight the fundamentalbeliefs—that is the appropriateword—that underlie the worldview of Dawkins andcompany. Before doing so, however, let us look at the historicaland scientific roots of the new atheism and how it hasdeveloped into its current insidious form.The intellectual foundation of the new atheism is notnew. It is the well-worn modern worldview known as “scientificnaturalism,” a label first used by T. H. Huxley in the19th century to emphasize the principle that science mustnever appeal to supernatural explanations. As understoodtoday, however, scientific naturalism goes far beyond whatHuxley intended. It decrees that the natural world, includinghuman beings and our creations, is literally all thatexists. There is no divine creator, no cosmic purpose, nosoul and no possibility of life beyond death.Most scientific naturalists are avowed materialists. Theybelieve that lifeless and mindless physical stuff, evolving byimpersonal natural processes over billions of years, is theultimate origin and destiny of everything, including livingand thinking organisms. “According to the materialists,”the philosopher Daniel Dennett claims in his bookConsciousness Explained, “we can (in principle!) account forevery mental phenomenon using the same physical principles,laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity,continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction,nutrition and growth.”Since Darwin, scientific naturalists have increasinglyalloyed their materialism with evolutionary accounts of life.Darwin’s notes reveal that he too was tempted occasionallyART BY STEPHANIE RATCLIFFE16 America May 5, 2008

to make materialism the foundation of his own understandingof evolution. But where Darwin felt uneasy splicingbiology onto such an inherently atheistic metaphysics, todaymany biologists and philosophers have no such hesitancy.Especially after it became possible in the last century tounderstand evolution in terms of genes migrating blindlyfrom one generation to the next, the irresistible temptationScientism and scientific naturalismframe every page of the newatheistic tirades. These wearyconstraints on human thoughthave been around for a long time.has arisen to resolve the entirety of life into a specialinstance of matter in motion.This reduction is the basis of Dawkins’s and Dennett’sunderstanding of evolution, and both Harris and Hitchensgo along with it. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell and Dawkins’sThe God Delusion assume that all living phenomena, includingour own ethical instincts and religious longings, can beadequately accounted for in an evolutionary and materialistmanner. Theological explanation, therefore, is now utterlysuperfluous.Scientism and the End of FaithThe materialist worldview espoused by the new atheists isitself the offspring of “scientism,” the widely sharedassumption that modern scientific method is the only wayfor reasonable, truth-seeking people to gain knowledge ofthe real world. Science, Harris insists, “has become the preeminentsphere for the demonstration of intellectual honesty.”Dawkins is even more emphatic: “It may be thathumanity will never reach the quietus of complete understanding,but if we do, I venture the confident predictionthat it will be science, not religion, that brings us there. Andif that sounds like scientism, so much the better for scientism.”For the new atheists science always trumps religiousbelief. Why? Because scientific method formulateshypotheses about phenomena on the basis of physicalobservations that can be tested over and over. Since religiousideas, by contrast, are not subject to publicly repeatableempirical verification (or falsification), rational inquiryrequires that they disown them.Religions, the new atheists complain, stem from “faith,”that is, from irrational acts of what they call “belief withoutevidence.” This is far from being a theologically informeddefinition, but it supports the new atheists’ declaration thatfaith is utterly opposed to science. “Pretending to knowthings you do not know is a great liability in science,” saysHarris, “and yet, it is the sine qua non of faith-based religion.”Hitchens adds, “If one must have faith in order tobelieve in something, then the likelihood of that somethinghaving any truth or value is considerablydiminished.”Since there is no scientifically accessible“evidence” to support the claims of religiousfaith, the authors classify them as “delusions.”According to Dawkins, the methods a goodtheologian should use “in the unlikely eventthat relevant evidence ever became available,would be purely and entirely scientific methods.”Science alone can decide the question ofGod.Scientism and scientific naturalism frameevery page of the new atheistic tirades. These weary constraintson human thought have been around for a long timeand still command a wide following in academic circles.What, then, is so new about the “new” atheism?Aside from the heavy dose of Darwinian materialism inDawkins’s and Dennett’s accounts of religion and morality(and even this is not peculiar to them), the only real noveltyadvanced by the four authors examined here is theirastounding intolerance of faith in any form. Since they takefaith to be the root cause of innumerable evils in the world,Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens instruct readers that it istime to erase every instance of “belief without evidence”from every human mind.Our critics warn that this ideal will never be actualizedas long as we keep nurturing the modern liberal tolerance offaith. In democratic societies most of us still assume uncriticallythat people have a right to believe whatever they want,but this leniency only makes the world ever more dangerous,the critics say. Most instances of faith may seem harmlessenough, but permissiveness toward any beliefs forwhich evidence is lacking opens an abyss in human mindsthat will inevitably be colonized sooner or later by the mostmonstrous religious lunacy. Events such as the terroristattacks of Sept. 11, 2001, should be proof enough that bytolerating faith to any degree, religious and secular liberalsalike become accomplices in evil.Theologians are especially to blame for making spacefor faith in people’s minds, according to the new atheists.That academic departments of theology still exist in an ageof science is, to them, a nauseating anachronism. “Surelythere must come a time,” Harris remarks, “when we willacknowledge the obvious: theology is now little more thana branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance withMay 5, 2008 America 17

wings.” Adopting the spirit of science, on the other hand,should help rid the world of theology and faith. Thereby itshould also help dispel our liberal tolerance of all kinds of“belief without evidence.”Three Questions for the New AtheistsWhat do the new atheists mean by evidence? They do notbother to clarify the term carefully, but undoubtedly it signifiesfor them whatever can be subject to scientific testing.To the new atheists, therefore, we must put the questionwhether the imperative to ground all claims to truth in scientificevidence is itself reasonable. We might begin by posingthree sets of questions to all four authors.Isn’t your belief that science is the only reliable road to truthself-contradictory? Your scientism instructs you to take nothingon faith, and yet faith is required for you to embrace thecreed of scientism. You have formally repudiated any ideasfor which there is no tangible or empirical “evidence.” Yetwhere exactly is the visible evidence that supports your scientism?What are the scientific experiments that lead you toconclude that science alone can be trusted to lead you totruth? Wouldn’t you have to believe—without evidence—inscience’s capacity to comprehend everything before settingup such experiments in the first place?To undertake scientific research, don’t you have to start outwith several important beliefs? You must take it on faith, asAlbert Einstein was perceptive enough to realize, that theuniverse you are exploring is intelligible or comprehensible.That the universe is intelligible at all is a great mystery thatyou cannot account for in scientific terms. Instead you mustapproach the cosmos with a sustained faith that it will continueto make sense as you probe deeper into it.Next, you cannot commit yourself to a life of rationalinquiry—or even write your atheistic manifestos—withoutbelieving constantly that truth is worth pursuing. Hereagain you cannot provide any scientific evidence to supportthis belief.Moreover, to claim with such conviction that scientismis right and religion wrong, each of you must believe (sinceyou cannot prove) that your own mind is of sufficientintegrity to grasp meaning and decide what is true or false.Your evolutionist materialism, however, should, logicallyspeaking, subvert your own intellectual swagger. As CharlesDarwin himself observed, evolutionary explanations of thehuman mind, accurate though they may be historicallyspeaking, are not enough to embolden us to trust our ownthought processes.Evolutionary accounts of your mind’s origin are importantand interesting as far as they go, but your need for logicalconsistency demands that you look for a more securereason to trust your mental functioning. Evolutionarymaterialism, far from providing such a foundation, givesyou every reason to distrust your mind. A theologicalworldview, on the other hand, could conceivably groundand justify the trust you place in your capacity to understandand know the world without in any way contradicting thediscoveries of Darwin’s science.How so? Theology’s claim is that all of creation is everlastinglyembraced by the mystery of God and is invited toenter ever more fully into that mystery. It is this invitationthat accounts ultimately for both the world’s evolutionarycharacter and the human mind’s own restlessness. A profoundfaith that your own mind somehow already participatesin infinite being, meaning, truth and goodness can inprinciple justify your cognitional trust, explain your tirelesssearch for deeper understanding, fortify your love of truthand ground your obedience to conscience. In this sense theologydoes not compete with science but provides essentialsupport to its ongoing adventure of discovery.Can you deny that there are avenues other than scientificmethod by which you experience, understand and know the worldyou inhabit? In your interpersonal knowledge, for example,the evidence that someone loves you is hard to measure scientifically,but is that love unreal? Have you arrived at yourknowledge of another person by way of the objectifyingroad of scientific experimentation? Most reasonable andethical people believe that such an approach to other humanpersons is both intellectually and morally wrong.Do you truly believe that if a personal God actuallyexists, the evidence for this God’s existence could be collectedas cheaply as the evidence to support a scientifichypothesis, as Dawkins requires? Even in your ordinaryexperience, only a position of vulnerable trust can allow youto encounter the subjective depths of another person. Howcould it be otherwise with God, whom believers experiencenot merely as ordinary, but as a supreme “Thou”?Remarkably, Dawkins insists that only science is qualifiedto decide the question of God’s existence, even thoughscience, with its impersonal objectivity, is not wired todetect subjectivity or personhood in any sense. Would notany effort to determine the existence of God primarilyrequire an interpersonal kind of experience, one that couldlead one to knowledge of God?If the universe is encompassed by an infinite love, anyconceivable encounter with this ultimate reality wouldrequire nothing less than a posture of receptivity, a readinessto surrender to its embrace. The new atheists believe thatthey can decide the question of God’s existence withouthaving opened themselves to the personal transformationessential to the formation of faith. One can only ask: what isthe evidence for such a belief?AFrom April 1909, the editors on “Darwinism andPopular Science,” at americamagazine.org.18 America May 5, 2008

An Evangelical Moment?To combat the rise of atheism, Christians must first look to themselves.BY RICHARD J. MOUWONE OF THE BEST HOMILIESI ever heard wasbased on the first chapter of the Book of Jonah.The preacher described the situation on board aship that had run into a terrible storm on the wayto Tarshish and a confrontation that ensued between somepagan sailors and a prophet of the true God. Surely, thepreacher observed, we would all put our money on theprophet of God, but this prophet was running away fromGod, and the sailors had figured that out. In that confrontation,said the preacher, an unbelieving worldpreached an important message to the church.I have often thought of those words as the writings onthe new atheism have appeared. Many of my fellow evangelicalshave joined Christians from other traditions ingoing into attack mode, responding to the case being madeagainst religious belief and practice. On many key issuesRichard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris andtheir like are fairly easy targets. Regardless of how otherChristian groups might respond, however, evangelicalshave much to think about, since we loomlarge in the new atheists’ scenarios about thedangers of religious conviction. Specifically, theycriticize the ways evangelicals have led thecharge against the teaching of evolution in publicschools and the larger influence of the religiousright in public life.Beyond Anti-IntellectualismIn both cases, the underlying problems have todo with a streak of anti-intellectualism that haslong plagued the evangelical movement.Historically, we evangelicals have found goodreasons to be worried about the intellectual life.Evangelicalism is a loose coalition of groups thathave their origins in various branches of Protestant pietism,a movement that emphasized the experiential dimensions ofthe Christian faith. European pietism had its beginnings ina reaction against a highly intellectualized orthodoxy thathad come to characterize many Lutheran and ReformedRICHARD J. MOUW is president and professor of Christian philosophyat Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.Popular evangelicalism is at avulnerable point: many of ourformer heroes have embarrassedus. There may now be morereceptivity to some new thoughtsabout what it means to work forthe common good.churches in the century or so after the Reformation. Theearly pietists protested the way “head knowledge” oftencrowded out “heart knowledge.” The present-day evangelicalmovement includes groups whose histories can bedirectly traced back to these pietists, as well as to Wesleyans,Pentecostals and sectarian primitivists, who emphasizedsimilar experiential motifs.The pietist project of taming the intellect took on a newsignificance in subsequent centuries, when a second battlewas waged, this time not primarily against orthodox intellectualizers,but against the inroads of Enlightenmentthought into the Christian community. The 20th-centuryevangelical struggle against modernism was a continuationof this second battle.Indeed, evangelical worries about the intellectual lifehave had some legitimacy when they have aimed at keepingthe intellectual quest in tune with a vibrant experientialfaith, or when they have addressed the dangers of a worldviewthat disparages religious convictions as such. Butrecent evangelicalism has also been influenced by a brand ofanti-intellectualism fostered by frontier revivalism, a phenomenonchronicled in some detail in Richard Hofstadter’sclassic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Here a seriousengagement with the important issues of life gives way toclichés, slogans and biblical proof texts.During last year’s controversies over Supreme Court20 America May 5, 2008

ART BY STEPHANIE RATCLIFFEappointments, Franklin Foer commented in The NewRepublic that we seldom hear about possible evangelicalcandidates for the nation’s highest court. Evangelicals speakup loudly about the need for conservative justices, he wrote,but when conservative nominations are forthcoming thecandidates are typically Catholics. On issues of public policy,Foer observed, Catholics have “intellectual heft” andevangelicals do not. Foer is right about evangelicalism as apopular movement. This lack of heft has made them anespecially easy target for the new atheists. They would notattack evangelicals with such passion if it were not for thenoise factor. As a force in the public square, evangelicalChristians have been hard to ignore in recent years.What has led us to be so noisy? It was not always so. Inmy youth it was not uncommon for the more liberal typesto complain that evangelicals were much too quiet aboutissues of social concern. My guess is that nowadays thosepeople—the ones who are still around—are looking backwistfully to the good old days.Evolution played a big role in silencing us in earlierdecades. The historian George Mardsen once observedthat moving from the 19th to the 20th century was forNorth American evangelicals an immigrant experience ofsorts. The migration was not geographic but cultural. Mostof the 19th-century evangelicals were active in public life,even playing a key role in promoting abolition andwomen’s suffrage. Entering into a new century, however,evangelicals found themselves defending the fundamentalsof their faith against an emerging Protestant liberal movement.The battle did not go well for the evangelicals, wholost control of the major Northern denominations and theologicalfaculties. Soon they lost again, in the battle againstevolutionism that came to a head with the famous Scopestrial. This time their defeat brought with it much publicridicule. The evangelicals retreated to the margins of culture,adopting a theological perspective that emphasizedtheir status as a “true remnant” and viewed the flow of historyin apocalyptic terms.From Minority to Majority ConsciousnessA sense of cultural marginalization characterizedAmerican evangelicalism well into the 1970s. Then suddenlyin 1979 a movement that had for a half-centurydefined itself as a cognitive minority in a society headedtoward Armageddon now proclaimed itself to be theMoral Majority. Evangelicals had once again become aMay 5, 2008 America 21

noisy presence in the public square.The shift from minority to majority status took placewithout much theological reflection. Not long after JerryFalwell appeared on the public scene, for example, he confessedthat he had once preached a sermon denouncingMartin Luther King Jr., on the grounds that preachersought not to be involved in politics. Now he was ready toadmit that King had been right. Unfortunately, Falwellnever offered much of an explanation as to the theologicalbasis for his change of heart. Had he now embraced a differentunderstanding of “Bible prophecy” from the dispensationalismthat had shaped his previous ministry? Did hehave a new doctrine of the church? What was his theologicalgrasp now of the common good, public justice and therelationship between church and state? Answers to thesequestions were not forthcoming.My own take is that for the past two centuries evangelicalshave gone back and forth between two eschatologicalperspectives. Typically we have done so without much theologicalawareness. Thus, in the late 1970s, when theprospects for cultural influence suddenly looked good, theevangelicals switched back to a more hopeful eschatology.Once again America was a chosen nation that could serveGod’s revealed purposes, if only the faithful would restorethe nation to its founding vision.If this new activism was not generated by a new theologicaldiscovery, what did account for the enthusiasm forpublic policy issues? One factor was a shift in class. By the1980s, many evangelical Pentecostal and holiness congregations,which had once resided on the wrong side of thetracks, had become flourishing megachurches sitting on thebest real estate in town. This turnabout nurtured a sense ofcultural leverage.What motivated evangelicals to use their leverageaggressively to bring about change was a concern about therearing of children. In large part the religious right hasarisen as a response to the sexual revolution that wassparked in the 1960s. The increasing visibility of pornography,the gay rights movement, the promiscuity that camewith the availability of the pill—all of these made evangelicalparents very nervous about the introduction of sex educationin the public schools. Many early initiatives by thereligious right were directed against school boards.That was also the case with creation science, a crusadethat had much to do with parental concern about schools.While the “young earth” adherents have presented theirviews as an alternative science, there has not been muchcareful, give-and-take dialogue about the nature of scientificinquiry and the relationship between the Bible and science.Much of the rhetoric has been fueled by conspiracytheories, relying heavily on sloganeering and the use of biblicalmaterials as proof-texts.A New Openness Among EvangelicalsThe irony is that while grass-roots evangelicals have beenembarrassing themselves in public life, many of their sonsand daughters have gained a significant voice in theAmerican academy. The cover story of The Atlantic forOctober 2000 boldly announced, “The Opening of theEvangelical Mind.” Alan Wolfe, who wrote the story, notonly chronicled the scholarly contributions of evangelicalschools like Calvin College, Wheaton College and FullerSeminary, but he also pointed out that the history and theologydepartments at the University of Notre Dame havebecome a home for many evangelical professors and graduatestudents. Just recently Mark Noll left Wheaton toassume the professorship at Notre Dame previously held byGeorge Mardsen, who had moved to Notre Dame fromCalvin College after making his mark in American religioushistory there. Harvard Divinity School has established anendowed chair in evangelical thought. And evangelicalscholars have been instrumental in forming an array offaith-based associations in several disciplines, like literature,history, philosophy and the natural and social sciences.The problem is not that evangelical Christianity lacksthe intellectual resources to remedy the much-publicizeddefects of popular evangelicalism. Rather, the challenge is tofind some way of repairing the disconnection betweengrass-roots evangelicals and evangelical academics who havebeen making their marks in the scholarly disciplines.Surely there is much to criticize in the freewheelingattacks on the faith that have been launched by the newatheists, and evangelical scholars have a contribution tomake to those debates. It is also an opportune time for evangelicalsto speak clearly to our own community of faith.Popular evangelicalism is at a vulnerable point: many of ourformer heroes have embarrassed us. There may be morereceptivity now to new thoughts about what it means towork for the common good.We academics will need pastoral support in making sucha case to our own people. We can take encouragement fromthe fact that some wise evangelical pastors have emerged aspublic leaders during the past decade. Bill Hybels, JoelHunter and Rick Warren, for example, have not only takenon different issues (AIDS, global warming, economic justice)than the religious right traditionally did, but have doneso with a sense of kinship with the evangelical scholarlycommunity and a spirit of civility toward those whom thereligious right often identified as enemies of the faith.This may be the right time for evangelicals to reflecton how people whom we have identified as our enemiesmay actually be speaking some truths to us. Perhaps in themysterious ways of providence the new atheists have beenraised up as unwitting servants of the Lord for such a timeas this.A22 America May 5, 2008

Called to LoveChristian witness can be the best response to atheist polemics.BY STEPHEN J. POPEWHO ARE the “newatheists”? Broadlyspeaking, they area collection ofwriters who have come togetherin recent years in their disdain forthe very idea of God. Theyregard religion as the last bastionof superstition, obscurantism andfear and see the Christianchurches as dedicated to inhibitingprogress and human freedom.They regard biologicalevolution as providing the bestoverall account of who we are,where we have come from andwhere we might go as a species.Religion “poisons everything,”proclaims the journalistChristopher Hitchens, and religiousmorality amounts to psychologicalabuse. The sociobiologistRichard Dawkins describesreligion as a “virus,” and in The God Delusion proclaims thatmonotheism is “the great unmentionable evil at the centerof our culture.” Dawkins regards theistic ethics as commandingobedience to a biblical God whose jealous and violentcharacter is anything but morally admirable. Thephilosopher Daniel Dennett depicts religion as a willfulattempt to pass on ignorance through promises that cannever be kept. He asserts that religious morality based onsacred texts immunizes people from asking critical questions.And in The End of Faith, Sam Harris argues that faithonly generates “solidarity born of tribal and tribalizing fictions.”Its promotion of irrationality dangerously sanctionsa habit of acting out of religious conviction unrestrained byhumility or compassion.One can certainly raise questions about the accusationsof the new atheism, but practical constraints narrow mySTEPHEN J. POPE is professor of theological ethics at BostonCollege and author of Human Evolution and Christian Ethics(Cambridge University Press, 2007).focus to three issues: first, therelation between belief in Godand morality; second, the relationbetween morality, reason andreligion; and third, the relationbetween morality and theChristian ethic of love. The newatheist critique of Christianmorality usually applies (if at all)only to a fundamentalist minorityof Christians. Yet because this literaturehits home with manyreaders, we Christians have totake seriously both its criticismsand our responsibility to presenta better public witness to thetruth of the Gospel.Is God Necessary forMorality?Much of the new atheist literatureis reactive in that it beginsby sharply criticizing what itrejects. The new atheists react against a triple claim oftenadvanced by religious people: that belief in a personal Godis necessary for people to have moral knowledge, for peopleto do what is right and avoid wrong, and for people to justifymoral absolutes.First, some Christians claim that belief in a God whoreveals the divine law presents the sole (or most reliable)basis for knowing right from wrong. Reason takes people allover the place, but only religious authority can settle thingsonce and for all. Yet the value of a given moral authoritydoes not prove either its legitimacy or reliability. Such anapproach to moral security is made the more troublesomeby the fact that Christians who rely on the same scripturalauthority, as well as Catholic Christians who profess loyaltyto a single hierarchy, often disagree on moral issues. Beliefin God does not exempt one from the difficult work ofinterpreting the significance of specific biblical texts orchurch teachings for our own day. On the contrary, it canmake moral reasoning at least as complex as anything onefinds in texts of moral philosophy.ART BY STEPHANIE RATCLIFFEMay 5, 2008 America 23

The Catholic tradition walks a middle way between thereligious positivist, who says we ought to rely only on religiousauthority, and the new atheist, who claims reason tobe self-sufficient. Catholics affirm the need for communityand the value of the accumulated wisdom of the past;Catholics also hold that each person is created with a conscienceand has access to the natural law through the exerciseof his or her moral intelligence. God teaches us throughthe exercise of our reason within the church and the broadersocial world within which we act.Second, some Christians assert that belief in God suppliesa necessary motive for doing right and avoiding wrong.The so-called sanction argument holds that fear of divinewrath keeps people on the narrow path; without it people arecapable of anything. The new atheists properly target thosewho take this deeply pessimistic view of the human person,curbed from evil only by threat of eternal punishment. AsHarris puts it, our “common humanity is reason enough toprotect our fellow human beings from coming to harm.”On this point, Catholic moral anthropology is closer tothe new atheists than to Christian fear-mongers. It regardseach person’s conscience as capable of being moved by aninnate “connaturality” with the good. God does not inspirein us a servile fear, which, as David Hume noted long ago,is an essentially egocentric position. Rather, Christian lifecalls us toward authentic love of God, neighbor and self andteaches us that we ought to fear sin and love God as our saviorand redeemer.Third, the new atheists reject the claim that only beliefin God provides the basis for exceptionless moral prohibitions.Harris regards moral absolutism as proposing a “certaintywithout evidence” that “is necessarily divisive anddehumanizing.” Even Christian critics see the questionbeggingnature of an apologetic tack that takes for grantedthe legitimacy of moral absolutes. It also ignores the factthat some atheists display a very strong moral code, justifiedby reasons independent of belief in God. The new atheistsrecognize the wrongfulness of murder, rape and the like. Yetone might argue that this thin concession does not providea sufficiently detailed ethic regarding morally complex andcontentious cases, especially concerning the most vulnerableamong us. Moral absolutes against abortion, embryonicstem cell research and physician-assisted suicide can bemaintained, Christians might argue, only by reliance ondivinely mandated or church-endorsed morality.Yet the fact that Christians themselves are sharply dividedover the ethics of life indicates that belief in God does notnecessarily guarantee consensus over the content of particularmoral absolutes. The significant gap between the smallminority of Christians who accept the absolute prohibitionon artificial contraception and the vast majority who differentiatebetween its properand improper usesChristian ethics is based on the belief thatthe purpose of human existence is neitherthe ‘replication of genes’ nor the ‘survival ofthe fittest,’ but the development of ourcapacity to understand and to love.illustrates this point. TheCatholic natural law traditiondoes not teach thatwe come to know thestrictly binding characterof these norms onlythrough divine revelationor ecclesial instruction. Itaffirms that one canattain knowledge of moral norms through the use of humanmoral intelligence.Is Christian Ethics Irrational?A major issue raised by the new atheists concerns the relationbetween Christian morality and reason. The new atheistswant us to reject Christianity for the sake of moralprogress, then to draw an antinomy between two massivedomains of human agency—reason and religion—in orderto promote the dominance of the former and the destructionof the latter. At times they concede that the Christiantradition has made some important historical contributionsto human well-being (including universities and hospitals),but they argue that everything good in the Christian traditionis because of the operation of reason within it.Conversely, everything bad in the tradition is because ofreligion, not reason. This line of argumentation is arbitrary,tendentious and viciously circular. It ignores the fact thatthe global (and ill-defined) categories of “reason” and “religion”are not alternatives but rather two forms of humanactivity that can be related variously: competitively, cooperativelyor in other ways. From a Christian standpoint, thecause of evil can be attributed neither to religion nor reason,but to human sin—the willful decision to put what is essentiallygood to evil uses out of greed, pride or other twistedmotivations.There is no question that sometimes evildoing has beenpursued under the guise of religion, but the same can be saidof science. The new atheists display their innocence of thecomplexity of historical causation when they simply point to“religion” as the prime cause of the wrongdoing of24 America May 5, 2008

Christians, ranging from Augustine’s defense of using violenceto repress heretics to the “silence” of Pius XII duringthe Holocaust. One could just as easily (and cheaply) blamereason for similar horrors. If the Nazis had not been sointelligently organized, they could not have managed theirfactories of death so efficiently. I say this facetiously, but thewritings of the new atheists are replete with such simplemindedrhetoric from self-appointed champions of reason.Is the Christian Ethic of Love Unrealistic?Some of the new atheists, informed by sociobiology andevolutionary psychology, hold that Christian morality proposesan impossibly high norm of love;meanwhile, the actual conduct ofChristians tends to conform to neo-Darwinian expectations that we care for“our own” and not others. In their view,what we need is a more realistic ethic,less lofty but more effective.Dawkins regards morality as a set ofnormative standards that rewards goodacts with social approval and punishesbad acts with social disapproval, andwithin which an individual promotes hisor her evolutionary self-interestthrough morality. Altruism typicallytakes one of four forms: “kin altruism”toward relatives and especially our ownchildren; “reciprocal altruism,” whichtrades benefits with friends in mutuallybeneficial relationships; generous acts,which accrue “reputational benefits”;and acts of assistance, which enhance anindividual’s own social status. In everysociety morality promotes individualconformity to socially agreed-upon patternsof reciprocity that allow communitiesto function with some degree oforder, regularity and peace. Christianmorality does the same.The new atheists regard Christianlove as a completely unrealistic form ofaltruism. Despite high-flown sentiments,most Christians channel theirresources to their own loved ones ratherthan to the poor. A small degree ofaltruism can be taught by culture, butinstructing human beings to be altruisticis, to use Dawkins’s metaphor, liketraining a bear to ride a unicycle.Altruism toward a stranger is an “evolutionarymistake,” and those who regularlypractice indiscriminate altruism can expect to be evolutionaryfailures as well as impoverished.Advocates of Christian morality can respond to thisposition in several ways.First, it is important to admit that the actual conductof Christians often leaves a great deal to be desired. Ingroupfavoritism and out-group oppression, sometimesagainst one another’s subgroups and more often againstoutsiders, can do more damage to the Christian communitythan any new atheist tract ever could. The new atheistsecho Freud’s denunciation of the contradictionbetween the universal ethic of the Gospel and the historyMay 5, 2008 America 25

Catholic Studies ProgramWriting and the CatholicImaginationRon HansenAuthor of Mariette in Ecstasy and Exiles, a newnovel about Gerard Manley HopkinsThursday May 8, 7:00 p.m.Cortelyou Commons2324 N. Fremont St.Chicago, IL 60614FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLICFor more information email Farrell O’Gorman atwogorman@depaul.edu, or visithttp://condor.depaul.edu/~cathstd/of Christian brutality toward the Jews.Second, the new atheists’ moral critique replicates theChristian tradition’s own internal criticisms of religioushypocrisy, apathy and self-deception. The prophetic tradition,for example, launched its sharpest criticisms againstthose who practiced liturgical correctness while being indifferentto the suffering of the poor. And it is clear that wehave yet to grasp fully the implications of Jesus’ mission tosave sinners, not the righteous. Christian prophets have recognized,as Dorothy Day once observed, that the Christianmust live in a state of “permanent dissatisfaction with thechurch.”Third, the critique applies to sectarian Christianswho suggest that the Christian ethic constitutes a completelyradical way of life that transcends all normalhuman needs and limitations and to those who interpretdiscipleship as an ethic for saints and heroes, but not forordinary people. Yet Catholic ethics regards grace as theperfection of human nature, not its enemy. The churchacknowledges that divine grace enables people like OscarRomero to lead heroically self-giving lives. The churchalso understands that grace calls most of us to follow theGospel in everyday life as we take care of our families,friends and neighbors. Even the most demandingChristian ideals, such as the preferential option for thepoor, are sustained when they are are pursued within lifegivingpersonal relationships and communities.Learning From the New AtheistsThe anti-religious polemics offered by the new atheists areoften unfair, uninformed and hysterical. Yet their body ofwork offers us a salutary reminder of the importance of twodimensions of moral integrity: the intellectual and the practical.Christian ethics is based on the belief that the purposeof human existence is neither the “replication of genes” northe “survival of the fittest,” but the development of ourcapacity to understand and to love.The new atheists rightly complain about the unreflectiveand ill-informed nature of much Christian belief.Harris laments, for example, the pervasive superficiality andanti-intellectualism of popular Christianity; Dawkins criticizesthe “distressingly little curiosity” that religious peopleshow regarding their own faith. It is no consolation that secularpeople in our society display similar weaknesses. Whilethe attacks of the new atheists reveal their ignorance of theChristian faith, their call for greater intellectual honestywithin the Christian community is appropriate and ought tobe heeded.The new atheists also consistently point to a gapbetween Christian beliefs and Christian conduct. But if theflawed conduct adds fuel to the new atheists’ fire, does notthe highest Christian witness snuff out at least some of theflames? Beliefs begin to make senseonly when they are embodied in reallives. True Christians exemplify thelove of God and neighbor in everydaylife in work, family and community life;and the examples of Christians whoselflessly serve the poor and neglectedare worth more than 1,000 books onmoral theology.For most of us, belief or unbeliefhas little to do with proofs for God’sexistence or the intellectual cogency ofTrinitarian theology. Most people areattracted (or repelled) by the quality ofthe lives of the individual Christiansthey encounter, rather than by theintellectual appeal of Christian beliefs.The primary response of Christians tothe new atheism, then, should not be tomarshal better moral counterarguments,but to engage in concreteactions that show that Christian beliefsare not sentimental illusions. As theauthor of 1 John put it, “let us love notwith word or with tongue but in deedand in truth” (3:18).A26 America May 5, 2008

The MadmanAnd the CrowdFor the new atheists, God is not worth a decent argument.BY MICHAEL J. BUCKLEYGERTRUDE STEIN LAY DYING.Stomach cancer had finally forcedher to undergo surgery in anAmerican hospital on the fringes ofParis. Preparing for the operation, she asked herlifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas, “What isthe answer?”Alice said nothing. Time passed. Gertrudespoke again: “In that case, what is the question?”Attendants came to move her cot into theoperating room. Alice never saw her again.Professor Herbert Lamm loved to repeat thestory. He thought her last words a triumph:“That’s the smartest thing that woman eversaid.”Over the centuries, questions have shapedthe development of human beings and their culture.Latent or confused, they have opened upnew lines of inquiry and spurred progress. Mosthuman enterprises recognize themselves to beas vital as their questions.MICHAEL J. BUCKLEY, S.J., the Augustine Cardinal Bea, S.J.,Professor of Theology at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara,Calif., is the author of At the Origins of Modern Atheism.The Pre-eminence of the QuestionThe absence of probing questions may wellwarrant a sweeping indictment of the “newatheism.” It is an astonishing world, one with clevermoments but with none of the searching, troubled inquiryin which human beings must “wrestle with the concept,” asHegel put it. Christopher Hitchens once promised that hisquestions would be resolved by evidence in contrast to religiousfaith, but there seems little attempt to secure adequateevidence or to present it cogently. Much of his argumentamounts to zingers. His new atheist peers use similar strategies.“We know,” writes Sam Harris, “that no [italics in original]evidence would be sufficient to authenticate many ofthe pope’s core beliefs. How could anyone born in the twentiethcentury come to know that Jesus was actually born ofa virgin?” So much for the facile weighing of religious literaryforms and the happy hegemony of evidence. A literalistreading of the Christian story of creation, or of the ages ofthe earth, or of the genealogies of the infancy narratives orof the reconstruction of the passion and resurrection ofChrist easily sets the stage for ridicule through shallow andclumsy commentary.Many of these attempts confront the question with theanswers already in hand. Seldom do they rise to a painstakingexamination of a serious problem, one that in history orethics or religion has for centuries driven philosophicalstruggles into the unknown. Little discussion can emergeout of Sam Harris’s judgment (which Christopher Hitchensreports with approval): “While religious people are not gen-ART BY STEPHANIE RATCLIFFEMay 5, 2008 America 27

erally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.” The questionis lost. Unfortunately, comprehensive invective does notsupply a serious substitute.Even here, however, the religious intellect may still findsignificant engagement. Until this current spate of booksmade its appearance in popular culture, was the reality ofGod taken as an admissiblequestion in popular circles?As noted by The WallStreet Journal, the newchampions of atheism havesold close to a millionbooks. The question ofGod has seldom beenargued more publicly thanin these latter decades. It isbeing raised in the strengthof its denial. Do honestconvictions deepen if theyare forced to pursue one of the problems with which St.Thomas opens the Summa Theologiae, “Whether Godexists”?What must figure in this matter is the commitment tothe absolute in an intellectual honesty that is itself anunqualified subservience to truth. If these claims of the nonnegotiablein human experience are not in some obliqueway an experience of God, then do human beings havesome experiences that are more demanding than the experienceof God? Does the question of God itself in its absolutequality bear the evidence for its own resolution?The Failure in MethodClosely allied to the new atheists’ weakness in questioningis a cognate failure in arguments and method. Atheism hashistorically favored the contradictions of debate. As inRoman rhetoric, so it is today. The spate of books carryingthe water for the new atheism begins not with a question tobe explored but with the conclusions to be sustained. Onebegins with the answer: that God does not exist. The task ofthe author is to collect or construct evidence to support thisthesis. Anything can be made to serve, so the contemporaryarguments inevitably wander across the pages and often lacksimple coherence. Hitchens’s argument from metaphysicsruns the gamut from naming scientists who happened to bereligious to medieval arguments about the length of angels’wings to quarrels between the papacy and the emperor, finishingwith a grand finale on the notion of a leap of faith. Allof this is placed within a single chapter on “the metaphysicalclaims of ‘religion.’”Serious inquiry, by contrast, moves in the oppositedirection: it begins with the question and then looks for theevidence or arguments that can resolve it. Concern aboutAn astonishing theologicalilliteracy runs through theseworks and invites comparisonwith the great atheisticthinkers of the 19th century.question and method in the discussion of the existence ofGod is not a pedantic nicety. It is required if one is to thinkcarefully through the great issues raised by contemporaryatheism, and it urges the directive primacy of the questionand its care. The central challenge is not that someone hasdenied the existence of God. In one form or another thatdenial has been with us formillennia. The central challengeis that much of theeristic manner of interchangehas so corrupted thequestion and the method asto make discussion impossible.Dawkins transmutes thequestion of God into thequestion of religion, butseems to think the questionof religion comprises notthe beginning of universities and hospitals, nor the cathedralof Florence and the music of Palestrina, nor a pervasivecare for the poor and the suffering, but instead an index ofevil events and stupid choices throughout history. His selectionof “examples,” however overstated, instantiates whatthe history of rhetoric has asserted over thousands of years:that the choice and marshaling of examples is the inductionof the sophist. A thesis can be asserted, or a list constructedand examples selected to prove anything.Care for the Subject MatterThe inadequacies of the new atheism lie not only in its failureto keep the integrity and depth of its question or to sustainan effective methodology with which the question ofGod could be credibly pursued. There is also an astonishingtheological illiteracy that runs through all of these works, anilliteracy that invites comparison with the great atheisticthinkers of the 19th century, such as Ludwig Feuerbach,Arthur Schopenhauer or George Eliot. One representativewill have to suffice. The most serious and paradigmatic ofthe great atheisms of the past century was that of FriedrichNietzsche; probably his most celebrated advancement ofthe atheistic option was his parable of the madman in themarketplace, which I relay here with comment.Have you not heard of that madman who lit alantern in the bright morning hours, ran to themarketplace, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! Iseek God!” The people in the marketplace convulsedwith laughter and screamed mocking questionsafter the madman: “Has he got lost?” askedone. “Did he lose his way like a child?” asks another.“Or is he hiding?”28 America May 5, 2008

Only the madman can answer this question: “Iwill tell you. We have killed Him—you and I. All ofus are his murderers.” The full enormity of the deedand of their loss breaks in upon them. “But how didwe do this? How could we drink up the sea? Whogave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?What were we doing when we unchained this earthfrom its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither arewe moving? Away from all suns.... God is dead. Godremains dead. And we have killed Him. How shall wecomfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?What was holiest and mightiest of all the world hasyet owned has bled to death under our knives.… Isnot the greatness of this deed too great for us?”The people in the marketplace did not believe that Godexists; they thought the search absurd. But for Nietzsche,the determining factor was that they had no understandingof what they had done and what they had lost. They tooktheir disbelief for granted, held faith in contempt and hadno sensible awareness of the new emptiness. The death ofGod existed among them, but it was an epistemologicalreality, not an ontological one; Hitchens misses this pointcompletely. The death of God in Nietzsche means thatChristian belief was no longer believable. Only the madmanknew the unspeakable value of what had been destroyed.It is here in the marketplace that the new atheism bothresembles and differs from the old. The new atheists possesscontempt for religious belief, but theirs is the contempt ofthe crowd in the marketplace, not the agony of the madman,who held what was destroyed in awe and reverence.The new atheism does not think the subject worth a decentargument. In the old atheism, only the madman knew whathad taken place. The crowd, nameless and strident, hadsimply accepted the impossibility of belief: “The greatestrecent event,” Nietzsche wrote, “that God is dead, thatbelief in the Christian god has become unbelievable—isalready beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.” Asthose shadows lengthened over what had once beenChristian faith, atheism became a more commonplace conviction.This became not the heroic disbelief of the propheticvoices of the 19th century, but rather the bourgeois indifferenceto transcendence and the superficially secured contemptof the crowd. Feuerbach, Marx, George Eliot,Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Freud yielded place to SamHarris, Daniel Dennett, Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins.It seems painfully obvious that the second string is of lessercaliber than the first; indeed, they should not besport themselveson the same field. Harsh but warranted is the judgmentof the Oxford mathematician and author JohnLennox: “On matters of theology, their arguments are a disgrace:assertion without substance, demanding evidence,while offering none, staggeringly unscholarly.”Lennox is not alone in discounting the attainments ofthe new atheism. The impoverished argument advancedby some recent atheist authors reveals, as perhaps nothingelse, its weary and pervasive ignorance of what was regardedby their adversaries as “[w]hat was holiest and mightiestof all that the world has yet owned.” If one stays withthe parable of Nietzsche, the frame of the marketplace canremain the same. The new atheism has simply givenrecent and celebrated names to the faces in the crowd.They have become the crowd, but the superficiality andself-assurance remain.The Advance of AtheismCriticism of the new atheism cannot take up each one of itscharges against religion and respond. The procedure of thenew atheists has made such a reply impossible. What is lackingin the attacks is a fundamental evenhandedness and balance.The argument and discussion require a pervasive andfundamental presence of the liberal arts tradition, the grammar,rhetoric and logic that would discipline language andthought into reasoned conversations and arguments.It is evident that recent attacks on religion do not issuefrom a profound knowledge of theology, history, philosophyand disciplined intellectual capacities. One will often look invain for a cogent argument or a sober appeal to history.Even more disappointing is the ignorance of Christian fundamentals.In The London Review of Books, TerryEagleton begins his review of Dawkins’s The God Delusion:“Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose onlyknowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and youhave a rough idea of what it feels like to read RichardDawkins on theology.” What one comes across are “vulgarcaricatures of religious faith that would make a first-yeartheology student wince.”Criticisms leveled at religion and at religious practicescan be of immeasurable service to the purification of religionfrom pretense and facility, but what is one to do withthis confused mass of imprecisions and travesties? One certainlycannot take the statements one by one, or the processwould never end. Perhaps one should do nothing at all,insisting that real argumentation demands care, skill andhonesty, and that the alternatives are a waste of time. Butthis is little more than cultural submission. Perhaps the beststrategy is to adopt the procedures of the Mississippi Riverpilots: take soundings. Select a particular region on the fastmovingriver, drop in a lead line to test out the depth andthe shallows of the water, register the findings and comparethem with the results of similar explorations. The knowledgegained could be of incomparable value in navigatingthe waters.AMay 5, 2008 America 29

Book ReviewsTheir Returnto GraceThe Party FaithfulHow and Why Democrats AreClosing the God GapBy Amy SullivanScribner. 272p $25ISBN 9780743297868Attention, all Democratic candidates,campaign managers, media consultantsand constituency organizers: If there is nota dog-eared, frequently underlined copyof Amy Sullivan’s The Party Faithful onyour bookshelf soon, please quit. Sullivan,who is the nation editor at Time magazine,writes an incisive analysis of theDemocratic Party’s inability to cultivatereligious voters and how, in a nation ofchurchgoers, this has led to their frequentexile from the halls of political power. Shecritiques the strategies that failed andsketches the outreach that has worked.This is a must read.Sullivan shows how Democrats activelylost religious voters. She describes indetail the shifting cultural forces, goingback to the Scopes trial through the countercultureof the 1960s, that created a wallbetween a devout America and theincreasingly secular, liberal elites thatshape the culture, including the culture ofpolitics. She recalls the squeamishness ofJimmy Carter’s advisors whenever hespoke of his evangelical religion. And shechronicles the refusal to let PennsylvaniaGovernor Bob Casey address theDemocratic National Convention in 1992because of his pro-life views. This historyis well known to most students of politics,but it is very well told in Sullivan’saccount.Less well known is the history ofefforts by left-leaning evangelicals andCatholics to fight secularizing trendswithin the Democratic Party. Sullivanpens an especially vivid account of the1973 meeting of evangelicals in Chicagothat published the Chicago Declaration onEvangelical Social Concern. These religiouslymotivated activists were “brimmingwith optimism” when they left Chicago;but by the end of the decade, the emergenceof evangelicals as a political powercame not from the left but from the right.“We wanted to get evangelicals politicallyengaged,” Sullivan quotes one of theChicago meeting’s organizers. “We neverexpected that the Moral Majority wouldbe the result.”In discussing the loss of ethnicCatholics from Democratic ranks,Sullivan acknowledges thecentrality of the abortionissue in alienating manyCatholic voters. She is correctin writing that “abortionrights supportersassumed that ordinaryCatholics would reject theChurch’s teaching onabortion the same waythey had with contraception”and that this assumptionproved incorrect. Theanti-Catholic bigotry ofsome abortion rights supportersis also covered; andwhile Sullivan does notprobe more deeply into the philosophicdifferences between the emerging libertarianethic of secular liberals and the traditionalethics of the Catholic Church, hertreatment of those fraught debates in the1970s is evenhanded. And her conclusionis spot-on: You can’t insult people’s religionand then wonder why they aren’t votingfor you.One mistake Sullivan makes is to placeundue emphasis on the differencesbetween the pre- and post-Vatican IIChurch. This is, sadly, a mistake made bymany Catholic historians as well but,increasingly, the continuities between thetwo are receiving the attention theydeserve. This is especially relevant whenlooking at the cultural expressions of faithand how Catholics view the world, includingthe world of politics, differently fromtheir Protestant brethren. The central actof Catholic worship, the Mass, suggests amore communal view of the world thanthat of a congregation listening to a sermon.The increased frequency of receptionof Communion that developed in the20th century dates back not to Vatican II,but to the liturgical renewal of the otherwisereactionary Pope Pius X in the firstdecade of the 20th century. Similarly, theRite of Christian Initiation of Adults hasbrought new life to countless parishes andincreased the degree of participation bylay Catholics in a variety of apostolates. Itwas Pius XII’s decision to rehabilitate theEaster Vigil liturgy that led to thisrenewed emphasis on baptism, which inturn has allowed many Catholics to liveout the words of President Kennedy:“Here on earth, God’s work must truly beour own.” The pre-Vatican II church hadall the seeds of a religiouslymotivated cultural lifethat is very different fromthe consumerist, hyperindividualisticculture thatwe call the Americanmainstream.The most depressingreading for liberalCatholics is the author’srecapitulation of theclumsy way the JohnKerry campaign dealtwith the religion issue.Sullivan’s reporting skillsshine in this section asshe gets deep inside theKerry campaign to discover the decisionsthat led to the defensive, inarticulatepublic posture the rest of us saw.Compared with the aggressive andsophisticated outreach efforts of theRepublicans, the lingering anti-religiousbias of Democratic Party operatives frustratedeven grass-roots efforts to enlistCatholics and others for Kerry. EricMcFadden started one such grass-rootseffort in the swing state of Ohio, but hiseffort to get help from the official campaignwas met with the dismissive, andracist, rebuttal from Kerry officialdom,The ReviewersMichael Sean Winters has written aboutpolitics and Catholicism for The NewRepublic, Slate, The New York Times, TheWashington Post and America. He is theauthor of Left at the Altar: How theDemocrats Lost the Catholics and How theCatholics Can Save the Democrats (PerseusBooks Group, 2008).Harry S. Stout is Jonathan EdwardsProfessor of American Religious History andchair of the Department of Religious Studiesat Yale University.Peter McDermott, a Dublin-born journalist,is associate editor of The Irish Echo in NewYork City.30 America May 5, 2008

“We don’t do white churches.”Looking ahead, Sullivan believes thealienation between religiously motivatedvoters and the Democratic Party need notbe permanent or total. She points to thegubernatorial campaigns of Tim Kaine inVirginia and Bill Ritter in Colorado, twopro-life Democrats who won election in2005 and 2006, respectively. She discussesthe successful effort of RepresentativesTim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro to hammerout and pass the Reducing the Need forAbortion and Supporting Families Act,which sought to decrease the number ofunwanted pregnancies in the first place,and offer financial assistance to pregnantwomen who decided to carry their childrento term. The bill passed in 2007despite a below-the-radar oppositioneffort by pro-choice groups.There is hope the Democrats havelearned their lesson. And, lucky for them,the emergence of the religiously fluentBarack Obama as a leader of the party canonly facilitate the dialogue Democratsneed to have with those who considerreligion a principal source of their ideasabout culture, economics and politics.The Party Faithful points the directiontoward a more humane and tolerantDemocratic Party that can also be moresuccessful on Election Day.Michael Sean WintersBipolar DisorderHead and HeartAmerican ChristianitiesBy Garry WillsThe Penguin Press. 640p $29.95ISBN 9781594201462Over a distinguished career spanning fourdecades, Garry Wills has been a veritableprodigy of journalistic and historicalaccomplishments ranging from works onSt. Augustine and medieval philosophy toNixon Agonistes and Lincoln at Gettysburg(for which he won a Pulitzer Prize). In hismost recent Big Book, Head and Heart, wesee flashes of the earlier brilliance, but onbalance the work fails to measure up to hishigh standards of depth and originality (tosay nothing of arresting prose).The premise of Head and Heart isclearly stated in the introduction. FromMay 5, 2008 America 31

colonial origins to the present, Americanthought and values have oscillatedbetween the poles of “head” and “heart.”Sometimes one is dominant, sometimesthe other. But regardless of which happensto prevail at any given time, the othernever goes entirely away. This leads in thebest cases to a creative dialectic in whicheach needs the other in order to sustainwhat we now call the United States ofAmerica. At worst, the tension betweenhead and heart emerges in witch hunts,violent nativism and racist hatred.Although these tendencies are primarilyidentified with Protestantism, Willsargues that they can be found in manychurches and, in fact, are better thought ofas “force fields” or strands that figure in allthe major Judeo-Christian traditions.Assessing the two poles, Wills concedessome positive achievements of the heartimpulse (usually labeled “evangelicalism”),but his heart lies clearly with the head tradition(usually labeled “enlightened religion”).The idea of organizing Americanintellectual history around the dichotomyof head and heart has a long ancestry thatextends all the way back to America’s firsthistorians. Its mostimpressive articulationappeared in Perry Miller’sposthumously publishedThe Life of the Mind inAmerica From theRevolution to the Civil War,which posited a fundamental“disjunction” inAmerican thought “of thehead versus the heart, ofintellect versus emotion.”It is one of the manycuriosities of Head andHeart that many ofMiller’s works are cited,but not one of the mostrelevant.Having set the context in terms of thehead and heart “force fields,” Willsbegins his narrative by pitting the “pre-Enlightenment” Puritans and the GreatAwakening against the “enlightened religion”of Quakers, Deists and Unitarians.As Puritanism wanes and the new republicis created “without the protection ofan official cult” (which Wills rightly seesas “the only original part of theConstitution”), the Deists and Unitariansremain firmly centered intheir Enlightenment forcefields, while the Puritansare replaced by the heartcenteredrevivalists, especiallyMethodists.Along the way Willstakes pot shots at JonathanEdwards and, by extension,Perry Miller and AlanHeimert, who had thetemerity to suggest thatEdwards was a product ofthe Enlightenment. ForWills, nothing could befurther from the truth. Hedismisses Edwards as a“pre-Enlightenment” dinosaur who“fought off the coming of theEnlightenment.” If this is accurate, a largenumber of scholars have wasted a lot oftime studying Edwards and the GreatAwakening. But happily it is far fromaccurate. Whatever his interpretive faults,Miller was spot-on in recognizing that,first among colonial intellectuals, Edwardsread and really understood the loomingEnlightenment figures Newton andLocke, while his “Old Light” rationalist,anti-trinitarian critics were still immersedin an essentially medieval world ofscholasticism and a psychology that dividedthe self into various “faculties.” Indeed,Edwards understood them so well that hecould take their terminology and insightsand turn them on their heads.Throughout Wills’s narrative, onegroup of historians dominates, namelythe self-proclaimed “evangelical” historians,George Marsden, Nathan Hatchand, above all, Mark Noll. Certainly onecan choose far worse historians to dependupon, but it is one of the more curiousanomalies in this book that Wills makesstrong claims for these historians’ supportof Unitarianism and “enlightenedreligion” as America’s religion, while infact they claim the opposite. ForMarsden, Noll and Hatch, America’sreligion is not the Unitarian religion norDeism, but, in Noll’s formulation, aunique amalgam of “republican-evangelical-commonsense” religion not foundanywhere else in the world in quite thesame symbiotic (and ultimately tragic)combination. For this reason, Noll concludesin America’s God that “Deismnever succeeded in establishing itself as32 America May 5, 2008

an American theology.” Instead, “by theearly nineteenth century, evangelicalismwas the unofficially established religionin a nation that had forsworn religiousestablishment.” In like manner, E.Brooks Holifield, author of the comprehensivehistory Theology in America, identifiesPrinceton Theological Seminary’sCharles Hodge as the most influentialAmerican theologian—a name that doesnot even appear in Wills’s narrative.The greatest problems with Head andHeart appear in the early chapters dealingwith the colonial and 19th-century periods.In a manner reminiscent of the oldintellectual histories written in the 1950s,Wills ignores ordinary people and, ineffect, effectively renders ideas asuncaused actors and change agents. Theyappear from nowhere in terms of sociallocation. Wills consistently misses socialand demographic realities that would renderhis ideas, such as separation of churchand state, not so much miraculous or surprisingas simply inevitable. By ignoringwhat might be termed the social origins ofideas, Wills is able to tell the story ofAmerica’s “head and heart” religion withhardly a woman’s voice to be heard.African-American voices appear onlyslightly more often, while ordinary daylaborers, union workers or civil servantsare virtually mute. By the late 20th andearly 21st century, as waves of Muslim,Buddhist and Hindu immigrants reshapedthe religious landscape of modernAmerica, they too remain invisible. Wheredo they fit under the comprehensiveumbrella of head and heart?Turning from substance to style, thisbook stands in stark contrast to the tightstyle and economical prose that characterizesuch earlier Wills classics as Lincoln atGettysburg or Cincinnatus: GeorgeWashington and the Enlightenment. In thepresent work, Wills does the reader nofavors. At many points the book simplyoffers a series of vignettes, sometimes literally“by the numbers.” Even more irritating,the author relies on so manyextended quotations from primary andsecondary sources (sometimes spanningtwo pages) that the reader is forced to treatthe book almost as a source book, miningthrough page after page of quotations forwhatever nuggets there are to be found.As the book moves forward in time,Wills’s comfort level clearly rises, and hespeaks with greater originality. The lastchapters are the strongest. By the Nixonyears and beyond, the journalist in Willstakes over and produces some extremelyclever and well-written snippets about keyplayers and events. Though decrying the“futile acrimony” that neo-conservativesand Republicans employ to gain theirdominance, Wills is hardly immune to hisown slashing criticisms in pursuit of hisliberal agenda. As one who shares much ofthat agenda, I found many opportunitiesto chuckle at the witty takedowns of thelikes of Philip Hamburger, MichaelNovak or Karl Rove. And Wills’s witheringcritique of anti-abortion arguments isas good as I have seen. But on deeperreflection the ultimate disrespect of allthings right is so pervasive that it confirmshow both sides in the “culture wars” stokethe fires of suspicion and hostility thatflare into open contempt.If this book does not represent Wills’sfinest literary hour, it still contains interestinginsights that save it from disaster.That being the case, one can hope for areturn to the higher quality of his past publicationsin his subsequent writing.Harry S. Stout A Grueling TestInternA Doctor's InitiationBy Sandeep JauharFarrar, Straus and Giroux. 320p $25ISBN 9780374146597There are millions of immigrant stories inthe naked city. Intern is one of them—thestory of the New York cardiologist andauthor Sandeep Jauhar. Born in India in1968, he came to the United States nineyears later with his parents and siblings.His father was a plant geneticist who didnot get many breaks in Americanacademia and blamed that on racism. Hismother was a lab technician; and her family,which settled in southern Californiaafter two years in Kentucky, often had torely on her salary to stay afloat. Given thattheir background was solidly middle classin its values and expectations—her fatherwas an army doctor before going into privatepractice in New Delhi—Jauhar’s parentswere far from living out theirAmerican dream. Yet they never seemedto doubt for a second that their children,May 5, 2008 America 33

Seeing the Medieval:Realms of Faith/Visions for TodayThe Middle Ages were a time of violence, clashing faiths, andradical breakthroughs in ideas and imagination—in sum, a timelike today. A two-day symposium will reconsider the connectionsbetween art, religion and culture, and highlight their relevanceto the 21st century.Why the Medieval MattersHow do the Middle Ages—in all their creativity, diversity, faithand, yes, violence—speak to 21st-century humanity? Peter Steinfels, Co-director, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture Francis Oakley, President Emeritus and Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of theHistory of Ideas, Williams College. Kathryn Kueny, Director, Religious Studies, FordhamUniversity. Charles Reid Jr., Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas Law School. NinaRowe, Assistant Professor of Art History, Fordham University.KeynoteThomas CahillThe author of Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cultsof Catholic Europe, will speak on Life and Art in the Middle Ages.Medieval Objects from Different ViewpointsWhat happens when scholars from different disciplines look at thesame works of art? Ena Heller, Executive Director, MOBIA Margot Fassler, Robert Tangeman Professor of Music History and Liturgy,Yale University. C. Griffith Mann, Director, Curatorial Division, Walters Art Museum.Mary C. Moorman, Ph.D. Candidate in Systematic Theology, Southern Methodist University.Xavier Seubert, Professor of Art and Theology, St. Bonaventure University.Teaching Techniques for Medieval StudiesMuseum, divinity school, university: How do they present the Middle Ages? Eric Ramírez-Weaver, Curator, MOBIA Dirk Breiding, Assistant Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Robin Jensen,Luce Chancellor’s Professor of the History of Christian Worship and Art,Vanderbilt DivinitySchool. Laura Weigert, Associate Professor, Rutgers University. Nancy Wu, Museum Educator,Metropolitan Museum of Art. their sons in particular, were destined forgreat things. That at Indian social functionsthe Jauhar children felt looked downupon by the families of doctors, who hadfancy cars and designer clothes, could onlyhave acted as a spur. That the embitteredplant geneticist had had childhood dreamsof a medical career, which were pushedbeyond his reach by the early death of hisown father, must have been part of theequation, too.Jauhar, though, is not very interestedin ruminating on family dynamics or psychologicalmotivation. He does concedethat his charming and easygoing if lessacademically gifted brother Rajiv “knewthe privileges of being the eldest son in atraditional Indian family and he guardedthem closely, like a trust fund.” So it is nota surprise that Rajiv unambiguously andunquestioningly chose a career inmedicine. Sandeep, always more interestedin subjects like philosophy and ethics,fantasized for a time about being a lawyerjust like Atticus Finch. He liked historyand he shared his father’s passion for currentaffairs, and so toyed with journalism,too. The elder Jauhar would dismiss suchnotions with maxims like “nonscience isnonsense.” In any case, he had envisionedhis second son as a Stanford-educatedneurosurgeon.Sandeep nonetheless marched off tocollege with the humanities still in mind.A persuasive roommate influenced aswitch to physics, which he pursued all theway to a Ph.D. at Berkeley. His second U-turn led him to begin medical school atWashington University, in St. Louis, theday after he handed in his thesis on quantumdots on the west coast.His parents were upset at this rebellionin reverse (“Don’t switch horses in themiddle of the stream,” his father said), buthe speculates near the book’s end thatpleasing them may have been his motivationall along.The book begins with his arrival onthe first day at Manhattan’s New YorkHospital for the orientation lecture givenby the grouchy residency director. Youknow the drill—in at the deep end. Theformula has worked on the big and thesmall screen alike, from “Doctor in theHouse” to a doctor called “House.” Theproblem is that the author doesn’t stick toit. Once the director’s introductory lectureto new interns is dealt with, the34 America May 5, 2008

author doubles back and tells the story ofhis life up to that point.Finally, on page 45, the new doctormeets his first patient, aneccentric 71-year-oldAfrican-American womannamed Jimmie Washington.The tone of the sceneis pitch perfect. And suchepisodes, usually lastingthree or four pages apieceand occupying much of thebook thereafter, areIntern’s great strength.The trend nowadaysfavors memoir, but theportrait of a doctor as aboy, a youth and a studentin various disciplines is notvery compelling. And the description ofhis personal struggles as an intern, particularlyconcerning his self-doubt, worksbest in small doses.Jauhar’s early biography should havebeen the back story, using a flashbacktechnique where necessary. Not that therearen’t a few lively moments in the firstchapters. The author’s affectionate sketchTO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW❑ New subscription ❑ RenewalYearly rates are $48 for each subscription.Add $22 for postage, handling and GST onCanadian orders. Add $32 for foreign subscriptions.Payment in U.S. funds only.❑ Payment enclosed ❑ Bill meOn occasion America gives permission toother organizations to use our list for promotionalpurposes. If you do not want toreceive these promotions, contact our ListManager at our New York offices.FORCHANGE OFADDRESSANDRENEWAL:Please attach themailing label fromthe front coverwhen writingabout service orchange of address.Allow 3 to 4weeks for changeof address to takeeffect. Thank you.AmericaNameAddressCity State ZIPMail to: AmericaP.O. Box 693, Mount Morris, IL 61064-7578or call 1-800-627-9533or visit www.americamagazine.orgE-mailW706of the patriarch and his frequently battyopinions provide most of them. “Theirony of all this is that my father hateddoctors,” he writes at onepoint. They were moneygrubbers,set apart fromshopkeepers only by theirhigher education.The episode withJimmie Washington, underliningthe doctor’ssqueamishness, alsoshows his light touch.Because she insists onmaking an appointmentfor two months later andnot three as he suggested,we fully expect her toreturn, much like one ofthose Yorkshire farmers in JamesHerriot’s vet books, each of themdefined by his idiosyncrasies.But there are no recurring charactersother than Rajiv, a cardiologist in the samehospital. Meanwhile, the mood becomesgloomy and generally stays that way. Theoutcome is happy, though, for this is presentedas the story of how one reluctantInterpretingScriptureWISDOMJune 20-21, 2008A collaborativeendeavor of theCenter for CatholicStudies at FairfieldUniversity andWisdom HouseJohn R. Donahue, S.J.HOUSERETREAT ANDCONFERENCE CENTER229 East Litchfield Rd,Litchfield, CT 06759860-567-3163For further information visitwww.wisdomhouse.org oremail programs@wisdomhouse.orgintern, after a horrendous first year,learned to love being a doctor.If you feel, however, that there is nogood reason why a young immigrant cannot follow his own dream to be an AtticusFinch or a Carl Bernstein, then an alternativeinterpretation suggests itself:Intern is the tale of someone who hasrebelled often, in his own nerdish way,but who has always knuckled under eventually.In the end, the dutiful son, brother,husband and son-in-law emerges fromthe “waking hell” that almost broke himto embrace fully the elitist worldview ofthe top doctor.“I often worry,” Jauhar writes, “thatthe current crop of interns, mandated toleave the hospital after a 24-hour shift, ismissing out on valuable lessons and islearning a mentality of moderation that isincompatible with the highest ideals ofdoctoring.”At its best, though, this insider’saccount of life on the ward forces us tocontemplate our own mortality. And weemerge from it all with a greater respectfor medical professionals and theirpatients.Peter McDermottCourageunder FireThe Jacquinot Safe ZoneWartime Refugees inShanghaiMARCIA R. RISTAINOWhen Japanese forcesattacked Shanghai in 1937, aFrench Jesuit, Father RobertJacquinot de Besange, S.J.,heroically stood up forhuman life. Through relentlessnegotiations and deft diplomacy, FatherJacquinot convinced Japanese and Chinese militaryleaders to allow for the establishment of asafe zone in the midst of the ongoing war.“Consulting an impressive range of multi-lingualarchival sources, Ristaino delivers thestory of a forgotten man and his remarkableachievement in setting up a successful model ofsafety zones that protected several hundredthousand Chinese civilians during WWII.”—Lu Liu,University of Tennessee$27.95 clothStanfordUniversity Press800.621.2736 www.sup.orgMay 5, 2008 America 35

VICE PRESIDENT,MISSION INTEGRATIONHealth Network, a member ofAscension Health, is comprised of fouracute care hospitals in beautiful,southern Arizona. We are seeking aVice President, Mission Integrationwho will serve as a member of theexecutive team sharing leadership ofthe organization and achievement ofthe ministry’s strategic and financialplan and goals with accountability tofoster a genuine expression of Catholic,faith-based identity in fulfilling theChurch’s mission in health care. TheVice President, Mission Integration willprovide leadership that is dedicated tohealing, diversity, advocacy andspiritually centered, holistic care whichsustains and improves the health of ourcommunities served, thus furtheringChrist’s healing ministry.Requirements include a Master’s degreein healthcare mission, ethics,spirituality or theology and at least fiveyears of relevant experience inintegrating the mission, vision andvalues of an organization. Thesuccessful candidate will havedemonstrated skills in the followingareas; organizational development,fostering spirituality, formation at alllevels and employee engagement.Experience with canon law, ethical andreligious directives, ethics committeedevelopment and spirituality in acomplex, faith based, healthcareenvironment highly preferred.We offer a competitive salary witha comprehensive executive benefitsand relocation package. Interestedindividuals can apply via our websiteor send their resume and salaryrequirements to:Carondelet Health NetworkChief Human Resources Officer2202 N. ForbesTucson, Arizona 85745www.carondelet.orgEOEClassifiedPositionsCALL TO ACTION/USA, a Catholic movementworking for equality and justice in the church andsociety is accepting applications for the full-timeposition of EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR.Successful candidates will embrace C.T.A.’s missionand programs, have a strong grasp of VaticanII and church reform history, understand organizationaloperations, be comfortable working withfundraising, media, publications and Web sitemanagement, have anti-racism and nonviolenttraining experience, have work experience that isbeneficial to this role and hold at least a bachelor’sdegree (master’s or higher preferred) in a field relevantto this role. For more information, includingthe method of application, please seewww.cta-usa.org/transition or contact TamarYager at ctayager@gmail.com with the subjectheading “CTA Executive Director Search.”Applications will begin to be evaluated andscreened by the search committee after June 1,2008.COORDINATOR OF YOUTH MINISTRY to developand direct shared high school/junior high programsfor two active parishes in the Clevelandarea. Applicant should be committed to the eightgoals of comprehensive youth ministry, possesspastoral and organizational skills, a background intheology and catechesis, and previous youth ministryexperience. $40,000 to $50,000 with benefits.Job description is available at www.divinewordkirtland.org.Résumé can be submitted by April30, 2008, to: Rev. George Smiga, St. NoelChurch, 35200 Chardon Road, Willoughby Hills,OH 44094.FIELD EDUCATION POSITION. The University ofSaint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary isseeking a Catholic faculty member to teach pastoralcare and counseling, direct certain fieldeducation programs and assist in human andspiritual formation. Send résumé to DorothyRiley, Field Education Search, 1000 E. MapleAve, Mundelein IL 60060; e-mail:driley@usml.edu.THE JESUIT VOLUNTEER CORPS, the largestCatholic lay volunteer program in the country,announces two positions, PRESIDENT andDIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT. Potentialcandidates should see www.JesuitVolunteers.org/staffjobs for more information.LUMEN CHRISTI JUNIOR-SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLseeks a dynamic PRINCIPAL to lead our school.Operated by St. Benedict’s Parish for just sixyears, this school is positioned to grow andexpand to serve Anchorage and south centralAlaska. We are looking for leadership committedto educational excellence in the Catholic tradition.Anchorage is a vibrant community on thelast frontier, with excellent cultural and recreationalopportunities. The successful applicantwill be hired as vice principal for the 2008-9 academicyear to become principal in June of 2009.For position description or information, pleasewrite LCHSsearch@gmail.com. A résumé maybe submitted by e-mail or by postal mail to: TheSearch Committee, Rev. S. C. Moore, StBenedict’s Church, 8110 Jewel Lake Road,Anchorage, AK 99507.RetreatsBETHANY RETREAT HOUSE, East Chicago, Ind.,offers private and individually directed silentretreats, including Ignatian 30 days, year-round ina prayerful home setting. Contact Joyce Diltz,P.H.J.C.; (219) 398-5047; bethanyrh@sbcglobal.net;www.bethanyretreathouse.org.IGNATIAN-BASED RETREATS and parish missions.Harry Cain, S.J., and Virginia Blass, D.Min.Inspiration, wit, humor and hope. Ph: (603) 927-4443; e-mail: concordia4u@aol.com; www.concordiaministry.com.WillsPlease remember America in your will. Ourlegal title is: America Press Inc., 106 West 56thStreet, New York, NY 10019.Call today!AMERICA CLASSIFIED. Classified advertisements areaccepted for publication in either the print version ofAmerica or on our Web site, www.americamagazine-.org. Ten-word minimum. Rates are per word per issue.1-5 times: $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28; 12-23 times:$1.23; 24-41 times: $1.17; 42 times or more: $1.12.For an additional $30, your print ad will be posted onAmerica’s Web site for one week. The flat rate for aWeb-only classified ad is $150 for 30 days. Ads may besubmitted by e-mail to: ads@americamagazine.org; byfax to (928) 222-2107; by postal mail to: ClassifiedDepartment, America, 106 West 56th St., New York,NY 10019. To post a classified ad online, go to our homepage and click on “Advertising” at the top of the page. We do not accept ad copy over the phone.MasterCard and Visa accepted. For more information call: (212) 515-0102.36 America May 5, 2008

LettersThe Hardest WordAs an Australian, I want to add toMargaret Silf’s “Sorry Business” (4/21):The apology given by our prime ministerwas extremely significant because it wasdelivered on behalf of the government tothe indigenous peoples wronged by governmentpolicy. Because the wrong was acollective one (i.e., a social sin), it neededa response from no less than our nationalleader. The country had been waiting formany years for the apology to be given,and the feeling was one of great relief aswell as understanding by many who hadpreviously failed to understand the hurt.Julie PurdeyKyabram, Vic., AustraliaMobilize the TroopsYour observations about Zimbabwe(Current Comment, 4/21) present a tragicsituation in which a proud and prosperousnation has been brought to itsknees by a corrupt thug who maintainshis power by rigging elections, torturingand killing those who oppose him, starvingchildren as a political tactic andlaughing at the halfhearted protests ofineffectual international agencies. If onlythere were a way to remove such a tyrantand establish a freely elected governmentthat would willingly cooperate with theinternational community to create a civilsociety! Wait: we did that in Iraq, andAmerica considered it a crime.James BelnaClaremont, Calif.Northern ExposureI read and reread “Northern Light,” bySheryl Frances Chen, O.C.S.O. (4/21),and delighted in the way she experiencesher monastery and its surrounding environs.The photos are lovely and the prosesheer poetry. It reinforced for me thenotion that deep prayer is a sinking intooneself, deeper and deeper until onereaches the place of organic unity withGod and all of creation.Patricia MelescoRockingham, Vt.From the Pews“Lessons from an Extraordinary Era,” byRoger Haight, S.J. (3/17), brings up adisturbing paradox in the CatholicChurch today. While Catholic academictheology has flourished over the past 40years in ways unheard of before theSecond Vatican Council, the church isalso experiencing a startling demographicdecline in Europe. It is also losing membersto other denominations in South andCentral America; and in the UnitedStates, its youngest generation is for allintents and purposes non-practicing.This is not to imply a causal relationshipbetween the flourishing of theologyas an academic subject and the loss ofpopular faith. But most religious peopleare only vaguely interested in academictheology, and religions that flourish arethose that offer their faithful some kindof affective connection with the transcendent,the heavenly and the otherworldly.Catholicism once had a rich tradition ofpopular devotions and piety, and manyCatholics in a former era were drawn toour high level of ritualism in worship.Academics may scoff, but can we reallyafford to allow these dimensions of ourfaith to wither away?James QuigleyMontclair, N.J.Aiding and AbettingOne has to marvel at the chutzpah ofAmerica in running full-page ads recruitingmilitary chaplains, paid for by theU.S. Army. Your commentary on yourcentennial year (Of Many Things, 4/21)notes that “America begins its 100th yearof publication, rounding out service toCatholic intellectual life in the UnitedStates.” It might accurately also have statedthat you are “aiding and abetting themost criminal enterprise in the history ofmankind.”Anthony F. FlahertyBoston, Mass.Lukewarm FaithYour editorial “Abuse of Office” (4/28),could not be more correct.Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears inthe United States. Part of the problemwas illustrated by Pope Benedict XVI’svisit: he had a lovely time with GeorgeW. Bush and never publicly criticizedhim for Iraq. He went to the UnitedNations to tout human rights, but nevermentioned the use of torture by theUnited States. Where is a statementfrom the U.S. bishops to Catholics andChristians calling for a nationalresponse to these issues in the name ofChrist? In what church on Sundays isthere a Christian witness to the victimsof our war in Iraq? Because such actionswould “divide the church,” we all goalong to get along. This was not thepath of Christ, who did not come toPSYCHIATRIST and MEDICAL DIRECTORResidential Behavioral HealthSt. John Vianney Center, a private residential treatment and education center forbehavioral health and substance abuse in suburban Philadelphia that cares forclergy, seeks a Staff Psychiatrist and Medical Director.Psychiatrist - Part Time (16 - 24 hours)+ Provide direct psychiatric services to residents including individual and group sessions+ Provide evaluation and treatment, review past medical records, charting, prepare reports, consult with staff and attendmeetings concerned with direct resident care.Medical Director - Part Time (8 - 12 hours)+ Overall management of services provided by medical staff and professional care team consisting of psychiatry,psychology, pastoral counseling, and social work.+ Review and co-sign treatment plans, serve on various administrative committees such as QI, policy and procedure,pharmacy.Both positions require a current PA medical license, Board Certified Psychiatrist, 2-5 yrs experience inpractice of psychiatry and 1-3 yrs experience administering an in-patient unit. Candidate must haverespect for and familiarity with Catholic culture and high degree of sensitivity and understanding in thetreatment of clergy and religious.Please submit your resume along with salaryrequirements to: mfullmer@chs-adphila.org orfax to M. Fullmer at 215-587-3773.May 5, 2008 America 37

Lettersbring a wishy-washy, lukewarm faith.Patrick HughesSt. Augustine, Fla.Quantity, Not QualityRe “Abuse of Office”: Despite what thecritics may say or believe, there was nothing“benign” about the way previouspresidents used signing statements onlegislation, including Bill Clinton. UnderClinton, the Justice Department went onrecord twice defending the president’sobligation to use signing statements torefuse to enforce constitutionally repugnantprovisions of new laws. The onlydifference between George W. Bush’suse of signing statements and Clinton’sis quantity; Bush has issued nearly 1,200challenges since 2001—a record, to besure.You rightly note that the real culpritin the president’s use (or abuse) of poweris Congress, and to a lesser extent thecourts. From 2001 to 2006, theRepublican-controlled Congress gave thepresident whatever he desired, essentiallydeclaring itself a junior partner to thepresident. We must continue to supportDemocrats in Congress, who haveincreased the number of oversight hearingsand issued direct challenges to theBush administration.Christopher KelleyCincinnati, OhioThe Blame GameIn “Bishop Encourages CatholicEducators” (Signs of the Times, 4/14),the problems of the church communityare blamed on “a lack of knowledgeabout the faith,” a cheap shot at catechetics.Talk about “Round up the usual suspects”!Sometimes I think the only reasonbishops keep catechists around at allis to have people to blame for their failures.The causes of the current membershiploss in the church are varied andcomplex, and call for further in-depthstudy. To the extent that catechetics maybe partly at fault, the bishops (our chiefcatechists) need to examine their ownlack of ecclesial leadership and supportfor catechetics. I’m tired of business asusual except when there’s an opportunityto place blame.Kristeen BruunNorth Richland Hills, Tex.To send a letter tothe editor we recommendusing the linkthat appears belowarticles on America’s Web site,www.americamagazine.org. This allows usto consider your letter for publication inboth print and online versions of the magazine.Letters may also be sent to America’seditorial office (address on page 2) orby e-mail to: letters@americamagazine.org.They should be brief andinclude the writer’s name, postal addressand daytime phone number. Letters maybe edited for length and clarity.America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 11 combinedissues: Jan. 7-14, 21-28, March 31-April 7, May 26-June 2,June 9-16, 23-30, July 7-14, 21-28, Aug. 4-11, 18-25, Dec. 22-29)by America Press, Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019.Periodicals postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailingoffices. Business Manager: Lisa Pope; Circulation: Judith Palmer,(212) 581-4640. Subscriptions: United States, $48 per year; addU.S. $22 postage and GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S.$32 per year for overseas surface postage. For overseas airmaildelivery, please call for rates. Postmaster: Send address changes to:America, 106 West 56th St. New York, NY 10019. Printed in theU.S.A.38 America May 5, 2008