Getting into Arguments

"A Catholic may go about in nearly every part of this country without encountering so much as a lifted eyebrow, even if perchance he be a priest and wear a Roman collar. But if he wants an argument, one is to be had anywhere . . . and he will then learn that the church to which he belongs is an object of fear, suspicion, resentment, and more or less abrasive jocosity."

So writes President George N. Shuster of Manhattan's Hunter College in his foreword to Catholicism in America (Harcourt, Brace; $3.75). The new book, originally a series in the Roman Catholic weekly, The Commonweal, has 17 authors, all but two of them Catholic. They cover the substance of many of the arguments a U.S. Catholic is likely to get into, and they do it with frankness and not a little abrasive jocosity of their own.

The Simple Solution. "Part of the emotional underpinning of Catholic isolationism," complains Commonweal's managing editor, James O'Gara, "undoubtedly comes from the long-standing love affair between the American Catholic press and the simple solution. Until comparatively recent times, few statements could flout reality too baldly ... for solemn editorial approval, if only they sounded sufficiently moral. Any increase in the crime rate, for example, was obviously the result of the decline of religion; any attempt to discuss other . . . factors was considered unnecessary . . .

"Nowhere does the predisposition to the simplistic show up more strikingly than on the question of Communism. For many American Catholics ... if the Communists are for something, [they] are automatically against it. Despite the social teachings of the church, and the labor of many devoted Catholics, clerical and lay, there is not much doubt that in many Catholic groups opposition to labor unions, public housing, slum clearance . . . interracial justice and the like is due to this absurd use of Communism as a negative determinant of what Catholics favor."

Science. U.S. Catholicism, which has lagged woefully in its contribution to science, is catching up in this field, according to Notre Dame Scientist Julian Pleasants, but not fast enough. "Twenty years ago," he writes, "Catholic effort in scientific research was perhaps one-thirtieth of that done by an equal number of non-Catholics. Right now, Catholic effort is probably one-tenth of what would be expected from a comparable group of non-Catholics, despite the fact that a few Catholic centers are developing their resources very rapidly."

Totalitarian Democracy? The vexed question of church and state is vexed some more by several of the authors in this symposium, but Commonweal's Editor John Cogley suggests that much of the political criticism of Catholicism in the U.S. is really theological at heart.

"In a country where approximately one out of every three marriages ends in the divorce courts, there is bound to be strong resentment against the church that solemnly brands subsequent matings as adulterous. A church that proclaims from the housetops that contraception is always against the law of God will naturally arouse the fierce antagonism of those who practice contraception and deem themselves virtuous when they do. As American culture becomes more secularized and further cut off from ,its Christian roots, we can expect this kind of antagonism to increase . . . framed in political rather than in theological terms, if only because theology has become largely meaningless . .

"In days gone by, Catholic doctrine was condemned as being unBiblical or superstitious: the judgment was theological. Today, it is more often branded as 'undemocratic' or 'un-American.' This, it seems to me, is a telltale sign of the growing totalitarianization of 'democracy.' American democracy is traditionally a tolerant political way of life. Many would now like to make it a set of secularist dogmas by which all things, even the moral order and religious beliefs, are measured. The professional birth-controllers, the divorce apologists (perhaps, soon, the euthanasiasts) and the aggressive secularists generally more and more have taken to wrapping their beliefs in the Stars and Stripes. They are increasingly ready to put all who disagree with them outside the 'democratic' pale."

Compromise with Mediocrity. One of the two non-Catholic writers included in the symposium is Jewish Author Will Herberg, who finds U.S. Catholicism today "at its highest point of prestige and spiritual power." But Herberg regrets "a tendency in Catholicism to smile indulgently upon men and pat them on the back, as it were. Catholicism thus comes forward as the friend of man, whereas Protestantism, with its unrelenting emphasis on judgment, sometimes appears as his enemy." Catholics' "spiritual geniality," writes Herberg, often combines with secularism to betray "Catholics into too easy an acquiescence in the banalities, timidities and mediocrities of everyday life--provided they do not violate the conventional decencies . . .

"Why is American Catholicism so uncreative, when compared with European? Why does it show so little appreciation of the great cultural treasures of its own tradition? There are many reasons, but I suggest that one of the most important is a deplorable readiness among many American Catholics of culture and intelligence to compromise with stupidity, stodginess and mediocrity, so long as these keep within the bounds of 'morality.' "

Unity Plea. Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr ends a discussion of Protestant-Catholic differences on the subject of natural law with a moving plea that Christians remember that they have more to unite them than separate them.

"We owe it to our common Lord to heal the breach between us and to eliminate the scandal of our enmities, which threaten the common decencies and the good order of our country. We would be well advised to remember that the secularism which we pretend to abhor has at least one resource necessary for the health of a democratic community It knows how to make pragmatic compromises in order to achieve harmony between seemingly incompatible positions, and Christian charity would accomplish the same end if Christians were humble enough to achieve the necessary charity."

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