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'Poped out' Wills seeks broader horizons
Nov. 21, 2008
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Garry Wills at home (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionEVANSTON, ILL. -- Popes don’t visit America often, so when they do, the country’s Catholic stars come out to shine. Airwaves and opinion pages brim with punditry from what Commonweal editor Paul Baumann mockingly calls the “Catholic commentariat,” meaning the galaxy of prominent Catholics eager to serve up their insights about the state of the church.
Last April, however, when Pope Benedict XVI came to town, one of the brightest stars in that firmament was conspicuously absent. Historian and journalist Garry Wills, perhaps the most distinguished Catholic intellectual in America over the last 50 years, spurned requests for comment from every major TV network, as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
It may seem a curious missed opportunity for the author of 2000’s Papal Sin, a blistering, best-selling polemic against what he described as systemic papal dishonesty and inflated papal power. Wills, however, offers a simple motive for his reticence: “I’m poped out.”
“I’ve had my say, and I have no desire to say more,” he said. “Popes don’t interest me very much.”
Therein lies a key to understanding the unique spot on the Catholic landscape occupied by Wills, one of the most fascinating personalities American Catholicism has ever produced. In the wake of Papal Sin, fans and critics alike tended to style Wills as a new guru of the Catholic left, a sort of Noam Chomsky for the Call to Action set. In truth, he is both less and more. Less, in that Wills has no interest in leading a reform campaign in Catholicism, since doing so would imply investment in an institution he regards as irrelevant and dull; more, in that Wills is hardly just a “Catholic writer,” but one of America’s most distinguished nonfiction writers, period, whose horizons are far broader than the church.
Wills’ remarkable life and career thus reflect several realities of U.S. Catholic life: the emancipation of American Catholics from their pre-Vatican II ghetto into the full light of secular accomplishment and acclaim; the post-Vatican II option of many liberal Catholics for political and social crusades rather than internal church concerns; and the consequent quandary of the Catholic left, which is that its best and brightest often don’t care enough about the institutional church to stand and fight.
Now 73 and still going strong, Wills sat down with NCR for an extended interview at his home in Evanston, Ill., near the campus of Northwestern University, where he has served as a professor of history since 1980.
Success in two worlds
Wills is an academic and a journalist, putting him on both sides of what has long been a peculiar love/hate relationship. Reporters mock the specialized jargon and narrow interests of the egghead class, but depend upon the fruits of their learning; intellectuals lament the superficiality of journalists, but envy their fame and public influence.
What’s distinctive about Wills is not that he has a foot in both worlds, but that he has scaled heights of success in both that few ever attain in one.
-- Zuma Press: G.K. ChestertonThere’s never been any doubt about his erudition. Wills is the kind of guy who, as a young man, when asked if he was a conservative, would reply, “No, I’m a distributist.” (To save traffic on the Wikipedia Web site, distributism is a political theory associated with the English Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton and 19th-century papal social teaching. It posits that ownership of the means of production should be widely distributed among the population, rather than controlled by the state, as in communism, or by financial elites, as in capitalism. Its model is the medieval guild system. Not coincidentally, Wills’ first book was on Chesterton, and he remains for Wills an enormous influence.)
Today Wills is regarded as America’s premier presidential historian, with acclaimed studies of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Kennedy and Nixon. His Pulitzer Prize came for the 1992 book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, which is routinely assigned at major American universities as mandatory reading for incoming freshmen.
-- AP/Dan Loh: The Philadelphia home of painter Thomas EakinsWills is also an accomplished expert on antiquity. His doctorate from Yale was in the classics, and in 1999 he published a powerful biography of St. Augustine. This fall, he’s bringing out a new translation of the Latin epigrams of Martial -- typically, it’s a project he pursued largely as a way to unwind. He’s also set to publish a small book, based on a lecture at the Smithsonian, entirely devoted to one fairly obscure 19th-century American painting: Thomas Eakins’ “William Rush Carving the Allegory of the Schuylkill River.”
Yet this consummate intellectual is also one of the country’s most acclaimed reporters, with a keen eye for detail and a knack for being where the action is.
-- CNS: Garry Wills in 1970Wills’ 1969 tour de force Nixon Agonistes, for example, managed to blend deep questions of political theory with on-the-spot color from Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, much of which rivals the best of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s later account of Nixon’s ’72 re-election bid, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, for both insight and comic relief. For a taste, here’s Wills on Nelson Rockefeller: “First-generation millionaires tend to give us libraries. The second and third generations think they should give us themselves. Naturally, some people want to look this gift horse in the mouth -- which may be the reason Rockefeller keeps his teeth on display.”
Wills famously began his journalistic career as a right-wing protégé of fellow Yalie William F. Buckley Jr. at the National Review. During a subsequent stint as a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter in the paper’s early years, he was considered the “token conservative” on the opinion page. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, however, Wills moved steadily to the left, driven by the experience of covering the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests.
-- NCR photo/Arthur Jones: Wills talks to NCR in 1990.No matter where Wills stood on the ideological spectrum, his writing in venues such as Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post and New York magazine always turned heads. Over time, he entered that select circle of journalists who are almost as much a celebrity as the people they cover.
Wills befriended opera diva Beverly Sills, for example, and became especially close to her mother. He also became close to cult filmmaker John Waters, who rescued Wills from arrest during the 1972 counter-inaugural protest in Washington by claiming him as a member of his film crew. He struck up a friendship with Bill Willis, the drummer at Jack Ruby’s Dallas nightclub. (Wills published a biography of Ruby in 1968, eschewing conspiracy theories about Ruby’s involvement in a Kennedy assassination plot because, as Wills put it, “he was incapable of organizing anything.” He quotes Willis about Ruby’s motive for killing Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald: “I’m downtown anyway ... might as well shoot him.”)
It’s part of Wills’ charm that he manages to relay such experiences without a trace of vanity.
Such is the stratosphere of secular regard in which Wills moves that when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, he published an opinion piece for TIME magazine calling upon President Bill Clinton to resign, and yet Clinton still felt compelled to give Wills the National Medal for the Humanities. In a White House ceremony just after the piece appeared, Clinton read a citation praising Wills’ “amazing set of insights over a broad range of subjects” -- adding the impromptu qualification, “Sometimes I have a little problem with that one.”
In Catholic terms, Wills is a classic case of a local boy who made good. He emerged from the cocoon of preconciliar ghetto Catholicism in the United States, and took the secular world by storm.
He was born in Atlanta in 1934, but spent most of his youth in Adrian, Mich., where he attended schools run by the famed Adrian Dominican sisters. He recalls inscribing “JMJ” on his schoolwork, saying “Hail Marys” before free throws, and cultivating devotion to the Infant of Prague. Looking back from the perspective of the early 1970s, Wills would write: “It was a ghetto, but not a bad ghetto to grow up in.”
The experience obviously left its mark. To this day, Wills says he has never seriously questioned his Catholic faith. He is a weekly Mass-goer at the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, and prays the rosary every day. (“I haven’t got that many ways to pray that I can afford to lose the one that comes most easily,” he said with a laugh.) Although he parts company with church teaching on papal infallibility, abortion and transubstantiation, he’s perfectly comfortable with the Nicene Creed: “I stick with the basics,” Wills said.
Martin Marty, the famed Lutheran scholar of religion, calls Wills “incurably Catholic”; in a similar vein, the Catholic novelist and sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley, another Chicagoan, told NCR that “anyone who carries the rosary every day and says it has to be a good Catholic.” (In a typical Greeley twist, he later asked to amend that to “has to be possessed by the analogical imagination,” and perhaps including both versions here does justice to the dual sides of Wills’ personality -- the popular journalist and the obscure academic.)
Given his intellectual precociousness, the teenage Wills inevitably gravitated into the orbit of the Jesuits. He attended Campion Prep School in Prairie du Chien, Wis., falling under the spell of forward-thinking young scholastics. He entered the seminary, but became disenchanted with what he regarded as its intellectual aridity.
He completed his graduate work at Yale, where Buckley recruited him for the National Review. One of Wills’ first assignments was to help Buckley defend himself against Catholic liberals who had charged him with disrespect for papal social teaching, especially John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra, which Buckley saw as a soft on socialism. Wills’ contribution was to coin the famous quip #147;Mater Si, Magistra No!” In many ways, the line could serve as a motto for Wills’ brand of Catholicism -- deep love for the faith and tradition, coupled with skepticism about ecclesiastical authority and its claims to special wisdom.
Eventually, Wills drifted away from Buckley’s hard-right stances. The definitive break came when Wills penned an essay for National Review critical of the Vietnam War, which Buckley spiked. The two later reconciled, but Wills never returned to the ideological fold.
Beyond ecclesiastical questions
Despite -- or, perhaps, as a means of escaping -- his all-encompassing Catholic formation, Wills’ interests and life experiences have led him well beyond narrowly ecclesiastical questions.
-- CNS/Kathy Skonicki, Catholic Explorer: Studs TerkelAsk Wills to name the most impressive people he’s ever met, and there’s not a prominent Catholic in the bunch. He ticks off Jesse Jackson, Sills, the early Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton up to her vote in favor of the Iraq war, and the recently deceased Studs Terkel. To be fair, Wills also mentions Buckley, but not because of his über-Catholicism -- he instead cites Buckley’s “generosity and egalitarianism, despite his hierarchical theories.”
Terkel was a particular Wills favorite. He recounts once watching Terkel introduce himself to Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, a distinguished conservative jurist who also teaches law at the University of Chicago, during an academic function. Terkel informed Posner that he got his law degree from the University of Chicago, and asked the judge what subject he teaches.
“Studs is very hard of hearing, and basically hears what he expects to hear,” Wills said with a laugh. “So when Posner told him his subject was ‘Evidence,’ Studs looked at him and said, ‘What’s that? Avarice?’ ”
Though he’s a talented raconteur, Wills has no such colorful anecdotes about Catholic churchmen. He says that he attended the Dallas meeting of the U.S. bishops in 2002 at the peak of the sexual abuse crisis, and found them “not an impressive group.”
As another index of Wills’ disinterest in matters ecclesiastical, consider that this is a writer who’s traveled far and wide to meet virtually every political and intellectual figure of consequence over four decades, yet who’s never even gone downtown in Chicago once to meet his local cardinal. (Today, Wills said he actually avoids settings in which Cardinal Francis George may be present, preferring to huddle with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a pro-choice Catholic, to compare notes on critical things George has said about both of them.)
Wills concedes that his own children don’t practice the faith. He and his wife, Natalie, have a daughter who’s a literary agent in New York (her authors include John Dean and the children’s writer Francesca Lia Block), as well as two sons, one a textbook writer and the other an aspiring environmental lawyer. Wills says their indifference to the institutional church doesn’t cause him any regret.
“It’s their choice. Anyway, they’re basically good, moral people, which is all that matters,” he said.
A masterpiece of Catholic prose
Prior to Papal Sin, Wills’ lone serious foray into writing about the contemporary church came with 1972’s Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion, widely considered a masterpiece of recent Catholic prose. Perhaps no work better captured the period immediately after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when wild optimism about the church’s future oscillated with deep despair, and almost everything seemed in flux.
The book was vintage Wills, blending deep analysis with vivid storytelling. To illustrate the church’s post-Vatican II identity crisis, for example, Wills described a debate that erupted at a Jesuit residence in New York when a former member of the order, who had become a peace activist and a member of the “D.C. Nine,” moved in with his wife and baby.
The arrangement irked some Jesuits, though as Wills explained, their opposition was “ill-focused” -- because, to be frank, “undisturbed leisure and easy access to the TV are not very high grounds on which to vindicate the sacredness of the cloister.”
Reading Bare Ruined Choirs today, it can be difficult to understand how anyone felt blindsided by Papal Sin, because it was all there: Wills derided the natural law reasoning behind the church’s ban on birth control, expressed contempt for the “imbalance and ignorance displayed at the very top rungs of the hierarchy,” and insisted that arguments for priestly celibacy are “nothing but dodges and deceits.” He was contemptuous of “the obsessive old men who have risked all credibility, order and good will within the church to uphold their animus against human intercourse.”
Perhaps conservatives simply didn’t absorb those portions of Bare Ruined Choirs because they were too enchanted by the book’s skewering of the pre-Vatican II Catholic left, especially its craven longing for acceptance by the liberal American establishment. Wills described how an exaggerated separation of church and state, given theoretical form by Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray and symbolized by the 1960 election of John Kennedy, in practice meant submission to the secular status quo: “By the early ’60s,” he wrote, “there was nothing less dangerous than a Catholic priest.”
What traditionalists failed to notice, however, was that the Catholic values Wills longed to see brought into American politics were not those of today’s “faith and values” contingent, but rather those of the radical left, especially the antiwar Berrigan brothers. The book’s last line said it all: “It is time to join the underground.”
Bare Ruined Choirs certainly proved that Wills could apply his journalistic chops to the Catholic church as well as he could to any other topic. Yet it didn’t transform him into a religious affairs writer, and over the next quarter-century his greatest accomplishments would come in other arenas.
In a sense, therefore, when he turned to Papal Sin, it was not a book he particularly wanted to write. Instead, he said, it came out of a feeling of obligation.
“I had known very intelligent, conscientious priests who had a big influence on me, and I felt that their views were not being reflected in the general discussion of the church,” Wills said.
“That was true of a lot of people I knew. I have friends who are ex-seminarians, as I am, and a number of them have drifted away from the church. The Sheil Center, where I go to Mass, is full of people who are totally disaffected from the hierarchy, but who still believe and still go to church.”
A ‘suburban Poverello’
One measure of a book’s impact is the level of vituperation it arouses, and by that standard, few Catholic titles in recent memory have proved quite as provocative as Papal Sin. Writing in First Things, Jesuit critic Edwin Oakes termed Wills a tiresome “suburban Poverello,” in need of a course in elementary logic. Not to be outdone, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus accused Wills of being a “cultural Erastian,” meaning, roughly, that whenever there’s a tension between liberal democracy and Roman Catholicism, in Wills’ mind it’s always liberal democracy that should prevail.
(On this score, Wills is happy to concede: “I like liberal democracy, there’s no doubt about that,” he said, arguing that so does Catholic tradition. In the councils of the early church, Wills insists, matters were settled on a “one man, one vote” basis.)
Some eight years after Papal Sin first appeared, conservatives still seem to be smarting, though they usually strike a note of regret rather than rage.
“He seems to live in a world that’s ‘forever 1968,’ and that means he’s missed a lot of what’s been evangelically exciting and fresh about the last 40 years, including the greatness of John Paul II,” George Weigel told NCR. “That’s a sadness, both for the U.S. Catholic debate and for American culture.”
In the wake of the book, Wills said he found that Catholic colleges are no longer as eager to offer him honorary degrees as they once were. Beyond that, Wills said, officialdom has precious little other leverage to employ, since he is neither a priest nor an employee of a Catholic institution.
If he had it to do over again, Wills said he might be more sensitive to Papal Sin’s argumentative tone. In the main, however, he’s been gratified by how Catholics responded.
“It comforted a lot of people who think the same things I think, and who worried that maybe they’re not a good Catholic after all,” Wills said. “I gave them encouragement, which is the nicest thing that came out of those two books,” referring to Papal Sin and his 2002 follow-up, Why I Am a Catholic.
Critics who gave Wills their best shot may be disheartened to learn that, in his view, the slings and arrows generated by Papal Sin were “nothing” compared to the furor unleashed by some of his political writing. For example, Wills said an angry reader once returned a piece he had written about Nixon with excrement smeared all over it, and another mailed him a picture that appeared with his newspaper column with Wills’ eyes jabbed out.
Even Catholic voices who tried to drum him out of the church, he said, were less hysterical than hyper-patriots who questioned his credentials as an American after Wills wrote that President George W. Bush is not his commander in chief. (Wills points out that under Article II, Section II, of the Constitution, the president is commander in chief only of the Army and Navy, as well as “the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”)
‘Wills Catholics’
When Papal Sin appeared, many Catholic liberals thought they had found their Moses, a long-sought progressive alternative to a perceived conservative monopoly on Catholic “spin.” In a February 2003 piece in Commentary, British journalist Daniel Johnson even supplied the appropriate taxonomy, suggesting that American Catholicism can be divided into “Weigel Catholics” and “Wills Catholics.”
What those reactions failed to appreciate, however, is that Wills never saw himself that way.
-- AP/Charles Rex Arbogast: Garry Wills in his Evanston, Ill., home in April 2007“I never meant to try to bring about change [in the church], because that’s not my business,” Wills said. “I’m Catholic, always have been, but I’m not running for any particular Catholic status. I just practice my faith.”
If pressed, Wills expresses basic confidence that the church will eventually move in the direction he’s outlined: “After all, more people agree with my position than with the pope’s on a lot of these things,” he said. He scoffs at suggestions that Pope John Paul II revitalized institutional Catholicism: “If he were all that popular, wouldn’t more young men want to be like him? Wouldn’t there be no priest shortage?”
Yet Wills has no ambition to be the one who moves things along. Wills is emphatic that he has no inclination -- “none, zero” -- to serve as a spokesperson for dissidents in the church. Aside, perhaps, from a study of the Book of Revelation to complement his titles on the Gospels and on St. Paul, Wills said he has no intention of writing anything more on Catholic topics. Even the prospect of a study of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, holds no appeal.
-- Newscom: Natalie DessayWhen asked if he would be tempted to accept should Pope Benedict XVI himself offer to sit down for an exclusive, no-holds-barred interview, Wills doesn’t hesitate to say no. Yet if opera singer Natalie Dessay were to dangle the same invitation, Wills said, “I’d do it in a shot.”
So it goes with Wills, whose mastery of the Catholic past at times seems rivaled only by his disinterest in its present.
In terms of his future plans, Wills said he hopes to find time for several projects that have been brewing for a while, including an analysis of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Coriolanus.” He’s also still deeply fascinated by politics (the bookish Wills takes a break from literary pursuits each evening to sit down with his wife to watch “The Daily Show”), and was passionate in midsummer about what he believed was at stake in the 2008 election.
-- CNS/Bettmann Archive/Presslink: William Shakespeare“The Constitution’s at stake,” he said then. “The main problem with this country is the usurpation of power by the executive branch ... the total secrecy in which it’s operated. We’ve become world famous for torture. One year when there were a lot of lynchings down South, Mark Twain said we are now ‘the United States of Lyncherdom.’ Well, today we’re ‘the United States of Torturedom.’ To have this kind of denial of constitutional rights, and total defiance of Congress, is tragic, and it’s got to end.”
-- Reuters/Eric Thayer: Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show”For the record, Wills was an unabashed supporter of President-elect Barack Obama. He quotes his editor at The New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers, to the effect that Obama could be the best writer-president since Lincoln. Given Wills’ own expertise on Lincoln, that’s high praise indeed.
Given Wills’ drive and basic good health, he could have two decades or more of productive writing ahead. He was inspired by Terkel’s zest and curiosity.
Yet the curiosity that drives Wills these days, as “catholic” as it is in other ways, simply doesn’t include the vicissitudes of the institutional church. As a result, apologists for papal authority may face plenty of other challenges in the years to come, but -- to paraphrase the subject of Wills’ classic, Nixon Agonistes -- they apparently won’t have Garry Wills to kick around anymore.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.
National Catholic Reporter November 28, 2008
Quote: "He scoffs at
Quote: "He scoffs at suggestions that Pope John Paul II revitalized institutional Catholicism: “If he were all that popular, wouldn’t more young men want to be like him? Wouldn’t there be no priest shortage?”"
Leave your ivory tower and come to a college campus or a gathering of 20-30 year-olds sometime, sir. Your persepctive might change. Maybe you should leave the "cocoon" of 1968 and visit the "ghetto Catholicism" of your youth to discover some reality and common sense.
Hooray for Gary Wills. I
Hooray for Gary Wills. I have been a great fan for many years and still enjoy reading his comments and observations. I believe that he is not all that different from many Catholics - that at one time or another were very involved in their faith and their church. Today, many many dissatisfied Catholics just don't care about the institutional Church. They have attended Masses where the priestd/bishop is the only one involved because it is "his Mass" and the homilies/sermons are filled with a wide variety of priests assume that the people are stupid little sheep waiting to be led. Many of the laity have no real active voice or ownership so they simply walk away and find other activities or places that nourish their soul. Gary will not walk away and he finds the spiritual nourishment that he needs and it makes no difference who is pope, bishop or pastor. He is an adult and accepts adult responsibilities for himself and his faith. Good for him.
"They have attended Masses
"They have attended Masses where the priestd/bishop is the only one involved because it is "his Mass"....
"He must increase, and I must Decrease."
- John the Baptist
Congratulations to Mr. Allen
Congratulations to Mr. Allen on an excellent article (which I found through a link from James Romenesko's popular media column at Poynter.org). I have not read many of the Garry Wills' books mentioned (yet), but three I have seen (not mentioned above) seem to me to have particular resonance today, especially in light of the apparent popularity (among Republicans anyway) of Sarah Palin: "Reagan's America: Innocents at Home" (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1987) "Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders" (Simon & Schuster, 1984), and "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (Simon & Schuster, 1999).
I think it is fascinating
I think it is fascinating that RomeSweetRome would invite Garry Wills to
discover some reality and common sense. If memory serves, it was but a matter
of weeks after the death of John Paul II that the Vatican was announcing the
great need to evangelize Europe, since the faith had apparently become such a little part of the lives of ordinary Europeans.
Reality question: did Europe need this new intervention or not, and if it did, how was it possible that the long pontificate of John Paul II, with all the massed throngs listening raptly to his every word, seemingly bore so little fruit?
Common sense question: John Paul II was always quoted as saying that "celibacy is a gift to the Church." Yet, as more young people declined to give themselves to a celibate life, it exacerbated the shortage of priests we now decry, resulting in the Sacrifice of The Mass (which we say is central to our faith) less frequently celebrated -- replaced by 'communion services' or parishes closed for lack of attendance.
Common sense tells us that if the gift of the Mass is central to our lives as
Catholics, a law like celibacy that could be changed with a stroke of a pen would not be allowed to atand in the way of Catholics attending it.
No need to have angels dance on the head of a pin in endless churchspeak. The Reality Common Sense shows us is that the Church, under John Paul II -- by its behavior -- regarded celibacy as a greater gift than the Mass.
Maybe that's why Europe needed so much renewed evangilization after his death.
Wills is "incurable
Wills is "incurable Catholic" but rejects the Real Presence? Sounds to me like he is well cured!
It's not clear that Wills
It's not clear that Wills rejects the "Real Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist. "Transubstantiation" is a scholastic philosophical attempt to explain what is essentially a mystery of faith. It may be that Wills simply finds this philosophical construct as an inadequate attempt to explain a mystery of faith.
I tend to share his disdain for the hierarchy's woeful hubris in claiming specious infallibility for every magisterial pronouncement. History provides incontrovertible refutation of these claims.
Claiming infallibility is an
Claiming infallibility is an oxymoronic statement.
"He scoffs at suggestions
"He scoffs at suggestions that Pope John Paul II revitalized institutional Catholicism: 'If he were all that popular, wouldn't more young men want to be like him? Wouldn't there be no priest shortage?' "
I've often had the same thought. Remember all those screaming teenagers at WYD in Rome and Madrid? Remember how they chanted "JP2! We love you!" and waved their rosaries?
He told them to (be priests or) have lots of babies. Now most of them are middle-aged. Where are the babies? Italy, Spain and Poland have some of the lowest birth rates in human history?
If they had really loved him, they would have kept his commandments. John Paul II's supposed popularity with youth was probably the most ridiculous claim made about his papacy.
Wills' end of career stance
Wills' end of career stance that the institutional church is simply becoming more and more irrelevant, if not downright tediously boring is more than right on. Grumpy old men in Rome and in Washington are simply no longer willing to accept the fact that the power and control they once exerted in the heyday of Roman Catholicism no longer exists. Who needs Rome, when one has one's own rosary?
I think that Wills is
I think that Wills is correct, the Institutional Church in the form of the Episcopacy has become irrelevant. There is just too much hypocrisy and lack of erudite consideration of the issues. One Priest I know says that the Bishops are Holy because they are prayerful, but I see very little action inspired by true humility or prayer. Actions are greater than words. Maybe Wills is right as Hans Kung says that over time the Church is indefectible. Infallible no but possibly over time indefectible. By the Church I mean, the People of God. All men of good will that are able to back it up with good actions. This does not seem to include so many of our current Bishops.
RomeSweetRome, above,
RomeSweetRome, above, states: "Leave your ivory tower and come to a college campus or a gathering of 20-30 year-olds sometime, sir. Your persepctive might change."
S/he ought to read the article more carefully. It says about Wills: "He is a weekly Mass-goer at the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, and prays the rosary every day."
Northwestern University ... Hmmmm ... sounds like a college campus to me. I'll bet there are even gatherings of students there on Sundays. Maybe even some 20 - 30 year-olds ...
I did read that.
I did read that. Northwestern University is not exactly the center of the universe:) Besides, going to Mass at a university is not the same as talking to the students. (all kinds of students--not just the ones that will agree with you) Ivory towers are self-made and can exist anywhere. Baby Boomers are sometimes so afraid of the orthodoxy of the youth that they try to pretend that it does not exist. On a side note, university Catholic centers, convents, monasteries, and seminaries that are faithful to the magisterium have an abundance of vocations and youth that are on fire about their faith and their Holy Father. But thanks for the comment anyway!
Michael Joseph writes,
Michael Joseph writes, "Northwestern University ... Hmmmm ... sounds like a college campus to me. I'll bet there are even gatherings of students there on Sundays. Maybe even some 20 - 30 year-olds ..."
All the worse for Mr. Wills that he seems to know so little about JP 2's impact on college students and priestly vocations. If the church apparatus supportive of Wills' perspectives would get out of the way, perhaps we would have even more of them.
Dear Beloved and Blessed
Dear Beloved and Blessed NCR
THanks to your excellent article here, I immediately ran to amazon to get both Papal Sins and Bare Naked Choirs. SOmehow the David Knowles book of that same title gets six hundred dollars, while Gary's gets one buck. I got Gary's, and glad to, ending as it does with the advice to go underground. In fact for years I have been attedning Mass in Mexico, where Wednesday we begin our sunrise Rosary Novena Processions for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Each day we pray for various social groups, from the Pope (his day is Thursday the eleventh, along with gang members, and the highway police, etc.) to prostitutes (their day is Sunday the seventh, along with farmers, ranchers, the customs house, the elderly and the city police, etc.). We also pray for prisoners, kidnapped, alcoholoics, lesbians, white slavers, miners, human smugglers, barkeepers, hairstylists, etc. No one gets left out. That's why even I can go to Church there in peace and pray, and not wonder if someone is going to refuse me Holy Communion for voting for Catholic Joe Biden. That's why, to quote Gary, I am still Catholic.
Thanks for your always excellent articles!
That is why of all Catholic journalism, I only keep you and the Worker, since Maryknoll will not accept me as a subscriber . . .
(Commonweal and America are not what they once were. You are all that and more!)
I too am pretty well poped out myself this past quarter century, and you yet keep Hope alive, and Faith and Charity too! You keep my in touch with the People of God as does my Parish in Mexico! Keep the Faith!
keep strong for a long long time . . .
One thing I can say as a
One thing I can say as a result of reading the article about Wills, is that, I don't come away with a greater love of Christ or of His Church. Please write about someone more inspiring and spiritual. Thank you. I love you all.
‘If pressed, Wills
‘If pressed, Wills expresses basic confidence that the church will eventually move in the direction he’s outlined: “After all, more people agree with my position than with the pope’s on a lot of these things,” he said.’ Well, it is good to know that he outlined the church’s future and the he is able to speak with such infallible certainty. He speaks like a true pope. Maybe that is why he is ‘poped out.’ Also, even if it is true that more people agree with his position, does not mean much. In two recent elections, most people agreed with George W. Bush. Was he, and were there right too? Finally, since it is mostly US citizens who are familiar with his writings and they would be the ones who agree with his position, it is a rather arrogant and ethnocentric attitude to suggest that they (hence Mr. Wills) speak for the whole church.
Wow... So he rejects "the
Wow...
So he rejects "the institutional Church"?
How ridiculous. I honestly hate to bring this to you all...but the Church before Vatican II was not outdated, evil, stupid, ignorant or anything else you want to call it. Its the same as the Church is now! VII changed ABSOLUTELY no doctrines of the Church.
You cannot be a Catholic and reject "the irrelevant episcopacy." I'm a Catholic college student who thinks that the entire idea of rejecting the institution of the Church is not only heretical but foolish. Its a protestant viewpoint. You want to embrace such a view then go episcopalian my friend.
"“It’s their choice. Anyway, they’re basically good, moral people, which is all that matters,” he said."
NCR no longer believes the sacraments are neccessary to be saved. PEOPLE WAKE UP! NCR WAKE UP! This is heresy!
Mr Wills...I don't know what to say to you. But what you are doing is not what Jesus wants. I look around...I have met young priests who are on fire with their faith! As well as young people. None of whom have your ideas of being a Catholic. Many of whom love the pope. No Mr. Wills...it is YOU and the heterodox movement in general which is irrelevant to the discussion.
Mr Wills and NCR...please understand that what your saying is against 2,000 years of Church teaching!
Garry Wills is a fresh
Garry Wills is a fresh breath of air -- in post-aggiornamento fashion -- and an inspiration for us Catholics who belive the official Church is stuck in a pot-hole of the Middle Ages. He is a testament to the fact that the Catholic Chrch can be truly "catholic."
" If they had really loved
" If they had really loved him, they would have kept his commandments."
The last time I looked, we are to keep GOD's commandments, not those of some human being titled pope.
I believe that Wills has the
I believe that Wills has the picture of Catholicism pretty well in focus. And contrary to "RomeSweetRome's" comment, who may be from an ultra-conservative Catholic University (like Franciscan U. in Steubenville, OH), the rest of the young people don't mirror the students at your school.
Just like eating too much candy and cookies, can give a sugar high to children, events like WYD can give a "vocation-high" to teens and young people in their 20's and early 30's. But to pursue a religious vocation--to be faithful to it all the days of one's life----takes so much more.
I would love to see a discussion between Gary Wills and George Weigel on
TV or in side-by-side columns in a magazine dealing with the state of the Catholic Church in America today. It would be great!
"Although he parts company
"Although he parts company with church teaching on papal infallibility, abortion and transubstantiation, he’s perfectly comfortable with the Nicene Creed: “I stick with the basics,” Wills said."
In other words, he no longer professes the Catholic faith. So then, how is he a Catholic? He is in schism, but he goes to Communion!
In other words, he is intellectually and morally schizophrenic, like NCR.
"They went forth from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, with us they would have stayed."
By gifting her children with
By gifting her children with the Rosary, our Blessed Mother offered an opportunity to enter into communion with her so that she could lead us ever closer to her Son, our Savior. It is a powerful form of prayer, as well as, a formidable spiritual weapon. If Garry Wills prays the Rosary daily as he claims, he surely does not invoke the power of the Holy Spirit as he does so. No one draws closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus without realizing that abortion is always an intrinsic evil, that the Holy Eucharist is, indeed, the Real Presence of Jesus.
The Rosary and The Eucharist are merciful, compassionate gifts given to the faithful for their sustenance, growth, and protection. I perceive here too much intellect, and not enough faith on Wills' part. Out of love for his eternal soul, I will pray a Rosary for Garry Wills.
Okay, question. After
Okay, question. After reading this article do we place Wills 10 feet above Augustine and Aquinas? Or 20?
Hey, is he also able to scoff at Natural Law reasoning which goes against partial birth abortion? Who wouldn't love liberal democracy when it affords us the legal right to kill our own children through such innovative means!
If the pre-Vatican II Church, with its full seminaries, schools, and hospitals staffed with actual nuns was a "ghetto", what does that make the Church of today? A hovel?
And by what description is Gary Wills a Catholic? Aren't transubstantiation and Papal Infallibility defined dogmas of the Faith? As well as opposition to abortion?
He wouldn't sit down for an interview with the Pope?! Sounds like a gentleman with a closed mind.
But hey, not to worry. Institutions such as the FSSP and Institute for Christ the King which celebrate the traditional Latin Mass are having no trouble attracting seminarians at all. So yes, the Church is moving in a new direction after forty years of "updating." It's just not anywhere near the direction Gary Wills and others like him may wish it to go. God bless.
"Anyway, they’re basically
"Anyway, they’re basically good, moral people, which is all that matters." That is exactly the sort of attitide among the class of '68 that ensures that Catholic schools (should I put that in quotation marks?) fail to pass on the faith. I wonder also if he and the peole who quote him actually listen to anything Benedict XVI says. If they did, they'd find he's not the Darth Vader they have made him out to be.
But, having said that, it's a bit rich for the Weigels and Neuhauses to call Wills a cultural erastian, given their own Republican captivity. They, like William Buckley, are deeply into 'Mater si, Magistra non' on many social and economic issues.
Re comment from Austin
Re comment from Austin Ruse:
I think you are mistaken that Garry Wills does not believe in the Real Presence. What is reported is that he doesn't believe in "transubstantiation" which is the Church's preferred explanation for how Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist but not a defined matter of faith.
To "RomeSweetRome," I write
To "RomeSweetRome,"
I write as a former eight-year seminarian, a 22-year Navy officer, an ecclesiastical official at diocesan and national levels, a deacon for more than 18 years (and counting) and now a full time college professor in Theology at a Catholic University, I take issue with your assertion that those of us in academe are somehow living in a cocoon. Professor Wills probably has far more contact with young adults, including young Catholic adults, than many other people. Our students remind us every day of their own engagement in the world, their commitment to principles, and their enthusiasm for the future. For those of us who bring extensive so-called "real world" experience to the mix, their engagement, commitment and enthusiasm is life-giving.
I submit, "RomeSweetRome," that perhaps you yourself need to break out of a cocoon of apparent ignorant self-righteousness which, when masquerading as Catholic orthodoxy, is quite offensive.
We raised four children of our own, and I took our two daughters to see JPII when he visited the United States. At the time, our older daughter was a junior in Catholic high school, and she was all agog about the Pope and talking about how much she loved and admired him. When I asked her to share why she felt this way, she couldn't think of a thing. It was all emotionalism and, in my opinion, the result of a growing and dangerous personality cult developing around the late pontiff. And that may be the most unfortunately part of his whole legacy.
Coriolanus IS SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus IS SHAKESPEARE FOR OUR MILITANT ERA
Wills does well to examine this lesser known play, as it reveals the effect upon the civilian populace burdenedby an authoritarian military-industrial complex and pathology of power
In fact we all do well to read once more Coriolanus to recover from the blood simplicity and torture of the past eight years, to resurrect from our fallen state of the UNited States of Torturedom and become a free people once more.
Read Coriolanus and you will think you are reading our past Secretary of Defense and Dick Cheney
Read Coriolanus with Wills' commentary and we may once more discover our Catholic heart and soul.
Meanwhile tomorrow before sunrise I go to pray the Roasry for peace in procession in MExico beginning the Novena of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and each day thereafter. Good to know Brother Wills prays as well.
I did read that; however,
I did read that; however, Northwestern University is not the center of the universe. Additonally, going to Mass at a university is not the same as talking to the students and is definitely not the same as talking to all types of Catholic students, not just the ones who will agree with you. Ivory towers are self-made and can exist anywhere. In fact, they often exist on college campuses.
Thanks for your comment anyway!
Gary Wills does speak
Gary Wills does speak accuratly about what a lot of Catholics including myself, who consider themselves truly universal catholics (small c), are thinking and doing in their faith life. I know from being part of a spiritual community of catholics that the pope's infallibility status is questionable and seems non-
Christ like. Christ was a man who walked among the people, all people, especially the marginalized. He was not about raising himself up like a king (or a pope), but about reaching out to the peoples as their brother, no better, no worse, living in this world and working to make people open up to God as a God of love. I truly appreciate those writers and speakers who leave themselves open to attack by standing in their truth. I have done so, but rather quietly. My spiritual community is one safe place to explore the frustrations of the institutional church. I could never do so with the body of catholics who sit in the same church I do and worship. So I say thank you to Mr. Wills for your life of being outspoken in a matter that truly matters to you—faith. And faith is much different than religion. Peace.
To a non-Catholic who's long
To a non-Catholic who's long followed these issues (RC friends, RC scholars, RC radio) it's obvious that the institution has devolved to little more than an aggressive GOP PAC. Wills actually holds this view...his faith is individual rather than imperial.
There seem two ideal outcomes for genuinely religious Catholics (like Wills):
1) push for correction of the institution's tax status.
2) create a replacement institution with something Jesus would recognize... like MoveOn.org. The 40% of Catholics that supported Obama are already in tune with MoveOn as well as Jesus, and the balance are reportedly quite elderly.
It says he supports legal
It says he supports legal abortion. Why?
Maybe he thinks that that governments shouldn't criminalize murder.
Maybe he thinks that all men aren't created eqaul.
Maybe he thinks that a fetus is not a human being.
I believe that covers the possibilities, but it would have been interesting to hear what his reasoning is.
Maybe he thinks that illegal
Maybe he thinks that illegal abortion would be worse.
Lol I'm looking at some of
Lol I'm looking at some of the replies to myself and RomesweetHome.
We're not smug. We're angry at heterodox Catholics who embrace the modernist heresy and tell us to get with "the spirit of the age." You people look for what is innovative, new, attracts people and the sort. You don't look for truth. Ya I'm one of those "ultra-conservative" college students. I go to a Catholic college of extreme liberalism with people talking about Islam and Judaism being equal to Catholicism and speakers talking about how great priestesses and disobeying the pope are. If being an orthodox Catholic who follows 2,000 years of dogma imparted by the holy spirit makes me an ultra-conservative then so be it.
Look at the religious orders and dioceses that are currently growing in vocations. Whether they celebrate the Traditional Latin mass or the Pauline mass they are orthodox in their faith and in the way they celebrate whichever rite of the mass they celebrate. And they grow.
Give me the name of one "Catholic" order which holds the views of Mr. Wills which is growing. Cmon now...abortion, priestesses, no transubstantian, no need to practice your Catholic faith...gimme a break. This is the year 2008 not 1968.
samuel brandon, MoveOn.org
samuel brandon, MoveOn.org is a vicious ignorant hate group. It is hardly something Jesus would endorse.
Anyway, God gave Wills incredible gifts. It's heartbreaking to hear that Wills has lost his faith and thereby put his soul in jeopardy. But it's encouraging to know that Wills apparently will now refrain from attacking God's Church.
"On a side note, university
"On a side note, university Catholic centers, convents, monasteries, and seminaries that are faithful to the magisterium have an abundance of vocations and youth that are on fire about their faith and their Holy Father"
This is clearly one of the most atrocious fallacies promoted by Legionaires of Christ and other such dissident groups.
I also have problems with
I also have problems with the church teaching on papal infallibility, family planning, transubstantiation, etc., and I'm also comfortable with the Nicene Creed.
It's Rome that that I am not longer comfortable with. Infallibility is bootstrap theology. I am the Church. You are the Church. The buildings, the tabernacle holding the Blessed Sacrament, the vigil light and the monstrance are all trappings of a human organization that has lost its way. Bread that is blessed in His name irrevocable and forever becomes something worth dying over. Women can lead a family but not lead a congregation. There are a lot of errors in Rome.
Rome does not trust the Holy Spirit to guide it. The most spiritual groups that I have found are when 5 or so families meet once a week in someone's living room. I seen that in 3 cities in my 60 years and am working to find one now in my new home.
I was tired of leaving mass angry. I have now left the heresy of the punishing god of the church of my childhood. But I am still offended by the stupidity that I believed eating meat on Friday would condemn anyone to hell.
I was in Lafayette, LA for the Gilbert Gauthe sex abuse scandal of 1985. Boston in 2002 was the beginning not of a sex scandal but of the scandal of the failure of the leadership of the Catholic Bishops. Starting with the newspaper articles of Jason Berry in 1985 and the he warnings of Fr Thomas Doyle and ending with the escape of Cardinal Bernard Law to Rome, I have had enough. Bernard Law belongs in jail.
Since I don't believe in the Marian obsession, particularly the rosary, or in statues, canonization, the magisterium, or in making up rules as we go along, I am much more comfortable in Bible based teaching. At least I have something to hold onto as opposed to the 1953 doctrine of the Mary's assumption bodily into heaven or that Mary was born without sin because she would later be the vessel for the birth of Our Savior. And my favorite, where the Church has no opinion on the apparition of Mary, but exactly how much Church money is made at Lourdes. "Today Lourdes has a population of around 15,000 inhabitants but is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season. With about 270 hotels, Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels in France after Paris." according to Wikipedia.
I have to laugh. I was baptized without my permission. And now not only does the Roman Catholic Church not have a complaint department, but there is now way to resign.
I don't agree with everything taught in my Lutheran Church but I now believe that my relationship with God is more important than my relationship with a church. I serve God not a church; if anything a church needs to serve me.
RJ Jennings
Miami, FL
Sorry, but I fail to see
Sorry, but I fail to see anything in Wills but an overweening sense of himself. It's no wonder that his logic is mixed-up and his sense of commitment is full of his own lack of spirituality. "You have hidden things from the intelligent, and have revealed them to infants", never rang more truly.
I am a new Catholic,
I am a new Catholic, confirmed at this years Easter vigil. What attracted me to the Church was many things, but predominantly the Eucharist (which I continually bumped up against Scripture before I made my confirmation) and the history of the Church. I have also long been concerned about the many Protestant denominations (with more springing up all the time). I felt the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church.
That being said, reading this piece on this author was enlightening. I would never read anything by him; it wouldn't add anything to my own growth as a Catholic or a citizen. So NCR, thank you for this piece.
And 'RealWorldProfessor,' your comments were condescending.
Obama got 40% of RC voters.
Obama got 40% of RC voters.
America knows why the remainder voted for someone proud of terror-bombing men, women, and children in Hanoi.
For the convenience of the 60%:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/links/indx-act.html#611e
Jesus evidently provided loaves and fishes to MoveOn.org gatherings.
I wish Garry Wills would sit
I wish Garry Wills would sit down with Pope Benedict for a serious but good-natured conversation on all matters, secular and religious. They would appreciate and respect each other. Both have superb minds. Both admire St. Augustine, both having done their doctoral dissertations on that great North African thinker. If Wills didn't mind, I would also throw into the conversation Cardinal George of Chicago, who also has a magnificent mind.
Speaking out when there is
Speaking out when there is disagreement with the hierarchy is not heresy if you are right. The hierarchy is NOT the Church. WE are the Church. If we see something is not right, we have an obligation to speak up. Wills is fulfilling that obligation and is being true to his conscience. The blind obedience to church leaders is a safe way out of having to truly form one's conscience and discern what is right and what is wrong. Many of us, like Wills, love our Church but are afraid that the leadership is more concerned with the exercise of power than about the well-being of all of the members of the Body of Christ. I hope that no one will want to tell me that the hierarchy was correct when they excommunicated Galileo for teaching the truth - that the earth was not the center of the universe. If the hierarchy can be wrong about that and many other things throughout its history, why should they not be questioned now?
We should thank John Allen
We should thank John Allen for the work that went into this article. I'm not sure why he didn't mention two books of Wills that are recent "What Jesus Meant" and "What Paul Meant"--no matter what Wills claims I suspect he'll be out one or these years with another "Meant" book.
I've come late to this article but I've enjoyed it but haven't had time to read all the comments so I might be repeating someone.
I live in very rural America (500 in my town)--the next town five miles away has 600. There is Mass there once a week on Saturday afternoon--the priest has to come 20 miles over moutainous roads. We get about 35-45 at Mass. Very few young people, if any. I'm 74 and most people are my age or older. There were plenty of Catholics here and actually still are plenty of baptized Catholics--but few at Mass.
So as Wills says--the church is becoming irrelevant.
On Saturday mornings I go to the local United Church of Christ for a discussion of "Faith and Issues" with my many Protestant friends. They struggle with belief. I don't know why but I don't---like Wills, I guess, I'm just a believing Catholic but not a papal Catholic--really a "Mass Catholic".
I didn't catch in the article that he didn't beleive in the "real presense" as someone claimed. I do. I feel lucky in the liturgy--something I hang on to which also hangs on to me. My UCC friends don't have this.
Wills is at a place where lots of Catholics are, ignoring the bishops and the Pope. One of the reasons I ignore all these men is that they've ignored Catholics in the church---they promulgate all of their condemnations (wholly sexual) to abstractions.
So finally good for Wills and good for Allen.
Dick Gaffney
Brother Gary, Sincere wishes
Brother Gary, Sincere wishes of grace and peace on this special day to you and your loved ones. The feast of the Immaculate Conception! Pray for our Mother, the Church upon earth, which rests securely in the Father's Isaiahian promise "..Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine". Once today is over , return to your Advent prayer and fasting with a glad heart; in anticipation of the Solemnity of Christmas ADESTE FIDELIS!... Grace and Peace with prayers always...
I do not know much about
I do not know much about Garry Wills. He appears to be a complex personality. I am a cradle Catholic who at times believes that many Catholic clerics have lost their moral compasses. I would not say that Wills has lost his moral compass but he does remind me of Catholic clerics who believe that they have all the answers and will not carry on dialogue with certain people.
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