Letters to the Editor

Dear Dr. McInerny,

The Catholic Dossier issue "Catholic Universities" dealt with a matter of great importance for the Church.
I have often felt that the strongest factor working against an acceptance or understanding of the Catholic Church is the attitude of some Catholics against their own faith.
If the Catholic faith was more faithfully proclaimed (e.g. in accordance with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and not contrary to it) it could break down the walls of prejudice many non-Catholics have built around themselves.
So many liberal-minded people in the Church want to keep people "in" by "loosening up," by letting uncomfortable views and practices disappear. Are they winning more "outsiders"? Hardly.
People escape to Eastern Mysticism, Islam, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons and so on where the regiment is a lot stricter. Why? They apparently see people there taking what they profess to believe seriously. If the responsible ones in the Church would do the same (instead of trying to water everything down) and teach the faith the way it should be taught - without making excuses and apologies for it  things would look better.

I know several dedicated Catholics here in Germany. It is not easy for them. Wanting to become a priest is a great thing  getting there with your faith still intact is something else. The universities where ongoing priests and servants of the Church are trained are liberal for the most part. They may not be liberal offically, but they are definitely so practically. A student often has to write papers which go against his convictions (and those of the Church) to get passing grades. He has to be careful not to anger his professor who could block his further progress if he dosen't dance to the current modern tune.
How can this be? Why does the Church look to such universities for the training of her servants? Yes, it is the bishop's task to proclaim and protect the faith not university professors but all these bishops have to attend the required schools before they can become priests and one day bishops. How much of the faith can they proclaim and protect if their training has been liberal in nature?

The one place where I saw academic training wonderfully combined with true devotion was at the priest seminary Heart of Jesus in Zaitzkofen here in Germany. I was deeply impressed by the dedication, learning and obvious joy in the faith of the students. Incredible! I wish the Church had more of them.
Thank you for listening.

Reformed Christian Fellowship
Pastor Max S. Weremchuk, L.S.T.
Notting Hill
Bahnhofstrasse 33
67283 Obrigheim (Albsheim)
Germany

St. Ignatius Institute

DEAR DR. McINERNY,

We thoroughly enjoyed the "Catholic Universities" issue of Catholic Dossier, especially the theory and doctrine side-by-side with featured colleges that remain faithful thereto. We did, however, want to bring to the attention of your readers a unique but often overlooked Catholic educational opportunity.

The Saint Ignatius Institute (SII) at the University of San Francisco is a capital "C" Catholic liberal arts program based on the Great Books. With a faculty that, without exception, took the Oath of Fidelity, the St. Ignatius Institute embodies Dr. Hitchcock's description of a true Catholic education:

It is "broad, encompassing theology, philosophy, history, and literature, the arts, political thought . . . while . . . embodying a principle of unity." It offers "a unique opportunity for students to wrestle with great texts . . ." and is "rigorous and demanding." The St. Ignatius Institute curriculum provides the USF student with virtually all of his general education units, and can be combined with any major at the university. Therefore, SII alumni are represented in various professions: medicine, law, nursing, teaching, business and finance, etc., as well as in the religious life. Students have the advantage of both faculty and peer support in their advancement in the spiritual and intellectual life and in the development of the whole person. They also have the opportunity to witness to the Truth in the university and city at large, while enjoying the support of the SII community. They are thus well prepared to defend the Faith in the world. The St. Ignatius Institute can "claim with full honesty that it [offers] an educational experience which [is] highly distinctive. It is a "living [example] of the cultural and educational diversity which liberals claim to prize."

Sincerely,
Anthony L. Francois, Esq., SII
Class of  '87
Suznnne M. Francois, R.N., SII
Class of' '91

A Great Pearl Overlooked

Dear Mr. McInerny:
I have just finished reading your July-August issue of the Catholic Dossier. Due to the nature of the symposium covered in this issue, I am compelled to question how responsible the Dossier was in providing the full picture.
It is injurious to the credibility of the Dossier that the Franciscan University of Steubenville occupied no more than a sentence in this latest issue. Certainly not all schools can be covered in such a symposium; however, clearly, in light of the recognition and praise given to the Franciscan University by the likes of our Holy Father, Cardinal O'Connor, etc., it is absolutely remiss of the Dossier to not highlight what is considered to be the most Catholic school in North America.
I do not accuse the Dossier of intent, but the omission in this issue seems to be indicative of a certain bias in current conservative-Catholic thought which places a stigma upon that which fully embraces Catholicism. This is an obvious problem.
Franciscan University embraces Catholicism in its fullness as it bears the fruit of a faith-filled intellectual community. The faculty are nationally recognized as guardians of church doctrine and truth, with many consulting the Holy Father on various issues of dogma and belief.

Further, how can the fact that 80% of the student body attends daily Mass be ignored? What about the great pearl of religious vocations and the crucial role these solid vocations will play in the future of our Church; not to mention, future educators, lawyers and nurses who will aid in the renewal of the Catholic church at the very foundations of our polity? Perhaps this is grandiose, but we must look at the challenge as one small institution at a time.

It is our duty to not turn our backs on that which is true and real. We cannot let the shroud of ignorance deter the promulgation of truth. Please, in future issues of the Dossier, be responsible to the task which you have set out to do; namely, the greater glory of God.

Cordially,
Tobias E. Schlueter

Cheers for University issue

Dear Mr. McInerny:
I recently subscribed to Catholic Dossier and I am very impressed by what I have read. I just graduated from college, and I found your issue on Catholic Universities to be extremely insightful and true. I didn't attend a Catholic university, but my Catholic high school was a den filled with liberalism, and I imagine Catholic universities to be much worse.
I just came back from attending the World Youth Day with the Holy Father in Paris, France. I have as a suggestion for a future topic the French Revolution. All my life I had been taught in school that the French Revolution was something wonderful, freeing the French people from oppression and injustice. On my pilgrimage to France, I learned about a French Revolution that was evil and out to destroy the Church. I saw statues that had beheaded by people who had an intense hatred for the Church. All the churches I entered in France had at one point been desecrated and destroyed during the Revolution. I think it's important that Catholics know about the complete truth of the French Revolution and not just what is taught in school.

Thank you,
Katherine Rossi
Jackson Heights, New York

Dear Dr. McInerny:
Pax et Bonum!
Your issue on Catholic Universities was so well done. I hope every Ordinary in the U.S. reads it, and the same for University Presidents. The basic mistrust in God's Revelation preserved in the Church He founded is behind this faithless inactivity. These powerful people too often want to be conformed to this world and not just be in the world. They all need "active willed commitment to truth, if they are to maintain intellectual integrity." (Faith and Certitude, by Thomas Dubay, Ignatius Press) To reject Faith, to reinterpret it, and to make of the University a faithless community is to commit it to a sterile paganism.

Sincerely,
Anthony D. Lutz
Vienna, Virginia

Readers, feel free to send your local Ordinary a copy.

New Subscriber: What Took Me So Long?

Dear Dr. McInerny:
I just received my first issue of Dossier and wonder where I've been the last few years. Congratulations on a splendid periodical and issue. Looking over the themes of the back issues, might I suggest a few topics that might merit consideration:

* Catholic elementary schools, their religious content, financing, standards, administration, and teachers' salaries among other subjects.

* Modern finance and international capitalism, ethics and economics, minority poverty, immigration, etc., and the social encyclicals updated.

* The Holocaust, European and American anti-Semitism prior to World War II, current Catholic-Jewish relations, and efforts to teach tolerance in Catholic schools.

* A review of philosophical studies in Catholic and secular colleges and universities, what is being taught, or not-taught and should be.

* The Latin language, its decline in Catholic schools and revival in secular institutions.

The sad state of theological studies is amply described in the current July/August 1997 issue. However, many of our children are looking forward to scientific and engineering careers in a world which is accelerating in that direction. How does one ensure that they remain "Catholic" when the only available top quality technical institutions are totally secular? The idea is to insist on the compatibility of science and religion, but in fact exposure for 4, 6, or 8 years to an atheistic/agnostic world-view must try the faith of the saint, let alone a youth... What hope is there?

Sincerely,
Roy Fenstermaker
Lakewood, California

Notre Dame Before 1967

Dear Dr. McInerny:
Official skepticism about the influence of the Magisterium in academic work is not something that began with the Revolution of 1967. Icebergs begin to form in frigid waters before they get big enough to be noticeable above the horizon.
A case in point: When I came to Notre Dame as a junior college transfer student in 1953, I had not yet heard about papal encyclicals, even though I had grown up in a devout family and in a small-town parish with dedicated priests and nuns (our staple was Scripture and the Baltimore Catechism).

Somehow in my senior year, after having taken three required Religion courses, news that such documents existed reached me through some extra-curricular source I cannot now recall. My natural reaction was one of astonishment that encyclicals had not been used as major source materials in my coursesÑ not just religion, but elsewhere in Arts and Letters.
When I mentioned this to a lay professor whom I still hold in high esteem for his piety as well as professional excellence, he answered that encyclicals were meant to nourish personal devotion and had no academic content or merit.
Evidently Land O'Lakes was a symptom, not the cause of dissent.

Sincerely,
John Gueguen
Professor Emeritus
Department of Political Science
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois

P.S. I did use encyclicals when I taught at Notre Dame in the 1960's, and even later on at Illinois State (for 24 years).

Had I Not Resubscribed...

Dear Dr. McInerny:
Had I not resubscribed to your publication, the insights of the "Catholic Universities" number would have escaped me. Fine work, and may God let you proliferate. I have a germane definition for you: ecumenical: that device at a Catholic college that prevents a Catholic college from being a Catholic college.

Sincerely,
Timothy V. O'Hara
Department of English, Theater and Classics
Rosemont College
Rosemont, Pennsylvania

Villain Suger

To the Editor:
When you read St. Bernard of Clairvaux on church architecture, you understand that what his contemporary and friend, Abbot Suger, was trying to do at St. Denis was no simple task. Bernard's approach was quite different from Suger's, and it is far from clear that he approved of the renovation and expansion projects undertaken by Suger at St. Denis. (See Otto von Simson's The Gothic Cathedral, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962, 111ff.) The introductory paragraph (in Catholic Dossier, vol. 3, no. 3, May-June 1997, p. 48) to the excerpt from Suger's essay on St. Denis unfortunately suggests that his project effectively "quashed" all of its critics. The story is not so simple.

It's also not evident that the Abbot's intentions at St. Denis were all that pure, despite the Dossier's reference to his "purity of heart". Suger's purpose for rebuilding the abbey church in such a majestic manner was manifold. Let us not overlook the fact that, in addition to being the spiritual father of a Benedictine community, he was also first minister of Louis VI and regent of France while Louis VII was away for the Crusade of 1147. Church architecture should lead the believer to God, but for Suger it was also a way to affirm the authority of the king.

I mention these details because I find an otherwise promising issue of Dossier on Church architecture to be consistently thin when it comes to details, distinctions, and nuance. One senses that these were omitted in order to make a point, namely that church architecture is good only if it makes substantial reference to, perhaps even seeks to revive, an architecture of the past when perhaps the faith was more purely lived.

The issue is also deficient in a more important way. I agree with Architect Stroik in his criticism of the modernist effort to invent an "architecture of our time," one that is "preferably abstract, progressive and scientific." (page 7) The modernist attempt to turn its back on the past is futile. Nature builds on, adjusts and corrects what the past provides; architecture needs to imitate this organic process. Life precedes and shapes the buildings in and around which it is conducted, and is in turn shaped by them. So is this the case for our life in the Church today. If that is true, as I believe it is, then simply to revive an architecture of the past is to admit that there is no life today worth "embodying" in a building. Even Gothic architecture built on, adjusted and corrected what the buildings of the past provided in order to embody a living faith. It did not seek simply to revive a past style, no matter how venerable that might have been.

Since Vatican II, we have been attempting to discover and perhaps rediscover not only an appropriate