Repent

Commonweal, April 23, 1999

When I first read the editorial note "Richard Neuhaus May Repent" [March 12], I thought of the old rule, so familiar to soldiers in an army, "Let no good deed go unpunished." Father Neuhaus has openly confessed that running a journal of opinion can itself be the near occasion of sin, the sin of crankiness; and that confession then provides the editors of Commonweal the opportunity for some rather captious free advice on how to avoid this sin.

But reading on in that same issue I found that John Garvey's column "Sneering at Religion" provided the best commentary on the editorial. There is a reason for the stress in Neuhaus's "The Public Square" on the sins of the cultural Left: the bias of the Left toward reporting its own flaws. For example, when Jerry Falwell averred that the anti-Christ is a Jewish male now roaming the world, the press made sure that Falwell's "exegesis" was trumpeted around the world, with an added fillip of jibes from late-night comedians ("Sounds like Sidney Blumenthal," Mark Phillips said tongue-in-cheek). In other words, the culture makes sure Falwell looks as silly as he often makes himself out to be.

But nonsense on the Left goes untreated, unreported, unexamined, except by, it seems, your own John Garvey and Richard John Neuhaus. Yes, dismay at leftish bias can seem like the censoriousness of the schoolmarm, if not handled correctly. But so, it seems, can mote-and-beam criticism of that dismay.

(Rev.) Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Denver, Colo.