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Caveat LectorBy Msgr. George G. HigginsThe Yard StickJuly 31, 2000Commonweal's review by the eminent British Catholic historian Eamon Duffy of Garry Wills' new book, "Papal Sin," is captioned on the cover of the magazine, "Mater, Si, Wills, No." The meaning of this caption may be lost on younger readers, but to people of my generation it will recall a notorious headline in William F. Buckley's magazine, National Review, of an article severely criticizing Pope John XXIII's 1956 social encyclical, "Mater et Magistra."The editors of the National Review took an extremely dim view of this encyclical and captioned their article about it "Mater, Si, Magistra, No." You would never know from reading Wills' book, "Papal Sin," that Wills himself was then on the staff of National Review or shared the magazine's extremely negative assessment of the encyclical, Mater et Magistra." As a matter of fact, a friend of mine who was a very reliable source once told me that Buckley himself said it was Wills who coined the caption "Mater, Si, Magistra, No." You may ask, so what? At this late date, almost 50 years after the encyclical was issued, what is the point of bringing it up in connection with Wills' book, "Papal Sin"? The point is that in his new book, Wills seems to have had a lapse of memory. On Page 82 he charges that Pope John XXIII's staff in the Roman Curia were involved in yet another "structure of deceit." How so? Because, he says, they consider the pope's openness to the modern world very naive. Wills alone can explain why he does not report that the National Review, with which he was then associated, thought that the pope was worse than naive. They thought he was dangerously wrong. Thus the caption, "Mater, Si, Magistra, No." Wills' silence on this issue raises questions for me about his objectivity here as an investigative journalist. In fact, it was his silence on this issue that made me suspicious right off the bat that though he has a justly deserved reputation as an investigative reporter, this book is the work of an angry polemicist prepared to put the worst possible interpretation on the words and deeds of ecclesiastical leaders. Wills says that unnamed people in the Roman Curia were critical of the encyclical. He doesn't know any more about that than I do, I am sure, and I happen to have been in Rome the day the encyclical was released. Redemptorist Father F. X. Murphy (Xavier Rynne) and I picked up our copies of the encyclical at the Vatican press office and then, before having time to do more than scan it, went to a scheduled appointment with the then editor of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, who gave us a full rundown on the background of the encyclical and patiently analyzed its contents for us. Father Murphy and I had better than average contacts in the Roman Curia, but we did not know then, and I do not know to this day, what the members of the Curia thought about the encyclical -- with the exception, of course, of the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, who thought highly of it indeed. The moral of this story is caveat lector --let the reader of "Papal
Sin" be on guard.
Papal Social Encyclicals Other Catholic Social Teachings General Articles of Interest Catholic Worker Connection Msgr. George Higgins Home Page E-Mail: Fr. Sinclair Oubre
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