Religion : interviews


g'MWI
One ofa Series of
Interviews on the

AMERICAN

CHARACTER

Centerfor the Study of

Democratic Institutions

Religion
Interviews by

Donald McDonald

with

Robert E. Fitch
(Page 3)

John J. Wright
(Page 31)

Louis Finkelstein
(Page 60)



This is one of a series of interviews being conducted by

Donald McDonald, Dean of the College of Journalism of
Marquette University, in connection with a study of the

American Character by the Center for the Study of Demo-
cratic Institutions. The Center is the principal activity of the
Fund for the Republic. Its work is directed at clarifying
basic questions of freedom and justice, especially those
raised by the emergence of twentieth century institutions.

Robert E. Fitch has been both Dean and Professor of Chris-
tian Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Cali-

fornia, since 1949. He was born January 25, 1902, in Ningpo,
China, the son and grandson of American Presbyterian mis-

sionaries. He received his education at Yale University, Union
Theological Seminary, Columbia University, and the Univer-

sity of Paris, and in 1936 was ordained into the ministry of
the Congregational Church. He is the author of seven books,
including "The Decline and Fall of Sex,” "The Limits of

Liberty,” and “The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self.”

John J. Wright is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Pittsburgh.
He was born in Boston, July 18, 1909, and attended Boston
Latin School, Boston College, St. John’s Seminary, and the

North American College in Rome, where he was ordained
in 1935. He completed graduate studies in Rome in 1939.
Bishop Wright has served as a professor at St. John's

Seminary, secretary to Cardinals O’Connell and Cushing of

Boston, and, in 1947, was made the first bishop of Worcester,
Massachusetts. He was appointed bishop of Pittsburgh in
1959. He has received numerous awards for his work in
civic, cultural, and intergroup affairs.

Louis Finkelstein has been associated with the Jewish Theo-

logical Seminary since 1920 and has been chancellor since

1951. He is also director of its Institute of Religious and

Social Studies. Rabbi Finkelstein was born in Cincinnati, June

14, 1895, and was educated at the College of the City of New
York, Columbia, and the Seminary. He is a director, among
other organizations, of the American Friends of Hebrew

University and a trustee of the Jewish Teachers College Fund.

He has written and edited numerous books.

The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions is a

non-profit educational enterprise established by the Fund

for the Republic to promote the principles of individual

liberty expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the

Constitution. Contributors to publications issued under the

auspices of the Center are responsible for their statements

of fact and expressions of opinions. The Center is respon-

sible only for determining that the material should be pre-

sented as a contribution to the discussion of the free society.

Sample copy free; prices on bulk orders, and a full list of

other Center publications, will be provided on request to

Box 4068, Santa Barbara, California.

Copyright © 1962 by the Fund for the Republic, Inc.

There are no restrictions on the use of this material.

Oaadcfine'-’



One of a Series of
Interviews on the

AMERICAN

CHARACTER

An Interview with
Robert E. Fitch

Q Dr. Fitch, what would you say are the central
characteristics of American Protestantism?

fitch: For one thing, it is pluralistic. As a matter of

fact, for this country it is pluralism. It is pluralism within

the Christian faith. It stands for an extraordinary degree

of diversity and freedom and individuality.

Q Is this good or bad, or a mixture of the good
and the bad? Would you like to see greater

unity in Protestantism?

fitch: It is a mixture, I think. You have to beware
of two extremes, as Reinhold Niebuhr keeps pointing

out: the extreme of tyranny where you have a mono-

lithic structure (I am opposed to a monolithic structure
in any church, state, or other institution); the other

extreme is simply anarchy or chaos in which nobody

can get together on anything. On the whole, I like the
diversity within the framework of the Christian faith.

Q Are there some kinds of diversity that would
be inimical to the vitality of religion, or to

the theological continuity of religion?

3



fitch: One thing I am disposed to say—and, of
course, some Protestant theologians would disagree with

me—is that the continuity of Protestantism is not, in a
clean-cut sense, a doctrinal continuity. It is rather a con-

tinuity of faith, hope, and love as defined by St. Paul in

the famous passage in I Corinthians, 13, and elsewhere.

We share a common faith, a Christian hope (not a
secular hope), and the Christian ideals—love, justice,

righteousness, and everything implied in these ideals.

But there is a great deal of disagreement on the details.

I find it quite significant that there has been really only

one great systematic theologian in the entire history of

Protestantism, John Calvin. And, of course, he isn’t ac-

cepted as authoritative by everybody, even by all con-

temporary Calvinists. We don’t have one unequivocal
norm and doctrine to which we can turn, such as I

believe the Catholic Church has. So there is flexibility

here. No, I would say that the key words are one in faith,

one in hope, and one in love, with a great deal of differ-

ence in liturgy, in discipline, in structure, in organization,

and in the particular gifts of the spirit by which one

church exhibits one aspect of the gospel and another

church exhibits another aspect.

Q There are, 1 understand, forces within Prot-
estantism now seeking greater unity. I am
wondering what diversities make unity dif-

ficult to achieve. Are they theological or lit-

urgical differences?

fitch: The World Council of Churches was able

to get together on a fundamental statement of beliefs.

Now that was not an elaborate credal formula covering
several pages, or comprising an entire book. But it was

a basic statement of belief and there was a surprising

amount of agreement. There is also, I think, an increas-

ing measure of agreement on what constitutes Christian

social ethics. One sharp point of disagreement is con-

cerned with polity or church organization, whether it is

Presbyterian, Episcopal, or Congregationalist—those are

4



the three basic forms, roughly speaking. Again, there

are sharp differences concerning the sacraments, whether

these have to do with the Lord’s Supper, or with Bap-

tism, or possibly with the laying on of hands which in

some churches would be the sacrament of Ordination.

Those are the two areas—church organization and sacra-

ments—where there occurs a kind of disagreement that

cannot be easily overcome.

Q Which strands of American Protestantism
have been dominant or most influential in

the history of both Protestantism and the

nation? Have some denominations been in-

fluential at certain times and other denomina-

tions influential at other times?

fitch: When one speaks of the origins of the coun-
try and its constitutional structure, I don’t think there

can be any doubt that the preponderant influence was

Calvinist-Anglican. And when we speak of Calvinists,
we must remember that on the right wing are Presby-

terians, in the center are Congregationalists, and on the

left wing are the Unitarians. Also we have to remember

that a good many Anglicans, even from the time of

Shakespeare and running on down through a thinker

like Malthus, have been peculiarly Calvinist in their

theology. Malthus’s writing is the most Calvinist treatise

on social ethics ever written. I would say that, later on,

other unestablished churches enter into the American

picture with greater force, notably the Methodists and

the Baptists. Numerically they are preponderant.

Q Did they also have a formative influence on
Protestantism and the nation?

fitch: They have the social ethics that I believe

have been influential. The Baptists have been the most

intransigent on the question of the separation of church

and state. Another thing they stand for with great rigor

is freedom of religious conscience—not necessarily civil

5



or academic liberty, but religious liberty. The Methodists,

in company with the Quakers, have exerted more influ-

ence for the welfare of the poor, the oppressed, the down-

trodden (whoever they happen to be—whether slaves or

Negroes or an harassed proletariat). In later times, I

would say that the strength of the Calvinists, along with

the Anglicans, has been in the field of general civil,

political, and academic liberties. They have a strong pas-

sion for constitutionality and a particular talent in that

area. I would link the Jew and the Catholic with the

Calvinist so far as their common regard for law and
constitutional process is concerned.

Q Do you think some of the smaller groups
have exercised an influence out of propor-

tion to their numerical strength?

fitch: That is very hard to estimate. The Congrega-

tionalists—that happens to be my church—are a small
group, but historically they were not small in the begin-

ning of this country; they were quite preponderant and

had an enormous influence. I would guess that the Quak-

ers have had an influence out of proportion to their num-

bers. Somehow they have a spiritual prestige that reaches

beyond the boundaries of their own particular organiza-

tion. Their influence has been felt both in their work for

peace and in the area of social justice and racial relations.

Q If private judgment and freedom are things
Protestants have in common, is there a tend-

ency among them now to look for more

authority? 1 have been reading articles in re-

cent months that would seem to indicate a

desire for a greater degree of authority.

fitch: The problem of authority is always an acute

problem with the Protestant. There is no use disguising

that. I think he is pretty clear about what he means by

liberty—the kind of spiritual liberty that St. Paul spoke

of, that Martin Luther advocated—and the freedom of

6



conscience that Roger Williams defended. But Protes-

tants are always having a debate on authority. Histori-

cally, our authority is the Bible. Then the question arises

:

who has the correct interpretation of the Bible? Since we

cannot say in a simple way, “the church has that author-

ity” because the question arises, “which church?” we tend

to develop interpretations that are fundamentalist or lib-

eral or orthodox or neo-orthodox. This debate is endless.

Q Is the neo-orthodox group having an influ-
ence today out of proportion to its numbers?

fitch: The “orthodox” part of the neo-orthodox

group, as I see it, is an effort to recover the insights of

the great Protestant reformers—notably Martin Luther

and John Calvin; it is also an effort to recover the essen-

tial meaning and the authority of the meanings to be

found in Holy Scripture. The “neo” part is that, unlike

other fundamentalist or orthodox groups, these men are
no longer quarreling with the natural sciences; they are

not at war with Darwin or Copernicus, nor are they

conducting a battle with the higher critics. This neo-

orthodoxy is illustrated by men like Reinhold Niebuhr
and his brother, the late H. Richard Niebuhr, but not

so much by Karl Barth. This kind of neo-orthodoxy has
pretty well won over the liberal camp in the United
States today.

Q Do you see any relationship between the
credal character and the moral effectiveness

of religion? If there is credal relaxation, will

moral relaxation follow?

fitch: I am sure that the things you really believe
make all the difference in the world in how you behave.
On the other hand, to be a bit technical here, when we
speak of Protestantism it is very important to distinguish

between what we call “credal” and “non-credal”
churches. It happens that the preponderance of the mem-
bers of the student body and faculty of the particular

7



seminary where I teach, the Pacific School of Religion,

come from what would be called non-credal churches.

They have a faith; and they have articulated and defined,

simply and briefly, their faith and hope and love in God
and Christ, in the Scriptures, and in the destiny of man
within that framework. But they are not credalists, they

are not like the Calvinists or classical Anglicans or

Lutherans. They don’t have a “Thirty-Nine Articles.”

They don’t have a Westminster Confession of Faith.

They do not define their doctrine with rationalistic pre-

cision; in fact, they are very skeptical of that approach.

So if you ask: “Does credalism make a difference?” I

would say, with a good Calvinist or Anglican, “Of course,

it makes a difference.” But with regard to a “non-credal”

church—the Methodist, Congregationalist, Disciples—I just

wouldn’t use that term. I would say: “What is his faith?

How does he define it? Does he really hold it?” If he
does, this makes a difference in his behavior.

I would like to make one more general remark here.

Within the last decade or two in Protestantism there cer-

tainly has been a marked revival of concern for doctrine,

even among the “non-credal” churches. This can be seen

in an institution like ours, which, as I say, is in a kind of

non-credal tradition. Our students, however, are turning

increasingly to courses in historical theology, in sys-

tematic theology, in the doctrine of God, the doctrine of

Christ, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of the church.

While they do not want a binding dogmatism in these

areas, they do feel it is important to know what you

believe with some degree of precision and to act accord-

ingly. The Congregational Church is a good example of

one definitely moving back toward a greater clarity and

system and order in its beliefs.

Q Protestant churches also seem to be return-
ing to the use of altars, vestments, candles,

communion services, and the like. Even the

architecture of the new Protestant churches

is reflecting a desire for a more formalized

liturgical character in church services.

8



fitch: We may as well lay some things on the line.
Apart from the historically established churches of

Protestantism—that is, the Presbyterians in Scotland, the

Anglicans in England, the Lutherans all over Europe—

the Protestant sects are the unesthetic sects. They are

like classical Biblical Judaism for that matter. They

throw out the idols. They heave out the incense. They

will have no images. Indeed, they are skeptical of any

elaborate liturgy, or music, or painting. This is a part of

their history. What they did was, I think, defensible at

the time that they did it. They were necessary actions at

a certain moment—to cast down Baalim, as it were. Since

then, many Protestant churches have tried to recover

the feeling for beauty in their worship, in their architec-

ture and liturgy. I don’t see this occurring in any whole-

sale way, however.

In this San Francisco Bay area, for example, we have

only one Congregationalist minister who follows rather

elaborate liturgical practices in his church on Sunday.

He is at liberty to do so if he wishes, but he is the only
one who is doing it. I know of some Unitarian pastors

who do it. I think that, historically speaking, there is

something of a tension between the liturgical-esthetic

emphasis in religion and the prophetic passion for social

ethics in religion. The Quakers are almost devoid of any

feeling for the esthetic. If you can combine the esthetic

with the prophetic, fine, but I don’t know who does it.

Q Lewis Mumford has a comment on this in
his book, The Human Prospect: “In the bare-
ness of the Protestant cathedral of Geneva

one has the beginnings of that hard barracks

architecture which formed the stone tene-

ments of seventeenth century Edinburgh, set

a pattern for the austere meetinghouses of

New England, and finally deteriorated into
the miserable shanties that line Main Street.

The meagerness of the Protestant ritual

began that general starvation of the spirit

which finally breaks out, after long repres-

9



sion, in the absurd jamborees of Odd Fel-
lows, Elks, Woodmen and kindred fraterni-
ties

”

Those are pretty harsh comments by Mum-
ford. I don’t know whether the shabbiness of
Main Street and the capers of Woodmen and
Odd Fellows can be laid at the Protestants’
doorsteps. But there was certainly an esthetic

and emotional sterility in some of the
churches, as you have said.

fitch: I want to concede a good part of what Mum-
ford says. In fact, I said much of that a moment ago.
But I think Mumford misses an important aspect of the
human spirit. That was not a total starvation of the
spirit. May I refer to a time when I was a graduate
student, studying on a fellowship from a theological

seminary? I was studying philosophy and theology at

the University of Paris, and almost all of my graduate
associates were artists and art students. Members of my
own family have been in the fine arts. But I think we have

to face the fact that there is a tension, and a sharp one,

between the kind of person who is a Hebrew prophetic

type, an Amos, with a passion for social justice, and the

kind of person who is an artist out of, say, the Renais-

sance tradition. The two just don’t look at life the same

way; they don’t think and feel the same way. Somehow

or other both of these people are needed in God’s world

and in His church.

The Puritan-Protestant tradition at the start went back

to the prophetic model, and some of the original prophets

were rather ferocious, savage-looking fellows. Elijah,

alongside of Jezebel, was an uncouth, untutored heathen

who didn’t have correct table manners and who didn’t

know how to behave himself in the parlor. She was a

civilized lady from one of the more advanced cultures

of the time. So we must be aware of both sides of the

picture. I am unwilling to let go of the ethical and social
and prophetic heritage of the church if that is the price

I have to pay for recovering a feeling for beauty.

10



Q But you are making no judgment as to
whether or not that is the price one has to

pay for color, beauty, emotion, in religion?

fitch: Yes, I will say that human nature, being im-

perfect, tends to specialize in one direction or the other.

I don’t know of anybody who really combines them.

Q John Conway of Harvard wrote a paper on
“Standards of Excellence” in a recent issue

of Daedalus in which he says that we do have

a “pluralist problem” in this country but that

we are not a “religiously pluralist” nation.

He thinks the “real religious tension ...is not
between Catholic and Protestant, or between

various Protestant groups; it is between the

traditional faiths on the one hand, the new

democratic and secularist humanism on the

other.” He says that the “logical end of
Rousseauism is a civic religion,” and he be-

lieves we now have, in fact, a civic faith and

religion. He thinks “President Kennedy's
anxiety during the [i960] campaign to de-

limit very carefully the area in which his own

religious convictions would operate seems to

point to the existence of a generally held

socio-political creed with, in the anthropo-

logical sense, some religious overtones.”

fitch: Of course, the logical outcome of Rousseau-

ism is a civic religion. The chapter tacked on to the end

of the Social Contract makes it clear that one must

establish a religion of the state. A secular idolatry of
democracy is as damnable a thing as a secular idolatry

of any other kind of government. It is fundamental to

the religious heritage — whether Jewish, Catholic, or
Protestant—that our loyalty to God is higher than our
loyalty to the government, and that the government, in

some sense, stands under the criticism—not under the

authority—of the supreme commandment of God. If we

11



are losing that, we are heading toward some kind of
totalitarianism.

Q Do you think we are losing that heritage?

fitch: No. I think Conway’s is the expression of a

kind of pious humanist hope that has become increas-

ingly disreputable with thoughtful people today.

Q He believes that “the American democracy

,

without any question, contains a substantial

Rousseauistic component, as does any sys-

tem which contains the concept of the sov-

ereign people” He adds: “Thus, there is pres-
ent the idea of the general will which pre-

supposes a cultural and ethnic homogeneity,

if not now, then ideally in the future. At any

rate, such an idea cannot easily tolerate really

fundamental diversities of value and outlook

and belief in the entity known as the sov-

ereign people”

fitch: As I say, he states correctly the logic of

Rousseau’s Social Contract. But the important political

difference lies between the heirs of Rousseau and the heirs

of John Locke. Our kind of political democracy came

out of Locke’s second treatise on civil government, thank

heavens, and not out of Rousseau’s Social Contract.

Ours is a kind of democracy that does allow for plural-

ism and diversity. By the way, I think that Gerhard

Lenski’s recent study of The Religious Factor would

contradict Conway’s statement of facts. That study indi-

cates that we are moving even more definitely toward a

pluralist, even a compartmentalized, society religiously.

At any rate, I think it most unlikely that we will all get

melted down into one common secular amalgam.

Q 1 don’t like to throw long quotes at anyone,
but 1 wonder if I could give you one more

from Conway’s paper: “In the absence of a

12



commonly shared religious faith in the old

sense [in the United States], we have sub-

stituted an esthetic for an ethical standard.

We evaluate and judge a man not on the basis

of his moral life—how can we with so many

differing ideas of what the correct moral life

is? But instead on the basis of his gifts and

the skill and integrity with which those gifts

are realized. . . . This does not by any means

exclude moral considerations. . . . They are

an important component but they have mean-

ing only insofar as they affect the esthetic

totality. ... The brilliant dishonest lawyer

fails in excellence because his performance

constitutes an esthetic affront. He does not
present that harmony and unity and single-

minded intellectual drive which his duty to

his talent demands and merits. The observer

experiences, not a moral shock in the old

sense, but the shock of .. . bad form.”

fitch: I disagree with this radically; I don’t think it

is an accurate statement of fact. The important thing to

remember about American history — whether you are
Catholic, Protestant, or Jew—is that our cultural pattern

comes out of a Hebrew-Christian religious heritage and

that our basic differences lie within this tradition. Within

that Hebrew-Christian tradition we have certain great

ethical ideals which, in fact, all people share. They are

ideals of social justice that come to us out of the Old

Testament. They are ideals of the love of persons and

respect for the person that come to us from the New
Testament. There is the later ideal of liberty, whether it

is spiritual, civic, or political. These things are shared

by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. And we don’t get
away from them. I am afraid we are not sufficiently
aware of this until we go and live in another country

where there is no such heritage.

I would like to add that, as far as I can see, any agnos-

tic or atheist in any country is always parasitic for his

13



ethics upon the religious heritage of that country. Nehru

is an agnostic, but he gets his ethics out of the Hindu

tradition as shaped by the religious heritage of his people.

A small number of the intelligentsia in this country think
they have an autonomous ethic. Actually they have

cribbed it from the Hebrew-Christian tradition. I think

there is a fundamental unanimity on this.

Q I suppose the question that arises here is how
long the Hebrew-Christian momentum will
continue to be effective. The farther one gets

away from one's religious roots, the less

vitality one has.

fitch: That is true. If this secular humanist minority

became a majority, the culture would begin to fall apart.

Q How would you evaluate the part that Amer-
ican Protestants have played in the area of

social justice—race relations, labor-manage-

ment relations, and the like? Will Herberg

points out that in the early years of America

“frontier Protestants” were closely identified

with the lower, downtrodden, and exploited

classes of people, but that as a middle class

emerged, they tended to get away from some

of their early social concerns. Is that true?

fitch: To make a judgment you have to bear in

mind that the particular social area that needs attention

changes from time to time. In the 1930’s, for example,

there was need for radicalism and bold leadership for the

rights of labor. That would not be so true in the 1960’s.

I was myself active in helping labor unions “way back

then,” but I don’t feel the same need to do that now.

The race question is more important right now.

Q If you want to consider the contemporary
scene, what would be your estimate of the

Protestant leadership in social matters?

14



fitch: We are humbly proud of the fact that some
of the very fine leadership among the Negroes them-

selves comes right out of the Protestant church—Martin

Luther King and people of that sort. This is always dis-

turbing to the secularists because they are persuaded

that religion is an opiate and that Christianity has been

used to drug the Negro into acquiescing, that it has been

used to keep him in a subservient state. They have become

rather annoyed to see that out of these Christian churches

have come some of the boldest leaders of reform within

the Negro movement itself.

To complete a thought in my answer before this, some
of the current social issues needing attention, in addition

to the race issue, are those involving civil liberties, free-

dom of speech, press, and assembly, and world peace. I
would add here that I don’t care what church you are

talking about, or what political party for that matter,

the bold, prophetic leadership is always a minority.

Human nature is not constituted otherwise. The larger
part of the church, of the government, of the university,

and of the community in general will always be on the

side of the status quo.

Q Do you think the minority is too small at this
time, or about right, or gratifyingly large?

fitch: The minority is always too small. The Old

Testament furnishes a good example of that; there were

only a few great prophets. In the long run, of course,

they were the most important people. But the great body

of people in Israel were content with their priestly, litur-

gical practices, content with a little Baal worship on the

side. And the prophets have to do what they can. We
never have enough of this kind of bold leadership.

Q Not long ago I read a lengthy report in The
New York Times in which Protestant lead-
ers in the Middle West and Texas were

quoted as saying that extreme religious and

economic conservatives were trying to pre-

15



vent ministers and church councils from

speaking out on social matters. Is this a

serious problem within Protestantism today?

fitch: I am glad you brought that up because I
would like to make this cheerful statement about our

church. It is notable, I think, that ever since the founding

of the Federal Council of Churches (now the National

Council of Churches), which is the preponderant group

of Protestant churches in this country, that organization

has always spoken in a boldly prophetic manner on mat-

ters of war and peace, racial discrimination, economic

justice. They may have made errors from time to time—
I think they have—but I would rather have a group that

sticks its neck out and makes a mistake now and then; at
least it is trying to do battle for justice.

Q At the time of the Freedom Rides through
the South, a number of Catholic publications

noted that there were no Catholics present.

fitch: I am still pluralist, and I would insist on a
diversity of strategies. Four or five years ago I attended a

conference in Chicago, and I remember vividly a Cath-

olic priest from New Orleans who spoke of the battle for
racial justice in the South. I was tremendously impressed

by his stand, and by the kind of thing he was doing.

There is more than one way to do this job; the way that

gets the headlines in the newspapers is not necessarily

the most important or most effective way. I was back

East a short time ago and there was a racial flare-up in

Levittown on the question of whether or not a Negro

could be admitted. I wanted to know why the church

was not doing something in the matter, and some friends

of mine jumped on me for raising the question. I looked
into the matter and found to my personal satisfaction
that a Congregational minister had in fact assumed a

position of leadership in that quarrel and was trying to

see that justice was done. But that minister was not

operating in a way to capture headlines.

16



Q Not long ago in an interview in U.S. News
& World Report on the general question of
the moral climate in the United States, you

painted a rather bleak picture of the moral

condition of the nation. You said that a great

deal of the blame for the moral breakdown

in this country must be placed on the Amer-

ican home. Since that time, have you detected

any improvement in the moral climate?

fitch: That interview was in 1960. I am disposed
to say that 1960 was a turning-point in this regard. I

think that roughly from about the end of World War I
to about 1960—that is a forty-year stretch—we had a

rise of relativism, of permissiveness, of a high degree of

tolerance and laxity in the field of morals. We had the
breakdown of what were erroneously called “Puritan”

standards; actually they were Victorian standards. I

think this was accentuated from the end of World War II,
1945, to about 1960. It came to focus in the beatnik

movement, the fake-Bohemian group that developed

then. I call them “fake-Bohemian” because the genuine

Bohemians who appeared after the first World War,
whom I knew and with whom I lived for a while, had
some ideals about morality and art and held to them

passionately. They were mistaken, but they were willing

to suffer and work for their ideals.

Now I think the moral breakdown over this forty-year
period has about run its course. I visit college campuses

and I talk to students. I have a feeling that they are turn-

ing once again to a regard for moral law, for standards

and principles. Very young parents today are not as

permissive as their parents were. They believe in certain

objective standards of behavior that have to be enforced.

Q Dr. Louis Finkelstein has said that there is a
good deal of spiritual and philosophical con-

fusion among the professors in our colleges

and universities. This, in turn, would cause

confusion among the students, l imagine.

17



fitch: I was a college professor most of my life:
I think I know that area better than I know the seminar-

ies. There is no doubt that relativism and positivism have

been dogma in American colleges and universities for a

long time. But there are signs that the intellectuals are

getting fed up and are turning away from it.

Q How would you compare the churches with
the schools and family life as a force influen-

cing the behavior of men? Can the churches

accomplish much if parents and schools are

not doing their share?

fitch: I find it hard to isolate the church from the

home and the school.

Q Do you think the schools are hampered in
their moral influence because they must be

“neutral” with respect to religion and the-

ism? 1 don’t want to bring in the whole

church-state issue here, but are the public

schools handicapped because they must re-

spect the conscience of the secular . . .

fitch: I think that, in our religiously pluralist soci-

ety, we cannot get religion into the public school. But I

also think that on certain basic questions of Christian

ethics the public school does a better job than the church

—and I don’t care which church we talk about, your

church, mine, or someone else’s. The public school is the

one place, better than any other, in which young people

from different social, racial, and religious groups are

brought together. You say: “Is this Christian brother-
hood?” I say, “Yes, it is Jewish-Christian brotherhood

within the framework of our society.” The public school

is doing that job in a way that no church organization

can. I welcome it and don’t want to see it weakened.

Q Once you get these children together, what
kind of moral truth is being communicated?

18



fitch: The practical answer, I think, is that in any

community a high percentage of the public school teach-

ers are apt to be quite active in the churches of the com-

munity. In effect, the moral standards—at least the moral

standards, not the explicit theology—of the public school

will be those that come out of the religion of the com-

munity. These standards may not be taught in any for-

mal, unequivocal manner. But they are communicated

by discipline, by custom, by the folkways of the school.

I think we Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are just going

to have to face the fact, if we are going to live together

in one country, that there will be this institution, the

public school, which accomplishes this particular job

and that we cannot turn it into a theological seminary

or a church.

Q To what extent has American Protestantism
become Americanized at the expense, per-

haps, of some of its central elements?

fitch: That question, following Herberg, could be

asked of all of us. Is American Catholicism, for instance,

different from Gallican Catholicism? This is always a

problem in any culture—for Protestants, Catholics, or

Jews.

Q It is intensified in ours, isn’t it?

fitch: I’m not sure about that. It is good to have

people point it out to us when it has happened. But any

religion that is universal, that reaches out beyond na-

tional boundaries, faces the problem of cultural adapta-

tion. It has got to do some adapting in order to reach the

people, to talk to them, and to function in terms of their

problems. At the same time it must keep its transcendant

and universal emphasis. While I can be pretty rabid about

my own church when it has succumbed to acculturation,
generally speaking I think the three faiths have been able

to retain their basic religious integrity to do the larger

task of criticism and judgment of society and the culture.

19



Q In your U.S. News & World Report inter-
view you were critical of the sociological and

psychological determinism that you saw in

America, the idea that human behavior is
beyond the control of the individual person.

Do you think the determinists have re-exam-
ined their position in recent years?

fitch: I think there is the beginning of a change.

It is as simple, if you want to put it this way, as a recov-

ery of the belief in the freedom and responsibility of the

human will. After all, that is an ancient Biblical affirma-
tion. For a while we had a kind of atheistic determinism

—sometimes I call it the doctrine of atheistic Calvinism—

which held that the real, omnipotent God, the determiner

of human destiny, is heredity and environment. But I
detect, increasingly, among counselors and psychologists,

and among existentialists in philosophy and religion, an

affirmation of human freedom and responsibility.

Q It seems to me that in the light of the omni-
potence of science and technology a feeling

of disillusionment has set in. This is a kind

of paradox. We are pouring more and more
of our national resources into science, into

research and technology, but at the same

time the people are expecting less in terms

of the Utopia that an earlier generation

thought the scientists could deliver.

fitch: The American people have lost three or four

idols—Baalim—in the last decade or two. This is a part of

our psychic and religious trauma. One is the belief in

Mammon, in the power of wealth to do everything. We
have lost our faith in that because even though we are

now a wealthy country, very affluent, it does not solve

all our problems. Second, we have lost our faith in the

omnipotence of science, in the belief that if you have

enough technology all problems and difficulties will be

solved and overcome. It has become clear that with

20



enough technology we can now blow ourselves to hell.

A third secular faith the American people have lost is
the belief that their unique and manifest destiny has

been to be the new, chosen Israel of contemporary his-

tory. The loss of these three idolatries is a basic factor in

explaining the revitalization of genuine religious faith.

Of course, some Americans are also turning to Zen and

Vedanta and some of the theosophical cults.

Q You said affluence solved no problems .
Would you say it has created some?

fitch: It certainly does create problems. I think

Aristotle was right, politically and sociologically, when

he affirmed the ideal of the mean. If you are too poor or

too rich you get into a lot of difficulties, and, strangely

enough, they often resemble each other. The addiction

to alcoholism, to sexual indulgence, to gambling, to the

quest for excitement, are common to people at the bot-
tom and at the top of the economic scale, but not so

much to those in the middle. We have gotten away from
widespread poverty and we are moving in the direction

of affluence and taking on the vices that seem to accom-

pany affluence.

Q What is your estimate of the relevance of
Protestant sermons to contemporary prob-

lems, say, this problem of affluence? Do they
reflect what you have called the “prophetic

mission” of the church?

fitch: I think there is a fair amount of preaching

that stresses our obligation of philanthropy, as persons

and as a nation, our obligation in charity toward less

privileged peoples all over the earth. And there are par-
ticular occasions and moments when people are called
upon to give and to contribute. No doubt there is not
enough of this; there never is. I would guess, however,

that if there is a trend in Protestant preaching it is toward

more depth in theology, to the basic doctrines in theology

21



that undergird our moral outlook and our beliefs about

God and Christ.

Q Much has been made about the moral con-
duct of American prisoners of war in Korea,

the collaborationism, lack of emotional sta-

bility, physical stamina, courage, and the

lack of unit and personal loyalty that was

found in distressingly large numbers during

that war. Do you think this reflected a na-
tional moral problem in the United States?

fitch: I was not in Korea, but I was a chaplain with

an attack transport during World War II. I must say as

soon as peace arrived I found myself shocked by the

rapid disintegration of morale of our fighting men. It did

not compare, of course, with what occurred during the

Korean war, but I felt at that time, as I felt during the

Korean episode, that the trouble with most Americans,

quite simply, was that they did not know what they were

fighting for. To put it in larger terms, they did not know

what they believed was precious in life—whether it was

God, or country, or mom’s apple pie, or having a good

time with “the boys” back home. They hadn’t worked out

in any explicit way their scale of values. I think this was

a product of the whole moral relativism, permissiveness,

materialism, and sentimentalism that had been going on

for forty years in this country.

Q But you think 1960 was a turning-point?

fitch: Yes, I think some kind of change is occur-

ring. For some time I have been turning over in the back

of my mind an article I would like to write called “A
New Breed of Cat.” I have been tempted to use President
Kennedy as an example of a certain shift in temper that

I think cuts across religious lines. It is a mood that con-

trasts with the attitude of the existentialists who just sit

back and whimper about their woes and sufferings. It is

a temper that faces up to the tough problems of life and

22



says, “We’ll take them on, we have to meet them, and

we’ll conduct ourselves like men.” It says that there are

certain historic principles in the light of which we act.

We will do our best, and that is all that can be expected
of us. I think this is a manly attitude; certainly it is a non-

beatnik attitude. I find it not only in our rather young

President but in the still younger members of the genera-

tion now coming along.

Q Do you think this will percolate from the
top down?

fitch: I don’t think it is percolating from the top.

down. I think, rather, that the President’s attitude and

approach to life reflect the general change in that direc-

tion taking place throughout our society among the

younger generation.

Q Do you think such matters as the revelations
of price fixing by some of our largest electric

corporations is symptomatic of a general

decline in morality in our older generation?

fitch: I don’t see this as symptomatic of a general

moral breakdown, as many of my brethren do. I see it
as symptomatic of a critical change taking place in the

structure of the corporate industry in this country. I think

it points to the fact that the kind of traditional free com-

petition we have always talked about is no longer a

viable thing, even for the capitalists who think they

believe in it. We have arrived at an awkward point in the
evolution of industry in the United States, both in in-

dustry’s relations with labor, which is frequently on a

nation-wide basis, and in its internal relations. Now,

things are done at this level that are no doubt wrong, at

least by classical norms of corporate behavior. But I

think they point to the need for a drastic overhaul of our

whole theory of how we should cope with these prob-
lems. Frankly, 1 don’t have an answer, and I would not

venture to try to answer.

23



Q What would you single out as the most im-
portant area in which American Protestants

can make their greatest contribution both to

our way of life and to their own vitality as
Protestants?

fitch: One area in which they are learning to make

a better contribution to their own vitality and therefore,
I hope, to that of the country is simply in the cooperation

between sects which in the past had engaged in needless

and ruinous competition. I happen to believe in some

measure of free competition in religion as well as in

business. I think it is wholesome and useful. But Prot-

estants are learning to get together not just on the na-

tional and world level but in local councils of churches

in which they plan their work in an intelligent way and

do not spend their time cutting each other’s throats.

Q You also mentioned earlier a trend towards
greater theological depth in sermons.

fitch: I think that in certain places there is a move-

ment away from a superficial theology to one that has

more depth in the classical sense, that is, greater depth

in both Biblical terms and in terms of the great Protes-

tant reformers.

Q In the area of the morality of nuclear war-
fare, some Catholics have been sharply criti-

cal of their own theologians for not playing

a greater part in the deliberations of the po-

litical and scientific people. So often, the

voice of the Catholic theologian seems to be

mute, if not missing, in these deliberations.

Are Protestant theologians more effective?

fitch: Some are wrestling with the problem of

nuclear warfare. Dean John C. Bennett of the Union

Theological Seminary and Professor Paul Ramsay of

Princeton are two whose names come to mind. They have

24



been working and writing in this field. But I would not

want to boast and say we have been doing a great deal.

And if as you say the Catholic voice is missing, I would

add that everybody’s voice is missing.

Q The theological dimension of the problem,
whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish,

seems to have been left out of contemporary

deliberations, whether by accident or design.

fitch: I’m not persuaded it has been left out. A
theological dimension to some people would seem to

dictate drastic, simplistic types of answers. If that were

true, I would be very distrustful of it. We are now con-
fronting in a very dramatic way what is involved in the

whole Biblical idea of the fall of man. People once re-

garded the idea that one sin of Adam could involve the
whole human race in subsequent catastrophe as naive

and superstitious. But the fact is that as a people we are

now at a point where one sin on our part or on the part

of an enemy like Russia in connection with the hydrogen

bomb could have catastrophic consequences for the en-

tire human race. So we now confront the classical prob-

lem of theological morals as a contemporary reality. I

think most theologians realize this. This does not mean

that they can come up with a quick answer.

Q In your own seminary do you offer special
courses dealing with the morality of such

contemporary problems as this?

fitch: Oh, yes. I teach in the Department of Chris-

tian Ethics and I have a course in Christianity and Pol-

itics which deals with current issues as well as with

classical ones. My colleague, Albert Rasmussen, has the
Department of Religion and Society and he, in collabo-

ration with another professor, teaches a course in world

affairs and international relations which deals explicitly

with this problem. I’m sure this is not unique; it goes on

in most of our Protestant seminaries.

25



Q Then you are not dealing merely with text-
book problems in morality.

fitch: No. The course is set up de novo each year

in terms of current issues, the available resources, docu-

ments, and personnel, and how we can tackle it in a
strictly contemporary way. We do not do everything in
this purely contemporaneous manner, but we certainly

do this kind of thing.

Q To return for a moment to personal moral-
ity, would you say that the classic tension

and always rather delicate balance between

freedom and authority is at a particularly

critical stage in our country at this time?

How does one keep this in balance? You
have talked in another interview about the

breakdown of family authority. We know
there is a breakdown of police authority in

many parts of the country. School authority

is jeopardized in our largest cities. Has free-

dom become more akin to license than re-
sponsible liberty?

fitch: This is a perennial problem, isn’t it? I spoke

a while ago of the two poles of tyranny and anarchy. I

must say that the more I associate with my Roman
Catholic friends the more I realize how the Catholic
Church historically has understood the importance of

institutional authority while we Protestants have under-

stood the importance of liberty. I think the Catholics

have gone overboard on authority at times, and I am
sure we have gone overboard on liberty, even to the

point of anarchy. But perhaps these two ecclesiastical

traditions can supplement each other to keep a balance

between freedom and authority in America. I am gen-
eralizing, of course, because I know there are some very

free-wheeling people within the Catholic Church and

some very authoritarian disciplinarians within the Prot-

estant body.

26



Q Perhaps it comes down to distinguishing be-
tween the areas in which a greater measure

of freedom is permissible and the areas in

which authority is more crucial.

fitch: I’d rather put it this way—and in this I am a
Calvinist by heritage and in line with the Catholic and

Jew in a belief in natural law and legal-constitutional

devices—I would say it is a matter of enumerating the

certain liberties that we believe in, as we believe in the

Bill of Rights for instance, and in the specific freedoms—

political, economic, social, ethical if there are some,

sexual if you think there ought to be some. I believe we

should enumerate these clearly, with the understanding

that in other areas these freedoms do not exist.

Q In some cases, l suppose, if a person asserts
his freedom it can be disastrous, and in other

cases it may not be. A man may say there is
no God or that Christ is not divine; he has the
ontological freedom to make such affirma-
tions or denials. But it does make a differ-

ence, at least to him, on how he uses his

freedom. Or in the area of moral conduct,

he is free to, say, commit adultery, but if he

does he is “outlawed” in the moral sense.

fitch: These are things we must continually debate

and try to define. There is the broad distinction between

freedom of belief and speech on the one hand and free-

dom of conduct on the other. In the classic civil liberties
tradition there is nothing that says one may act upon any
fool belief one may have. Roger Williams distinguished
between “seducing teachers” — that is, those who teach
and preach unorthodox doctrines — and “scandalous
livers.” He said civil society must tolerate teachers who
seduce, though it does not have to pay them a salary

or give them a job. But it does not follow that civil

society can tolerate any overt action as it is defined

legally and constitutionally.

27



Q Is America in danger of becoming a nation
in which morality is determined by majority

opinion or action? If a Gallup Poll, for ex-

ample, were to show that 55 per cent of the

women engage in premarital sexual relations,
or that 60 per cent of the men have had some
homosexual experience, is there a danger that

the people will consider such conduct to be

the norm? Would this be some of that demo-

cratic idolatry we talked about earlier?

fitch: I would question the adequacy of such a

survey or poll, whether from Gallup, Kinsey, or anyone

else. A person may be guilty of one moral lapse and yet
in some statistical surveys it will be treated as though it

were a matter of habitual behavior. But, to answer your

question, any democracy lives continually under the

threat that majority behavior may be taken as the norm
of what is right and wrong. But as long as it keeps its

religious heritage alive the society will not do that.

Q If any religious leader — priest, minister, or
rabbi — were to go overboard on the side of
liberty, 1 suppose he himself would, unwit-

tingly perhaps, be in danger of adapting his

teaching and preaching to the prevailing

winds of fashion in human behavior.

fitch: I come back to my statement that one should
not ever affirm freedom-in-general. You affirm only
specific liberties that have been tested throughout history,

that have been defined—sometimes legally and ethically.

We believe in those particular liberties, and I think
we could enumerate the legitimate ones in the Protestant

tradition. They would include what is called the spiritual

or Christian liberty—freedom from the dominion of sin,

death, and circumstance; freedom to live a life of love

and justice by the grace of God. That is the basic liberty

I am sure we share with Catholics and Jews. But then
there are political liberties against a foreign tyranny, and

28



that means, too, representative government at home.

There are also specific liberties such as freedom of

speech, press, conscience, and assembly. There is aca-

demic liberty. There is economic liberty, which means,

under certain restraints, free enterprise in business. Also,

freedom of labor. But when somebody goes beyond these

and starts hollering about some other liberty I want to

say, “What liberty are you talking about? I never heard

of that one. This liberty has to prove itself.” There is no

ethical tradition or legal tradition that warrants an over-

all sexual liberty, for example.

Q What are the criteria for judging legitimate
and non-legitimate liberties? The natural

law? Traditional teaching? A combination
of the two and perhaps some others?

fitch: I am quite willing to go along with the
natural law provided I can bring in Calvinist and Jewish

interpretations of it as well as Catholic ones. This is

something we share together. I would appeal through

natural law to the moral law, but I would also appeal

to the experience and the historic wisdom of the Christian

people in their effort to work out particular problems.

Perhaps some of our liberties are pragmatically validated,

and others, such as excessive permissiveness in the home,

have been pragmatically invalidated in the last decade or

so. Parental permissiveness was so overdone people

turned away from it.

Q From the title of your latest book, The
Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self, 1 gather

you think egoism is a characteristic of contem-

porary America, or at least a critical problem.

fitch: In that book, which is religious and ethical,

I traced what I think is the inevitable logic of the break-

down of the historic God-centered society. My argument
was that after you give up belief in God you turn to
nature. Then you turn to humanity. Then you turn to

29



society and its folkways. Then, after existentialism, you

finally turn to the self, to your own feelings and self-

interest. I said this is where we have come after about

200 or 300 years of moving in that direction. I am trying

to get back to the idea of a self that is oriented to certain

great objective realities, the greatest being God. I include

nature in those realities, since nature is the creation of

God. Yes, we have become an ego-centered, self-centered

society, I believe.

Q What you said in the U.S. News & World
Report interview was in line with your thesis

from the book, then.

fitch : Yes, the editors of the magazine had seen an

article I had written for Christianity and Crisis entitled

“The Obsolescence of Ethics.” It was a savage critique of

certain tendencies in modern Protestantism which, from

my point of view, minister to ethical relativism and the

abolition of belief in objective laws and principles.

Q What you have just said is what 1 had in
mind in my early questions concerning the

relationship between belief and practice.

fitch: I am sure there is that relationship. When any

religion gets so acculturated that it takes in what may be

the prevailing relativism and freedom of its society, then

it is breaking down the foundations of morality. Let me

make this honest judgment: I don’t want to get too gen-

erous to my Catholic friends, but since I assume that
Protestants, in general, incline toward the side of liberty

and maybe Catholics incline, in general, toward the side

of stability and authority, if there is a secular trend now

toward too much liberty, toward relativism, then the

odds are that the Protestants will err in this direction

more than the Catholics will.

Q Will Herberg says about American Protestant-
ism that it has had its moments of dynamism

30



and revival, in the classic meaning of the

word, but that each period of vitality has

been followed by a period when the “organ-

izers'* and “institutionalizers” took over,

with the result that it fell into static, non-

creative periods.

fitch: That is probably true. I think it is also true

that there are different kinds of revivals, and this would

hold for Catholicism and Judaism as well as Protestant-

ism. Yes, you can have a liturgical revival, you can

have an intellectual revival (a sudden thrust and move-

ment of the church toward not merely theology but

toward the universities and the schools, science, learning,

and the culture of the time) . You can have a revival of
the prophetic impulse for social justice. These are all

rebirths that can take place on different levels at different

moments. And one must be ready for all of them.

An Interview with
John J. Wright

Q Is there something, Bishop Wright, that can
be defined or even described as “American

Catholicism”? If so, what do you consider to

be some of its most characteristic elements?

wright : I don’t like the term “American Catholicism,”

as I do not like the terms “French Catholicism” or “Span-

ish Catholicism.” It seems to imply a nationalization of

that which should remain universal and transcendental.

However, everyone knows what you mean by that term.
You are asking whether there are characteristics of Cath-

31



olics in America by which they are individualized, per-

haps, in the practice or in the quality of their Catholicism.

So understood, the term has a valid signification, just as

we may speak, for example, of an “Irish way” or an
“English way” in sanctity, without on that account re-

stricting or changing the essential and universal aspects

of sanctity.

American Catholicism has been characterized from the

beginning by a profound spiritual loyalty to Rome. In no

small part this has perhaps been because so many of the
immigrant Catholics came to America precisely as a re-

sult of their religious loyalty to Rome. I think, for exam-

ple, of the Germans who came here at the height of the

los von Rom movement in Bismarck’s day; and of the
Catholics of Eastern Europe where the very hallmark of

the faith for centuries has been fidelity to Rome in con-
trast to local autocephalous and national Orthodox tradi-

tions. I think particularly of the English Catholics who

settled here; passionate loyalty to Rome has always been
characteristic of English Catholics in their homeland and

here. The Irish have never forgotten Saint Patrick’s plea

that they be Romans precisely because Christians; wher-

ever else Gallicanism may have flourished, it has not been
among our Franco-Americans in what pertains to the

Pope.

The American Catholic’s loyalty to Rome is an almost
mystical thing. It is strictly spiritual. It has little or no

political overtone; it isn’t always matched, perhaps, by

equally unanimous understanding of such matters as, for

example, specific social developments in the Papal en-

cyclicals. Yet it does reveal profound love for that Rome
of which, as Dante said, Christ was a Roman. It has

nothing to do with the Rome of the Caesars; it has abso-
lutely nothing to do with the Rome of the Risorgimento
or nineteenth century Italian nationalism. The Roman

loyalty of American Catholics constitutes a supra-national

commitment of which we have been proudly conscious.

People in the community around us have been very much

aware of it, too, but sometimes they have been either

uncomprehending or unsympathetic.

32



Q You say there are other characteristics of the
American Catholic?

wright: Yes. Another, I think, is an energetic and

generous disposition of the American Catholic for the

performance of good works; the prosperity and flourish-

ing of good works among us is no accident. The appeal

of programs like the Vincent de Paul movement, the

manner in which American Catholics will rally for the

building of charitable institutions, even when they may

not be equally interested in institutions for intellectual or

contemplative purposes—this is characteristic and is, I

think, a trait we share with Americans generally.

A third and like characteristic of American Catholi-
cism is its heavy emphasis on moral rather than dogmatic

theology, on moral considerations rather than doctrinal

speculation. This appears also to be something we have

in common with the non-Catholic American community.
Their genius, as ours, has been heavily practical and

moral. This characteristic, in my opinion, has arisen from
the very geography of our country and from the circum-

stances of our history; the stern and rockbound New
England coast left little time for philosophical specula-

tion among the New England Protestants, and the press-
ing practical problems of survival which confronted our

immigrant peoples inevitably influenced their cultural

development.

These are three of the most obvious characteristics

of American Catholicism in contrast with certain Euro-

pean patterns. For example, Spanish Catholicism is

heavy on speculation, short on social programs; French

Catholicism, in some chapters of its history, reveals a

“Gallicanism” quite unlike the great awareness of Rome
in the American pattern; in German Catholicism the

genius, again, is more often for dogmatic and specula-

tive theology.

Q European visitors to the United States fre-
quently comment on the fervor and devotion

of American Catholics in their practice of the

33



faith. Would you include this as a character-

istic note of Catholicism in this country?

wright: Yes, and this, too, may be partially the result

of precisely this characteristic moral preoccupation of

which we have been speaking. Then, too, it has been our

practice that has revealed us as Catholics, whereas in

other traditions it has rather been the ideas and outlooks

of people that revealed them as Catholics. Think, for ex-

ample, of France and men like Charles Peguy. Peguy was
weak in practice, but no one could be under the illusion

that he was other than Catholic; all that he said and

thought reflected the intense Catholicism of his mind and

heart. Among us, however, faithful, even scrupulous
practice of the obligations of the faith early became the

familiar outward sign of our inward conviction, even

when or if we weren’t always particularly felicitous or

articulate in other expressions of inward convictions.

Q American Catholics are said, on the one
hand, to be virtually indistinguishable in

their behavior from non-Catholic Ameri-

cans. And, on the other hand, American

Catholics are also said to be rather separatist,

“non-engaged” or non-involved with much

of the ongoing work of our society, whether

it be in the political, social, or cultural order.

One manifestation, perhaps, is the prolifera-

tion of specifically Catholic organizations

which, in many instances, parallel the work

of non-denominational organizations in the

areas, say, of scouting, rural life, civil liber-

ties, and all the rest.

wright : I am one of those who believe that a principal

explanation of the proliferation of specifically Catholic

groups duplicating or overlapping other groups in the

community is that, unfortunately, for a long while we

were left out of the original organizations and move-

ments, especially in some communities. And so, in many

34



cases, we plowed ahead and did like things under our own

auspices. It’s the old problem of “which came first?” In

this case, was it the exclusion of Catholics by others, or

the voluntary withdrawal of Catholics from the company

of others? Alas, all too often I fear it was the first.

Q Would you care to make a judgment of the
extent to which American Catholics are now

involved in the mainstream of American life

,

regardless of the causes for their involvement

or non-involvement in the past?

wright: I think they are now deeply involved in

American life and action. By this I do not merely mean

the areas always mentioned in this regard, e.g., the Army,

Navy, Air Force, though the Lord knows they are heavily

“engaged” there! I mean that they are deeply engaged in

the American scene and, American fashion, are engaged

on every side in the divided camps that comprise Amer-

ica. Perhaps this is one reason why we fail to give a united

and characteristically Catholic witness in some areas.

Certainly in political matters American Catholics func-

tion in a highly divided fashion; they bear a deployed and

varied witness and I see no reason to regret this.

Q In what areas or on what levels, then, has
there been a specifically and solidly Catholic

witness in American life?

wright : It seems to me that we have borne such a wit-
ness, again, on the moral front. Some years ago the
Protestant publisher of a New England newspaper told
me that during the years of his publishing career he had
observed the processes by which two communities

changed from nineteenth century American communities

of largely Protestant complexion to mid-twentieth cen-

tury American communities of largely Catholic complex-

ion. He mentioned three things that seemed to him to
characterize the Catholic contributions to the communi-

ties. At the beginning of his career, he said, the lads work-

35



ing on the docks and railroads were mostly Catholic

immigrants. He had seen them transformed by the tem-
perance movements (the Father Mathew Society among
the Irish, the Jean-Baptiste among the French) from a
people who, in their economic discouragement, had been

in danger of chronic alcoholism, into a temperate peo-

ple. This was accomplished by spiritual and moral means

that bore no resemblance to the pressures of the largely

Protestant Prohibition movement or Carrie Nation cru-

sades. It had been accomplished in the confessional, in

parish missions, and by patient religious programs.

The second thing he mentioned was speech. He said
that the foul-mouthed language of desperately poor

workers had, in his lifetime, disappeared, chiefly under

the tremendous and beneficent influence of the Holy

Name Society. Then he remarked that he, a Unitarian,
had observed that out of the ideal Catholic family and

school situation there came a recognizable type of girl

and woman, a type that reflected typically Catholic influ-

ences and a Catholic witness. He considered this type
of girl (and corresponding types of men)—the persons

so often described as “good Catholics”— as exemplifying

a major contribution Catholicism had made.

Q What has been the effect, do you think, of the
nineteenth century decision by American

Catholics to resolve the problem of education

by establishing their own school system rath-

er than, as some Catholics then advocated,

entering fully into the public school system?

How has that affected the character of Amer-
ican Catholics and the extent to which they

are engaged in the work of the general com-

munity? Has it taken them automatically and

inexorably out of a large part of the main-

stream of community life, and, if so, is this

a significant factor?

wright: Perhaps it is, but not in the way that is some-

times feared. Indeed, I sometimes think it will prove a

36



significant factor in enriching the authentic American

tradition in a way that may never have been expected,

certainly not in the way that I once expected. I am in a
peculiar position on this matter. Not only did I go to

public school, but I am very happy that I went to my spe-
cific public high school at the time when I did, because

I fear it would no longer be equally worthwhile to go

there now. It has changed, as have all things else. Now I
find myself believing, and passionately believing, that a

principal contribution of the Catholic school system to

the American educational tradition may be as a means

and instrument for the preservation of the very freedom

of education. I am not paranoid on this matter, but I have
talked with people involved in it often enough to be aware

of the forces in the land that are bent on establishment of

a single public school system, a monolithic educational

system under state, even federal, control.

As of a couple of generations ago I might have wished

we Catholics had gone, in the nineteenth century, fully

into the public school system. Now I consider this would
have been an unmitigated political and educational dis-

aster. Let’s face it, totalitarianism is present, seed fashion,

in every purely secular government as it would be in any

theocracy; the moment you say that ours is a purely secu-

lar state, at that same moment you provide a basic for-

mula for one or another form of totalitarianism and you

come perilously close to Mussolini’s concept: “everything

within the state, nothing outside the state.” The separate

school system is a major and healthy obstacle to such a

situation.

Q There can be a third form of political soci-
ety, can there not, which is neither “purely

secular” nor “confessional” in nature?

wright: Yes, there can be, and our American society

bade fair to be a good example of such, but it is dubious

whether it could have survived, especially if we had made
a different educational decision in the nineteenth century

and had not established our own school system. The

37



forces for secularism were already at work and they were

destined to gain momentum with the passing years. Some
of this momentum was gained directly from secularism
itself; some came indirectly from groups not, perhaps,

intent on the establishment of secularism but made the
de facto allies of the secularists by reason of their own
special interests. For example, whatever mutual under-

standings had been worked out between Protestants and

Catholics in the Christian community, there was always

in some degree and recently in great degree the pressure

of the insurgent group of the secular humanists.

But not less important than the political and sociologi-

cal problem is the educational question. Many things that
some of us look upon as indispensable parts of education

were doomed by the educational forces that were to de-

velop in American education. One may write all the
articles and dissertations one wishes in the effort to estab-

lish that John Dewey didn’t really hold what John Dewey
obviously held about the nature and purpose of educa-

tion, and/or that his words admit of other interpretations.

But the fact remains that his contentions were understood

in a specific sense by universities, textbook writers, school

associations, and, above all, teachers’ colleges all over

the land. I do not find the net result in American culture

such as to make me wish we had abandoned totally our
independent educational witness.

Q Then you don't think Catholic presence in
the public school system would . . .

wright: Would have changed it? No. Water seeks its

level. The constant temptation of our people would have

been to say, “Ah, well, this is education, not cult or

creed” and we would have gone along with the reduction

to dead levels of standardization. As a matter of fact,

even in our own schools we have too often conformed
to standards and requirements set by other schools. I

often fear that we have been able to retain only a minimal

part of our heritage in our own schools. There are too

many Catholic schools all over America where one finds

38



scant trace that they are in the living stream of the world-

wide, historic communion of saints, except, perhaps, in

the names of the schools, which are often accidental and

not infrequently turn out to be names like “Our Lady of

Lincoln Highway,” which, all by itself, is as local in in-

spiration and as lacklustre as “P.S. 282”—yet even with

half an hour of religion in the morning and a few memo-

ries of the saints and of the Christian centuries in the

school week, there is still a free, independent witness that

is essential to religion and healthy for America.

Q Is this purely a cultural difference in Ameri-
can Catholics that you see?

wright: It is cultural, moral, and social. I think of the

men who came out of my old college in the days when it
was frankly a “small Catholic college.” They were typical

of a whole generation. It is not a question of whether they

were better than others; the point is they were different,

and their differences contributed mightily to America.

Moreover, one feels that more often than not they were

probably better than the standardized Brooks Brothers

suit man. It isn’t that this fellow is incompetent; it is

simply that he isn’t significant. He has no specifically
Catholic or other personality worth notice.

I think, too, of the Yankee doctor who once told me
he would have died of boredom in his little Maine town

had it not been for the presence there of a Catholic priest

who had studied in Rome, who was of French descent,
and who became his friend. In that lonely Yankee town,
with its built-in conformities and cultural limitations, the

priest, whose faith the doctor never accepted, kept him

in touch with a whole world that he had come to know

and love in the year after he had graduated from Harvard

and had made the “grand tour” with his father and

mother.

I think, too, of Worcester, Massachusetts, and the jewel

of a Gothic cathedral that had been built by Father John

Power from Boston sixty years before the diocese was

established. He had studied in a Catholic tradition and

39



he brought into a nineteenth century mill town some of

the things he had seen, learned, and loved elsewhere,

things that were specifically Catholic and that would have

been lost to love or even memory in a monolithic educa-
tional system. The pastor of St. Paul’s in my time was an
old man, Father Mike Kavanaugh, who had gone to
Rome as a young student some sixty-two years before.
He had studied at the old Scandinavian college in Rome
and had become an authority on the medieval saints

about whom Sigrid Undset was later to write. Father
Kavanaugh was also a great Latinist. He read the classical
authors and watched for boys who gave a hoot about
such things.

Here in Pittsburgh I find what might have been a drab

industrial city alive with traditions and color because of

Eastern European memories kept strong in the midst of

labor and struggle by groups like the Tamburitzans, flour-

ishing around families, to be sure, but greatly encouraged

by our schools.

In Pittsburgh, too, I find the magnificent monument of

Sacred Heart Church, lifting the level of courage and

vision — undoubtedly unconsciously — of thousands who
went home every night exhausted from the steel mills.

They were kept sane as well as saved by the beauty found

in the church built by Father Coakley. We will have
fewer such men and will make a poorer contribution to

the national life to the extent that in our own schools we

conform to least common denominators of a cultural and
educational kind. And so, bleak as the picture sometimes
is, our schools are the only contact we still have with

what some of us still mean by a humane civilization.

Q Theoretically , at least, educational diversity is
possible within a single school system.

wright: But historically it does not sufficiently work

out that way, not any more. The great public school

system which grew up in the early nineteenth century

was in fact diversified. There was the old Latin school, or

classical school. There was the mechanics-arts school.

40



There was the high school of commerce. But now every

little district school must have all the departments within

it. In Worcester the last class that will ever graduate

from a classical high school was graduated last year.

The classical high school will now be closed and all

students who want to study classical subjects can take

them, as incidental electives, in the local district high

schools. But many subjects they will take with the boys

and girls who wish to study no subjects and who are

merely complying with the compulsory school attendance

law. At the moment this is almost an American, indeed

a “democratic,” ideal and it can yet mean that our land

is headed for dead levels of performance and interest,

human nature being what it is.

The seeming fate of my own school, Boston Latin
School, illustrates the problem. From 1635 until certainly

World War II, though supported by tax funds as part of

the public school system of Boston, it taught only boys

who wanted to study Latin, Greek, ancient history, and

the pre-liberal arts humanities and who had the privilege

of doing so under masters who delighted in these subjects.

Now an unholy concurrence (probably fortuitous) be-
tween the theories of some educators and the political

interests of some politicians jeopardizes such schools as

no longer “useful,” relevant, or, forsooth, “democratic.”

It may be an encouraging sign that 1,700 boys of the

school signed a petition demanding that the school com-

mittee leave Latin in the curriculum; but are those boys

the temporary end of a tradition?

Q What social or cultural impacts do you think
Catholics have had on the American char-

acter or the American community?

wright: To the extent that we may look upon the
American community as enriched by certain of the great

liturgical holy days of Christendom, the mysteries of

which played so powerful a part in the development of

Western culture, there is obviously a substantial Catholic

contribution to community values. I never see a deco-

41



rated Christmas tree, even in the most commercialized

circumstances, without remembering that we are indebted

to the German Catholic immigrant for no small part of
the element of our national life of which the Christmas

tree is the symbol. And even when I see a candle in an
absurd penthouse window on the top of a hotel, I remem-

ber that we are indebted to the Irish Catholic for the
candles at Christmas time. The midnight services in

Boston Congregational churches on Christmas eve show

the effect the Catholic French Canadians have had on

New England Puritanism, the minuit chretien and the
creche they brought into our tradition. Emily Dickinson

was suspect of being a Catholic convert because she

“kept Christmas” in Amherst! I think these things are but

hints of a considerable influence on the national culture.

There are other things, too, some of them hardly more

than subjects of light-hearted conversational banter, that

reflect the Catholic factor in our observances as a people,

as, for example, when people plan a dinner and are glad

to remember that the So-and-So’s don’t eat meat on Fri-

day; one thinks of all the corny but friendly little jokes

about A1 Smith getting up for Mass at early hours of

the morning or leaving “important” business to say his

prayers! These are all signs of contradiction but also of

assimilation; they give local meaning to phrases like “a

good Catholic” or “a bad Catholic,” and suggest how

these have influenced American thought and values.

Q Do you think that American Catholics, by
and large, are conservative? I’m not speaking

in terms of the familiar liberal-conservative

tensions and arguments, but more generally.

Aren’t they for the most part conservative in

their theological thought, political and social

thinking and action, cultural and artistic life,

intellectual life?

wright : Why are they so? I think American Catholics,
by and large, tend to be conservative on most subjects.

The moment we say that we have to make immediate

42



exceptions; we have to point out, for example, that

Catholics have been up to their necks in the trade union

movement as they are now up to their necks in the New
Frontier, at least those who are Democrats. But why are

they so often conservative? I think they are conservative

because any people with a proud tradition tends to be

eager to retain it—the first families of Virginia, the Plym-

outh Rock people, for example. So ours are a people with

immemorial traditions to cherish and defend.

This fact is also bound up with our moral preoccupa-

tion. Moral considerations weigh heavily with a con-

servative people. It is frequently, but too facilely, assumed

that the people with strong moral emphasis in their

thinking become the advanced guard. The progressive

people, the “liberals” and “revolutionaries,” are more

often those whom a dream hath possessed. Dreams
possess those interested in speculation, philosophical and

intellectual, rather than those who put their chief empha-
sis on morals. Moral conscience goes along with specula-

tion, of course, but the emphasis is quite the other way.

We American Catholics are not so much a people whom
a dream has possessed; we are more often a people whom
memories haunt, holy memories, happy memories, per-

haps, but memories of the past rather than dreams of the

future. We are a nostalgic people. Our typical nationality
groups tend to be people with long memories, many of
them melancholy, many of them sweet, many of them
proud, but, again, memories. The Irish are characteris-

tically nostalgic; the Poles, the Franco-Americans, and

Slavonic peoples have long memories. So have the Latins.

Not only is there this nostalgic characteristic, but not

a few of our people have the tenacity of those who have
only lately acquired what they have of this world’s goods.

Those, for example, who seem most fiercely to oppose
social legislation, like “medicare,” are not infrequently

doctors who are just beginning to be able to educate their
children on the scale that America has taught them

should characterize professional men, men who are of a
certain social status. Status people are much more ner-
vous about losing their status if they have not had it long.

43



European nobility take their status rather casually as

contrasted with recently arrived Congressmen.

Q Something that I have always been struck by
is the contrast between the progressive think-

ing of the Holy See (which, according to its

institutional character, one would think

would be conservative in all things) and the

excessive caution and static quality in so

many areas of American Catholic life. 1 won-
der whether the transmission processes, say

the Catholic press, fail to convey the advanced

word from the modern Popes with clarity and

vigor. Perhaps this accounts for the contrast

in the thinking of the Holy See and that of

American Catholics on so many matters,

social, cultural, spiritual.

wright: The Holy See is resolute for theological and

spiritual reasons, but, let’s face it, it can be sure of itself

even psychologically, too. It has been there for almost

2,000 years. It has survived so many “destructions,” so
many crises, so many upheavals, and so many catastro-
phes that there is a sense in which for it to be morally

courageous is no longer psychologically difficult. There

is little sense of risk. Why did Queen Victoria never look
behind her to see if the chair was there when she sat

down? She knew right well the chair was there. It was

always there. On the other hand, when a people first
moves into society, they instinctively tend for a long time

to check on whether the chair is there.

So it is, mutatis mutandis, for American Catholics, in-

cluding your editors, the majority of whom may not have
the social and psychological sense of security of those

who see history the way the Holy See so easily can. They

do not have it, as we were saying a while ago, because

the sense of history is not sufficiently in their education. A
characteristic question among us is: “What will happen if

we try this and it doesn’t work?” Those who are schooled

in older traditions less often ask that question. They are

44



more likely to say: “The last time we tried that, this is

what happened. The last time we failed to do this, that is

what happened. For example, in the case of Napoleon,

this is what happened. In the case of Hildebrand or Bar-

barossa, that is what happened.” On the other hand, we
in America, including, alas, Catholics, often reveal no

such sense of history, and so we say to ourselves, “Dear

Lord, what will be the reaction if we use the word ‘social-

ization’ instead of such-and-such? What will be the effect

on the circulation of our paper? What will be the effect

on our Protestant neighbors, who mustn’t be scandalized?

etc., etc. . . .” In its best moments, the Holy See is more

likely to say, “This is what we must do or say because
this is the direction of history; Vox temporis, vox Dei:

This is the manifest requirement of the hour.”

They don’t look behind them to see if the chair is there;

they know it is there. We do look. The editor may even
look behind him every morning to see if it has been re-

moved from under him during the night. There are spiri-

tual values involved here, but there are also cultural,

psychological, and educational influences. It comes back,

therefore, to the reason why our educational system
should be not merely American and Catholic in its moral

emphasis, but also Catholic, even papal, in its doctrinal

and historical content. We cannot possibly teach our chil-
dren too much about Pope St. Leo the Great, Pope Hilde-
brand, Pope Pius VII, and all the indestructible saints.

Q You seem to assign great importance to the
educational and the intellectual in your esti-

mate of the character of the Catholic tradi-

tion or of any tradition.

wright: The intellectual element must always be
basic to a society. The moral element is essential, integral,

indispensable, but not enough. When you have only
moral motivation for social action, it may tire very early
in the fight. When Edna St. Vincent Millay writes that
there is no man dies in Capri but she dies, too, she may
be talking sentimental rubbish unless her moral idealism

45



is firmly rooted in a philosophy or dogma concerning

man and, indeed, death. It is only a powerful doctrinal
consideration that compels a Vincent de Paul to pursue

the poor, not with poetry but with exhausting work, seek-

ing out fallen girls and guarding their babies not in Capri,

but next door as well—which is more difficult and more

rare, but also more to the point. He lives a moral life and
leads a social revolution in accordance with the dynamic

that comes from his dogma. He doesn’t get up in the
morning asking himself what the sensitive moral con-

science should say about the problem of his underprivi-

leged contemporaries. Rather, a consuming dogma makes

him seek the image of Christ in every place, person, and

problem. There is and must be a doctrinal foundation for

the action he performs, or he grows perfunctory in the

action. The very nature of the human beast requires that

in the last analysis we be moved to action by ideas, not by

codes. It is not enough that noblesse oblige, unless those

obliged have clear ideas of why noblesse obliges and of

what noblesse is. Here could and should be the potential

Catholic contribution to any effective ferment of an in-

tellectual and social kind. Otherwise we fritter away our

moral heritage and fail our proper vocation as people of

faith. Sometimes we seem perilously close to such a de-

fault now. We are living on a moral heritage which in
point of fact has survived for several centuries without

sufficient dogmatic renewal. Herein lies an embarrass-

ment for religion in America and a peril for America

herself.

Q It has been said that American Catholic theo-
logians are sometimes more concerned with

textbook theology problems than they are

with some of the pressing issues of the day

such as the morality of nuclear warfare, a

theology of work or a theology of toleration,

the whole Church-and-State issue, and so on.

Whether or not there are theological “solu-

tions” to all of these things, do you think

there has been, from the Catholic side in this

46



country, any theological illuminations of the

discussions and dialogues that are going on in

these areas?

wright: On the obliteration-bombing question we
have, I fear, an example in the general community of the

precise kind of moral preoccupation without robust doc-

trinal premises that underlies the problem of culture that

we have been discussing. I think that many people who

are worked up about The Bomb are merely appalled at
the prospect of everybody being killed at once, though

some of them could take in stride the elimination, one by

one, of a whole generation if only it be done “decently”

and by some less physically horrible means. The Chris-

tian, on the contrary, is appalled by the killing of even

one man, one foetus, or one baby born imperfect. The

emotional drama and logical fallacy of massive numbers

killed by The Bomb are both irrelevant to the moral issue.
Another item: in McCall’s magazine, for June, 1962,

I find an article on the childless marriage by a Dr. David

R. Mace. The doctor raises the question of how we are
going to provide children for unfortunate couples whose

marriages have been infertile. In the midst of the discus-

sion he naturally comes to a discussion of artificial insem-

ination. He says that, admittedly, it presents certain psy-
chological problems and, at the moment, even certain

legal problems. However, he considers that it may be
desirable for the following reason, and on the cultural

and moral implications of this sentence I ask you to medi-

tate in terms of girls now of school age: “If at some
future time our contraceptive techniques are so per-

fected that the supply of children conceived outside mar-

riage and available for adoption falls off sharply, then it

will be inevitable that there will be a greatly increased

demand for artificial insemination.” In other words:
Should we finally bring things to such a level of “perfec-
tion” that contraceptive devices will be easily obtained by

the youngsters who now get into the “trouble” that brings
them to unmarried mothers’ homes, then we won’t have
any babies for adoption and this will leave many couples

47



childless, so that we will have to have increased artificial

insemination! So long as sentences like that are read (and

written) blandly in family magazines, I reserve judgment

about the depth of the moral fears or indignation about

bombing expressed elsewhere in the same or like circles.

Q Nevertheless, do you think American Catho-
lic theologians are paying adequate attention

to the bomb and other such questions?

wright : I submit that the things on which theologians

are prepared to talk in 1962 are those on which they did

their homework in 1932. I argue that such work must be

done this patiently and even, in a sense, quietly if it is to

be done worthily and lastingly. I am deeply persuaded
that the homework is being done in 1962 on what we

will eventually be able to say the more clearly and co-

gently on these other questions. It is being done here in

America; it’s being done all over the world. There is an

enormous amount of searching of the Scriptures and the

other sources, rational and revealed, on these new ques-

tions, on new formulations of old questions and problems.

There is not, by the way, a single new worry, including

the obliteration-bomb, that involves totally new moral

concepts even when they do involve staggering new di-

mensions. I would be made suspicious — as a matter of
fact, I would be discouraged — by any sudden show of
brilliant clarity on the part of our theologians in matters

so complex. I would fear that whatever they might have

to say so glibly would be as unimpressive intellectually

and unimportant historically as what I find being said on

these questions by others, Catholic or non-Catholic, who

have spoken too soon and with what seems brashness.

Q Are there any even tentative manifestations
of the homework that is now being done on

some of these large-scale questions?

wright: Yes, I think so. On the bomb question, a good
series appeared in Commonweal a few months ago. The

48



Catholic Association for International Peace convention

was taken up totally with the ethics of modern war a few

years ago. At that time many people said of Father John

Courtney Murray’s paper on the subject that they were

glad he hadn’t tried to be too final on this so delicate issue.

Some were kind enough to say the same thing about my
own paper at that time. Father John Ford has been doing

much work on this question. It took John Ford years

before he put down his thoughts on depth-psychology and

its relation to certain moral problems. I don’t think that

a truly Christian sense of urgency expresses itself on the

intellectual questions of the hour by rushing forward with

final answers. Spontaneity is possible and obligatory in

the performance of the works of mercy; you give the glass

of water right away because it is here and now needed.
But moral philosophy is not so spontaneously worked out.

Q Then, as a matter of your own personal con-
viction on this question of American Catholic

theological speculation, you are not . . .

wright: Dismayed or disturbed? Temperamentally I

chafe with impatience at the slowness with which it is

done, but in my better moments I know why study is slow,
particularly when I read what emerges from the off-hand

solutions by others of long-range worries. Moreover, I

think it an unduly narrow statement of the question to

ask what “American theologians” are doing on these

problems. This carries an implication which is un-Catho-

lic, the implication born of a tendency to over-emphasize

the American conscience, the English conscience, the

German or French conscience. The problem is one for
the human conscience and/or the Christian conscience.

So it is important to ask not what is being done in any

single national tradition, but what is being done in the

Church everywhere and anywhere. I should hate to think

that we would ever be so dependent on whatever Ameri-
can theologians might think out by themselves that we
would no longer continue to profit from the enormous

thinking of the French theologians or the Germans, or

49



others who are at work on the formation of a Catholic

Christian moral judgment of the new problems. But even

with that said, I still feel that many American theologians

are doing no little patient groundwork on the great issues

of the hour, particularly in the area of moral theology.

Q In recent months there have been a great

many articles, news stories, editorials, and

talks with regard to the place of the layman

in the life of the Church. One bishop has an-

nounced that laymen will be participants in

his next synod, another has appointed laymen

to his archdiocesan school board. In Mont-

real, Cardinal Leger has turned over an en-

tire Catholic college to lay administrators.

Do you think the American Catholic laity are

acquiring a new, deeper maturity? Will this

be a significant new factor in the history of

American Catholicism?

wright: Undoubtedly. But, once again, the discussion

we have been hearing is often in terms that are reductive-

ly sociological, political, and merely historical rather than

sufficiently in terms most relevant to any discussions of

the Church, namely, theological. We should be on guard

against our American tendency to think in terms of or-

ganization with scant reference to organic realities. This

could be easy and fatal in talk about the place of the lay-

man in the life of the Church. Is he going to be heard, for

example, on school boards? Is he going to be heard on

the question of how many collections should be taken up

on Sunday and whether or not we will continue to have

seat money? Well, I would hope he will be heard on all

these things, but I hope that these peripheral questions of

a policy and purely organizational kind are not made the

measure of a baptized Christian’s true place in the organic

life of the Church. And this brings us back to the question

of the appalling need in which we stand of a greater

knowledge of theology, above all dogma, if the place of

the Church in American culture is to be vital and the

50



place of the layman in the life of the Church is to be

worth talking about.

A refreshed theological understanding would make us
gratefully aware that we all have our place in the life of

the Church not as a result of an election or an appoint-

ment but as a result of Baptism, Confirmation, Holy

Orders, Matrimony, and Eucharist, sources of a dignity

greater than human. How many laymen have the slightest
glimmer of the theological realities behind their dignity

as baptized persons, as confirmed persons, as persons who

receive the Eucharist? Can you imagine discussing the

place of the Blessed Virgin—a member of the laity, by the

way—in the life of the Church in terms of her influence

on the appointments made by the Apostles?

Q You think, then, that theological formation,
among other things, must precede full, organ-

ic participation of the laity in the Church?

wright: Yes. The Church is not a purely human soci-

ety. It is not a merely historical phenomenon. Like Christ,

it is not of this world. This means that it is a theological

phenomenon, and this, in turn, means that to appreciate

it or our places in it we must become a people with a

theological sense. I don’t mean only lay people; I mean

the bishops and clergy and Religious, all of us, must con-

tinually refresh our dogmatic insights, the theological

roots of all that we are and are yet to be. Unless we do,
what difference does it make, with or without laity on the

administrative boards, if nobody knows or cares about

the organic realities? Would the incomparable place of

Thomas More in the life of the Church have been en-
hanced had he been on the board of administration of

some English diocese in his day? Would the beneficent
influence of Frederick Ozanam in the Church have been
greater if the Archbishop of Paris had consulted him in

the purchase of real estate?

Q There are some things, however, that distress
Catholic parents and do not fall into the cate-

51



gory of the merely organizational aspects of

the Church. The quality of some of the text-

books, for example, and how they can ap-
proach the problem of replacing inferior texts

with good ones, assuming that some are in-

deed inferior. 1 think a good many of the
laity are not concerned with getting in on the

administrative or organizational activities of

the Church, but they are concerned with the

quality of the intellectual and spiritual forma-

tion of their children.

wright: Agreed—and they are frequently quite right.

In any case, they doubtless need and deserve far greater

voice in such matters. It would be good for the Church.

But my point is that such administrative and organiza-
tional problems do not sufficiently involve what should

be our profound understanding of the “place of the lay-

man in the life of the Church,” and I am afraid the
present debate on that place is in danger of becoming

merely an argument on such relatively superficial levels.

Q To the extent that lack of theological forma-
tion of the laity exists, doesn’t this reflect the

quality of their Catholic education?

wright: I am afraid so. The Catholic educational sys-
tem, with all its substantial accomplishment, still owes it

to the Church and to America to correct a situation in

which so many thousands of boys and girls can come out

of it so little able to tell us about Dante and his pro-

foundly theological thought—or St. Paul, or Thomas

More. They have read too little by far of these men—and
without these they cannot possibly catch for themselves

or communicate to others the social, historical, and cul-

tural implications of the Incarnation. It is not enough

that our students be merely prepared to tell us things they

would have learned equally well had they gone to strictly

secular schools. There is an impressive argument for our

“holding on” to our schools, not only for the preservation

52



of our own religious tradition but also for the spiritual

witness that is essential to the national culture.

Q You said that the American Catholics' re-
sponses to most of the social and political

problems of our times will be adequate or in-

adequate according to how clear their under-

standing may be of the implications of the

Incarnation, the fact that God assumed hu-
man nature in the person of Christ. If Ameri-
can Catholics sometimes do not seem as fully

committed to the legitimate work of the tem-

poral and earthly order, can this be due in

part to a defective understanding of the In-

carnational aspects of Christianity?

wright: Perhaps we are faced here, again, with the

defect of a virtue, that is, the heavily moral emphasis of

American Catholicism. But, alas, any moral code is pre-

destined to be superficial unless it has deep roots in the

inexhaustible doctrinal riches of Christ of which St. Paul

teaches. A people who had anything like a due under-
standing of the implications of the Incarnation would be

a people with commitment and passion in their humani-

tarianism, as well as in other things, far greater than any

with which we are ordinarily familiar. The proof of that

is the saints. St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis of Assisi,

St. Joan, all were distinguished by a passionate intuition

into the nature and corollaries of the Incarnation, which

took place precisely because God Himself so loved the
world as to send His very Son. The saints are relevant to

our discussion because the contribution of Catholicism

to America, as to any other nation, should be the raising

up of saints. Our embarrassment may well be the extent
to which we have not done this more fully, though, in all
truth, I often suspect our contribution of hidden but sav-

ing sanctity has probably been rich.

Q Do you think that as a matter of fact one of
the great problems of the Christian is how to

53



come to terms with both the temporal and

spiritual sides of his nature? He is confronted
with this dualism and tension, and how he
works it out will determine to a great extent

his attitudes and his actions in both orders,

the temporal and earthly order and the spiri-

tual and supernatural order.

wright: Yes. And perhaps our gravest deficiency (a
failure that would have been even greater, I feel, had we
gone the way of the non-humanistic education that

threatens to dominate secular education in America) has

been the failure to date of American Catholicism to pro-

duce a persuasive Christian humanism in our land. This

is all the more lamentable because, as I have intimated,

in the nineteenth century I think we were well on the way

to producing such a humanism. However, to the extent

that we abandoned or neglected our specifically Christian

humanistic heritage, as Americans we have let the Church

down and, as Catholics, we have let America down.

America desperately needs a truly devout humanism. We
were in the process of bringing such an emphasis to

America; we may yet help bring it. Unless we do, I don’t

know who else will; any other humanism that is apt to
find substantial following in our land suffers from the

pernicious cultural anemia of secularism.

Q People like Father Walter Ong say that some
American Catholics seem to be looking back

to Europe too much, that they ought to be

more concerned with forming and develop-

ing a distinctive American tradition.

wright: Agreed, but with one qualification. Just as it

would be dated for us to be looking back to Europe in

terms, let us say, of nineteenth century Europe, or early

twentieth century Europe, so Father Ong’s point of view,

too, it seems to me, reflects a bit of a cultural lag if it fails

fully to consider the fact that the world is becoming ever

more close-knit in its unity, so that for new reasons we

54



must not so much “look back” but “look over” to Europe,

even as Europe, indeed, must “look over” to us. Human
affairs are constantly becoming more interrelated and

interwoven. It is not a question of “looking back” to

dated things, as, for example, to a romantic medieval-

ism, but of moving forward, together with Europe and

all the human family. The Common Market is simply
the most recent symbol, on a rather lowly level, of the

trend that has long been developing on other levels, sci-

entific, literary, and religious. Our culture, more and

more, will be neither European nor American, but

human, and, I pray, divine. Hence the relevance of the

Incarnation to our cultural problem, national and cosmo-

politan.

Q In a lecture on the historic role of the Amer-
ican Catholic bishops you stressed the fact

that the hierarchy has always been close to

the laboring man and to his aspirations, and

that American Catholics in general have been

strongly identified with the laboring man and
the labor movement. Was that identification

primarily an economic rather than an ideo-

logical one? Have American Catholics ever

worked out, say, a theology of the working

class? In the absence of such a theological or

ideological conviction about labor and the

laboring man, have American Catholics

abandoned their identification with the labor-

ing man as they have moved up the economic
ladder in recent years and have taken on the

attitudes of the middle class?

wright : This is probably true, but it doesn’t alter my
essential point in the lecture. What made the hierarchy
close to the working people is secondary to the fact that

they were. And that this was good both for America and
for the Church was the point I was making. Whatever

the reasons, even if merely economic or social, it was

historically a blessing that the clergy were, in fact, so

55



close to the workers. It spared us from the anti-clericalism

that marred the life of the Church elsewhere. Also, this

closeness of the clergy to the workers brought into the

organized labor movement a saving influence, even a
certain conservatism, that kept it from going to the ex-

tremes of socialism and ideological materialism which

hurt so many nations elsewhere. I think, too, that it has a
beneficent effect on the family sense of the American

workingman. Probably nowhere in the world has there

been so great an emphasis on the rights of the working-

man precisely as the head of the family. I see in this a
result of the religious influence.

Conversely, the fact that we were a working people, in

the main, has colored, more often for good than other-

wise, the quality of our Catholicism. If one re-visits the

older sections of most American cities he finds an inter-

esting illustration of what I mean. In almost all of them

there is a great church of a religious order—the Gesu in

Milwaukee, the Immaculate Conception in Boston, others

of the Jesuits, for example, in New York, Philadelphia,
St. Louis, Baltimore—and invariably alongside of them

there is the first college that our people built in each of

these cities. More often than not, the college itself has

long since moved, but note well how early it was founded

and that it was founded precisely in working-class areas.

It represented the dynamic of our people, as Americans

in this land of opportunity, to see to it that their sons went

to college. Moreover, these colleges, humble when they

built them, were, if I may so put it, darned good ones. In
the things that matter to me, in the humanistic branches

and in the realms of religion, they were sometimes better

than they are now.

I remember Francis Rogers, then Dean of the Harvard

Graduate School, speaking at Assumption College in

Worcester and reproaching us because at the moment our

colleges are doing the things done elsewhere, but often

are doing them less well. He lamented that we are not
keeping alive in the intellectual community of America

those values for which we established colleges a century

ago. I subscribe to that. When our colleges and univer-

56



sities were founded, they had a clear commitment both

on the cultural level and on the religious level. For a

long, long time they met that commitment, courageously

and competently. They are not always equally clear about

their commitment now, and that worries me. If they

clarify their commitment, religiously and culturally, they

are more likely to provide the spiritual philosophy of

labor, of family life, and of other human values that you

properly ask of them and that their devout and patriotic

founders dreamed would be their contribution.

Q Are there any other specifically Catholic in-
fluences you can discern so far as the Amer-

ican character is concerned?

wright: Oddly enough, I think the Catholic influence

has produced some of our most constructive revolution-

aries, or, at least, people identified with our most con-

structive revolutions. Many of our nationalities happen
to be involved historically in revolutions, which is one

reason why we happen to be here. It is interesting to me
that many people, quite outside the household of the
faith, when they relate the stories of their part in Amer-

ica’s typical progressive movements, tell of their indebt-

edness to specific Catholic priests for encouragement.

Q And yet, wouldn’t you say that one of the
characteristics of American Catholics is the

intransigence with which they cling to the

articles and content of their faith, a certain

resoluteness in matters of faith?

wright: No doubt, and I am glad that this is so. I also
think that American Catholics are, if I may use the word,
the “prayingest” people in the world. Constantly on the

lips of our people are phrases asking or promising prayer

—prayers for the living and for the dead. Throngs of peo-

ple at noontime and at odd hours of the day drop into our

city churches habitually to pray before the Blessed Sacra-

57



ment. This is a strictly voluntary, almost mystical, char-

acteristic of American Catholics. It involves no species of

conformism or legalism. It is impossible to believe that

this enormous fact of constant and universal prayer is not

without tremendous effect and repercussions in our na-

tional life, especially when we add this massive force of

popular lay prayer to the daily treasury of prayer and

meditation in our contemplative houses, monasteries,

schools, and churches. Heaven knows, whatever else we

may be, we are a people who pray. I think it is important
that this witness of prayer be thought of whenever we are

talking about how a religious group influences the nation.

Q The Supreme Court recently ruled that a
prayer prescribed for voluntary recitation in

the public schools of New York State was
unconstitutional. The State Supreme Court

of California last year threw out as unconsti-

tutional certain local ordinances and laws

governing narcotics traffic, pornography

,

prostitution, and the like. Do you think the
moral climate of our nation is deteriorating,

and the courts are perhaps hastening the proc-

ess by accommodating the law to what they

think is the majority viewpoint on morals?

wright: This appears to me, as one among many, to

be ground for grave concern. We tend at the moment, I
think, to be too facile about the overly sharp distinction

between what is legal and what is moral. Sometimes the

Supreme Court seems almost too eager to say that it can-

not define concepts like “blasphemy” or “obscenity” and

so cannot rule on questions involving these concepts.

True, our generation, by and large, considers morality a

private affair, but one cannot help feeling that moral

liberalism so extreme neglects the intimate interrelation-

ship between law and morality, even though the formali-

ties of conscience and the formalities of legal obligation

differ. So wide a distinction between legality and moral-

ity as that which aggressive secularism demands leaves us

58



open to a dreadful harvest. It will require much more

than the new electronic devices to catch income-tax evad-

ers and other scofflaws if the glib dismissal of any moral

implications in the areas of legal obligation becomes the

permanent pattern of our national law.

It is unquestionably true that the realm of moral con-

science and that of civil law are often distinct in their

premises and in their sanctions; frequently in history

both religious and political freedom have depended on

the due distinctions between these, not only in “pluralis-

tic” societies but everywhere. But the exclusions of the

secularism that is so aggressive at the moment are quite

another matter; they forget that unless the Lord build,

they labor in vain who strive to build the human city. I
fear that as excesses of authoritarianism historically lead

to extremes of libertarian reaction, so the present ex-

tremes of libertarianism will lead to a conservative reac-

tion, even a reactionary conservatism.

Q Something you said early in our discussion
about the theoretical possibility of a third

kind of political society which would be nei-

ther purely secular nor confessional or sacral

reminds me of something Father John Court-
ney Murray once said in his description of
America. He called it a “lay state,” which, he
said, should not be confused at all with a

“laicized” state.

wright: Yes, and we had the happy makings of that,
the makings of an entirely unique political society, before

the recent drive of secularism. We had, in a sense that
Cavour and his crowd never dreamed of, “a free church

in a free state.” We may not much longer have it. We had
it in the sense of a free church which enjoyed a certain

favor of the law within the free state. And we had a free
state which enjoyed the full blessing of the free church.

That was an enviable situation. It did not entail an estab-

lishment, either of religion or of a church, but it gave the

favor of the law to morality, as certain things may have

59



the favor of the law without on that account being part

of the government. Certain decencies enjoy the favor of

the law. That favor was reflected in tax exemption of

charitable, religious, and educational work. It was re-

flected in the attitude of the Northwest Ordinance toward

religion, virtue, and piety. It was reflected in many ways.
It was, in point of fact, the reason for the enormous sys-

tem, unique in America, of chaplaincies in the Army,

Navy, and Air Force, in mental institutions, poor houses,

and elsewhere. Such favor of the law did not mean an

establishment of religion by the state.

By the same token, there was and still is no place in

the world where the Church is so eager to be positive in

its approach to the civil institutions and secular traditions

as it is here in America. We do well to pray and to work
that this tradition, so uniquely American and so favorable

to both civil and religious progress, is not lost to us under

the pressures of sheer secularism, anti-clericalism, or

clericalism—home-grown or alien.

An Interview with
Louis Finkelstein

Q Is is possible, Dr. Finkelstein, to speak oj
“American Jewry”? Is there such an entity as

American Jewry?

finkelstein: Many Jews in America feel ties of kinship

with one another and a common cultural background.

Most of them, I think, have a common concern for the

future of their tradition, and there is a great deal of in-

formal cooperation among them. But there is no organ-

ized American Jewry.

60



Q You said in one of your writings that Judaism
is not an organization, as such.

finkelstein: That’s right.

Q And that there is no person or group of per-
sons to whom the Jewish people everywhere
owe obedience or whose views must be ac-

cepted by all Jews as binding.

finkelstein: Yes.

Q Doesn’t this raise a question, then, as to how
theological accuracy may be continued and

guaranteed within the Jewish tradition?

finkelstein: Up to about 100 years ago, all Jews, to
the extent that they were Jews, accepted the Hebrew

Scriptures, which are commonly called the Old Testa-

ment, and the Talmud, which is a discussion of it, and

the books based on the Talmud, as at least theoretically

their guides in life. About 100 years ago a group of Jews

in Germany tried to introduce into Judaism the same ele-

ment that Protestantism had introduced into Christianity.

They tried to build a concept of Judaism in which the

congregation could modify, interpret, or innovate. And
they didn’t consider either the Bible or the Talmud bind-

ing upon them in their lives. These are the Reform Jews.

In the past 100 years there also have been a large number

of Jews who simply do not observe Judaism. So it cannot
be said that the Talmud is a guide to all Jews in their way

of life. But insofar as they are Jews there is no other

guide. A few years ago, Mr. David Ben-Gurion asked
twenty-five Jews: “What is a Jew?” Some of those ques-
tioned observed their religion, some didn’t; some were

Reform, some Orthodox, some Conservative. They all

agreed that they had no other way to answer that ques-
tion but through the Talmud.

Q Those are the three major divisions of Jews
—Orthodox, Reformed, and Conservative?

61



finkelstein: Yes. Our seminary is generally described

as Conservative. Conservatism extends all the way from

Orthodox to almost-Reform.

Q What factors in American Jewry inhibit or
enhance whatever influence the American

Jews have had or are having on the American

character?

finkelstein: The influence of American Jews on the

national character can be considered in two parts. There

is the influence of Judaism as a way of life. This has

been very considerable. The Puritans were great students

of the Old Testament, and some of them were students

even of the Talmud. Many of the ideas that flourished
early in American history had their origin in Rabbinic

Judaism. The concept of the rights of man, which in the

Talmud takes the form of the duties of man, was one of

these ideas. The Puritans were fascinated to discover

such concepts in Judaism. But secondly, I would say that

the Jews as a group exercise no influence on American

life. Jews represent as many different viewpoints as does

the rest of the American community.

Q You mean they exercise no religious or
moral influence on American life?

finkelstein: I don’t think they are exercising any re-

ligious influence as a group because they are very divided.

One would think, from the fact that Jews play so very

important a part in a number of industries, including the

communications industry, that something of Judaism

would percolate through these areas at least. But this

isn’t so, because the Jews who have developed great com-

petence and leadership here know virtually as little about

Judaism as the Christians do. Jews, qua Jews, have no

great spiritual or moral influence on America except in-

sofar as individual Jews who are very close to their tradi-

tion might influence others by their example. Of course,

that would be true of Catholics and Protestants as well.

62



There are two exceptions one should mention perhaps.

I have been told by Professor Paul Tillich that Martin

Buber is the greatest force in American Protestantism.

And I think the influence of Professor Abraham J.
Heschel of this seminary is growing and is being recog-

nized. But these are extraordinarily gifted individuals.

Q Jews have had enormous cultural and es-
thetic influence, but that gets away from the

specifically religious character.

finkelstein: Yes. And Spinoza had a great deal of in-
fluence on the world, but not as a Jew. He happened to
be a great philosopher. Freud had great influence, but

not as a Jew. Einstein knew virtually nothing about the

Jewish tradition. Freud knew little about it and was quite

unaware of the Talmud. The place where Jews have in-

fluenced American life, I think, is in philanthropy. Or-

ganized philanthropy is the one commandment that con-

tinues to be fulfilled. By example, American Jews may
be exerting some influence in this area.

Q It has been said that Jews are not a proselyt-
izing group, that they do not feel compelled,

as those in other faiths, to convert others to

Judaism.

finkelstein: The Jews have not been a proselytizing

people since the rise of Christianity. One hears lonely
voices from time to time expressing the need to go back

to proselytization. But they are lonely voices.

Q Would anti-Semitism have a direct, or in-
direct, effect on the amount and quality of
influence American Jews can exert on the

American character?

finkelstein : That question reminds me that the lack of
Jewish influence in America was never clearer than dur-

ing the Hitler period. Hitler was a great threat to the

63



world, and every Jew knew it. He happened to be a direct
threat to the Jews, an immediate threat to them. But he

was an even greater threat to the world. There was no

way, however, in which the Jews could explain that to

America. They tried very hard, but nobody believed them.

But I don’t think anti-Semitism plays an important part

in what we are talking about. The problem is a Jewish

problem, not a problem of the outer world. If the Jews

were better Jews and knew more about their religion,

obviously they would have a great deal of influence in

the world. And there is a great deal in Judaism that could
influence the world. St. Thomas Aquinas was deeply in-

fluenced by the Jewish philosopher, Maimonides. Mai-

monides was a very good Jew, steeped in Judaism. St.

Thomas found much in Maimonides that was useful,

even when he refuted Maimonides, or tried to refute him.

Today we don’t have any large number of Jews who have

their roots in Judaism and also know it well enough to

be able to interpret it. We have a terrific problem just
trying to explain Judaism to Jews.

Q Your use of the word “Judaism” reminds
me of an essay I read recently by Arthur
Cohen, who says that Judaism is not so much

a religion as a way of life .

finkelstein: I think what he was saying is that Judaism

is not a creed or a philosophy, but a way of life. I’m not

sure that people of other religions would say that theirs

is not a way of life also. Judaism expresses its ideas

mainly in action symbols. The person who confesses his

faith in Judaism has achieved nothing unless he trans-

lates that into action. His action is what matters.

Q The central doctrine of Judaism, 1 think you
once said, is the belief in One God, the Father

of all mankind. Another source has added

a second element as being indispensable in

Judaism—the covenant, the election of Israel

to be the bearers of this belief.

64



finkelstein: Belief in One God is central in the sense
that if you don’t have that you have nothing, and then all

the rest becomes merely fossilized custom. But in itself

belief in God doesn’t differentiate Judaism from any
other religion. It doesn’t make one a Jew, and if it is

unassociated with action it isn’t even terribly important.

Of course, without that belief one can’t get very far.

Hillel, the great Jewish rabbi of the first century, was

asked by a pagan to define Judaism in a single sentence.

Hillel said, “What you do not like, do not do to your

neighbor; all the rest is commentary.” Hillel came much

nearer to what Judaism is than many of us have. The

whole of Judaism, according to Hillel, is a footnote to

that doctrine. That is essentially the Golden Rule ex-

pressed in different words. I don’t know to what extent

so difficult a doctrine can influence people who are really

not within the tradition.

I might add that it is a curious thing that the Jews in

the Middle Ages, though they were persecuted and never

knew when extermination might face the community

and were driven out from place to place, nevertheless had

more influence on their world than we have had on the

modern world. There were great rabbis and great sages

among the medieval Jews.

Q What accounted for that influence?

finkelstein: In those days Jews spent an awful lot of

time doing an awful lot of thinking about their religion

and about the relation of their religion to the world. If

they did the same in our time, I don’t doubt that they

would have similar influence.

Q To what extent has formalism crept into
Judaism? Will Herberg, for example, says

that the Bar Mitzvah ceremony has become

more of an elaborate social affair than a re-

ligious ceremony or a liturgical rite. Formal-

ism is a danger that all religions fear. To

what extent has it appeared inside Judaism?

65



finkelstein : Undoubtedly Americans, generally speak-

ing, pay lip-service to their religion and prefer to live

religion on specific days and on specific occasions. And
they are not necessarily eager to translate their religious

ideas into action in the marketplace. I imagine this is to a

certain extent true of Judaism. However, it is possible to

overstate this. A boy who is going to be Bar Mitzvah
(Son of the Commandment) has to attend the services,
he has to study a lot, and this process of studying and

being Bar Mitzvah at thirteen years of age, when he is

responsible for his own actions, is a serious matter in his
life, even though his parents might reduce it to a lavish

party, which seems a little absurd to the rest of us.

Q What percentage, would you say, of the five
and a half million American Jews practice

their religion in a regular fashion?

finkelstein : That’s hard to say because at least a mil-

lion of them are Reform Jews, and while they consider

themselves practicing their religion, obviously the Ortho-

dox Jews do not agree with them. I suspect that the

Orthodox Jews do not consider even the Conservatives

as practicing their religion.

Q How many Conservative Jews are there in
this country?

finkelstein: There are perhaps a million and a half

Conservative Jews. Most Jews in America practice their

religion to some extent. I imagine that on the Day of

Atonement, out of the five and a half million, four and a

half million will attend the Synagogue, or fast, or in some

way set aside that Day of Atonement. Maybe four and a

half million Jews have some kind of party on the first

night of Passover which reminds one of the old Passover

Service. I think virtually all the five and a half million,

either willingly or to a certain extent unwillingly through

the pressure of their friends, practice philanthropy, a cen-

tral commandment of Judaism.

66



Q In the area of political and social thought,
American Jews seem to be consistently on

what is known as the “liberal” side, even

though their professional and business occu-

pations might tend to align them with politi-

cal and social conservatives in this country.

Is this liberalism traceable to their religion

or to other elements in their lives or back-

ground?

finkelstein: Many Jews are conservatives, but perhaps
the more articulate ones aren’t. The large unions in New
York were founded by Jews and are led by Jews, and

they are obviously what you would call on the “liberal”

side. Men like David Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman have
had great influence within their groups. A place where
the Jews, qua Jews, may have had some influence is in
the law. Judaism, of course, is a system of law, and

therefore many people get a training in Judaism which

otherwise they might not have. It is not entirely by acci-

dent that so many extraordinary judges, like Brandeis

and Cardozo and Irving Lehman, were Jews.

There is another point to be made about the contribu-

tion that Jews can make to political and social mores in

this country. There is an important role which a small

minority can play in this land that no one else can play,

and precisely because the minority tends to be sensitive

to any act of disparagement to the stranger. The members

of the majority often will, without malice but thought-

lessly, and without really entering into the spirit of mem-
bers of a minority, do things that will hurt the stranger.

Because the Jewish community is articulate and extremely

sensitive, it has been able to help the American people

understand this situation; and in that way it has been able

to help all minorities, and above all, the American spirit.

Q What is the attitude of American Jews to-
wards involving themselves in all the various

areas of American life? Nathan Glazer has

said that one of the great anomalies of Amer-

67



icon Jewish life is that the Jews, who by
objective criteria are eminently suited for per-

sonal success and civic responsibility, never-

theless feel themselves apart from the main-

stream of American social life. He says that
through a combination of their own wishes
and the wishes of other Americans they lead

a life apart in their own communities.

finkelstein: Dr. Glazer is a very able man, and if he

says something I suppose he has the facts to back it up.

I don’t think he is referring to involvement in American

political thinking, however. He’s referring to social life,

in the sense of the social milieu. There is an invisible wall

here, and I don’t know who creates it. People feel more

at home with those whom they are like, and they tend to
drift together. But I am not sure this is altogether natural
because one does not find it in small children. It begins

to assert itself among boys and girls only after they

reach the age of fifteen or sixteen, so perhaps there is

an artificial element in this picture.

Q Glazer also talks about the “present closed
community” of Jews in this country and the

“set of parallel institutions” which, he says,

shows no signs of weakening. All this sounds

remarkably similar to the things American

Catholics say about themselves—the problem

of withdrawal, non-involvement, parallel

Catholic institutions and organizations. But

you say this separateness of Jews is more a

social fact than anything else.

finkelstein : It is a fact, and I don’t know whether it is

altogether good or bad. Obviously Judaism is helped to

survive when Jews are a closed society. But this also

deprives them of a good deal.

Q A sociological study made in an American
community revealed that 9 per cent of the

68



non-Jews acknowledged that they “felt dif-

ferently” toward Jews; but 39 per cent of the

Jews in that community thought that the non-

Jews “felt differently” toward them. This

may mean that a long tradition of persecu-

tion has left Jews understandably sensitive.

finkelstein: I don’t know if that study helps us very

much here because a man will tend to underestimate his

“feeling differently” toward others. He might say, “As
far as I am concerned, everyone’s alike.” But in point of
fact he might not feel that way at all. The Jew who has

been in contact with the world might be more aware of

this. With experience limited to about half a century I

could furnish some astonishing examples of people who
are famous for their liberalism and who, 1 must say, have

even a friendly personal regard for Jews, as Jews, but

who nonetheless on occasion in my presence will say to
me, “There is a certain feeling of strangeness regarding

these people” (the Jews).

Oddly enough, this strangeness increases as the Jew

tends to be more like his neighbor. When the Jew looks
and acts like everybody else, a big part of the world starts

worrying about him. I wonder whether, if Hitler’s target

had been the Baptists or the Episcopalians or the Cath-

! olics, the rest of the world would have stood by as quietly

|

and seen them exterminated, as it did with the Jews. It

seems incredible that the world would stand by and watch

a religious group be exterminated and never lift a finger.

Q Over the many years that you have been
teaching and writing, what would be your

estimate of the American Jews’ practice and

belief of their religion today compared to

what it was, say, a generation ago?

finkelstein : The impression one gets is that in the past

ten years there has been something of an upsurge in

religious interest among Jews, as well as among other
Americans. Call it wistfulness if nothing else. Young

69



people tend to be getting a better Jewish education than

they used to get. But I must say that in the thirty years

immediately preceding the past ten that was not so. And
I am not sure that the upsurge in the past ten years is
keeping pace with the increase of the Jewish population.

More Jews are being born and so we get the impression

that there is more Jewishness, when perhaps there isn’t.

The key ceremonial in Judaism, of course, is the observ-

ance of the Sabbath. Throughout Jewish history a Jew

who did not observe the Sabbath was considered to have
virtually abandoned his faith. That was the last thing a

Jew would give up, short of giving up his religion alto-

gether. In America the Sabbath is about the first thing he

gives up. How that reversal occurred, I don’t know.

Q 1 suppose the sociologists would cite this as
another example of Americanism, or an

Americanist acculturation.

finkelstein: Yes, Saturday is used as a shopping day

or as the day to go out and play golf.

Q How significant in the general context of
American Judaism is this abandonment of

the observance of the Sabbath?

finkelstein: It is tragic, because the Sabbath day was

the day set aside by Judaism for Jews to be Jews and

nothing but Jews. It was strictly observed as a day for

study and for living as a Jew. It is a day on which Jews

should mingle with fellow-Jews on a spiritual plane, on

which they should contemplate, on which they should

sit home with their families, a day of complete rest, of

cessation of work, cessation of worry and anxiety. If

you abandon that to play golf or to go shopping or to go

to work or to do a million and one other things, that

is a great calamity, and it has befallen us as Jews.

Q Do the Jews, as l have heard it said of some
Catholics and Protestants, look upon religion

70



as simply a means by which they can satisfy

personal needs rather than as a manifestation

of praise and honor for God? Would this

help to account for the “religious upsurge”

you have noted?

finkelstein: There is, of course, a great deal in every

religion, including Judaism, that is useful to people.

Certainly it is clear that the Sabbath, as it has been

observed by Jews through the centuries, has been a great

life-preserving institution. It is good to take a day off

from worldly affairs and simply enjoy living, studying,

and contemplating. I wish I could find some way of per-

suading Jews that it is a good thing. A very famous Jew
was here once at our seminary on the Sabbath and he

told me afterward that it had been a wonderful experi-
ence. He said that for the first time he forgot all about
financial reports for his company.

Q Can a comparison be made between the qual-
ity of Judaism in this country and in others?

finkelstein: Judaism, at least in certain phases, is a

highly intellectual religion. To live it one has to know a

great deal of a civilization that is remote; one has to know

another language in order to pray in Hebrew; one has to

know a wholly different calendar from the secular cal-

endar; one has to know what the holidays are; and in
order to keep the Sabbath one has to know literally
hundreds of precepts. Therefore it requires a great deal

of study. To be a good Jew also requires a great deal of
training of one’s mind to be responsive to specific situa-

tions. Generally speaking, Americans—and Jews among

them—do not like study. They hate learning new lan-

guages. So most American Jews find very hard the mas-

tery of what Judaism has to tell them.

It is said that in Israel young people are not religious.

I suppose that on the average they are not more religious

than American Jews. Still they know a great deal more.
Their language is Hebrew. Sabbath is all around them,

71



holidays are all around them. So they catch on to a great

deal more, right from the cradle. Each time I am in
Jerusalem I am very much impressed by the great amount
of religion going on there, even when people think they

are not religious.

Q What educational system exists within Amer-
ican Judaism to give this intellectual training?

Is this training compulsory or voluntary?

finkelstein: We have a voluntary system, it cannot be
compulsory. It takes several forms. The most intensive

form is the Jewish day school, which corresponds to the

Catholic parochial school and is becoming more and

more popular. About IV2 per cent of the Jewish children

who are getting any religious education in New York are
getting it from a Jewish day school. Our Conservative

group, which hasn’t had Jewish day schools until recently,

is now developing them at a great rate. Some of these

day schools are eight-year schools, some run through

high school, a couple run through college, combining

Jewish studies and secular studies.

Q How do children who do not attend Jewish
day school get Jewish intellectual orientation?

finkelstein: They go to afternoon school and Sunday

school. These are sometimes five-days-a-week afternoon

schools, sometimes three-days-a-week schools. The one-

day-a-week school doesn’t help very much at all, in my
opinion. Since most children are going to attend the

three-days-a-week school, we will have to discover how

to make each hour count more. I think in that respect

that Jewish teachers have been lax; they have not thought

through in the past fifty years any new ideas that I know

of which would help transmit more quickly to Jewish

children what Judaism is all about.

The only really new Jewish idea that has appeared is

the camping system that we at the seminary conduct. We
have six camps in which children spend two months in

72



the summer. In these camps the child finds himself trans-

ported to a far different world. To a great extent the lan-

guage is Hebrew and the customs are all Jewish religious

customs. And there is a great emphasis on character

training. The results have been quite remarkable, so re-

markable that we could fill six more camps if we had

them. We now accommodate 1,500 children each sum-
mer and if we had the camps we could take in another

2,500 or 3,000 who seek admittance. This is something

that has developed in the past twelve years.

Q Has the number of rabbinic students in your
seminary increased?

finkelstein : It has multiplied by four in the past twenty

years. We have to multiply by three more. We have 123
students and we would like to have about 360 to meet

the demands for rabbis from this institution.

Q Has the liturgy of Judaism become Ameri-
canized in any way?

finkelstein: The American Jewish religion differs in

its emphasis and in some specific facts from other forms

of the Jewish religion. Every Reform synagogue and

almost every Conservative synagogue has dropped the

segregation of the sexes which had been traditionally

observed until a hundred years ago. Also, many Con-

servative and almost all Reform synagogues have much

of their services in English, in the vernacular. This is not

prohibited in the Talmud. But it does suggest that the

congregation is not taking the trouble to study Hebrew.

You would think that the least the Jew would want to do
would be to study the language of the prophets so he

could understand what they said.

Q What can you and other Jewish leaders do to
attack the problem of increasing the influence

of Judaism on Jews, a problem you have said

is basic?

73



finkelstein: I spoke about what we are trying to do
with our camps. Also, we have about 700 graduates from
this seminary who are serving congregations, so to a cer-
tain extent the ideas worked out here percolate to the

congregations. Also, adult study groups are now very
popular. I am amazed to see how the older people will
come to study and spend weekends trying to find out

what Judaism is really about. The development of the

State of Israel has also helped because people go there

and see Jewish religion, although sometimes they are

more impressed with an eight-inch irrigation pipeline

than they are with the spiritual development of the coun-

try. But I don’t think we have even begun to do our
work. You perhaps know about the radio and television
program we conduct here, “The Eternal Light.” It is lis-
tened to by Americans of all faiths, but it has many points,
of course, that are specially addressed to Jews.

Q You say much more remains to be done?

finkelstein; Yes. I don’t think we have yet come to

grips with the problem. We have to do something that is
very hard for all of us here, for anybody. I can explain

this by telling you a story about Solomon Schechter. He
was the president of this seminary when I came here as

a young man. He gave the entrance examination and
afterwards he asked me to read a text. He said, “All right,
you know enough to come in here. Now I want to ask
you some questions to find out whether you have any

common sense. Why do you want to come here?” I said,
“I want to come here because I want to study.” He said,

“In that case, you aren’t clever at all, because you could

study much more rapidly in the library than you could in

class. In class you are one of many and a lot of people

would hold you back. So this isn’t an efficient way to

study.” I thought I wasn’t going to be admitted. I said,

“Dr. Schechter, why do I come to the seminary?” He

said, “You come to the seminary to associate with great

men. We have very great men on the faculty here. And
by association with them and by osmosis you learn an

74



awful lot.” That has been true; it has been a great privi-

lege. For fifty years I have associated with great men —

teachers and now my colleagues and some of my pupils.

Q Judaism’s influence on Jews is tied in, then,
with the quality of its “great men”?

finkelstein: Judaism is a religion that has to be taught

very largely through osmosis and by people willing to

undertake being great men. Jewish leadership has to carry

an enormous burden because it is not easy to be a great

man in the sense that I am using that term. One has to
give up lots of things. I would say that the future of

American Jewry—the main task in that future—is to

persuade the rabbis and teachers who graduate from this

seminary, and the lay people who are associated with us,

that this is their business—to try to be great men. There is

no escape from it. If they won’t, then nothing that is said,

nothing that is preached, nothing that is written, is going

to make any difference at all.

About that Hillel answer to the pagan on the definition

of Judaism, a professor at the seminary here once said,

“Isn’t that strange; all of us have told that story and

nobody has become a Jew because of it. But when Hillel

told the story, the pagan became a Jew.” Hillel had some-

thing that we lack. What Hillel was saying he was also
living, and the pagan was convinced not so much by
what he said as by the fact that Hillel said it.

Q As you have been talking about the great
demands that Judaism makes on the indi-

vidual Jew, 1 have been thinking about the

climate or environment in America in which

those demands are made and either met or

left unmet. Can there be an American expres-

sion of the Judaistic law that would make the

demand not easier to fulfill but perhaps more

congenial or apposite to the American con-

text? Or would such adaptation cause Juda-

ism to lose something essential in the process?

75



finkelstein: Judaism exists under many conditions. It
can be lived in America. It can be lived in any other

country. Its message is addressed to a world in need.

Everything that goes with Judaism—its comforts, its con-

solations, its directions, its prohibitions, its command-

ments—is addressed to people who are suffering, perhaps
especially Jews.

In a country like ours in which there is plenty to eat,

plenty of freedom, and in which Jews are treated like

anybody else, the whole religion has to be thought

through all over again, not so much as to what has to
be done but as to new opportunities.

For instance, we have had a Jew who was Governor of
the State of New York. There is no provision in the
Talmud for guiding a Jew who is Governor of New York.
It never occurred to anybody that a Jew would be gov-

ernor of anything. A Jewish governor has new responsi-
bilities. Or take the Sabbath—if I have a store, I must not

do business on the Sabbath. But suppose that I have

shares in the New York Central Railroad and I am there-
fore a part owner of that railroad and the railroad works

on the Sabbath as well as on every other day. There is

nothing in the Talmud to tell me what my obligation is
in this situation. Or, suppose that I own shares in an

electrical company that has engaged in nefarious prac-

tices. The Talmud says I should not steal, but it does not

say what my obligation is if I am part owner of an elec-
trical company that steals.

There is a whole series of things that have to be thought

through in an entirely new world. And there are some
Jewish commandments that simply cannot be observed

in the way they used to be observed. One of the basic

Jewish commandments is to visit the sick. Today, visiting

the sick in the hospital is mostly a nuisance to the sick,

and if the person is really sick the hospital won’t let you

in. In the Middle Ages this was a very important matter

because there were no nurses and when you went to see

a sick person you helped him, you tended him. But today

what happens to the great Jewish commandment of tak-

ing care of the sick?

76



Q Whose task is it to explicate and elaborate
this American application of the Jewish law?

finkelstein: That task, I should think, falls on our

seminary, at least as far as our group is concerned. It

falls on a combination of the faculty of the seminary,

who are great scholars, and the rabbis and graduates,

who are also scholars and who are in contact with life.

This is an entirely different matter from making Judaism

an “easier religion” to follow. I don’t think Judaism has

to make religion easier to follow; religion should not be

easy to follow.

Q I was not thinking of adaptation in terms of
“easier” but more in terms of perhaps a

closer correspondence between Judaism and

the American context.

finkelstein: The American people—and the Jews are

part of the American people—need not less discipline, but

more discipline; not less willingness to sacrifice, but

greater willingness to sacrifice. You cannot walk out of
your traditions and reduce them to some kind of tepidity.

Q Will Herberg has said that religion in Amer-
ican society has become “secularistic” in that

our guiding values and goals are secular

values and goals.

finkelstein: I am not sure that that is something new
in this world. If you went into a small town in Poland

where all the Jews kept the Sabbath, there was nothing to

do on the Sabbath but keep it. There was no temptation

not to keep the Sabbath. In New York there are many
things to do on the Sabbath, a great many temptations.
I don’t think the New York boy who doesn’t observe the
Sabbath can be classed as “less religious.” But I have no

doubt there is a problem with which all of us have to

come to grips—and that is the problem of trying to get

the American people of all groups, and especially us of

77



the Jewish group, to be much more morally sensitive. I
stress “morally sensitive” before “liturgically sensitive”

because I think the latter will come.

Q Are young Jewish college students able to
maintain and develop their religious life in

the secular colleges and universities? What

provisions have Jewish leaders made for them?

finkelstein: There is a Hillel Foundation and Hillel

groups are on the campuses. Under some of its directors

there is great spiritual activity and influence. They attract

young men and women to services and study. At other
places I don’t think the Hillel group amounts to much
more than boys and girls coming together to have a

pleasant social time. I am not sure that most Jewish col-
lege students like the Hillel groups. The last time I was

in England I noticed that there are 350 Jewish students

at Oxford but only about fifty of them attend services

on the Sabbath. Forty years ago, when I first went to

Oxford, there were only fifty Jewish students at the

school, but they all attended Sabbath services. Something

has happened in those forty years.

Our colleges, of course, are the seats of great spiritual

confusion. Teaching religion is not permitted in any of

the tax-supported institutions, though apparently teach-

ing non-religion is permitted. So a biologist can say that

he does not believe in God or that he thinks man is an

“accident.” But if a religious person said that biology

cannot be understood without reference to a wise Creator,

he might be fired for trying to “indoctrinate” his pupils.

Q 1 have been told that 75 per cent of American
Jews live in five metropolitan centers. Are

the Jews who do not live in those centers

being taken care of spiritually?

finkelstein: They are not being taken care of, that is

one of the great pities. We can’t get enough rabbis to
serve them.

78



Q Judaism considers a man once a Jew always
a Jew, doesn’t it?

finkelstein: The ancestors of all the Jews, according

to the Book of Exodus, were on Mount Sinai, and they

accepted the observance of Judaism for themselves and

all their descendants. Therefore, all of us are bound by

that. There is no way in which this covenant can be

unilaterally abrogated by any Jew. A Jew is a Jew.

Q What about intermarriage with non-Jews?
Jews seem to be almost as vigorously op-

posed to intermarriage with non-Jews as

Catholics are with non-Catholics.

finkelstein: Jews are hostile to intermarriage with

people of another faith. This is not too well understood.

Jews are not hostile to intermarriage with people of

another race, if they are Jews. The basic doctrine here is

that the home is a sanctuary and it has to be maintained

as a sanctuary. It cannot be so maintained if either the

high priest or the high priestess, so to speak, belongs to

another faith. That is something Jews do not like—mar-

riage outside of their fold—because it means the children

will not be Jews, or will be only half-Jews. Jews feel

strongly about the importance of preserving Judaism

because there are very few Jews. Judaism does not con-

sider it an unreasonable sacrifice for a Jewish man or
woman to shun marriage or even the thought of marriage
to a non-Jew.

Q What about the future of Judaism here? Are
you going to get enough “great men”?

finkelstein: Each of us has to do the best he can, but

he shouldn’t fool himself into thinking he can do it all

alone. Solomon Schechter used to say that you have to

leave a little bit to God.

January 1963