I've always been interested in line-drawing (perhaps due to a lack of virtue) and of late I wonder how the Christian should debate.
For instance, in the latest Crisis, Ralph McInerny responded to a criticism by saying words to the effect "I appreciate your teaching me Aquinas", which, in light of his books about Aquinas can only be seen as sarcastic. A minor off-key note, since it contributed nothing to the debate. Would JPII write it? No. Would Cardinal Newman? Probably.
That is mild of course. A famous Catholic blogger recently wrote that Andrew Sullivan thinks of the world only in terms of his "little Willie", which, as any guy can attest, is cruel only in its use of the diminutive.
Perhaps no one can skewer like Fr. George Rutler, a priest in Manhattan whose rejoinders read like poetry. The passage below, about the Kennedys, is mild compared to his normal balpeen hammer blows:
In Boston, the Kennedys and the clergy made unlovely music playing each other like pianos. Current distress in that archdiocese may be traced in part to defective spiritual chromosomes in Joe Kennedy and Cardinal O’Connell. A generation later, an obsequious Cardinal Cushing greased the slide from the solid piety of the work-worn 19th-century Patrick Kennedy to a latter-day “I never worked a (!!**!#!) day in my life” Patrick Kennedy accusing the pope of bigotry.If this be vice, it pays a certain virtue to vice.
The decay of the Kennedy dynasty now is marked not so much by the hypocrisy of more colorful earlier generations, whose vice paid tribute to virtue, as by a dull humbug whose virtue pays tribute to vice. P. J. Kennedy dancing on tables and Honey Fitz singing “Sweet Adeline” are more splendid figures in their corruption than Kathleen Kennedy Townsend delivering confused animadversions on Galileo.
Some negate, some affirm. Some stamp out heresy, others promulgate truth. Some fight wars, some are pacifists. I guess there is room for both in the universal church.
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