Letters to the Editor: March 2025

Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

I read the “Symposium on Catholics & American Political Life” (Parts I & II, Dec. 2024 & Jan.-Feb. 2025) with interest, in particular because my Benedict Option concept came up. Once again, it has been misunderstood. As anyone who has read my book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (as opposed to commentary on the book) knows, I do not advise political quietism. In fact, I say explicitly that Christians must stay engaged in politics, if only to protect religious liberty. In my own case, I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024, not because I see them as any kind of solution to our manifold crises but because they were the better choice by far.

The Benedict Option does not aspire to be any kind of total solution. I don’t think a total solution is possible. What I believe is that come what may in this age of chaos and disintegration, Christians — Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox — should make every effort to deepen their own religious lives — individually, in their families, and in their communities. We are not monks, so there is no retreat from the world for us, and in any case, there is no place to which we might escape. Head for the hills, if you wish, but wherever the Internet is, the world will find you. The point of the Benedict Option is to surrender the false hope that we can renew and redeem the world through mass political action, and instead to put most of our focus and energy on constructing resilient local communities within which to live out the faith through the troubled times upon us and those to come.

Again, this is not to say we should not engage in politics! As long as we have the vote, we can and should try to make a difference. It matters whether there are people in power in Washington, D.C., and at the state and local levels who are hostile to us and to what we believe. It has been the unhappy experience of many of us small-o orthodox Christians that even the institutional churches are not prepared to resist the disorders of our day. This is no reason to abandon the church — for Catholics and Orthodox, that wouldn’t be possible — but only to refuse despair and to do what we can as laymen to order our lives by the truth in a way that permits us to hold on to the faith and pass it on to our children.

When I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I met fellow Christian conservatives who still labored under the illusion that there was nothing wrong with America that electing more Republicans couldn’t solve. This is a claim that can’t withstand a moment’s reflection, but I could tell that they needed to believe this to justify their own religious passivity. When COVID came, we saw at our small Orthodox mission an influx of young Evangelicals who had been shaken to the core by what they had seen — namely, how fragile the seemingly settled civic order was — and who concluded that they needed a church with deeper roots and greater stability if they were going to endure the breakdown of the American order. I think they were right about that, but if they thought that all they had to do was join a more conservative, liturgical church to shelter from the coming chaos, they were mistaken.

The times upon us call for radical action among all Christians — including discerning how, whatever our confession, we can help one another across church lines. I was pleased to be in Rome on September 11, 2018, to hear Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the personal secretary of Pope Benedict XVI, give a powerful endorsement of the Benedict Option concept in a public address. Italian journalists present told me I should understand Gänswein as speaking for the Emeritus Pope, who was a great hero of mine. If the Benedict Option is good enough for Joseph Ratzinger — whom I used to call the “second Benedict” of the Benedict Option — then it ought to be considered seriously by Catholics and all serious Christians.

Rod Dreher

Budapest

Hungary

The Essential Guide

In his contribution to Part I of the “Symposium on Catholics & American Political Life” (Dec.), Will Hoyt writes that “the crucial question” is “to which faith…we should commit, as a place to think and act from.”

The scriptures of the world’s faiths provide essential and important information that answers this question. Some faiths instruct the worship of gods that kill; some tell believers to kill. With the exception of self-defense or defense of others, killing is evil. To worship a killer or honor scriptures that insist believers kill is to worship and honor evil.

Jesus told His listeners about the God of the universe, the God of love and virtue who does not kill or demand His believers kill. Jesus’ teaching about the One God has been a gift for two millennia, and it is the essential guide for understanding the religion that honors the God worthy of worship, respect, and love, and who guides what scientists tell us is an orderly and expanding universe.

Christianity teaches not only about a loving God but truths about our world and ourselves; it provides guidance not only for right belief but how to lead fulfilling, virtuous lives by loving God and respecting our fellow men.

Monta Pooley

Port Orchard, Washington

On the Means & Methods of Salvation

I read with great interest Hurd Baruch’s article “Revisiting & Redefining Universal Salvation” (Nov.). I share his belief that God offers, during our final moments in this life, the chance to repent and come to Him in eternity. But I had to chuckle when I read Baruch’s reason why lifelong Catholics needn’t grumble at this — because it is likely to be a process “painful and possibly long in duration.” Not exactly an assertion overflowing with sentiments of Christian charity!

It seems to me that our rejoicing at the possibility of salvation being offered to and accepted by all at the end of their lives, as well as our need for unflagging zeal to spread this message of salvation before that end arrives, can be found in a simple verse in the New Testament: God “desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).

Catherine Lawson

Brookville, Ohio

I appreciated the features dealing with the questions of just who can be saved and how salvation happens: “Indiff’rent Strokes” by Pieter Vree (New Oxford Notebook, Nov.) and “Revisiting & Redefining Universal Salvation” by Hurd Baruch.

Vree is distressed that Pope Francis claims that the various religions are “gifts from God” and are “different paths” to the one God. I think he is overly worried. Francis is echoing what Pope St. John Paul II said in a general audience (Sept. 9, 1998): The Holy Spirit is “present in other religions,” “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person,” and “it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their Savior.”

Both Popes were speaking to interreligious gatherings. Both agree that the Spirit of God is given to people in different religions and works efficaciously in those individuals and religions. Neither Pope was challenging or trying to correct the beliefs of the non-Christians in the audience. Neither claimed that the other religions had “equal weight” with or were as equally true as Christianity. And neither denied that “Jesus Christ is the one Mediator and Savior of the human race.” Though the appearance of their papacies is quite different, the substance of what both Francis and John Paul say on this subject is the same.

Since nonbelievers can, in fact, be saved, Baruch explores just how and when this salvation may occur. He supports the idea that at the moment of death we have an encounter with God that allows us to see fully and understand ourselves, our lives, and God — and in that encounter to choose to either turn to or away from Him. This seems right to me. Baruch quotes Pope Benedict XVI in support: “In the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation…. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy” (Spe Salvi, no. 47).

Benedict goes on to state that “it is clear that we cannot calculate the ‘duration’ of this transforming burning [a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God], in terms of the chronological measurement of this world” (ibid.) — a view that allows the possibility that for those who are first fully seeing themselves and God at their death, the time given to them for the experience, understanding, and decision may be more than just a hurried minute or two. It may be a lifetime. Who can say with certainty that it might not be an eternity?

Robert Schier

Orinda, California

HURD BARUCH REPLIES:

To Catherine Lawson

The possibility of a painful process of transforming repentance is where divine justice comes in, while it is in the ultimate outcome of salvation that Christ’s charity overflows.

To Robert Schier

I think we can say that the purgation process — the transforming burning — cannot last an eternity, for eternity has no end; therefore, there would be no ultimate salvation to the process. That would more properly be called Hell. But I could imagine a lengthy purgation stopping just short of eternity. I would note that when Lucia, the little seer at Fatima, asked the Blessed Mother whether a particular girl she had known was in Heaven, the Blessed Mother responded that “she will be in purgatory until the end of the world” (The Sun Danced at Fatima by Joseph A. Pelletier, 1983).

PIETER VREE REPLIES:

To Robert Schier

Just because Pope St. John Paul II said something similar to what Pope Francis said doesn’t make it correct. John Paul was, after all, the same Pope who kissed a Qur’an — quite unnecessarily — and invited pagans of all stripes to Assisi in 1986 to pray to their false gods for world peace. He was the same Pope who presented two Anglican archbishops of Canterbury with pectoral crosses, traditionally given only to Catholic bishops, and who kissed the episcopal ring of one of them, symbolizing…what? Perhaps only a misguided attempt at ingratiation.

Though neither John Paul nor Francis denied that “Jesus Christ is the one Mediator and Savior of the human race,” neither did they make that fact clear in these instances.

Would that John Paul and Francis had taken those opportunities to “challenge or try to correct the beliefs of the non-Christians” with whom they were interacting. Instead, both Holy Fathers took the easy path of irenicism. Rather than teaching hard truths to possibly hostile audiences, they decided to contravene the teaching of the Holy Office (now known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) in its Instruction on the Ecumenical Movement (1949), which calls on bishops to “be on guard lest, on the false pretext that more attention should be paid to the points on which we agree than to those on which we differ, a dangerous indifferentism be encouraged.”

Yup, indifferentism.

Although John Paul was a great pope — a dynamic and charismatic world figure during an era of tremendous global peril — who lives happily in our memories, he was, at times, a sower of confusion in matters religious, as is Francis. (For the depressing evidence, see “Catholic Confusion at the Very Top” by David Palm, March 2004.) Consider: How do non-Christians, as John Paul said, “receive salvation in Jesus Christ” while “not recognizing or acknowledging him as their Savior”? That seems a blatant contradiction of Scripture. Didn’t St. John say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn. 3:16-18)? Not to recognize or acknowledge Jesus is to reject Him — something very different from never hearing of Him, which is known as invincible ignorance. You must first hear Jesus presented as the Savior in order not to recognize or acknowledge Him as such.

As for John Paul’s claim that non-Christians who so reject Jesus can “receive salvation” by sincerely practicing their own religions, didn’t St. Peter say, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven…by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)? Anyone besides Jesus — Allah, Waheguru, or whoever — is an impostor and does not offer salvation. That’s Christianity 101. And it’s a dereliction of duty for Christian leaders not to make this clear, no matter how uncomfortable it might make their listeners. That’s why Christ calls His Gospel a “sword” (Mt. 10:34): It divides believers and nonbelievers.

If John Paul is correct that anybody who merely “follows the dictates of his conscience” can receive salvation, then why do we need to hear about Jesus? Or know Him? Or love Him? Or receive Him in the Eucharist? Or believe in His Church? Or have anything to do with organized religion at all? Forget one religion being as good as another; in this case, one man’s conscience is as good as another’s. That’s extreme indifferentism, and it’s a formula for chaos, not salvation.

A Man of Many Talents

As a fellow Johnsonian, I greatly appreciated Terry Scambray’s article “The Genius of Paul Johnson” (Dec.). I second his list of achievements, but I wish to add one more, published later in Johnson’s career: Art: A New History (2003). Somehow, in addition to writing first-rate history, Johnson also found the time to paint, even holding one-man exhibitions in London.

In fact, Johnson’s father was an artist, and he discouraged his son from taking up the same profession. “I can see bad times coming for art,” he said. “Frauds like Picasso will rule the roost for the next half-century.”

My aesthetic preferences run along the lines of Cordelia Flyte (“Modern art is all bosh”), but, unlike me, Johnson actually knows what he’s talking about and is an excellent guide to art both modern (which isn’t all bosh) and traditional. His book is a joy to read and features many excellent reproductions of artistic masterpieces. It is highly recommended.

Eric Jackson

South Saint Paul, Minnesota

TERRY SCAMBRAY REPLIES:

I, in turn, appreciate Eric Jackson’s comments on my article, and I thank him for adding more luster to Paul Johnson’s reputation. Though I alluded to Johnson’s writings on the topic of art, Mr. Jackson provides an apt description of a book with 752 pages.

Yes, Johnson’s father discouraged him from a career in art because he saw the cynicism engulfing the art world. In the 1970s and later, for example, art exhibitions might include “happenings” wherein individuals dressed in impish garb scampered around on tiptoe while performing infantile pantomimes, which was another way, I guess, to pan the tastes of the bourgeoisie. As Marshall McLuhan put it, “Art is anything you can get away with” — which is to say, “modern art” is an oxymoron.

If Jackson’s aesthetic preferences are represented — somewhat — by Cordelia Flyte of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, then mine are cribbed from Tom Wolfe’s book The Painted Bird, the conclusion of which is also that “modern art is all bosh,” though not all of it, certainly.

The Grand Illusion of Historical Narratives

In his column “History Doesn’t Exist” (Cultural Counterpoint, Dec.), Jason M. Morgan doesn’t mention but evokes St. Augustine’s exploration of “memory.” The great saint was right in identifying memory as all we have: Though we obviously don’t have the future, we don’t really even have the present moment the way we think we do. “Now” is gone before we even get to the “w.”

Given this reminder of the fragility of our existence — ever living, moving, and thinking on the tiniest point of time’s needle as we are — it is little wonder we attempt to secure our position on heaps of invented historical narratives. We do the same with our grand plans for the future. All illusion, of course, and of the same clumsy and ill-fated variety as Adam and Eve’s attempt at self-reliance in Genesis 3.

For the record, it shouldn’t necessarily be assumed that soldiers in foreign wars slog on out of a sense that their efforts fill in a blank of some righteous historical narrative. When I found myself overseas in such an escapade, I knew it was pointless, but I was under contract.

Paul Tormey

McKinney, Texas

JASON M. MORGAN REPLIES:

Paul Tormey’s thoughtful letter shows great insight. Maybe more than he realizes. Please turn to my column “A Love Supreme” (the third and final installment of the series), on page 34 of this issue, to see the great St. Augustine bringing it all back home.

Is Israel Immoral? Stupid? Or What?

In his guest column “Clarifying Our Thinking about the Holy Land” (Oct.), Thomas Storck provides a good summary of the historical events that led to the October 7, 2023, attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israel. But he fails to mention the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s, which Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat refused to sign, and the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in 2008. Right now, nothing is negotiable with the Muslim Arab residents around Israel, and nothing has been since 2010. Historically speaking, when Israel’s enemy hates it and desires its total removal, then the only options are overwhelming defeat of that enemy or another Holocaust. I don’t like that, but it is the ground truth.

Sometimes nations are forged in the cauldron of war, but there is no single Palestinian nation and cannot be. The Arab residents of the region were Ottoman-Turkish subjects for 500 years — without nationality but with clan and tribal relationships. These people were not allowed to assimilate into any Arab nation (Syria, Jordan, Egypt) because Arab Muslims were taught to hate the Jewish people, and you can never make peace with a people you hate. Refugee camps were and are the continuing policy of the Arab nations since 1948.

There are only two options to establish peace — and they are fragile, at that. The first involves a truce with a severely weakened Hezbollah and Israeli administration of Gaza. The second involves a negotiated settlement with the states holding Arabs hostage in refugee camps that allows a percentage every year for 25 years to be released and given citizenship in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or the Gulf States. As Arabs, they could easily assimilate, and there are jobs in those countries currently filled by imported laborers who cannot become citizens of any Muslim nation in the Near East.

Lee Breidenstein

Milford, Kansas

In Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide, reviewed by Inez Fitzgerald Storck (Oct.), author Atef Abu Saif notes that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) warned the residents of an apartment complex to leave the building before it was destroyed. Later in her review, Mrs. Storck reminds us of Catholic teaching on “the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression.” I am puzzled. Is that not the very duty the IDF fulfilled in forewarning the residents of said apartment complex? Is it not the genocidal “from the river to the sea” mentality of Hamas that has led to the unintended double effect of civilian casualties in Gaza?

Chaim Peri, the 79-year-old Israeli hostage for whom I had been praying, was killed by Hamas last June. Is not Abu Saif attributing to Israel the unacceptable behavior of Hamas?

William James

St. Louis, Missouri

I was sorry to read the “defense” Inez Fitzgerald Storck mounted in her reply to the letters (Dec.) regarding her review of Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide. For example, she refers to news agencies as authoritative in their assessment of the presumed “40,000 civilian casualties” in Gaza, when those news agencies have no boots on the ground to validate that number, which is repeated by Hamas. The phrase “echo chamber” comes to mind: If enough people repeat something, that something becomes true. Sadly, that is not the way truth works. (These same news agencies in like fashion struggle to identify “men” and “women” using the same sophistry.)

Mrs. Storck further cites “reputable news sources” that debunked the errant Palestinian rocket that hit the Al-Ahli Hospital. Pray tell! Even The Wall Street Journal found enough evidence on Palestinian cameras and radio intercepts to show where the rocket took off, where it landed, and what the Palestinians themselves said about it. Mrs. Storck’s level of credulity undermines any moral argument she might have tried to make.

Are there limits to war when one combatant is willing to sacrifice every last civilian (and hospital, school, community center, and residential building) to achieve final victory? I think that is the question Mrs. Storck would like to answer. If history is any guide, I don’t think so.

Andreas Loeffler

Lake Oswego, Oregon

Congratulations to Thomas and Inez Fitzgerald Storck for providing background information on the Hamas-Israel conflict. It was a responsible decision on the part of the NOR to publish their efforts.

At the risk of prodding a hornet’s nest, I would like to contribute a few further thoughts.

First, let us recognize that Israel and Hamas have been at war for many decades. The October 7 attack by Hamas was an incident in a continuing war between contending parties. This fact in no way justifies the brutality and immorality Hamas unleased with its attack. War, unfortunately, has just such predictable effects: the death of truth and morality.

Second, Hamas is also at war against the Palestinian Authority (PA). It is an example of jaw-dropping stupidity that the Israeli government has not formed an alliance with the PA so as to establish a combined front against Hamas.

So, Israel is stupid. Can the same be said of the members of Hamas? Has their hatred blinded them to the utter impossibility of their prevailing? I don’t think so. It is much more likely that they expected to lose. So, why would they attack? I suspect that they were willing to lose a tactical initiative in order to advance a strategic result — i.e., lose a battle to win the war. The strategic result is to drive Israel into the sea, to massacre every Israeli man, woman, and child.

Israel will prevail tactically. Hamas is more than likely to prevail strategically. Can Israeli leaders not see the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan? Those tactical victories led to catastrophic strategic losses. Do Israeli leaders not know that the Crusaders held the Holy Land for 150 years before being expelled in a great massacre? Israel is not yet 75 years old; Hamas simply has to wait for a new Saladin to organize Islam for the final battle.

From this perspective, Israeli tactical victories merely advance Hamas’s strategic objective.

So, Israel is stupid. Is there anything it can do to gain a strategic advantage?

The solution is simple but extremely difficult. In the face of Hamas’s brutality, Israel must forgive and ask forgiveness. In the face of Hamas’s hatred, Israel must respond with love. Let Israel campaign for peace, seeing its Near East neighbors as brothers to be helped out of their sinfulness, just as they expect their present enemies to forgive them and help them to be secure. That’s the strategic counteroffensive. Difficult? You bet. The advantage of this strategy is that Israel can start immediately, with its own citizens. Israel can:

support those groups pleading for peace and extending helping hands to their Palestinian neighbors,
support peace groups in Muslim lands,
support the freedom of religion in their land and in Muslim lands, and
welcome conversion to the Catholic Church. Large minorities of Catholics everywhere in the Near and Middle East would likely change the whole picture.

As a complete aside, this strategy could cause the United States to rethink its foreign policy in these lands.

Joseph R. Breton

Walpole, Massachusetts

THOMAS STORCK REPLIES:

I appreciate Joseph R. Breton’s remarks about what is necessary to achieve lasting peace in the Holy Land. He is right to emphasize that the latest attack by Hamas is part of a lengthy conflict. Although at present Israel clearly has immense military superiority with (apparently unlimited) backing from the United States, in the long run this might change. But the most important point is that might does not make right. Palestinians lived in the Holy Land for centuries and cannot simply be wished away. Israel must learn to live in peace with other inhabitants of the region and be content with its original internationally recognized boundaries. That is the only way to a peace that respects justice.

I am puzzled by Lee Breidenstein’s statement that Yasser Arafat refused to sign the Oslo Accords, as all the historical and media sources say the opposite. Indeed, there exists online an easily accessible picture of President Bill Clinton standing by as Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shake hands following the signing of the Accords (see, for example, history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo). What would have come of this if Rabin had not been assassinated by a Zionist extremist, no one knows.

There is no need for me to restate my basic argument here, but I will reiterate that while Palestinians indeed have committed injustices and atrocities, unless all this is seen as part of a century-old, ongoing conflict between Palestinians and emigrant Jewish groups, we can hardly have an adequate understanding of the conflict, its causes, and a possible solution.

INEZ FITZGERALD STORCK REPLIES:

Andreas Loeffler questions the estimate of 40,000 casualties in Gaza. Israeli historian Lee Mordechai, who has published extensive documentation of the genocide (his term) in Gaza, estimates that over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. He makes the point that Israel does not report the number of casualties, though Israeli leaders have validated Hamas’s estimates. Dr. Mordechai references thousands of sources in his report Bearing Witness to the Israeli-Gaza War, including eyewitness testimony and videos. He also catalogues the numerous atrocities committed by the IDF, including the shooting of children and other civilians.

Mr. Loeffler also questions my statement that an Israeli rocket was responsible for the strike that hit the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza in October 2023. It is true that there has been controversy about the origin of the missile. The organization Forensic Architecture investigated the explosion at the hospital and concluded that it was the result of a rocket fired from the direction of Israel. Forensic Architecture, led by Israeli-born Eyal Weizman and based at the University of London, is a multidisciplinary research group that investigates causes of state violence. In October 2024 it published A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Since October 2023, a report of more than 800 pages, documenting Israel’s systematic destruction of infrastructure in Gaza.

In response to William James, I would point out that while the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas on October 7 must be strongly condemned, those outrages do not justify Israel’s retaliation against the entire Gazan people, most of whom are not members of Hamas. As I mentioned in my review of Don’t Look Left, the author, an enemy of Hamas, was savagely beaten by them. The killings and destruction Atef Abu Saif chronicles by far surpass the atrocities of Hamas. So it is a misstatement to suggest that he is attributing to Israel the crimes of Hamas. Also, though the IDF warned some Gazans ahead of time that their residences would be demolished, this was far from universally the case.

I very much appreciate Joseph R. Breton’s advocacy for peace, in which he joins many other individuals and groups. The Alliance for Middle East Peace, founded in 2006, a coalition of over 160 organizations and thousands of Israelis and Palestinians, is one of many such associations. Though peace might seem like an impossibility, it is incumbent on us to pray for it.

To submit a Letter to the Editor, click here: https://www.newoxfordreview.org/contact-us/letters-to-the-editor/