A Matter of Accuracy

In the March issue it was stated that the MAGAZINE would print no more letters aboutthe Blanshard book. However, ProfessorO'Neill has written to point out that endingthe exchange with the March letters was unfair to him, not only because of the personalreferences but also because his whole centralpoint about accurate scholarship had beenmisinterpreted. The editors agree that, in allfairness, the following communication fromProfessor O'Neill should also appear beforethe discussion is finally closed.

TO THE EDITOR:

I appreciate your giving me space to correct some of the misstatements and insinuations in the letters in the March issue berating me and the other "closed minds of millions of American Catholics."

My letter in the January magazine raised no question "involving religious views," but only questions of scholarship, valid criticism, and ordinary accuracy in statements about a book. I am sure that two illustrations will promote needed understanding. Mr. Blanshard's "scrupulous documentation" (Mr. West's phrase) in addition to many extreme faults of scholarship which could, perhaps, be missed in a quick reading by a reviewer unacquainted with the material Mr. Blanshard was treating, has two vices which Mr. West transforms into virtues.

I. A great deal of Blanchard's so called proof rests on his constant misuse of the meaning of the Imprimatur. He tries to make his uniformed readers believe that any statement in a book with an Imprimatur is authentic Catholic doctrine which all Catholicsare supposed to believe. This is simply silly. The Imprimatur means only that the official giving the Imprimatur found nothing in the book that was contrary to fundamental Catholic doctrine. Most of the stuff mentioned by Blanshard has nothing to do with such doctrines. The truth about the Imprimatur is that "No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed." (Official formula of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.) There is no underwriting or guaranteeing of the authenticity of anything.

2. Mr. West's statement that the Blanshard book was "checked and rechecked" by distinguished Catholic scholars is an irresponsible expansion of one of Blanshard's shabbiest pretenses. On page 7 Blanshard mentions his debt "to hundreds of friends and advisers, Catholic and non-Catholic." Not a name is given nor an opinion quoted. Below in the same paragraph he says that "the first draft of the manuscript was submitted for scrutiny and criticism to a panel of experts which included" Giovanni Pioli of Milan, Italy and "a leading American Catholic author"—name not given! There is not even a suggestion of what (if anything) these two "experts" said about the book. Mr. Blanshard would fare better if he had kept Giovanni Pioli also discreetly anonymous. He is an ex-priest who was removed from the office which Mr. Blanshard mentions to give him status, on January 18, 1908, for his "strange and peculiar ideas." On such spurious grounds the Dartmouth alumni are informed by a Professor in Dartmouth College that a false and bitter attack on every literate American Catholic has been "checked and rechecked" by distinguished Catholic scholars!

I have read the Blanshard book. In fact, I have examined both text and documentation with care. I am now writing, under contract with Harpers, an answering volume to be published in 1951 under the title Catholicsand American Freedom. Further, I do not "pick up" my opinions from others nor do I estimate the scholarship in a book by counting the 92 books in the bibliography, nor the 448 footnotes. By the Blanshard-Barber technique anyone can prove any charge he wishes to frame against Dartmouth College, the United States, the CIO, or the GOP—with footnotes!

Mr. Rusterholtz fits well into the Blanshard pattern of scholarship. He refers to my letter in the June 1948 MAGAZINE as a "perverse view" by "another Dartmouth Catho- lic"! It is interesting that he could not remember my name but somehow he knew my religion, though there was nothing in the letter he referred to that in any way indicated my religion! Mr. Rusterholtz says I "lashed out at President W. K. Jordan for his excellent statement regarding democracy and freedom." This is hardly a scholarly report of my letter, as anyone can see by looking it up in the June 1948 issue. I simply corrected, with accurate documentation, some clearly erroneous statements about the First Amendment which Mr. Jordan was reported to have made.

A political scientist should know that the statements on this topic (not on freedom and democracy!) attributed to President Jordan are simply not true. Any scholar who does not already know this, and who knows how to use a library, can find out that they are not true in a couple of hours in any good library. I wish that someone like President Jordan, or Mr. Blanshard, or Mr. Rusterholtz, who disapproves of the First Amendment as written, explained, and observed by Madison, Jefferson, and the men of the First Congress (and as accepted and enforced by every President, every Congress, and every relevant Supreme Court decision before McCollum) would go to the historical records, and the writings of historians and other scholars, and dig up something that will bolster their attempt to get rid of the First Amendment as we have known it for over a century and a half. Anyone has a right to work for a new section in the Bill of Rights, but no scholar can properly assume that the First Amendment never meant what it was deliberately designed to mean and was accepted as meaning by substantially all literate Americans for nearly 160 years.

A little scholarship would have uncovered the fact that the passage from Ryan and Millar have been rejected by Catholic scholars for years; that American Catholics disapprove of the restrictions on Protestants in Spain and on Catholics in Sweden: that fragments ofsentences should not be taken out of context in a Papal Encyclical (or any other document) and offered as a statement of doctrine on a complex subject with which the commentator is quite unfamiliar. Mr. Rusterholtz's last two references to the Wynne volume are of this type. His first statement is simply untrue. Pope Leo XIII did not denounce "the American principle of separation of church and state." The Encyclical referred to was addressed to the Bishops and Faithful of France, and was concerned wholly with the type of separation then being advocated in that country and not with the American principle.

Our American principle of the relation of religion and government embraces two ideas only: No legal preference of one religion or church over others, and freedom of religion for all—"no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That is the complete American principle. American Catholics have observe and upheld it consistently. Catholic statesmen helped to formulate it, and it has been endorsed by Catholic Bishops and other clergi and leading laymen from 1791 to 1950:-from John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in America (whose brother in the House an cousin in the Senate took active parts in framing the Bill of Rights) down to the formal statement of all the Catholic bishops of America in November 1948. These endorsements have been emphatic, complete, unqualified. No scholar who happens to be an honest man will present the opposite as the truth.

Lakeville, Conn.