Book Review: Why I Am A Catholic

"Why I Am a Catholic" by Garry Wills

Why popes need the Church and vice versa

Garry Wills is a paradox. He viciously attacks some of his Church's most public teachings, harshly questions the competence and motives of its leadership and challenges its image of itself. He is also madly in love with it, appreciating it for what it has managed to retain of its mission and calling. He is liberal and old-fashioned - a pre-Vatican-II-born Catholic who wields a pen-sword of truth in one hand, a rosary in the other and knows how to use both.

"Why I Am a Catholic" is Wills's response to the criticism he received from some quarters about his previous book, "Papal Sins." Many (including this reviewer) saw that book as an attack on celibacy, priesthood and the papacy. Not so, says Wills. A more careful reading would have shown it to be an attack was on the "structures of deceit" that the Church has built into itself. These structures defend celibacy, for instance, by knowingly twisting the meaning of scripture to fit pre-conceived conclusions. Wills doesn't seem to care whether the Church teaches celibacy, opposes contraception or reserves the priesthood to men. He detest the Church when it relies on untruths, selective history, outdated philosophy and bad scholarship to do so. Wills argues loudly and persuasively that using lies to sell truth is ultimately a losing proposition. And, I might add, even a diabolical one.

This volume attempts to set the record straight. But as the Church has allowed such an overgrowth of pietism, nonsense and superstition to flourish, Wills is compelled yet again to wield his machete of truth-telling with his characteristic vigor.

This book, which should have been called "Why Popes Matter," is written in three-parts. Part I details Wills's childhood and education. Raised in difficult economic times in the Midwest, he received his education at the hands of the Jesuits. At the time, this order was a fusty version of its old vigorous self, relying more on fleshly mortifications and [...]-retentive rule-mongering than on the innovative spiritual experiments of its founder, Ignatius of Loyola. Wills loved his teachers, though the curriculum was a straightjacket that forbade forays into secular literature, something suffocating to a nimble mind like Wills's. Still, he felt enough of a pull to consider joining the Jesuits, though he soon dropped out before making vows.

Part II, the longest, is a fairly detailed exposition of the history of the papacy. Wills makes it clear throughout that the term "papacy" is a misnomer for the institution, a modern concept retrojected into the history of the bishops of Rome to legitimize their rule and position. Wills starts with Peter, the bumbling disciple of Christ, his denier, his misunderstander, but ultimately, the one to whom he entrusted his sheep. Wills follows Peter to his likely execution in Rome, but makes the now-familiar case that Peter was no bishop of that city, even less so a pope. The same can be said of a number of men who followed Peter as leaders of the local Church. Not until the start of the first century can anyone be said to have possessed the self-awareness of being a bishop of Rome. Wills provides a fascinating glimpse into the relationship between the bishop of Rome and the rest of the Church. From its earliest days, Rome was an apostolic church, along with Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch. But it was a weak sister. The Council of Nicaea in 325 was dominated by the intellects of the Eastern Church, with a few stragglers from backwards and intellectually unsophisticated places like Rome.

From this inauspicious beginning, Wills traces the history of the papacy (still a misnomer, but useful shorthand) through its early years, through the glorious fiasco of the Middle Ages and into the modern time. Wills paints the institution as having been sometimes in serious error, even heresy; beholden to some princes (Constantine, Charlemagne and Otto) and imperiously superior to others; land-holding and land-broke; alternately dismissive of and dependent on councils; lashing out at modernity (and democracy and free speech) and embracing those same values. Wills spends much space on the more well-documented recent history of the Church -especially with the landmark Second Vatican Council. He ends with the papacy of John Paul I (still alive as Wills went to print this book in 2003) and with tantalizing glimpses of a certain "bete noir," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. These latter two men are seen rightly by Wills as attempting to undo the "liberalizing" tendencies of Vatican II. Where V2 stressed the collegiality of bishops, JP2 and BB16 have worked hard to neutralize the autonomy of bishops and impress their own autocratic vision of Church "unity".

Ultimately, Wills ends this section with the idea to which the entire book has been leading. This is the idea that the papacy is part of the carsism of Peter" - the gospel-based leadership that Christ bestowed on Peter. But he innovates by counterbalancing this centralizing tendency with the need for the Church as a whole to correct Peter. Having laid out the history of the popes, it is very easy to see where the Church - through individual bishops like Augustine, to councils and even the tendency of the laity to resist dangerous innovation - have pushed the papacy. Together, both the papacy and the Church have corrected each other, and have ultimately kept each other on the narrow path. Wills see this kind of corrective action in the resistance of the laity to papal edicts attempting to limit discussion of birth control and male priesthood. If the laity only knew the power that it had.

Part II of the book, is a short excursus on the Apostle's Creed. This material is interesting, but not central to Wills's thesis. Garry Wills empbioesb the best in Catholic scholarship. He is devout without being obsequious; a son of the Church not afraid to warn his Mother she is driving the family over a cliff. His gift is to cut through thr cloying and self-serving faced that Church officials construct for themselves, blasting away until he gets to the Rock - not Peter in this case, but Christ, whose spirit continues to enliven the Church.