Denver Catholic

18 JULY 13-26, 2019 | DENVER CATHOLIC T en years ago, a friend and col- league suggested that I write "The Great Vatican Novel." I quickly declined, not just because the truth about life behind the Leo- nine Wall is often stranger than fi ction (and more so since the suggestion was made), but because the idea of writing a novel terrifi es me. Writing large books — no problem. Sitting in front of a keyboard or a pad of paper and making it all up out of my head — characters, plot, dialogue — is beyond my imagination. Which is one reason why I was delighted to meet Herman Wouk, who died this past May 17. Having won the Pulitzer Prize for fi ction with the 1951 bestseller, The Caine Mutiny, Wouk never took his foot o˜ the authorial accelerator for more than a half-century thereafter, reaching the pinnacle of his popu- larity with two more World War II novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (for which he subsequently wrote screenplays). But while fi ction was on my mind when we fi rst met, it wasn't on Herman's. He was writing a companion volume to his famous introduction to Juda- ism, This Is My God, and the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, sug- gested to Herman that he might want me to brief him on developments in Jewish-Catholic relations since This Is My God was published in 1959. So over lunch at Washington's Cosmos Club, Wouk and I spent an hour going over Vatican II's teach- ing on Judaism and its deepening by Pope John Paul II; the advances recently made in the Jewish-Chris- tian theological conversation by Father Richard John Neuhaus, Rabbi David Novak, and an uno¢ cial group of Jewish and Christian scholars; and what the o¢ cial terrain of Jew- ish-Catholic dialogue might look like in the future. As host, Herman could not have been more gracious, so when we were having co˜ ee, I decided to pop the question that had been on my mind from the moment we sat down: How on earth do you write a novel? And specifi cally, where did Captain Queeg, the principal character in The Caine Mutiny, come from? Wouk didn't miss a beat. There had been several mutinies in the U.S. Navy during World War II (all in port, incidentally), and the author had gotten permission from the Pentagon to read the transcripts of the trials that followed. Herman certainly drew on his own naval experience in giving The Caine Mutiny its verisimilitude and its array of characters; but the captain of the fi ctional destroy- er-minesweeper USS Caine, Philip Francis Queeg, "emerged" from the testimonies of various o¢ cers at the real trials, Wouk said. OK, I replied, what about Armin von Roon, the aristocratic Wehrmacht general who gives readers the view from the other side of the hill in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance? The answer was about the same: From Wouk's extensive reading in the mem- oirs of German o¢ cers, von Roon "emerged." It may sound simple. What was really at work here, though, was dis- ciplined talent informed by consider- able human insight. One of our last conversations reminded me of the regularity of Her- man's Jewish practice. He'd had his publisher send me the proofs of his penultimate novel, A Hole in Texas, which anticipated nuclear physicists' discovery of the Higgs boson while lampooning scientifi c hubris and governmental craziness. I'd read the galleys in a single sitting and called the author on a Saturday evening, Washington time, to congratulate him. But I'd miscalculated sundown in California, and the housekeeper who answered the phone said, very politely, that "Mr. Wouk will be happy to take your call after the Sabbath." Herman Wouk's gift for storytell- ing was matched by his seriousness and it would not be a mistake to think that he imagined writing as a voca- tion. Shortly after a lot of America began watching the televised adapta- tion of The Winds of War in the early 1980s, he refl ected on a deep irony of his craft: "It is the paradox of my career that, though I have won recog- nition as a creator of war literature, I regard war and the preparation for war as the primal curse now a· icting the human race. Some serious writers have understandably averted their eyes from the skull that grins at them from current events, so as to create art from their private preoccupations. I have looked straight at the grinning skull and written about it." This gifted, purposeful storyteller died at 103, still writing. May he rest with his forefathers, in the bosom of Abraham. B oth Jews and Greeks were scandalized by the Incarna- tion. Could the Son of God truly become man, taking on our weak fl esh, and su˜ ering to the point of death? That same shock and disbelief could be applied to the Church, the con- tinuing Incarnation of Christ in the world: does God truly work through a communion of weak and even sinful human beings to teach his truth and communicate his grace? Many cannot accept this truth. I teach Church History for the Denver Catholic Catechet- ical School (sjvlaydivision.org/ enrichment-courses) and we explore the shocking scandals and su˜ erings of the Church throughout history, but also how God uses these events in his providence and draws good out of evil. In the course of the story of the Church, there are many cases of betrayal, where Church lead- ers have given into corruption and undermined the Church's mission and integrity. There are also cases of infi ltration, where individuals with a preexisting agenda enter the Church's leadership to direct the power and infl uence of the Church to their own ends. Examples of this infi ltration would be the appointment of Arian bishops by the Emperor Constantius, the use of the hierarchy by monarchs for their own political gain, and the subversion of the Church by modern regimes beginning with the French Revolution and extending to proven Soviet agents. Taylor Marshall, a philosopher and apologist, has released a popular and controversial book, which attempts to trace a recent movement of infi l- tration beginning in the 19th century: Infi ltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within (Sophia, 2019). The book has garnered a lot of atten- tion, including from the secular press, partly due to the thousands of people who agreed to be part of the "launch team." It has also gotten some harsh critiques from Catholic pundits for recycling conspiracy theories. Strik- ing a balance, I fi nd that Marshall has raised some important questions and concerns, but also o˜ ers an oversim- plifi ed narrative that does not tell the whole story and, even when raising valid concerns, makes some unsub- stantiated assertions. In a way, the book takes on too much and too little the same time — too much by trying to connect so many dots, too little by not address- ing the topics in enough depth. Many of these "dots" are signifi cant: major changes to the governance of the Papacy through the loss of the Papal States, Marian apparitions, Perspectives The Catholic Diž erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL Herman Wouk, storyteller Has the Church been infi ltrated? The Catholic Reader R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is a husband and father of six, the director of formation for the Archdiocese of Denver, a Benedictine oblate, prolifi c writer, and insatiable reader. DR. R. JARED STAUDT

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