A Book Review… A Prominent Catholic Historian Stumbles In New Book

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

Catholic historian James Hitchcock has been one of my favorites. When I first read his Catholicism and Modernity, I invited him to address a groundbreaking conference called to defend the family, held 40 years ago in Rockford, Ill. Several of his books line my shelf, and warm memories abide of his leadership roles in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, where his erudition was always appreciated.
Some ten years ago, Dr. Hitchcock published a series of articles in the Human Life Review (HLR) which have now been developed into a book-length account (Abortion, Religious Freedom, and Catholic Politics, Transaction Publishers [now the Routledge imprint of Taylor and Francis]. Routledge currently lists these prices: Hardback $100 [sic]; Paperback $44.95.)
In this book, Hitchcock offers his thumbnail analysis of the pro-life movement since before Roe v. Wade, with a parallel focus on two publications which he considers central to that history, the National Catholic Reporter and The Wanderer.
Hitchcock’s 2007 HLR article attacked The Wanderer with vigor. Its rancorous tone surprised this longtime admirer, so I immediately called and offered him an open-ended interview, resulting in a 3,000-word front-page Wanderer article where he calmly aired his views in his own words. A year later, he launched another attack in HLR. At that point, Maria McFadden, the editor of Human Life Review, graciously offered me the opportunity to reply. Hitchcock’s third article, addressing my response, appeared some months later, entitled “I Object.”
His new book indicates that nothing that has transpired in the intervening ten years has changed Hitchcock’s mind. In fact, his ire burns ever hotter, saving his most unvarnished invective for the last page: “The Trump movement was in many ways an ecumenical manifestation of the Wanderer Catholic underground of conspiracy theories, old religious and ethnic grudges, economic ignorance, resentment, and alienation from the entire modern world, an amalgam that for a time saw Ron Paul as its messiah and that above all yearned for the emotional release that a demagogue could provide.”
With this final word, Hitchcock leaves in the dust the persona of the professional to indulge in a flight of fancy worthy of the best (meaning the worst, of course) in today’s Fake News industry.
But believe me, dear reader — Hitchcock is telling us what he really thinks.

Prophecy As Poppycock

Poor Dr. Hitchcock. His deadline looming, one might assume, he turned in his hurried manuscript before the 2016 election, and the publisher didn’t even bother to proofread it. His fulmination fairly overflows: Trump was “almost certain to be defeated by Hillary Clinton. The Republicans might also lose control of the Senate, and the Democrats would therefore be able to cement in place a pro-abortion judiciary that would last for decades.”
“In the unlikely event that Trump should defeat Clinton,” prognosticates the prophet, “he appeared [sic] to lack both the knowledge and the will to address pro-life concerns. It was a tragic ending indeed to the long and courageous pro-life struggle.”
Thus ends Hitchcock’s histrionic history lesson.
No one can be faulted for lacking a crystal ball, even if he is blinded by his own scowling glare.
Hitchcock’s rant merely confirms the sad fact that his professional acumen was momentarily eclipsed by the temptation to employ the shrill, epithet-laden faux analysis that neoconservative Never-Trumpers have long wrought with a vengeance
In 2009, Hitchcock fumed as he shouted, “I Object!”: “My two articles were ‘replete with errors,’ but Manion says he does not have space to document them.” (Apparently, he objected to the fact that I was allowed the opportunity to respond at all.) Understandably, HLR’s editor decided that four articles were enough, opining that an ongoing back-and-forth would not be suitable for a quarterly publication.
But not anymore! Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, those desiring to address Hitchcock’s meanderings will have unlimited space to discuss not only his numerous errors, but his skewed mode of analysis, the principles and assumptions that inform it, and yes, his desultory redeeming insights, which are indeed valuable when he sticks to the subject at hand.
To permit that extended discussion, this author has created a website where any and all of those interested in pursuing this conversation can contribute, comment, or merely follow along, easily and free of charge. We have assured Dr. Hitchcock (in his university email) and we assure him here that he is welcome to respond, with no limit and no editing of his contributions, so the conversation will be genuinely free-flowing and unbiased. The website address is simple: https://hitchcockmanion.wordpress.com.

Some Basic Questions,
For Starters

In these conversations we will discuss at length such questions such as:
Why does Hitchcock adopt the left’s version of political reality expressed by the reductionist “Left-Right” spectrum, which demands that all opinions be forced to fit somewhere along a unidimensional line between two “extremes”?
Why does he assume that the fateful choice to embrace USCCB leader Joseph Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment” ideology was the only possible means of forging a pro-life political alliance in the 1980s?
Why does the ace historian ignore the USCCB’s decisive move to embrace that doomed approach because, as former USCCB official Mark Gallagher has confirmed, key leaders in the conference had already shelved the priority of pro-life issues in favor of pursuing their welfare-state agenda? How did Hitchcock miss that?
Why does Hitchcock assume that Cardinal Bernardin had no choice but to approach Sen. Ted Kennedy (not a misprint!!) in 1983 to forge a political pro-life alliance with Democrats because an alliance with the pro-life Sen. Jesse Helms (and President Ronald Reagan) was “unthinkable”? Is Hitchcock unaware that Helms’ entire senior staff was Catholic, and included Carl Anderson, now the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and a champion of the pro-life movement?
Why does Hitchcock pretend to discover “a tangled and sometimes obscure thread” (2007) or manufacture insights that are “largely unrecognized even by most Catholics” (2016)? What might these secrets reveal, other than the disgruntled, resentful animus that permeates this work, pretending to be analysis?
Why does Hitchcock assert that the welfare-state proposals of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal have something to do with “charity”? Isn’t charity by necessity voluntary? And doesn’t the welfare state depend on government force — in Roosevelt’s case, taking the money of private citizens (by seizing their gold) or creating it (through government printing presses)? And, more fundamentally, can charity (love, “caritas”) truly be made mandatory — as in, “He loved Big Brother”?
Why is Hitchcock so obsessed with the Barry Goldwater? He complains that my HLR remarks failed to report how, in our Wanderer interview, the self-described liberal Democrat Hitchcock of 1964 considered Goldwater to be “a bum”? Is that really news? He goes on to complain that Goldwater supporters (including me) in 1964 did not foresee Roe v. Wade, the nationalization of the abortion issue, and Goldwater’s eventual pro-abortion record 20 years later.
Why the ire? After all, today, after 35 more years, Hitchcock now praises the USCCB’s Bernardin for romancing the murderous Ted Kennedy as a prospective pro-lifer in 1983, but blames conservatives of 1964 for not seeing 20 years into the future. He calls this “analysis”?
Repeatedly, Hitchcock attacks Wanderer contributors for periodically writing about other issues than abortion. Well, as Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker used to say, “That door swings both ways.” Let’s apply the Hitchcock rule to Hitchcock. Months after this book went to press, in May 2017, he conducted a friendly interview in which he was free to describe his various interests and priorities — as a Catholic, a historian, a teacher, and a loving husband. Yet in almost 4,000 words, he never brings up the issue of abortion. Is Hitchcock still pro-life? Or were President Trump’s historic pro-life policies just too much for him to deal with?

Haste Makes Waste

Admittedly, the Hitchcock book that went to press was not a final draft. He could have caught some of its many errors and lapses in a final rewrite. The text is rushed, the tone uneven, with glib assertions posing as analysis. Its index is garbled and undependable; “Humanae Vitae” becomes “Human Life Review”; “amoris laetitiae” becomes “latitiae amoris.” But at $100 a pop, the book is apparently designed for mandatory purchase by a comfortable number of research libraries, where well-informed specialists will realize that they can’t refuse a book by Hitchcock just because its publisher couldn’t afford to hire decent copy editors.
And at the center of Hitchcock’s account lies a gaping hole: In a book about “abortion and the Catholic right,” the reader searches in vain for a coherent discussion of the major Catholic leaders of the pro-life movement — in a book which Hitchcock promises will reveal insights that are “largely unrecognized even by most Catholics”!
Well, most Catholics would recognize leaders like Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Carl Anderson, Chris Smith, Nellie Gray, and Charles Rice as intrepid pro-life Catholic centers of gravity in the political trenches during the years Hitchcock pretends to analyze. But they have no place in Hitchcock’s history — most of them aren’t mentioned at all.
Yes, Hitchcock’s book does include valuable analysis, especially of the liberal Catholics from whom he has apparently distanced himself over the years. He understands the liberal mind well. But alas, the work is indeed still “replete with errors,” errors which the interested reader will be able to address at length and at leisure on the website hitchcockmanion.wordpress.com. We welcome Mr. Hitchcock’s objections there as well. Please feel welcome to participate there, and look forward to future Wanderer articles reporting those proceedings.
(Dr. Hitchcock and other readers can contact me directly at cm@manionmusic.com.)