By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On Wednesday of Holy Week, God called Fr. Schall home for Easter.
Fr. James V. Schall, SJ, was a friend to untold thousands. He was a master teacher, inside the classroom or wherever else he happened to be. He taught even when he was asleep, since his works have been read for years in every time zone. And when you read Fr. Schall, you learn.
We first met in 1975. Things got off to a rocky start. Fr. Schall was teaching in Rome, and so was I, so Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ, suggested we get together. I suggested lunch at a nice restaurant on the Tiber. He arrived, along with his colleague, Fr. John Navone, SJ, and we enjoyed a long and leisurely visit. After a fascinating discussion, I asked for the check.
I forgot my wallet.
So for years I’ve been able to say that I was bailed out by a Jesuit. Naturally, I’ve been grateful ever since. And so were Fr. Schall’s countless students, colleagues, and friends through the years, most of which he spent at Georgetown University, teaching political theory, in a most unique and enlivening way.
Fr. Schall brought Plato to life. His life reflected the Socratic loves — of the truth and of his students. Many among today’s younger generation lack the attention span to listen to a long lecture. Some professors respond by trying to be “Socratic” — engaging the students in conversation. Unfortunately, those attempts run the risk of turning into glorified bull sessions.
But not Fr. Schall. He had Socrates’ gift of knowing the students more than they know themselves. “All men by nature desire to know,” wrote Aristotle as he began his Metaphysics, and Fr. Schall spoke to that desire, awakened it, and informed it lovingly. His students knew it and they loved him back. When he left his last class as a GU professor, hundreds of his former students lined the halls, the stairs, and the sidewalks outside, cheering.
Loving The Truth And Sharing It
Fr. Schall couldn’t teach everywhere, so he wrote some thirty books, many of them directed at students at other institutions. He wanted students everywhere to understand and to love the truth. He praised the liberal arts, properly considered, and he taught the reader how to consider them properly.
Fr. Schall could make any subject seem easy. I remember his review of a book on the New York bond crisis, written by a friend of his. Seeking the eternal in the bond market would be hard for most of us, but not for Fr. Schall. He could write about anything, and usually did. In fact, he wrote two or three articles a week until about a month ago.
I don’t remember every one — like my missing wallet, some of the particulars have strayed — but he was always on target. In recent years his regular column in a news site for Capital Hill staffers, lobbyists, and journalists was the site’s most popular feature.
My wallet strayed, but Fr. Schall’s mind never did. His gaze ranged far and wide, but he was always at home. And one always felt right at home with Fr. Schall. The farm boy from Pocahontas, Iowa, was a cheerful and humorous companion to all.
Brilliance at its best shines in simple words, the words that are just right. And he always found them. Frankly, I find it hard to find the right ones to explain the loss profoundly mourned by so many of his friends.
Fr. James V. Schall died on April 17, 2019, at the age of 91. May he rest in in peace.
A Religion Of Peace
In a well-coordinated, country-wide attack on Easter morning, Islamic terrorists in Sri Lanka murdered hundreds of victims, most of them parishioners of three churches, two Catholic and one Evangelical. The Christian Post carried a moving account of what happened at Zion Church in Batticaloa:
“ ‘Today was an Easter Sunday School at the church and we asked the children how many of you willing to die for Christ? Everyone raised their hands,’ Caroline Mahendran, a Sunday school teacher at the church said. ‘Minutes later, they came down to the main service and the blast happened. Half of the children died on the spot’.”
In every time zone, Christians are being killed every day. The massive Sri Lanka terror attack couldn’t be ignored, but the variety of responses reveals why persecution of Christians is the most under-reported major news story in recent history.
“I condemn this barbaric Islamist violence,” tweeted Robert Cardinal Sarah, whose native Africa has been the scene of murderous Islamist attacks on Christians for years.
But other public figures were more cautious. The most curious were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tweeting within an hour of each other their sympathy for the “Easter worshippers” whose deaths were tragic but otherwise unexplained. Neither could mention “terror,” “Islam,” or “Christians.” Those who did were attacked by The Washington Post, where the headline read, “Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West.”
Why the reluctance to face reality?
In a review of Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad last year, Fr. Schall explains. “Islam is rapidly developing ways to practice jihad when it is not a major military power. It is learning how to rule and invade simply by immigration and settling in lands that tolerate it. It has learned to live in the West and to use its freedom to advance its own religious and cultural agenda. In the meantime, most of the non-Muslims in Muslim lands have been killed or have left the Near East. The persecution of Christians in the near-East goes on.”
So why the reluctance?
“Several possibilities exist,” he responds. “1) Liberalism does not take religion or permanent principles to be unchangeable. Therefore, when Muslims settle under democratic laws, they will gradually themselves become relativists. 2) The second is what I call the ‘sleeping dog thesis.’ The adage ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ means, in this case, that there is no sense in stirring up Muslim masses. The historical record is true and simply tells us to have nothing to do with Islam. 3) A third view would be that Islam is less dangerous than Christianity. Thus, given a choice, we should favor Islam. 4) The fourth reason is a legitimate fear of confronting such a fanatical foe. More bloodshed would arise from confronting it than leaving alone at all costs. In short, we do not confront Islam because we know…what to expect.”
According to the Associated Press, this past February Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, “the head of Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning,” addressed an audience that included Pope Francis. “Islam is a religion of peace that values human life,” he said. In another piece, Fr. Schall addressed that claim. “In the end,” he wrote, “it seems clear that the ‘true’ Islam is indeed a ‘peaceful’ religion only when it has attained political and religious control of the Law that governs our thought, actions, and polities.”
To put it another way, one might say that Islam offers the peace of the grave for nonbelievers, and the peace of Sharia Law for the living.
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