Those of us who write regular columns have little time for introspection. We are too busy getting up the next article. But we are frequently prompted, sometimes by our disappointed readers, to ask what we are up to. Every now and then our readers deserve a personal response.
In my case, the questions go like this: What am I, as a Jesuit priest, doing writing about all topics except the woes of the Catholic Church? And as a follow up question, what are the Jesuits, a Catholic religious congregation, doing sponsoring Eureka Street, a magazine that has little Catholic content and regularly publishes articles that might be more at home in The Guardian than in the scriptures?
Such questions touch on integrity: the coherence between our public commitments, our behaviour and our inner thoughts.
My initial response is that I do write often and happily in magazines that address a Catholic audience on Catholic teaching and issues within the Catholic Church. Eureka Street, however, is a public magazine written in a publicly accessible language for a public audience on issues of interest to a wider public. Issues affecting the Catholic Church, therefore, need to be addressed in a language and in arguments accessible to that audience.
The specialised language of Catholic theology and an appeal to the authority of Catholic statements are not appropriate in this forum.
Another factor limiting what can be written for Eureka Street is its commitment to a public conversation that is open and courteous. Its editors hope that readers will engage with what is written, explore the arguments deeply, and be open to modify their own views.
This excludes both directly polemical writing and also participations in debates where the guns are already trained from both sides, ready to fire at any provocation. Direct attacks on highly controversial figures in church or state are therefore off limits: they may be justified, but they will not generate conversation, only shouting.
"In my judgment, the root of many of our current discontents lie in the shallow and self-seeking emphasis on the competitive individual. This has led to a self-generating structural inequality in society."
The orientation and Catholic sponsorship of the magazine make it particularly difficult to publish defences of Catholic positions on controversial positions, particularly if written by Catholic priests. They will be assumed to be microphones for a party line, with the result that the response will focus on authority and not on the