Dale Vree, God's Faithful Pit Bull: Show Some Respect!

There are many reasons why some people do not like the New Oxford Review (NOR). For one thing, NOR tends to be ineluctably right-wing in its theological drift. In fact, it seems to lean so far right, at times, as to be nearly horizontal. For another thing, it can be highly irritating, depending on one's sympathies. For more years than some highly irritable individuals care to remember, NOR has been running ads in national Catholic periodicals that have come to enjoy a broad reputation as ... well, anything but Catholic-lite. NOR is -- what can one say? -- brazenly Catholic. It is not merely provocative, but pugnacious -- even piquish.

One ad satirizes Fr. Flapdoodle, the warm-and-cuddly Pastor/MC of happy-clappy liturgies, fuzzy-wuzzy homilies, and balloon-and-party time banalities at St. Bozo's parish. Another sports an image of Jesus reclining with His disciples at the Last Supper and invites readers to "Join the Vast Right-Wing Catholic Conspiracy," declaring: "Liberal nay-saying Catholics, who haven't had an innovative idea since the Sixties, sit in their overstuffed tenured chairs and their bureaucratic sinecures. And they're getting puffy and flabby, just like their hero Ted Kennedy..." Yet another reads: "As long as sodomite priests are winked, and certain seminaries remain hothouses for flamers and promote dissent that justifies immorality, sexual license in the priesthood will continue..." Still another, picturing a crusader in chain mail, states: "If you want a militant Catholicism -- as in 'the Church Militant' -- do subscribe to New Oxford Review. But don't subscribe if you're a bozo or a sissy, for we hereby forewarn you: Doing so will give you a hissy fit..." Still another ad for the magazine once pictured St. Peter's Basilica with the banner headline above it reading, simply: "Rome Will Win!"

You get the picture. NOR is not genteel. NOR is not nice. NOR is not soft on issues. NOR is hardcore. And these features of NOR reflect the brassy, off-beat outlook, humor and attitude -- I underscore the word attitude -- of the editor, Dale Vree.

Dale Vree has garnered for himself a reputation for being something like the Pit Bull of Catholic orthodoxy in the United States. Like a Pit Bull, he attacks, bites, latches on, and holds on. Like a Pitt Bull, he is tenacious. Like a well-trained Catholic attack dog, he goes after anything that smells of theological compromise. Liberals hate him. Dissidents despise him. Moderates fear him. Neoconservatives are annoyed by him. The trouble is, he unleashes his reserves of adrenalin against his targets at the first, faintest whiff of anything that smells remotely like heterodoxy, even if his target is a widely celebrated champion of Catholic neoconservatives like Richard John Neuhaus or Scott Hahn. In fact, the offending odor doesn't have to even be remotely related to heterodoxy: if he catches the least scent of inconsistency or compromise, this dog of war will unleash himself upon your allegedly hypocritical derriere even if you are Fr. Joseph Fessio, George Weigel, Deal Hudson, Legionaries of Christ founder Fr. Marcial Maciel, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, or even Catholic-And-Loving-It blog magnate, Mark Shea. Needless to say, this has not made him many fast friends.

I have been a reader of NOR for decades -- since before it was even a Catholic journal. Some readers may not even know that NOR was once an Anglican journal in the tradition of the Oxford Movement. I was a reader back when readers watched as the whole staff of NOR, in the words of Anne Roche Muggeridge, "argued and agonized itself into the Catholic Church over the issues of the ordination of women and homosexuals." I have followed in detail the progress and changes of the magazine over the years, the passing of some of her Titans listed on her masthead of contributing editors over the years (Christopher Lasch, Sheldon Vanauken, William D. Miller, L. Brent Bozell ...), as well as the various debates engaging the energies of the editor. With very few and comparatively minor exceptions -- generally constituting, at worst, indiscretions of tact -- my judgment is that Vree's editorial performance has been utterly irreproachable. This isn't to say that his biting style or satirical humor is to everybody's taste. Nor is it to say that he hasn't been offensive to some; but this offensiveness has never, to my knowledge involved malice, slander, libel, or deliberate misinformation, but only the singular tanacity of a Pit Bull -- or, perhaps better here, bloodhound -- to get to the bottom of the facts where he smells (or at least thinks he smells) a rat. Nor is this to claim that he has always interpreted the facts right or even gotten all of the facts. Who has? But even at his most "offensive" -- as in his socio-etymological analysis of the term "fag" -- I have found Vree's arguments nearly always carefully reasoned. I may not always agree -- particularly in the tact and diplomacy department -- but then, tact and diplomacy, as lofty as they may be, are probably also more often a cloak for cowardice than we'd like to admit.

A preeminent example of tactlessness from the classical world is Socrates, who, in his search of someone wiser than himself, you will recall, thought nothing of offending others. He thought nothing of waltzing up to the great men of Athens, with a gaggle of youthful groupies in tow, and proceed to inform these pillars of the Athenian community how much worse off they were than he was, since they thought they knew everything and knew nothing, whereas he, at least, knew that he knew nothing. Plato's Apology, of course, is an account of the trial of Socrates on trumped-up charges against him of religious impiety and corrupting the youth, and a large dose of guilt-by-association with a student of his who turned traitor to Athens. But what animates his enemies is their hatred of Socrates for his constant needling truth, his exposure of their hypocrisy, ignorance, and moral compromise. After the inevitable verdict, when Socrates is given a chance to propose an alternative to the death penalty proposed by his accusers, Socrates suggests that a fitting return for his services would be free meals and a pension so that he might continue instructing his fellow Athenians in the care of their souls -- a reward he deserves, he says, far more than a winner of a chariot race at the Olympiad. This, of course, seals his fate, even though there is nothing untrue or malicious in anything Socrates has said.

I've been startled by the steady increase in the percentage of my students who seem unable to find insufficient warrant in the defense of Socrates in the Apology for his acquittal. In fact, I have seen a steady rise in the number of students who have little if any patience with the person of Socrates at all, let alone comprehension of his purposes, and who find themselves lining up behind his accusers, even if they find his death sentence a little harsh for their tastes. (I tell you, my friends, a new Dark Age is upon us, and the barbarians at the gates are not on the outside!)

"To be great," said Emerson, in one of his few memorable quotations, "is to be misunderstood." My contention here, in the first place, is not so much that Vree is either great or misunderstood -- although he may be both -- but that he is simply disliked because he rankles. Like Socrates, he rankles those who do not welcome his observations that they think they know when they do not, and -- especially -- that they have been hypocritical, inconsistent, duplicitious, or self-serving, while being pampered in public for their philanthropic largesse, theological insight, doctrinal orthodoxy, or spiritual depth. People just do not want to hear this -- even if it's true -- especially if it's true. We would all prefer to circle the wagons and lambaste the obvious enemies -- Roe v Wade, Al Qaeda, Modernism, Dissent, Cafeteria Catholicism, or perhaps the Lefebvrites -- rather than see the finger pointed at -- heaven forbid! -- one of our own, even if it involves sexual predation, administrative misfeasance, or theological confusions.

NOR has, over the last few years, had its ads successively pulled from several major conservative Catholic periodicals, including Crisis, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, and perhaps others. In some cases, no reasons were offered for these refusals, though they are not hard to guess. NOR hasn't been an easy "team player," where being a team player has required not pointing the finger at other team members who haven't played by the rules. As I've said, Vree's blunt finger-pointing has made NOR many enemies, not altogether unlike the blunt outspokenness of Socrates among his fellow Athenians. In some cases, NOR ads seem to have been pulled purely as an act of personal spite -- although I underline the word seem: I do not ultimately know. What I do know is that NOR itself has been unjustly attacked, marginalized, cold shouldered, edged out.

Most of the negative talk about NOR is simply hearsay. This is easy for anyone to verify who is a regular reader of NOR, because one can immediately see that these attacks come from individuals who haven't a clue what they are talking about. One example comes from a commentator on Mark Shea's weblog post, "Out At the Fringe" (October 12, 2005), who writes the following:

The NOR crowd have become pricks. Also one of their writers (I forget his name)accused Scott Hahn of promoting Lesbianism teaches [sic] the Holy Spirit had sex with the BVM (for some reason THAT'S ok to teach but not that the Holy Spirit is associated with the feminine). Go figure. (Source)

Scott Hahn is a very dear personal friend of mine, and I generally repose a near absolute trust in his theological judgments. Whatever may be said of his views concerning the Holy Spirit, however, the broadside derisive dismissal of NOR's discussion of Hahn's Pneumatology represented by such witless folderol is simply embarrassing, for NOR published no such nonsense as this. In fact Karl Keating, one of NOR's contributing editors, argues on Shea's blog that even if Vree's editorials were to be criticized as hyperbolic, the same charge could not be leveled against articles such as the one that appeared in the June 2004 issue entitled "Scott Hahn's Novelties," by Edward O'Neill. Keating writes: "I read that article more than once and saw no hyperbolic language or uncharity in it. It was a low-key look at some of the positions Scott has taken (some of which I hadn't been aware of), and I thought it brought up fair questions." (Source) I read the same article and drew much the same conclusion myself. Most of the emotional rants against the NOR that I have seen have not been based on first-hand acquaintance the journal, but with secondhand hype and balderdash.

Another commentator named Rosemary on Shea's blog writes (and here I'm quoting what Vree calls the piece de resistance from Shea's commentators in his New Oxford Note, "Hit Men for Opus Dei," New Oxford Review [January 2006], p. 17):

They are a bunch of pricks and their rantings are nuts. Dale Vree is a former Communist party official (no kidding) who worked in East Berlin and then graduated from the leftist Berkeley University in California. Michael Rose isn't much better. He graduated from the leftist Brown University in Rhoad [sic] Island. Both men and their wives (I am told from a knowledgeable source) are Opus Dei, and I know for a fact that they were paid well to do hit pieces on the Legionaries. [Ibid.]

Vree replies:

No, Dale Vree is not "a former Communist party official," not even a member of the Party. Yes, he lived in East Berlin in 1966, where he found Jesus Christ.

Yes, Rose graduated from Brown and Vree from Berkeley (and, by the way, our Managing Editor, our Deputy Editor, and others on the masthead also graduated from Berkeley).... But the big question is: Since Rose graduated from the leftist Brown and Vree graduated from the leftist Berkeley, then how did both of them become rightists? How could they have resisted the leftist indoctrination?

As for both men and their wives being Opus Dei operatives who are paid well to do hit pieces on the Legionaries: How do you prove a negative from an unknown source? We solemnly swear that none of us belongs to Opus Dei and nobody paid us anything.

Aside from the pity that they aren't members of Opus Dei, the gaping discrepancies between such opinions and the reality about NOR leads me to the following conclusion: Do not believe hearsay or what you read secondhand. Do not join the rush to judgment, caricature, slander, and condemnation. Do not let yourself be deceived or become an unwitting participant in the deception of others. Read NOR for yourself. It may not be a slick, glossy production. It may not always be of an even quality. What is? But it's one periodical I have always read through cover-to-cover with profit. Why? Because I invariably find there information I have not find anywhere else -- like Tom Bethell's excellent article, "Archbishop Levada: Advancing on the Chessboard" in the January, 2006, issue, which traces Levada's career from his arrival in San Francisco to his current Vatican post on as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (Read it and see for yourself.) NOR often publishes pieces other journals might hesitate to publish for reasons of diplomacy, if you see what I mean. Furthermore, I invariably find there editorials that challenge my perspective, such as Vree's constant drumbeat against the Neuhaus-Weigel, Crisis-First Things consensus on the war in Iraq, Bush Presidency, or capital punishment. These make me uncomfortable. But then I have to remember that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI opposed the war in Iraq from its beginning, and have taken positions unpopular with the Republican administration and American neoconservative Catholics on certain issues. I do not consider the discomfort inflicted upon me by Vree an evil, but a reminder that I, too, must constantly keep myself open to possible correction. NOR also has great book reviews and guest columns. Finally, perhaps this will only appeal to those of you with a slightly wonky sense of humor, but there are times I simply find myself enjoying Vree's sense of humor. But then, I guess that explains why my buddy John T. Bell and I founded the fraternal order called the Sons of Tomas de Torquemada (subsequently expanded -- oh, so politcally correctly and inclusively -- to Sons and Daughters of Torquemada).

Finally, on a more personal note, "Vree" is a Dutch name, and Dale Vree comes from Dutch Reformed parentage and the Calvinist tradition. He found his way to the Catholic Church by a circuitous route via a brief flirtation with Marxism in East Berlin, where he found Jesus Christ (see his book, From Berkeley to East Berlin and Back [Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1985]), and a period of sojourn in the Anglican tradition as an Episcopalian. His spiritual journey is recorded in "A Less Traveled Road to Rome," in The New Catholics, ed. Dan O'Neill (New York: Crossroad, 1989), pp. 49-62. I remember the ads of the magazine being pugnacious back then, although the target was usually American Fundamentalism and nationalistic civil religion. The hybrid signature alignment of NOR, forged amidst the civil rights movement of the sixties and Vietnam War of the seventies, was theologically conservative and socio-politically liberal. Alignments may have shifted a bit, but you still see NOR coming out against the war in Iraq and against much of the current Bush administration policy. Malcolm Muggeridge's Canadian-born daughter-in-law, Anne Roche Muggeridge, witnessed Dale Vree's (and NOR's) journey to Catholicism. As a traditional Catholic, distraught over the disastrous aftermath of Vatican II, she wrote:

Catholics watched with a mixture of pity and amusement as the whole staff of the excellent Anglo-Catholic New Oxford Review argued and agonized itself into the Catholic Church over the issues of the ordination of women and homosexuals. I now know a substantial number of recent converts like this (in counter-revolutionary groups they usually outnumber "cradle Catholics") and am much edified by their purity and ardour. Seven of them are my godchildren, and I must confess that some of us, to our shame, earnestly tried to delay them, on the grounds of the growing disorder in the Catholic Church. They forced their way past us anyway, thank God; though the priest I brought them to for instruction and I could not resist saying, when they had their first shocking confrontation with revolutionary priests and nuns over their children's education: "Well, you can't say we didn't warn you!" The point is, these converts remind one of what one asks of the Church of God, as the old baptism question went; the answer being, "Faith!" They come, like St. Peter, because they have found that for them there is nowhere else to go to hear "the words of eternal life." They come because at the highest level of Catholic teaching, the doctrine of the faith, though much embattled, remains uncompromised and is as fearlessly proclaimed by John Paul II as by Peter, Paul, Ignatius, or Augustine. (The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church [1986; Rev. ed., San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990])

"To be great is to be misunderstood," said Emerson. I do not know whether Vree is great. He may be. I do think he has been misunderstood by many because of the misinformation at the hands of those whom he has rankled and offended. I do think that Socrates was both great and misunderstood. Long after his own generation, having spurned and executed him, has passed into oblivion, we remember Socrates for his courage to speak the truth, bluntly, even sometimes rudely, in the face of untruth and adversity. I rather doubt that Vree will have the luxury of dying a martyr's death, though I suspect there are some who might wish that fate upon him. Yet long after the dust of the chaos and confusion of this generation has settled, and long after some of those now feted as brighter lights have passed from the scene, it would not surprise me if San Francisco's feisty little non-profit Catholic journal and its pugnacious editor are remembered -- even celebrated. The New Oxford Review is an indispensable Catholic publication in the present crisis: subscribe to it and read it. Think of Dale Vree, its editor, as God's very own faithful Pit Bull, and show some respect.

[No, Rosemary, I was not paid a single shiny American penny for writing this. There is nothing in this for me, but the satisfaction of a little compulsion called love of truth.]