Catholic writers must stay true to themselves
May 19, 2010
First I blame the hall phone. The buttons stick, the battery is weak, and when the famous interviewer called from Italy, it wouldn’t let me answer. Great was the hue and cry in the McLean household as I rushed to the kitchen to pick up the other phone before it was too late. But it was too late. I had to wait, embarrassed, until the man called back. Second I blame a kind friend. Some months ago, she wrote to me of a priest in England who considers me an unsafe person to talk to his conference of English Catholic teenagers about the single life. Apparently I might be too liberal, a concern that would make my friends, enemies and family members fall about with loud guffaws. However, it is also the sort of libel that makes Catholic theology professors have nervous breakdowns and Catholic authors second-guess every word they write or say.