I was surprised to see a letter from Notre Dame philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso in your pages. In discussing the controversial hiring of Michael Baxter ... Freddoso cites "an ongoing and nasty feud" between Baxter's dissertation director, former Notre Dame professor Stanley Hauerwas ... and Fr. Richard McBrien, a professor at Notre Dame and former chair of the Department of Theology. This "feud" was not the issue ...

Ultra-orthodox defenders of Baxter, like the Opus Dei-connected Freddoso, would have us believe that Baxter and his mentor, Hauerwas, are challenging a compromised Catholic liberalism exemplified by McBrien. Baxter and Hauerwas are portrayed as having embraced an authentic sectarianism ...

Hawerwas's sectarianism displays no unease with U.S. capitalism. He has long been dismissive of liberation and feminist ideologies which are critical, inter alia, of the depredations of the free-market. I am baffled by the way he divorces Christian ethics from the current, barbaric economic context ...

If there is indeed a feud between McBrien and Hauerwas, we might do well to understand it as a rivalry between liberalism and neoconservative ideologies.


PETER WALSHE
Notre Dame, Ind.