Letters to the Editor: September 2026

Erratum

In my review of Michael Tobin’s new translation of Georges Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest (Jul.-Aug.) there is a missing word of some importance. In the exchange between the holy country curé and a young member of the Foreign Legion, who has a devil-may-care attitude about death in battle, the priest listens patiently as the young man unburdens himself of his — apt! — critique of contemporary Christianity, making just a few efforts to defend the faith. The two men have a sort of affinity, a sense of camaraderie. When they part, the soldier tells the priest, “I wouldn’t want any other priest beside me on my deathbed.” Unfortunately, due to an omission on my part, the “other” in this sentence was left out, drastically altering the meaning of the sentence and removing the note of hope from the dénouement of their encounter. I regret the error.

Inez Fitzgerald Storck

Westerville, Ohio

Missing: Overtures of Fellowship

I take issue with the assertions of Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., as cited by Casey Chalk in his column “Motive of Credibility: Holiness” (Revert’s Rostrum, June). Though Martin Luther could indeed be “embarrassingly scatological,” as Chalk says, most Christians would agree that scatological remarks violate social taste rather than God-given morality. And neither Luther nor John Calvin looked down on the Church Fathers. Mr. Chalk need only consult Anthony N.S. Lane’s book John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (2025). Indeed, both Luther and Calvin had high respect for the Fathers — especially Augustine, whom they frequently quoted.

Finally, Chalk’s assertion that Huldrych Zwingli “kept a woman” is misleading. Zwingli was not guilty of adultery. Rather, he secretly married a widow, Anna Reinhart, and shortly afterward married her in a public ceremony on April 2, 1524.

To make a larger point: As an Evangelical Anglican, I often disagree with NOR writers’ claims that the Catholic Church was the Church founded by Jesus Christ. I offer the following as thought-provoking observations, with which any Catholic should agree:

Happy children are so full of love that they extend overtures of fellowship in every direction. They talk to their toys, they sing to their pets. The whole world is a kingdom of love. The days are too short to take in all the good things, the nights too long. Sleep is a thief and a robber, for it keeps the children from enjoying life to the full.

Since happy children are citizens of the kingdom of love, they enjoy an intuitive perception of virtue….

They discover the meaning of virtue by listening to their own hearts. Whether the intellect will own it or not, the heart has its convictions. These convictions say that a person is good when he is kind and truthful, and that in the end a good person has nothing to fear. The first part clarifies love, while the second part clarifies hope. To love is to be kind and truthful; to hope is to believe that things will work out happily in the end….

Happy children project their convictions in the form of stories or fairy tales. These stories are built about a dramatic conflict between good and evil. Children can enter into this conflict because they are already familiar with the virtues that form the kingdom of love.

Although parents enjoy reading fairy tales to their children, they seldom see any connection between the logic of these tales and the logic of life itself. They think they are only entertaining their children, when in truth they are performing a work of love. They are assuring their children that the convictions of the heart are trustworthy.

….

There may be a great deal of evil in life, just as there is in a fairy tale, but the evil is not so great that the conditions of love are dissolved. Take away love, and what is left? Children know the answer, and so do all who remain children in heart. If love is lost, all is lost….

Adults may scoff at the intuitive powers of a child, but there was one man who did not, and that was Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus was so mindful of a child’s wisdom that he advised his disciples to heed this wisdom in their own lives. “And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 18:2-4).

From The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life by Edward John Carnell (1919-1967), a Baptist minister.

John Harutunian

Newtonville, Massachusetts

CASEY CHALK REPLIES:

I’m grateful for John Harutunian’s letter, because if one part of my column deserves further discussion and clarification, it’s the Protestant objection that there have been plenty of holy Protestant men and women over the past five centuries, so why solely foreground the Catholic Church? My column discusses what makes Catholic saints different, and since Mr. Harutunian didn’t offer any objections to that particular point, there’s no need to belabor it.

Let’s return to what Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange wrote about Martin Luther. He was “an aggressive man who was insulting to those closest to him, prideful, transgressing his vows, a defiler of the divine books, a man who drank far too much, holding authority in contempt, stirring up the people, and speaking the most shameless of words.” My reference to Luther’s proclivity for the scatological was my own, not taken from Garrigou-Lagrange. That said, regarding the complaints lodged by the great French Dominican theologian, the historical evidence speaks for itself. Even Luther’s Protestant biographer, Heiko Oberman, acknowledges his “towering sense of divine vocation,” which is, I think, a polite way of saying Luther was certain of his own superiority. That self-confidence (or arrogance) can be seen across his corpus when he describes his adversaries as “asses,” “swine, “devils,” “whores,” “liars,” and “children of Satan.” When German peasants inspired by Luther’s teachings rose up in 1524, he declared, “Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly.” As many as 100,000 peasants died in the bloodshed.

It’s possible that Garrigou-Lagrange overshoots in attacking Luther’s drinking, though it certainly was an integral component of Luther’s “Table Talk” with colleagues and students. I recognize that Luther’s comments on the Jews, read through a post-Holocaust lens, are unfairly exploited for rhetorical purposes via the tired ad Hitlerum fallacy. Nevertheless, in On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther encourages coercing Jews into manual labor and confiscating their property. But first, he writes, Christians should “set fire to their synagogues or schools.” Even if the Shoah had never happened, that’s still repulsive language.

Like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were convinced of their theological and exegetical superiority over their adversaries, as I discuss in detail in my book The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity. Both men believed they possessed a singular ability to accurately interpret Holy Scripture against the interpretations of their opponents, a position they held as an extension of their belief in the perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture. Calvin writes, “Scripture indeed is self-authenticated…and ought not to be made subject to proof and reasoning” (Institutes of the Christian Religion). Zwingli claims the Catholic Church “subject[s] the interpretation of God’s Word to men” (The Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God). Both men, unsurprisingly, asserted that their interpretations of the Bible were not of men but of God, illuminated by the Holy Spirit. It’s a powerful rhetorical device, but not easily verifiable.

I can’t be sure, but I presume Garrigou-Lagrange’s reference to Calvin’s “looking down upon the ancient Fathers of the Church” is a reference to Calvin’s selective use of patristic sources. Yes, his Institutes warmly quotes St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome (among others), but not regarding their affirmation of many Catholic doctrines he rejected, such as baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, prayers for the dead (and thus Purgatory), the primacy of the bishop of Rome, the authority of the deuterocanonical texts, and Marian devotion. In that sense, Calvin effectively sets himself above the Church Fathers, viewing them not as true authorities but only sources to be cited in his favor when they agree with his own positions.

As for Zwingli’s “woman,” Anna, I admit the details are obscure, and the degree of the sin is debatable. She was indeed a widow when Zwingli secretly married her in 1522 (the marriage was publicly celebrated in 1524, three months before the birth of their first child). That said, Zwingli received the Catholic sacrament of Holy Orders in 1506 in the Latin Rite, which precluded him from marrying. At least from a Catholic perspective, that would mean his marriage to Anna was invalid and immoral. Moreover, at that point, he hadn’t rejected his Catholic ordination, meaning even if in his conscience he believed he was free to marry, he also knew he was contravening canon law while still presenting himself as a priest in good standing. This “secret” marriage may well have been an opportune means for Zwingli to engage in sexual relations with a patina of moral justification. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to know. That said, even from a Protestant perspective that affirms clerics’ right to marry and have children, Zwingli’s relationship with Anna — and the curious timing of their public marriage right before she bore their first child — would be considered irregular, if not suspect.

I’ll close by noting that saintliness is itself a contested human virtue. Perhaps there’s grist for a larger research project on how Protestants and Catholics differ over what they consider saintliness. It would be a fascinating study. But anyone who compares, say, Luther to St. Robert Bellarmine, or Calvin to St. Francis de Sales, will find marked differences in the quality and scope of the virtue manifested in these near contemporaries. If the question is “Which of these men seems purer, more humble, more godly, more prayerful, more devoted to Christ?” I think the answer is not difficult to determine. That, I submit, is the crux of Garrigou-Lagrange’s observation.

Finally, a Framework

I was stunned by the clarity and coherence of the argument Robert Kurland so eloquently and directly advances in “Quantum Mechanics, Transubstantiation & Why Aristotle Was Right After All” (June). As a molecular biologist, now retired, I have always been unsatisfied with the usual ad hoc strategies to place the elements of quantum mechanics in a framework that is both reasonable and conceptually accessible. By highlighting the resonance between quantum mechanics and Aristotelian philosophy, Dr. Kurland has provided that framework. And, by placing transubstantiation within that framework, he has rendered the miracle more conceivable, notwithstanding its ultimate mystery.

Thank you, Robert Kurland, and thank you, NOR.

John Manfredi

Salt Lake City, Utah

I read Robert Kurland’s article on quantum mechanics and transubstantiation with great interest and agreement. For almost 30 years I taught both chemistry and physics in high school settings. I frequently found myself in discussion with students about materialism and religion. As a Catholic, I was embarrassed by the Aristotelian-Thomistic substance-vs.-accidents view of reality and how it seemingly held back the “correct” Newtonian explanations that led to the intellectual scientific explosion of the Renaissance.

But then, along comes quantum mechanics! The easily demonstrated fact that electrons and light exhibit both wave and particle properties breaks the smug materialistic reasoning that everything is the mechanical result of random collisions of particles and requires nothing beyond measurement for an exhaustive explanation of its being. I believe Catholic educators need to emphasize this more in their science and religion classes.

Vincent Brach, Ph.D.

Tyler, Texas

Robert Kurland’s article on quantum mechanics and transubstantiation affected me deeply, in both a substantial and measurable way. Assuming his elucidation of quantum theories is correct (which, though it is far above my intellectual ken, I have no compelling reason to doubt), the question arises: What is to be done? I must assume there are many like me in today’s congregations who are disheartened by the prevalence of the postmodern idolization of materialism but who are unequipped to combat its adherents in any compelling way.

Until now. Dr. Kurland’s article is so brilliantly articulate and yet accessible to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that I want to shout it from the rooftops. Distressingly, he references a Jesuit (whose order had a role in reviving and promulgating Aristotle’s wisdom) who now claims Aristotle is intellectually obsolete. How can the tables have turned so drastically?

I would ask Kurland to expand on his conclusion that “we must enrich” modern physics and sacramental theology. What can we NOR readers do to help?

John McFadden

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Robert Kurland is convinced that superposition is a real phenomenon. But the pre-eminent theoretical physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, winner of the 2025 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (worth $3 million) and the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics, said in an interview, “Quantum mechanics is the possibility that you can consider superposition of states. That’s really all there is to it. And I’d argue that superpositions of states are not real…. Superposition in the macroscopic world is nonsense” (Scientific American, April 8, 2025). If ‘t Hooft is right, this implodes Kurland’s entire article.

Kurland uses Aristotelian philosophies to try to explain transubstantiation, which he says he’s not really trying to do. He writes, “Substance and accidents [measurable properties] belong to different ontological levels [states of being].” This sounds like one of Plato’s teachings that Aristotle attacked. His attack was on the separation of the form, or essence, of a thing in another realm. Aristotle taught that any particular substance, such as bread, is a unity of form and matter. It cannot exist apart from its own essence.

Kurland writes that the “substance [of transubstantiation] changes through sacramental action,” and “the Eucharist is a miracle.” Then why does he write five pages “paralleling” it with Aristotelian philosophies and quantum mechanics? Then he writes, “The same philosophical toolkit that helps us understand electrons in superposition helps us understand how bread becomes Christ’s body.” If transubstantiation really is a miracle, why do we need to understand it in terms of a natural process? All this torturous explanation using Aristotelian philosophies and quantum mechanics seems to denote a lack of faith.

Rosalyn Becker

Fort Myers, Florida

Robert Kurland proposes that the difficulties inherent in the interpretation of quantum mechanics originate from Cartesian metaphysics, in which things are either actual or nonexistent. These difficulties can be alleviated by interpreting the measurement problem of quantum mechanics by means of the Aristotelian-Thomistic idea of actualizing potentiality, in this case by a specific kind of physical interaction that involves coupling quantum and classical systems.

I agree that this paradigm (actualizing that which is potential) is useful for understanding what in quantum mechanics is called the “collapse of the state vector” (which is typically assumed to occur when a quantum system is observed or measured). However, postulating that a measurement involves a coupling between quantum and classical systems requires distinguishing between a “classical” measuring apparatus and a “quantum system” that interacts with the apparatus. The basis of that distinction remains unclear. John von Neumann (and later Henry Stapp) thought it more logical to assume that all physical systems are “quantum systems” (that is, they obey the laws of quantum physics), including a measuring apparatus, which becomes entangled with the quantum system being measured, and would thus exist in a superposition of quantum states (described by a “state vector,” that is, a potentiality in Aristotelian terms), where each state corresponds to a possible outcome of a measurement. In other words, von Neumann and Stapp would argue that there is no such thing as a “classical” measuring apparatus. To them, it is only when a nonphysical mind (something not governed by the laws of physics) interacts with the measuring apparatus that the superposition of states (described by a state vector) collapses to a single state, giving a definite result. Hence, they argue that only a conscious mind can cause “collapse of the state vector” (or, in Aristotelian terms, actualization of a potentiality).

It seems to me that both interpretations of the cause of state vector collapse (actualizing a potentiality) are logically possible. However, the idea of “classical” objects being conceptually different from quantum systems is hard to justify, especially since modern experiments keep pushing the size limit of a quantum system (e.g., quantum interference has been demonstrated in metallic nanoparticles made of between 5,000 and 10,000 sodium atoms — see “Researchers Break Record for Largest Object Placed in Quantum Interference,” IFLScience.com, Feb. 5). On the other hand, the idea that a conscious mind is required to end a quantum superposition (that is, to convert a potentiality into an actuality) is also problematic, since there are regions of the universe (such as the interiors of stars and hot Jupiter planets) where quantum processes occur and presumably have definite (actualized) physical results despite the absence of any minds observing (or measuring) the outcome.

In The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (1995) physicist Wolfgang Smith hypothesized that the process of state vector collapse involves the intervention of God, who effects the change from the possible to the actual by divine decree. In a sense, Smith agrees with von Neumann and Stapp that a nonphysical entity (a conscious mind) is the cause of state vector collapse, but it is the mind of God, not that of a creature. And that interpretation may correspond well with Dr. Kurland’s assertion that “the same philosophical toolkit that helps us understand electrons in superposition helps us understand how bread becomes Christ’s Body — not because they’re the same phenomenon but because they both involve levels of reality that materialism cannot accommodate.”

Terrence Lagerlund, M.D., Ph.D.

Rochester, Minnesota

Robert Kurland’s article is important for Christians, not because he explains Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist according to the terms of quantum mechanics but because he doesn’t. Dr. Kurland instead offers a cogent defense of Aristotelian metaphysics, the foundation for St. Thomas Aquinas and others’ highly successful philosophy of the Eucharist. Although Kurland achieves this by reviewing the implications and paradoxes of quantum theory, he is appropriately adamant that the Eucharist is distinguished as “a miracle, not a natural process” — not even as an entangled, quantum whole.

I fear that some readers will miss that crucial distinction and be tempted to theorize intensely about the Eucharist in quantum terms. The problem is that any theory or explanation that reduces reality will be inadequate, at best — or dangerously misleading, at worst — to a deep understanding of a divine event. Even quantum mechanics, with its openness to indeterminacy and appreciation of the unity of reality, is a reduction in the form of mathematical equations and discursive logic. Penetrating the apparent veil of mystery surrounding the Eucharist, however, is a matter of relating to reality in an entirely different way.

As I explain in my article “AI and the Reduction of Truth: A Eucharistic Alternative” (Religions, vol. 17, issue 5), the truth of the Eucharist and our faith in it are deeply personal. Its apprehension is enabled and enacted with loving attention by a spiritually endowed and graced person — an apprehension that attains a kind of synergy between the person and the object. We are oriented to the very person of Christ — His sacrifice, redemption, and resurrection. As Pope Benedict XVI taught, the important question is not so much in what we believe but in whom we believe (cf. Deus Caritas Est, no. 1). In my article I write that “a purely factual orientation to the Eucharist also overlooks the disclosure through the Eucharist of the truth of human existence, which finds its essential — not merely its chosen — beatitude in eternal life with God.” God’s grace does not destroy limited nature, including our own, but elevates it, as St. Thomas explains (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 8).

Kurland’s defense of Aristotle’s philosophical system not only facilitates descriptive understanding of the Eucharist but also supports categories and concepts that reinforce the dignity of humanity. In an age when both scientistic and digital formulas attempt to reduce the human person and human consciousness to a function of algorithmic, data-centric, physiological, and even quantum processes, it is wise to remember the Aristotelian distinction St. Thomas draws between ratio, the restless mental movement of the rational mind, and intellectus, the mind’s satisfied rest. We will not attain intellectus solely by churning out logical and discursive theoretical achievements but by willed orientation to our Beatitude — a relationship with God, through Christ, immersed in joyful submission, love, and reverence.

Christopher M. Reilly

Fredericksburg, Virginia

ROBERT KURLAND REPLIES:

I am grateful to everyone who took the trouble to write, and I am gratified that the article provoked exactly the kind of conversation I hoped it would.

To John Manfredi and Vincent Brach: Thank you for your generous words. Dr. Brach’s point deserves amplification. The double-slit experiment can be demonstrated, or at least vividly presented, in any high-school classroom, and it is a better opening for a discussion of the limits of materialism than any philosophy lecture. It was, after all, the demonstration Richard Feynman himself chose to introduce quantum theory in his course at Caltech; I had the good fortune to audit that lecture, and the memory has not faded. Catholic educators are sitting on an untapped resource. The physics curriculum itself, honestly taught, undermines the reductive materialism our students absorb from the surrounding culture.

John McFadden asks the practical question: What is to be done? Three suggestions. First, read and share the works of those developing these ideas — Robert Koons’s philosophical papers, Wolfgang Smith’s The Quantum Enigma, and the paper by Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, and Michael Epperson, “Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously,” which argues that quantum states describe real potentiality (res potentia) in just the sense Aristotle intended. Second, refuse the premise. When someone asserts that science has disproven some article of the faith, ask politely which experiment did so. There is none. The materialism attached to modern science is a philosophical rider, not a scientific result, and the ordinary believer is entitled to say so. Third, encourage the teaching of the philosophy of nature alongside science in Catholic schools, so that the next generation does not grow up thinking, as Dr. Brach once feared, that the Church’s metaphysics is an embarrassment. It is not; it is an asset.

Rosalyn Becker raises three objections, which I take in turn.

First, Gerard ‘t Hooft. He is indeed a pre-eminent physicist, and I would not presume to match credentials with him. But notice what his quoted remark concedes: superposition is, on his own account, what quantum mechanics is. No physicist, ‘t Hooft included, denies superposition as mathematical formalism and as experimental fact; interference patterns, quantum computing, and the nanoparticle experiments Terrence Lagerlund cites all depend on it. What ‘t Hooft denies is that superpositions are real — which is to say, he offers an interpretation: his “cellular automaton” interpretation, a form of superdeterminism holding that beneath quantum mechanics lies a hidden deterministic theory. It is fair to say that this view has fewer adherents among physicists than the Aristotelian interpretation has among philosophers of physics. My article never claimed a consensus for the Aristotelian reading; I said explicitly that it has not gained general acceptance. But the spectacle of a Nobel laureate making metaphysical pronouncements about what is “real” rather proves the article’s central point: The interpretation of quantum mechanics is a philosophical question, and physicists cannot avoid philosophy — they can only do it well or badly. As for ‘t Hooft’s remark that superposition in the macroscopic world is nonsense: I made no claims about macroscopic superposition. The argument concerns the microscopic domain, where superposition as a phenomenon is not in dispute. Nothing implodes.

Second, the charge of Platonism. The substance/accidents distinction is Aristotle’s own, set out in the Categories and the Metaphysics; it was his alternative to Plato, not a lapse into him. When I wrote that substance and accidents belong to different ontological levels, I did not mean that essences float in a separate realm. I meant that within one concrete thing, what it is cannot be reduced to the properties by which it appears — which is straight hylomorphism. Mrs. Becker is quite right that, for Aristotle, accidents naturally inhere in their substance and cannot naturally exist apart from it. That is precisely why St. Thomas Aquinas taught that in the Eucharist the accidents of bread persist without their proper substance only by divine power (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 77, a. 1). Her sound Aristotelian instinct is, in other words, exactly the reason the Church calls transubstantiation a miracle.

Third, the suggestion that seeking to understand betrays a lack of faith. Here I can only appeal to a tradition much older than I — and that is saying something. St. Anselm called theology fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding; behind him stands St. Augustine’s credo ut intelligam, I believe in order that I may understand. Aquinas devoted many questions of the Summa to the metaphysics of the Eucharist, and no one has yet accused him of insufficient faith. More to the point, my article did not attempt to explain the miracle and said so explicitly. Its purpose was to remove a stumbling block: the claim that modern physics has rendered the doctrine’s conceptual framework unintelligible. Clearing away a false objection is not rationalism. It is the ordinary work of apologetics, done in service of faith, not in place of it.

Dr. Lagerlund puts his finger on the deepest open question: What grounds the distinction between the “classical” measuring apparatus and the quantum system it measures? He is right that the cut cannot be a matter of size, as the interference experiments with ever-larger objects show. Nor does decoherence settle the matter: Entanglement with the environment explains why we do not observe interference, but it does not by itself select which outcome occurs. The von Neumann-Stapp proposal that consciousness effects the collapse faces the difficulty he notes — stars burned, and their quantum processes were actualized, long before there were any creaturely minds to observe them. Wolfgang Smith’s alternative, that the passage from potency to act is ultimately effected by God, is congenial to a Thomist, for whom God is in any case the primary cause of every actualization, working through secondary causes. And we should remember that Heisenberg himself reached for Aristotle’s vocabulary, describing the quantum state as “a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality” — potentia. On the Aristotelian view, I would say the apparatus functions as a measuring device precisely insofar as its relevant properties are already actual; but how and where actualization occurs remains open — which is, I think, where honest physics and honest philosophy currently stand. I thank Dr. Lagerlund for the most substantive engagement for which a writer could ask.

Finally, Christopher M. Reilly — whose article on artificial intelligence and the Eucharist I commend to readers — states better than I did the caution my article intended. The danger is not too much thinking about the Eucharist but the wrong kind: the kind that mistakes a conceptual framework for the reality it serves. His distinction between ratio and intellectus is exactly right. Aristotle’s categories can defend the doctrine’s coherence; they cannot produce adoration. For that, one must kneel.

Aquinas understood this. The man who gave the Church the metaphysics of transubstantiation also gave her the Adoro Te Devote: visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur — sight, touch, and taste are deceived in Thee. The accidents remain, and the senses report only them; faith alone perceives what the substance has become. After a lifetime of doing physics, I have found that the deepest realities, quantum or Eucharistic, are approached the same way: with rigor as far as rigor will go, and with wonder after that.

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