Perspective

A reader called recently to complain, not so much about a particular article, but about a certain kind of article. The latest example was Arthur Droge’s “Did Paul Commit Suicide?” BR 05:06. (For letters on this article, see Readers Reply) But that wasn’t the only one. Another was “Can Scholars Take the Virgin Birth Seriously?” BR 04:05, by J. Edward Barrett. A third—this person read the magazine carefully and remembered it well—was Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s “What Really Happened at the Transfiguration?” BR 03:03.

These articles—and perhaps some others—were, the reader said, “off-the-wall.” He suggested we printed them just to provoke people, to irritate and rile them.

When we get calls complaining about one thing or another, we usually listen, chat a bit and then ask the caller to give his or her views to us in a letter that we will consider printing in Readers Reply. We do, after all, have a pretty open column of readers’ letters where we share with other readers a representative sample of the kinds of letters we get—some praising us, some arguing, some offering new insights or asking questions and some critical and even condemning.