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So encyclicals are not binding; they are teaching instruments?

Encyclicals are a form of exercising the magisterium. The magisterium is the teaching authority of the church. The pope uses his encyclicals to make occasional pronouncements. The current pope feels very strongly, as did Pope Paul, on this particular subject, but I guess what I am saying is that if 10 or 15 years from now, if there is a modification of Humanae Vitae, I don't think it will be deeply troubling to most Catholic theologians. It will be to some. One of the things that attracted Malcolm Muggeridge to the church was Humanae Vitae.

You write that we need to "nurture an ethos and to revive an ethos." Tell us what you mean by that.

It is very difficult to effect an ethos, but that doesn't mean that an ethos oughtn't to be addressed as something that is remediable. I gave as an example anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was endemic when I was a boy. But what happened was that the Holocaust compelled people to confront that delinquency. It happened with blacks also. And the ethos did change. There is some anti-Semitism now, sure, but nothing like what there used to be. When I was at Yale, the first Jewish professor to achieve tenure arrived about the same time I did. So the difference between then and now is simply enormous. By the same token, if one wants to beat back the idea that sex ought to always be an entirely permissive exercise—just when you feel like it—one mustn't be resigned to the opposition that it is an unmodifiable part of the ethos. Assaults on it and criticism of it can be offered. And therefore an ethos can be changed and revived.

Once when defining conservatism you said it is the "tacit acknowledgment that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us." What did you mean?

I wrote that in 1957. What I meant was that it is inconceivable to me as a Christian that God forgot to say critical things, or if there was anything terrifically important, it's hard to think that Jesus would have forgotten to pass it along. Obviously, there are lots of refinements on the Ten Commandments and the creed. But in terms of importance, what has been said is what is important. All the rest is exegesis and development.

Michael Cromartie is now vice president at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he directs the Evangelicals in Civic Life and Religion & the Media programs.

This article originally appeared in the November / December 1997 issue of Books & Culture, a Christianity Today sister publication.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

See also Cromartie's 1995 Christianity Today interview with Buckley on Christian activism.

Books & Culture editor John Wilson reviewed Nearer, My God for Christianity Today, which won a CT Book Award.

Jeremy Lott reviewed Buckley's 2004 "literary autobiography" for Books & Culture.

Obituaries of Buckley are available at The New York Times, Associated Press, National Review, and other publications.

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