The Letter Killeth by Ralph McInerny Page A

work, to earn my living. Long ago, the guilt that induces drove me into politics. I mean as a supporter. But that’s long over.”
    â€œAnd now?”
    â€œI am guided by my putative namesake, trying to save my soul.”
    Neither of them wanted a drink. When Fred ordered the Sorin Salad, Roger put down his menu. “Me, too.”
    â€œI wanted to tell you what a good influence you have been on my son.”
    â€œHe is a good lad. And the newspaper he and his friends are putting out is a good thing.”
    Fred smiled. “The heresy of good works.”
    â€œDom Chautard.”
    â€œYou know him?”
    Roger shrugged. In the lobby there were stacks of the current issue of the Observer, but none of the paper Bill and his friends put out. Circulation was a problem, since they relied on volunteers to distribute copies to various places around campus. At first, piles of the paper had mysteriously disappeared. In default of his son’s paper, Fred had paged through the Observer.
    â€œThat’s an amazing story about the professor whose car was firebombed.”
    â€œIzquierdo? I haven’t seen it.”
    â€œI don’t know when I last looked at a campus publication, but I was astounded at how matter-of-fact they were about the man’s atheism. An atheist teaching at Notre Dame? He seems to be something of a missionary as well.”
    â€œProfessors aren’t above posturing, you know.”
    In reading the piece, Fred had been truly shocked. It seemed preposterous that parents would send a son or daughter to Notre Dame in order to have someone seek to undermine their faith. He could imagine what Bastable would think of this piece on Izquierdo. Of course it could be argued that one will meet with assaults on his faith throughout life and that there was little point in putting it off. An untested faith is impossible. It was quite another thing to subsidize the attack on one’s beliefs.
    But he had not asked Roger Knight to lunch in order to discuss campus politics. Everything Fred had heard of the portly Huneker Professor had made him wonder if he might not, as his father had, give some financial support to Notre Dame. Quirk’s campaign was having its effect. He dreaded the thought of calling on the Notre Dame Foundation, where professionals in the art of separating people from their money would have to be dealt with. What he wondered was whether he could not more or less directly underwrite the wonderful work that Roger was doing.
    â€œFred, I am paid far more than I am worth as it is. I sit in an endowed chair. I have a discretionary fund. There is nothing I need.”
    It occurred to Fred that Roger might be drawing the wrong inference from the clothes he was wearing: the same baggy sweater and corduroys with their wales all but gone. “My family has always given generously to Notre Dame. I mean my father. I’m afraid I’ve let that sort of thing go.”
    Small amounts of money, given to quite specific purposes, seemed more effective. Large sums, very large sums, seemed to satisfy some need of the giver rather than the recipient. Fred was struck by the way new buildings at Notre Dame bore the names of their donors. The pharaoh principle, more or less. Thank God his father had not been in the grip of that kind of vanity.
    â€œIn any case, I appreciate the thought. Money isn’t what Notre Dame needs most just now.”
    â€œAnd what is?”
    Roger was wedged into his chair; his napkin was tucked into his collar and lay like a pennant on his massive chest. He looked at Fred. “Let me tell you a story.”
    It was Roger’s story, orphaned early, raised by his older brother, dubbed a prodigy, and finished with college and graduate school when most boys were finishing high school.
    â€œSwift as my passage through college and university was, delighted as I was to be able to pursue a dozen interests at once, from the beginning I felt