John Brennan has been Obama's national security adviser and is now nominated to head the CIA. His torture, rendition, and drone involvements have had moral murmuring but I've not detected major public criticisms of him. So today, I was surprised and amused to see Pat Lang, at my favorite military/intelligence/political blog, say the following: "I would not have picked Brennan. He seems to me to be a rule obsessed product of too much Catholic education." Can anyone have too much Catholic education? Does Lang mean too much Jesuit education? Brennan is a graduate of Fordham (political science).UPDATE: Here is a "Room for Debate," debate on Brennan at the NYTimes.Patrick Molloy informs us that Hagel is also a Catholic (didn't know that). See his comment below.And Here: an interesting and provocative piece by Michael Lind at Salon on the Hagel nomination: Obama Repudiates Bushism.

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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