Are They Awake on The Watchtower?
They travel in pairs, carrying copies of their magazines.
They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), part of a non-Christian
religion. Their publishing house—the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (WTS)—is headquartered
in Brooklyn, New York, and publishes two magazines that appear twice each
month: Awake!, which is a general interest magazine with occasional
religious content, and The Watchtower, which more formally presents
the doctrines and beliefs of the WTS and is usually intended for initiates
or those who have at least expresssed an interest in knowing more about
the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It doesn’t take long, after browsing through a
few issues, to learn that the Witnesses have a fixation with Catholicism.
They devote an inordinate amount of space in their magazines to attacks
on Catholic beliefs. On the whole, the debunking
is done in a relatively inoffensive manner, but
nonetheless it’s obvious which ecclesiastical organization is seen as the
great enemy. (In the 1920s and 1930s—the era of "Judge" Rutherford, the
second president of the WTS—the attacks on the Catholic Church were more
virulent and direct, but the WTS has since toned down its approach.) Let’s
look at representative issues, but first it’s necessary to understand the
WTS’s use of anonymity in its articles and publications.
Privacy at All Costs
The officials in Brooklyn value anonymity highly.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses publish their own translation of the Bible—the
so-called New World Translation (NWT)—which was produced by committee,
but the names of the committee members have not been revealed by the WTS.
This version is used routinely—but not exclusively—in their publications.
It should be noted that JWs will use other Bible translations, but only
when it suits their purposes to do so.
The NWT is universally rejected by non-Witnesses,
including secular Greek and Hebrew scholars. These scholars, and informed
critics of the Watchtower, speculate that few of the members who served
on the committee were experienced as translators or even knew the rudiments
of Hebrew or Greek; the NWT appears to be little more than a modification
of already-existing English versions. It was by means of two former Witnesses,
Bill Cetnar (who worked in the Brooklyn headquarters) and Raymond Franz
(a former member of the WTS’s Governing Body) that the identity of the
committee members became known and therefore that the scholars’ suspicions
were confirmed. According to Cetnar and Franz, only one member of the committee
(Frederick Franz, fourth WTS president and Raymond Franz’s uncle) studied
biblical languages at all, and he studied non-biblical Greek for
only two years.
Also, with the exception of some personal testimony
stories, readers of both magazines will fail to find the names of people
who authored the various articles contained in them. The WTS does this
partly because it supresses individuality within the organization and partly
because it prevents the reader from examining an author’s requisite credentials
to teach on the given subject matter. Witnesses are taught to submit
to the WTS, not to question its publications. Consequently, the anonymity
is understandable.
Awake!
The November 8, 1988, issue of Awake! features
on its cover a painting of the Virgin and the title, "Mary: The Answer
to World Crisis?" Inside are seven short articles about Mary and Marian
devotion. All but one, a personal conversion story, are anonymous. The
byline for the first, for instance, is this: "By Awake! correspondent
in Italy."
The first article in Awake! is about a recent
Marian year. Like other pieces Awake! has run about things Catholic,
it takes swipes at the Church of Rome. The reader is told that "traditionalist
Catholics" were pleased with the televised proclamation of the Marian Year,
but "for others, both Catholics and non-Catholics, it was a useless waste
of money, a ‘cosmic show’ of doubtful taste."
Why did Pope John Paul II proclaim a Marian year
in the first place? Because, "for quite some time, in the more conservative
Catholic spheres, there has been concern over the fact that Marian worship
seems to have been obscured." (Notice that Catholic doctrine has been subtly
misrepresented. Catholics do not "worship" Mary, but they do honor and
venerate her. Such misrepresentation is not an uncommon occurrence in the
pages of WTS publications.) The writer says there were other motives—for
instance, it was hoped that increased pilgrimages to Marian shrines would
result in increased priestly vocations.
Not all Catholics were pleased that a Marian year
had been proclaimed. "Catholic priest Franco Barbero [otherwise unidentified]
caused a stir when he publicly declared that he never prayed to Mary. In
his ‘Letter to Mary,’ Barbero states that she has been crushed ‘under a
mountain of dogmas, relics, devotionalisms, legends, superstition.’ The
same priest has also stated that even ‘speaking of a "year of Mary" could
raise legitimate perplexities.’"
Madonna Worshipers?
So far, these complaints sound as though they could
come from any "Bible Christian" or even any secularist. But the Witnesses
have twists of their own. The Awake! author asks why so many Catholics
have become "Madonna worshipers." He answers, "There are many reasons.
Some of them stem directly from doctrines taught by the Catholic Church.
For example, since the Church teaches that Jesus is equal to God, this
leaves no independent intermediary between man and God. God and Christ,
surrounded by an aura of Trinitarian mystery, are no longer approachable,
and for this reason the role of ‘intermediary’ between the Divinity and
humankind has been delegated to the ‘Madonna.’"
These lines might be confusing to those who don’t
realize that the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in the Trinity. They
believe that Jesus is not divine, is not the Second Person of the Trinity—in
fact, that there is no Second Person, because there is no Trinity in their
view. If Jesus is not divine, what is he? A creature, though the best of
creatures. He was the first thing created by God and had a prehuman existence,
and it was through him, as an agent, that God created everything else.
Jesus Only an Archangel
Still, he’s only a creature. The miracles he performed
attested not to his own divinity, but to approval of him by God. In heaven,
Jesus is now known as Michael. (This identification of Jesus and Michael
the Archangel relies on Jude 9, Daniel 10:13 and 12:1, and Revelation 12:7-8.
Read them for yourself and see how far-fetched this is.)
What these beliefs of the Witnesses amount to is
the ancient heresy of Arianism, which is nothing new. Athanasius battled
it a millennium and a half ago. The Witnesses, in condemning Marian doctrines,
often come up with reasons of their own, quite distinct from those given
by Fundamentalists. Like Fundamentalists, they oppose giving Mary the title
Theotokos (Greek for "One who bore God" or, less literally, "Mother
of God"). "It does not appear in the Bible," writes the anonymous author.
Worse, "she cannot be described as the ‘Mother of God’ for the simple reason
that Jesus was not ‘God the Son,’ but ‘the Son of God.’ The Trinity doctrine
was no part of ancient Hebrew belief and is not taught in the Bible."
No Fundamentalist would argue like this. He would
agree that the notion of Mary as Theotokos does not appear in the
Bible (and he’d be wrong), but he’d never argue that Mary isn’t the Mother
of God on the grounds that Jesus isn’t God. The Fundamentalist fully accepts
our Lord’s divinity.
Twisting Words
Awake! is not adverse to misquoting and
twisting the words of Catholic writers when doing so can help them slam
the Church. Referring to Mary, the anonymous writer says, "The [Catholic]
Church claims she was always virgin. While the Bible itself specifically
states that Mary was ‘a virgin’ before giving birth to Jesus, ‘virginity
after childbirth is not indicated in the New Testament,’ writes Catholic
theologian [René] Laurentin." This makes it seem that Laurentin,
an expert in Mariology, disbelieves in the perpetual virginity of Mary.
Quite the opposite. What he was saying is that the New Testament doesn’t
say, in so many words, that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth—and
it also doesn’t say she didn’t. But this quote is a typical example of
how the WTS will cite sources in a selective and slanted manner: First,
readers of WTS publications are never given the context of the sources
cited. Second, the WTS will quote only a portion of relevant passages,
giving the appearance that the author holds a view directly opposite of
what he or she actually believes—and this opposite view conveniently supports
WTS beliefs. Third, the WTS rarely provides sufficient references for their
sources, leaving readers unable to check the sources for themselves.
Perfectly good arguments can be made that the New Testament does,
indeed, establish Mary’s perpetual virginity, but Laurentin was only acknowledging
that we won’t find in the text a line that says, "And Mary never had any
other children." We are left to infer that from other facts given to us
in the text.
The Watchtower
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ other magazine is The
Watchtower. Twenty-two million copies of each issue are printed in
well over 100 languages, and about a third of those copies are in English.
(Awake! has a somewhat smaller circulation.)
The December 1, 1988, issue of The Watchtower
features a photograph of a cathedral on its cover. Superimposed is the
question, "What Traditions Please God?" Apparently not something like All
Souls’ Day, which "seems strange or even bizarre to an outside observer."
And well it might, since we’re told that it and many other "religious traditions
are plainly derived from, or at least [are] astonishingly similar to, non-Christian
religious rites. For example, All Souls’ Day virtually parallels the Buddhist
festival of ‘Ullambana,’ a day set aside for ‘the expression of filial
piety to deceased ancestors and the release of spirits from bondage to
this world.’" The New Encyclopedia Britannica is cited as the source
of the last quotation. The (again) anonymous author asks, "Are followers
of such traditions really worshipping in truth?" He refers the reader to
John 4:23, "The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth."
The Give-Away
The next paragraph is a give-away. It throws a
bright light on the author’s confusion. It says: "Some argue that the mere
acceptance of traditions into the Church justifies them. Said the Second
Vatican Council in 1965: ‘It is not from sacred Scripture alone that the
Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore
both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated
with the same sense of devotion and reverence.’"
The confusion here is equating mere traditions—customs
or ways of doing things—with Tradition, the oral teaching given by Jesus
to the apostles and passed through their successors, the bishops. Vatican
II, in this passage, was talking about "upper-case" Tradition, not "lower-case"
tradition. The writer for The Watchtower was either grossly ignorant
of the meaning of Catholic terms, or he tried to pull a fast one here,
knowing that the word "Tradition"—also called "sacred Tradition"—implies
something other than mere "tradition"—or "human tradition."
Such an approach is not unusual for the WTS, which
often misrepresents or confuses official Catholic doctrine, and then refutes
the mistaken notion rather than the actual teaching. This approach is called
the "straw man" tactic. The misrepresented belief, which is essentially
"made of nothing" and thus called a "straw man," is set up and then easily
refuted or "knocked down." To the unsuspecting person, this tactic makes
the WTS appear quite scholarly and biblically astute. The danger,
however, lies in the fact that the WTS is refuting beliefs and teachings
which are not legitimate Catholic doctrine.
All Souls’ Day is a custom the Church developed
centuries after the apostles, not a doctrine. Yet when Vatican II speaks
of Tradition, it refers only to those doctrines and practices which have
been handed down from the apostles, either implicitly or explicitly. It
is only the latter—those which have come down to us from the apostles—that
are automatically accepted. Those invented later can be changed, modified,
or even abandoned as needed.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with All Souls’
Day. The Bible teaches that we should pray for the dead (2 Macc. 12:44-45—though
Witnesses rely on the Protestant canon of Scripture, which cut this book
out of the Bible). And no serious historian would claim that All Souls’
Day is in any way derived from the Buddhist festival Ullambana—though this
is precisely the conclusion suggested from the way the WTS presents its
sources.
These are but a few examples of how the WTS distorts
Catholic beliefs and presents "scholarship" in support of its views. These
examples provide a "representative slice" of the thinking and modus
operandi of the WTS, and they should serve as a warning signal for
those unsuspecting people who open their doors to JWs and welcome their
message. When dealing with WTS publications, be forewarned that the material
exhibited there is distorted in such a way so as to present what appears
to be a rather compelling case for WTS theology. But all that glitters
is not gold.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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