Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
A quick reminder that our third annual apologetics cruise will take us
around the Canadian maritime provinces. We depart Montreal on October 2 and
arrive in Boston on October 9.
Joining me as speakers will be Jimmy Akin, Rosalind Moss, Tim Staples,
Thomas Howard, and Bishop Colin Campbell of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. This
year we will have, aside from the plenary talks, lots of small-group
sessions with the speakers. There will be even more "face time" than
before.
This will be a wonderful cruise, and I hope you will be able to join us.
Bookings are running ahead of last year, so we're anticipating a fine
turnout. For more information please go to:
http://catholicanswerscruise.com
SUSPENDED
Tyler Chase Harper, 16, was suspended from Poway (California) High School
for wearing a T-shirt during the annual Day of Silence, an event held on
high school and college campuses throughout the country "to recognize and
protest discrimination and harassment against gays, lesbians, bisexuals,
and transgender students," according to a report in the "San Diego
Union/Tribune."
The problem wasn't that Harper's T-shirt endorsed the Day of Silence but
that it opposed homosexuality. On the front the T-shirt read "I Will Not
Accept What God Has Condemned," and on the back it read "Homosexuality is
Shameful, Romans 1:27."
The administrators said Harper's T-shirt violated the school dress code,
which provides that it is unacceptable to wear clothing that promotes
"violence or hate behavior including derogatory connotations directed
toward sexual identity." Harper was told his T-shirt would have to go; the
assistant principal even told him to "leave your faith in the car." When he
refused to remove the T-shirt, Harper was suspended.
A double standard is at play. Free speech is permitted to students whose
T-shirts endorse the ideology behind the Day of Silence but not to those
who oppose it. This meant Harper was out of luck--and out of school. Now he
is suing the Poway Unified School District. (One of his attorneys is
Charles LiMandri, a friend of Catholic Answers.)
Like Harper, I attended a public high school. Things were different back
then. I had some instructors who were so good I was surprised they were
teaching at a high school instead of at a prestigious college. We received
a good education, and I was unaware of moral, ethical, or social problems
at the school (not counting the "toughs" who, after school, used to gather
across the street and smoke cigarettes).
That was then, and this is now. The public school system has declined
nearly everywhere--and not just declined but plummeted. Poway is a well-off
suburb of San Diego. Its public schools are well regarded, but that is only
to say that they may be less badly off than schools elsewhere. Few parents,
and apparently even fewer employees, have any sense how degraded public
education now is--degraded intellectually and morally.
It seems to be an almost universal phenomenon: Ideology has gripped high
schools (and even lower schools) the way it gripped colleges some years
earlier. Ideology always is accompanied by a dilution of true education.
Just as bad money drives out good, so slogans drive out true learning.
This explains, in part, why I always vote against school bonds. I think
public schools are a lost cause and that they are so deeply corrupted that
it no longer is possible to bring them back to health. Let me point to two
indicators.
In the mid-nineteenth century the most popular school books were the
"McGuffey's Readers," which are still available in facsimile editions. The
reader used for sixth-grade students included selections from Shakespeare
and Milton. Mind you, this is what twelve-year-olds were expected to know.
Nowadays, most public high school students have read neither Shakespeare
nor Milton, and even many college students manage to reach their
commencement ceremonies without having read a single play or poem from
these masters. This is not what I would call intellectual advancement. Even
in my high school days the intellectual fare was rich compared to what is
offered in today's schools.
Back then, we kept our books and personal effects in hallway lockers. This
was convenient, even though it meant crowded hallways and clanging locker
doors between classes. Some years ago--I don't know just when--lockers seem
to have disappeared almost everywhere.
Perhaps it was due to lobbying efforts by manufacturers of day packs, who
must have realized a fortune when tens of millions of students stopped
using lockers and started toting everything on their backs. More likely the
change was a response to rampant crime in the schools plus
judicially-imposed restrictions on administrators' access to lockers. The
junking of the lockers was a sign of failure--a failure of the schools to
inculcate even basic morality.
UNSURPRISED
"USA Today" last week ran a cover story titled "Churchgoing Closely Tied to
Voting Patterns." A chart showed that, in the 2000 election, people who
attended church once a week favored George Bush over Al Gore by 58% to 42%,
while those who seldom attended church favored Gore over Bush 61% to 39%.
No surprise, really.
Referring to this year's presidential campaign, the newspaper said that
"Bush, a Methodist, has the support of most Catholics who attend Mass every
week. [John] Kerry is ahead among those who don't." Bush is even more
strongly backed by Evangelicals.
His campaign sent out an e-mail to supporters in Pennsylvania, asking them
to "identify 1,600 'friendly congregations' where voters friendly to
President Bush might gather on a regular basis." Fair enough, I suppose,
since for years Democratic candidates have been speaking and gathering at
churches friendly to them.
But Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and
State (I mentioned him in last week's E-Letter), cried foul. He called the
e-mail "a breathtakingly bad merger of religion and politics." I don't
remember him using such language when Jesse Jackson and other Democrats
spoke and raised funds at churches, but maybe Lynn has tightened his
standards since the 2000 campaign.
Whatever you think of the candidates for president, you have to admit that
religion is taking a role it hasn't taken at least since 1960 (when John F.
Kennedy ran) and probably since 1928 (when Al Smith ran).
(No matter who wins in November, some wag will note that the streak
continues: 1928, 1960, and 2004 show that a solid Catholic can't be elected
president.)
CLARIFIED
Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles has said that a bishop or priest
cannot deny Holy Communion to a pro-abortion politician who has not yet
been excommunicated, placed under interdict, or put under a formal
sanction.
Not so, says canon lawyer Edward N. Peters (who formerly worked for the
Diocese of San Diego). He notes that canon 915 says that those who
"obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy
Communion." That canon does not say that the person must be under a formal
sanction, and it certainly is the case that "chronically supporting
abortion is a grave sin."
Cardinal Mahony has said that, when someone presents himself for Communion,
one is to presume that he is in the state of grace. Peters replies that
that is only partly true because "the presumption of one's eligibility to
receive the Eucharist" can be countered by contrary evidence.
Peters discusses the issue at:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/enpeters/blog.htm
PREDICTED
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, a convert to the Catholic faith,
wrote that the indecisive actions of certain prelates, such as Theodore
Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., has given the first-round victory
to "pro-choice" politicians.
"But one priest familiar with how the Church operates told me that more and
more American bishops, influenced by Pope John Paul II, will deny
Communions and 'finally "out" liberal Catholics for what they are at heart,
Protestants.' This priest sees the day when 'pro-abortion politicians will
stop calling themselves Catholics or repent of their sins.' That surely
will not happen before the 2004 election."
Agreed. It's not going to happen this year, and it may not happen in the
next election cycle either. It won't happen so long as only five or ten
bishops take a hardline stance, but it will happen if a hundred bishops do.
Finally, let me make a small adjustment to the unnamed priest's comment: I
would put "liberal" or "mainline" before "Protestants," because the
religion espoused by pro-abortion Catholic politicians is quite different
from the Protestantism held by Evangelicals.
ZOOMING
Although they went live barely three weeks ago, the Catholic Answers
discussion forums already are a big success. As of this afternoon 4,300
people are registered, and our forums are now the most popular places for
Catholics to gather on the Internet.
What traffic we have! Yesterday 1,492 new messages were added to the
forums. Now there are 23,000 covering 1,700 different topics: doctrines,
morals, liturgy, history, family life, politics, and so much more.
Who's doing all this? Folks like you. Many of our members are first-time
forums users, while others have been on forums for years. They pose
questions and comments, reply to one another, even give great counsel. Of
course, Catholic Answers' staff apologists are there too, fielding hundreds
of queries each week.
If you haven't yet visited our forums, I invite you to do so today. Just go to:
http://www.catholic.com
and click the big button in the upper right-hand corner of the main page.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do
not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
There you will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your
comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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