LET'S NOT JUNK HOLY DAYS
SOUR GRAPES ABOUT THE VOTER'S GUIDE
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Biographer Robert Speaight noted that "you may generally know a man by the books he reads as well as by the books he writes." I think this can be said even of non-writers. If you are what you eat, you also are what you read. If you read Plutarch and Shakespeare and Frost, you end up one way. If your literary fare is limited to Barbara Cartland's romances, well, you know.
And what if you enjoy the works of Edward R. Tufte?
Probably you have not heard of him. No shame in that. His speciality is how information is presented graphically (answer: usually atrociously). His earlier books include "Envisioning Information," "Visual Explanations," and "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information." They are coffee-table style books with much color, many pictures, and loads of artistic sense.
I have learned that Tufte came out with another book while my back was turned: "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint." PowerPoint is the Microsoft program that just about everyone uses when pitching an idea or product. Tufte explains why PowerPoint sessions are exercises in sleep inducement. The program is incapable of displaying information adequately, and the result is dumbed-down presentations.
I like this kind of stuff. My copy should arrive any day now, at which point I will go incommunicado for the duration.
MORE OBLIGATIONS, PLEASE
Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I was a bit surprised to discover that it actually is being celebrated as a holy day of obligation this year, at least in my area. How rare that seems any more! I was getting used to seeing holy days being made non-obligatory or being translated to the nearest Sunday.
I always have thought the reasons given for reducing or, effectively, eliminating holy days have been flawed, the chief reason being that obligating Catholics to attend Mass on a weekday makes many of them feel guilty when they cannot get off work.
If that is the case, why not catechize them instead of changing the holy day? A person who cannot get off work to attend Mass is excused from the obligation and should be told so from the pulpit. This always has been true about Sunday Masses, and it applies to holy day Masses too.
Another reason given for changing holy days is that not many people show up for holy day Masses anyway. Being in the habit of going to church only on Sundays, they supposedly forget to show up on week days. Again, they end up feeling guilty, and that is something up with which we will not put.
Again, the solution is pulpit catechesis. How hard would it be for Father to remind parishioners of an upcoming holy day? I remember when that was how it was done, and the several Masses on the holy day were packed.
When you sense a cold coming on, you take more vitamin C, not less. The worse a headache gets, the more aspirin you take; you do not cut back from two tablets to none. The Church in this country has been acting this backwards way for years now. It has been doing precisely the wrong thing.
Instead of reducing the number of holy days and eliminating the obligation to attend Mass on them, we should have been increasing the number of holy days and encouraging more Mass attendance.
You do not overcome a bad culture by succumbing to it but by opposing it. We live in an increasingly secular society. Catholics easily fall prey to its blandishments because most of them do not try to live a counter-cultural life. Their thinking (and voting!) habits are nearly indistinguishable from those of other Americans because their everyday actions are nearly indistinguishable.
One good way to get Catholics to think like Catholics is to have them act like Catholics in a public and, yes, at times in an inconvenient way, such as attending Mass on holy days.
Aside from the intrinsic merit of attending Mass (it is good to attend Mass on any day, not just Sundays and holy days), the very act of going to church on a weekday sets Catholics aside, in their own minds, from other Americans. It makes them think about what that setting aside means. It makes them better Catholics.
WE DID A "BAD THING"
Kathleen P. Hockey lives in Richland, Washington, and doesn't like Catholic Answers one bit.
In a letter to the "National Catholic Reporter," she said that "Catholic Answers has done more to promote discord and division in the church with its agenda and 'letter of the law' mentality than any other organization in recent memory. I'll take Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Elizabeth Ann Seton's example of Christian living over Catholic Answers' version any day."
Hockey was responding to a column that appeared in the November 5 issue of the "Reporter." Written by Steven P. Millies, an assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina's Aiken campus, the column was titled "A Catholic Response to Catholic Answers" and began this way: "I have a question for Karl Keating. Why do we need you?"
Millies' complaint concerned a fundraising letter Catholic Answers sent out over my signature. The letter sought funds for the distribution of our "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics." As it turned out, the letter was so successful that we were able to put our guide in front of about 15 million voters. Not bad for a first effort, I think.
But Millies did not like the guide. For one thing, he said, the very existence of the guide suggested that the Church in this country "has done a very bad job" and "has failed us." The "result has been the absence of unified, Catholic, political action that Mr. Keating laments." Millies thinks this lack of unity is a good thing "because the universality of the church must admit to more than one political perspective."
Our voter's guide, he went on, tried to get Catholics to march in lockstep on the five non-negotiables, and that was a Bad Thing. "So, Mr. Keating, I regret that I cannot support your organization, and neither can I abide by your voting instructions."
Millies' column and Hockey's letter leave me confused. He complained that Catholic Answers tries to get everyone to think the same way. She complained that Catholic Answers fosters division of thought. That sounds like an inconsistency to me, but no matter. We all know that the real issue is not whether Catholic Answers wants people to think alike or to think disparately. The real issue is the moral teaching of the Church.
If the voter's guide had said that Catholics were obliged to endorse a higher minimum wage and more federal dollars for the arts, and if it left out those messy non-negotiables, Millies and Hockey would have had no complaints. There would have been no comments about marching in lockstep or causing divisions. But when you insist that people follow the Church's teaching on abortion and those other issues, even in the voting booth ...
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' new discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. 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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