WHERE SEMINARIANS ARE--AND AREN'T
THAT OL' TIME ANTI-CATHOLICISM
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Two weeks ago I wrote about Bill Jackson, head of Christians Evangelizing Catholics, and his views on divorce and remarriage. One of the other issues he examines is Catholics' attitude toward images. "Bowing down to or genuflecting before material objects, such as carved images, is forbidden."
Jackson suffers from imprecision. Catholic genuflect not to "carved images" but to Christ present in the Eucharist. They do bow before "material objects," such as the altar, when those objects are worthy of special respect. (In the case of the altar, that respect is due to the imminent confection of the Eucharist on it.)
What would Jackson say about analogous gestures that he probably engages in? At the "Star Spangled Banner" does he rise from his seat? Does that imply he is worshiping a song? When he recites the Pledge of Allegiance does he put his hand over his heart? Is he giving adoration to a nation-state? Does he give honor to the national flag? Isn't it just a piece of cloth? Why treat it with respect?
How odd that a man can see that honor can be given to material things in the secular realm but not in the religious realm!
RANKING THE DIOCESES
The July issue of "Catholic World Report" includes a lengthy article on "why some U.S. dioceses attract more priestly vocations." At the end of the article is a chart ranking Latin-rite dioceses in terms of Catholics per seminarian, with the statistics taken from the 2004 edition of "The Official Catholic Directory."
The top five dioceses are:
1. Lincoln, 2,555 Catholics per seminarian
2. Yakima, 3,428
3. Savannah, 3,454
4. Cheyenne, 3,641
5. Rapid City, 3,743
Each of these dioceses is small. The largest, Lincoln, has only 89,431 Catholics. What about large dioceses? How did they fare?
Here are all of the dioceses with Catholic populations larger than 750,000. The number preceding the name of the diocese shows its ranking among the 176 dioceses:
41. Chicago, 7,268
80. Newark, 12,937
100. Cleveland, 15,333
101. Miami, 16,166
128. Galveston-Houston, 22,633
141. Trenton, 27,421
142. Philadelphia, 28,578
143. Pittsburgh, 29,133
152. Brownsville, 37,000
154. Orange, 40,361
156. Detroit, 42,339
161. Boston, 49,464
162. New York, 52,523
163. Los Angeles, 54,212
166. Brooklyn, 58,922
167. Dallas, 62,023
168. San Bernardino, 67,137
173. Rockville Centre, 78,452
175. San Diego, 84,580
The dioceses with the largest number of seminarians are Los Angeles (77), Denver (77), Newark (102), and Chicago (336).
Juneau and Honolulu each have but one seminarian. Juneau ranks number 18 on the list because of its tiny Catholic population, while Honolulu, with 48 times as many Catholics, is at the very end of the list at 176.
Keep in mind that relative rankings change year to year, sometimes dramatically. This is especially true of small dioceses. A small diocese with, say, four seminarians may find itself jumping twenty places in the rankings if the next year it has five seminarians--or it could lose twenty places if it drops to three seminarians.
v
The change is not so stark for big dioceses, of course. Chicago, with 336 seminarians, will have about the same ranking whether it adds or loses ten seminarians from one year to the next.
What counts is the averaged multi-year trend. Some dioceses are regularly near the top of the rankings, and others are regularly near the bottom. As a rough rule of thumb, dioceses with bishops who are thought of as vocally orthodox tend to be high in the rankings, while dioceses led by bishops who are thought of either as wobbly or passive tend to be low in the rankings.
But these are just tendencies. You also have to consider the state of the diocese before the current bishop arrived there. Some dioceses have had a history of many vocations. Put a lackadaisical bishop in such a place, and it may be years before vocations drop off appreciably. Other dioceses have had a long-term paucity of vocations. Put a strong bishop in such a place, and it may be years before that diocese's ranking goes up much.
Despite these considerations, the list is instructive. If you have knowledge of a diocese and can place it, in your mind, at a particular place on the spectrum of your choice (conservative/liberal, orthodox/heterodox, activist/inactivist, evangelistic/non-evangelistic, clericalist/non-clericalist), you likely will know where to find it in the rankings.
THOSE CONNIVING JESUITS!
Someone sent us a copy of "The Secret Terrorists," a thin paperback written by Bill Hughes. He runs a ministry called Truth Triumphant. It is based in Tangerine, Florida.
In anti-Catholic literature the Jesuits long have been scapegoats--worse, they have been conspirators. In the nineteenth century, for example, people such as Charles Chiniquy claimed that Jesuits were responsible for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The claim was believed by many who had a predisposition against the Catholic faith. Usually that predisposition was coupled with a deeply held belief that historical events were largely the result of conspiracies.
This thinking may have had roots in the widespread popularity of Masonic movements, which, with their secret handshakes and code words, were conspiratorial in structure. Nativist Americans participated in secret societies, and it made sense to them that people elsewhere in the world would operate on a similar basis.
"The Secret Terrorists" easily tops Chiniquy. Like Chiniquy, Hughes believes that Jesuits were behind Lincoln's death. He also believes they were responsible for much else.
Most people think that Timothy McVeigh was the mastermind of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Not really, says Hughes. "The Oklahoma City bombing was planned, carried out, and fully known by the Jesuits"--with the acquiescence, by the way, of "the government of the United States [and] the President." (Hughes notes that "Bill Clinton was a Jesuit.")
Remember the "Waco massacre"? Another Jesuit plot, as it turns out. "Everyone who goes along with the Jesuit plan for the world will be allowed to live, and those who do not will experience Waco!"
Needless to say, Lincoln was not the only president assassinated by the Jesuits. Count John F. Kennedy too. But these killings were minor compared to the carnage of World War II, which the Jesuits also instigated.
They even were responsible for the establishment of the state of Israel. This was done not out of any sympathy for Jews but to advance papal power: "With the Jews' return to Israel in Palestine the Jesuits hoped to cause such bloodshed in that part of the world that the world would cry out for a peacemaker to come to the region. And who would be that peacemaker? The pope of Vatican City, of course."
Okay, okay. Hughes, who belongs to some variant of the Seventh Day Adventists (he complains about the day of worship being moved from Saturday to Sunday), is a screwball. He sees an unhappy event and "knows" that the Jesuits were responsible for it. (They even sank the Titanic, he says.) What to do about him? Answer: Nothing.
Some people are immune to common sense. No amount of logic will change their minds. No catalogue of facts will alter their stance. The Archangel Gabriel could come down to straighten them out, and they'd tell him to mind his own business.
I have no idea how widespread Bill Hughes' outreach may be, but his is not the only organization that spreads such claptrap. I saw similar books at World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, and in the years since comparable nonsense has been distributed in mass mailings from several groups. Most of these have some connection with Adventism, but some do not.
Low-brow anti-Catholicism, which can be traced as far back as the English Reformation, has never disappeared. Most of it has matured into the anti-Catholicism you find on television and in popular magazines and even on the floor of the Senate. But there remain some of the earlier strains. That they still exist indicates that there still is a constituency for the old-style attacks on the Church.
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
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.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
Discuss
Index
Prior issue
Next issue
Sign up