LOSERS AND WINNERS
"INCANDESCENT HATRED"
DIOCESAN NEWSPAPERS
TOP (OR WORST?) HYMNS
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
This time around, a quick look at several disparate items.
LOSER
Singer Elton John says that organized religion should be banned. "Religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people," he told the London "Observer" on Sunday. "It turns people into hateful lemmings and it is not really compassionate."
"The reality is that organized religion doesn't seem to work," he said. The organized religion he seems to disapprove of most is the Catholic Church. In 2000 John excoriated the Church because a priest had remarked that homosexuals engage in "a lifestyle that can never respond to the deepest longings of the human heart."
WINNER
We received this e-mail message from Anthony Mathison of Aiken, South Carolina:
"I am a seventeen-year-old guy, and I just want to thank you all at Catholic Answers. I used to be a staunch Evangelical Baptist, but after years of studying the Scriptures and listening to the scholarly arguments of Catholic Answers apologists, I decided to convert to Catholicism in July of 2006. Currently I am in RCIA classes. I was originally baptized a Catholic as an infant, but I never received my confirmation or my first Eucharist. I am so very excited to be coming into the True Church!"
Thanks for the good news, Anthony. You may never sport as many goofy-looking sunglasses as does Elton John, but you have discovered something he still has no inkling of: It is only in the Catholic faith that one will discover what it is that fulfills "the deepest longings of the human heart."
MORE WINNERS
A study funded by the Lilly Endowment discovered that "The majority of twelfth-graders in the United States--about two-thirds--do not appear to be alienated from or hostile toward organized or established religion." I suppose this news is of little comfort to Elton John.
A NICE TURN OF PHRASE
James Hitchcock, professor at St. Louis University and one of this country's top Catholic writers and thinkers, recently had this to say about the "National Catholic Reporter":
"For over forty years the NCR's very reason for existing has been to promote dissent from the official teaching of the Church and, judging from the long columns of letters from readers, the paper primarily appeals to people who have an almost incandescent hatred of ecclesiastical authority."
"Incandescent hatred": That puts it well.
I read NCR weekly. Have to. It's part of the job. When the paper sticks to straight news reporting, it actually does fine. Its editorials and opinion columns are another matter, though. The latter, especially, often are filled with bitterness. As bad as the columns can be, the letters to the editor usually are worse, full of bile and bad arguments. And the worst of the letters tend to come from priests, who, if nothing else, demonstrate in a hundred words that in the 1960s or 1970s they made very bad career moves.
DIOCESAN NEWSPAPERS: DOA?
Last year the USCCB Department of Communications sponsored a nationwide survey of Catholics. It discovered that only one-fourth of them had read a diocesan newspaper in the previous six months. Actually, I'm surprised the proportion is so high, given the execrable state of most such papers.
I can think of only two or three diocesan papers that actually are well written and attractively presented. I can think of quite a few that still persist in running heterodox columns. Almost all diocesan papers are dull reads--not surprising since they are not real newspapers but are house organs that can't be expected to write frankly about problems within the Church.
A REMARKABLE EXCEPTION
One of the best diocesan newspapers isn't a newspaper at all. It's a magazine, the "St. Augustine Catholic," published by the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida. It's a full-color, 32-page publication that appears every two months. Bishop Victor Galeone is the publisher, and Kathleen Bagg-Morgan is the editor.
Not only does the magazine look good, but its content is solid. It should be, given Bishop Galeone's superintendence. I've been acquainted with him for years, ever since he had me give a seminar at his parish, back when he was a priest.
MUSICALLY, THE PROBLEM IS AT THE TOP
Not satisfied with the music at Mass? Most Catholics aren't. And most Catholics, of course, have no say in the matter. What you hear at Mass is decided not usually by the celebrant but by the parish's music committee.
Larger or more affluent parishes have professional musicians heading their programs. Many of those musicians belong to the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. That group's members were asked to name their favorite songs. Here they are:
1. On Eagle's Wings
2. Here I Am, Lord
3. Be Not Afraid
4. You Are Mine
5. How Great Thou Art
6. Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
7. Amazing Grace
8. All Are Welcome
9. Prayer of St. Francis
10. Ave Maria
I give the musicians three out of ten (numbers 5, 6, and 10). Five or six of the remaining songs (I'm up in the air about number 9) ought to be retired. And one of the songs actually is heretical. Do you know which one it is? (Hint: It's is a fine Protestant hymn, but the problem is its Protestant theology regarding the first infusion of sanctifying grace.)
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