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S i d e b a r
JAMES AKIN: “DON’T TAKE HIS LITERATURE! HE’S ANTI-CATHOLIC!”
By JAMES AKIN
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 11
 November 1993 
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DESPITE the altitude of the "mile high"
city, Denver was hot! The first day I perspired so much I had to drink
two gallons of water. By the end of a long day of hawking Pillar
of Fire, Pillar of Truth, all I could manage was a hoarse whisper.
I discovered an intersection through which many foreign
people were coming for the opening ceremony in Celebration Plaza.
Most had only imperfect English, but there was intense interest in
the booklet. Some would walk past me, see what I had handed one of
their friends, and double back. Hands poked at me amid accented requests:
"I want . . . I want . . . "
Some of the visitors at World Youth Day had come from
as far away as Southeast Asia and Africa. Especially surprising was
the number of Europeans--Germans, Dutch, and even Italians--who
were at the event. These people, who lived fairly close to Rome, had
come all the way to America to see John Paul II.
There were other visitors, people less enthusiastic
about the Pope. These were the anti-Catholics. On the opening day
several came into Celebration Plaza carrying cloth banners suspended
from the top of twelve-foot poles. The banners carried messages such
as, "Come out of her my people, lest you share in her plagues
(Rev. 18:4)." The protesters believed the Catholic Church to
be the Whore of Babylon.
These anti-Catholics positioned themselves facing the
flow of people coming from the center of Celebration Plaza. I positioned
myself just in front of them so I would have first crack at the crowds.
The booklets went rapidly at this location; I probably distributed
over a thousand while standing in front of these anti-Catholics. Newspaper
photographers took photos of me handing out booklets cheek-by-jowl
with the anti-Catholics. Eventually the proselytizers got tired and
went home, but a little later they were back with a young Hispanic
who stood on a chair and preached to the crowd. I stood on a chair
opposite him and began to debate him. He shouted frustratedly as the
young Catholics around him responded to his harangue by praying the
rosary.
A couple of days later other anti-Catholics were in
Celebration Plaza passing out photocopied flyers. When we got word
of it at the Catholic Answers booth, I took a box of Pillar of
Fire, Pillar of Truth and went to find them. I stood next to a
portly man and handed out our booklets as a counter, explaining to
passers-by, "That one he just handed you is anti-Catholic. Here
is the other side of the story." (Above is a photo of me next
to the fellow.) Once the young people heard that the man's flyers
were anti-Catholic, many insisted on returning them, or they threw
them onto the ground or into trash cans. Several of our volunteers
came to help me in this effort, and eventually the anti-Catholics
got fed up with trying to rescue their papers from the ground and
the trash and went home.
One of my fondest memories of World Youth Day was meeting
a rather unkempt man who was visibly moved by the event and explained
that he had been baptized as a Catholic when he was a baby but that
he had not grown up in the Church. Now that World Youth Day was here,
he was interested in practicing his religion and wanted to come down
to Celebration Plaza, meet with fellow Catholics, and, as he put it,
find out about his spiritual family.
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