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By Karl Keating

This Rock Volume 5, Number 5   May 1994     Up Front By Karl Keating   Letters   Dragnet   OUR SILENT HERESY By BRIAN HARRISON, O.S.   Sidebar Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787)   OUR SHOP-AROUND NEIGHBORS By JAMES J. MORAN   Sidebar He Increases and She Decreases By Mark P. Shea   Between the Lines No, No Mademoiselle! By Karl Keating   BBS Transcript Cat-holic Dog-ma   Classic Apologetics The Catholic Evidence Guild: Part II By Frank Sheed   New Testament Guide Acts By Antonio Fuentes   Fathers Know Best Intercession of the Saints   Heresy of the Month Ebionism By James Akin   Verse by Verse Original Sin   Quick Questions    Subscribe    Permissions

Brazilian bishop Bonaventura Kloppenburg was quoted a few years ago as saying, "I was told the Second Vatican Council had put an end to apologetics. I obeyed and stopped fighting." The results, he opined, have been disastrous, "and all we can do now is to go back to the apologetic, defensive method and inevitable polemics." I was alternately dismayed, pleased, and dismayed again by the bishop's remarks.

I was dismayed that a bishop could think that Vatican II "had put an end to apologetics." Nowhere does such a sentiment exist in the documents of the Council; it appears only on the tongues of those who still talk about "the spirit of Vatican II," as though that were something different from the Council itself.

Then I was pleased to see that Bishop Kloppenburg realized that an absence of apologetics results in an absence of faith. After all, the faith is not passed on by what I have termed the eighth sacrament, Holy Osmosis.

Dismay returned when I saw that Bishop Kloppenburg equated apologetics with a "defensive method" and "inevitable polemics." I know apologetics sometimes is nothing more than the first and might degenerate into the second--but not necessarily.

I'm interested not just in defending the faith, but in going on the offensive to spread the faith joyfully. Besides, there's nothing "inevitable" about "polemics" (in the sense of nasty-tongued controversy). There will be controversy, but it can be positive, stimulating, and faith-building.