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D r a g n e t
"They're back!"
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This Rock
Volume 6, Number 7/8
 July/August 1995 
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Fr. Dan J. McKeanis pastor of St. Mary's Church in Williamston, Michigan. In his bulletin he warned his parishioners about impending visits from Mormons, who already had been attending Mass:
"They're back! Two elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, attended our Mass last weekend. You can't miss them--dark suits, white shirts, and the name tags that introduce them. They are polite and respectful of the Mass and that fact that we do not have open Communion. . . . I was proud that those who sat near them were friendly and welcoming, even extending the customary sign of peace.
"But still, you've got to wonder why they are coming. As you probably well know, these Mormon elders live in the community with the primary goal of seeking converts. Converting wayward Catholics is where they seem to have the most success--and fun. Many of you know this because they have visited your home and challenged you on your faith, the pope, Church teachings, and Scripture. . . .
"As respectful as they are, I strongly suspect that they are attending Mass so that they might have a better chance, or understanding, at seeking converts. I don't think they are here to convert [to Catholicism] or because of their love for Catholics and their liturgies.
"Catholics are especially targeted because they often don't know how to answer challenges to their faith. Many Mormon teachings have their root in Catholic teachings, but that's where the similarity ends. They may call Jesus the divine Son of God, but it is not the same understanding as our own. They believe in a Trinity, but, examining it further, you will discover some huge differences. They do not believe that there is only one God. . . . Mormons believe that all other churches, including Catholicism, are corrupt and evil. . . .
"Mormon missionaries probably will visit you! They hope they will find you vulnerable and without any idea of the fallacies of their own Mormon beliefs. They are experts at twisting Scripture, citing verses to support their ideas, and making you feel defensive and guilty.
"My advice," ended Fr. McKean, "is to be polite, but don't be led into a debate that they are hoping to trap you in. There are answers to their questions and questions to challenge their answers.
"The moral is: Learn more about the treasure of your faith! Don't be ashamed of your faith or accept the ignorant criticism of others."
At the end of his message Fr. McKean adds a few words recommending Catholic Answers, for which we thank him, but we thank him especially for speaking plainly to his parishioners. May his brother priests follow his example!
In an essay ostensibly written to demonstrate that "Rush Limbaugh is not the Messiah," Arthur Maricle, writing in the newsletter of Mission to Catholics International, complained that Limbaugh praised John Paul II on the Pope's "whirlwind public relations stint in the U.S." The radio commentator "roughly shoved aside a Mt. Everest of evidence that Roman Catholicism is corrupt and the office of pope is that of a dictator and tyrant."
Maricle said, "I will discredit the Polish pope without alluding to the outrages committed by his predecessors in the imaginary line of apostolic succession." Giving new meaning to allusion, he said, "We'll lay aside the role played by the Jesuits in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. . . .
"We'll turn a blind eye, momen-tarily at least, to the decisive part played by a pope in establishing the Nazi and Fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy. We will reluctantly pass over the Vatican's key function in the Holocaust . . ."
"Pope John Paul II is a deceiver," "preaches a false gospel," "is an utter hypocrite," "is a blasphemer"--each charge being "proven" by a paragraph of non-sequiturs. Kinda makes us think it would be a miracle if Maricle could show he understood the first thing about Catholicism.
Veronica Lueken, the seer of Bayside, New York and the head of These Last Days Ministries, died on August 5. A mother of five, she claimed in 1968 to receive visions of saints. Two years later she said the Virgin Mary began to appear to her. Her revelations repeatedly have been condemned by the Brooklyn Diocese as spurious. (She is reported to have claimed, for instance, that Mary said that test-tube babies do not have souls, a philosophically and theologically impossible proposition, since all living human beings have souls).
Condemnations by the Church did not stop thousands from going on pilgrimage to Bayside. Gary Wohlscheid, Lueken's chief assistant, has taken over her ministry, saying that the period of new revelations has passed, and now it is time to put those revelations into practice.
Another holy site in good hands: Our friend Fr. Edward Dillon, a Franciscan priest, has been appointed the Guardian of Gethsemane. "I really didn't want the job," he says. "This is one of the two most visited holy places in Jerusalem (the other being the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). The tour buses can drive right up to our door, and we can have a couple of thousand visitors in a single day. It can get a little hectic at times." Father's community consists of three Americans, one Australian, two Italians, and a Spaniard. "Sometimes we're confessors, and sometimes we're cops."
We found an anagram site on the Internet: You type in a few words, and it spits out words that can be formed from those letters. We typed "Catholic Answers." Out came "Charcoal witness," "Ac cretion shawls," "Narcotics whales," and--our favorite--"Anarchic slowest," which we may adopt as the motto of This Rock.
Priests for Equality has produced The Inclusive New Testament. A promotional flyer says "the translation is fresh and exciting, with unmatched immediacy and intimacy. The language is graceful: no search-and-replace inclusivity here! We've been painstakingly faithful to the original Greek texts, employing the best up-to-date scholarship available, while gently and creatively finding new and non-sexist ways to express the same ancient truths." Uh-huh.
Here is Colossians 3:18-21: "You who are in committed relationships, be submissive to each other. This is your duty in Jesus Christ. Partners joined by God, love each other. Avoid any bitterness between you. Children, obey those responsible for you in everything, for this is what pleases God the most. And if you are responsible for children, don't nag them, lest they lose heart."
These are the same verses in the New American translation: "Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged."
Notice that the translators of The Inclusive New Testament studiously avoid "Lord" and "fathers"--sexist, you know. Neither "wives" nor "husbands" are mentioned, not so much because they are sexist terms, but because they are too confining. In their places we have "you who are in committed relationships," which surely is intended to include, homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals.
This is the kind of translation the editors call "painstakingly faithful to the original Greek texts." Give them credit for chutzpah. In fact, all the traditional translations accord with the NAB's rendering--and with the Greek. The Inclusive New Testament has gone off on its own, modifying not just pronouns, but the meaning of the text.
Another one to get: Fr. Charles M. Mangan has edited Walking with the Pilgrim Pope. Fr. Mangan has combined 25 full-color photographs of the Pope (our favorite one is of the Holy Father exiting a teepee in Arizona) with the Pope's own meditations. Copies of this attractive book can be purchased from Queenship Publishing, P.O. Box 42028, Santa Barbara, CA 93140-2028, (800) 647-9882.
Timothy Kauffman is employed as an engineer with NASA, is the director of a Protestant ministry called White Horse Publications, and describes himself as "a former devotee of the apparitions of Mary [who] now invests [sic] himself in exposing the deceptive spirit behind them." He has written two anti-Catholic books.
In its winter 1995 newsletter, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, an Evangelical organization to which Catholics sometimes refer people who are concerned about relatives who are involved with cults, published an article by Kauffman: "Another Mary, Another Jesus, Another Gospel." The article gives Catholics a good reason to cease cooperating with SCP, which has shown itself to be at root an anti-Catholic organization.
After referring to some admit-tedly false apparitions, Kauffman writes, "The apparitions of Mary at Fatima (1917), Paris (1830), and Guadalupe (1531), among several others, could be trusted because the Church had assured the faithful that these were the authentic Mary of the Bible. But what did these approved apparitions have to offer? The same deception as any of the others.
"Even the most devout followers of the Paris apparition acknowledge that the visionary, Catherine Laboure, was known to have received pro-phecies that did not come true, a clear indication to us that 'the prophet hath spoken presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him' (Deut. 18:22). The Guadalupe apparition asserted bold ly that 'she' was our 'fountain of life,' and the Fatima apparition had denied the sufficiency of the Cross by stating that we should 'make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell because they have no one to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them.'"
Kauffman makes elementary errors here. One can find in Scripture conditional prophecies "that did not come true." The gist of a conditional prophecy is that something will happen if something else doesn't occur. If that other thing doesn't occur, the event prophesied doesn't come to pass --but this doesn't mean the prophecy is false. It means only that a required condition did not occur. And this consideration applies to unfulfilled prophecies given in true apparitions.
For Kauffman to complain about an apparition claiming that Mary is "our fountain of life" implies less about the apparition that about his grasp of Church history. Nestorius complained that Mary could not be termed the Mother of God because such a title would falsely exalt her, but the Church decided that title was precisely correct and protected a truth: Mary was the mother not just of the man Jesus, but of the God-Man, the Messiah, and therefore of God (since there is only one Person in Jesus, not two, and that Person is the Second Person of the Trinity).
In describing Mary by titles such as "our fountain of life," early Christian writers (of treatises and hymns) protected another truth: Without Mary's "yes" to the Archangel, the Incarnation would not have taken place. Through the free will of Mary came at last the redemption, which was needed because of the abused free will of our first parents. Yes, it was Christ alone who effected our redemption, but he allowed his mother, the most perfect of all God's creatures, to play a crucial part. Unless she consented to the Archangel and gave birth to our Lord --unless she agreed to be his "fountain of life" and therefore ours--our race would be unredeemed today.
Kauffman's last argument, that the admonition to make sacrifices for sinners implies the insufficiency of Christ's redemptive work, undercuts Paul's statement that "I make up in my sufferings what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ." If Mary at Fatima was wrong, Paul was wrong. If she had a skewed notion of the Mystical Body of Christ, so did he. If she was wrong to think Christians could pray for one another and thereby actually help them, so did he.
No doubt you have seen the advertisements for LifeLine, the long-distance provider that many Catholic organizations and publications are switching to, for two reasons: LifeLine does not (as do AT&T, Sprint, and MCI) use portions of its funds to underwrite abortion-related activities, and, while saving the customer several dollars a month, LifeLine remits part of its income to sponsoring organizations.
To Catholic Answers and many other Catholic groups this seemed the way to go: We could encourage our subscribers to switch from the major carriers to LifeLine. They would save money, we would receive ten percent of their long-distance payments, and no funds would underwrite the likes of Planned Parenthood.
Everything was fine with LifeLine--we had a good relationship with its representatives and had completed all the paperwork--when we received a letter saying our account was refused "because Catholic Answers exists to spread and defend the Roman Catholic Faith" (emphasis LifeLine's). LifeLine is willing to sign up anti-Catholic groups such as Christians Evangelizing Catholics, but it won't sign up Catholic Answers, St. Joseph's Catholic Radio in Orange County, California, or Franciscan University of Steubenville. We're all too Catholic.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has issued a press release condemning LifeLine's position and recommending that Catholic organizations and individuals switch from LifeLife to some other long-distance provider.
If you have signed up with LifeLine through a Catholic organization, we suggest you follow the League's advice, demonstrate solidarity with Catholic Answers and the other groups LifeLine has rejected, and switch to another provider. Sometimes the only way to keep our rights is to speak with the pocketbook.
Highly recommended: Thy Faith, Inc., a Catholic evangelization organization headed by our friend Gary Michuta, produces a fine bimonthly magazine titled Hands-On Apologetics. Sample copies are available at no charge, but we suggest you include a donation with your request. Write to Thy Faith, Inc., 33228 W. 12 Mile, Ste. 305, Farmington Hills, MI 48334.
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