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T h e A p o l o g i s t ’ s E y e
Transfusion Confusion
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This Rock
Volume 11, Number 9
 September 2000 
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One characteristic of a false religion is the changes its doctrinal system undergoes in order to "adjust" teachings and prophecies that prove to be false. A recent example of this was noted in the June 14, 2000 edition of the TimesS of London. In an article entitled "U-Turn on Blood Transfusions by Witnesses," the Times noted that, "Elders have decreed that Jehovah’s Witnesses who accept blood transfusions under life-or-death conditions will no longer face excommunication from their religion." Paul Gillies, a spokesman for JWs in Britain, confirmed this position.
This "adjustment" in Watchtower Society (WTS) teaching began in March 1998, when the WTS voiced the same change to the European Human Rights Commission. This alteration was made on behalf of JWs in Bulgaria, where their status as a religion was threatened because of their prohibition against transfusions. In order to safeguard its religious status, the WTS did a U-turn on transfusions, allowing JWs to receive one with "no religious sanctions" imposed on them.
These events go contrary to what had been the WTS’s long-standing policy on transfusions, namely that a JW who receives one ". . . must be cut off from God’s people by excommunication or disfellowshiping," being labeled "a rebellious opposer and unfaithful example to fellow members of the Christian congregation" (The Watchtower, January 15, 1961, 64). This was true regardless of the circumstances.
Gillies noted that the teaching on transfusions is still a "core value" for JWs—in other words, they believe it is God-sanctioned truth. An examination of WTS literature will likewise show it is not a peripheral or merely disciplinary issue. This is evidenced in the fact that over the decades numerous JWs have died because of their refusal to receive a transfusion. But if transfusions are still a "core value," then why the U-turn on sanctions for those who receive them? Is God no longer punishing sin?
The WTS teaching on transfusions is based on an erroneous interpretation of Old Testament prohibitions against eating blood (cf. Gen. 9:4, Lev. 17:10–14) and the New Testament admonition—disciplinary, not doctrinal—to Gentiles of the early Church to abstain from blood (cf. Acts 15:29). The former involved the Mosaic Law, which is no longer binding on Christians, and the latter involved abstaining merely for the sake of not offending Jewish Christians of the time.
Contrast the WTS’s doctrinal history to that of the Catholic Church. While the Church can and does change its disciplinary matters, its deposit of faith—those teachings given by Christ to the apostles—have remained unchanged for 20 centuries.
—Joel S. Peters
Canard Of Complicity
When Sir Martin Gilbert talks history, people listen. That’s why his remarks this summer in praise of Catholic efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust, and his putting the lie to the claim that Catholic efforts to convert Jews over the centuries were bound to end up in the fearsome persecutions of Jews, are so important.
The British historian’s eight-volume study of Winston Churchill’s life place Gilbert near the top of enduring twentieth-century historians. But almost all of his other studies, and they are many, deal with various aspects of Judaism—Soviet Jewry, the Middle East, the city of Jerusalem, and so on. Consequently, when this Jewish historian with impeccable secular credentials, in his latest work, Never Again: A History of the Holocaust, contradicts the relatively recent claims that Catholic Church tolerated and even abetted Hitler’s war on the Jews, people are taking notice. At least, the ones who know about Gilbert’s position are listening, a qualifier made necessary by the fact that his observations garnered virtually no reporting in the major media. That’s a pity.
Gilbert is not breaking new ground, of course. Like all good historians, he is rediscovering and re-presenting old facts to a generation out of touch with them. Until an anti-Pius XII work of dramatic fiction, The Deputy, made the New York stage some 30 years ago, it was commonly recognized that Catholic Church did much to save the Jewish victims of Nazism prior to and during World War II and that their efforts made Catholics the object of Hitler’s hatred as well. Many prominent Jews at the time voiced their gratitude to the Church for such relief as Catholics were able to offer.
The canard of Catholic complicity in the murder of millions of Jews, having reached its peak in 1999 in John Cornwell’s "academic" work—one meant to be taken seriously!—that Pope Pius XII was Hitler’s Pope, may now be in retreat. Catholic apologists have ably addressed this matter for some time, but this major assist from one of the world’s greatest historians should provide a most welcome perspective.
"If the [current] Pope has to apologize [to the Jews]," Gilbert told United Press International, "perhaps someone could also thank him. In fact, my book does thank him for what the Vatican did to save Jewish lives."
—Edward Peters
Real Statistics On Real Presence
One often hears that most Catholics these days don’t believe in the doctrine of the Real Presence. The next time someone claims this within your earshot, point out that three recent U.S. surveys found that over 80 percent of Catholics do believe the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ.
The most well known and influential poll on the topic—and the one that has most influenced public perception—was reported by Peter Steinfels June 1, 1994, in the New York Times. American Catholics were asked whether the bread and wine are "changed into the body and blood of Christ" or are "symbolic reminders of Christ." Steinfels wrote that "almost two-thirds of American Catholics believe that during Mass, the central sacred ritual of Catholicism, the bread and wine can best be understood as symbolic reminders of Christ rather than as actually being changed into Christ’s body and blood. . . . Even among subgroups of Catholics who said they attended Mass every week or almost every week, 51 percent described the ritual as strictly symbolic."
In a less widely reported study the same year, Purdue University sociology professor James Davidson and colleagues asked Indiana Catholics whether they agreed with the statement, "In Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ." Eighty-seven percent agreed. Seven percent were uncertain. Only six percent disagreed.
In 1997, Dean Hoge, William Dinges, Mary Johnson, and Juan Gonzalez used the same item in a national survey of U.S. Catholics. This time, more than 80 percent of Catholics agreed with the statement. Also in 1997, a Roper poll commissioned by Catholic World Report found that 82 percent of Catholics believe "the bread and wine used in Mass are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ."
In an article published in the June 1, 2000, Florida Catholic, sociologist Davidson calls the Times reporter Steinfels’ analysis "problematic." "He frames the issue of Real Presence as a choice between the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ or being purely symbolic," writes Davidson. "This ‘either-or’ formulation overlooks a third possibility: that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ and become the body and blood of Christ" (emphasis added).
In fact, this approach is rooted in Catholic theology. Aquinas said, "We do not understand that Christ is there only as in a sign, although a sacrament is a kind of sign" (ST III:3:75:1). "If Steinfels had offered his respondents a category reflecting this ‘both-and’ point of view," Davidson says, "I think most would have chosen it. It would have given them a chance to say what I think they really believe: that the bread and wine are symbolic reminders of Christ, and they are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. If I am right, their response would be consistent with Church teachings."
—Tim Ryland<
New "Doctors" Of The Church
A mass conversion of witchdoctors this summer was powerful witness that the missionary Church continues to go about its work, mostly unnoted, of bringing souls to Christ. Christ the King church in Kampala, Uganda, was the scene of the extraordinary ceremony in June, when 400 former witchdoctors were baptized.
African missionary Fr. Joseph Brunner told the Fides news service in Rome that the tribal leaders, dressed in traditional leopard-skin costumes, knelt to make acts of contrition and statements of faith before receiving the sacrament. After being baptized, the former witchdoctors revealed some of the tricks of their old trade. Witchdoctors can make a handsome living in many African societies by using a combination of traditional medicine, intimidation, and sleight-of-hand to convince people that they possess special powers.
—Brian Kelleher
"Third Secret" Revealed
On May 13, 2000, at the beatification ceremony for Francisco and Jacinta Martoxx—two of the three children to whom Our Lady of Fatima appeared—Cardinal Angelo Sodano, at the behest of Pope John Paul II, announced the essential contents of the third part of the secret of Fatima. As is now well known, the third part of the secret (commonly called "the third secret") concerns the suffering of the Church in the twentieth century, the many martyrs of our day, and an assassination attempt on the Holy Father. Cardinal Sodano also indicated that the full text of it would be released shortly with a commentary to help people understand it.
On June 26, 2000, the Holy Father made good: The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) released a booklet titled The Message of Fatima.
The period between the announcement of the secret’s contents and the release of its text was not uneventful. Radical Traditionalists who had made careers out of demanding the release of the third secret went into overdrive. Noteworthy efforts to "spin" the situation were made by Fr. Nicholas Gruner, the self-billed "Fatima priest" who has been one of the most vocal critics of the Holy See regarding the third secret.
In the six weeks between the announcement of the booklet and its release, Fr. Gruner’s Fatima Center, based in Fort Erie, Ontario, issued three press releases exhorting the Vatican into releasing the secret in the way the Fatima Center desired. The press releases also laid the groundwork for a rejection of the Holy See’s interpretation of the secret if, contrary to Fr. Gruner’s theories, it were interpreted to refer largely or entirely to past events.
The Fatima Center continues to make its familiar charges that the secret had been "suppressed" and "repressed" for 40 years. It hinted that the release of the secret might be indefinitely delayed due to Vatican malfeasance. It demanded that the secret be released in Sr. Lucia’s own handwriting (which the Holy See did). It questioned the need for any commentary or background to be released in conjunction with the secret. And it denounced Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the CDF, for correctly pointing out in an interview that private revelations such as Fatima do not demand the assent of faith—that is, one is not bound under penalty of sin to believe in them.
Unfortunately, the disclosure of the third part of the secret proved too much of a challenge for the world-view of the Fatima Center, which has been predicted on the ideas that the consecration of Russia has not been done and that the third secret could not have been already fulfilled. It issued two press releases claiming that the Vatican's commentary "white=washed" the third part of the secret and that the secret does not refer to the assassination attempt on John Paul II's life. What remains to be seen is what Fr. Gruner and his associates will make of the third secret now that it is out and had been shown not to involve many of the things they said for years that it was sure to contain.
For a detailed look at the contents of the third secret itself, look for an article in next month’s issue.
—James Akin
Don't Take Our Word For It
In our previous issue, the article "TV Psychics Want to Be Your Friend" warned of the dangers of dabbling in New Age practices or occult games, even for fun. "We make a mistake when we think these practices are harmless games or we believe in their power but assume it comes from benign spiritual forces under human control," author Mary Beth Kremski wrote. "There is spiritual power operating in the occult, but it’s not human and it’s not holy."
Shortly after that issue went to press a story made the news wires that an English exorcist said the number of exorcisms worldwide is rising as a "direct result of New Age philosophies and religious ignorance."
"The incidence of the demonic on the while is rising," said Fr. Jeremy Davies, an exorcist of the Westminster archdiocese, told the British Catholic Herald newspaper. "At the center of this is man’s ever-growing pride and attempted self-reliance, man trying to build a better world without god—another Tower of Babel."
Father Davies also blamed ignorance of the Bible, lack of faith, and gullibility about false prophets.
—Tim Ryland
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