You may have seen the news item a few weeks ago about a cinnamon roll that bears an alleged resemblance to Mother Teresa. Baked by accident in a Nashville, Tennessee, coffee house, the pastry captured the public’s imagination to such a degree that the “NunBun” site on the World Wide Web has drawn tens of thousands of “hits” in the past month. The site features a morph of a photo of Mother Teresa turning into an image of the bun, and there are hundreds of visitor comments about the “miracle.”
The bun itself, which does have a vaguely facial configuration, is inoffensive; we suspect Mother Teresa might get a chuckle out of it. What is offensive is that the opening screen of the NunBun site contains the quotation from John 6: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” Also troubling are the many blasphemous or just plain spiteful guest comments aimed at everyone from the Holy Trinity to the Holy Father.
Catholic Answers fired off stern e-mail to the webmaster but as yet has received no reply. However, quite by accident (Providence?) a Catholic Answers staffer, in Nashville for a conference, encountered one of the bun-bakers in the flesh a few days later and was able to convey our displeasure. The baker assured us he was a Christian, raised a Baptist—trained, he said, by his grandmother, “God rest her soul.”
“Well, you’ve just done a very un-Baptist thing,” he was informed.
He looked stricken. “What’s that?”
“You just prayed for your dead.”
We also pointed out that, instead of giving five percent of NunBun profits to the Missionaries of Charity (the Web site offers T-shirts and other mementos for sale), it would be fitting to give Mother Teresa all the proceeds.
“After all,” we pointed out, “you’re cashing in on her life’s work, and she’s retiring soon.”
If you’re a Russian Orthodox priest, you can be suspended if you show “excessive sympathy for Catholicism.” That’s what happened to Archimandrite Zianon Teodor, who was suspended from the priesthood by Archbishop Eusebius Savvin of Pskov. The suspension was pursuant to a regulation forbidding common prayers with “heretical bishops, priests, and deacons”—and that means Catholics.
Teodor is Russia’s best-known icon painter. He and two other monks received Communion from visiting Italian priests, who celebrated Mass at the Miroski Monastery on the Feast of the Assumption. Teodor, whose position is equivalent to that of an abbot, sent a letter to Savvin, rejecting the notion that the Catholic Church had been shown to be heretical by Orthodox norms: “As for the so-called additions introduced by the Roman Church, no one has imposed them. Far from corrupting the essence of faith, they merely reveal new.aspects of the Latin tradition, which long predates the division between Rome and Constantinople.”
As Fr. Ray Ryland has been demonstrating through his articles in This Rock, if there is unwillingness to bring the “two lungs” of the Church together, it is almost entirely on the side of the Orthodox, not the Catholics. After splitting from union with Rome, Orthodoxy introduced theological novelties (such as permitting divorce and remarriage) and ended up claiming that bishops and priests in union with Rome had suspect credentials.
The Eucharistic renewal program of Archbishop John Donoghue of Atlanta aims at fostering and deepening faith in the Blessed Sacrament. Through months of education, prayer services, testimonies, and a call for personal and corporate adoration, the archdiocese has sought to reestablish a keen awareness of Christ’s Presence in the tabernacle. Parishes are conducting “Life in the Eucharist” seminars to help people make the Eucharist the center of their lives.
The renewal was inspired by a 1992 Gallup poll that found only one-third of U.S. Catholics polled agreed with the statement that when receiving Holy Communion they receive “the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.”
The teaching of Christ about his Real Presence in the Eucharist has been challenged throughout the centuries, the Archbishop says. Contemporary dissenters question the divinity of Christ, question the reality of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and replace man’s need to be redeemed by God with a false attitude of pride, he says.
“Worse, they attack the minds and the spiritual weakness of so many people and infect them with the sickness of doubt—doubt of what the Church teaches, of the way her people have always lived and worshiped, and doubt against the very words of Christ himself.”
While he was bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina, Donoghue once invited a group of children close to the tabernacle and explained the Presence of Jesus to them. “We brought them right up to the Blessed Sacrament,” he said. “They were amazed. They were fascinated. I explained the presence to them. Just looking at their faces, they were in rapture . . . I knew these were the people we really have to start influencing. These kids do not know what we are talking about when we talk about the Eucharist.”
The Lay Catholic Broadcasting Network met for its second yearly conference in February in San Rafael, California. Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., was a featured speaker.
Chris Lyford founded LCBN to help people start and maintain a Catholic radio ministries in their own communities. Catholics have lagged far behind their Evangelical brothers in making use of this effective medium; We know of Catholics who have been confused and even lost to the Church because they listened to “Christian” radio that had a subtle but real anti-Catholic bias.
Recent months have seen a burgeoning interest in providing Catholics with their own radio outlets—as well as evangelizing others through the airwaves. There is a significant increase not only in solid orthodox programming, but in Catholic-owned stations, with plans under way for more. An upcoming issue of This Rock will cover in depth these developments. In the meanwhile, visit the LCBN Web site at http://www.visioninteractive/lcbn/entry.html.
Want to pray the rosary with others? How about reciting it online? “Beginning this Sunday some of us from CIN [Catholic Information Network] will gather weekly on the IRC Dalnet #catholic channel to recite the rosary together,” reports Sharon Mollerus, CIN sponsor. “The time is: 7:00 P.M. PST, 9 P.M. CST, 10 P.M. EST. We will remember the many intentions mentioned on the CIN [mailing] lists.” CIN is one of the oldest Catholic presences in cyberspace, approaching its tenth anniversary this year. It sponsors a World Wide Web site, as well as a number of Catholic online mailing lists (discussion groups).
There will be no priest shortage in Thailand. Buddhist monks there plan to ordain fifty million trees to save them from being cut by loggers, according to a UPI report.
The Bangkok Post quoted Buddhist monk Phra Somkid Jaranadhammo as saying the religious ordination of the forest will make pirate loggers think twice before axing the sacred trees. More than 90 percent of Thailand’s woodlands have been lost to timber cutting. He says the trees will be wrapped in the orange robes worn by Buddhist monks to deter the woodcutters. The number fifty million was chosen in honor of Thai King Bhumibol, who last year celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his accession to the throne.
Good news, bad news from a Midwestern Sunday bulletin:
“Dear Parishioners,
“As Catholics we believe that the bread and wine we consecrate and share at Mass is the Body and Blood of our Lord. This last month and a half we have been finding an occasional ‘host’ lying on the floor, in the aisle, or under a pew. I don’t know if they are consecrated or not; they could have come off the gift plate in transit as the server takes the gifts to the gift table . . . but I don’t think so. For us as Catholics this is not just ‘ordinary bread,’ it is the sacred Body of our Lord.
“I ask that parents please teach your children what the Eucharist means to us as Catholics. It is the presence of Jesus among us under the forms of bread and wine. Why is it? Because Jesus promised us that he would be with us in this way. He made this promise at the Last Supper so that he could be a part of us always. Teach them how they are to receive Communion: How to hold their hands, that they are to consume the Body of Christ upon receiving it, not walk with the host to the pew. Some children have been seen holding on to the host until they get back to their pew. I am concerned about children and young people not being taught. We can only do so much in one hour’s time in Religious Education—so much depends on you parents.”
The good news? The pastor is teaching solid Eucharistic theology. The bad news? Someone didn’t teach these children—or parents. Based on incidents we’ve seen, even many older adult Catholics no longer know how to communicate properly or give due reverence to the Blessed Sacrament.
For the past twenty years, teenagers from all over the United States and Canada have been congregating each summer for the High School Age Youth Conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville. The weekend-long gatherings, which feature Eucharistic adoration, speakers, intensive training, and music, have become so popular that additional venues being added yearly. In 1996 “Steubenville South” was held in Alexandria, Louisiana. This year, three conferences will take place in Steubenville, with additional weekends in Alexandria, Boston, and Phoenix.
The original purpose of the conferences was to give prospective students the flavor of life at FSU, and that’s still one of the results. But for many young Catholics, it provides a deep experience of Christ and his Church. “We invite the youth—many for the first time—to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and show them the awesome power of the sacraments,” says John Sengenberger, executive director of Christian Outreach for FSU. For information on the conferences, call the Franciscan University at (614) 283-3771.
A theologian in Sri Lanka has been excommunicated for challenging the Pope’s authority and Catholic teaching on baptism, original sin, and the virginity of Mary. Tissa Balasuriya, a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was excommunicated after the Pope refused a final appeal about writings in his 1990 book, Mary and Human Liberation. Balasuriya maintains that baptism, the sacrament that marks a Catholic’s official entrance into the Church, is not necessary. He refuses to recognize papal infallibility, questions the divine nature of Jesus, denies the dogma of original sin, and denies that Mary was a virgin and was assumed bodily into heaven. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has insisted that Fr. Balasuriya engage in truth in advertising.
A pregnant Chinese woman who faced a forced abortion is now in Vienna after an intervention by a Catholic priest. The woman, who was living in Austria with her husband and two children, had to return to China to renew her passport. While there, she was told by Austrian authorities that their refugee quota had been filled and she could not return at that time. Eight weeks before her baby was due, Chinese authorities insisted that her third child was “against family planning policy” would have to be aborted within one month.
When Fr. Anton Lowe, who has a mission to the Chinese in Vienna, heard of the case he alerted the Vienna Archdiocese, which asked the Austrian ministry of the interior to make an exception on humanitarian grounds, enabling the woman to return. Within hours the woman was on a flight back to Vienna. Mother and baby are safe, thanks to the quick action of Fr. Lowe.
Public outrage has caused ABC to rethink the lesbian plot line of its sitcom “Ellen.” The announcement that Ellen Degeneres’s character would “come out” this season drew fire from Christians and other moral conservatives. Jamie Tarses, president of Disney-owned ABC Entertainment, said that an episode that reveals Ellen is a lesbian is in the works. But, she said, it’s “wait and see” whether the episode will air.
Meanwhile, the sitcom contains double-entendres and other allusions to the homosexual theme that make it questionable viewing. It’s too bad, because in its first season, “Ellen” was remarkable for its clean humor and a kind of innocent charm. Make that apparently innocent.
In his last letter to Karl Keating, the late Sheldon Vanauken said he hoped to live to write a tract asking “Can it [Christianity] possibly be true?” He sent along a rough draft, which is as far as he got. “I am ill and not sure that I’ll ever be able to write the tract.” He said that “Can it possibly be true?” is the chief question confrinting us; the follow-up question: “Is the Catholic Church the Church?”
Vanauken’s sixth and final book, The Little Lost Marion and Other Mercies, is reviewed in this issue. He called it “my swan song.”