Lots of Fundamentalists think they’ve pegged the Antichrist as the office of the papacy, using various combinations of selective Scripture quoting and dubious numerology. Now a series of fliers from the Tract Evangelistic Crusade goes one better, identifying the Antichrist as Paul VI, pope from 1963 to 1978. Although we could imagine certain dissenters from Humanae Vitae making this claim, what reason does Tract Evangelistic Crusade give for this charge?
“Could Pope Paul Sixth be the Antichrist?” asks the title of one tract. “I believe Pope Paul Sixth could be the evil Antichrist for the following reasons. He was the number six king in Revelation 17:10 and he was the first beast in Revelation 13:12 and soon a new Pope will take his seat in Rome, Italy and he will be the second beast in Revelation 13. He will be called Pope Paul Seven and he will be Satan’s false Prophet. Revelation 20:10.”
Wait a minute. Paul VI has been dead since 1978. How effective an Antichrist could he have been? The tract goes on to explain: “After the rapture of all born-again Christians from earth, Pope Paul Seven will have the power of the first beast and he will use this power to bring Pope Paul Sixth back from the dead! When Pope Paul Sixth comes back to life, he will then become Pope Paul Eight, but he was of the Seven just as we read in Revelation 17:10-11. Pope Paul Sixth was the number six king in Revelation 17:10-11 and he is Satan’s son who will give the mark of the beast after the rapture! Revelation 13:18.”
This all seems so unnecessarily complicated. Why not just say that the future Paul VII will be the Antichrist, and avoid all the confusion about Paul VI dying, being raised, becoming Paul VIII, and then giving the mark of the beast? Another thing: One flier proclaims that its purpose is to “warn all born-again Christians that the Antichrist was Pope Paul Sixth,” presumably so they can be on guard against him. But if all the born-again Christians on earth are to be “raptured” away before the Antichrist reveals himself, why should they care?
“Once Upon a Time: Gay Catholic Marriage Rites” was the title of a recent editorial from the San Jose Mercury News. The author, Deb Price , recounts the story of two homosexual men, one of whom pulls out a ring while at a dinner celebrating the anniversary of their first “date,” and asks, “How would you like a spring wedding?” Well, the spring didn’t work out, but the following autumn the two men were “wed” by a Catholic priest (at an Episcopalian church) in what Price describes as a “traditional Catholic wedding ceremony.”
How, you wonder, could a priest allow, much less perform, a ceremony so blatantly contrary to natural law, scriptural evidence, and Church tradition, an affront to the sanctity of Christian marriage, an occasion of egregious b.asphemy? And what journalist, whatever her agenda, could deign to call it “traditional”?
The justification for all this is found in a book called Same-Sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe. Its author, John Boswell , contends that “for at least 1,000 years, the Catholic Church had special, approved rituals for joining two men or two women in wedlock,” thus “establishing that Catholic gay marriages are astoundingly traditional.”
Price apparently has not read the book nor seen the evidence (all references to it are in the future tense), but she seems absolutely convinced of its veracity, so much so that she believes Boswell’s “discovery” is “guaranteed to rock assumptions about Christian animosity toward homosexuality.”
She envisions the pope losing sleep over the matter, as if long-buried skeletons in his closet had finally been revealed. “Pope John Paul II, obviously, will have to attempt to discredit Boswell’s findings,” she writes. Note her words: The pope “obviously” (no ignoring this!) will have to “attempt” (vainly) to “discredit” (not disprove–this would not be possible–but merely cast .aspersions upon) Boswell’s scholarship.
Price ends her editorial by hinting that gay unions are not only equal to, but might be in fact superior to heterosexual marriages: “In studying the Catholic rites performed over the centuries, Boswell finds services for mixed couples stressed multiplication–‘the wife shall be as a fruitful vine’–while those for same-sex couples had a much simpler calculus: ‘a very beautiful emphasis on love.'”
A World Youth Day reunion pilgrimage is being planned for the West Central Wisconsin area. Last year’s WYD participants are invited to the August 6 pilgrimage, which will include a five-mile hike, Eucharistic adoration, prayer sessions, and an evening program of music and witness. A music festival featuring Tony Melendez will follow on Sunday. A fee of $15 includes a commemorative tee-shirt and button and two meals. For more information write to: WYD Anniversary Pilgrimage, Route #1, Box 160, St. Mary’s Ridge, WI 54619.
Baptist Biblical Heritage , a newsletter distributed from Pasadena, Texas, claims that fellow Fundamentalist and anti-Catholic Peter Ruckmanand the staffers at Evangelical organizations such as the Christian Research Institute are all closet Catholics. The targets of the newsletter only pose as “Bible Christians,” the better to infiltrate the ranks of real Fundamentalists. In the April 1994 issue editor Bob L. Ross reveals that Catholic Answers is in on the subterfuge:
“KEATING TO THE RESCUE—We were written up by Romanist Karl Keating’s Catholic Answers magazine This Rock , September ’93, but the purpose was to re-assure people that ‘Possel’ Peter Ruckman is not ‘a Catholic Stooge.’ Ever since Ruckman’s Romanism was exposed, efforts have been made to restore Possel’s ‘cover,’ and you know he is really hurting when his ‘debating buddy’ (Keating) has to step in to patch-up the ‘sheep’s clothing.’ He even goes so far as to allege that Possel believes the KJV ‘has been inspired,’ contrary to what I heard him say on the floor of his church on April 1, 1992. I asked Keating for documentation, but so far he has said nothing. Possel says the ‘Scriptures’ were ‘given by inspiration,’ but you can’t say the Bible is ‘inspired.’ Just more ‘convolution.’ Sorry, Karl, Possel’s ‘cover’ has been shredded!”
Your tax dollars are funding anti-Catholic exhibits and slanted history at Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Museum of American History. One exhibit chronicles the Spanish exploration and settlement of New Mexico (mostly a Bad Thing).
“Coexisting with Catholicism” is the title of one sign, which reads: “Spaniards forced the Pueblos to live with Catholicism by beating and shaming resisters and by imprisoning or executing leaders of Pueblo religious groups. Some Pueblos never converted, and those who did rarely gave up their traditional beliefs.” There is no suggestion that such incidents, if they occurred at all, might have been aberrational or that most Indians were willing converts.
Another sign tells how Spanish Franciscans “attempted to destroy objects and shrines sacred to the Indians and banned native religious rituals.” The hardy natives drove out the imperialistic missionaries in 1680, the sign goes on to explain, but twelve years later they returned, and, aided by Spanish soldiers, disease, and conflicts within the tribe, were able to set up 21 missions by 1776.
For a more balanced account of the Spanish (and other) settlements in the Americas, see Newman C. Eberhardt, C.M., A Survey of American Church History , which should be available at your local library.
A different exhibit at the Smithsonian details the “progress of science.” One wall is dedicated to the development of the birth control pill. Such an exhibit would not be complete, of course, without explaining how birth control had prevailed despite “the power of the Catholic Church,” which nearly managed to stop the pill even though, as numerous signs remind us, a majority of Catholics are “openly defying the Pope” on the issue. A tribute to birth control, abortion, and eugenics pioneer Margaret Sanger (and her newspaper, The Woman Rebel, with its slogan, “No Gods, No Masters”) completes the atrocity.
Just for the record, Sanger was a racist who wanted to reduce the country’s black population through “selective breeding” and who apparently held similar distaste for the American Indians. This is “progress”?
Megalomaniac Fundamentalist crank and one-time country-western singer Tony Alamo has been convicted of three counts of tax-evasion charges and is awaiting his August 26 sentencing. Alamo could receive up to six years in jail and $550,000 in fines. It looks like the long arm of the IRS has finally caught up with the man whose sensationalistic tracts, such as “Fugitive Pope,” depict Romish plots and government persecutions against his “Holy Alamo Christian Church, Consecrated.” Alamo, whose real name is Bernie Lazar Hoffman, had been on the run from authorities of different states since 1988.
Churchwatch is the quarterly newsletter of the Chicago-based Call to Action , an organization dedicated to Church “reform” (see “Dragnet,” February 1994). The May 1994 issue reports on Vatican opposition to the upcoming U.N. Conference on Population and Development , at which implementation of a worldwide policy for providing abortion and contraception will be high on the agenda.
Some 20 groups within the CTA-founded Catholic Organizations for Renewal, including the Women’s Ordination Conference, Dignity, and Catholics for a Free Choice, and spearheaded by Catholics Speak Out, hope to diminish the Church’s pull in opposing the conference proposal by publishing an “Open Letter to John Paul II.” The letter, bearing thousands of endorsements from individuals and organizations, will appear in The New York Times in late summer.
According to Churchwatch, “the letter will state bluntly what a majority of Catholics believe: the pope is wrong when he calls contraception ‘intrinsically evil.’ This teaching lacks legitimacy because it has never been embraced by the faithful and represents a marginalized minority view in our church, defended largely by a male celibate hierarchy.”
Note to CTA: The Church’s teaching on contraception had been “embraced by the faithful” for nineteen centuries; only in our time has it been ignored by many Catholics. But the proportions are unimportant. Even if it were a perpetual minority view, it would still be true.