You might think a booklet as gentle as Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth would cause nary a ruckus, but this is what Ingrid H. Shafer, professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Science and Arts in Chicakasha, Oklahoma, wrote in an Internet newsgroup called “Vatican2”:
“Among dozens of sites dealing with literally countless flavors of Christianity I discovered New Advent [World Wide Web site]. This site features Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, a brief introduction to the Catholic Church. Here is the table of contents. [Omitted.] What follows is something far closer to Pio No-No’s [from Pio Nono, Italian for Pius IX] garrison church than the post-Vatican II church, with just a few cosmetic changes in vocabulary. It’s almost as though Vatican II never happened! I am concerned that this sort of unsophisticated 19th century Catholicism is being passed off as the One and Only and Eternal True Catholic Church — in many ways a refuge for immature people who want absolute certainty and are afraid to think for themselves.
“I am appending representative citations of what I mean. I am not nearly as troubled by the content of individual paragraphs but by the way the content is presented as though there were no room for discussion. The overall triumphalist tone that pervades the document is appalling. I can’t imagine someone with these convictions even considering entering into genuine dialogue with other Christians and members of non-Christian religions.
“When Len and I presented our Global Ethic workshop in Berkeley last June to a group of almost entirely non-Catholics and several non-Christians, Len noted how his understanding of the church had deepened and matured in the last forty years-along with the self-understanding of the church. Back in the fifties, he said, he would have wanted to ‘make them all Catholic,’ but now, at age 66, his understanding of Catholic Christianity was more ‘profoundly, truly, authentically Catholic than it had been at 26,’ adding that there had been an advance in the Catholic community. This document propels me right back into the pre-Vatican II church-the fortress church I assume we finally left behind.”
There follows extensive quotations from Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, plus one tailing sentence that does not come from that booklet: “In all of human history, God has founded only two religions. The Catholic Church is one of them; Judaism — the Church’s precursor — is the other.” In reaction to this sentence Prof. Shafer adds, “This final comment really staggers the imagination. How dare we limit God in such a manner? I really hope that soon we will have our web site up, so we can present an alternate view of the church as semper reformanda [always reforming] and open to genuine, unassuming dialogue with the world and other religions.”
Since Prof. Shafer’s comments may have been read by thousands, they need to be replied to. Let’s start at the end. We don’t know who wrote that final sentence, but it’s entirely correct. If God didn’t found only two religions, which other religions did he found? The Aztec religion, which used human sacrifice? Hinduism, with its multiple gods? Ancient paganism with its multiple warring gods? When we say that God founded only two religions, we do not “limit God” we merely relate a fact. To suggest that God founded other religions (including offshoots of the ones he did found) is to suggest that he has been planless, but the message of the Old and New Covenants is that God, from the beginning, has had a plan for his people. To deny this is to eviscerate not just Christianity, but Judaism.
Back to the comments about Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth. Notice the tone of what Prof. Shafer says. She begins with a childish ad hominem: “Pio No-No.” Maybe she is a fan of Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who is sometimes called “Archbishop Weak-Knees” by impolite conservatives who contribute no more to the discussion than Prof. Shafer does. Would she countenance the Archbishop being referred to by such a moniker? Presumably not. Then why does she think it permissible to refer to a pope in similar fashion?
The ad hominem continues with the charge that the booklet makes it seem “almost as though Vatican II never happened!” This is not really a criticism of the booklet, but an avoidance of criticism. Real criticism reflects on the content of a writing. Prof. Shafer merely emotes.
She says the booklet portrays “unsophisticated 19th century Catholicism,” which is “a refuge for immature people.” She seems to think she represents the party of sophistication and maturity. Her husband, Len, belongs to the same party. He once wanted others to become Catholic, but not now — presumably there’s no need for them to do so. Catholics and non-Catholics enjoy equal chances for salvation. (It’s likely they’ll all be saved anyway, with a few exceptions such as Hitler, Franco, and Pius XII.) Eschatologically speaking, the Church is irrelevant, so why all the fuss?
What does it mean to say someone has “matured” in the faith? We can’t turn the dictionary for help, because the dictionary doesn’t give “jettison” as a synonym for the verb “mature,” and “jettison” is what is meant nowadays. To mature in the Catholic faith is to jettison it. If this sounds harsh, ask yourself how many Catholics who trumpet their “maturity” agree with “immature” Catholics (such as John Paul II) on contraception, abortion, and fornication, to mention just three moral issues. Do these “mature” Catholics recognize the Real Presence in the historic Catholic sense, or have they so diminished that sense that they find the Real Presence in every Protestant worship service? The questions answer themselves.
If the “fortress church” mentality that Prof. Shafer decries was a disability — one can allege it was in that it implied the Church chose not to engage society, but to hide from it — is it really better to lay down one’s spiritual and doctrinal weapons and march out of the fort to join the besiegers? Do we just declare victory and sign the instrument of surrender? Are these the only options?
Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth is a 32-page booklet designed to give Catholics, especially younger ones, a sense of confidence in their faith. Not a word in it is novel. Some might even say what it teaches is old hat. What is it about this little booklet that so frightens people like Prof. Shafer that they think they need to get on the Internet to combat it? Her last sentence gives a partial answer.
She is interested in a Church that is semper reformanda, always reforming itself through the jettisoning of fixed and determinate conclusions about faith and morals. A Church that is semper reformanda in this sense is a Church that rolls with the punches. It does not claim to have found the final truth about any particular issue. It is “mature.”
Have you ever slipped a letter into the wrong envelope? It can be embarrassing — or at least revealing to the unintended recipient. We had the pleasure of seeing that kind of thing happen recently.
John Clubine, who lives in Etobicoke, Ontario, purchased from us tapes of the debate on the priesthood between our staffer James Akin and former priest Anthony Pezzotta. Clubine didn’t purchase the tapes for himself, but for Bart Brewer, the ex-priest who heads Mission to Catholics International. Clubine put the tapes and a letter in an envelope intended for Brewer, but he wrote down our post office box number and zip code, so guess who got the package?
The interesting thing is that the purchase was not unprompted. Clubine didn’t get the tapes for himself. He reminds Brewer that these are the tapes “which you requested that I try to get for you from Catholic Answers.” Why didn’t Brewer order them directly? We think it might have something to do with his getting burned some years ago when he stocked cases of Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism, the only book aside from his autobiography that mentions him.
Brewer apparently thought his supporters would be encouraged to see that his ministry was being taken seriously by Catholics. What he didn’t count on was that some of the anti-Catholic Fundamentalists to whom he sold Catholicism and Fundamentalism ended up being convinced by it, ceased to support his work, and entered or returned to the Catholic Church. Ever since then Brewer has kept his distance and has obtained Catholic Answers’ materials through proxies — but this time the ruse didn’t work.
Roman Heart Apostolate, run by Michael J. Rayes, produces Youth Trax, a “series for teens and young adults. We are presenting classic apologetical material in a ‘way cool’ format that young people will enjoy. The tracts are easy-reading and loaded with graphics,” says Rayes, a 29-year-old layman. His outreach is just beginning, so the offerings are few. He can be reached at Roman Heart Apostolate, P.O. Box 35573, Phoenix, AZ 85069 or (602) 993-3037
Another group to look into is TORCH (Traditions of Roman Catholic Homes), which began, says its national coordinator, Joan Stromberg, “with a handful of families who had to share their faith and support one another in homeschooling their children. TORCH has grown greatly in five years, branching out to set up chapters all across the country and in Canada.” TORCH operates with diocesan approval in Scranton, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and has chapters in more than fifty cities. For a catalogue, write to TORCH, P.O. Box 2, Danville, P A 17821, or call Mrs. Stromberg at (717) 271-0244.
Still another source of materials: Lisa Contini has produced tracts on chastity. Her practical applications of the Church’s teaching can be obtained by writing her at P.O. Box 5403, McAllen, TX 78502 or calling her at (210) 630-0277.
If you want to be sued, do something displeasing to the Church of Scientology, possibly the most litigious church in history. Consider the case of the folks who started an Internet newsgroup (discussion group) called “alt.religion.scientology.” About a hundred messages a day are posted about Scientology, most of them from people exposing the church, its doctrines, its finances, and its methodologies. Some former Scientologists are posting what they say are the secret scriptures of the church, and the church’s leaders have acknowledged the authenticity of the documents by obtaining a court order confiscating the computer equipment of a former Scientologist who had been uploading the texts. So round one seemed to go to the Scientologists-except that other people have been posting the same material anonymously.
The Church of Scientology sees this as copyright infringement; the posters of the messages see it as exposing a cult. Scientology charges its members thousands of dollars to progress from one level of instruction to another. At each level new “scriptures” are revealed. Many members of the organization have mortgaged their homes to pay for instruction at the higher levels.
The religion was founded nearly fifty years ago by L. Ron Hubbard, a writer of low-quality science fiction novels. The story is that he claimed anyone could found a religion, was challenged to do so, and won the bet.
Our contributor Canon Francis J. Ripley sent us this message: “You may be interested in a story which hit me recently. I was browsing through the Ignatius Press catalogue when I noticed an illustration of the cover of one of their new books, Acts of Faith, by Faith Abbott. The cover included an illustration of the first edition of my book This Is the Faith. I obtained a copy of Acts of Faith and discovered that it is the story of Faith Abbott’s conversion from Buchmanism. She went to a Fr. Eugene Clark, S.J. for instruction. He introduced her to This Is the Faith.
She writes, ‘We panted on through the sticky summer of 1954, and every day I took This Is the Faith with me to read on the Fifth Avenue bus (if I had a seat) and to Bryant Park on my lunch hour. All of New York that summer seemed to be, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “charged with the grandeur of God.” The whole world seemed full of poetry.’ The book goes on to describe the writer’s progress toward the faith and eventually her baptism, first Holy Communion, and confirmation.”
John Robbins, writing in his anti-Catholic newsletter The Angelus, claims that “democracy, civil rights and liberties, constitutional government, and the free market all find their roots in the Reformation.” Interesting thesis, but a little hard to sustain.
The ancient Greeks enjoyed periods of democracy (not all of them enjoyed it, of course, which is why they got rid of it), and they were pre-Reformation. So were the Medieval monks who invented double-entry bookkeeping and set the stage for modern commerce. So was King John of England, forced to sign the Magna Carta and thereby grant civil rights and liberties. And constitutions were discussed by Plato and Aristotle, who, so far as we recollect, were not influenced by the Reformation.
Another hard-to-sustain thesis is found in Christian Counter-Revolution, a newsletter edited by Ursula Oxfort, an early opponent of Vatican II who titles her review of Crossing the Threshold of Hope “Confessions of an Apostate Pope.” Early on she asks, “Has not John Paul II from the beginning of his reign pledged himself not to the love of Christ the King, as did all his predecessors up until Pope John’s Revolutionary Council (1962-65)? As the book reveals, Karol Wojtyla’s pontificate is determined entirely by his love for Pope Paul VI, his ‘spiritual father,’ and above all by his faith in the Second Vatican Council, which he blindly accepts from the hands of Pope John XXIII.” Sheesh!