Bring out the party favors. It’s time to celebrate fifty years of the Canadian Protestant League, which has as its apparently exclusive purpose not the promotion of Protestantism but the destruction of Catholicism. The organization started in response to the erection, outside the House of Commons in Ottawa, of an altar for Mass “and the celebration of that b.asphemous and dangerous deceit”–all this at public expense yet.
The League distributes six times yearly The Protestant Challenge. One of the original members of the League, Jonas E. C. Shepherd, is the editor. In late-breaking news, this summer the newsletter reported that “The Spanish Inquisition Ends.” Actually, the end came in 1808, but what’s a delay of two centuries?
Shepherd was a little more timely when he complained about Pope John Paul II’s visit to North America. “WHERE ARE TODAY’S PROTESTANTS? ” asked the main headline. “What about the Protestant churches? Why should they not act other than their forefathers?”
Well, one reason might be that Shepherd’s forefathers acted in a rather un-Christlike manner toward to Catholic Church, that’s why. And the folks who join him in writing for The Protestant Challenge seem to have learned little since the founding of the journal.
Lynn Hayes Miller says of the Pope, “This man is dangerous! His purpose is to unite all men airtight, but under a ruthless, godless dictatorship! All the great Protestant leaders of our past considered John Paul and his predecessors the Antichrist. . . . Catholics have not changed in a thousand years.”
[Note: A thousand years ago all Christians were Catholics. The Eastern Orthodox churches split off starting 937 years ago. The Protestant churches first arose 474 years ago.]
Miller continues: “They (the Popes) are still out to get the true believer and destroy his faith. . . . Do not be fooled by the slick, smooth swagger of Pope John Paul II. [Swagger?] He is still the Antichrist described by Paul, Daniel, and John.” Ironically, Miller’s column is titled “Who’s Fooling Whom?”
At a different end of a different spectrum, Fr. Richard McBrien is reported in the National Catholic Register as equating “Catholics opposed to drastic change [in the Church] with August’s totalitarian coup plotters in the Soviet Union.” He said, “There’s too much power in the papacy. Popes should not name the bishops. The bishops should be named, should be appointed, by the people they are going to serve. And they should send a letter to Rome just to let them know.”
Going further, “McBrien darkly hinted that one opponent of Catholic dissent might even have a Nazi past,” reported Thomas McArdle. Said McBrien, “Keep in mind Cardinal Ratzinger was a teenager during the Third Reich. We don’t know what he was doing. Was he in the Hitler Youth? Some suggest he was.”
What joins McBrien and Miller? First we acknowledge there are differences. He’s an academician and she’s not. He’s a Catholic and she’s not. He’s an American and she’s not. But there is something that unites them in their utterances: cheap shots. Miller resides on the fringe of Protestantism, just beyond respectability, and she is there because her ideas are loony. But is McBrien’s comment about Ratzinger at a measurably higher level than her feverish notions about the Pope as Antichrist?
The Catholic evangelist can learn from both of these people, and perhaps the first thing he can learn is to distinguish sharp but fair criticism from crass slurs. A witty riposte, a telling remark, a raised eyebrow are all fair enough. (No one wants to legislate wimpiness.) But even pugilists aren’t allowed to hit below the belt. Can’t we expect from Miller and McBrien at least the level of courtesy granted his opponents by Evander Holyfield?
Well, Fundamentalism has been redefined–again. Mary Jo Weaver, professor of religious studies at Indiana University, says the ranks of Fundamentalists include “nuns who see the wearing of the habit and pursuing traditional apostolates as crucial to their identity . . . married couples who believe Catholicism requires strict adherence to Vatican II . . . those who focus on the Mass as a sacrifice . . . who believe in the dreadful reality of personal sin . . . and educators whose pedagogical style and content are heavily indebted to a reading of Thomas Aquinas and scholastic theology.”
Looks like Fundamentalism is growing all the time. (If you want to learn whether such a thing as “Catholic Fundamentalism” really exists, listen to Karl Keating’s tape “‘Catholic Fundamentalists’: Menace or Myth?”)
Wright College in Chicago uses Conversacion y Repaso as its intermediate-level Spanish textbook. (The publisher is Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.) In unit 3, titled “Religion in the Hispanic World,” we come across this example of Catholic bashing:
“Mama: ‘What’s wrong, Carlos? You missed Mass.’
“Carlos: ‘Many times [the Mass] seems to me only hypocrisy.’
“Mama: ‘Oh, my son. Such ideas are from the devil.’
“Carlos: ‘The priest is only a man, like myself.’
“Mama: ‘Carlos, I’m very disillusioned in you.’
“Carlos: ‘I don’t believe in priests. They meddle in politics as much as the politicians and once in a while fight for the people. They ought to help the poor economically. They are hypocrites!’
“Mama: ‘Carlos! You offend God with your b.asphemy.’
“Carlos: ‘Mama, it’s not such a big deal! Values are changing. I am changing. Religion doesn’t run life as much as it did before.'”
This exchange, truncated here, takes place on All Soul’s Day, an especially important holy day in Latin America.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Malachi Martin’s best-selling The Keys of This Blood. It concerns what the author sees as three competing worldviews: Mikhail Gorbachev’s, Western secularism’s, and John Paul II’s. Martin says the Pope is a crafty geopolitician who, looking at the long run, is trying to make sure the worldview of the next century isn’t one mired in materialism. Some reviewers like Martin’s thesis, others don’t.
One who doesn’t is Kathleen R. Hayes, writing in Trumpet, the publication of the National Research Institute, which, so far as anyone can tell, doesn’t engage in research, unless publishing anti-Catholic essays counts as research. Her examination of Martin’s thesis is plainly titled: “POPE JOHN PAUL II EXPECTS TO CONTROL THE WORLD WITH MARY’S HELP, RERUN OF ‘MIRACLE’ OF FATIMA.” In another article she claims Bishop Fulton Sheen predicted that in the End Times the pope will connive with the Antichrist. “The Vicar of Christ will rule from the Kremlin,” she explains. She even comes out against Prince Charles, “the man who would be the New Age king.” (Wait until his mother hears about this!)
Didn’t you know that firewalking “has been practiced within most world religions, including Christianity”? So states Chick Balter, “a certified firewalking instructor,” in The Philosopher’s Stone, a New Age publication.
You should believe him: He has the right credentials. He “studied at the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education (F.I.R.E.). He has been practicing and instructing in yoga since 1980 . . . and is a master-level practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. . . . Chick has been involved in personal and planetary transformation for over 15 years.” (His biographical squib does not list the planets he has transformed.) Balter claims that “people who participate in firewalking experiences are empowered; their lives are transformed.” (Yes, having to see a podiatrist can be a transformation.)