Subscriber Frank Pollicino publishes the 1995 Resource Directory for Catholics, which lists 650 organizations “that are beneficial to Catholics.” Catholic Answers is listed; Call to Action is not–an indication that nearly all of the groups can be recommended without reservation. Pollicino can be reached at P.O. Box 245, Smithtown, NY 11787, telephone (516) 366-4928, fax (516) 386-0755.
Speaking of Call to Action, the January edition of its newsletter reported on its November conference, held in Chicago.
The crowd of 3,000 was 40 percent larger than the previous year, and the break-down of participants tells a story: 37 percent clergy or religious, 70 percent women, 28 percent women religious, 90 percent attend Mass “regularly” (which is not defined, but may mean once a month or more); ten percent don’t attend Mass “regularly” (which suggests they attended the conference for other than spiritual reasons), and “one-third are employed by the Church.” These numbers might lead one to conclude that Call to Action is top-heavy with feminists and Church bureaucrats (and feminist bureaucrats), and that’s a proper conclusion.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister got a ten-minute “standing ovation for her speech. She also gave the homily at the Eucharist.” (Laymen, males or females, are not permitted to give homilies; only bishops, priests, and deacons may give homilies.) Chittister “invoked the best of the Catholic tradition: not only the Second Vatican Council, but all the way back to the Council of Constantinople in 381, which said the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic–rephrased by Joan as ‘ecumenical, spiritual, inclusive, and ministering.'”
Apparently there was a small surge in young adult representation at the conference. Peter Del Vecchio, 25, “is a youth minister in an affluent parish in Winnetka, Illinois. He favors a reversal of the ban on contraception, lay participation in major church decisions, women’s ordination and a married priesthood.” He said, “I’d probably join the Jesuits if Jesuits could get married.” Tammy Liddell, also 25, “is a campus minister at Creighton University in Omaha.” She is more tough-minded than Del Vecchio. “I’m revolution oriented! We have to break down a lot of structures; we have to rethink everything.” The newsletter explains that although Liddell “is supportive of women’s ordination, she fears that taking that step now might only create ‘a cosmetic change.'”
Georgia Marin of Wheaton, Maryland agrees but is frustrated. “I don’t know anyone in my parish who is church reform-minded. When the Pope came out with his latest asinine pronouncement on the ordination of women, I was dying to call someone and vent my feelings. There was no one I could turn to.” (Her parish may be worth registering in.)
In many dioceses the Pre-Cana programs for engaged couples tend to undermine rather than strengthen the faith. For example, it’s common to hear that prospective brides and grooms are told to make up their own minds about contraception; the Church’s teaching is not presented clearly or convincingly (and it isconvincing if clearly presented).
Here’s the perfect antidote and the perfect pre-wedding gift for any couple: the Wedding Edition of John F. Kippley’s Marriage is for Keeps: Foundations for Christian Marriage. The book is now in its second edition and includes the full wedding ritual. The price is $6.95, with free copies sent to priests for review. Write to the Foundation for the Family, P.O. Box 111184, Cincinnati, OH 45211.
Kippley is a well-known author and lay theologian; he wrote this book at the request of a parish priest who wanted a comprehensive but not cumbersome explanation of the married vocation for engaged couples. Marriage is for Keeps is written in a lively question-and-answer format. The publisher explains that “it avoids the wishful bromides that often arise from an abstract treatment of married life.” It makes sense that Kippley would know what he’s talking about: He’s been married for 31 years.
Lawrence Ho, a young senior banker in Singapore, helped establish the Apostolate for Catholic Truth. ACT has been giving seminars throughout the small country and operates under the spiritual direction of Fr. Alfred Chan and with the approval of Archbishop Gregory Yong. The group is staffed entirely by volunteers and recommends several Catholic Answers publications in its promotional brochure.
Ho reports that “recently we spotted the circulation of Catholicism: Crisis of Faith, the anti-Catholic video tape, and brought it to the attention of the Government Board of Film Censors, which ordered its decertification, and to the Catholic press,” which exposed the video as little more than bigotry with high production values. “Thanks to This Rock‘s May 1993 cover story [on the video], a copy of which was sent to the authorities, we have sought to educate the various parties on what the tape really is like.”
One anti-Catholic organization selling Catholicism: Crisis of Faith is Mike Gendron’s Proclaiming the Gospel, located in Plano, Texas. In a newsletter called Pursuing the Truth Gendron presents “guidelines for witnessing to Roman Catholics.”
Among his ideas: “Discuss the infallibility of a pope. Review Galatians 2:11-14 when Paul told Peter (the Catholic’s first pope) that he was wrong. Show in verse 14 that Peter admitted he was wrong and submitted, not to another man or religion, but to the truth of the Gospel.”
Our suggestion: Don’t stop here, but go a step further and point out that the episode in Galatians had nothing to do with an attempt by Peter to teach. Peter was guilty of a moral (or maybe just diplomatic) fault, and the Catholic Church does not claim that popes are impeccable (incapable of sin), but infallible (incapable of teaching error under certain circumstances).
In other words, Galatians 2:11-14 has nothing at all to do with the question of papal infallibility. Gendron may know this; if so, he also knows that most Catholics can be hoodwinked into thinking his argument undercuts papal infallibility. He relies for his success on Catholic ignorance, not on the actual merit of his argument.
This is shown in another suggestion: “Try not to go off on tangents unrelated to salvation.” The issue of salvation is the Fundamentalist’s strongest card because it is the most alluring. He claims a Christian can have an absolute assurance of salvation (“Wouldn’t you like to know that you’re going to heaven?”), and this is immensely attractive, even though false. Gendron’s advice here is double-edged. Not only is he telling his Fundamentalist readers to stick with salvation because it is on that topic that they have the most rhetorical power, but by implication he also is telling them to avoid other topics.
For example, he would not want them “to go off on tangents” such as the unscripturalness of sola scriptura or the determination of the canon of the Bible. On these issues his readers will find themselves in trouble, since the Bible doesn’t support sola scriptura and since Fundamentalism has no good grounds on which to claim that the 66 books in its Bible are inspired.
The Good NewsLetter is published by Former Catholics for Christ and edited by Diane M. Wachtel of Greentown, Ohio. In a recent issue she informed her readers that the Douay translation of the Bible says that “all Protestant clergy are thieves, murderers, and ministers of the Devil.” Wachtel, who gives no commentary on this alleged quotation, opposes not just Catholics, but many Protestants, such as Billy Graham, so it’s unclear whether she believes the quotation is entirely wrong or only partly wrong.
In her “Did You Know?” column she asked, “Did you know that the Latin equivalent of the Greek anti is vicarious [sic], from which comes ‘vicar’? So “Vicar of Christ” actually means Antichrist? The pope is called the Vicar of Christ.”
This is a good example of how some people know things that just aren’t so. The Greek anti means “against,” but the Latin vicarius (not vicarious, which is English) means “representative” or “agent,” so Vicarius Christi or Vicar of Christ means Christ’s representative.
Someone who spends too much time in the check-out line sent us a copy of a page from Family Circle‘s February 1 issue, which includes a photograph of Maureen Clancy and Hilary Halpin giving a client a massage at the St. Francis Center for Women’s Health. So big deal, you say? Read the fine print.
Clancy is a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Halpin is a Benedictine nun. The article explains that they “are just two of the many nuns and priests who have added massage therapy–and even acupuncture–to their spiritual tools of the trade. ‘It’s definitely a growing ministry within the church,’ says Sister Clancy, who once spent 18 months as a missionary in Paraguay and now travels around the country giving lectures on ‘befriending the body.’
“‘We have a lot of church dogma to overcome,’ she says. ‘The message of the church used to be, ‘Don’t touch, don’t look, and if it feels good, it’s bad.’ But it’s not good to divide body and soul,’ she says. ‘It’s important to embrace the whole self.’ Along with a one-hour massage, the sisters ‘anoint’ their clients with prayers, blessings, and body oil. ‘I’m a proper Irish Catholic girl from Chicago’s South Side,’ she says, laughing. ‘I used to think that massage was pretty risque.’ But that view changed when Sister Clancy experienced her first massage.”
Standard texts in paleontology and geology state that strata of sedimentary rocks are laid down one atop the other, with the oldest at the bottom and the newest at the top. Within each strata may be found fossils, those toward the bottom being more ancient than those toward the top. The fossils are used to date the strata, and the strata are used to date the fossils.
But there are some anomalies, such as fossilized trees that are not found lying horizontally within one stratum alone but are found lying vertically through several strata that are supposed to be widely varying in age. How can this be? If the base of the tree were stuck in a lower stratum and became fossilized, the upper part, exposed to the air for countless years, would not also become fossilized, but would decay away. Yet the trees are found entire, stretching through two or more strata.
Such a consideration led scientists to ask whether the uniformitarian assumption (that sedimentary rock is deposited in even, horizontal strata) is correct. What if the rock were deposited in such a way that a higher stratum is not necessarily older than a lower? This would have great impact on the question of evolution, which relies for its convincing power largely on the placement of fossils in sedimentary rocks.
Drama of the Rocks is a video in which this question is answered. Scientists at an American laboratory built a kind of sluice in which sedimentary rock is deposited in strata quickly and on a micro scale, and they discovered that the deposits are built up from side to side (say, from the shore toward the ocean) rather than from bottom to top. Through the glass sides of the sluice you can see the action for yourself. The video is available from This Rock subscriber Peter Wilders, 42 Bd. D’Italie, 98000 Monaco, fax 92-16-73-36 and will be useful for anyone interested in the question of evolution.
The apologetics movement grows–younger. Connie J. Wright is the editor of Pillar & Foundation, the newsletter of Young Catholic Apologists. She says the newsletter “is dedicated to explaining the Catholic faith in terms the average lay person can understand. It is 100 percent faithful to the teachings of the Church. We concentrate primarily on explaining the sacramental principle and its relationship to individual doctrines. In this way the faith is seen as a unity instead of as a series of arbitrary and separate teachings.”
The inaugural issue contains an article on “Sacrament and Creation,” another on the meaning of “born again,” and a Q&A column. Subscriptions ($16.95) and further information are available by writing to Young Catholic Apologists, 9101 Old Cedar Ave. S., Ste. 106, Bloomington, MN 55425.
Whatever anti-Catholicism leads to, it isn’t inner peace. Consider the case of Larry Wessels. He used to work with Robert Morey, who has a ministry and radio program based in Austin, Texas. Morey considers himself something of an expert on the errors of “Romanism,” and he has debated such defenders of the Catholic Church as Robert Fastiggi, who teaches in the religious studies department at St. Edward’s University.
It seems that Wessels and Morey had a falling out. Wessels has been distributing a small-print newsletter that devotes several thousand words (plus photocopies of checks, ledgers, and letters) to the proposition that Morey is a crook. Wessels refers to his “unenviable position of being slandered by national bulk mailouts, threatened with lawsuits, and vilified by telephone by a man determined to assassinate my character and destroy my ministry.” His ministry–and we take this as a compliment–is called Christian Answers.
Morey once aspired to be heir to the late Walter Martin on the “Bible Answer Man” radio program, but Hank Hanegraaff, under Martin the president of the Christian Research Institute, got the job instead. Ever since then it’s been one disappointment after another for Morey as his anti-Catholic ministry implodes– and, apparently, as Wessels takes his own anti-Catholic operation down with Morey’s.