Hyde Park Heckler Comes Home to Rome
Your December 1992 issue made me positively homesick. Two super articles by Australians in one issue! (We’ll ignore the “Dragnet” article about the awful Australian comic book.) Being myself Australian and a convert, I naturally gravitated hungrily to those two articles. To complete the human interest side of this letter, one of the authors, Dr. Leslie Rumble, M.S.C., received me into the Church in 1949.
I have real sympathy for people like Ramon Quesada, Leonard Ostrom, and Bart Brewer, and my heart aches for them because there is so much more for them in the Catholic Church if only they would cling to what Christ taught and promised instead of allowing themselves to be led astray by Satan’s deceits.
Having been raised in a strongly anti-Catholic Protestant family and nourished on all the “Whore of Babylon” horror stories, I know how sincere and deeply rooted–and ignorant–is the concern that many Protestant have about the eternal salvation of Catholics.
One of my favorite Sunday afternoon occupations was to heckle the Catholic Evidence Guild’s platform in Hyde Park, Sydney. Headed by Frank Sheed, an Australian, the Guild was especially strong there, but so was anti-Catholic feeling, and, believe me, the Guild speakers got more than their fair share of rotten eggs and tomatoes. As zealous Protestant teenagers, my sister and I would then steal into the gloom of St. Mary’s Cathedral and sprinkle prickly berries all along where those superstitious papists “knelt to the pews.”
I cannot offer either logic or erudition to account for my conversion and 44 happy years of growth in the Spirit and union with God through the Church. As a Protestant I was an earnest young Sunday School teacher and had begun training for the mission field in the Pacific Islands. I was very happy with the faith and fellowship I found in my church. But as a Catholic I was brought into a richness and fullness I had never even dreamed of.
No amount of scars, warts, or boils can dim for me the shining splendor of what God has done for us in Christ through his Church. Yet the Church today is surrounded by scandals of the worst kind, by errors, confusion, dissension, defections, and apathy as never before. How can I continue to adhere to such an institution? Because I believe with all my heart that the inner nature of the Bride of Christ is as pure, as unified, and as intact as it was when our Lord espoused her through his Spirit, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yet alongside the ugliness and the evil, there have been in the Church in all ages beautiful lives of heroic holiness, sacrifice, and service which surely witness to the pure Spirit of God at work. Must we look at the Judases and say that’s all there is? That the scandal of Judas proves that the Church is corrupt? Does the high divorce rate prove that marriage is not of divine institution?
The Lord does not want us to judge the world but to live for God, does not want us to focus on human weakness and imperfection, but on what he wants to do by using them. The Church is surely an outstanding example of how the power of the Lord is made more manifest in weakness. Not until we put aside our inherited prejudices, our will to judge and condemn like the Pharisees, will we be able to see the magnificent design of God being effected through the Catholic Church, despite its multitude of very real shortcomings. It is precisely here that we need to prove that our faith is in God and not merely in the institution.
Elizabeth Grenfell
St. Louis, Missouri
Becoming a JW
I am now studying the Bible with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I am preparing for baptism is God’s true organization. I am returning my Certificate of the Blessed Eucharist of the Roman Catholic Church. I renounce my membership in your organization, and I wish my name removed from all your records.
I have made this decision after considerable personal study of the Scriptures. I have found that the Catholic Church does not measure up to God’s scriptural standards. I could list many instances of this, but I believe one Scripture will suffice.
At John 13:35 Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” The Catholic Church professes to have love among its members. The word “catholic” itself means “universal,” signifying a unity or oneness. However, historically and continuing to the present, Catholics have shown a remarkable ability to slaughter each other in the wars of the nations. Often, they go to battle after receiving a blessing from a priest to ensure success in killing the enemy, their fellow believers. I cannot reconcile these actions with Jesus’ words, and I have never heard a word of explanation, condemnation, or apology from the Catholic Church for these actions. This is just one instance based on one Scripture.
Remember Jehovah God’s words in the eighteenth chapter of Revelation, especially this verse: “And I heard another voice out of heaven say: ‘Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.'”
If you wish to correspond with me further on this matter, my address is included.
Name Withheld
Editor’s reply: This letter was not addressed to us, but to a priest in California, who forwarded a copy to us. We include it here because it is much like other letters we received in the past. It needs a few words of reply.
1. I don’t know what a “Certificate of the Blessed Eucharist” is. Perhaps it is a form that indicated you received First Holy Communion as a child? No matter. You seem to think it authenticates your membership in the Catholic Church. It does not. You became a Catholic when you were baptized, and proof of your baptism is in the register of your baptismal parish. You cease to be a member of the Catholic Church whenever you choose to be a member of some other church, and that is what you have done.
2. I grant you that Catholics have caused scandal through the centuries and that such scandal has repelled people from the Church. But even a cursory reading of the New Testament suggests this was just what Jesus expected. After all, he did not set up a “Church of the Elect.” He set up a Church which was to contain both the saved and the damned.
Look at his parables about the wheat and the chaff, the good grain and the tares (e.g. Matt. 13:24-30). The fields in the parables represent the Church on earth. That Church is to include saved and unsaved until the end of time. If it includes unsaved members, a good number of them will cause scandal. (Scandal also will come from some who ultimately will be saved but whose earlier lives are morally defective.) If you have never heard this pointed out to you, you have not bothered to read much from Catholics.
3. Yes, the Lord instructs his followers to “get out of her, my people.” If you believe that the thing they are to get out of is the Catholic Church, in conscience you are obliged to leave. But it hardly follows that you then must join a religion that was invented only in 1870. I use the word “invented” deliberately since the doctrinal distinctives of the religion established by Charles Taze Russell were unknown to early Christianity. They were slapped together by Russell.
No early Christian believed that Jesus Christ, before his Incarnation, was the Archangel Michael and now, since his Resurrection, is again the Archangel Michael, but this is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach. No early Christian believed that a permanent hell did not exist and that the unsaved would find their souls not damned but annihilated, but the Witnesses teach this also. No early Christian believed that eternal paradise would be a reconstituted earth and that the majority of the saved would be confined there instead of being allowed into heaven, but this also is a new doctrine from the Witnesses.
As I say, none of this is Christian in any historical sense. If you wish to leave the Catholic Church, which is the only church that even claims to be the institution founded by Jesus, that is your prerogative. But it would make more sense for you to “sit out” religion entirely than to join a church that has been around hardly more than a single long lifetime and that features doctrines unknown to historic Christianity.
Maybe Ralph Kramden?
I don’t believe I have written to you before, but I would like you to know that This Rock is one of my favorite magazines, and I recommend it to others at every opportunity. Reading your lucid, accurate, and faithful defense of orthodox Catholicism is pure delight. Your lightheartedness and total lack of pharisaical self-righteousness are among the magazine’s many virtues. However, your sense of humor sometimes seems excessively waggish.
For example, your reply to Tracy Jamison’s letter (“Which Fulgentius do you mean?”, October 1992), if intended as a joke, surely is a bit too recondite for the average reader not versed in patrology. That a Ralph (!) Fulgentius should be writing on The Rule of Faith and referring to “the Holy Catholic Church” at the same time St. Paul was writing his epistles might be received by the unwary as a wonderful, and strangely underutilized, source for Catholic apologetics. [Editor’s note: A typographical error transformed Fulgentius’s date of writing from 520 to 52.]
Of course, the person who knows that the name Ralph (from Old Norse Rathulfr) would be an impossible appellation in the first century would also know that the first attested literary use of the term “the Catholic Church” was in the Letter to the Smyrnaeans of St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110) and thus would realize your reply to be tongue-in-cheek.
I would hate to think, however, that some young would-be apologist, citing the unique fragment of “Ralph Fulgentius” (A.D. 52) on the authority of This Rock, should be embarrassed in debate and thus lose faith in your accuracy, if not your veracity. Next time, please, in the name of prudence, resist the urge.
Robert C. Rice
Front Royal, Virginia
Editor’s reply: Prof. Rice teaches at Christendom College, one of the brightest lights in Catholic academia. We wish to make it clear to our readers that he is not related to any patristic writer except in spirit.
Conversion Center’s Goofs
Not to belabor what you probably regard as obvious, but among the Conversion Center’s “Roman Catholic Doctrines & Practices Contradicted by the Bible!” (“Dragnet,” January 1993) were chancellor, doorkeeper, discalced, asperges, sprinkling, introit, and ritual.
Anyone who has a King James Version-based concordance can tell you that “chancellor” is used for a secular office in Ezra 4:8, 9, 17, and “doorkeeper” (which is what “chancellor” means) in 1 Chronicles 15:23f and Psalm 84:10 (Ps. 84:11 in the New American Bible) is used for the Temple officer. The chancellor was the deputy who had the keys for the doors and often served as more than just the head of maintenance. Peter is made the chancellor of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 16.
“Discalced” (“shoeless”) refers to wearing no sandals in imitation of Matthew 10:10 and Luke 10:4. (And then there is Acts 7:33.)
“Asperges” is the first word in the Latin translation of Psalm 51:9, the antiphon used during the rite of sprinkling outside of Easter season, when vidi aquam (Ez. 47:1, 9) is used. It is also a name for the rite itself, which is in imitation of the Bible’s rite of sprinkling with water (Lev. 14:1-9, Num. 8:6f, 19:11-22, Ez. 36:25, Heb. 9:19-21, 10:22).
As for “introit” (“entrance [antiphon]”), that’s usually a verse from the Psalms. Does the Conversion Center insist that “biblical” Christians should avoid singing the Psalms? Maybe a group that insists “ritual” is unbiblical does.
By the way, Karl Keating’s What Catholics Really Believe: Setting the Record Straight sounds like a good book, but, I don’t know–$7.99 plus $2.00 shipping and handling comes to $9.99, and upside down that’s . . . I mean, I’m still wondering why Hal Lindsey’s books are published at 666 Fifth Ave., Babylon on the Hudson.
Don Schenk
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Let’s Be Right About Rites
The article “The Church Visible or Invisible” by John J. Moran (January 1993) dealt with explaining the meaning of “Roman Catholic.” Being identified as a Roman Catholic has another understanding that was not addressed.
What is understood by the designation Roman Catholic is specifically Roman Rite Catholic. According to Basil Shereghy in his Byzantine Catholics, “Rite is the expression of faith, a form of divine worship. The word ‘rite’ does not connote just liturgy. Rite could also be defined as Christian faith developed through the centuries according to the culture and spirit of a particular people.”
The Catholic Church is comprised of four major and several minor rites. The major rites are the Roman, Byzantine, Antiochene, and Alexandrian. The operative word in “Roman Rite Catholic” is, of course, “Catholic.” The meaning of the term “Catholic Church” is the universal Church embracing all these rites, which give the Church a rich cultural diversity within the unity of faith. These rites are not denominations. There are no denominations in the Catholic Church because there is unity of faith.
E. J. Bandola
Boca Raton, Florida
Where Are the Bishops?
Forgive this late response to an articles in the September 1992 issue’s “Dragnet.” (When you are a part of the Army in Europe, transit times are lengthened.) The article concerned the opinion of a priest writing in his parish bulletin [and telling his readers to “ignore” a Vatican document on homosexuality]..
The question I have is: Where is the bishop responsible for this priest? Why is there no effort on the part of the episcopacy to counteract, and firmly, the public dissemination of such views? Even secular priests must vow obedience upon ordination. Does this not matter to anyone–if not to be priest, at least to the bishop to whom he is supposed to be obedient?
The fact that there is a shortage of priests does not excuse tacit support of wrong leadership from priests or bishops. Unless the Church clearly teaches the gospel and stands by it as having real meaning, we will not attract men to the priesthood. It is no wonder that Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are making such inroads among Catholics. They, at least, have a clear vision, however off center, of what is right and wrong and where people ought to be headed.
I cannot help but pray that those of us in the pews have a little more support from the episcopacy, especially since we so often do not have it from the pulpit.
Jane F. Kodack
APO Europe
KJV Is Our Apologetics Tool
We are both converts who live and work in a non-denominational ministry. It is often a trial to be among Christians who look upon the Church of Rome as modern-day Babylon. Yes, in our daily witness and in our discussions (informal as well as in Bible studies), we have been able to defuse much of their ammunition against Catholics. A friend gave us a subscription to This Rock, and it has been a great source of information.
As we read through each issue we highlight and comment in our King James Bible the texts concerning disputed doctrines. We also list relevant Scriptures on book marks which are kept in the Bible. This way, we are fully prepared to answer questions and to refute falsehoods which come up in our Bible studies–and we do this using a Protestant Bible! By the end of the year we should have a truly Catholic apologist’s Bible which should put [the] Scofield [study Bible] to shame.
Coming from a Protestant background, we know the power there is in quoting Scripture to gain the respect of our separated brethren. It is only through gaining that respect and living our love for Catholic truth that we will ever see unity come.
David and Judy Bratten
Jewett, Ohio
Rock-a-Bye Baby
This is my grandson, Nikolas Kodros. I say that it will be his job to unite the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. In the meantime, he cleverly sat this Hello, Rock book next to This Rock. Pretty clever for a three-year-old!
Dolores Weaver
Alton, Illinois
Doubly Bad Taste
Your cartoon, “Proselytizer’s Worst Nightmare” [September 1992], is in bad taste. So is your postcard ad copy for gift subscriptions in the same issue: “Almost as good as a plenary indulgence.”
Your earlier reply to criticism of Jeff Harris’s cartoons merely proved my point. You likened his work to that of Gary Larson of “The Far Side” fame. Now there is an example of unambiguous, mainstream humor! I like “The Far Side,” but Jeff Harris isn’t quite there yet. If you need cartoons, maybe Dagwood Bumstead would be a safer model.
The problem I have with the indulgences reference is that, without having the benefit of your other articles on the subject, the reader might think you’re trivializing the subject. Your mission is too important, your work too well done, otherwise, to have readers put off by weak attempts at humor. Stick to the main course. And God be with you.
Bernard M. Chachula
O’Fallon, Illinois
Throw Convicts at JWs?
Keep Jeff Harris’ art and humor, along with Karl’s humor. I don’t care what the “sad saints” said in the “Letters” section. And if they don’t like Harris’s cartoon about throwing a pit bull at a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, let them throw a Catholic convict. Our bite is much worse.
Russell L. Ford
Union Springs, Alabama
Grab Another Lemon, Folks!
Tell that Harris guy who draws the cartoons that he’s doing a great job! These sourpusses who’ve been whining about his Jehovah’s Witnesses cartoon have probably not been cornered by a crowd of JWs–a pit bull would come in handy! These bitter people should lump it, grab another lemon to suck on, and leave Harris to draw his hilarious cartoons.
Matthew Dunn
Sparta, New Jersey
Easy Evangelization
One method by which I distribute tracts is by inserting them in the envelopes in which my bills are paid. The persons at the other end will be forced to examine the enclosed tracts. Since they are opening the envelopes individually, they may secretly read them or spirit them to a place of privacy. They could just jettison them in the trash, but they may not. They could give them to someone else.
They could disagree with the message, but at least they know that there are Catholics out there who aren’t lying down or asleep. If the recipients happen to be Catholics and happen to have never heard of Catholic Answers, they just learned of it.
Duane Oden
Beatrice, Nebraska
Were the Saints Sickos?
A friend gave me a book, The Codependent Church, that I’m reading just to understand where many of our friends and fellow Church members are coming from.
So far I’ve learned that St. Monica was a classic codependent, canonized for her “sick” codependent behavior, and St. Augustine was a typical sex addict who never underwent the “recovery process” and whose sick mind invented the theology that has resulted in the Catholic Church’s addictive control of our sex lives. As few as ten percent of our clergy are actually celibate, and on and on. Please renew my subscription to sanity!
Robert R. Geiger
Port Clinton, Ohio
RCIA’s Treasure Trove
I have read your newsletter and then This Rock since 1987. As director of the RCIA program in our local parish, I find that your apostolate provides us with a treasure trove of knowledge, wisdom, and clarification. Our candidates and catechumens find “The Fathers Know Best” feature to be very useful.
Jim Anderson
Logan, Ohio
Clear-Headed Seminarian
Just a note to thank you for the great work you do in Catholic apologetics. I am a seminarian who benefits from my pastor’s subscription to This Rock. Please remember to pray for me.
Edward J. Roberts
Rock Island, Illinois
Unity’s Demand on Us
In the December 1992 “Letters” column Ramon S. Quesada argued that Protestants and Catholics should not try to convince each other who is right, but should feel free to “go and fellowship” with whomever one “thinks can make him or her grow in the Lord.”
The editor’s reply was excellent. Most important is the fact that only in the Catholic Church can one receive the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, which Christ commands us to do in order to have “life within” us.
But I believe your answer missed another crucial point: unity.
Doctrinal differences between Christians are a scandal to non- Christians. Why should non-Christians believe when Christians cannot agree on what Christ taught? How can the average Christian know what to believe when there are so many confusing claims and counterclaims?
The pursuit of unity is a very demanding reason for Protestants and Catholics to “try to convince one another who is right.” But unity will not be found in a cafeteria-style Christianity–believing what we want to believe, or eating at the restaurant where we find the best ambiance. Christ is not a waiter who is pleased to offer us whatever we like.
A more accurate metaphor is Christ as a hospital dietitian. If we want to recover from our disease of selfishness and pride, we must learn to give up eating, drinking, and believing whatever we please. Instead we must submit in faith to whatever the Divine Dietitian sets before us, either directly or through his appointed (as in ordained) assistants, the teaching authority of his Church.
David Reardon
Springfield, Illinois
Was Gabriel an Idolator?
The series by Father Mateo refuting CRI’s position (or attack) on Mary has been very timely. I’m glad to see it has been put in booklet form for mass distribution [Editor’s note: See advertisement for Father Mateo’s booklet in this issue.] It soundly exposes the weaknesses, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the flawed and unfounded (scripturally, historically, logically) arguments penned by CRI’s Elliott Miller.
It doesn’t take a Scripture scholar or genius to realize that if Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and some Evangelical Christians (including Protestant Reformers) throughout history have been guilty of idolatry in calling Mary blessed as Scripture tells us to do (Luke 1:48), then the Archangel Gabriel and Elizabeth are both just as guilty since they are the ones who started it (Luke 1:28, 42).
Steve Neef
Lafayette, Louisiana
Apologetics Class in Prison
Once again, please receive our profound gratitude for your last shipment of materials containing the cassettes and books on the sacraments, Mormonism, the priesthood, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Spanish bibliography list. These materials will be used in the weekly classes on apologetics here at Soledad Prison. Please keep us in mind for the future. Your material is of great assistance to me as the Catholic chaplain and of great value to our inmates.
Humberto Acosta
Soledad, California
Hey, Bishops!
I am a 55-year-old layman who has turned my back on a 26-year career as an architect to do something more directly meaningful to help extend the kingdom of God. I am enrolled in a master’s program in theology and Christian ministry at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Graduation is about two years away.
It is one thing to get an education. It is quite another to put it to some good use. The tragedy is that so many who get this kind of degree wind up pumping gas for a living because little is ever done to get those who want to work directly for the Lord together with those who have the need. The Evangelicals and Fundamentalists put us to shame because they do not let talent go to waste.
So I am addressing this letter to all you orthodox bishops, priests, and any other kinds of authorities. Please write to the theology department of our university and make your needs known. It does not make any difference where you are: There are people who are willing to go there!
Gerald R. Schmidt
Steubenville, Ohio
Apologetics in Portland
We’re starting a little apologetics group here in the Portland, Oregon area. Rich Denham and I have already attended one Fundamentalist church’s presentation on “Romanism,” where we identified ourselves as Catholics and politely presented the Church’s view on such subjects as purgatory, prayers to Mary and the saints, sola scriptura, and sola fide.
Many of the attendees were quite interested in what we had to say, and we distributed a few tracts and four copies of Catholicism and Fundamentalism. In talking with people after the presentation, Rich found himself in a group of about seven people, including the speaker.
When Rich brought up the subject of Protestant scholars who disagree with the speaker’s position and asked if his interpretation of Scripture was infallible, he became upset, started breathing heavily, turned red, and walked out of the hall.
Needless to say, it was not Rich’s intention to appear triumphalistic or arrogant, but this preacher was so confounded by what we’ve learned from Catholic Answers that he was unable to respond and so fled.
Rich and I have no degrees in theology or Scripture studies, but we have become pretty effective at answering the Fundamentalists’ charges, thanks to you. We will remain polite and charitable, but we will defend our faith when it is challenged.
Readers in the Portland area may call me at (503) 646-4710 or may write to me at 12490 S.W. 27th Street, Beaverton, OR 97005 if they would like to work with us in an apologetics ministry.
Rob Powell
Beaverton, Oregon
Fr. Harrison Was Wrong
Your feature article “Logic and Protestantism’s Shaky Foundations” [December 1992] by Brian W. Harrison, O.S., deserves a rebuttal. Prof. Harrison calls Protestants illogical and inconsistent for professing sola scriptura while also accepting non-biblical revelation.
The Professor is not addressing the actual issue here because he’s attacking a caricature of sola scriptura, not the real thing.
Sola scriptura does not mean Scripture is the only source of revelation. It means there is no prime source of revelation or formalized constitution for the church except the Bible. However, ancillary sources such as nature and direct individual communication by the Holy Spirit are accepted also, as the following evidence shows.
Martin Luther, John Calvin, H. H. Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, and other endorsed general (or extra-biblical) revelation. Luther said, “All men have the general knowledge of God, that he is just, that he punishes the wicked . . .” (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 944).
My Baptist seminary textbook says, “We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures.” “The universe is a source of theology.” “There is also an inward witness . . . in the heart of every man (Rom 1:17-21, 2:15, Ps. 19)” (A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology, 13, 26).
We should regard sola scriptura as a slogan, a battle cry in heat of controversy, not a careful delineation of theology. Since Prof. Harrison’s reasoning is based on a mistaken assumption, his conclusion that the “bedrock dogma of the Reformation is rationally indefensible” is not valid.
Rob Songer
Turlock, California
Father Harrison replies: I don’t think I have “caricatured” the Reformers’ position, although I abbreviated it for convenience. Rather, Mr. Songer caricatures my position.
I did not attribute to the Reformers the belief that Scripture is “the only source of revelation,” as he complains, but rather the belief that “all revealed truth is to be found” in Scripture. The differences are important.
Of course, the Protestant “founding fathers” accepted nature as a source of “general revelation,” but they would have insisted that what can be known about God from nature (his existence, power, justice, etc.) is also found in Scripture and is to be believed by Christians primarily because it is found therein. They would certainly not have accepted as part of the Church’s definitive faith any doctrine purporting to be derived from nature which was not to be found in Scripture.
It is also worthwhile distinguishing between “private” and “public” revelation. In my article I was concerned only with the latter.
There is no dispute between Catholics and most Protestants that the Holy Spirit can, if he wishes, give particular inspirations, prophecies, etc., to individual Christians, even in post-biblical, post-apostolic times. We would all agree, however, that these can never, on their own authority, become part of the Church’s official faith or doctrine, which all of us are morally obliged to believe–that is, her “public” revelation.
Mr. Songer should agree that, according to classic Protestant doctrine, sola scriptura does indeed mean that “all public revelation is to be found in the inspired Scriptures.” If the word “public” is inserted for greater clarity before “revelation” or “revealed truth” throughout my article, this will not impair my argument in the least. Even with this more “careful delineation of theology,” sola scripturawill still turn out to be just as logically incoherent as ever.
So will Mr. Songer’s own formulation of that doctrine, namely, “there is no prime source of revelation or formalized contribution for the church except the Bible.” Since the 66 books of the Protestant Bible nowhere claim to constitute the only “prime source of revelation,” Mr. Songer will contradict himself by claiming that sola scriptura, as he defines it, is revealed truth. Those books provide no source at all–let alone a “prime source”–for that doctrine.