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If It Works for Them…

Constantino and Maryann Santos heard Christ calling, so they founded Christ Calling, a Catholic tract ministry, taking as inspiration for their work Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” 

(We must give these folks their due: Their tracts appeared before any of Catholic Answers’ materials. Constantino and Maryann Santos are pioneers in the modern revival of Catholic apologetics and evangelization) 

Among their tracts are Will God Really Judge Us? (about judgment after death), What’s Happening? (challenging teenagers), and Are You Confused? (about personal sin and the cults). 

These evangelists believe strongly in the power of tracts. They cite testimonies from Protestant evangelists who have credited tracts with many conversions. If tracts have worked well for Protestants, argue the Santoses, why not for Catholics? They’ve answered the question by demon-strating that Catholic tracts do, in fact, work. 

Constantino Santos is employed by a large food company in Oakland, California. He and Maryann operate Christ Calling from their kitchen. They make a point of emphasizing that really only half the ministry is tracts–the other half is prayer. 

Requests for tracts arrive from all over the world, and thousands of people have been influenced by them. They’re excited to discover easy-to-digest answers to their questions about the faith, and they keep asking for more tracts. The effectiveness of this outreach should be an inspiration to other Catholics who, quite inexpensively but very successfully, can accomplish much good through this simple technique. 

(Hint: Consider setting up your own tract ministry, either using tracts produced by others, such as Christ Calling or Catholic Answers, or using tracts of your own design–chancery approved ones, of course.) 

The tracts are available from Christ Calling at no charge, but contributions are welcome (and needed). There are expenses for printing and mailing, and these expenses otherwise come out of the founders’ pockets. We suggest you write for samples, remembering to include something to defray expenses. The address is: Christ Calling, P.O. Box 19001, Oakland, CA 94619. 


 

In the nineteenth century there was Maria Monk, with her nonsensical (but believed by many) tale of escaping from a Canadian convent. There also was Charles Chiniquy, who claimed to be a former priest and whose writings appealed to the prejudices of anti-Catholics aching to be titillated by another “Romish” scandal. 

Our own century has seen more than a few ex-nuns and ex-priests, some authentic, some fake. Among the best-known fakes today is Alberto Rivera; a series of comic books describing his escapades has been distributed widely by Chick Publications. Among the best-known authentic ex-priests is Bartholomew F. Brewer, head of Mission to Catholics International. Rivera and Brewer both work out of Southern California. 

Now there is another ex-priest from Southern California, Cipriano Valdes Jaimes. We can’t say whether he really was a priest or is just another charlatan, but it doesn’t much matter. His little tract, The Lord Called Me, demonstrates that in the twenty years he claims to have operated as a priest (beginning in 1951) he learned little about Catholic beliefs and practices–assuming, of course, he was a priest at all. 

He decries the “lying and lucrative ritual” of purgatory, as the “ritual” was promoted in Mexico. If anyone mentions to you how “lucrative” purgatory is, you know instantly he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 

Even in the U.S. priests receive very small stipends for saying votive Masses–in the impoverished Mexico of the fifties and sixties priests received much less, if they received anything at all. (How many peasants could give any sort of stipend?) 

Valdes refers to his “painstaking, incisive work in dogmatic and moral theology.” A few sentences later he cites the “ridiculous, shameful, anti-scriptural practice of daily listening to the frailties of others” in the confessional. If he thinks confession is “anti-scriptural,” he has not read John 20:22-23 recently, nor has he read early Church history. Just how “painstaking” and “incisive” were his studies? 

He says a bishop gave him “the incredible, the deceitful, the false powers which the Roman Catholic Church pretends to give to men to delude others.” He refers to the “horrible confession box,” to his “absurd duties,” and to the “magic words of the consecration.” 

Can a real priest who has turned against the Church use words such as these? Sure–Bart Brewer does all the time, and he recommends Valdes’s ministry. We can imagine a priest (meaning now not a con man but someone who, for whatever strange reason, concludes he’s made a gigantic mistake in being a Catholic and, worse, a priest) turning against the Church of his upbringing with words similar to those in the tract. 

We can imagine such a thing, and such people may exist, but we’re justified, no doubt, in coming across a tract such as this in suspecting that there’s more here than meets the eye–certainly more than has been committed to paper. 


 

“Protestants are patronizing popery; they are making compromises and concessions which papists themselves are surprised to see. Men are closing their eyes to the real character of Romanism, and the dangers that result from her supremacy. People need to be aroused to resist this danger to civil and religious liberty.”

That’s one of many warnings in a new book called Why Protestants? Why Catholics? Published by IBE, Inc. of Jemison, Alabama, the book lists no author. It is a rehash of old-line Seventh-day Adventist claims, partly against Protestantism, but mainly against Catholicism.

Not so long ago the Seventh-day Adventist Church was officially anti-Catholic. Its publications read like Why Protestans? Why Catholics? and were filled with slanders against the Catholic faith, but the Adventist Church has mellowed; it no longer publishes most of the anti-Catholic literature it once did. 

That chore has been taken up by individual Adventists, such as the nameless folks at IBE, who have set up their own publishing houses to maintain the now-passe party line. These publishers may not have the sanction of their church leaders, but that doesn’t stop them. 

You can identify this literature by its anti-Catholicism and insistence on “Sabbath worship.” (The Catholic Church is attacked for shifting corporate worship from Saturday to Sunday–true, but not blameworthy.)

 

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