The election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960 is considered a watershed event in American cultural history. For the first time, our historically Protestant, historically anti-Catholic country had elected a Catholic to the highest office in the land.
But is America ready for a Mormon president?
Had Utah Senator Orrin Hatch gotten the Republican Party’s nomination, we might know the answer to that question. Of course, after failing to generate significant interest in his candidacy in the January Iowa caucus, Hatch quit the campaign, throwing his support to George Bush the Younger.
But imagine what religious questions might be asked if Hatch—or any Mormon—got the nomination of one of the major political parties and was competing in the general election.
Mr. Media: “Mr. Candidate, you are a professing member of the Mormon Church or the ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.’ Are you a ‘temple-worthy’ Mormon—a Mormon who lives by the teachings of his religion and has been cleared for participation in the rites of Mormon temples?”
Mr. Candidate: “I am. I am very proud of my faith and do my very best to live by it.”
Mr. M.: “Mormon teaching holds that those who participate in the Temple rituals and lead a worthy life will eventually become the gods of their own planets. Do you plan to one day be the god of your own planet?”
Mr. C.: “Well, that is a very high aspiration, and I don’t claim to be worthy of that. But we are talking here about very sacred matters that Mormons feel should be kept sacred.”
Mr. M.: “Even if you don’t claim to be personally worthy of being a god, do you adhere to Mormon teaching that it is possible for you to become a god, with billions of people on your own planet worshiping you as their deity?”
Mr. C.: “I really don’t think that this is something the American people are interested in.”
Mr. M.: “With all due respect, given what history has shown happens when political leaders have.aspirations of godhood, I think the American people would be quite interested to know where you stand on this issue. Do you or do you not stand by the teachings of your church concerning the possibility of your own deification?”
Mr. C.: “I am a faithful Mormon. I love my faith, and I love the good, wholesome people of the Mormon church. Neither they nor I wish to push our ideas on anyone else, and we demand the same respect from others that we accord them. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
From here on it would be all downhill. Jay Leno would make cracks about how door-knocking Mormon missionaries don’t want to “push their ideas” on anyone—“Yeah, and the Girl Scouts aren’t pushing cookies.” David Letterman would read a list of the Top Ten List Things Mr. Candidate Plans to Do with His Planet Once He Gets It—“Number ten: Ugly, short guys get the really hot chicks.” John McLaughlin would bellicosely remind his Group of what the pharaohs and Roman emperors did based on their claims to godhood. Sam Donaldson would fulminate to Cokie Roberts about what Mormonism’s living prophet might order Mr. Candidate to do once he was in office. Political pundits would note how evasive Mr. Candidate was. Hardcore Mormons would be outraged at how he failed to stand up for their faith. Christians would be aghast at Mr. Candidate’s view of godhood and would stay away in droves. Mormon conversions would plummet. The media, sensing blood, would keep asking Mr. Candidate more religious questions . . .
Somehow, we don’t think the country’s ready.
A January survey says fewer Americans are attending church, but the rate is still higher in the US than in other developed countries.
The Catholic World News reported that the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research foundfound that 55 percent of Americans reported attending church at least monthly in 1998. Sixty percent said they attended monthly in 1981. The institute said attendance has been increasing in Great Britain and five of the seven ex-Communist nations surveyed, but it is falling in Switzerland, Spain, and Australia.
When asked about how frequently they pondered the meaning of life, 46 percent of Americans replied “often,” second only to East Germans at 47 percent. Twenty-six of 37 countries showed gains in this area, including Australia, South Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany which rose by 10 percent.
In January, Bishop Francesco Loris Capovilla, former personal secretary of Pope John XXIII, denied the statements of French Mariologist René Laurentin, according to whom “the third secret of Fatima could have been revealed in 1960 during the period of preparation of Vatican Council II.”
Fr. Laurentin’s statements were published in a book written by Italian journalist Giuseppe De Carli, entitled “Breviary of the New Millennium” (San Paolo).
“Laurentin is referring to rumors that were circulating at that time, but there is no indication that allows one to think that the Pope hoped to reveal the secret in 1960,” Bishop Capovilla said.
According to a Roman newspaper, Pope John Paul II is considering revealing this secret when he travels to Fatima later this year to beatify the two shepherds who were favored with apparitions of Mary in that Portuguese town. This rumor has yet to be confirmed.
Archeologist Emmanuel Anati claims to have discovered the location of Mount Sinai. He states that Mount Har Karkon, in the Israeli Negeb desert, was the location of the giving of the Ten Commandments, not the Egyptian mountain usually accepted as the site, and which the Holy Father will visit this February.
On January 24, Anati will present his latest book, published by Bayard and entitled “The Mysteries of Mount Sinai,” in which he recounts the reasons that have brought him to the conviction that Har Karkon is the real Sinai of which the Bible speaks. The author says that Sinai is not north of the Red Sea, as Western knights assumed during the Byzantine period. However, he admits that decades of work will be necessary to prove that statement. Nonetheless, there are findings that are favorable to its being the place of the Commandments. “In the first place, we found the altar and 12 boundary posts at the foot of the mount. Those 12 pillars are mentioned in the pages of the Bible [Ex 24:4]. Then, some 60 meters away, the remains of a Bronze Age camp. This is also mentioned in the Old Testament.”
“But last year our mission came upon the last discovery that for me is decisive. In parallel work, we excavated a protruding burial mound. We thought we would find the tomb of a famous personage. Instead, it was a commemorative burial mound. In the center, it had an altar, and underneath, the vestiges of a fire. On the altar there was a white stone in the shape of a half moon, about two feet long and weighing almost a hundred pounds: the symbol of the moon god. It was a revelation — in Mesopotamian culture, the moon god is called Sin. Sinai, therefore, is an attributive form equivalent to ‘of Sin.’
The Mesopotamian peoples, whom we date at the beginning of the third millennium before Christ, had dedicated Har Karkon to the god Sin. This also explains the mountain goats on the stone paintings: the mountain goat is the sacred animal associated with Sin. Therefore, this mount was the authentic Sinai, a mountain already sacred 1,000 years before Moses.”
Decades will go by until the information is consolidated, but the hypothesis has certainly whetted researchers’ curiosity.
A coalition of 850 mostly liberal clergy and other religious leaders issued a statement on Tuesday calling for all religions to allow same-sex marriages, homosexual clergy, open access to abortion and contraception, and sex education at all ages.
The statement was signed by the retired leader of the Episcopal Church, the presidents of the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist Association, presidents or deans at 15 Protestant seminaries, and numerous theology teachers, but not by any Catholic, Evangelical, black Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim leaders.
“For too long the only voices in the public square on religion and sexuality have been the anti-sexuality pronouncements of the religious right,” said Debra Haffner, president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US, a secular organization.
While members of 25 different denominations signed the declaration, about half were from the United Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, among the most liberal religious groups. It was also signed by two Catholic nuns and a few Catholic laypersons.
Apparently sexuality within the context of heterosexual marriage qualifies as “anti-sexuality.” Goofiness isn’t a crime, but if it were the Debra Haffners of the world wouldn’t be walking the streets.
Sinners may now unburden their guilt in a cyberspace confessional which invites visitors to type their sins “in the space provided” and make peace with God.
The web site, launched on the internet by Premier Christian Radio today, promises a confidential confession, saying: “This is between you and God and your privacy is totally respected.” The site, called The Confessor, includes biblical quotations and prayers set against a background of clouds, sunflowers and leaves.
There is no interaction with a priest and whatever the visitor types is erased once the confession is over. It is not stored on the computer or transmitted on the internet. The Confessor also makes no demands for penance.
A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday: “This is not what Catholics would understand as confession. Confession cannot be done by telephone, email, or by proxy.”
Almost one year ago, a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) announced that they intend to get the Vatican kicked out of the United Nations. Through extensive international media coverage, a sophisticated web-site, and advertising in the New York Times, the campaign has grown to 400 organizations that are now calling for the UN to downgrade the status of the Vatican from Permanent Observer to NGO.
The leader of the campaign is Frances Kissling, President of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), an NGO dedicated to overturning official Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion. Over the years, beginning at the International Conference on Population and Development, the Holy See has become the main voice in opposition to expansion of abortion in UN documents. The Holy See participates in a loose-knit coalition of Catholic and Muslim states that has also stopped the efforts to expand gender to include homosexuality, and to redefine the family to include homosexual couples.
According to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, since the UN works by consensus, any small group of states can theoretically stop any piece of language they find objectionable. Since most states rely on foreign aid, the pressure to bend to the will of the Clinton Administration and the increasingly radical European Union is intense. The Holy See does not receive any foreign aid, so it cannot be pressured in the traditional ways.
Not even Kissling believes her campaign will have the stated affect of taking the Holy See out of the UN. She said as much in an article in the Washington DC-based Legal Times published last summer. Veteran UN observers understand that the Kissling effort is really intended to intimidate the Holy See delegation and to scare away her allies from Latin America and the Middle East.
Those of us a little longer of tooth recall Thor Heyerdahl as the daring adventurer who sailed the Pacific Ocean aboard his raft Kon-Tiki. Without impressive academic credentials, Heyerdahl has sought throughout his life to prove that civilizations were spread by ancient mariners crossing oceans in flimsy craft. In 1947, he sailed the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki 6,900 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days, followed by voyages on the reed boats Ra, Ra II, and Tigris.
Now Heyerdahl is raising hackles by claiming that Norseman Leif Ericsson sailed to North America a millennium ago as a Christian missionary rather than a Viking explorer, as is generally believed. In a book out next month, he will again confront the Scandinavians’ cherished views of their ancient hero, Leif Ericsson. “Leif was no Viking, as many want to see him, but the first missionary for the Catholic Church who crossed the Atlantic with a priest and a catechism aboard,’’ Heyerdahl, 85, was quoted as telling the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten on Wednesday. The claim was based on research, including into ancient Norse sagas, maps and Vatican documents, with Swedish map expert Per Lillestroem, Heyerdahl said.
Ericsson, probably born on Iceland, is considered the first European to have sailed to the Americas, some 500 years before Christopher Columbus. He and his fellow travelers, possibly blown off course en route to Greenland, arrived in Newfoundland where they founded a settlement known as Vinland. The Vinland Map, discovered about 35 years ago, purportedly showed the North American continent in 1440, or 52 years before Columbus’s 1492 voyage. However, scientists disagree on the map’s authenticity.
Lillestroem says the map supports the theory that Ericsson was a missionary. “The Vinland Map from 1440 was drawn to show the reach of the Catholic Church in the world, all the way from China in the East to America in the West,’’ Lillestroem was quoted as telling Aftenposten in Tenerife, the two researchers’ home base in the Canary Islands. Christianity was introduced to the Vikings in about the year 1000, which was in Ericsson’s era.
Great Britain could soon completely sever all links with its Christian heritage if ministers succeed in scrapping the letters AD from the date.
Years have been labeled AD (Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord) or BC (Before Christ) for at least 400 years. But ministers say the labels are inappropriate in a multi-faith country and are launching a consultation with a view to using the more politically correct CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era).
Under the new scheme this year would be CE2000 instead of AD2000. The Romans would have invaded Britain in BCE55 and the American War of Independence would have ended in CE1781.
But there is already growing pressure from churchmen for the scheme to be abandoned. John Broadhurst, the Anglican Bishop of Fulham, told The Sunday Times: “It would be pathetic to try to bury the birth of Christ in some fashionable change.” Father Danny McLoughlin, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said it was “absolutely absurd.”
“I suppose next year we will have to count the years from when Prime Minister Blair came into office, as they do in some countries after a revolution,” he told the Daily Record. “This year we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. If the Government has missed that, it has a big problem.”
A reader forwarded to us a blurb and an ad that ran in the February 2000 issue of The Spotlight, an extreme rightwing magazine, for Chevaliers de Notre Dame. “Our priests have extended God’s love in the Holy Sacraments for over a thousand years,” the ad proclaims. Their blurb from the back of the magazine, listed under “Religious Services and Interfaith Marriages,” gives them away: “For those experiencing difficulties with Church policy regarding marriage or remarriage in the Catholic Church, Chevaliers de Notre Dame offers alternatives recognized by Church authorities.”
Obviously, the Chevaliers are part of the Priests for Hire crowd who offer their clients what appear to be valid Catholic sacraments without all those pesky Church requirements. (They didn’t specify which “Church authorities” recognized their services.) But what really bowled us over was this: “From the awards won and the respect earned, NO OTHER CATHOLIC PRIESTS come as highly recommended with a $250,000 sacramental guarantee.”
Wow. Does Lloyd’s of London know about this lucrative new field?