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The Gospel According to Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney hasn’t aged well. Years ago, on “Sixty Minutes,” he gave pithy, sensible, and witty advice. Now he has intruded himself into religion and lost his moorings. In a column written in October, Rooney noted (accurately, sad to say) that “for most Americans religion is an area of their lives separate from any other. It doesn’t have much to do with day-to-day activities in their business, social, or family life. They take comfort from certain beliefs they have, but they don’t talk or even think much about them.” In other words, for most Americans religion is a mere habit or a crutch. It’s not a matter of principle. So far, Rooney’s analysis is correct, if unexceptional. But with the next paragraph he falls off his chair.

Pope John Paul II is looked on with mixed feelings by both Catholics and non-Catholics. He seems like a good man and a sincere man but not a great thinker and not one of the great popes.” Boing! This pope is neither a “great thinker” nor a “great pope”? For the sake of argument, let’s concede that he isn’t among the top five popes either as a thinker or in general greatness, but he likely will be found in the top, say, twenty — and that means in the top twenty of 264 successors of Peter, many of whom were brilliant and influential. Some Catholic commentators suggest that John Paul II may end up being only the third pope to have “the Great” appended to his name. That may be overoptimistic, but even the broaching of such a thing suggests that, by any rational evaluation, it is foolish to say that this pope is “not a great thinker and not one of the great popes.” 

In Rooney’s next sentence we learn why he gives a thumbs down. “Even some of the most devout of his followers have a problem accepting his hardline statements opposing women as priests or abortion under any circumstances.” Two things can be said about this: First, Rooney exposes his own values. If the Archangel Gabriel were to come down to earth, opposing women priests and abortion (which, of course, he would), Rooney would say Gabriel didn’t amount to much of an angel. Second, Rooney is wrong to say that “some of the most devout” of John Paul’s “followers” approve of women priests or abortion. Sorry, guy. Those who oppose Church teaching, on either the doctrinal issue (the priesthood) or the moral issue (abortion) are, ipso facto, not “devout.” 

Now that Rooney has revealed his agenda — he’s pro-feminist and pro-abortion — he goes on to complain about the latest papal encyclical, Fides et Ratio. He says, “The Pope believes — if I understand him — that you can believe in the importance of reason and still have faith in the existence of God even though that belief defies the kind of reasoning that mathematicians would use.” Wrong again. The Pope said no such thing. In fact, he knows, as the Church always has taught, that the existence of God can be known by reason alone. You don’t have to have faith in God to know he exists, though you cannot know him well without faith. But mere reason, if properly applied, is sufficient to prove that there is a God.

Rooney says, “The Pope’s contention that faith and reason can go together surprises me. If I understand the meaning of the two words, faith and reason are as opposite as black and white. They are incompatible.” The idea that faith and reason are compatible “does not seem like one that would come naturally to this very conservative pope, and it seems possible that this encyclical is a joint effort. In view of his failing health, it would seem likely for this very conservative pope to have accepted help in the writing of this encyclical.” Ah, there we have it. John Paul II is old and infirm. If he were vigorous, he wouldn’t be so silly as to say that “faith and reason can go together.” Deep down, he knows better than that.

Rooney caps his argument by quoting Aldous Huxley: “Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously accepted system of make-believe.” “There are a great many charlatans practicing religion and making a lot of money from it,” notes Rooney. Many of them “do their witchcraft on radio or television.”

Reading this, one is tempted to snort, “It takes one to know one,” but a more charitable comment is that Rooney is an innocent when it comes to matters of religion. He doesn’t really know what religion is, and he doesn’t really know what reason and faith are. This pope does, and that’s why he never would make the sort of unreasonable blunders that Rooney makes in his column. “The question is whether believing with your heart is as good as believing with your brain,” concludes Rooney. No, the question is whether passing along sophomoric thoughts in a nationally syndicated column is as good as knowing what you’re talking about. 


 

If you believe everything you read, here’s a web site for you. It’s www.jesus-is-lord.com. At it you will learn that “Canon Law Says Catholics Can Kill Protestants.” That’s the title of one of the articles found at this anti-Catholic site. The piece begins by saying, “As most of us know, the Catholic religion plunged Europe into the dark ages and has terrorized and killed multitudes. According to their own canon law, a heretic is to be purged by the following steps.” First is excommunication. Then comes a proscription from all offices, ecclesiastical or civil. Next is the confiscation of the goods of the heretic. Finally comes the death penalty, “sometimes by sword, more commonly by fire.” 

Now just where in canon law do we find these? We can locate excommunication in both the 1983 and 1917 codes, which also refer to the removal from a Church (though not a civil) office-see canon 196, for instance. How about confiscation of goods or capital punishment? Well, ah . . . Those are a little harder to find in canon law-because they aren’t there. We didn’t mean to say quite that, insist the folks at Jesus Is Lord. We mean that in the old, old days you Catholics used to engage in such practices. Yes, one can point to such instances-but also by Protestants. (The death penalty against heretics was employed much more vigorously in Elizabethan England than in Catholic Europe.) There was a time when, on both sides of the religious divide, the promulgation of heresy was understood to be something that undermined not just the religious order but also the political order, and in those times the penalty for major political offenses was severe. In biblical times the penalties were even more severe, with the Lord God commanding that whole peoples be wiped out. Maybe the folks at Jesus Is Lord should attend a little more to the Bible and to the history books. 


 

An especially good headline: “Levitation Takes Some Mystics to New Heights.” That’s from a press release for Kevin Orlin Johnson’s book Apparition: Mystic Phenomena and What They Mean, published this year by Pangaeus Press, P.O. Box 67017, Dallas, TX 75367. Johnson notes that Teresa of Avila was perhaps the most famous levitator — something she didn’t want to be. “She’d hold on to the altar rail or order her nuns to hold her down, but it didn’t work. She once grabbed the mats on the floor and took them up with her.” Joseph of Cupertino levitated with such force that he took up the brothers who were trying to hold him down. When Gerard Majella began to levitate while speaking to a nun through a grille, he grabbed the grille and ended up bending it out of shape. 


 

An otherwise unidentified “Mr. A. Atkinson,” who lives somewhere in the U.K, sent us a complaining e-mail. “We have been investigating your claims about our church, the Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ), and we would like to inform you that we are now seriously considering filing a lawsuit against your organization with regards to the information in your web site about the Iglesia Ni Cristo. The articles in your web site are unfounded, false, destructive, and very malicious. Your aim is to destroy the biblical teachings that we, members of the Church of Christ, adhere to. We are anticipating an apology from your organization.” 

Get ready for a long wait, Mr. Atkinson. You won’t be getting an apology from Catholic Answers’ apologists, because what we wrote about Iglesia Ni Cristo was accurate.

Iglesia Ni Cristo was founded by Felix Manalo, who claimed to be God’s “messenger,” appointed to bring back a church that had gone into apostasy in the first century. Manalo said that Scripture pointed to a future leader who would come from “the East” and from “afar.” This, he said, meant that he would come from the “Far East.” And what is the center of the Far East? Why, the Philippines, of course! And that means Manalo must be the long-awaited “messenger.” 

Of course, there are a few problems with the argument. The term “Far East” didn’t exist until recent centuries. When the Bible refers to “the East,” it usually refers to lands as far to the East from Israel as, say, today’s Jordan. And when the Bible says that someone will come from “afar,” that person could be coming from any direction on the compass.

More than that: What about the Philippines being the center of the Far East? This one is easy to answer by looking at a map and a dictionary. The dictionary will note that the countries of the Far East include China, Korea, Japan, the Indochinese countries, and, yes, the Philippines. The geographic center of these countries is located in southeastern China, not across the sea in the Philippines, which happens to be at the lower-right-hand corner of the area. So maybe the members of Iglesia Ni Cristo want to modify their expectations and look for a “messenger” to arise in China? Well, not likely. After all, their church is more than just a church; it truly is a cult. They believe that Felix Manalo was chosen by God-as was Manalo’s successor, his son Erano. If the facts don’t fit the ideology, so much the worse for the facts. 


 

Habemus Papam — again! Tired of John Paul II? Looking for an alternative — fast? There are several to choose from, if you’re willing to settle for an anti-pope.

There’s a fellow in Canada who styles himself Pope Gregory XVII. He permits only the old Latin Mass, and he has ordained women to celebrate it. You read that correctly. His fully-habited nuns have been ordained as the first priestesses, on the direct authority of the Holy Spirit, who, he claims, speaks to him with some regularity.

If you have trouble accepting the bona fides of a pope who ordains women, there’s another Gregory XVII to choose from. This one lives in Palmar de Troya, Spain, and heads what he calls the One, Holy, Catholic, and Palmarian Church. He actually had first dibs on the name Gregory XVII, having beaten out the Canadian by a few years.

But maybe you’re tired of foreign popes. How about one from the heartland of America? Pope Michael I lives in St. Marys, Kansas. His room is above the store that his parents run. They arranged for a conclave, with dutiful friends as electors, and apparently weren’t too surprised when their son succeeded, ah, Pius XII. Their argument was that we haven’t had a real pope since 1958, when Pius died, and it was about time to get one, even if that meant their son had to take on the job. Their theory, and the theory of most sedevacantists, is that John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II have been intruders — not a single one has been a valid pope. How could they be? They all approved of Vatican II!

Michael I now has domestic opposition. As of October 24, the U.S. has sported two anti-popes. The latest entrant is the former Fr. Lucian Pulvermacher, a long-time opponent of everything post-Vatican II. He has taken the name Pius XIII. For some months his web site, www.truecatholic.org, has been explaining why there has been no real pope for forty years and why it is becoming necessary to elect one. He tried to promote this idea as though he were a disinterested party, but it would have been the naïve reader who didn’t sense that Pulvermacher was thinking of himself as the perfect candidate. So it came as no surprise that the 80-year-old former Capuchin, who lives in a trailer outside of Kalispell, Montana, didn’t say Non placet when his name was proposed. Pius XIII’s “Director of Information,” identified in the press release only as “G. Bateman,” reported that the new pope “gave his first apostolic blessing to the city and the world immediately after his election to the Chair of St. Peter.” 

In his Urbi et Orbi message, Pulvermacher said that he has “only a small remnant of faithful Catholics to address.” He is grateful to them all, especially “all those who took part in the recent conclave to elect a pope to succeed our predecessor, Pope Pius XII of happy memory.” He isn’t so grateful to the men who purported to succeed Pius XII. There was John XXIII, “a Rosicrucian Mason” and a “Luciferian worshiper, which all Masons really are.” He said that John’s “crowning act of stupidity and malice” was the calling of Vatican II. John’s successor, Paul VI, also was a Mason. Then came the first pope with two names. “This should tell us something,” said Pulvermacher, though he didn’t indicate what that “something” is.

The papal conclave had been in the works for three years. “Since there were no cardinals alive at the start of the conclave”-all the cardinals named by Pius XII are long since dead — “natural law allows for Catholics, clergy and laymen, to be the electorate to vote for the pope. . . . The Conclave Committee, a group of three Catholic laymen, with the approval of the electorate, organized the logistics for the conclave.” The first thing to do was to verify that each of the electors really was a Catholic. Each elector had to sign two documents “attesting to his/her Catholic standing” — phrasing that indicates that some of the electors were women, an odd thing, one would think, for self-styled Traditionalists to permit. Among other things, the documents affirmed the electors’ “non-association with any Vatican II (Novus Ordo) individual(s).” 

Since the electors were unable to gather in Montana, they “cast ballots using today’s God-given technology of the telephone. Security was ensured using secret and unique voting codes assigned to each elector to authenticate each vote.” That may have been excessive — it would seem that Pulvermacher would have recognized the electors’ voices over the phone; they were his hand-picked choices, after all, so they could have phoned in their votes without resorting to codes. In any event, Pulvermacher unsurprisingly received more than two-thirds of the votes cast. “The Dean of the Committee, according to prearranged procedures, contacted the elect to ask if he accepted the papacy. When Fr. Pulvermacher accepted, at that very moment, the papacy was restored.” 

Curiously, there is no mention of his being ordained to the episcopacy. Every pope is pope precisely because he is bishop of Rome and therefore successor, as bishop, to Peter, the first bishop of Rome. Pulvermacher, recognizing the orders of no recent pope and, perhaps, of no living bishop, had no one to ordain him. Already, on Internet discussion groups, there are questions about how he can claim to be pope and yet not be a bishop. In all likelihood the matter will be resolved, at least to his followers’ satisfaction, by his declaring that there has been an intervention of the Holy Spirit. Someone, probably Pulvermacher himself, will claim to have received a confirmatory vision: God, making an end run around the usual procedures, has raised Pulvermacher to the episcopacy.

In any event, the ballots, as taken down over the phone, “were burned in a wood stove, and white smoke ascended into the mountains of Montana. . . . Instead of hundreds of thousands of cheering faithful in Vatican Square, the white smoke was seen only by a handful of the faithful, as well as by God’s creatures of the forest.” 

According to his biography at the web site, “Pius XIII” was born in 1918 and took solemn vows in the Capuchin order in 1942. He was ordained in 1946. At first he was assigned to a parish in Milwaukee, but in 1948 he was transferred to Japan, where he worked for the next 22 years. He spent the next six years in Australia, but by 1976 he was fed up with what he now terms the “Novus Ordo Church,” and he quit, as he put it, “cold turkey,” not applying for a leave of absence, not informing his superiors of his plans. He just hopped on a plane for the u.s. He joined the Traditionalist movement but discovered, within eight months, that none of the other Traditionalist priests were real Catholics. “Since that time he has been all alone as a priest.”

Some time ago “he met a German priest at a pre-conclave meeting in Washington State. In the summer of 1998, this German priest, who at the time was thought to be papabile, defected from the conclave movement, so to some extent Fr. Pulvermacher’s loneliness as a priest continued.” Reading between the lines, one suspects that the German priest “defected” when he realized that, no matter what the Holy Spirit might have had planned, Pulvermacher had his own ideas about the identity of the next pope.

To read all the documents at the truecatholic.org web site takes an hour or more. The reader comes away marveling that so many could be so wrong about so much. Of course, there may not be “so many” at all. Although the site implies that Pulvermacher’s “remnant Catholic Church,” while tiny in proportion to the billion-member “Novus Ordo Church,” has a good many adherents, it may be that all of them could meet simultaneously in his trailer. If one is left with an emotion after reading the articles and contemplating the photographs of Pulvermacher — one shows him giving, apparently in his tiny chapel, his ” Urbi et Orbi” address to no one in particular, other than the photographer — it is pathos, because the charade he and his followers have engaged themselves in, now and for several decades, is truly pathetic. 


 

The writer isn’t identified by name. All we know is that he uploaded his conversion story to the discussion boards at www.trincomm.org. He explains that he had been brought up a Catholic but drifted away. He was married in an Episcopal church, but he and his wife decided the theology was “too hostile” for them. They had a flirtation with Eastern Orthodoxy, “but the theology just seemed wrong.” They found themselves unchurched. “Our souls were homeless; we were very vulnerable, and so we were easy pickings for the Mormons when they knocked on our door. We converted to Mormonism despite the objections of our friends and spent the next couple of years with our brains turned off. (Don’t let anyone fool you-it’s a cult.)

“Not too long after we converted to the LDS Church, we bought a tape by a guy named Isaiah Bennett, who had been a Catholic priest. He converted to Mormonism and gave his ‘testimony’ on this tape. We listened and thought, ‘Hey, if even an RC priest can “see the light,” we must not be wrong’ — which was, of course, the intended point of the tape.” 

But the writer and his wife were having problems fitting in. “I couldn’t stop smoking cigarettes, and the ‘bishop’ was pressuring my wife to go to the temple without me — and maybe just to go on without me too. Fortunately for me, she’s a good German farm girl with a streak of stubborn a mile wide, and she wasn’t going anywhere without me. I didn’t know whom to turn to — the LDS are good at isolating you once they’ve got you — so I started surfing the Internet for information on leaving Mormonism, and I came across anti-Mormon material written by . . . Isaiah Bennett!” 

It turned out that Bennett “had ‘seen the light’ again and had converted back to Catholicism. So I wrote to Bennett and he wrote back. We’ve been in touch for two years now; he’s sent me books and booklets, he’s prayed for me and my family.” 

And it’s been a one-way street since then. Now the writer and his wife are attending Mass. Their three-year-old daughter was baptized (the real way). They are involved in a Fatima apostolate, attend holy hours, and have joined RCIA. “We are building a Catholic home and a life in the Church.” 


 

If it’s any consolation, ours isn’t the only country with religious fringe groups that fight one another. Argentine newspapers, such Buenos Aires’ Hoy (Today), have been reporting on an imported religious group that considers Mother Teresa an agent of Satan. Led by Buddhist priest Dorei Ito, a member of Japan’s Nichiren Shoshu sect, the group claims that Mother Teresa is a manifestation of the Devil of Mercy, a demon that leads people to hell through merciful acts. Ito and his followers have been attacked by Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan’s “new religions” (those founded after the Second World War). Soka Gakkai claims to rest its beliefs on the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin, a thirteenth-century Buddhist priest “who taught that every person possesses the potential for enlightenment.” The Nichiren Shoshu sect, claims Soka Gakkai, is a deviant brand of Buddhism. Not only are Ito & Co. wrong about Mother Teresa, but they wrongly complain about Soka Gakkai’s custom of “singing the world-acclaimed classic ‘Ode to Joy’ because of the references to Christian theology in the lyrics by Schiller.” What it boils down to is that Nichiren Shoshu is divisive while Soka Gakkai is inclusive, says the latter. 


 

For those who suspect that not much of value comes from the NCCB, here’s a wake-up call: The Committee on Doctrine has issued a document titled “Ten Frequently Asked Questions About the Reservation of Priestly Ordination to Men: A Pastoral Response.” It’s quite good. Some excerpts:

“1. What is the Catholic Church’s teaching on priestly ordination concerning women? In the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed that the Catholic Church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women. This teaching is to be held definitively by all the faithful as belonging to the deposit of faith. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified the authority of this teaching by stating that it is founded on the written Word of God, has been constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, and has been set forth infallibly by the universal ordinary magisterium.” Note the references to “the deposit of faith” and infallibility. No mealy-mouthed summary, this.

“4. Is it arbitrary for the Church to limit ordination to men? The basis for this teaching is the authority of Christ himself. There is a parallel in the theology of the Eucharist. Bread and wine are essential to the celebration of the Eucharist. It could be argued that other foods or beverages would be more appropriate for cultural or other reasons and that the restriction of the Eucharist to just these food-stuffs is merely conventional or arbitrary. Just as the only Eucharist is the one Christ instituted, so the elements he employed cannot be considered optional. . . Just as the Church cannot alter the elements of the Eucharist, so the Church cannot determine the recipients of priestly ordination in a manner which contradicts the actions of Christ.” This is a good analogy, one that apologists can make use of.

“6. Did Christ’s decision to choose only men as apostles depend on the cultural circumstances of the time? Christ’s election only of men for apostolic office and ministerial priesthood represented not an accommodation to the cultural circumstances of Palestine in antiquity, but a deliberate choice bearing on the very nature of these orders. He often demonstrated freedom from the cultural and religious conventions of the day. . . .” The document could have noted that in the regions surrounding Palestine were pagan religions that had priestesses, so the idea of priestesses was not foreign to the ancient mind.

“7. What theological discussion and debate has led the Church to make a definitive statement on this issue? It is misleading to suggest that this is an entirely new topic. The issue of the possibility of ordaining women was first raised in the second century and has been raised and addressed by theologians down to the present day. . . .” Good point: The Church addressed this issue ages ago. It’s not as new as most people think.

“9. What about women who feel called to ordination to priesthood? The only calling that is universal — embracing all women and men — is the call to holiness. Every claim to the possession of an authentic call to priestly ordination must be tested and validated by the Church. . . . The Church cannot consider the claim of a woman that God has called her to ordained ministry, because the very possibility of priestly ordination arises only within the framework of a divine plan and order in which participation in Christ’s role as head of the Church is reserved to men.” This is a polite way for the NCCB to tell women who think they have a calling to the priesthood that they’re simply mistaken.

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