You can rest easy. You Catholics haven’t been left out. The Nation of Islam isn’t just anti-Semitic. It’s anti-Catholic. Tony Martin, a tenured professor of African studies at Wellesley College and a Nation of Islam spokesman, claimed in a speech that the Catholic Church had “a very active role in the slave trade, including the pope himself.”
He said that the 1493 papal edict dividing the new world between Spain and Portugal gave tacit approval to commerce in slaves and that Jesuits owned slave concubines and plantations worked by slaves. It may have been the case that Jesuits purchased slaves in order to manumit them, but they should have been applauded, not condemned, for doing what was possible to free slaves.
“Slaves were marched by priests on their way to the boats and baptized with buckets of water,” Martin said, “so if they died on the trip they’d go to heaven.” The only thing wrong with this description is that the slaves no doubt marched with, rather than were marched by, the priests.
It would have been soldiers or slave runners who ordered the marching, and they may have allowed priests to minister to the unfortunates before the start of what, for many, would prove to be a voyage they would not survive. But Martin doesn’t care about such nuances, quite understandable in a man who self-published a book titled The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront. In the book Martin accuses “organized Jewry” of conspiring against him because he uses Nation of Islam materials in his classes.
Speaking of Jesuits, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, a long-time friend of ours, has been implicated in a conspiracy discovered by Texe Marrs, who thinks that the Christian Research Institute, the Evangelical organization founded by the late Walter Martin, is “a pro-Catholic group out in California doing a lot of dirty work smearing fine Christian and patriotic Americans.”
Marrs says that “CRI specializes in bashing Protestants. Sometimes, its criticisms are justified. But isn’t it interesting that only Protestants are attacked?” (Apparently Marrs missed the articles, published in CRI’s magazine, attacking Catholic Marian doctrines; Catholic Answers published Refuting the Attack on Mary as a response to them.)
Marrs says that “CRI has a national radio program on Christian stations called ‘Bible Answer Man,’ during which the well-trained hosts regularly lambaste Christian leaders who are Protestants, but heap praise on the Pope and on Catholicism. (The clever commentators disingenuously claim that, of course, CRI does not necessarily agree with all of the Roman Catholic teachings.)”
How does that make them clever? If he were under oath on the witness stand, Marrs would have to say the same thing. After all, he agrees with some Catholic teachings (such as that there is a God, say), but not necessarily with all of them.
The next section of Marrs’s article-the subtitle: “Is CRI a Vatican Front?”-introduces Fr. Pacwa. “CRI seems to have rather unusual support from Roman Catholic sources. Some people believe that a Catholic Jesuit priest, Mitchell Pacwa, is carefully guiding CRI toward papal objectives. Pacwa acts as ‘advisor’ to CRI’s leaders and writes for their publications. In one book written by two CRI authors, Jesuit priest Pacwa was invited to insert an entire section to make sure that readers got the official Vatican version on the apparitions of ‘Mother Mary.'”
Sounds sinister? Read on.
“Why is CRI in existence? Apparently, the goal of its backers is to make this group so powerful a voice that CRI can lash out and destroy any Christian or any ministry that refuses to support the Roman Catholic viewpoint. CRI also viciously attacks those who expose the New World Order. . . . Meanwhile, CRI’s printing presses and its mouthpieces on radio never mention the fact that Bill Clinton was trained by the Catholic Jesuits at Georgetown University”-which, we say, only tends to show the inability of some Jesuits to inculcate the faith in their students.
Marrs quotes a supporter of his position, Robert Morey, who, in his ministry’s newsletter, The Researcher, says, “Evidently the Jesuits are now viewed as the true brothers of CRI, and historic Protestants are now viewed as the enemies of CRI.”
Morey’s complaint needs to be measured against his disappointment in not being named the successor to Walter Martin. At the latter’s death Morey jockeyed to be appointed head of CRI, but lost to the organization’s CEO, Hank Hanegraaff, who now appears regularly on the “Bible Answer Man” program, a program for which Morey at one time had been a substitute host.
The St. Barnabas Society, based in Oxford, is the British equivalent to The Network, the American group headed by former Protestant minister Marcus Grodi and designed to assist converting ministers and their families. We have mentioned The Network in these pages before and want to mention now its sister organization. The leading figure in the St. Barnabas Society (formerly called The Converts’ Aid Society) is Keith C. Jarrett. The president is Cardinal Basil Hume.
A solicitation letter from Jarrett asks the reader, “Would you give up your job, your home, your family’s security to become a Catholic? This is what clergy and religious of other denominations do when they ask to be received into the full communion of the Roman Catholic Church. They pay the price of conscience.” The price is especially high for those with families, since the bread winner suddenly finds himself not winning any bread.
Someone leaving the military as an electronics specialist might not have too hard a time finding work in civilian electronics, but someone leaving the ministry for the Catholic Church discovers that there is no call at all for a family man whose only employment has been as the Protestant analogue of a priest.
The St. Barnabas Society can be reached at 4 First Turn, Wolvercote, Oxford OX2 8AH, U.K. The Network can be reached at P.O. Box 4100, Steubenville, OH 43952.
Some months ago Karl Keating had an exchange of e-mail, reproduced in these pages, with Ingrid Shafer The subject was access to a left-wing discussion group on the Internet. In October Shafer’s byline appeared in The National Catholic Reporter under an article titled “REAL PRESENCE A FUNCTION OF GLUTEN?”
The article complained about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s recent reminder that the bread used in the Eucharist must be made from wheaten flour and the wine must be real wine, not grape juice. Shafer called Ratzing-er’s statement “one of the most absurd pronouncements in the history of the CDF” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Ratzinger is Prefect). Her complaint was that his decision deprives celiacs (men who are allergic to the gluten in wheat) and alcoholics from being priests, and this, she insisted, is unfair.
“It’s not a light matter to those who are affected-not only or even primarily priests, but countless laymen and laywomen, both celiacs and recovering alcoholics, who by virtue of their baptism have a right to the sacraments of the church for which they are properly prepared, a right to be offered sustenance, not poison.”
Shafer, who referred to the Pope’s right-hand man as the “Grand Inquisitor” (Mr. Dostoevsky, please call your office), said, “The magisterium [should] seek ways to interpret the rules in such a way that potentially none of God’s children could be excluded, at least in theory. Alas, the logic that cuts human beings off from the Eucharist and bars men from the priesthood because of a congenital condition or an illness is precisely the rigid and loveless logic Yeshua the Healer came to combat and precisely the same kind of narrow, literalist legalism that views God as accountant, distinguishes between natural family planning and artificial birth control and bars women from ordination.”
You see, said Shafer, Ratzinger “is ruthlessly consistent. If he were to permit non-gluten wheat to be baked into the bread that will become the Christ or not-yet-fermented grape juice to serve as communion ‘wine,’ then he might also have to permit non-male humans to image the male Yeshua and speak the words of consecration. . . . After all, celiacs, alcoholics, and women share one characteristic with unfermented grape juice and gluten-free wheat: They are ‘inferior matter,’ not capable of consecrating or being consecrated.”
No surprise in any of this. Would any experienced reader have doubted that an excursus on the proper matter for the Eucharist would end up arguing for priestesses? You might say Shafer’s writing is ruthlessly consistent-and ruthlessly predictable.
But more needs to be said, at least a few words about her comments on “depriving” certain men, not to mention all women, of the priesthood or of receiving the Eucharist. If someone is a celiac, he can take Communion under the form of wine; if someone is an alcoholic, he can take Communion under the form of bread. Such people might be unable to take Communion under both species, but most of us take it under only one anyway. (Do we need to reiterate that the whole Christ is present under either species?)
It would seem that, in theory, the only people who might be excluded from Communion would be those who are simultaneously celiacs and alcoholics. Are there any such people? Assume there are a few. That still doesn’t settle the issue.
While no alcoholic should be given a glass of wine at dinner, few alcoholics are unable to handle a single drop of wine-for most of them the problem was that they were taking wine by the jug, not the drop. While celiacs should not eat triple-decker sandwiches made with thick slabs of wheat bread, few of them will have measurable reactions to a tiny particle of bread. So we narrow the field even further, to those individuals whose bodies can tolerate neither a single drop of wine nor a single crumb of bread. Are there any such people? The odds are again st it, but let’s presume we can find one.
Would such a person be deprived of Communion, and would that be “unfair”? The answers are: Yes, then No. Such a person would be unable to take Communion if he were unwilling to undergo whatever discomfort there may be in ingesting a single drop or crumb. Let’s go the whole way and say he has no choice because even such minuscule amounts would set off violent physical reactions, so he really must stay out of the Communion line.
But is this “unfair”? No, it isn’t, since receiving the Eucharist is not absolutely necessary for salvation, and one can receive grace through a devout spiritual Communion. Besides, there already are actual people, not just theoretically-constructed people, who are unable to receive Communion: children under the age of reason, non-Catholics, the comatose, those who are so ill that their only means of sustenance is intravenous feeding. None of these people is in a position to take Communion, and it isn’t “unfair” that they can’t do so.
Shafer’s article skirts the key issue that Ratzinger was addressing: What constitutes valid matter? Does rye bread? Does Welch’s grape juice? The answer is either case is No. Breads made with grains other than wheat may be bread, but they aren’t wheat bread, which is what hosts must be made from. Grape juice may, like wine, be a “fruit of the vine,” but it isn’t wine, even though, if allowed to ferment, it someday would be. If grape juice were a permissible substitute for wine, why not “grape-ade,” why not fruit punch, why not liquid Jell-O?
The answer is as obvious as it is uncomfortable: Because this is the way God set it up. He decided that wheat bread and wine would be the things that could be transformed into his body and blood-not croissants, not Perrier. This is an “arbitrary” fact, and its arbitrariness may bother people, as might the “arbitrary” fact that God took flesh in a particular culture, in a particular people, in a particular place.
Why didn’t the Redeemer come as a woman in Boston in 1950? There are plenty of reasons, which don’t need be addressed here. All that needs to be said is that Christianity is an incarnationalreligion, which means our faith is a faith of dates, places, people, deeds, things, and facts-things like wheat bread and real wine and facts like the inability of a few people to receive Communion.
If the motivating gripe behind Ingrid Shafer’s attack on Cardinal Ratzinger is that she wants to see women priests, well, now there’s a solution for her. A friend of ours saw a classified ad on CompuServe — the title was “HOW TO BECOME A CATHOLIC PRIEST” — and sent away for information. Back came a letter from the Most Rev. Meri L. Spruit, Rector of the Sophia Divinity School of the Church of Antioch, located in San Jose, California. The church boasts not just a patriarch, but a matriarch.
Ms. (or Bishop) Spruit wrote, “Thank you for your inquiry about becoming a Catholic priest. If you are not familiar with independent Catholicism, it has an extremely ancient history, antedating the ‘orthodox’ traditions [which, if you think about it, means it antedates Christianity itself]. The earliest Christians emphasized the spiritual experience. Today, we are witnessing a rekindling of this early enthusiasm. What characterizes this Catholicism is the effect of the traditional sacraments which occurs when an individual is open to pursue the true basis of spirituality-divinity within. . . . The sacraments produce a spiritual effect which is cultured by one’s own spiritual exercise.
“The sacraments are extremely powerful spiritual channels, and many people have been deterred from them, either by dogmas to which they cannot subscribe or by restrictions they cannot accept. Our objective it to create qualified priests with minimum difficulty. We feel strongly that all who have the calling should be afforded the opportunity to prepare themselves. Therefore, we have instituted a seminary program, largely through home study . . .
“The rites and orders of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch are recognized as valid by Christians who hold to the apostolic succession of orders [with the exception of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, of course]. Reception of holy orders in this Church requires no change in lifestyle. [Whew!] You may continue to live in the same manner that you are now living and also be a priest. There is nothing to give up. . . . The Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch admits all sincere people to holy orders, including the episcopacy”-and the introductory ordination course is only fifty dollars!