Tick, Tock
I read with interest the item headed “Cleaning his Klock” (“Dragnet,” October 1995). I found it a little annoying, at first, then disappointing.
One has to wonder why “the magazine of practical apologetics” chose to “select out for your delectation a few representative and predictable sentences.” In my view, your presentation was neither representative nor particularly apologetic, in a practical sense.
While I was correctly identified as “an author who lives in Key Largo, Florida,” the next few words [of the author blurb accompanying his article in the Miami Herald] were “and a lifelong Catholic,” which phrase was inexplicably deleted. How can my place of residence be more significant than my religious persuasion?
The headline of the subject Herald piece made no mention of “leading the Church to functional obsolescence,” as indicated in your article. Rather, the headline (composed by the newspaper) read: “IS HE OUT OF TOUCH?” (The title I had selected was Christianity or Churchianity?, which might have been even less pleasing to you.)
I’m sorry that I used “blindly” in referring to those who submit to, rather than dissent from, the dicta of Church leaders. I don’t feel that those (including yourself and your staff) who submit wholeheartedly to papal teaching are sight-impaired or working with their eyes closed. Rather, I suggest that unswerving loyalists are wearing blinders which restrict their view of peripheral goings-on in the church.
I hasten to point out that when I speak of the church, I mean the people, rather than the hierarchy, a possible point of disagreement between us.
I also suggest that a survey of your staff people would have a considerable margin for error as a reflection of the attitudes of worldwide Catholics.
I readily concede that I should not have used the word “democratic” in describing the early Church. I should have used “collegial,” and your article refers to a “rulership of bishops” which would seem to support the notion of collegiality. This concept, incidentally, took a severe body blow in the Vatican’s recent “end-run” around the bishops on the subject of female ordination.
I won’t question the corrections of history cited in your article and will readily yield to your superior knowledge of same. However, regardless of when and how it came about, it’s pretty clear that mandatory celibacy was more likely an invention of the church hierarchy, rather than the intention of Christ.
I find it remarkable that you trace celibacy to the “apostolic times, beginning with Paul and the other apostles.” I would have appreciated some enlightenment as to the marital status of the original twelve and some citations of the actual ratio of married to single clerics in the early years, in place of your sweeping statement that “there were very few as a proportion.”
Perhaps I should plead ignorance of the significant difference between the “rhythm” method of scheduled abstinence and natural family planning; but to answer the only specific question addressed to me (“Where has Klock been?”), I doubt it would have been asked had the author known that my wife and I have eight children and nineteen grandchildren.
Belying the time-honored precept that “practice makes perfect,” we practiced the rhythm method and/or natural family planning throughout our fertile years, and I freely confess that never once did we say “let’s have a baby.”
Call it what you will (rhythm or NFP), the point that I wished to make in the Herald article was that the church condoned a system by which conception could be prevented, one which is, according to surveys, in disfavor among 87% of professed Roman Catholics in the U.S.
Most of all, I suppose I regret the fact that your column, in its search for “delectation,” chose to ignore almost all of the issues raised in the piece I wrote for the Miami Herald. Most of them touched on subjects that are of keen interest to American Catholics but which are not being dealt with in an understanding manner by the “Churchianic” leadership in Rome-a leadership becoming increasingly Catholic, but less catholic (and collegial) than it was during the years immediately following Vatican II.
I don’t delude myself that these few words will sway you from your position (or even win space in your publication), but I think you should know that, with only a half-dozen exceptions (including a series of rebuttal articles by Archbishop Favolora of Miami), the response I’ve gotten since the article first appeared has been overwhelmingly favorable, including (sadly) a number of clerics and lay people who did not feel they were in an atmosphere that permitted them to speak out as publicly as I did.
You should also know that, as I pointed out in the article, my thoughts were written more out of pain than anger, as was this letter.
I love the Church (as previously defined herein) and will continue to press for changes that I believe are in the best interest of the faithful and are consistent with the sensus fidelium as I understand it. In this respect, I’m sure that you, I, and the author of “Dragnet” are of one mind and spirit.
Joseph P. Klock, Sr.
Key Largo, Florida
Editor’s reply: You may be correct in saying that a survey may show that our staff is not representative of Catholics as a whole — at least that may be true of Catholics in this country, many of whom reject Catholic doctrinal or moral teachings yet still call themselves Catholic. But truth isn’t subject to a majority vote, so that factoid is immaterial.
By the way, collegiality didn’t suffer a “severe body blow” from the issuance of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis or the subsequent dubium. To restate an infallible teaching, a pope does not have to check with other bishops first.
So far as celibacy in ancient times is concerned, the most recent research (such as Fr. Cochini’s book) shows that, while a few married men were ordained in the early years, after ordination such men were expected to live continently-that is, without marital relations.
Might I suggest that you read up on the meaning of the sensus fidelium? You might be laboring under a false definition. Many people assume the term has something to do with taking a poll. Cardinal Newman was castigated by some in Rome for what they thought was a misapplication of sensus fidelium (they objected to his essay On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine). Newman remains a good writer to turn to on this topic.
Cuban Appeal
Last year I received some copies of This Rock, and I devoured them. They helped me to learn more about my faith and how to defend it. Since then, I began to participate in a Bible study group and I’m now receiving classes of social doctrine, Christology, and Mariology. I’m finishing my medical studies (I’m 22 years old), and I intend to enter a seminary of a religious order before this year ends.
I find this embarrassing, but I do need some books that are unavailable in Spanish and, of course, forbidden [to be published] in Cuba. Could you please publish my name and address? I would greatly appreciate it if someone could send me any book or material written by Fr. Frederick Faber, Joan Carroll Cruz, St. Louis de Montfort, or St. Peter Julien Eymard. Thank you for your kind assistance.
Pray for this intention so that it may become a real vocation. Please answer soon!
Emilio Alvarez
P. O. Box 326
Holguin 80100 Cuba
Former JW Agnostic
Just a quick note to thank you for your book Catholicism and Fundamentalism. I am an ex-Jehovah’s Witness turned disillusioned agnostic who converted to Catholicism last Easter. Your book was a real “lamp unto my feet” and provided me with answers that I could not seem to get from other people. My husband found the book and bought it for me on a whim. Little did I realize how it and Catholic Answers would change my life. I am truly grateful for the work that you do to preserve and promote the truth and beauty of Catholicism.
Melody M. Veltri
via the Internet
Editor’s reply: Welcome home!
Time for a New Confessor
I just received your most recent tracts, and I had to let you know how great they are . . . I am especially impressed by the tract on birth control. My husband, a physician, recently stopped prescribing birth control to his patients (a tough decision) and went to confession to ask forgiveness for the years he had prescribed oral contraceptives. He was met with a priest who chastised him for “imposing (his) decision of conscience on his patients.”
When Brad pointed out that he was merely trying to be obedient to Church teaching, the priest replied that many theologians would not agree with my husband’s interpretation of Church teaching on this subject! I wish that Brad had your tract in the confessional at the time. I plan to order more of these excellent pieces of apologetics so we can be better prepared in the future.
Thanks for continuing to tell the truth (without pulling any punches!)
Fran Schweitzer
Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Time for Lab Work
I enjoyed reading your 12 Painless Ways to Evangelize on the Catholic Information Network.
If we are the Body of Christ, what are we waiting for? Let’s tell everybody about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! He is the best-kept secret in the whole world. But what we do is to go to Mass on Sundays and then keep silent about God the rest of the week.
I heard a great way of looking at evangelization the other day: We have lectures (Mass, retreats, reading the Bible, etc.) and lab work (witnessing to family, friends, strangers). We love to go to lectures, but we forget we need to do the lab work. It is in the lab work, though, where we learn the most and do the most good.
Tom Pain
via the Internet
It’s a Gift
The article regarding your exchange with Ingrid Shafer and the issue of celiacs receiving Communion (“Dragnet,” Nov. 1995) was well stated.
My only comment is about the word “take” in front of “Communion.” I had never heard this before I heard it in a Protestant church. The sisters at St. John’s Cathedral grade school taught us to “receive” Communion, not “take” it.
There is quite a difference between “taking” and “receiving” Holy Communion! You may want to expand on this in a future article.
Mike Noonan
Jefferson, Wisconsin
Strictly from Hunger
Thank you for your efforts to refute Fundamentalists’ attacks on Catholics. I am well aware of them, as I regularly attend a small faith-sharing groups with friends from a Fundamentalist church. There are five others besides my wife and I — all the rest are from their church. However, three of those are ex-Catholics.
I perceive the problem not so much as a success of their arguments, but the poor education Catholics have in their faith. These people are starving for a spiritual life, and our local parishes and diocese seem entrenched in their administration and bureaucracy that the average Catholic parishioner just can’t seem to get nourished.
The reason I’m with the Fundamentalists is that there are no small faith groups in our Catholic church of 600 families.
Ronald F. Huebsch
Princeton, Minnesota
Took Mom Out, Then In
My Mom and I are both former Catholics. I left the Catholic Church right after parochial school (age 14, am now 40); I had “had enough” of it. My mother was a faithful Catholic all her life. She’s now 68, and we both want to come back to the Church. She’s only been away for about three years. At this point we both believe, individually, that the Catholic Church is where we belong.
I am responsible for leading my mother away from the traditional Catholic beliefs. I became a Fundamentalist Christian four years ago and became immediately concerned that if my mother did not “get saved” she was going to hell. Prior to getting saved I was heavily into the New Age, the recovery movement — I had been alcoholic for nine years from teens to early 20s, but found help, thanks be to God — and I believed in astrology, reincarnation, the I Ching, tarot cards. Following a reading through of the Bible in 1992 I became fairly certain I’d been born again. For the first time, I thought, Jesus was real to me. Some of the filth dropped out of my life. I started listening to Christian music and looking for a Bible-teaching Protestant church.
Concerned about Mom’s eternal destiny, I prayed and began a campaign of “witnessing” to her. I did all I could to talk her out of devotion to Mary, to whom she was very devoted, and I succeeded. I was baptized by immersion in 1993, and was pleased when Mom followed in 1994.
We tried to fit in with our Baptist congregation — Mom even harder than I did (she joined the choir and helped with Christian Character Club), attending Sunday school, church twice on Sundays (but no Wednesday prayer meeting . . . right off, we weren’t measuring up), Bible studies and everything church.
I just did not think it remotely possible that the Roman Catholic Church I was raised in could be the repository of truth. I’d read Dave Hunt and Bart Brewer (Mission to Catholics) and even spoke once on the telephone with Bart (and he spoke with my mother also). We bought and viewed Jim McCarthy’s Catholicism: Crisis of Faith video and ate it up.
Now I wish to go to confession and come back and hope to see a priest friend of ours very soon. Mom has already made plans to see him right away to have a private confession. I have begun to read the Catechism and pray the rosary. Last year, following the sudden death of a devout aunt who remained devoted to the Church all her life, I felt led to come back to the Church. It was the book by Scott Hahn, Rome Sweet Home, that really got to me. (My late aunt had a copy of the book, and I’d begun to read it with nothing but prideful contempt and derision.) Also I’d been getting softened towards Catholicism by the works and the life of C. S. Lewis. This year two Charles Williams novels really got to me, and also somehow softened my heart.
Martin Farkus
via the Internet