Controversies: March 2004 Archives

In February, Bishop Ratko Peric of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno in Bosnia-Herzegovina issued a new summary of the Medjugorje case. At the end of the report, he lists the Holy See's statements:

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has intervened four times through two of its Secretaries, while the Prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger, also made an important intervention.

In 1985, Msgr. Alberto Bovone notified the Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of Italy not to organize official pilgrimages to Medjugorje.

In 1995, Msgr. Tarcisio Bertone wrote to the bishop of Langres, Msgr. Leon Taverdet, and repeated the same to Msgr. Lucien Daloz of Besan�on, France, who were interested in knowing the position of the Holy See on Medjugorje.

Finally, in 1998, the same Secretary wrote to Msgr. Gilbert Aubry, bishop of Reunion. All these letters emphasized that pilgrimages, whether private or public, are not allowed if they presuppose the authenticity of the apparitions, since this would be in contradiction to the declaration of the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia.

Ratzinger's frei erfunden. In 1998, when a certain German gathered various statements which were supposedly made by the Holy Father and the Cardinal Prefect, and forwarded them to the Vatican in the form of a memorandum, the Cardinal responded in writing on 22 July 1998: "The only thing I can say regarding statements on Medjugorje ascribed to the Holy Father and myself is that they are complete invention" - "frei erfunden".

Massachusetts' highest court once again rules that old obstacles to free sexual expression must be swept aside.

BOSTON (AP) The state's highest court ruled Monday that the state's law against incest doesn't apply to stepparents and said it was up to the Legislature to enact a ban.

Ruling in the case of a 60-year-old man accused of having sex with his teenage stepdaughter, the Supreme Judicial Court said under the current law the incest prohibition applies only to natural or adoptive parents.

A law professor observes that the court wasn't willing to construe the word "parent" broadly here, although in another case, it's certainly been willing to construe "marriage" broadly:

Wendy Murphy, a professor at the New England School of Law, said she appreciated the court's ruling ''in a technical sense,'' but she questioned why the justices didn't recognize the role of stepparents in modern families when they have recognized the changing nature of families in other cases.

For instance, the SJC noted the ''changing realities of the American family'' in its landmark decision in November that found it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage in the state.

Aren't we lucky to have such wise judges?

Here's a recommendation for those who wish to engage Newman at the heart of his Catholicity - unapologetic orthodoxy rooted in the supernatural. Buy it for yourself or for a mamby-pamby liberal Catholic you know who trots out Newman to justify their view of the development of doctrine or the crappy implementation to date of Vatican II. Maybe you know an Anglican or Anglo-Catholic who clings tenaciously to the Church of England. They, too, would do well to read this book.

Obviously, all else being equal, the answer to this post's title is "yes." I think the answer is "yes, but not right now," and I'll explain why.

This is a surprisingly neutral article about Evangelical efforts to convert Iraqis to Christianity. Let me first say that I have the highest respect for the zeal and fearlessness displayed by many Evangelicals, and I have no doubts about their sincerity or love of Jesus Christ. The best of them could teach your average Catholic a thing or two about how to live a Christian life without compromise.

That said, I have serious concerns about how Evangelicals run their foreign ministries. They center around two issues: the prudence of evangelizing in Iraq right now, and their attempts to convert Christians to their brand of Christianity, without regard to the Christian communities that already exist in that culture.

Let's take the second point first. When I was in Nicaragua a couple of years ago, I saw many Evangelical churches aggressively proselytizing in the Juigalpa province, a poor, rural area. I can understand evangelizing a non-Christian population, but the people were uniformly Christian. This is a part of the world where a large town's main general store is named after the Fatima apparitions, and bus drivers put a religious slogan ("Jesus Bendiga Mi Camino"), a picture of the Virgin, or both on the rear of their vehicles. (I also noted with satisfaction that Catholic churches weren't even marked as such, and that everyone -- Catholic or Protestant -- knew where they were.)

Converting Catholics is an explicit denial that Catholicism is Christian. If Evangelicals really believe that it doesn't matter what church you go to, as long as you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then why attempt to lure away poor, believing Catholics? Or active members of other Christian traditions who are entirely orthodox about the nature of Jesus?

Next, take a look at this quotation from the article:

"It is every Christian's requirement to share Jesus Christ's gospel with everyone on the planet, including every Muslim," said Richard D. Land, president of the public policy arm of the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. "If that causes anger and violence, it only shows we must speak more loudly."

Isn't that what you're supposed to do when foreigners misunderstand you? JUST TALK LOUDER!!!

I don't mean to lampoon Mr. Land or his efforts. (Okay, maybe just a little.) But there's a serious question as to whether they are undermining the long-term prospects of the Gospel by concentrating on short-term growth of storefront churches. Arabs are enamored of conspiracy theories, and Iraqis are particularly enthusiastic in their love of such things. (Please, spare me any lectures on the evils of "ethnic stereotypes," because this is generally true. Ask anyone who's spent time in the Middle East.)

There are many Iraqis -- by no means all, but a very significant minority -- who believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq to steal its oil wealth and convert the inhabitants to Christianity. Since wealth-stealing and forced conversions are recurring themes in that part of the world, that isn't as absurd it might seem, and I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss their concerns.

Right now, the United States and its allies are trying to stabilize Iraq so it can have a decent society. That will be hampered if there is a widespread belief among the populace that the "crusaders" are there to destroy or subvert Islam. The Christian message will find a more receptive audience when the hearers are less paranoid and more self-confident.

I'm not a relativist, and I'm not saying that Iraqis don't deserve to hear the Word of God. Some places just aren't ready for the Gospel yet. Why not wait another year or two, when things are more stable and there's a native Iraqi government in place? Contrary to the comment in the article, there's no "six-month window" to spread the Gospel in Mesopotamia.

Headline: Blood Runs thru Streets as an Angry Mob Riots After Seeing "The Passion of the Christ" - Gibson Partially to Blame

er... maybe it's

Headline: Couple Fails to Resolve Rudimentary Theological Dispute and Resorts to Violence. Cops involved.

Via CNN.

OpinionJournal.com has a piece by Methodist minister Donald Sensing about the connection between artificial contraception and gay marriage. Though on the surface, the two phenomena have little in common, he makes the right connections:

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.

If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women, what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples?

I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God. But traditionalists, especially Christian traditionalists (in whose ranks I include myself) need to get a clue about what has really been going on and face the fact that same-sex marriage, if it comes about, will not cause the degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.

I don't share his pessimistic view of how modern people view marriage -- from my perspective, most secular married couples want to remain married until death, though many are woefully unprepared to make that happen -- but he's a pastor and deals with married people on a more intimate level than I do.

It is my fervent hope that Protestants join the Catholic Church in opposing artificial contraception, the exacerbating cause of bad marriages, illegitimacy, spousal abuse, and abortion. (It isn't the sole cause, and eliminating it wouldn't make those problems disappear, but it drives those problems.) Such a change would only be a return to the universal Protestant tradition until 70 years ago, when the Anglicans decided they would abandon Christianity for the siren-call of the world, and decide to place their faith in latex and chemicals instead of God's providence.

Ken Shepherd has some comments related to the post about the St. Joseph novena.

I'm going to defer to my friends at Catholic Answers, who, when I was struggling with things like this, gave me the biblical, theological and rational grounds for what Catholics believe and do. If not for them and God's grace, I might be an angry ex-Catholic today.

Some may grant that the previous objections to asking the saints for their intercession do not work and may even grant that the practice is permissible in theory, yet they may question it on other grounds, asking why one would want to ask the saints to pray for one. "Why not pray directly to Jesus?" they ask.

The answer is: "Of course one should pray directly to Jesus!" But that does not mean it is not also a good thing to ask others to pray for one as well. Ultimately, the "go-directly-to-Jesus" objection boomerangs back on the one who makes it: Why should we ask any Christian, in heaven or on earth, to pray for us when we can ask Jesus directly? If the mere fact that we can go straight to Jesus proved that we should ask no Christian in heaven to pray for us then it would also prove that we should ask no Christian on earth to pray for us.

Praying for each other is simply part of what Christians do. As we saw, in 1 Timothy 2:1–4, Paul strongly encouraged Christians to intercede for many different things, and that passage is by no means unique in his writings. Elsewhere Paul directly asks others to pray for him (Rom. 15:30–32, Eph. 6:18–20, Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25, 2 Thess. 3:1), and he assured them that he was praying for them as well (2 Thess. 1:11). Most fundamentally, Jesus himself required us to pray for others, and not only for those who asked us to do so (Matt. 5:44).

Since the practice of asking others to pray for us is so highly recommended in Scripture, it cannot be regarded as superfluous on the grounds that one can go directly to Jesus. The New Testament would not recommend it if there were not benefits coming from it. One such benefit is that the faith and devotion of the saints can support our own weaknesses and supply what is lacking in our own faith and devotion. Jesus regularly supplied for one person based on another person’s faith (e.g., Matt. 8:13, 15:28, 17:15–18, Mark 9:17–29, Luke 8:49–55). And it goes without saying that those in heaven, being free of the body and the distractions of this life, have even greater confidence and devotion to God than anyone on earth.

Also, God answers in particular the prayers of the righteous. James declares: "The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit" (Jas. 5:16–18). Yet those Christians in heaven are more righteous, since they have been made perfect to stand in God’s presence (Heb. 12:22-23), than anyone on earth, meaning their prayers would be even more efficacious.

The full article is available at www.catholic.com.

Cardinal Ambrozic leads the way:

TORONTO, March 5, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a press release yesterday, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto reported that it has suspended the faculties of Father Tim Ryan. The Toronto Scarboro Foreign Mission Society priest who, in August 2003, filed an affidavit with the Supreme Court of Canada in support of homosexual marriage.

[via Relapsed Catholic.]