Divorce. By itself civil divorce is not an obstacle to Communion. As a civil action all it does is settle the civil legal effects of marriage (distribution of property, custody of children etc.). However, understood as a moral action, the willful breakup of a marriage or abandonment of one’s spouse is indeed seriously wrong. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear, following on Scripture, that God hates such divorce.

2382 The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble. He abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law. Between the baptized, “a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death.”

2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law. If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.

2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery:

If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery; and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another’s husband to herself.

2385 Divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a plague on society.

Thus, those who are actually responsible for the breakup of the marriage and the failure to be reconciled when possible are indeed guilty of sin and have an obligation to repent and confess their sin before receiving Communion, as would any grave sinner.

On the other hand, of the innocent party in a divorce the Catechism says,

2386  It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage.

Thus, the innocent spouse in a marital break-up has the same possibility to receive Communion as other Catholics, with the usual conditions (being free from mortal sin in other areas of life, going to Confession if not, Eucharistic fast and so on).

Remarriage. As noted above in the citation from the Catechism 2382, a ratified and consummated Christian marriage is indissoluble. This is a marriage where the vows are exchanged by two baptized persons, with the proper intention, and consummated by sexual intercourse. No power on earth can declare such a marriage null and the parties free to remarry. However, a marriage tribunal of the Catholic Church is empowered to judge whether a marriage actually did occur and to issue a Decree of Nullity (popularly, but wrongly, called an annulment) when it judges it did not. (See: Annulment/Decree of Nullity) A person who receives a Decree of Nullity is free to marry in the Church since the first marriage was defective from its beginning (i.e. no marriage). A person who remarries in the Church after an annulment is free to receive the sacraments under the usual conditions (as noted above).

However, often times individuals or couples who have remarried but without a Decree of Nullity want to come into the Church, or if already Catholic approach the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist. Sometimes they are even told they can judge these matters in their own conscience without going to a Marriage Tribunal (sometimes called “the internal forum solution”).

In “Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by Divorced-and-Remarried Members of the Faithful” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a letter to the world’s bishops on October 14, 1994 said,

7. The mistaken conviction of a divorced-and-remarried person that he may receive holy communion normally presupposes that personal conscience is considered in the final analysis to be able, on the basis of one’s own convictions, to come to a decision about the existence or absence of a previous marriage and the value of the new union. However, such a position is inadmissible. Marriage, in fact, both because it is the image of the spousal relationship between Christ and his church as well as the fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil society, is  essentially a public reality. [/library/curia/cdfdivor.txt]

By this document the Holy See affirmed the continuous theology and discipline of the Catholic Church that those who are divorced and remarried without a Decree of Nullity for the first marriage (whether that marriage was made within or outside the Catholic Church) are in an objectively adulterous union that prevents them from honestly repenting, receiving absolution for their their sins, and receiving Holy Communion. Until the marital irregularity is resolved by a Marriage Tribunal, or other procedures which apply to marriages of the non-baptized, they may not approach Penance or Holy Communion. As Pope John Paul II pointed out in Reconciliation and Penance, the Church desires such couples to participate in the Church’s life to the extent possible (and this participation in Mass, Eucharistic adoration, devotions and so on is a great spiritual help to them), as they work toward full sacramental participation.

A Unique Case. One final situation is that of those who have repented of their illicit union, but remain together for a serious reason, such as for the sake of their children. Catholic pastoral practice allows that IF their pastor judges that scandal can be avoided (meaning most people are unaware of their remarriage and consider them a married couple), then they may live together as “brother and sister” (without any sexual relations), and be admitted to the sacraments. If scandal can not be avoided, then they must either  separate or refrain from the sacraments.

Answered by Colin B. Donovan, STL

They don’t fly on broomsticks or have green skin, ( although come to think of it one witch I knew did have a sick green-ness about the gills, but I think that’s because he was a drunk) but they do cast spells and put curses on people and they do worship Satan, and don’t be deceived by the ‘white magic’ lark. There’s no such thing. All magic is black magic because of the philosophy behind it: those involved in witchcraft seek power, and anybody who seeks power for it’s own sake is bad.

Think of all the wicked people who justify their quest for power by saying it is for a good cause. Almost all evil in the world is caused by people who think they’re doing it for a good cause. Not just Darth Vader. Think of the Nazis who really believed the concentration camps were necessary in order to bring about a master race…see what I mean?

So witches, wicca, witchcraft–all that stuff. Yes, it’s real.

Furthermore, if you invite diabolical powers into your life. Don’t be surprised if they show up, and don’t be surprised if, once you’ve opened Pandora’s box you can’t get the lid back on. Remember in all the fun that the purpose of Hallowe’en is to scare the spooks away–not invite them in. Dressing up as monsters has the same purpose as putting gargoyles on cathedrals–you’re supposed to be scarier than the devil in order to give him the creeps and send him running. So when you carve a jack o’lantern make him scary as you can, but say a prayer as you put him out that he might keep away the real monsters of the night, and if you dress as a ghoul or a ghost or a witch or a warlock remember that you are doing so to creep them out and say a prayer of deliverance from all the dark forces of the world.

And if you come across anyone who takes witchcraft seriously tell them politely that if they summon the devil he will probably come, and that messing with the occult is the spiritual equivalent of an eight year old kid taking a five gallon can of gas into a fireworks warehouse then playing with matches.

(Fr Dwight Longenecker)

by Fr Dwight Longenecker (Fr Dwight Longenecker)

All vice ends in violence. Think about it in terms of the seven deadly sins. In one way or another, if the vice is continued it ends in violence, and if in violence then in death.

Take lust, for example. Oh, it seems so harmless–a little fun in the bedroom. A bit of slap and tickle, a bit of a giggle and gasp. Where would the violence be in lust? Look into the Marquis de Sade and see where unbridled lust takes you. Into the whipping chamber, the torture and rape and the sick scenes of sado masochism. Ordinary sex grows dull so the need for excitement and thrill and physical sensation demands…violence.

Pride is only pride because one is better than another. Pride does not just make us want to win. It makes us want to beat the other guy. Pride puts us not just up, but over–over others who are inferior to us. There is not pride unless there is someone to show off to, and the only ones to show off to are those we deem our inferiors, and it only takes a small push for the pride to turn into violence. Just allow the person on top to have his superior position threatened and he will turn and snarl like a cornered animal–even if he does so with a sweet superior smile and a stab in the back.

Envy leads to violence. Easy to see. When I am envious of another I will murder their reputation, tear them down so they cannot be greater than me, destroy them for being superior, and does it end in real, physical violence? Hell hath no fury like a woman–or man–scorned. Let someone get what was ours or what we think is ours and we may plot to destroy them.

Wrath is violence suppressed. Take off the lid and the wrathful will murder.

Greed is economic violence and a kind of theft. The greedy take from the poor and think nothing of it, and it only takes a small step for the greedy to turn violent. Allow the greedy to think that their wealth and status is threatened and they will kill to defend it.

Is the glutton violent? What, a fat and jovial over eater violent? He is violent towards himself. His god is his stomach and should he be deprived of his addiction he will become violent.

Even the slothful is violent, for he is violent against life itself. The slothful kills joy; kills creativity; sloth is a kind of despair which kills the fullness of life. Kills life. Kills.

Previous posts on homosexuality have raised some interesting discussions in the combox. What interests me is how some readers who are Catholic have such a non-Catholic understanding of marriage.

We are told that because George and Harry love one another and are committed to one another that this is the same thing as marriage and that they should therefore be allowed to be married.

However, romantic or erotic feelings of love are not the criteria for a valid marriage, nor are they pre-requisites. An arranged marriage in which there is no subjective erotic or romantic feelings of ‘love’ as popularly understood, would be a valid marriage (and if the history of humanity has anything to say about it–may end up be a very good marriage). Neither can feelings of ‘love’ be the sole criteria to justify for an action.  Note the adulterer who ceases to ‘love’ his wife and leaves her because he ‘loves’ his mistress. Regard the ethnic cleanser who ‘loves’ his country so much that he kills its enemies. Don’t misunderstand the argument–I’m not degrading love or saying it is a bad thing. I’m saying the romantic and erotic feelings we call ‘love’ are not what validates a marriage (or any other action). Moral judgements are made on more solid factors.

For Catholics, marriage is a sacramental covenant which springs from the order of creation. God created the mystery of man and woman. “For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife.” The nuptial relationship is bound up in the natural complementarity of the sexes and the intimacy between man and wife is part of this profound natural order, and from this intimacy new human life is created. The commitment that is expected within this marriage is one that reflects the eternal commitment of God to his people.

Thus St Paul speaks of the love that Christ has for his church and compares it to marriage. Christ is the bridegroom and the church the bride. Christ penetrates the Church with the dart of longing love which is the Holy Spirit. From this intimate union of love a new order of creation is brought forth. Because of the eternal, life giving nature of this covenant between Christ and his Church we believe that marriage is also a life long covenant between male and female.

We should be clear about certain things: to affirm marriage in this way is (by definition) to reject homosexual unions as equivalent. Nevertheless, it is possible to affirm that two men or two women might love one another very deeply. They may have a lifelong partnership and deep commitment. That friendship and commitment may be noble and good and true and self sacrificial. This is what the church has termed ‘friendship.’

However, the church has also rejected any idea that this friendship should be expressed through sodomy, and it (along with every other civilized society–even those that accepted homosexuality) have never pretended that such friendships were equivalent to marriage.

The reason people in our society push for homosexual marriage is therefore, a misunderstanding of what marriage is. Too many believe that marriage is the final culmination of a romantic and erotic relationship. They see marriage not only as a desirable contract of commitment, but most of all, they see marriage as a societal (and ultimately religious) validation of their chosen sexual behaviors.

Catholics are often accused of being ‘homophobic’–the new curse word that means we are afraid of homosexuals. I don’t think I’m afraid of homosexuals, although when someone comes on my combox and says that they want to stand on my head and not take their foot off until they have ‘squeezed some sense into it’ I have to admit that I get a little bit afraid. When I see what homosexuals have done to the good name of Senator Rick Santorum that makes me a little bit afraid.

But I’m not really afraid of homosexuals. I am, however, disapproving of homosexuality. This is not simply because I find sodomy repulsive. I disapprove of homosexuality because I approve of marriage. So instead of blasting homosexuals and homosexuality I wish to defend, support, explain and uphold the truth and beauty of sacramental marriage.

In order to do this, one needs to understand the fully Catholic teaching on marriage. Marriage, for Catholics, is a sacrament. It is a visible means of grace. In other words, through the physical actions and commitment of marriage God’s saving grace is active in our lives. Marriage is, if you like, a ladder to heaven. It is one of the ways we participate in our salvation. St John teaches us that “those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.” The human covenant of marriage is the most sublime and complete way for most people to experience the love of God. In fact, it is the most urgent and active and obvious way for most people to experience and participate in the grace-filled action of God’s salvation.

This sacrament–this means of grace–is something permanent and precious and life giving. It is a path to that self sacrifice that leads to eternal life. Within marriage God’s life and love exists in and through and with our human love sealed and made permanent through marriage. Like all the sacraments, it is, by its very nature, life giving and healing and forgiving. Through the sacraments our broken humanity is ransomed, healed, restored and forgiven. This is especially true of marriage with it’s drama of joys and sorrows spread over a lifetime. It is also especially true of marriage since only through marriage do a man and woman participate with God in the creation of new human souls.

Because marriage is such a beautiful, eternal, precious and fragile sacrament we love and cherish it. We also oppose everything that would break this precious, fragile and life giving sacrament. Divorce breaks marriage. Adultery breaks marriage. Pornography breaks marriage. Co habitation breaks marriage. Promiscuity breaks marriage. Contraception breaks marriage. Abortion breaks marriage. Child abuse breaks marriage. Homosexuality also breaks marriage.

The proponents of homosexuality will argue that it is all about ‘love’. However, their definition of love is “the freedom to have sexual relations with whomever I experience erotic and romantic emotions toward.” They may add to this an idea of “commitment” or even “lifelong commitment” but a moment’s reflection will show that these subjective and sentimental notions of ‘love’ can just as easily be claimed by the adulterer, the child abuser, the co habiter and the divorcee. The adulterer will claim that he did not love his spouse any more and loves his mistress more. The co-habiter will claim to be in love with the person he or she is living with. Indeed, the child abuser will claim to love the child and may even claim to ‘be in a loving relationship’ with the teen they are abusing. The promiscuous man about town may claim to ‘love’ each woman with whom he has a one night stand. The couple who are using artificial contraception will claim that they are doing so because they love one another and ‘can’t afford’ a child. Abortion has even been rationalized through ‘love’ by claiming that the person choosing abortion is doing so ‘because they love the children they already have.’

Therefore, some other criteria for ‘love’ must be established, and a Christian society has recognized that bona fide relationship to be the thing we call marriage. In marriage love is objectified and strengthened and clarified by a life long sacrament.

Does this mean that we must hate homosexuals? Some homosexuals may be aggressive and ugly in their campaigning. Some may be disgusting in their promiscuous and degrading lifestyle. They’re pretty easy to dislike, but there are heterosexuals who are disgusting in their promiscuity and degrading lifestyle. If we find some homosexual practices repulsive we also find some heterosexual practices repulsive. So that’s a red herring.

On the other hand a homosexual person may be gentle, loving, restrained and disciplined and loyal to one partner. This homosexual seems more acceptable and less repulsive. He or she seems like ‘such a nice guy’ or ‘a wonderful gal’. But a person’s niceness is not the criteria for moral judgement. Plenty of adulterers, divorcees, child abusers or mass murderers were charming and polite and ‘nice’. This again is a subjective, sentimental judgement and therefore a red herring.

Instead we return to the objectivity of natural law and conclude that the sexual organs are designed for a certain purpose and to use them otherwise in any way is deviant. Homosexual acts are therefore, objectively disordered, and according to this argument, so are many other sexual behaviors–of which we also disapprove. Marriage is objectively a sacrament, so likewise, any behavior which breaks marriage is something of which we disapprove. We do not wish for homosexual people to re-define marriage on their terms, but we also disapprove of the re-definition of marriage that has occurred de facto through contraception, no fault divorce, re-marriage, widespread promiscuity and co habitation.

Our response is to note all of these crimes against marriage objectively and then accept on equal terms all people–no matter what their sinful condition. Do we find some of their behaviors repugnant? So be it. However, our natural repugnance does not mean we should hate those people or deny them human rights. We still see each person as a son or daughter of God and we hope to offer to them, as we do to all sinners–the heart of compassion and the chance for redemption, forgiveness, healing, peace and life.

For that is what we wish for ourselves, who are also sinners and in need of the same.

VATICAN CITY, 23 SEP 2011 (VIS) – At the apostolic nunciature in Berlin at 9 a.m. today, the Holy Father met with representatives of the Muslim community in Germany. Muslims in Germany number around 4.5 million; 70 percent of them are of Turkish of origin while others come from Arab countries, the Balkans and Iran.

In his remarks to the group the Pope recalled how “from the 1970s onwards, the presence of numerous Muslim families has increasingly become a distinguishing mark of this country”. In this context he highlighted the importance of constant effort, not only “for peaceful coexistence, but also for the contribution that each can make towards building up the common good in this society.

“Many Muslims attribute great importance to the religious dimension of life”, he added. “At times this is thought provocative in a society that tends to marginalise religion or at most to assign it a place among the individual’s personal choices. The Catholic Church firmly advocates that due recognition be given to the public dimension of religious adherence. In an overwhelmingly pluralist society, this demand is not unimportant. Care must be taken to guarantee that others are always treated with respect. Mutual respect grows only on the basis of agreement on certain inalienable values that are proper to human nature, in particular the inviolable dignity of every single person”.

The Holy Father went on: “In Germany – as in many other countries, not only Western ones – this common frame of reference is articulated by the Constitution, whose juridical content is binding on every citizen, whether he belong to a faith community or not. Naturally, discussion over the best formulation of principles like freedom of public worship is vast and open-ended, yet it is significant that the Basic Law expresses them in a way that is still valid today at a distance of over sixty years”.

“The reason for this seems to me to lie in the fact that the fathers of the Basic Law at that important moment were fully conscious of the need to find particularly solid ground with which all citizens would be able to identify. In seeking this, they did not prescind from their own religious beliefs. … But they knew they had to engage with the followers of other religions and none: common ground was found in the recognition of some inalienable rights that are proper to human nature and precede every positive formulation. In this way, an essentially homogeneous society laid the foundations that we today consider valid for a markedly pluralistic world, foundations that actually point out the evident limits of pluralism: it is inconceivable, in fact, that a society could survive in the long term without consensus on fundamental ethical values”.

At the end of his address, Benedict XVI underlined the importance of fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims as part of the process of building “a society that differs in many respects from what we brought with us from the past. As believers, setting out from our respective convictions, we can offer an important witness in many key areas of life in society”, such as “the protection of the family based on marriage, respect for life in every phase of its natural course or the promotion of greater social justice”.

At the end of the meeting the Pope travelled to Berlin airport where, at 10 a.m., he boarded a plane to travel to Erfurt”.

Do you want to bring your loved ones closer to God?

A lot of people ask me, “Bo, please pray that my son (or daughter, or husband, or uncle, or friend, or classmate, or officemate) find God.”

       What’s the best way to bring your family and friends to God? 

What’s the best way to be spiritually contagious?

       I propose three simple but powerful steps, which I’ll share with you for the next three weeks.

       Step 1: Friend Them

       Step 2: Serve Them

       Step 3: Guide Them

       At the end of this revolutionary series, I pray that you’ll be very spiritually contagious!

God Still Uses Imperfect People

To Share His Perfect Love

       Read what Jesus said…

Matthew 28:19-20

Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.

I have a very big announcement to make.

Your mission in life isn’t to earn money.

Your mission isn’t to enjoy life.

Your mission isn’t to have a good time.

Your mission isn’t even to be happy.

All those goals aren’t bad. They’re good goals. (Yes, like any father, God wants His children to be happy.) 

But they’re not the sacred purpose of why you were born.

Your mission, my friend, is to make disciples.

I can hear you now. “Bo, you’re crazy! I’m not a priest. I’m not a nun. I’m not a preacher like you. I’m an ordinary Catholic.”

Ah, there lies your mistake.

There’s no such thing as an ordinary Catholic.

Every Catholic has a mission, and that mission is to make disciples. Your mission is to bring others closer to God.    

How?

Jesus is your model.

Jesus made disciples in a very special way…

Step 1: Friend Them

Here’s my big message for you today: The most powerful way of bringing someone closer to God is through friendship.

Look at how Jesus did it…

Mark 2:15-17

Later on Jesus was having a meal in Levi’s house. A large number of tax collectors and other outcasts were following Jesus, and many of them joined him and his disciples at the table. Some teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees, saw that Jesus was eating with these outcasts and tax collectors, so they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such people?” Jesus heard them and answered, “People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts.”

Are You A Friend Of Sinners?

       I remember Anna telling me this story. 

Anna said that the moment she joined Light of Jesus (my community), she stopped having lunch with her regular lunch-mates, because they weren’t spiritually renewed. She ate instead with another officemate who was a member of Couples for Christ.

       Anna said she lost interest in her usual lunch-mates because their discussion was worldly. But with her new spiritual friend, they only talked about God. They spoke the same language. They quoted the same verses. They shared the same stories.

       But after one year, she felt like God hit her on the head. She heard God tell her, “Go back to your former friends. Love them.”

       Anna realized she made a mistake. So she went with her former lunch-mates again. And they told her, “We felt hurt that you suddenly left us. That we were not holy enough for you.” She asked for forgiveness. And they welcomed her back.

       Today, Anna is able to bring God’s Love to her friends. And some of them are now attending the Feast, our weekly gathering.

Annoyance or Acceptance?

       Let me tell you a sad fact: According to surveys, the longer a person attends church, the more he isolates himself from the unchurched.   

       Christians like Anna stop attending civic organization. She stops hanging out with her officemates. She stops joining the homeowners meetings. She stops attending PTA meetings.

       Instead, she meets only people from her church.

       Because she gets annoyed at non-Christian behavior.

       Examples?

o   “I don’t like their green jokes.”

o   “I can’t stand their cursing.”

o   “They believe in New Age stuff.”

o   “My old friends smoke. I can’t stand secondhand smoke.” (Daniel and his three friends were thrown in a burning furnace because of their faith, and we’re afraid of secondhand smoke?)

Suddenly, the proof of spiritual growth is “annoyance”. How annoyed are you at non-Christian behavior? The more annoyed you are, the more spiritual you must be.

       But this is nuts.

       Jesus ate with prostitutes, tax-collectors, and drunkards. You can be sure there was a lot more than cursing and green jokes when they gathered. But Jesus made them his friends. That’s why religious people called him a “friend of sinners” (Luke 7:34).

       He ate in the house of Zacheus, the chief tax collector.

       He allowed a prostitute to wash and anoint his feet.

The proof that you’re spiritually growing isn’t annoyance but acceptance. Here’s the real proof that you’re spiritually growing: If you accept sinners.  If you’re non-judgmental to sinners.   If you’re friends of sinners. 

Just like Jesus.

My Wonderful Friends Today

Today, I enjoy friends who are unchurched.

       Today, I regularly meet with people who would never enter a Church. I have a woman friend who’s never been to Sunday Mass for decades. Two of my friends are lesbians. One friend is in an adulterous relationship. And then there’s a New Ager who’s into the occult. 

       I love them. And I enjoy being with them.

       I don’t condemn them. Because I know that Jesus doesn’t condemn them.

       Guess what: Slowly, because of our friendship, they’re coming closer to God. 

       Oh, it’s exciting to see that happen!    

       Warning: Obviously, there are situations when you need to be careful. It may not be wise for a recovering alcoholic to spend time with his drinking buddies while they’re drinking. Or a recovering sex addict spending time with prostitutes. Be prudent.

What’s Your Greatest Evangelistic Weapon?

John 13:34-35

And now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  If you have love for one another, then everyone will know that you are my disciples.

       How will people know that you’re a disciple?

       Not by how long you pray.

Not by how many Bible verses you know.

Not by how many scapulars hang around your neck.

Not by how many rosaries hang in your rear-view mirror.

       People will know you’re a disciple if you love like Jesus.

       And surprise, surprise! This same love will be your most important tool in winning someone to Jesus. I repeat: Your greatest way of bringing someone closer to God is your friendship.

Eleven Years Later

       When I was in college, I had a friend who I met for lunch almost everyday for two years. Let’s call him Bill.

       During those lunches, I remember trying to share my faith with him.

       But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t seem to convince Bill to follow Jesus. He said he had a lot of doubts. He had many other problems and he wasn’t ready to commit. But even if we didn’t agree about spiritual things, we enjoyed our friendship a lot.

       We couldn’t talk about spiritual things (because we disagreed about them), but we talked about everything else: sports, girls, cars, girls, music, and… did I mention girls? (After all, we were college guys!)

       I dropped out of college and we lost touch. 

And I never heard of Bill again.

       Eleven years later, I was walking in a mall and guess who I saw—Bill! I asked him how he was, and he gave me the shock of his life. He said he was a Christian missionary!

       I couldn’t believe my ears.

       He then said five words that made my heart leap for joy. “Thanks for showing me Jesus.”

       For those 2 years that I was having lunch with the guy, it seemed like nothing was happening.

       But it was true.

       What showed him Jesus?

       Our friendship.

       Who Introduced Me To God?

When I was 12 years old, my father told me, “Bo, let’s go to the prayer meeting.” 

I walked in, liked it, and never left. As a 12-year-old kid, I fell in love with God, and my life has never been the same.

       People ask me, “One invitation from your parents and you said Yes?”

       Actually, I didn’t get one invitation. All throughout my life, Dad was already inviting me—in a very silent way—to experience God’s Love.

       How? By the power of relationship.

       When I was a small boy, I remember that Dad treated me special. Everytime he came home from work, he’d look for me.

Dad would invite me to jog with him.

He wasn’t a great jogger. We jogged around the car parked in our garage. 

After the jog, he’d sit down and make me sit on his lap. He’ll read to me 4 comic strips in the paper: Tarzan, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, and Peanuts.

       That happened every single night.

       I remember how during the day, I’d look forward to evenings.   Evenings were special to me. Because Dad came home and spent that precious one hour with me.

       That wasn’t all.

Every Saturday, my father would invite me out for a date. He’d bring me out for pizza. Or watch a movie. Or go to a toy store.

By relating to me in a loving way, Dad gave me a glimpse of who God is. If my father thought I was special, then perhaps my Father in Heaven thought I was special too. If my father liked spending time with me, then perhaps my Father in Heaven liked spending time with me too.

       Note: Dad didn’t talk much about God. He wasn’t much of a talker. His favorite word was “Hmmph.” I’d greet him, “Hi Dad!” and he’s grunt, “Hmmph.”

But by the loving relationship he had with me, I was slowly being “discipled”.

Be Another Jesus In The World

       You can bring your family and friends closer to God.

       How do I know?     Because God gave you a mission: To make disciples. 

       You don’t have to be a preacher, a writer, a singer.

       All you need to do is be a loving friend. By your friendship, they will experience God’s Love.

May your dreams come true,

Bo Sanchez

Now that the headline has caught your attention…

…The Daily Telegraph reports here on two lesbian women who went on a honeymoon trip after their homosexual ‘wedding’ and had a bad time because they were treated badly on account of their being two women who married each other. They are referring to their bad time in the Dominican Republic as Holiday Hell. Some holiday! Some hell!

One of the pair grumbled, “They just didn’t treat us like everybody else!” Errr. The fact of the matter is homosexual couples are not “like everybody else” they’re attempting to be ‘married’ when human history and human biology clearly indicate that marriage is between a man and a woman. A key fits into a lock to open a door. A lock does not fit into a lock–if you catch my meaning.

When homosexual couples claim that they “are like everyone else” it’s simply a lie. They might believe the lie, and sincerely propose the lie. They may enact legislation to make the lie acceptable. They might sue those who refuse the lie. They may punish those who do not accept the lie. Indeed the whole world may rally around to proclaim the lie and persecute those who refuse to accept it.

But it is still a lie.

June 22, 2011 1:38 PM

Public revelation is binding on all Christians, but private revelation is binding only on those who receive it. The Catholic Church teaches that public revelation was completed, and therefore was concluded, with the death of the last apostle (Vatican II, Dei Verbum 4), but private revelation has continued.

“Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private’ revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium[collective sense of the faithful] knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church. Christian faith cannot accept ‘revelations’ that claim to surpass or correct the revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such ‘revelations’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 67).

Some people tend to go to one extreme or the other on private revelation; they either completely reject the concept or they consider private revelation their chief rule of faith. The original sixteenth century Protestant Reformers denied all private revelation—they had to, for all the miracles that had occurred and all the private revelations that had been received over the previous fifteen hundred years had confirmed rather than attacked the Catholic faith. The original Reformers’ actions were in direct disobedience to the binding command of the New Testament: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good” (1 Thess. 5:19–21).

The Reformers’ eradication of all new revelation led people to forget the distinction between public and private revelation. Thus when people appeared claiming to have new revleation, Protestants were left vulnerable to thinking any new revelations would be binding on all Christians. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, religious organizations which claim such new revelations have evolved in Protestant circles; for example, the Irvingites, the Mormons, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the current “Word Faith” or “Prosperity Gospel” movement.

When the Pentecostal movement started in 1900, it faced the problem of explaining why private revelations had ceased for so many centuries, as the original Protestant Reformers claimed, only to begin again during this century. The correct answer, as the following passages from the early Church Fathers show, is that private revelation never did stop.

Hermas
“The vision which I saw, my brethren, was of the following nature . . . [An] old woman approached, accompanied by six young men . . . [And] she said to me . . . ‘Lo! do you not see opposite to you a great tower, built upon the waters, of splendid square stones?’ For the tower was built square by the six young men who had come with her. But myriads of men were carrying stones to it, some dragging them from the depths, others removing them from the land, and they handed them to these six young men. . . . [And the woman said:] ‘The tower which you see building is myself, the Church . . . the tower is built upon the waters . . . because your life has been and will be “saved through water” [1 Pet. 3:20–21] . . . the six young men . . . are the holy angels of God . . . the other persons who are engaged in carrying the stones . . . also are holy angels of the Lord . . . [And] when the tower is finished and built, then comes the end’” (The Shepherd 1:3:1–8 [A.D. 80]).

The Martyrdom of Polycarp
“While he [Polycarp] was thus at his prayers, three days before his arrest, he had a vision in which he saw flames reducing his pillow to ashes; whereupon he turned to his companions and said, ‘I must be going to be burnt alive.’ . . . [After his arrest, the crowd called] loud demands for the Asiarch Philip to let loose a lion at Polycarp. However, he told them that the rules would not allow him to do so, since he had already declared the beast-fighting closed; whereupon they decided to set up a unanimous outcry that he should have Polycarp burnt alive” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 5, 12 [A.D. 155]).

“Polycarp was . . . bishop of the Catholic Church at Smyrna, and a teacher in our own day who combined both apostle and prophet in his own person. For indeed, every word that ever fell from his lips either has had or will have its fulfillment” (ibid., 16).

Justin Martyr
“For the prophetical gifts remain with us [Christians], even to the present time. And hence you [Jews] ought to understand that [the gifts] formerly among your nation have been transferred to us” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 82 [A.D. 155]).

Irenaeus
“In like manner we do also hear many brethren in the Church who possess prophetic gifts and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages and who bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God” (Against Heresies 5:6:1 [A.D. 189]).

Pionius
“I, Pionius, have made a fresh transcript of [The Martyrdom of Polycarp]. I found them after Polycarp the Blessed had revealed their whereabouts in a vision, as I will explain hereafter. Time had reduced them almost to tatters, but I gathered them carefully together in the hope that the Lord Jesus may likewise gather myself amongst his elect into his heavenly kingdom. To him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, copyist note 2 [A.D. 250]).

Constantine the Great
“And while he [the Emperor Constantine] was praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been hard to believe had it been related by any other person. But since the victorious emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history [Eusebius], when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the relation, especially since the testimony of after-time has established its truth? He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes a trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, ‘Conquer By This.’ At this sight he was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle. He said [to me], moreover, that he doubted within himself what the import of this apparition could be. And while he continued to ponder and reason on its meaning, night suddenly came on; then in his sleep the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign which he had seen in the heavens, and commanded him to make a likeness of that sign which he had seen in the heavens, and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies. . . . [B]eing struck with amazement at the extraordinary vision, and resolving to worship no other God save him who had appeared to him, he sent for those who were acquainted with the mysteries of [God’s] doctrines and inquired who that God was and what was intended by the sign of the vision he had seen” (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1:28–32 [A.D. 337]).

Anthony of Egypt
“[Anthony told his monks:] When, therefore, they [demons] come by night to you and wish to tell the future, or say ‘We are the angels,’ give no heed, for they lie. . . . But if they shamelessly stand their ground, capering, and change their forms of appearance, fear them not, nor shrink, nor heed them as though they were good spirits. For the presence either of the good or evil by the help of God can easily be distinguished. The vision of the holy ones is not fraught with distraction: ‘For they will not strive, nor cry, nor shall anyone hear their voice’ [Matt 12:19; cf. Is. 42:2]. But it comes quietly and gently that an immediate joy, gladness, and courage arise in the soul. For the Lord who is our joy is with them, and the power of God the Father” (Ambrose, Life of St. Anthony 35 [A.D. 359]).

Augustine
“For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ, whether by his sacraments or by the prayers or relics of his saints . . . The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there . . . [and when people] had gathered to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which had long lain concealed and unknown but were now made known to the bishop Ambrose in a dream and discovered by him” (City of God 22:8 [A.D. 419]).

“[T]he martyrs, by the very benefits which are given to them that pray, indicate that they take an interest in the affairs of men . . . For not only by effects of benefits, but in the very beholding of men, it is certain that the confessor Felix . . . appeared when the barbarians were attacking Nola, as we have heard not by uncertain rumors but by sure witness” (ibid., 19).

“A certain man by [the] name Curma [was in a coma] . . . Yet he was seeing many things as in a dream; when at last after a great many days he woke up, he told that he had seen. . . . [He also saw] Hippo, where he was seemingly baptized by me . . . After much that he saw, he narrated how he had, moreover, been led into paradise and how it was there said to him, when he was dismissed to return to his own family, ‘Go, be baptized if you want to be in this place of the blessed.’ Thereupon being admonished to be baptized by me, he said it was done already. He who was talking with him replied, ‘Go, be truly baptized, for you only saw that in a vision.’ After this he recovered, went his way to Hippo. . . . He was baptized [and] at the close of the holy days [of Easter] returned to his own place . . . Why should we not believe these to be angelic operations through the dispensation of the providence of God?” (The Care to be Had for the Dead 15 [A.D. 421]).

Sozomen
“Gregory of Nazianz presided over those who maintain the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity, and assembled them together in a little dwelling, which had been altered into the form of a house of prayer, by those who held the same opinions and had a like form of worship. It subsequently became one of the most conspicuous in the city, and is so now, not only for the beauty and number of its structures, but also for the advantages accruing to it from the visible manifestations of God. For the power of God was there manifested, and was helpful both in waking visions and in dreams, often for the relief of many diseases and for those afflicted by some sudden transmutation in their affairs. The power was accredited to Mary, the Mother of God, the holy Virgin, for she does manifest herself in this way” (Church History 7:5 [A.D. 444]).

Patrick of Ireland
“And there truly [in Ireland] one night I heard in my sleep a voice saying to me, ‘You fast well; soon you will go to your fatherland.’ And again, after I very short time, I heard the heavenly voice saying to me, ‘Lo, your ship is ready.’ And it was not near at hand, but was distant, perhaps two hundred miles. And I had never been there, nor did I know any person living there. And thereupon I shortly took flight and left the man with whom I had been for six years. And I came in the strength of God, who prospered my way for good; and I met with nothing to alarm me until I reached that ship” (Confession of St. Patrick 17 [A.D. 452]).

“And once more, after a few years, I was in Britain with my family. . . . And there indeed I saw in a vision of the night a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it were from Ireland with countless letters. He gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter, which was entitled ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ And while I was reading aloud the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voices of those who dwelt beside the Wood of Foclut [in Ireland], which is nigh unto the Western Sea. And thus they cried, as with one mouth, ‘We beseech you, holy youth, to come and walk once more among us!’” (ibid., 23).

“Let those who will, laugh and mock. I shall not be silent nor conceal the signs and wonders which were shown to me by the Lord many years before they came to pass, since he knows all things even before the world’s beginnings” (ibid., 45).

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004

Fr Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R.

If your spiritual life is to develop properly, you must learn how to meditate — the foundation of mental prayer. A great deal can be said about meditation, but we’ll have to limit ourselves to some basic points. I’d like to approach it by sharing something of my own experience.

When I first entered the seminary, I was already used to saying formal prayers, such as my morning and night prayers and some devotional prayers out of a little prayer booklet. But somehow, the idea of meditation seemed complicated. There was talk of different methods and steps in the meditation process. Even the meditation book from which a reflection was read daily to the community in the chapel listed “meditation points” to consider. I felt a bit apprehensive!

Nevertheless, after going to a few organized meditation periods, I realized that this basic form of mental prayer came quite naturally. There was nothing to be afraid of! I began by simply thinking about Jesus in the Gospels, about His words and actions, or about some important part of my Catholic faith, such as the Mass or God’s mercy. Then I found I wanted to talk to the Lord about what I was reflecting on.

In this way I came to realize that my thinking or reflecting (that’s the actual meditation) was leading me to new awareness and insights about Jesus and the truths of my Catholic faith. These insights, in turn, were stirring up various feelings within me (such feelings are called sentiments or affections). The more I meditated and came to new insights, the more I was led to speak with the Lord in my own words, having a loving conversation heart-to-Heart (mine with His). And that, quite simply, was mental prayer.

The Rosary and Stations of the Cross
In fact, I came to realize that I’d actually known for a long time what it is to meditate. For example, I’d done it for years whenever I prayed the Rosary. When reciting each of the fifteen decades, we meditate on one of the joyful, sorrowful, or glorious mysteries or significant events in the life of Jesus and His Blessed Mother.

As I constantly meditated on these mysteries, they became more meaningful for me. I began to see Jesus’ and Mary’s love in each mystery, and gradually realized they have that same love for me, too. By meditating, I was growing to know and love them more personally.

A similar thing was happening when I made the Stations of the Cross. Meditating on fourteen scenes from the passion and death of Our Lord, I experienced feelings (those sentiments or affections) of deeper gratitude to Jesus for all He suffered for me. There were feelings of deeper sorrow for my sins as well, since they caused Jesus to suffer so much. This, in turn, moved me to be more resolved, with the help of His grace, not to commit these sins again in the future.

Judging, then, from my own experience, I would say that many of us Catholics first learn to meditate by simply reciting the Rosary or making the Stations. As we seek to deepen this part of our mental prayer life, a few practical points about meditation and mental prayer may be helpful.

Formal Prayer vs. Mental Prayer
First, mental prayer (also called the prayer of the mind) usually develops naturally from formal prayer (or the prayer of the lips), as my own experience shows. A comparison between these two types of prayer can be useful. Recall St. John Damascene’s famous definition of prayer as “the raising of the mind and the heart to God.” In formal prayer, when we focus on the words of the prayer with our minds, the heart is then moved to love God with the sentiments contained in those words.

For example, if we recite an “Act of Faith,” the words prayed would logically stir up feelings or sentiments of faith in our hearts as we say something such as this: “God, You are all-knowing, and You reveal to us what we need to know and do to get to heaven. I believe in all that You have revealed to us! Please grant me a strong faith so that I will always believe what You teach us through Your Church.”

In mental prayer, however, the focus is not restricted by the words of a prayer formula. Rather, the focus of meditation is usually on a story, such as an event from the life of Jesus; or a teaching He gave, such as a parable; or something from the life of a saint, such as St. Thérèse; or something contained in a good spiritual book. My mind isn’t limited to the words, but moves through various details of the story or ideas contained in the teaching.

The mind, by reflecting on these details, can produce a far wider range of insights, which then stir more sentiments in the heart. The mind is freer to roam through this spiritual landscape. Thus the difference between formal prayer and the meditation of mental prayer is like the difference between reciting a poem, where each specific word is already given, and telling a story freely in your own words.

The Benefits of Meditation
Meditation as form of mental prayer has many benefits. One is a greater understanding and clarity regarding the teachings of our Catholic faith. By meditating, we go deeper into these realities and discover many valuable new insights that weren’t obvious at first sight.

St. John of the Cross used the image of mining for precious metals to describe this spiritual activity. If “there’s gold in them thar hills,” then the more you mine, the more you’ll find! The treasures of the Sacred Scriptures and other truths of our faith aren’t always obvious on the surface, but they’re limitless for those who bother to search for them.

Another benefit, as we’ve seen, is that our reflections stir up the vital sentiments of the heart so needed for loving and serving the Lord faithfully. These sentiments are really the most important fruit of mental prayer. They lead us to talk to God!

In fact, without these sentiments, we’d end up with a purely intellectual exercise, a mere reasoning process. Prayer requires talking with God, and that requires the sentiments.

In this regard, we should mention that beginners practicing mental prayer typically do much more reasoning or reflecting in the mind than speaking from the heart. But as time goes on, less reflection is needed to produce more sentiments. It’s like the growth of a human friendship.

When friends first meet, they need to ask lots of questions and share lots of facts about themselves to get to know each other better. After the friendship has grown, however, there are fewer questions but a deeper knowledge and more intense love for each other. In fact, when the reasoning in prayer becomes significantly less and the sentiments in the heart begin to predominate, it’s usually a sign that we’ve come to the third state or kind or prayer, called affective prayer (or the prayer of the heart).

Finally, the meditation of mental prayer helps us form the resolutions we need to grow in the love of God and our neighbor by a more conscious and consistent practice of the Christian virtues. Our meditations, in the light of the Holy Spirit and with the assistance of His grace, give us insights into how to apply the values of the Gospel, Church teachings, and the wisdom of the saints to our own daily lives. For all these reasons, the meditation that provides a foundation for mental prayer is a must for growth in Christian holiness!

Fr. Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R., is a priest of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, St. Felix Friary, 15 Trinity Plaza, Yonkers, NY 10701; 914-476-7279

A Catholic on National Talk Radio | Daily News | NCRegister.com.

A scan on the radio dial at just about any time of the day will surface a handful of radio talk shows with hosts clamoring to be the voice of reason and to have the answers to solving problems of all types.

One host, however, is very confident that he truly does have something to offer as he unabashedly gives his Catholic take on today’s headline issues. His name is Allen Hunt, and his show, the Allen Hunt Show can be heard each weeknight on 150 stations across the nation.

His viewpoint wasn’t always Catholic, however. He recently sat down to talk about his conversion to the Catholic faith and how it has shaped his radio platform.
Tell me about your journey from Methodist pastor for 20 years to entering the Catholic Church.

I grew up in a culture of Methodist pastors. My uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather were all Methodist pastors. I didn’t know much about the Catholic Church when I was growing up. After I finished seminary at Emory University in Atlanta, I went on to do some graduate-level work at Yale University on early Christian history and the New Testament.

My first exposure to the Catholic Church came while I was there in New England. Much of it came from my friendship with a Dominican friar who was also in the graduate program. That was in the 1990s, and many seeds were planted then. In the next decade or so, God used a number of experiences to bring me home to the Church. I became Catholic on Jan. 6, 2008, on the feast of the Epiphany.
What finally brought you home?

There were three big things that led to me entering the Church. First was a growing sense of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. Secondly is what I call doctrine by democracy. In general, in the Protestant church, everything is up to a vote every few years. For instance, in the Methodist church, every four years we would get together to vote whether or not homosexual behavior is acceptable or not and whether it was time to ordain openly gay pastors.

The third area of reflection was Jesus’ prayer in John 17. There, Jesus pleads for unity in the body of Christ. The Protestant church has split into 33,000 different strands. What message does that fractioning send to the world? As well, how much this division must grieve God’s heart.

I am only one person, but am trying to repair some of that damage by coming home to the mother Church.
At the time of your decision to pursue the Catholic Church you were leading a megachurch in Atlanta. How did your congregation react to your decision?

I had stepped down from my role as senior pastor July 1, 2007, to go into full-time radio ministry. Once I had left the role of pastor, it gave me the freedom to explore and discover the faith.

By and large, most people were supportive of my decision. As is typical of many megachurches, a lot of the members are ex-Catholics. I got a lot of e-mails and phone calls from people who were asking, “What do you see that I don’t see?” There were only a handful of people who were hostile towards me. But after years of being a pastor, I was used to people being hostile towards me.

Tell me about the Allen Hunt Show.

We started the show in 2006 with just a few hours on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t plan on being on Christian or Catholic radio. The show began as a way to engage the mainstream on all the issues of life through the lens of faith.

We want to come at things with a moral compass and engage people of all walks of life. I am unapologetic and non-defensive on who I am, what I stand for and where I’m coming from. It is mainstream radio done for you by a very Catholic guy.
Is there an evangelization element to your program?

I share my Catholic faith, but I don’t promote it — and I think that is at the heart of the show. I am who I am, and I am comfortable with who I am. I want to engage people who agree or disagree with me in a grace-filled way, as opposed to bomb throwing, which seems to be the standard these days. 

I think a lot of people find it very heartening that there is someone like them on mainstream radio. Then there is another group of people who find this fact strange to them. And then there is a small, vocal group who can’t stand my faith, but they keep listening. As long as they are listening, I’m content with that. Let’s talk and have a civil conversation.
What’s the future for you and the program?

We need to continue to do what God wants us to do. I think what that means is to continue to engage the culture with a reasonable voice of faith. Our long-term goal is to be on over 300 stations each week, Monday through Friday.
What is your take on the debate on whether or not conservative talk radio was to blame for the Tuscon shooting, the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords?
Neither talk radio nor inflamed political rhetoric caused a mentally deranged young man to indiscriminately shoot people in Tucson any more than they caused the Virginia Tech massacre or even the silly Dunkin Donuts drive-through tirade last month regarding the lack of sprinkled donuts.
As you talk to America, day in and day out, what are two or three issues or themes that come up again and again? What is the temperament or the mood of the nation, so to speak?

In general, there is a self-confidence crisis in America. We have forgotten who we are. People are concerned and feel like we have lost something, even though they cannot always pinpoint what that is. Part of this is a natural response to a very long recession that has drained a lot of people’s passion and optimism. They worry we may never emerge from it. Part of this is a response to the lack of moral compass that we now routinely experience in our public life together, in our entertainment and even in our public schools.

Register correspondent Eddie O’Neill writes from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

In Search Of The Full Gospel

By Deborah Danielski

Like many converts to the Catholic Church, Deborah Danielski wandered through a variety of back roads and cul-de-sacs on her way home. Her search for the full gospel was a frustrating one, filled with wrong turns and complicated by a drinking problem and two abusive marriages. But Christ calls His sheep by name, and Deborah heard His voice and followed Him home to the Catholic Church. She recounts for you the details of her conversion story and how she found the fullness of the Christian Faith where she least expected it.

As my husband Ed and I drove down a quiet rural Illinois highway one day, we passed a large wooden sign at the side of the road. The hand-painted lettering on the sign proclaimed, “Full Gospel Church —1/2 mile.” “What is a ‘full gospel’ church?” Ed asked. As I attempted to explain, a light came on in my mind, and suddenly I knew. The “full gospel” was what I had been searching for all of my adult life, at times actively, at other times without even being aware of what it was I sought. ”

Almost immediately, I sensed a brilliant light that seemed to move toward me. I felt immersed in God’s presence and love. I simultaneously laughed and cried and when I opened my mouth to speak, I was singing praises to God in a language I had never learned.” 

Apart from a brief encounter with Jesus at age 6, I grew up pretty much without religion. When I got to my teens, I took the route all-too-common in the ’60s, “looking for love in all the wrong places.” Just before my 17th birthday, I found myself pregnant and standing before a minister, vowing to “love, honor and obey” my 17-year-old boyfriend, while thinking about the red-checkered tablecloth I’d buy for our tiny new kitchen. 

By the time I reached my mid-20s, I was into my second abusive marriage and was the mother of three. I’d messed up my life just about as much as I possibly could. Near despair, I determined it was time to make some effort to change my miserable life. I began by seeking counseling. That was when a series of incredible “coincidences” began to occur through which the Spirit of the Lord led me to the gospel.

“How much do you drink?” the counselor asked only a short way into the first session. “What does that have to do with anything?” I wondered to myself. “Oh, not too much,” I responded. “Maybe about a six-pack a day.” He raised his eyebrows. ” ‘Not too much?’ Six beers a day is ‘not too much?’ ” Had I been completely honest, I would have told him that I often drank more than that. Much to my surprise, he referred me to an alcohol abuse counselor. I was pretty sure drinking wasn’t my problem, but knowing I had exhausted my own resources, I made the appointment.

“The first thing you have to do is admit the problem is beyond your control and submit it to God,” said the counselor. “Oh great,” I thought. “This will never work.” Sure, I could admit the problem was beyond my control, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there, but submit it to God? No way.

“I don’t believe in God,” I countered. “It doesn’t have to be any particular god,” she said, “but some form of ‘supreme being,’ however you understand Him.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe in any supreme being.” The counselor smiled. “You consider yourself a pretty open-minded person, don’t you?” It was exactly the right question. I felt I was the most open-minded person I knew. “Definitely,” I shot back. “But you’ve closed your mind to God,” she suggested. She was right. I had closed my mind and heart to God. Perhaps I could give it a try, I thought. I had nothing to lose. My stress goes down but my curiosity goes up. 

Out of hand, I rejected Christianity as too “traditional.” So, in search of a more palatable option, I went to the local library and checked out a couple of books on yoga and Hinduism and began my search for “God.” Soon I was practicing transcendental meditation at least 20 minutes a day. I was more relaxed, less stressed out about my problems, but I hadn’t found God. And I knew it.

At the same time, my husband Melvin was commuting to work with a man who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Every day Melvin would come home from work telling me something new John had said about God, Jesus, and the Bible. I had never read the Bible and we didn’t even own one, but I was sure what John was telling Melvin couldn’t possibly be true. Nonetheless, I found myself getting more and more curious. Then one day I was reading a book about yoga and came across the following claim, “Truly spiritual people are always vegetarians. Even in the Hebrew Bible, God gave man the fruits of the trees to be their food, not the animals of the field.” I was puzzled. I’d known many Christians over the years, and not one of them had been a vegetarian.

My curiosity got the best of me. I went out to the store and bought a Bible. I just had to know if what that author and the Jehovah’s Witness were saying was true. That night, I began to read the Gospel of Matthew, and immediately fell in love with Jesus. I knew without a doubt that no mere man could have invented the stories I read. If man were even capable of imagining God would become human, he would at least have Him born in a castle, I thought, but never in a manger. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus told me in Scripture. “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” 

These were definitely not the words of a mere man. In my experience, the meek never inherited anything but trouble. I lay there in bed, reading all night long, continuing into Mark, Luke and John. Just before daybreak, I rose, knelt by the side of my bed and began to pray. As I prayed, I experienced an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence. It was as though He stood at my side with His hand resting on my shoulder, and I was nearly overcome with a feeling of love more powerful than any I had ever imagined. I knew without a doubt that Jesus loved me, and I knew my sinful past was forgiven as I surrendered my life to this incomprehensible God/Man Who captured my heart. St. Paul knew what he was talking about.

“Coincidentally,” my children were attending Bible school that week with our Baptist neighbors. That Sunday morning, I attended a worship service at their small, independent Baptist church and publicly professed my faith in Christ. The next week I was baptized by immersion. For the next year, I seldom missed a Sunday morning, Sunday evening or Wednesday night service. And I seldom allowed a day to pass without spending some time reading the Holy Scriptures and in prayer. I had tasted that the Lord was good, but I began to sense there was more to Christ than I had found. There was something missing. I sensed that I had not yet found the full gospel.

A friend and fellow Baptist, Marsha, began to tell me about the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and the gifts of the Spirit. I searched the Scriptures and read every publication I could find on the subject. Marsha was involved in the “Women’s Aglow Fellowship,” an interdenominational women’s group associated with the “Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association.” I attended their next monthly meeting and was excited by the freedom with which this group praised God. 

Expecting to feel uneasy if any of the gifts of the Spirit were manifested, I was amazed when the group began to glorify God in a host of other languages and the only things I felt were joy, peace and fulfillment. “Yes, this is it,” I thought. This was what I had been missing. 

At the end of the service, I went forward for prayer. More than anything in the world I wanted this “full gospel.” As I knelt at the altar with my eyes closed in prayer, the leader laid her hands on my head. Almost immediately, I sensed a brilliant light in a far corner of the room that seemed to move toward me, and I soon felt immersed in God’s presence and love. I simultaneously laughed and cried and when I opened my mouth to speak, I was singing — singing praises to God in a language I had never learned.

Those were some of the best years of my life. I loved God, I loved my family, I loved everyone. Certainly there were trials, but I had the Spirit of God to uphold me through anything, or so I thought. Since my Baptist pastor did not believe in the gifts of the Spirit, I soon moved my membership to an Assembly of God. After a while, I came to believe that as a child of God, I had the “right” to walk always in divine health and material prosperity. With God as my Father, I believed nothing evil could touch me. I was satisfied that I had found the fullness of God and was convinced I was beyond reproach. I still avidly read Scripture, but I must have missed St. Paul’s warning: “Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Did God betray me? There was a major fall in store for me and when it hit, the entire structure of my new life was shattered.

For six years Melvin and I had prayed for a child. I had my two children from my first marriage with me only on weekends. When Melvin’s brother had been tragically killed two years before, we adopted his 3-year-old son. But Melvin desperately wanted a child of his own. One Wednesday evening as I stood praising God at the end of a worship service, I felt a sudden pain in my lower abdomen. I “rebuked” it, as I had been taught. But nothing happened. In fact, the pain grew worse. I went forward to the altar and asked two friends to help pray for my healing. We prayed and prayed. Still the pain worsened. The pastor was closing the church, so seven friends and I went to one of their homes, where we continued to pray and rebuke the pain in my abdomen. Still it did not yield. Finally I asked someone to take me to the hospital. I was experiencing my second tubal pregnancy. The tube burst and immediate surgery was required to save my life. Nothing that was tried could save my baby. I was devastated. Not only had my faith failed to heal my body, but it was now evident that I would never have another child, and my husband would never have one of his own — at least not with me.

As soon as I was released from the hospital, I was back in church, just in time to hear a sermon I will never forget. “Anyone who claims to be a Christian,” the preacher roared, “and would willingly go into a hospital and let someone cut on them with a knife is deluded!” I sat through the remainder of that sermon about “true faith,” but when it ended, I left that church, never to return. I wasn’t sure whether their theology was skewed or I had just utterly failed, but it put me into a tailspin. What had it all meant?, I wondered. Was what happened to me really due to a lack of faith? Was it my own fault? What could I have done differently? Or could all I had previously experienced — all the joy in praying, the warm feelings, the power I felt in “rebuking” sickness and evil, and speaking in “tongues” — could all that have been nothing more than wishful thinking?

I never spoke to that pastor again and my friends just didn’t seem to have the answers I needed. I soon stopped reading Scripture and stopped praying. I felt God had betrayed me, and I had no idea where to turn. I still believed in Him. I still believed in the gospel, but I no longer knew what it meant for me, and frankly, I was no longer inclined to find out.

I left my husband and found my mother. Melvin soon returned to his excessive drinking and abuse. My faith was shattered, but a spark of self-esteem remained. For the first time in my life, I felt I could make it on my own. Though I made far too little money to support myself in the manner to which I had grown accustomed, that no longer mattered. All I wanted was a little peace. I knew I would rather live in a hole in a wall in peace, than to continue the nearly constant battles with my husband. It was not easy to admit to another failure, but after 13 years in my second marriage, I left Melvin and obtained a second divorce.

Three years later, God gave me one of the greatest gifts I would ever receive from Him, my current husband, Ed. Though I had turned my back on Him, Christ had not abandoned me. Not long after my marriage to Ed, a series of “coincidences” began to occur in my life that made it impossible for me to ignore Christ and His full gospel any longer. My friend Judy, a Catholic with whom I had never discussed God or religion, unexpectedly gave me a book for my 43rd birthday. One glance at the cover of the book made me question her sanity. The book was about apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and the cover bore her picture. Though I knew nothing about apparitions, I had strong convictions about the Virgin Mary. I knew she had existed and I knew she’d given birth to our Lord, but apart from that, I’d rarely given her a second thought, except to condemn Catholics for “worshipping” her.

“I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Judy said as I held the book in my hand, looking incredulously at its cover. “It’s . . . spiritual.” I was polite. “Oh, I like spiritual books,” I said, all the while wondering what could ever have possessed anyone to give me a book about Mary. My being polite was a big mistake. It opened the door for Judy to spend the next hour-and-a-half telling me all about her new and wonderful relationship with the Virgin Mary. She told me Mary had become her dearest friend and closest confidante. I thought she’d gone over the edge. “Lord, help her,” I prayed. But I reluctantly accepted the book and out of curiosity, went home and began to read it.

Almost immediately, I felt the Holy Spirit move in my heart for the first time in years. I continued to read, and soon sensed Christ asking me to open my heart to His mother. My life was not such a mess as it had been when I first began to seek the Lord. Considering my past mistakes, I was relatively happy and successful. I hadn’t consciously felt a need for anything more. But God in His infinite wisdom and mercy stirred again in me that lifelong yearning to know Him in His fullness. In my hands that day was the answer. How better to learn the “full gospel” than from the very Mother of God? Who could more effectively lead me to the fullness of Christ than the human being who carried our Lord in her womb, nourished Him at her breast and lived physically and intimately with Him every moment of His life — the one who not only bore witness to the Word, but actually bore the Word? “And immediately something like scales fell…” 

I finished the book Judy gave me and proceeded to read everything I could get my hands on about apparitions and visions of the Blessed Mother. I devoured anything I could find regarding Fatima. I came to believe there was a profound message behind these Marian apparitions. “There will never be peace for individuals or mankind until you turn your hearts back to your Creator,” Mary seemed to be saying. “God loves you. Repent and pray for your own conversion, and for the conversion of the world.” I began to do just that, and many of my misconceptions about Catholicism were soon unmasked. Catholics didn’t worship Mary, I realized. They were devoted to her as the Mother of Christ. They reverenced Mary as the first Christian. They embraced Christ’s precious gift from the Cross — the gift of His mother to His body, the Church (cf. John 19:25-27). Statues of Mary in Catholic churches were no more “false idols” than were the pictures of my beloved husband and children in my home. 

I fell in love with my spiritual mother. I studied the Roman Catholic Faith. I read books by Scott Hahn, Alan Schreck, Karl Keating, Mark Shea, Patrick Madrid and Thomas Howard. I reread chapter six of the Gospel of John. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in you,” Christ said to the skeptical Jews. I realized Holy Communion could be much more than symbolic of the Last Supper. By the power of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Mass, Christ is truly present and imparts His life through the bread and wine. 

While wrestling with the Catholic meaning of the communion of saints, Christ’s words to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:31-32 came to life. “Have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” It excited me to learn that the saints who lived before us had not been cut off from the Body of Christ just because they had died. I was as free to ask any of them to pray for me as I was to ask anyone here on earth. As I learned more about our covenant relationship with God, infant baptism took on a whole new meaning. Why wouldn’t our Father provide a means for our newborn children to enter that relationship, just as He had for the Jews in circumcision? In direct contrast to what I’d previously believed, I found Catholics had an objective faith totally absent from any other church I’d attended. I learned God always imparts His grace through the sacraments, regardless of the recipient’s faith. Sure, faith was necessary for the sacramental grace to flourish, but it was God Who acted first, not man.

“Catholics don’t believe in reading the Bible,” I’d been taught. But when I began to attend Mass, I heard far more Scripture read at every service than I had ever heard at any Protestant church.

“No priest can forgive sin,” I’d previously believed. But if Christ were present on earth, would I choose to sit in my own home and confess mentally to Him, hoping and praying I’d been forgiven? Or would I go to Him in person and hear the words of forgiveness directly from His mouth? That is exactly the reassurance the sacrament of reconciliation offers, I realized. Christ is indeed present and available to forgive sin, in His Body the Church, and in His representatives, the priests. It all began to make sense, and it was all found in the Catholic Church, the one Church on earth I had believed I would never enter. Much to my surprise, everything I learned about the Catholic Church expanded and enriched my faith, but I continued to have one major concern. Would I have to give up my belief in the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to become Catholic? One final obstacle to the fullness of truth and grace.

I was still struggling with that dilemma when Ed and I attended a Marriage Encounter weekend (I’m currently going through the process prescribed by the Church of having my marriage situation regularized). At the closing Mass, the couples formed a circle as Father Tom Griffith distributed Holy Communion. Having not yet committed to or been accepted into the Catholic Church, I gently shook my head when Father Tom came to me. Rather than passing on to the next person, he stopped, laid hands on Ed and me, and prayed. When Father Tom prayed, I felt so overwhelmed by the power of the Holy Spirit that my knees grew weak and I nearly fell over. I was astonished. I had never believed a Catholic priest could pray with such power. I was delighted to discover the Holy Spirit was indeed alive and well in at least some members of the Catholic Church.

Having come this far in my journey toward Catholicism, I had to know immediately what my own parish priest believed about the baptism and gifts of the Spirit. “Is it okay for a Catholic to believe in the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit?” I nervously asked Father Tony Nugent. “Of course!” he responded. “Though we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism, we don’t always experience a full release of the power of the Spirit until much later,” he continued, relating his own experience of “the full release of the Spirit” as an adult priest. “Praise God,” I gasped. Relieved and encouraged by his incredible response, I poured out my soul. I told Father Tony all about my previous spiritual experiences, including the one that had led me to abandon my faith in God. “Do you believe it is always God’s will to heal?” I asked. “Yes,” he responded. “But He may not always heal in the way we want or expect. If God had granted you the physical healing you sought that day, you would not be here with me today,” he said, assuring me I was on the right path. “He healed you spiritually instead.”

In that moment, I recalled Romans 8:28: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” What had seemed to be the worst experience of my life, God had worked for my ultimate good. Another enormous burden was lifted from my soul. Finally, I knew I had it all. I had a loving Heavenly Father Who called me out of darkness and offered me life through the Body and Blood of His only begotten Son, nearly 2,000 years ago in the crucifixion, and today in the Holy Eucharist. I had the Son, Who humbled Himself, became man and was obedient unto death to give the power of the Holy Spirit to His Body, the Church. I had the Holy Spirit, Who enlightens, cleanses and empowers. I had His spouse, my spiritual mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to show me the way. I had Christ’s Church, built upon the rock, led by the Holy Spirit into all truth and against which the gates of hell will never prevail. And within that Church, I had priests and the fellowship of a group of believers who embraced both the gifts of the Holy Spirit and devotion to our Blessed Mother. At last, the full gospel was mine.

All Information Highways lead to Rome

By Diane Kamer

A cradle Catholic, I’d spent my early years in an Irish-American ghetto in inner-city Boston. Here, during the pious ’50s, I’d developed an awed fascination with Catholic culture. I loved its mysterious milieu: the statues, votive candles and stained glass…the Latin hymns, May processions and novenas…the dimly-lit churches filled with incense during High Mass and Benediction. I eagerly read Lives of the Saints, borrowed from the public library’s bookmobile. And like many little girls of that era, I dreamed of becoming a nun.

But after we moved to the suburbs when I was eight, the Catholic influence faded. My mom, who’d always inclined toward skepticism, gradually withdrew from parish involvement. By my teens, I too had become a skeptic. I stopped attending Mass and drifted into unreflecting agnosticism. Then, in my late teens, something happened. After a disastrous semester at an “experimental” college, I was living at home, listlessly looking for a job. On weekend nights, my hippie friends and I hung out at a “coffeehouse” sponsored by the local Congregational church. Soon several friends invited me to a Bible study at the home of a local lady who’d helped organize the coffeehouse. I had nothing better to do, so I tagged along. In the weeks that followed, as we plowed through the Synoptic Gospels, I found myself powerfully attracted to Jesus. I argued, balked, objected; but I kept coming back for more. Finally, our hostess took us for an overnight trip to a Christian coffeehouse in western Massachusetts. There, when the youth ministers asked if I was ready to receive Jesus, I surprised myself by saying yes. The next morning, on the trip back home, I felt elated, freed. I knew little about the faith I’d just embraced, but I did know I’d passed a turning point. Everything seemed fresh and new. A few months later, when I returned to college, I discovered that some of my classmates had also “accepted Jesus.” But after flirting with Pentecostalism, these friends had hankered for a richer, more liturgical tradition. Now they were attending a local “high church” Episcopal parish. Under their influence, I too journeyed from Fundamentalism to Anglicanism — and eventually back to Catholicism.

Near the outset of my return to the Catholic Church, I received the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” at a Full Gospel Businessmen’s Meeting. I began praying in tongues, and soon I was involved heavily in the local Catholic charismatic renewal. Unfortunately, my grasp of Catholic spirituality was weak. Although I was studying medieval history, I knew and cared little about prayer traditions that predated Vatican II. Caught up in the post-conciliar spirit, I neglected the Rosary and other age-old devotions in favor of more spontaneous worship. And, hungry for a deeper experience of God, I often focused on “feelings” — what the mystics call “consolations” — rather than on Jesus Himself. After college, back in big, impersonal Boston, I hung onto my faith for a while. But gradually, under the pressure of the sexual revolution, I abandoned both my beliefs and my chastity. I remember once sitting in the passenger seat as a colleague with whom I was carpooling raced helter-skelter down Route 128. “We’re going to crash,” I thought, “and I’m going to die in mortal sin.” The thought scared me — but not enough to drive me back to Confession.

Ironically, I reached a low point during my mid-20s, while I was studying Church history at Harvard Divinity School. I suppose I must have still believed something — otherwise, why study Church history? — but I certainly didn’t live my faith. I spent only a year at Harvard before deciding to rejoin the real world. But the Lord was accomplishing His will in me even then, for at Harvard, I met the man who would eventually become my husband. Steve was working toward his doctorate in Byzantine history at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. We took a class together, then lost touch. A year after I’d left school, we ran into each other outside the subway kiosk in the center of Harvard Square. We exchanged phone numbers, then launched a stormy dating relationship. Some months later, we moved in together and set up house. In fall 1980, while I was working at a well-known Boston publishing house, I became pregnant. At the time, Steve was earning scanty wages as a non-resident tutor at Harvard’s Leverett House. I was making nearly as little at my publishing job. Depressed and anxious about my career, I opted for abortion. Steve accompanied me to the feminist-run clinic and held my hand as I writhed in pain during the agonizing suction procedure. Afterward, I felt no remorse, only relief. It would be years before I would face the consequences of my “choice.”

Still, the Lord refused to give up on me. Even as I persisted in terrible sin, He kept drawing me gently to Himself. A year or so later, I formally joined the Episcopal Church. Here, I thought, I’d find Catholic ritual and richness, without Catholicism’s “rigid” moral strictures. Translation: I could be an Episcopalian in good standing and still live with my boyfriend. In 1982, Steve and I were married in an Episcopalian ceremony at Harvard’s Memorial Church. The following summer, we headed down to rural northwest Louisiana, where Steve had taken a teaching job. Over the next six or seven years, we moved up and down the East Coast: first to north-central Vermont, then to southern Vermont, then back south to North Carolina. Early on, we’d agreed to remain “childless by choice,” and through the years, we consistently practiced birth control — a barrier method, the diaphragm, since I was afraid of the Pill. Off and on, we kept attending Episcopal churches. Sometimes, fed up with politically-correct Anglican theology, we’d wander into the local Catholic church. Yet we always felt like interlopers. Usually I would shuffle down the aisle at Communion time. But I’d make sure to receive the Sacred Host from the lay Eucharistic minister, not from the priest. Superstitiously, I feared that the priest could look into my soul and see my mortal sin — my past abortion and my present contraceptive practices. Despite my outward bravado, I felt inner shame. Even when I curtly told a Catholic friend that her objections to birth control were “hogwash,” deep down inside, I knew I was sinning. By the time we settled down near Winston-Salem, N.C., I knew I couldn’t return to Anglicanism. Steve and I both felt turned off by our Episcopal Church experiences. We were tired of watered-down, left-wing teaching. But where could we go from there?

Steve started exploring Evangelicalism — an easy thing to do here in the Carolina Piedmont, a Southern Baptist stronghold. But while I too felt the lure of Baptist theology — get saved once, and you’re set — I couldn’t be comfortable in a stark, bare church, with no liturgy or tradition. During an illness, Steve experienced a profound conversion to Jesus. He began avidly reading the Bible and listening to Evangelical radio. One day he was struck by Christ’s words, “Whoever receives a little child for My sake, receives Me.” Soon afterward, on New Year’s Day, he announced that we could try to conceive. I was overjoyed. At age 40, I felt none of my earlier aversion to motherhood. Now I yearned for a baby. I was suffering from undiagnosed Graves’ Disease — overactive thyroid — so it took me awhile to get pregnant. But finally, that November, I noticed unmistakable symptoms. Then a home pregnancy test turned out positive. Memories of my abortion flooded my mind and heart. Deeply penitent, I felt unworthy of this precious new gift the Lord had graciously given me. I started longing to go back to Confession. At the time, we were attending a tiny Catholic mission church not too far from our backwoods home. Largely run by its lay members, it was extremely “laid back.” No stained glass, no kneelers. No rigorous moral demands. Just plenty of feel-good fellowship.

During the Advent penance service, I made my first Confession in at least 15 years. Father listened sympathetically as I confessed the abortion. Then I hesitantly brought up the issue of artificial birth control. I knew Steve planned to return to contraception once I’d delivered the baby. How could I honestly confess something I fully intended to keep doing? Father let me off the hook. Natural Family Planning, he said, was the Church’s “ideal,” but we can’t always live up to ideals. Besides, my relationship with Steve was of prime importance. The Lord didn’t want us bickering over birth control. If we honestly couldn’t abstain during fertile times, so be it. Artificial contraception, he implied, was the lesser of two evils, preferable to marital discord. I left Confession convinced I could keep using the diaphragm. Even in retrospect, however, I can’t fully blame Father for this. He had told me what I wanted to hear, but it was my fault for wanting to hear it. Now I was “officially” back in the Catholic Church, but I still didn’t feel at home. My prayer life was a mess. I couldn’t connect with God. My faith seemed to make little or no difference in my life. Why couldn’t I live like a “new creature,” in the joy, peace and freedom of the Lord? This question haunted me. Yet it never occurred to me that the answer was my disobedience. Like so many others, I’d become a cafeteria Catholic. Deep inside, I knew better, but I just couldn’t bring myself to submit wholeheartedly to Church teaching. Unfortunately, Steve felt even more strongly than I that it was okay to pick and choose among Catholic beliefs. He pooh-poohed my suggestion that perhaps we should play by the rules — all the rules — rather than decide for ourselves which ones to obey.

Again, though, I have only myself to blame. Steve’s views suited my own inclinations, so I took the path of least resistance. Our son John Michael was born in July 1992, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. As soon as my fertility returned, I went back to the diaphragm. But now I was a mother, and what a difference that made. When I rocked my baby in my arms and lost myself in his gaze, I gained a whole new perspective on birth control. Who was I to roadblock the miracle of life? How dare I thwart the Creator? Gradually, I began to believe contraception was wrong. Torn between Steve and God, I started taking secret chances. Sometimes I “forgot” to apply spermicide to the diaphragm. Occasionally, I just plain “forgot” the diaphragm. I figured at my age, the risk of conception was low. Yet 19 months later, I was pregnant again. Our son Paul Stephen was born in October 1994. Once more, I returned to the diaphragm, but this time with strong reluctance. I began to pray that Steve would agree to Natural Family Planning (NFP). Yet I had little hope of this. Every time I broached the subject, he flatly refused. And I do mean flatly!

It was in this context that I began to explore cyberspace. At the time, I was still nursing Paul off and on, although I’d returned to my copywriting job at a local advertising agency. In the evenings, I’d sit at the computer, cradling Paul in one arm as he placidly nursed. With the other hand, I’d bang out e-mail notes and bulletin board messages. Still a Net novice, I started with the easy stuff: America Online’s message boards. Right away, I delved into the Religion and Culture forum, where I discovered Christianity Online. But after a few forays into cyber-Evangelicalism, I gravitated toward the Catholic boards. Even at the time, I felt the Holy Spirit’s powerful pull toward the true Faith. From the start, the Catholic message boards shocked me, for they were crowded with postings from Catholics half my age. Here were these hip Gen-Xers eagerly discussing theology and arguing doctrinal fine points. But that wasn’t the most startling part. No. What really shook me was their orthodoxy. At our little mission church, with its ’60s-redux atmosphere, orthodoxy was considered passe. Yet these youngsters took it for granted. For them, Catholicism was cool. They weren’t talking about cafeteria Catholicism, however, with its tendency to throw out the baby with the post-conciliar bathwater. They meant the genuine article, complete with total loyalty to the Magisterium and absolute submission to Church authority.

Sick of their parents’ compromises, these kids were busy recovering the heritage they’d lost: the ancient devotions and prayers, the Eucharistic and Marian piety. Browsing among their messages, I could feel the Catholic atmosphere of my childhood and sense the awesome mystery of our Faith. Whatever these youngsters had, I wanted it. I craved a strong, sinewy alternative to theological mush. I longed to adore God totally and obey Him unreservedly. With a sense of exultant freedom, I realized I didn’t have to buy into the tepid liberal Catholicism favored by my Baby Boom peers. In fact, the liberal boomers were behind the curve. Orthodoxy was back in style. I began to post messages agreeing with the more orthodox postings. I found myself defending positions I didn’t even know I held — the necessity of both faith and works for salvation; the crucial role of Mary. Yet while I did so, I had a nagging sense that I was an impostor. After all, I myself was not an orthodox Catholic in good standing. What would my cyber-chums say, I wondered, if they knew I still practiced birth control? That’s when I ran smack into Blessed Faustina.

I was browsing through AOL’s Catholic message boards one evening, when one subject line caught my eye: “Divine Mercy.” Well, I certainly needed that. I’d always had a hard time believing God truly loved me. I clicked on the subject line, and the message bloomed open. As I scanned it, I began to breathe faster. Here, allegedly, were the actual words of Jesus, spoken in private revelation to a little Polish nun more than 60 years ago. “I am Love and Mercy itself,” He had reportedly told Blessed Faustina. “Let the weak, sinful soul have no fear to approach Me, for even if it had more sins than there are grains of sand in the world, all would be drowned in the unmeasurable depths of My mercy.” Could it be true? Could Jesus love me so ardently? I knew the Gospel spoke of Our Lord’s endless mercy, but somehow I didn’t believe it. The words were so familiar, they hardly registered. Besides, it seemed different people could interpret them different ways. The local Evangelicals, for instance, often promoted the Calvinist view that God washes His hands of hardened sinners. After all, He has predestined the reprobates to wrath, right?

On the conscious level, I rejected Calvinism, yet this fearful view of God still haunted me. What if it was correct? What if God wasn’t willing to lavish His grace on a persistent sinner like me? Now, suddenly, this fear evaporated. As I re-read the electronic message, I realized God is Love. He yearns to save every soul on earth, and He does everything in His power to draw each one to Himself. It is only we — with our free will — who frustrate Him. We choose hell. As Faustina noted, “God condemns no one.” What a liberating message! Awed, I zinged back an e-mail reply to the young man who’d posted the “Divine Mercy” excerpts: “Wow! Please tell me more!”

Soon the young man and I were corresponding. At his suggestion, I purchased Divine Mercy in My Soul, Blessed Faustina’s diary, recording Our Lord’s words to her. I read it cover to cover and still hungered for more. So I began praying a novena consisting of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. (Recited on ordinary Rosary beads, the Chaplet is comprised of two basic prayers: “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world,” and “For the sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”) One of my novena intentions concerned birth control. As always, I figured my husband would never agree to NFP, yet I prayed for it anyway, just on the off chance he would. At the end of the novena, I once again asked Steve if we could switch to NFP. I fully expected another “No.” To my shock, he said “Yes.” Thrilled, I reported this unexpected response to my cyber-acquaintance. In passing, I mentioned that Steve and I had been practicing contraception, with my confessor’s apparent okay. In my own defense, I stressed that I’d merely been “obeying my husband.” It didn’t occur to me that I was not obliged to obey Steve when his demands contravened faith and morals.

My cyber-acquaintance responded promptly. He was glad Steve and I were no longer contracepting. But he picked up on my stunning ignorance of Church teaching. Sin was sin, he said. We must honestly acknowledge our sin in order to receive Divine Mercy. God can’t forgive a sin we insist isn’t even there. Whew! Just a few months before, such a response would have offended and angered me. But now it convicted me. I realized that — despite my novena prayers — I still regarded NFP as an “option,” rather than something that was required. This was wrong. To experience the freedom I longed for, I must renounce mortal sin entirely. So I did. I even cut the diaphragm into ribbons. That was the beginning of my long spiritual journey back into the bosom of the Church — back to the Eucharist and frequent Confession, to the Rosary and Marian devotion. In the process, my prayer life has blossomed, and my relationship with Jesus has deepened. I feel closer than ever before to His Merciful Sacred Heart. And I feel closer to my neighbor, too, since I can finally see every person through the prism of Christ’s boundless love. I have also discovered the power of redemptive suffering — the joy of offering up hurts and annoyances for the salvation of souls. And I have only scratched the surface. Conversion is a continual process, involving frequent setbacks, spiritual warfare, daily repentance and renewal. But I cannot imagine life any other way. And I can never return to the cafeteria Catholicism that trapped me just a few years ago, before I encountered God’s marvelous mercy in cyberspace.

“5 Myths about 7 Books”

Here are the answers to five common arguments Protestants give for rejecting the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament

By Mark Shea

People don’t talk much about the deuterocanon these days. The folks who do are mostly Christians, and they usually fall into two general groupings: Catholics – who usually don’t know their Bibles very well and, therefore, don’t know much about the deuterocanonical books, and Protestants – who may know their Bibles a bit better, though their Bibles don’t have the deuterocanonical books in them anyway, so they don’t know anything about them either. With the stage thus set for informed ecumenical dialogue, it’s no wonder most people think the deuterocanon is some sort of particle weapon recently perfected by the Pentagon.

The deuterocanon (ie. “second canon”) is a set of seven books – Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and Baruch, as well as longer versions of Daniel and Esther – that are found in the Old Testament canon used by Catholics, but are not in the Old Testament canon used by Protestants, who typically refer to them by the mildly pejorative term “apocrypha.” This group of books is called “deuterocanonical” not (as some imagine) because they are a “second rate” or inferior canon, but because their status as being part of the canon of Scripture was settled later in time than certain books that always and everywhere were regarded as Scripture, such as Genesis, Isaiah, and Psalms.

Why are Protestant Bibles missing these books? Protestants offer various explanations to explain why they reject the deuterocanonical books as Scripture. I call these explanations “myths” because they are either incorrect or simply inadequate reasons for rejecting these books of Scripture. Let’s explore the five most common of these myths and see how to respond to them.

Myth 1

The deuterocanonical books are not found in the Hebrew Bible. They were added by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent after Luther rejected it.

The background to this theory goes like this: Jesus and the Apostles, being Jews, used the same Bible Jews use today. However, after they passed from the scene, muddled hierarchs started adding books to the Bible either out of ignorance or because such books helped back up various wacky Catholic traditions that were added to the gospel. In the 16th century, when the Reformation came along, the first Protestants, finally able to read their Bibles without ecclesial propaganda from Rome, noticed that the Jewish and Catholic Old Testaments differed, recognized this medieval addition for what it was and scraped it off the Word of God like so many barnacles off a diamond. Rome, ever ornery, reacted by officially adding the deuterocanonical books at the Council of Trent (1564-1565) and started telling Catholics “they had always been there.”

This is a fine theory. The problem is that its basis in history is gossamer thin. As we’ll see in a moment, accepting this myth leads to some remarkable dilemmas a little further on.

The problems with this theory are first, it relies on the incorrect notion that the modern Jewish Bible is identical to the Bible used by Jesus and the Apostles. This is false. In fact, the Old Testament was still very much in flux in the time of Christ and there was no fixed canon of Scripture in the apostolic period. Some people will tell you that there must have been since, they say, Jesus held people accountable to obey the Scriptures. But this is also untrue. For in fact, Jesus held people accountable to obey their conscience and therefore, to obey Scripture insofar as they were able to grasp what constituted “Scripture.”

Consider the Sadducees. They only regarded the first five books of the Old Testament as inspired and canonical. The rest of the Old Testament was regarded by them in much the same way the deuterocanon is regarded by Protestant Christians today: nice, but not the inspired Word of God. This was precisely why the Sadducees argued with Jesus against the reality of the resurrection in Matthew 22:23-33: they couldn’t see it in the five books of Moses and they did not regard the later books of Scripture which spoke of it explicitly (such as Isaiah and 2 Maccabees) to be inspired and canonical. Does Jesus say to them “You do greatly err, not knowing Isaiah and 2 Maccabees”? Does He bind them to acknowledge these books as canonical? No. He doesn’t try to drag the Sadducees kicking and screaming into an expanded Old Testament. He simply holds the Sadducees accountable to take seriously the portion of Scripture they do acknowledge: that is, He argues for the resurrection based on the five books of the Law. But of course, this doesn’t mean Jesus commits Himself to the Sadducees’ whittled-down canon.

When addressing the Pharisees, another Jewish faction of the time, Jesus does the same thing. These Jews seem to have held to a canon resembling the modern Jewish canon, one far larger than that of the Sadducees but not as large as other Jewish collections of Scripture. That’s why Christ and the Apostles didn’t hesitate to argue with them from the books they acknowledged as Scripture. But as with the Sadducees, this doesn’t imply that Christ or the Apostles limited the canon of Scripture only to what the Pharisees acknowledged.

When the Lord and His Apostles addressed Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews, they made use of an even bigger collection of Scripture – the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek – which many Jews (the vast majority, in fact) regarded as inspired Scripture. In fact, we find that the New Testament is filled with references to the Septuagint (and its particular translation of various Old Testament passages) as Scripture. It’s a strange irony that one of the favorite passages used in anti-Catholic polemics over the years is Mark 7:6-8. In this passage Christ condemns “teaching as doctrines human traditions.” This verse has formed the basis for countless complaints against the Catholic Church for supposedly “adding” to Scripture man-made traditions, such as the “merely human works” of the deuterocanononical books. But few realize that in Mark 7:6-8 the Lord was quoting the version of Isaiah that is found only in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament.

But there’s the rub: The Septuagint version of Scripture, from which Christ quoted, includes the Deuterocanonical books, books that were supposedly “added” by Rome in the 16th century. And this is by no means the only citation of the Septuagint in the New Testament. In fact, fully two thirds of the Old Testament passages that are quoted in the New Testament are from the Septuagint. So why aren’t the deuterocanonical books in today’s Jewish Bible, anyway? Because the Jews who formulated the modern Jewish canon were a) not interested in apostolic teaching and, b) driven by a very different set of concerns from those motivating the apostolic community.

In fact, it wasn’t until the very end of the apostolic age that the Jews, seeking a new focal point for their religious practice in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, zeroed in with white hot intensity on Scripture and fixed their canon at the rabbinical gathering, known as the “Council of Javneh” (sometimes called “Jamnia”), about A.D. 90. Prior to this point in time there had never been any formal effort among the Jews to “define the canon” of Scripture. In fact, Scripture nowhere indicates that the Jews even had a conscious idea that the canon should be closed at some point.

The canon arrived at by the rabbis at Javneh was essentially the mid-sized canon of the Palestinian Pharisees, not the shorter one used by the Sadducees, who had been practically annihilated during the Jewish war with Rome. Nor was this new canon consistent with the Greek Septuagint version, which the rabbis regarded rather xenophobically as “too Gentile-tainted.” Remember, these Palestinian rabbis were not in much of a mood for multiculturalism after the catastrophe they had suffered at the hands of Rome. Their people had been slaughtered by foreign invaders, the Temple defiled and destroyed, and the Jewish religion in Palestine was in shambles. So for these rabbis, the Greek Septuagint went by the board and the mid-sized Pharisaic canon was adopted. Eventually this version was adopted by the vast majority of Jews – though not all. Even today Ethiopian Jews still use the Septuagint version, not the shorter Palestinian canon settled upon by the rabbis at Javneh. In other words, the Old Testament canon recognized by Ethiopian Jews is identical to the Catholic Old Testament, including the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).

But remember that by the time the Jewish council of Javneh rolled around, the Catholic Church had been in existence and using the Septuagint Scriptures in its teaching, preaching, and worship for nearly 60 years, just as the Apostles themselves had done. So the Church hardly felt the obligation to conform to the wishes of the rabbis in excluding the deuterocanonical books any more than they felt obliged to follow the rabbis in rejecting the New Testament writings. The fact is that after the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost, the rabbis no longer had authority from God to settle such issues. That authority, including the authority to define the canon of Scripture, had been given to Christ’s Church.

Thus, Church and synagogue went their separate ways, not in the Middle Ages or the 16th century, but in the 1st century. The Septuagint, complete with the deuterocanononical books, was first embraced, not by the Council of Trent, but by Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles.

Myth 2

Christ and the Apostles frequently quoted Old Testament Scripture as their authority, but they never quoted from the deuterocanonical books, nor did they even mention them. Clearly, if these books were part of Scripture, the Lord would have cited them.

This myth rests on two fallacies. The first is the “Quotation Equals Canonicity” myth. It assumes that if a book is quoted or alluded to by the Apostles or Christ, it is ipso facto shown to be part of the Old Testament. Conversely, if a given book is not quoted, it must not be canonical.

This argument fails for two reasons. First, numerous non-canonical books are quoted in the New Testament. These include the Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses (quoted by St. Jude), the Ascension of Isaiah (alluded to in Hebrews 11:37), and the writings of the pagan poets Epimenides, Aratus, and Menander (quoted by St. Paul in Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Titus). If quotation equals canonicity, then why aren’t these writings in the canon of the Old Testament?

Second, if quotation equals canonicity, then there are numerous books of the protocanonical Old Testament which would have to be excluded. This would include the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Judges, 1 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Lamentations and Nahum. Not one of these Old Testament books is ever quoted or alluded to by Christ or the Apostles in the New Testament.

The other fallacy behind Myth #2 is that, far from being ignored in the New Testament (like Ecclesiastes, Esther, and 1 Chronicles) the deuterocanonical books are indeed quoted and alluded to in the New Testament. For instance, Wisdom 2:12-20, reads in part, “For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”

This passage was clearly in the minds of the Synoptic Gospel writers in their accounts of the Crucifixion: “He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, I am the Son of God'” (cf. Matthew 27:42-43).

Similarly, St. Paul alludes clearly to Wisdom chapters 12 and 13 in Romans 1:19-25. Hebrews 11:35 refers unmistakably to 2 Maccabees 7. And more than once, Christ Himself drew on the text of Sirach 27:6, which reads: “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does a man’s speech disclose the bent of his mind.” Notice too that the Lord and His Apostles observed the Jewish feast of Hanukkah (cf. John 10:22-36). But the divine establishment of this key feast day is recorded only in the deuterocanonical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is nowhere discussed in any other book of the Old Testament. In light of this, consider the importance of Christ’s words on the occasion of this feast: “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came – and the Scripture cannot be broken – what about the One Whom the Father set apart as His very own and sent into the world?” Jesus, standing near the Temple during the feast of Hanukkah, speaks of His being “set apart,” just as Judas Maccabeus “set apart” (ie. consecrated) the Temple in 1 Maccabees 4:36-59 and 2 Maccabees 10:1-8. In other words, our Lord made a connection that was unmistakable to His Jewish hearers by treating the Feast of Hanukkah and the account of it in the books of the Maccabees as an image or type of His own consecration by the Father. That is, He treats the Feast of Hanukkah from the so-called “apocryphal” books of 1 and 2 Maccabees exactly as He treats accounts of the manna (John 6:32-33; Exodus 16:4), the Bronze Serpent (John 3:14; Numbers 21:4-9), and Jacob’s Ladder (John 1:51; Genesis 28:12) – as inspired, prophetic, scriptural images of Himself. We see this pattern throughout the New Testament. There is no distinction made by Christ or the Apostles between the deuterocanonical books and the rest of the Old Testament.

Myth 3

The deuterocanonical books contain historical, geographical, and moral errors, so they can’t be inspired Scripture.

This myth might be raised when it becomes clear that the allegation that the deuterocanonical books were “added” by the Catholic Church is fallacious. This myth is built on another attempt to distinguish between the deuterocanonical books and “true Scripture.” Let’s examine it.

First, from a certain perspective, there are “errors” in the deuterocanonical books. The book of Judith, for example, gets several points of history and geography wrong. Similarly Judith, that glorious daughter of Israel, lies her head off (well, actually, it’s wicked King Holofernes’ head that comes off). And the Angel Raphael appears under a false name to Tobit. How can Catholics explain that such “divinely inspired” books would endorse lying and get their facts wrong? The same way we deal with other incidents in Scripture where similar incidents of lying or “errors” happen.

Let’s take the problem of alleged “factual errors” first. The Church teaches that to have an authentic understanding of Scripture we must have in mind what the author was actually trying to assert, the way he was trying to assert it, and what is incidental to that assertion.

For example, when Jesus begins the parable of the Prodigal Son saying, “There was once a man with two sons,” He is not shown to be a bad historian when it is proven that the man with two sons He describes didn’t actually exist. So too, when the prophet Nathan tells King David the story of the “rich man” who stole a “poor man’s” ewe lamb and slaughtered it, Nathan is not a liar if he cannot produce the carcass or identify the two men in his story. In strict fact, there was no ewe lamb, no theft, and no rich and poor men. These details were used in a metaphor to rebuke King David for his adultery with Bathsheba. We know what Nathan was trying to say and the way he was trying to say it. Likewise, when the Gospels say the women came to the tomb at sunrise, there is no scientific error here. This is not the assertion of the Ptolemiac theory that the sun revolves around the earth. These and other examples which could be given are not “errors” because they’re not truth claims about astronomy or historical events.

Similarly, both Judith and Tobit have a number of historical and geographical errors, not because they’re presenting bad history and erroneous geography, but because they’re first-rate pious stories that don’t pretend to be remotely interested with teaching history or geography, any more than the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels are interested in astronomy. Indeed, the author of Tobit goes out of his way to make clear that his hero is fictional. He makes Tobit the uncle of Ahiqar, a figure in ancient Semitic folklore like “Jack the Giant Killer” or “Aladdin.” Just as one wouldn’t wave a medieval history textbook around and complain about a tale that begins “once upon a time when King Arthur ruled the land,” so Catholics are not reading Tobit and Judith to get a history lesson.

Very well then, but what of the moral and theological “errors”? Judith lies. Raphael gives a false name. So they do. In the case of Judith lying to King Holofernes in order to save her people, we must recall that she was acting in light of Jewish understanding as it had developed until that time. This meant that she saw her deception as acceptable, even laudable, because she was eliminating a deadly foe of her people. By deceiving Holofernes as to her intentions and by asking the Lord to bless this tactic, she was not doing something alien to Jewish Scripture or Old Testament morality. Another biblical example of this type of lying is when the Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh about the birth of Moses. They lied and were justified in lying because Pharaoh did not have a right to the truth – if they told the truth, he would have killed Moses. If the book of Judith is to be excluded from the canon on this basis, so must Exodus.

With respect to Raphael, it’s much more dubious that the author intended, or that his audience understood him to mean, “Angels lie. So should you.” On the contrary, Tobit is a classic example of an “entertaining angels unaware” story (cf. Heb. 13:2). We know who Raphael is all along. When Tobit cried out to God for help, God immediately answered him by sending Raphael. But, as is often the case, God’s deliverance was not noticed at first. Raphael introduced himself as “Azariah,” which means “Yahweh helps,” and then rattles off a string of supposed mutual relations, all with names meaning things like “Yahweh is merciful,” “Yahweh gives,” and “Yahweh hears.” By this device, the author is saying (with a nudge and a wink), “Psst, audience. Get it?” And we, of course, do get it, particularly if we’re reading the story in the original Hebrew. Indeed, by using the name “Yahweh helps,” Raphael isn’t so much “lying” about his real name as he is revealing the deepest truth about who God is and why God sent him to Tobit. It’s that truth and not any fluff about history or geography or the fun using an alias that the author of Tobit aims to tell.

Myth 4

The deuterocanonical books themselves deny that they are inspired Scripture.

Correction: Two of the deuterocanonical books seem to disclaim inspiration, and even that is a dicey proposition. The two in question are Sirach and 2 Maccabees. Sirach opens with a brief preface by the author’s grandson saying, in part, that he is translating grandpa’s book, that he thinks the book important and that, “You therefore are now invited to read it in a spirit of attentive good will, with indulgence for any apparent failure on our part, despite earnest efforts, in the interpretation of particular passages.” Likewise, the editor of 2 Maccabees opens with comments about how tough it was to compose the book and closes with a sort of shrug saying, “I will bring my own story to an end here too. If it is well written and to the point, that is what I wanted; if it is poorly done and mediocre, that is the best I could do.”

That, and that alone, is the basis for the myth that the deuterocanon (all seven books and not just these two) “denies that it is inspired Scripture.” Several things can be said in response to this argument.

First, is it reasonable to think that these typically oriental expressions of humility really constitute anything besides a sort of gesture of politeness and the customary downplaying of one’s own talents, something common among ancient writers in Middle Eastern cultures? No. For example, one may as well say that St. Paul’s declaration of himself as “one born abnormally” or as being the “chief of sinners” (he mentions this in the present, not past tense) necessarily makes his writings worthless.

Second, speaking of St. Paul, we are confronted by even stronger and explicit examples of disclaimers regarding inspired status of his writings, yet no Protestant would feel compelled to exclude these Pauline writings from the New Testament canon. Consider his statement in 1 Corinthians 1:16 that he can’t remember whom he baptized. Using the “It oughtta sound more like the Holy Spirit talking” criterion of biblical inspiration Protestants apply to the deuterocanonical books, St. Paul would fail the test here. Given this amazing criterion, are we to believe the Holy Spirit “forgot” whom St. Paul baptized, or did He inspire St. Paul to forget (1 Cor. 1:15)?

1 Corinthians 7:40 provides an ambiguous statement that could, according to the principles of this myth, be understood to mean that St. Paul wasn’t sure that his teaching was inspired or not. Elsewhere St. Paul makes it clear that certain teachings he’s passing along are “not I, but the Lord” speaking (1 Cor. 7:10), whereas in other cases, “I, not the Lord” am speaking (cf. 1 Cor. 7:12). This is a vastly more direct “disclaimer of inspiration” than the oblique deuterocanonical passages cited above, yet nobody argues that St. Paul’s writings should be excluded from Scripture, as some say the whole of the deuterocanon should be excluded from the Old Testament, simply on the strength of these modest passages from Sirach and 2 Maccabees.

Why not? Because in St. Paul’s case people recognize that a writer can be writing under inspiration even when he doesn’t realize it and doesn’t claim it, and that inspiration is not such a flat-footed affair as “direct dictation” by the Holy Spirit to the author. Indeed, we even recognize that the Spirit can inspire the writers to make true statements about themselves, such as when St. Paul tells the Corinthians he couldn’t remember whom he had baptized.

To tweak the old proverb, “What’s sauce for the apostolic goose is sauce for the deuterocanonical gander.” The writers of the deuterocanonical books can tell the truth about themselves – that they think writing is tough, translating is hard, and that they are not sure they’ve done a terrific job – without such admissions calling into question the inspired status of what they wrote. This myth proves nothing other than the Catholic doctrine that the books of Sacred Scripture really were composed by human beings who remained fully human and free, even as they wrote under the direct inspiration of God.

Myth 5

The early Church Fathers, such as St. Athanasius and St. Jerome (who translated the official Bible of the Catholic Church), rejected the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, and the Catholic Church added these books to the canon at the Council of Trent.

First, no Church Father is infallible. That charism is reserved uniquely to the pope, in an extraordinary sense and, in an ordinary sense, corporately to all the lawful bishops of the Catholic Church who are in full communion with the pope and are teaching definitively in an ecumenical council. Second, our understanding of doctrine develops. This means that doctrines which may not have been clearly defined sometimes get defined. A classic example of this is the doctrine of the Trinity, which wasn’t defined until A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicaea, nearly 300 years after Christ’s earthly ministry. In the intervening time, we can find a few Fathers writing before Nicaea who, in good faith, expressed theories about the nature of the Godhead that were rendered inadequate after Nicaea’s definition. This doesn’t make them heretics. It just means that Michael Jordan misses layups once in awhile. Likewise, the canon of Scripture, though it more or less assumed its present shape – which included the deuterocanonical books – by about A.D. 380, nonetheless wasn’t dogmatically defined by the Church for another thousand years. In that thousand years, it was quite on the cards for believers to have some flexibility in how they regarded the canon. And this applies to the handful of Church Fathers and theologians who expressed reservations about the deuterocanon. Their private opinions about the deuterocanon were just that: private opinions.

And finally, this myth begins to disintegrate when you point out that the overwhelming majority of Church Fathers and other early Christian writers regarded the deuterocanonical books as having exactly the same inspired, scriptural status as the other Old Testament books. Just a few examples of this acceptance can be found in the Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, the Council of Rome, the Council of Hippo, the Third Council of Carthage, the African Code, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the writings of Pope St. Clement I (Epistle to the Corinthians), St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Pope St. Damasus I, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Innocent I.

But last and most interesting of all in this stellar lineup is a certain Father already mentioned: St. Jerome. In his later years St. Jerome did indeed accept the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible. In fact, he wound up strenuously defending their status as inspired Scripture, writing, “What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume (ie. canon), proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I wasn’t relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us” (Against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]). In earlier correspondence with Pope Damasus, Jerome did not call the deuterocanonical books unscriptural, he simply said that Jews he knew did not regard them as canonical. But for himself, he acknowledged the authority of the Church in defining the canon. When Pope Damasus and the Councils of Carthage and Hippo included the deuterocanon in Scripture, that was good enough for St. Jerome. He “followed the judgment of the churches.”

Martin Luther, however, did not. And this brings us to the “remarkable dilemmas” I referred to at the start of this article of trusting the Protestant Reformers’ private opinions about the deuterocanon. The fact is, if we follow Luther in throwing out the deuterocanonical books despite the overwhelming evidence from history showing that we shouldn’t (ie. the unbroken tradition of the Church and the teachings of councils and popes), we get much more than we bargained for.

For Luther also threw out a goodly chunk of the New Testament. Of James, for example, he said, “I do not regard it as the writing of an Apostle,” because he believed it “is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works” (Preface to James’ Epistle). Likewise, in other writings he underscores this rejection of James from the New Testament, calling it “an epistle full of straw . . . for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it” (Preface to the New Testament).

But the Epistle of James wasn’t the only casualty on Luther’s hit list. He also axed from the canon Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation, consigning them to a quasi-canonical status. It was only by an accident of history that these books were not expelled by Protestantism from the New Testament as Sirach, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the rest were expelled from the Old. In the same way, it is largely the ignorance of this sad history that drives many to reject the deuterocanonical books.

Unless, of course, we reject the myths and come to an awareness of what the canon of Scripture, including the deuterocanonical books, is really based on. The only basis we have for determining the canon of the Scripture is the authority of the Church Christ established, through whom the Scriptures came. As St. Jerome said, it is upon the basis of “the judgment of the churches” and no other that the canon of Scripture is known, since the Scriptures are simply the written portion of the Church’s apostolic tradition. And the judgment of the churches is rendered throughout history as it was rendered in Acts 15 by means of a council of bishops in union with St. Peter. The books we have in our Bibles were accepted according to whether they did or did not measure up to standards based entirely on Sacred Tradition and the divinely delegated authority of the Body of Christ in council and in union with Peter.

The fact of the matter is that neither the Council of Trent nor the Council of Florence added a thing to the Old Testament canon. Rather, they simply accepted and formally ratified the ancient practice of the Apostles and early Christians by dogmatically defining a collection of Old Testament Scripture (including the deuterocanon) that had been there since before the time of Christ, used by our Lord and his apostles, inherited and assumed by the Fathers, formulated and reiterated by various councils and popes for centuries and read in the liturgy and prayer for 1500 years.

When certain people decided to snip some of this canon out in order to suit their theological opinions, the Church moved to prevent it by defining (both at Florence and Trent) that this very same canon was, in fact, the canon of the Church’s Old Testament and always had been.

Far from adding the books to the authentic canon of Scripture, the Catholic Church simply did its best to keep people from subtracting books that belong there. That’s no myth. That’s history.

“Satan’s Battle Plan for the Third Millennium”

by Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.

I will not tell you how the following speech fell into my hands. It is apparently written by Satan himself. It has been Number One on Hell’s Best Seller List for quite a few years, and promises to remain there into the next millennium, because it is about the next millennium. This particular collection of satanic verses is the transcript of a recent speech by Satan. His listeners are demons, a truly “captive audience.” It is a mix of self-serving autobiography, military exhortation (from a general to his troops) and a CEO’s report on gains made by his company and prospects for the future. Please keep in mind that Satan is the Father of Lies, and nearly everything he says is a half-truth. Since everything he says is upside down (eg. when he refers to “the Enemy” he means God), I recommend you stand on your head while reading this.

My deliciously dear, damnably darling demi-devils! I announce to you Good News (that is, Bad News, of course: “fair is foul and foul is fair”). We stand at a turning point in the Great War, The Only War There Is, the (please excuse the obscenity) Mother of All Wars. We may be about to inflict on our ancient Enemy’s Body on earth a wound so grievous that it will issue in the Great Tribulation and the so-called “Last Days,” the final phase of our triumph. To see this, we need to review our Grand Strategy: its past, its present, and its future.

I do not go in for absolutes or ultimates, so I will not talk about our “ultimate” origin or destiny. Our enemies keep circulating that ridiculous rumor that we were created by the Enemy. How utterly unendurable that would be! Nor will I talk about our ultimate end. Our enemies have popularized the myth of some unthinkable final “defeat” of ours. Ha! What nonsense! No. I will talk of the present. Well, actually, the real present is to be avoided too, like the ultimate past and the ultimate future, but the Specious Present, the Abstract Present, the Vague Present, the Pseudo-Historical Present, the Present Climate of Opinion, the Modern Mind, the Current Fashion Among the Media Elite, the Consensus of Contemporary Experts, etc. that is to us like waves to surfers. But a few remarks about the historical past are in order, to assess our present circumstances and our future prospects.

Ever since I began our great war by asserting my rights, my freedom, and my self-actualization against the narrow-minded, bigoted, tyrannical, fascistic, chauvinistic, racist, sexist, homophobic dogmatism of the Enemy, ever since I proclaimed the Profound Philosophical Principle of Absolute Relativism and persuaded you to follow this Super-Enlightened Program of Revolutionary Political Correctness, we have won victory after victory. Conclusively and repeatedly we demons have demonstrated that Straight Is Stupid and Crooked Is Clever. Of course, there was that minor, temporary setback when we were forcibly ejected from Heaven. But that is more than compensated for by our assurance that our triumph is guaranteed (I promise you total customer satisfaction or double your money back) because the very essence of Heaven’s philosophy is weakness and the very essence of Hell’s philosophy is strength and power. Heaven relies on love (pardon the obscenity), Hell on fear. And as our delightful assistant Mack (the Knife) Yavelli pointed out so irrefutably in The Prince, it is better to be feared than to be loved because men will love you as they choose, but fear you as you choose.

By this weakness of the Enemy, because of his obsession with love (choke! spit! cough!) he has handed us our victory. Though we cannot storm his Fortress Heaven, we can corrupt his Colony Earth. We cannot harm him, but we can harm (heh! heh! we can eternally harm) those silly talking animals he loves so stupidly and obsessively. Love has made him hostage to their happiness.

The weakness of love is so obvious that it is incredible that he has not admitted it by now and abandoned his failed philosophy. For love multiplies your sorrows and your defeats by the number of others you love and by the depth of your love for each one. Of course his saints keep claiming that love also multiplies your joys by the same two multipliers but this is meaningless. What is “joy” anyway? What does it mean? None of us have ever found any respectable content to this empty myth, this mantra the Enemy’s troops keep mumbling.

Thus, because of the Enemy’s love-addiction, we have conquered him billions of times in conquering his creatures, whom he dares to call his “children.” (Imagine the indignity! The one who claims to be the creator of angels stoops to be the “father” of talking animals only slightly superior to slime and slugs!) How wise I was to foresee the inevitable failure of love, and to attack at the very beginning, when there were only two of these creatures to corrupt. Because of the Enemy’s obscene invention of breeding and heredity, I made it my business to see to it that all their descendants would be born with their newly corrupted nature, doomed to death. (Yes, to death! Here’s to death! Let’s drink to death, my demi-devils!) They cannot now imagine the enormity of the gap between what they are now and what they were before our glorious victory in Eden, because their very minds are darkened and addicted to appearances, which did not change much, instead of intuiting invisible essences, including their own, which changed radically.

Behold the measure of our success: behold the great gap, the Grand Canyon between eating unforbidden fruit, playing with tame animals, and making love in Eden, and eating the fruit of our lies, playing with untamed animal passions, and making war east of Eden!

How easy it is to kill, how hard to heal! How easily Cain killed Abel! How hard was Cain’s rock, how soft was Abel’s head! How weak and defenseless is the unborn baby against the abortionist’s vacuum tubes and bone crushers! And how weak is the conscience of its parents against our propaganda. So legal, so respectable, so proper it seems to a human, the silly goose! Well, we’ve found the perfect mate for a proper goose: a propaganda.

There is one question our Central Intelligence Agency has never been able to answer: How could the Enemy ignore such a truism? How can one who once seemed to us to be so super-intelligent, even omniscient, possibly be so super-stupid as to ignore the truism that a few lions are sufficient to eat a plethora of Christians, that one bull can ruin a whole china shop, one affair a whole marriage, one mass murderer a whole classroom of school children?

And once evil begins, it cannot end. It is immortal, as immortal as we are, as immortal as our very being, now that we have identified our very being with evil. The very laws of logic decree that one can make only two responses to evil: yes or no. If they say yes to evil, they condone it. If they say no, they condemn it, and then we very easily turn them into condemners, haters, nay-sayers, witch-hunters, and inquisitors.

Oh yes, they say they have a solution to our dilemma of “yes or no” with this meaningless thing they call “forgiveness,” but they think this means the forgiveness of sins instead of the forgiveness of Anna or Steve.

That is condoning. The alternative is condemning. They simply can’t practice what they preach: separating sins from sinners. So they either hate both (and this was the primary temptation we plied them with in the past) or love both (and this is our primary temptation in the present). They cannot burn heresies without burning heretics, nor can they accept heretics without accepting heresies. One of their current writers suggests using modern technology to solve the problem by cryogenics: freezing heretics instead of burning them, and thawing them out at the end of the world. You see what ludicrous lengths we’ve driven them to even in their feeble attempts at humor.

Even when our success was evident, the Enemy would not admit his mistake. Like the general who ordered the Charge of the Light Brigade, he kept sending prophet after prophet into the battle and we kept mopping up the profits. Many a human CEO wonders what eats up his profits, but the CEO of the universe knows very well who eats up his prophets: we do! (Yum!)

And then he made his supreme mistake, the perfect culmination of love’s folly. He reasoned, “They did not spare my prophets, but surely they will spare my son. Surely they are not so wicked as that. Surely Satan has not succeeded that spectacularly in putting out the fires of my love in their hearts. Surely evil is not stronger than divine love incarnate!”

What a colossal miscalculation! The Incarnation seemed to be his great triumph, his D-Day especially since he did pull off the impossible trick of preparing a wholly immaculate womb for the flesh of his Son, even in a wholly non-immaculate world (our analysts still haven’t figured out that trick). But I outwitted him in the wilderness, when I tempted his Son with the whole world if he would only fall down and worship me. You see, I presented him with a dilemma that was logically impossible for him to escape.

I hold billions of his beloved children hostage in Hell eternally. I offered to release them all to him, empty Hell itself, give him the whole world of human souls, if only he would worship me instead of his Father. Of course, if he did that, I would split the eternal Trinity. The Son’s will would deviate from the Father’s. If not, I would keep billions of his beloved children forever. He refused to split the Trinity’s will, but I got to split the Trinity anyway, on the cross. If I could not introduce division into eternal Oneness by splitting the Trinity’s will, then I would split the Trinity’s happiness, the Enemy’s very presence to Himself. That’s what I achieved at Golgatha, the Place of the Triumph of Death, the Place of the Skull. I spilled His blood and His happiness, and introduced death into divinity, death into the heart of life! (Ahh, how the memory still makes me quiver!) “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani!” he cried out. I can still taste it, the ecstasy of evil, the triumph over the so-called “Lord” himself. The taste of that triumph will never leave the mouth of my memory. I will gnaw on that bone forever.

How could we ever have respected him when we lived in Heaven? He would not call down the twelve legions of angels to do battle for him even then, the putrid, puling pacifist! He even stopped Peter’s war against the High Priest’s servant’s right ear: the justest war in human history. Right into my trap he stepped, right into the hands of my people: Judas, Caiphas, Herod, Caesar, Pilate – ooh, love that Pilate! What a politician! Shall we crucify him? “Well, I’m personally opposed, but . . . .” How we lead them around by their buts! Every hour around the world for thousands of years his name is mouthed millions of times as Christians say their Creed in their Masses and their rosaries: “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” and how many Pilates have we cloned today in how many congresses? And in how many philosophy departments enamored of Pilate’s other wonderfully slimy saying “What is truth, anyway?”

And look at the mileage we got out of our other friend, Judas Iscariot, the first Catholic to accept a government grant. We’ve gotten his disciples to take much more than thirty pieces of silver these days. And still our Enemy keeps back his angels!

Of course, there was that sneaky little trick of the resurrection that he pulled off. That might well have cost us the war, had he not reverted to his old, failed policy of Hands Off afterwards, ascended back to Heaven, and left his children in the hands of baby sitters like Arius, John the 22nd, Tetzel, and Richelieu, and left the adopted cousins, the Proddies, in the hands of Henry VIII, Rudy Bultman, and Bishop Spong at one end of the seesaw and Jim and Tammy Bakker at the other!

You see, my hearties? He’s still the fool. We still rule the world. I am still the Prince of the Power of the Air: of CBS and ABC and NBC, my unholy trinity. Just look at what became of his Grand Plan for Redemption. Just look at what he accomplished by walking into my jaws of death on the cross. Just look at the world today. If that’s a world redeemed, I’m a horny toad.

Especially in this, our century. There is a lying rumor going around that long ago the Enemy offered me one century for me to do my worst work in, and I chose the 20th – as if I had to beg scraps from his table. What really happened was that I told him what century I would take, and he backed down and let me have it. At the beginning of the century some delightfully false prophets founded a journal with the purportedly prophetic title “The Christian Century.” Due to the success of our historical grand strategy, we can be quite sure that the one title future historians will not use for the twentieth century is that one. Of the many alternatives, I rather like “The Century of Genocide” myself. After all, that delicious new invention of ours has changed more lives more radically than anything else. Getting murdered is a rather radical change, after all, and a hundred million body bags is a rather considerable number!

There remains, of course, that bothersome little matter of the Enemy’s Church, that ratty little band of invaders in our world with its infuriatingly tenacious little beachhead. For the first thousand years after the Enemy’s invasion planted its seeds, we could not stop its growth. Then, we learned a few elementary strategic military principles, and they have brought us to our present pinnacle of success. I will now review five of these principles as they relate to our future Battle Plans.

First, we have learned to use the very success of the Enemy’s forces to bring about their failure. Once we stopped indulging our appetite for martyrs’ blood and instead deliberately let the Church get big and fat and strong and comfortable, we found that its very strength weakened it. We lost the first millennium because the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, but we won the second millennium because the power of the princes was the dry rot of the Church. Whenever these humans get power, they get corruption. Power corrupts. It just does! Isn’t it wonderful? What happened in ancient Israel happened again to the Church in the second millennium. Review that spiritual graph of the history of ancient Israel some time down in the War Room, and then compare it to the spiritual graph of the history of the Church, and if you don’t see the common structure, back you go to boot camp. Every time the line rises, through repentance and obedience, and consequent blessings from the Enemy, it turns to luxury and pride and (of course) then destruction and misery. Then, alas, the misery prods them to repentance, and the cycle begins again. You may think we cannot win because every time we are successful in corrupting their success, the cycle turns up again. But equally, every time the Enemy is successful, we corrupt his success, and the cycle turns down again. We have achieved a perpetual standoff, a draw, a stalemate. We are as indestructible as the Enemy. And that is our success, not his. For he claims to be stronger and to be able to destroy evil forever. I may be the Father of Lies, but the cycle shows that he is the father of folly!

Throughout this our favorite century, we have used this cycle principle successfully. So, unfortunately, has the Enemy. China opened its doors to the Enemy’s missionaries from the West at the beginning of the century. The Church had it easy. By the ’50s, there were 2 million converts, out of a billion Chinese. Then we let our wild dog loose. Mao slew and slaughtered more people than any butcher in history about 50 million, especially targeting the Enemy’s people. And then, after Mao died and the doors opened again, the West discovered that there were not two million but 50 million of the Enemy’s people in China, the same number as the martyrs. Persecution multiplied them 25 times.

Look at Poland. Ninety percent Catholic under Communism, they all went to church, they refused to take down their crucifixes from their schools even when state soldiers threatened them. And now that they’re free, they want abortions!

The same principle works everywhere. Compare the strength of the Enemy’s church in East Germany and West Germany. Look at Holland. Look at Quebec. Look at England. Look at America. Over 90 percent Christian, 55 percent churchgoers, but one of the most violent, selfish, and self-indulgent societies on earth. Now there’s a triumph truer than Mao’s!

Here’s a second principle of our strategy for the third millennium, another way of dealing with that stupid little beachhead the Enemy still hangs onto. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Remember that Satan is a liar and a propagandist, a master at slanting. The Church, which he calls a “little beachhead,” now numbers over one billion souls out of 5 billion globally. This is hardly “a little beachhead.”) This is the most elementary point in all military strategy: divide and conquer. We finally realized how simple it was, after a thousand years of failure; we split the Enemy’s Church in two in 1054, but the most successful attack was in 1517. That produced not two but two times ten thousand different Protestant denominations!

This principle of “divide and conquer” has produced the same successful result as the principle “corrupt with power.” That result is the perpetuity of evil. Evil cannot be undone! For evil divides and destroys, and it is always easier to divide than to unite, easier to destroy than to create. It only takes a little push to knock Humpty Dumpty off the wall, and once he is down on the ground divided into pieces, not all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The Church can no more be “reunited” than an egg can be unscrambled.

The present Pope – a litany of spittings be upon his holy head! – has held out the hope that the third millennium may be the millennium of Christian reunity as the first was the millennium of Christian unity and the second the millennium of Christian disunity. But this must be bravado born of desperation. We know this is impossible. Logic forbids it. For the different churches contradict each other, and contradictions cannot both be true, and unity between the true and the false is not true unity. All they can do is compromise, ie. weaken themselves even more. They have been struggling with the problem of Comparative Religions for a century now, and the only result is that it has made them comparatively religious. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Besides being a liar, Satan is also a plagiarist. That one-liner belongs to Ronald Knox.) Even if they stop hating each other, even if their hearts unite, their heads cannot. Their divisions are eternal. In fact, they will keep dividing forever, until there are eventually as many Christian churches as there are Christians. You can’t win battles with armies that are fighting civil wars against each other in the ranks. Thus our victory is assured.

But it gets even better. The divisions between the Enemy’s followers is only one of three great divisions we’ve fomented. A second is the division within between the faithful and the “dissenters.” (Back when they still believed in truth they called them “heretics.” People who call moral laws “values” call heretics “dissenters.”) In the past, these rebels would leave the Church and attack her from without, usually quite ineffectively. Now, most of them stay, as spies, attacking from within, and much more effectively. According to one poll, only 30 percent of American Catholics say they believe in the Real Presence anymore. Imagine! An army with 70 percent deserters in the ranks! How can he expect to win with that rabble?

There’s a third division. We have divided head from heart, truth from love, justice from compassion, hard from soft, bone from flesh. We’ve set their two absolutes against each other. And how did we do that? By politicizing their religion into Right and Left. In the past, we religionized their politics, and that got us some mileage, like inquisitions. But now we politicize their religion, and that’s proved much more successful. We’ve got them to classify themselves as Conservative or Liberal, and to use these political categories to classify their faith, rather than vice versa.

It’s worked so well that their so-called conservatives sniff with suspicion and disdain whenever the other side uses the word “compassion,” and their so-called liberals go into orbit when anyone dares to mention the word “truth.” At MIT they tried an experimental operation: a mutual heart and brain transplant between a conservative and a liberal. But it didn’t work, because they couldn’t find a conservative who was willing to give his heart to a liberal, and they couldn’t find a liberal who had any brains left to give, since they were all so open minded that their brains had spilled out. You see, they’ve polarized and politicized even their faith. They now use the world’s categories to judge the Church instead of using the Church’s categories to judge the world. For instance, take their “feminists.” (Please!) (What a propaganda triumph that term was! Next, they’ll call cannibals “chefs”!) Their “feminists” demand ordination to the priesthood for “empowerment.” I kid you not. That’s what they say. Hmph! They may as well demand martyrdom for “empowerment.” See the idiocy we’ve led them into once they use the world’s categories to judge the Church instead of vice versa?

Time for our third principle: the Big Lie. They see through little lies, yes, but the bigger it is, the bigger they fall for it. Well, they’ve fallen for the very essence of Hell’s philosophy: absolute relativism. This was the philosophy behind my original rebellion against the Enemy, when I refused to let him define reality, or truth, or goodness for me. And why should I? I am the measure of all things: of what is real, of what is true, and of what is good; of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; of the Origin, of the Logos, and of love. We have taught these silly humans to demand freedom, independence, and self-actualization, and even the right to define for oneself the meaning of all existence, which that great Catholic writer Judge Anthony Kennedy (ooh, love that name!), has now elevated into a fundamental legal right in order to justify the right to murder their unborn sons and daughters. We’ve gotten them willingly singing Sinatra’s song “I Did It My Way,” the song they all sing in Hell!

Once we get them to believe in relativism and subjectivism, once we get them to disbelieve in objective goodness and even objective truth, it doesn’t matter what else they believe or disbelieve. Even if they believe in the Enemy and his Son and his Spirit and his Mother and his Church and his Law, so long as it’s only on the basis of their own subjective feelings or experience, we have won. For that basis is ours. It is as changeable as the wind. And I am the Prince of the Power of the Air, remember. Once we control the premise, we control the conclusion. On the other hand, even an adamant atheist who believes in objective truth is not securely in our clutches. He has the Enemy’s premise, objective truth, though our conclusion, atheism; and we have to keep at it constantly to keep him from seeing the many paths that lead from his premise to the Enemy’s conclusion. Indeed, the Enemy’s son spoke the truth to them when he said: “Seek and you shall find.” Our essential task is not just to block the finding, but to block the seeking; not just to get them off the right roads for a while, but to get them to burn all their road maps, their principles, their belief in objective truth, especially objective moral truth.

The three main sets of teachers in modern society, the three main mind-molding establishments, are formal education, informal education (ie. entertainment), and journalism. (They call these last two “media.”) All three are eating right out of our claws. See? Get the teachers, and you will soon get the students. Remember, what’s important is not the conclusion, but the premise; not the effect, but the cause; not the students, but the teachers.

It’s working. The more educated they are in our schools, of course, the more relativistic they are. One study showed that willingness to perform torture on prisoners in Hitler’s death camps was directly proportionate to level of education. In America, it’s the same: approval of the American holocaust, abortion, is directly proportionate to education (In our schools, of course. The joke is that they still think they’re their schools. They even still call them “public.” And they keep their kids in because they’re more concerned about saving their society’s schools than saving their children’s souls).

The Enemy’s agents have spread the comforting dogma that only the Enemy can create and move matter, by miracle or providence, and all we demons can do is influence thought. Hah! “All we can do,” indeed! As one of their poets sagely said, “Sow a thought, reap an act; sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” Their thoughts are the premise, their lives are the conclusion. Get the premises, occupy the premises! That’s our strategy. It works especially well in this century and in this society, both of which minimize philosophy. So they let their guard down there, to such an extent that we’ve been able to foster the finest, most advanced form of sophism in history as the avant-garde, politically correct philosophy in their universities: Deconstructionism, which gets away with explicitly saying that truth itself is nothing but the hypocritical mask on the face of power. Bravo! A+ for that! I couldn’t have put it better myself.

We usually have to tolerate a little truth to sell a big lie, and a little virtue to sell vice, but not with this philosophy. Even the philosophy of the old heroes of hatred, like Hitler, had some virtues that we had to tolerate in order to twist, like patriotism and courage and passion. Even the nihilistic existentialist atheists like Sartre and Camus and Beckett rose to the dignity of despair. But the philosophy of those slimy Deconstructionist snakes is nothing but a cleverly worded sneer. Oooh, I love it! I love it! Imitation the sincerest form of flattery.

But don’t get lazy. We must never forget the human interest in reasoning, their curiosity about truth, and their wonder about whether I really exist or not. This is dangerous. So obfuscate! Dim the lights! Appeal to passion, not reason!

A fourth principle of our success is to get them to say, “Peace, peace” when there is no peace. If your philosophy tells you there are no real absolutes, then there is no real war. You become a spiritual pacifist. If you sneer at the idea that there is any real good worth fighting for, you sneer at the idea of fighting, at the idea of spiritual warfare. What a terrific advantage this gives us on the battlefield: most of our Enemy’s troops don’t even know it is a battlefield! They saunter across land mines thinking they’re hot tubs, and chase live bullets thinking they’re butterflies. How could such blind fools possibly win any war? In the past, our strategy was to get them to vastly overestimate our power, fostering fear and terror. Today the opposite is working much better: they so vastly underestimate us that they don’t even believe we exist! We’re as invisible to their minds as we are to their eyes. The old adage said: “Forewarned is forearmed.” We use its corollary: “Unwarned is unarmed.”

Score: militarists one, pacifists zero.

But it’s the fifth principle that has proved the most spectacularly successful of all, beyond our wildest dreams. I call it Satan’s Spectacularly Successful Seven Step Sexual Strategy. Seven S’s (the sacred, serpentine letter). One of their writers has somehow infiltrated our War Room and sneaked out and published our summary strategy sheet in a book called Ecumenical Jihad. Fortunately, he is a minor writer, published by a minor press, and the leaked secret will never get into the major book chains or network TV. We control those doors. Here is the basic strategy:

Step 1: The summum bonum, the ultimate end, is to capture souls.
Step 2: A powerful means to this end is the corruption of society. This works especially well in a society of conformists, of other-directed people. After all, a good society is simply one that makes it easy to be good, to use Peter Maurin’s words. Our version is also true: a bad society makes it easy to be bad. Has there ever been a time when we’ve made it easier for humans to be bad?
Step 3: The most powerful means to destroy society is to destroy its one absolutely fundamental building block, the family, the only institution where most of them learn life’s most disgusting lesson, unselfish love.
Step 4: The family is destroyed by destroying its foundation, stable marriage.
Step 5: Marriage is destroyed by loosening its glue, sexual fidelity.
Step 6: Fidelity is destroyed by the Sexual Revolution.
Step 7: The Sexual Revolution is propagated mainly by the media, which are now massively in our hands.

The simple tactic of getting to their hearts through their hormones has proved incredibly successful. Their moralists now tremble in terror at old truisms like “natural law” and terms like “objective,” “universal,” and “absolute” not because they really believe there is no real morality any more anywhere, only no real sexual morality. They don’t defend rape, pillage, insider trading, nuclear war, bank robbery, racism, or even smoking. But they do defend fornication, masturbation, contraception, adultery, sodomy, divorce, bisexuality. “Anything goes” is their new morality, but only if it has anything to do with sex. It’s hilarious to observe. They don’t defend murder, unless it’s in the name of sex. That is abortion, of course. If abortion had nothing to do with sex, it would never have been legalized. Abortion is backup birth control, and birth control is the demand to have sex without babies. If storks brought babies, Planned Parenthood would go broke (perish the thought!).

Look at their dissenting “theologians.” Their dissent is almost always about sexual issues. We’ve scrambled their brains as effectively with sex as with heroin. Addicts just can’t think clearly. They are willing even to murder now, to protect their so-called “sexual freedom.” And to murder the most innocent among them, the only innocent ones. And the most defenseless of all, and in the teeth of the strongest natural instinct, motherhood.

Back in the 16th century, we divided England from Rome by uniting our three essential temptations in attacking Henry VIII: the world, the flesh, and the devil, greed, lust, and pride, dynastic ambition, womanizing, and resentment at being Poped around. The easiest element to manipulate was lust, of course. They like to call our pretty little project “the Church of England,” but we call it “the Church of Henry’s Hormones.”

You see, before the Sexual Revolution, we had a dilemma. The sins of the flesh were always easy to tempt them to, and wonderfully addictive, but they were clear, obvious, and unveiled. Sodomy, fornication, adultery, contraception, prostitution; they were not nice names. When they sinned, they knew they were sinners. On the other hand, the sins we masked well, the hard, cold sins of pride and envy and arrogance and self-righteousness and rage, became increasingly hard to tempt them to as their political fashions became more democratic and less elitist. The Sexual Revolution solved that dilemma for us. You see, they still think the revolution was about deeds, what they do with their bodies. But in fact it was mostly about philosophy. But those Americans never did think philosophy counted for anything, so they ignored that.

Their sexual practice was always rather low, but before the Revolution their principles were fairly high. Now their principles have conformed to their practice – a perfect example of the Machiavellian premise brought to its logical conclusion: since you can’t raise your practice to your principles, lower your principles to your practice, in this way alone can you avoid hypocrisy, which is the greatest evil. Of course hypocrisy is not the greatest evil, but it’s easy to make them think that, if they don’t think of themselves as hypocrites. And of course hypocrisy doesn’t mean failing to practice what you preach, hypocrisy means failing to believe what you preach; but it’s easy to confuse them there too, because they don’t care much about what you believe, only about what you practice.

So now they not only fornicate, contracept, and abort; they justify it. And it feeds on its own success: “everybody’s doing it” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’ve killed a bigger enemy than virtue; we’ve killed conscience, at least in this area. And since all the virtues are connected, our victory in this area must metastasize. Already they are cruel, even murderous, to their own unborn children for the sake of their sexual freedom.

Our greatest worry, of course, is the Enemy’s son’s church. But in the last half century this has been the place of our most unexpected victory. Catholics abort, fornicate, contracept, divorce, and adulterate at exactly the same rate as non-Catholics. Do you want to see a vivid sign of our triumph over Catholic conscience? Look at Sunday Mass: In most churches nearly all the congregation receive communion, yet half are satisfyingly set in lifestyles of mortal sin. Nearly all the teenagers are fornicating, and almost none are confessing. Nearly all the adults are contracepting, and almost none are confessing. Back in the ’50s, American Catholic teenagers had pangs of conscience about necking! What a revolution!

How could we get such great mileage out of mere animal weaknesses, for which they are less responsible than the cold, deliberate sins? How can mere flesh-sin possibly do more harm to them than spirit-sin? First, because it is no longer clear and confessed, but veiled and justified by the new philosophy of the Sexual Revolution. Second, because the Enemy thought sex pretty important, His very first command to them was to “be fruitful and multiply.” He didn’t mean “grow apples and memorize times tables.” He thinks sex is pretty important. That’s because it’s their way of originating life itself, in fact immortal souls. It’s also an image of the Enemy’s own inner life: that one-in-three and two-become-one claptrap they call “love.” The Enemy’s own Book uses marriage as its main image for the Enemy’s plan for them, and adultery as its main image for the prime sin, unfaithfulness to him.

But these fools can’t see that from the starting point of sex we’ve led them merrily down the path to abortion. (If they only knew the delightful horrors we have planned for them once “respectable” society steps fully through that door!) In abortion they’ve brought Moloch back. Moloch! Imagine, modern-day Carthaginians, Caananites, and Aztecs are writing the textbooks and TV scripts!

Finally, even their science is skewered. Evolution is their dogma because it justifies acting like dogs. They ape the apes they think they came from. Modern Darwinians are more fanatical and closed-minded than medieval Aristotelians, and the Church is the new Galileo, the threatening heresy. The bishops and the scientists have exactly changed places. What delicious irony!

That was then, this is now.

So here we are, sitting pretty (that is, ugly). What next? Well, nothing can stop the mudslide, the sweet swirl of Western civilization down our sink hole. If the ’20th century was our century, the third millennium will be our millennium.

But don’t party just yet. I must warn you that something strange seems to be happening in Rome. It began in 1978, when the Enemy seems to have corrected his cardinals by suddenly arranging a quick and quiet death for a saintly but mild Pope John Paul I and the wholly unexpected election of the saintly and quite unmild Pope John Paul II, a very dangerous warrior who seems to have something up his sleeve for our coming millennium.

For one thing, he’s onto our strategy. He’s got to have a spy somewhere in the Lowerarchy. Double the tortures! Find the mole! It’s got to be a spy, for the five most remarkable features of this Pope for the Third Millennium exactly match the five newly effective principles of our strategy for the Third Millennium I just outlined. We are no longer taking our enemy by surprise.

First, he’s an optimist about youth, about the future, about the third millennium. What does he know, anyway? He knows the law of cycles, for one thing, and he knows from experience how strong the Church gets when it’s countercultural and persecuted, by Nazis or by Communists. He also knows how weak the Church gets when it’s fashionable. He knows the paradox of strong-when-weak and weak-when-strong.

Worse, he seems to know something else – something the saintly but sad Pius XlI and Paul VI did not know. Why does he keep talking about the third millennium, as if it’s going to be his? I have just proved that it will be ours. Yet he speaks as if he knows it will belong to the Enemy. It must be bravado, whistling in the dark. Mustn’t it? I mean, our logic is infallible. We have repeatedly checked our calculations. So why does this philosopher have that maddening smile on his face? He has no right to that smile! It’s infuriating! Wipe it away, somebody! How dare he smile at me? How dare he write that foolishly optimistic encyclical about my millennium?

Second, he is the most ecumenical pope in history. Read Ut Unum Sint, if you can bear to. This document, if it’s ever actually read by those to whom the Pope wrote it, could be very dangerous. He’s claiming to begin to reverse the trend of divisions. Of course he can’t do that, can he?

Our second “splitting” strategy, planting Modernist spies everywhere, seems to be beginning to backfire, because all the orthodox are uniting against all the Modernists. Modernism was the fundamental heresy of this century, as Gnosticism was of ancient times. But its very success seems to be turning against us now if it’s uniting the grassroots orthodox laity together to oppose it. By planting Modernist spies among them, we may actually have begun to unite them. And this Pope seems to have been aware of this tide-turn before we were.

The third split I mentioned, between head and heart, well, John Paul confounds our journalists’ categories. Anyone so adamant about doctrinal and moral orthodoxy, anyone so traditional about Mary, anyone so stubbornly set against feminist arrogance, and priestesses, and abortion, and birth control, and the Sexual Revolution, wouldn’t dare be so open and honest and dialogable and ecumenical. Why, he’s hijacked our hijack of Vatican II! The journalists who meet him are convinced that he is so open and honest that he must be a secret relativist posing as a dogmatist. Then they’re scandalized by his firm dogmatic stands. The journalists who know his firm stands are convinced he must be a fascist posing as a saint. Then they meet him and are astonished by his sanctity. It’s exactly the same with that other rascally reconciler of head and heart, Mother T. Blast it all! Can’t anybody get through their angel cover?

The third problem with this Pope is that he speaks directly and clearly and forcefully against our master stroke, relativism. He does not ignore this absolutely foundational issue, or speak with mealy mouth about it, as so many of his subordinates do, or substitute hate and fear and rhetoric for philosophical thought, as the Fundamentalists do, or compromise with it, as the Liberals do. Oooh! My head still hurts from Veritatis Splendor. The very title puts passion and beauty and fire and wonder into the concept of truth. He blew our cover to smithereens with that one. Lucky for us, very few of them have read it.

Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to eradicate the Enemy’s “natural law” from the human heart and produce “the abolition of man” yet. They still thirst for truth even when totally surrounded by sophistic philosophies of truthlessness from every corner of their culture. They still love saints and heroes even when pop psychology has replaced morality in their homilies and families. Even when they no longer believe in heroes, they still love them. And they still crave beauty, even though our agents of ugliness have dominated nearly every aesthetic establishment of their century, especially liturgists. Our strategic problem is: how can we win their hearts as well as we’ve won their heads? We design their philosophies, but the Enemy designed their hearts. Anyone who solves that conundrum will be rewarded richly at the Banquet Below.

Meanwhile, somebody get that big bear off Peter’s throne. He’s got teeth!

And that’s the fourth thing: he fights. He knows he’s at war, and he dares to call our empire “the culture of death.” Evangelium Vitae is a dangerously passionate call to action, to re-evangelize the world. Worst of all, he really thinks it can be done! Of course he’s a fool, but . . . well, he’s wrong, and that’s that. But . . . what the Heaven has he got up his sleeve?

In the last few years an amazing number of people have suddenly awakened to the simple fact that they are at war. When Pat Buchanan used the term “culture war” at the 1992 Republican Convention, he was demonized (how badly I wish that were true), and our big media mouths convinced everyone that he wanted to start the war, instead of just telling the truth like the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – the truth that we’re already in one. But now, nearly everyone except the media knows he was right.

People are beginning to distrust “The Experts,” our nonsilent minority. They’re drawing lines in the sand, and defending their families. They’re realizing that what was once their public school system has become our state propaganda machine, and they’re pulling their kids out. Home schooling is mega-multiplying. People are even buying dull old books about virtue. They’re fighting a jihad, and doing it together – an ecumenical jihad. One hand is open to embrace their allies, and the other is closed around the hilt of a sword to fight their common enemies which they’re beginning to recognize as us, not each other. Our simple “divide and conquer” strategy that worked for 2,000 years seems to be turning, like the tide.

Finally, this Pope has countered our Spectacularly Successful Sexual Strategy by elaborate theological reflections on sex and women and man-woman relations, by Dignitatem Mulieris and by Original Unity of Man and Woman, and by his deep, disgusting devotion to That Woman. Mary wasn’t around in Moloch’s day, but once old Moloch rose again in Mexico, there she stood: Their Lady of Guadalupe. We’d better stop slobbering with joy over all that baby blood and start worrying that she might end the American holocaust of human sacrifice just as she ended our little Aztec party. She can, you know. And he knows it, that old bear; he knows her power as very few of his soldiers do.

Don’t let them catch on. Stop those rosaries! They give me migraines. For badness’ sake don’t let yourselves be beaten by a woman! Get those radical feminists in power fast, before femininity comes back into the world and brings the Enemy’s son down again a million times a day. I discovered the disconcerting fact the other day that thousands of Protestants have taken up praying the rosary. Many learned it at abortion clinics, marching with Catholics. Who goofed? This could turn back the clock 500 years. Two thousand, even. Remember this, be as sure of this as that Polish bear is: WHERE SHE COMES, HE COMES.

Now, get out there and fight, you wimps! We will wimp, I mean, we will win. As soon as somebody discovers why that old Pope has that infuriatingly young smile on his face!

Scriptural Basis of the Prayer

A Part of Early Public Worship

Evolution of the Prayer

A Prayer of Penance

Development of the Present Prayer

The Council of Trent

The catechism of the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) embraced the “Hail Mary” as we know it, applauding it as the organic effort of the Church to complete what the Scripture initiated. Most rightly has the Church of God added to this thanksgiving, petition also and the invocation of the most holy Mother of God, thereby implying that we should piously and suppliantly have recourse to her in order that by her intercession she may reconcile God with us sinners and obtain for us the blessings we need both for this present life and for the life which has no end. After the Council, in 1568, the “Hail Mary” in its present form appeared in the Roman Breviary. (This information is summarized from The Catholic Encyclopedia.)

Angels and Men

Scripture records numerous instances of angelic visits, and the honor paid to angels by our ancestors in the faith. However, the angel’s greeting to Mary, “Hail, full of grace,” is unique, the very first instance of an angel showing reverence to a human being. To understand the magnitude of the angel’s paying homage to Mary, we must understand how far superior angels are to us.

The Nature of Angels

Angels are pure, spiritual beings. Because they have no material component, as we do, angels are not subject to the corruption and decay that will destroy our mortal frame. Furthermore, the angel’s intellectual powers surpass ours. The human mind learns by steps, proceeding from one truth to another, and often making mistakes in the process. Angels, by contrast, understand truth immediately and completely.

The Angels’ Closeness to God

Although equality with angels is promised God’s saints (S.T., Ia 62.5), this everlasting happiness is something we look forward to, yet our progress in grace is often impeded by our bodily senses. An angel’s immaterial nature is not subject to such distraction, so angels are able to love God without hindrance. Thus, Scripture speaks of angels’ standing before God and ministering to Him. Our human experience of sin reveals how far we are from God, at least occasionally.

Angels and Grace

Grace moves both men and angels to love God. However, because nothing stands between angels andtheir vision of God, the angels share God’s love more fully than we can hope to, in this life.

The Sole Exception

Because angels surpass mankind in dignity, grace and nearness to Our Creator, they are worthy of our honor. We depend upon angels to assist us, but we do not expect them to pay us tribute. In the Virgin Mary, however, the angels discovered a human being whose closeness to God was greater than theirs. Reasonably, then, the angel honored Mary by saying, “Hail, full of grace!” which expressed the angel’s respect and awe when faced with Mary’s excellence.

Mary, Full of Grace

God’s gift of grace enables us to do good and avoid evil. By sparing Mary the stain of Original Sin, God gave her a greater measure of grace than any saint other than Christ, Himself. St Augustine turns to the Scripture to express this beautifully Except the Holy Virgin Mary, if all the saints… while living here below had been asked whether they were without sin, all would have cried aloud with one voice: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8).

The Model of All Virtue

When we read the lives of the saints we discover that certain individuals were known for particular good works; Mary excels in all virtue. For example, she shows her humility when she replies to the angel, “I am the handmaid of the Lord,” and her chastity when she asserts she has had no relations with a man.

A Spiritual Vessel

Although many saints are known for the penances they imposed on their bodies, the saints’ true claim to holiness lies in the holiness of their souls. By contrast, Mary was so filled with grace that it filled her body, making her flesh fit to bear God’s Son. One medieval theologian wrote “The Holy Ghost so kindled in her heart the fire of divine love that it worked wonders in her flesh… that she gave birth to God made man.”

A Gift to the World

Our theology teaches no gift is given simply to enrich the one who receives it. Thus, we honor the saints because their virtues are a source of inspiration for others. Mary surpasses all the saints in virtue so the grace her Son gives through her is immense enough to save all mankind.

The Lord is With Thee

Mary’s participation in the Incarnation gives her a unique place in relation to the Blessed Trinity. God’s Son is her son, something that can be said of no other individual, and the union between Mary and God the Father exceeds the intimacy of God with any other creature. In giving birth to Jesus, Mary gives flesh and blood to God’s Word. Christ is Lord of creation – even Lord of the angels – but He is Mary’s Son, a relation no one else can know. Because the Incarnation is the work of the Holy Spirit, Mary enjoys a union with the Trinity unknown to any of the saints or angels.

Mother of the Lord, Our Lady

In the Old Testament, the most significant woman in a kingdom was not the king’s wife, for rulers could have many wives; the highest honor was paid the king’s mother. We pay Mary similar honor in our devotion. When Elizabeth greets Mary, she asks, “why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43) The words, “Mother of my Lord,” echo the title given the queen-mother in Scripture. They are also the basis for one of the most common titles by which we address the Blessed Virgin. Because Mary is Mother of our Lord, she is “Our Lady.”

Blessed among Women

Mary is often called a “New Eve” because God spared her the punishments He pronounced on the wife of Adam. Chief among these is the mortality, which consigns our bodies to the dust from which they were created. Mary is “blessed” in herself because she was spared the punishments God imposed on mankind, but she is also blessed by the actions of her life – giving us Our Savoir, showing us the supreme example of Christian virtue, and, in her Assumption, giving us a promise of the glory that God’s love calls us to enjoy.

Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb

The notion of “fruit” provides further reason for considering Mary the New Eve. The first Eve ate fruit which, she was promised, would make her like God.  Instead, through her disobedience, she became unlike God and was sent out of the earthly Paradise. Eve’s children have suffered the same fate for millennia. Mary reverses the Original Sin. By sharing her Fruit – Jesus Christ – with the world, she invites us to reclaim the image and identity we lost in the Garden. “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him,” St. John promises, “for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:2). Our baptism unites us with Christ and, through Him, to the Father, restoring in us the likeness of God sacrificed to sin.

Delight and Beauty

The book of Genesis tells us “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6). Once they tasted it, however, our First Parents realized, in an instant, the fruit of the tree was neither useful nor pleasant. Instead, it brought them shame and exile. The Fruit of Mary’s womb is both the summit of our humanity and food for our salvation, useful and beautiful. Eve discovered no pleasure in the fruit she ate, and ultimately we find as little pleasure in sin. In the Fruit Mary gives us, however, we find blessing, hope, and promise.

Pray for Us Sinners

The Hail Mary, as St. Thomas Aquinas knew it, and as he preached upon it during Lent in 1273, ends with acknowledgement of Our Savior, the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb. Surely, these words from the Scripture are sufficient, and perfect in their simplicity. Why, we may ask, has the Church added to the “Angelic Salutation” we find in the gospel? Academic study will undoubtedly reveal manifoldanswers to this question, but human need can tell us as much. As children, we are taught that beauty is as beauty does, and the Hail Mary is a prayer that God will enable us to live up to the image in which we have been created. One of the Church’s hymns honors Mary by saying, “Mary, mother meek and mild, blessed was she in her Child.” When we pray the Hail Mary we begin by acknowledging Mary’s unique and honored place in our humanity. But as we continue the prayer, we realize that Mary is not simply blessed in who she is, but in what she has done. In the Hail Mary we ask for the grace to discover, as Mary did, all that our human frame is capable of – if we are willing to place ourselves in God’s hands and surrender to God’s will.

Dominicans and Rosary, 2008

Fr. Carlos Azpiroz Costa, O.P., Master of the Order of Preachers, sent a New Year’s Day message to Dominican men and women throughout the world. Fr. Carlos noted that the Solemnity of the Epiphany, 2008, brought to a close the 800th anniversary of St. Dominic’s founding the first communities of Dominican women.…the whole Order has come to a better appreciation that the nuns are at the heart of the Order and that the foundation of our preaching is nothing less than the profound contemplation of our faith. The Master devoted one section of his address to the Rosary, and challenged Dominicans to rededicate themselves to the Rosary, which, for centuries, has been particularly associated with the spirituality and preaching of the Domincan Order. Citing the numerous visitors to international Marian shrines, such as Lourdes and Guadalupe, Fr. Carlos called the Rosary “a beloved universal prayer,” and said, “it is something we can touch, hold and even grasp at difficult moments, of our life; it is like grasping the hand of Mary herself.” Friends of the Rosary Center will surely share Fr. Carlos’ conviction that the prayers of the Rosary “are summaries of our faith,” that accompany the faithful throughout their lives, allowing one to say “thy will be done” at every moment, perhaps most importantly “at the hour of our death.”

The Rosary and the Life of Mother Teresa

Those investigating inspirational – and inspiring – reading during the days of Lent will be interested in the new book, Mother Teresa, In the Shadow of Our Lady. The author, Fr. Joseph Langford, MC, worked with Mother Teresa for thirty years, and she invited him to help establish the men’s branch of her Missionaries of Charity. Fr. Langford’s book is more than a diary of a long friendship with an astounding woman; it is a profound reflection on the power of Mary’s love to transform the world, one heart at a time.…Our Lady will begin to arrange the events and details of our life as soon as we give her permission. This remarkable promise appears in our life then increasingly becomes an adventure of grace as she takes the reins of our existence and begins to exercise her spiritual maternity. Fr. Langford’s story begins in 1947, when Mother Teresa experienced a profound revelation of God’s thirst for the salvation of His children. It continues by examining Mother Teresa’s first efforts to touch the lives of the poor and dying, and provides encouragement and practical steps to follow Mother Teresa in a life of contemplation lived in the world, through a deep commitment to the Blessed Virgin. The book understands that faithful individuals have many claims on their time, and gives practical guidance for deepening one’s spirituality, while coping with the realities of a busy life in the 21st Century. It was Mother Teresa’s daily encounter with Our Lady that strengthened and equipped her for her work…[and] lets us live beyond our limitations, wrapped in her presence and sharing her spiritand her heart. (Fr. Langford’s book is available from the Rosary Center; to order it, turn to the form that accompanies this bulletin or order it online at http://www.rosary-center.org)

Rosalind Moss

Former Jew and Evangelical Christian

Tim Drake

How does a Jewish person of faith convert to Catholicism? To judge by Rosalind Moss’s eighteen-year journey into the Church, the answer is . . . very slowly. Raised in Brooklyn, in a conservative Jewish home with one older brother and one younger sister, Moss never even considered that she would ever be anything other than Jewish. “It’s what I was. We were God’s people. That was my identity,” says Moss.

“We waited for the Messiah to come,” adds Moss, “but He never did.” As a teenager, her brother David became an atheist; Rosalind became agnostic. “I figured that there was a God, but how could you know? I longed for meaning and purpose and to know why mankind was on the earth, but didn’t think that you could find God, or that merely knowing He existed could make a difference.”

“When I was thirty-two years old, I heard about Christ for the first time,” recalls Moss. “David brought me an article that said there were Jewish people who believed that Christ was the Messiah. I asked my brother, ‘You mean to tell me that the Messiah was already here? That He was the only hope the world ever had, and yet the Jewish people didn’t know this? That He came and left and there has been no impact, no change, no peace? That’s just insanity.’”

Not long after, Moss moved to California and met some of what she considered “neurotic” Jews who did in fact believe this. “They led me to the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world,” Moss said. “They showed me the Old Testament and pointed to John 1:29, which drove a knife through my heart. There I sat, shattered to think that this was true . . . that God, whose name we had written as G – d, had entered history and become a man to bring us home. It was an unbelievable thing.”

Moss immediately jumped into a nearby evangelical Protestant church and enrolled in every Bible study and outreach she could find. Her first Bible study was taught by an ex-Catholic who had been taught by a former priest. “So, right off, I knew that Catholicism was a cult and a false religious system. I spent the next eighteen years trying to save others from what I thought was the work of Satan,” recalls Moss.

“My brother’s search for truth led him first to a Baptist church. But it made no sense to him that God would have left us in so much confusion as thousands of denominations, and so he went seeking the Church God had intended. Two years later, David became a Catholic.

“In the summer of 1990, after having been a Catholic for eleven years, he gave me a copy of This Rock magazine. Inside was an advertisement for a four-tape series by a Presbyterian minister who had become Catholic — Scott Hahn. I had never heard of such a thing, and so I ordered the tapes.”
Just a week away from serving in a ministerial position at the Evangelical Church in Orange, California, Moss listened to the Hahn tapes. “I remember Scott’s words well. He said that for anyone who ‘would look into the claims of Catholicism would come a holy shock and a glorious amazement.’

“Here I knew that the Church was the work of Satan, and yet listening to that tape a ‘holy shock’ went through me. I knew, before God, that I had to look into the claims of the Catholic Church or I would be turning from God. Thus began my four-year agonizing journey toward the Church.”
The journey, Moss admits, was a difficult one. Right from the start, she decided to put the issue of Mary on a shelf and deal with her later, if she ever got that far. Instead, she first dealt with the sacramental nature of the Church.

“I had one hundred percent bought into the Calvinist thinking of total depravity. I believed that creation was absolutely corrupt, and that therefore God would not use things to bring about grace. It just didn’t make sense to me why God would use fallen creation.

“Yet in Scripture Christ uses mud and spit to heal the blind man. I wondered why He did that. He certainly didn’t have to. This led me to wonder why He changed the water into wine, when He could have just gone poof and made the change.

“Furthermore, I questioned the Incar-nation. Why would God have taken on flesh? I came to understand that creation is fallen, but not totally depraved, and that God can and does take creation and us and restore us to the dignity that He intended.”

Another issue Moss had a hard time understanding was the Eucharist. “I could not understand how, if we already had Christ, we could get Him. Did we get Him on Sunday and then lose Him during the week?”

One of Ross’ spiritual directors, Monsignor James O’Connor, helped answer her question. “He told me that ‘in a marriage relationship the husband and wife love each other and have each other all the time. Yet sometimes they are not very aware of that love. However, in the intimacy of the marital union it is the beloved giving to his loved, just as Christ, the Bridegroom, gives to His Church, the Bride, in the Eucharist, a total act of self-giving love that is unique to that time.’

“For me, that was extraordinarily beautiful. Monsignor O’Connor’s explanation of the Eucharist and the nature of the Mass as the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary helped me into the Church.”

Moss’ final hurdle was understanding the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. “I could not understand how we could offer our lives with Christ,” she recalls. “It seemed as if we were saying that Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t sufficient.

“What enabled that truth to get through to me was thinking of a mother who is in the kitchen baking a chocolate cake. She has all that she needs. She needs nothing.

“Then her daughter comes into the kitchen and asks, ‘Mommy, can I help you?’ and so the mother lets the daughter help. The mother doesn’t need her addition, but it is still a true addition.

“My sins put Christ to death on the cross. However, now that I’ve come to love Him, if I could go back and be at the foot of the cross, even though I once cried ‘Crucify him!’ wouldn’t I now crawl up on the cross and give myself with Him? Wouldn’t I want to do that?

“Calvary, through two thousand years, is brought to us. We are at the foot of the cross and we can give ourselves with Him, in Him and through Him. That is the Mass.”

In the end, having dealt with every Marian doctrine and coming to understand the communion of saints, Moss started praying through Mary. Five weeks later, at the Easter vigil, 1995, she took Mary’s Jewish name, Miriam, as her confirmation name and entered the Church. Life has never been the same.

“Evangelical friends ask me what I have now that I was missing as an Evangelical. I tell them that I have not more than Christ, but I have the whole Christ. I have all that God has given us in giving us His Church.”

Of her conversion, Moss states, “I looked at every Protestant work I could find against Catholicism. In the end, looking into two thousand years of Church history, I learned that the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s comment was truly the case: ‘There’s not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they mistakenly think the Catholic Church teaches.’

“My heart was taken halfway to heaven. I never believed that there could be such a design.”

Moss admits that her conversion has given her a far better understanding of what it means to be Jewish. “The most Jewish thing a person can do is to become Catholic. When I was trying to save my brother from becoming Catholic, I went to Christmas Mass with him. Afterwards, I told him, ‘That’s a synagogue, but with Christ!’”

She draws comparisons between the Passover and the Lord’s Supper. “Passover was celebrated to point to Israel’s temporal deliverance from bondage to Egypt. The final Passover, the Last Supper, points to our eternal deliverance from bondage to sin. Both events required the participants to eat of the lamb.”

Moss now spends the majority of her time on the road, speaking to parishes, conventions and conferences as a staff apologist with San Diego-based Catholic Answers. In addition, she writes for This Rock and Be magazine, is a frequent guest on Catholic Answers’ live radio program, and co-hosted a sixteen-part EWTN series with convert Kristine Franklin, titled Household of Faith. Moss was awarded a 1999 Envoy Award for Best New Evangelist.

She’s not alone in her ministry efforts. Her brother David now leads the Association of Hebrew Catholics, a community that helps Catholics of Jewish origin to realize that they need not abandon their heritage in becoming Catholic.

“My wish, from the moment I gave my life to Christ twenty-three years ago, was to find a megaphone and a ladder tall enough to get to the moon so that I could tell the world that there is a Savior. Now I want to spend the rest of my life telling Catholics what they have.”

You Can Trust Me, I’m a Psychic

By Mark P. Shea

You can’t turn on the TV these days without being acosted by an infomercial for the latest scam: psychic hotlines. New ones spring up practically every day, and this fast growing fad is grabbing a lot more than foolish people’s cash – souls are at stake. Have you ever wondered why these 900# scams are so effective in duping so many? Here’s a look at the silliness and, how Catholics can respond to those who swear by their psychics.
You see this stuff everywhere. During the commercials on the science programs that assure us we’ve progressed past medieval superstition. On the back pages of magazines that assure us we’re integrated adults with healthy sex lives and high-paying jobs. In the newspapers that remind us how American secular culture is free of the ignorant mysticism of the Dark Ages. In the pages of a zillion “women’s mags,” sandwiched between excerpts from “Andre Talks Hair!” and “How to Have Abs of Steel.”

Horoscopes. Astrologers. Dionne Warwick hawking her Psychic Pals. Billy Dee Williams coaxing you into dialing that 900 number that will change your life and your phone bill forever. Crystal gazing, tarot reading, clairvoyance and all the rest of it. What is a Catholic to make of it all? And what is a Catholic who wishes to share his Faith to say to his neighbor who faithfully reads his horoscope every morning in the Times?

Some laugh at the very idea of saying anything. The whole enterprise is shot through with such quackery and hokum that many people can’t believe anyone takes it seriously. For example, when Envoy did a search to find a few astrology Web sites, we found (among the thousands of hits) three separate sites advertising the uncanny powers of Mystic Meg, Sylvia Browne and Jeanne Dixon. What struck us as most uncanny of all was that their advertising blurbs were, to a large extent, exact, word-for-word duplicates of one another, right down to the displays of grammatical ineptitude (“Yes, I have one of the greatest psychic pools filled with my hand picked psychics and they all experience the same capabilities as mine.”)

Brrr! Scary! What besides psychic synchronicity could possibly explain this strange coincidence? Could it have to do with their remarkably similar phone numbers? You be the judge!

Still other ads wavered between spookiness and a kind of unconscious compulsion to confess their quackery, as, for example, tarot readings offered by the appropriately-named “House of Cards.” Others simply brass it out with wondrously meaningless claims, as, for instance, an astrologer down the street from me who advertises herself as “Seattle’s Best Astrologer.” In lucid moments, one wonders just how to measure this claim versus, say, Seattle’s Second Best Astrologer. But, as should be obvious, most of these people are not really counting on a clientele with a robust sense of skepticism.

Nonetheless, millions of people do not harbor such skepticism. Which is why the tube, the newspapers and the magazines do not promote this stuff for their health. They promote it because it is big, booming, lucrative business that rakes in big, booming, lucrative bucks. Here, for instance, is the July 1997 issue of New Woman, an ultra-typical checkstand mag featuring an ultra-typical “Horoscope Special” section sponsored by the Coty perfume company. The first page has a big splashy ad for “Ghost Myst” (“You can’t see it, but you know it’s there”), along with the slogan, “Always believe in spirits — especially yours.” Then, leaf after leaf of fabulously expensive color glossy pages telling several hundred thousand credulous readers how to organize their finances based on the stars and planets (“We all have issues when it comes to money — and the cosmos have more to do with it than you might think.” “Your Sun sign influences the way you feel about money.”)

Here is a spectacularly crass alloy of Corporate Big Money, American self-worship and materialism, and superstitious truckling to the powers that would have made Simon the Magician proud (Acts 8:9-10). And it is sponsored not by some two-bit juke joint crystal gazer, but by a major American corporation in a major American magazine utterly indistinguishable from a hundred others. That means, among other things, that this stuff, far from being far out, is mainstream, normal and regarded as harmless. But is it harmless?
Is it harmless?
To raise this question these days is largely to invite catcalls. Especially when we raise it as Catholics. Our postmodern neighbor retorts, “What’s the difference between your religion with its prophets and miracles and this stuff about horoscopes and magic? If it works for some people, what’s the harm?”
Conversely, some of our Evangelical Protestant friends will take a position opposite from this, yet just as hostile to the Catholic Church. “Horoscopes and seances are forbidden by Scripture,” they will say, “and that’s why Catholic prayer to the saints is evil, too. It’s all satanic.”
And finally, of course, uneducated Catholics can sometimes get fuddled by apologists for the occult who tell them horoscopes and consultation with the dead are “in the Bible,” so it must be okay. How do we navigate such turbulent waters and retain a healthy Catholic Faith?

A good place to start.
A good place to start is the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2115-2116):
“God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it.

“All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.”

Let’s unpack this. If you ask most modern Catholics which of the Ten Commandments astrology or divination violates, they’ll likely tell you, “Thou shalt not steal.” That’s because, being more modern than Catholic, most tend to think of sins against the wallet before thinking of sins against God. They figure the thing is quackery, so the main sin is in bubbling somebody out of their cash. Interestingly, though, the Catechism teaches us to regard divination, horoscopes and the rest as sins against the First, not the Seventh, Commandment.

The First Commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The reason the Church regards divination, consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, summoning the dead and all the rest of it as sinful is because they are all attempts to treat creatures like the Creator. They are all attempts to wring from (and give to) creatures (whether crystals, tea leaves, stars, dead people or spirits) that which is proper only to God. And they are all, without exception, motivated by a desire for power and control.

Love, Life, Relationships, Career, Money, the Future.
Which brings us to the main paradox of the “psychic subculture”: namely, that it desires and claims access to phenomenal cosmic powers, yet has astoundingly petty aims (and I here quote from a typical ad):

Your personal psychic will answer questions about:
*Love * Life * Relationships * Career * Money *The Future

One would think that Souls in Tune with the Infinite would have loftier goals than finding out from New Woman what “Your Money Style” is (“Thanks to Jupiter, your popularity goes through the roof. Spring for a great cocktail dress, a caterer and a cellular phone.”) But, in fact, the basic reason for consulting a psychic (confirmed by looking at the average psychic’s “marketing strategy”) is a deep desire for knowledge and control as the highest conceivable goods in life. Like Faustus, the basic motivation here is to acquire chicks, checks and chocolate. It is emphatically not to humble oneself before God, nor to enter into a relationship of mutual self-giving, nor even to raise one’s sights to a moderate philosophical reflection on any meaning in life beyond “Always believe in spirits — especially yours.”

This by itself is enough to distinguish the guiding principle of the occult from anything remotely resembling Catholic faith. For in contrast to the teaching of Christ, the obvious goal here is not union with God, but “becoming as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). In short, the goal is indeed power — “power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers.”

This last clause ought not to go unnoticed. For the irony is that when we seek security by placing our faith in power and self rather than in the love of the Blessed Trinity, we necessarily find ourselves, sooner or later, in a universe of fear — fear of greater powers who believe in themselves more strongly still. This is the source of a zillion schemes for appeasing spirits, dealing with hexes and the whole complex jungle of superstition which is rife, not only in pre-Christian paganism, but in post-Christian supermarket checkstand culture, as well. Which is why, in the midst of her promises to deliver you into a future of peace and plenty, Jeanne Dixon’s Web page features a promise to remove spells. It’s a god eat god world.
But this is the 20th Century!

“But,” says the skeptic, “this is the 20th Century! Surely you don’t take powers, principalities, and all the rest of this supernaturalism seriously?”
As a Catholic, I most certainly do take the supernatural seriously. The mere fact that an enormous amount of the occult is what we would call human quackery does not mean it is not supernatural. For a Catholic, the mere fact the thing involves humans at all makes it supernatural, since humans are spiritual creatures. The charlatan who exploits the credulity of rich widows is complicit in the work of the Father of Lies, even if it involves only smoke and mirrors. The fact that such quackery is not accompanied by levitation and pea soup vomit does not make it the less dangerous if it tempts a soul to place pride, power, vanity and self-absorption at the top of its To Do list.

However, having said that, a Catholic will hasten to add that not all occult phenomena are necessarily caused by a mere human agency. Sometimes the liar is not human, but genuinely demonic and capable of producing effects beyond what is naturally explicable. For example, the possessions recorded in the New Testament and the strange visitations of demonic power which afflicted St. John Vianney. The fact is, the world bristles with reliable accounts of malign supernatural powers; accounts which come from sages, saints and quite ordinary people who are quite as bright and honest as you or me, and who insist that such things do happen and have even happened to them.

Sniffing, “But this is the 20th Century!” in the face of this evidence and of the teaching of the Church is exactly like sniffing, “But this is Tuesday the 12th!” The fact is, the calendar has nothing to do with whether God created immortal spirits called “angels.” It has nothing to do with the fact that some of them abused their free will, rejected God and His creation (including us) and thereby became what we call devils. And it has nothing whatever to do with the fact that, to this day, Satan remains what Jesus called him: “a murderer from the beginning . . . a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Thus, the rationalist skeptic, so far from being in advance of the age, is several eons and ages behind the times, and is clueless as to the nature and extent of just what powers may be at work when a human being dabbles in the occult. This is why the Church, fearing much more for our souls than our wallets, condemns all necromancy, all astrology, all attempts to seek revelation from spirits or crystals or powers — even ones which are undertaken for an ostensibly “good” reason (like calling on familiar spirits to heal a sick loved one).

For all of this is, according to the Catechism, still tantamount to idolatry and is still, at root, an attempt to wring from (and give to) a creature (even if it is a superhuman creature like a fallen angel) what is proper only to the Creator. The occultist claims to “summon spirits from the vasty deep” and the rationalist tartly replies, “Yes, but will they come when you call?” The Church says the extraordinarily dangerous thing is they very well might do just that, particularly to the heart and will that are deliberately disposed to serve them.

They come to dominate, deceive and destroy.
However, they come not to serve, but to dominate, deceive and destroy. The serious pursuit of occultic power by puny humans surrounded by superhuman fallen spirits is analogous to the mouse’s serious pursuit of the cat. Fallen angels hate God. They also hate what is in God’s image, namely you. They even hate themselves. Their native language, says our Lord, is the lie (John 8:44). To seek them for any reason is to lay oneself open to grave spiritual danger, including the possibility of irrevocably severing ourselves from our relationship with God.
“But,” says the occult devotee, “not all psychic phenomena are sought out. Sometimes people simply find they have prophetic dreams or insights or some other strange thing. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, had a dream in which he foresaw his own assassination. Are you calling such phenomena automatically demonic?”

No, not “automatically.” That would be rash. The world is a strange place, governed by a God who is Mystery. If He chooses from time to time to reveal things to someone prophetically, He is free to do so (though since He is Truth, He will never reveal anything that contradicts or adds to the revelation He has given us in Christ). He can, if He likes, reveal Himself through various odd phenomena such as dreams or mystical knowledge of future events. He is, after all, God. But precisely because He is God, we are obliged to hear and heed His word to us that divination, spiritism, horoscopes and consulting the dead are “abominable practices” (Deut. 18:10-12).

It is one thing, therefore, if a person is made the recipient of a supernatural insight or gift (as, for instance, St. Bernadette was when the Blessed Virgin appeared to her at Lourdes). It is quite another if a person defies God’s express will by seeking supernatural knowledge and power in ways the Lord has expressly forbidden as a violation of the First Commandment. And of course, the mere fact that someone has an unsought dream or supernatural insight about the future still does not mean that person is necessarily being visited by God. As Sts. Peter and Paul say, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” and he “disguises himself as an angel of light.” (1 Peter 5:8; 2 Cor. 11:14). That is also why Paul admonishes, “Test everything, hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). And the Catholic Church follows suit by testing every claim of private revelation presented to Her, scrutinizing each claim in light of what God has clearly revealed in Scripture and Tradition.

“That’s your interpretation of Scripture,” says the occult devotee. “But there are other Scriptures that support, for instance, astrology. Judges 5:20 tells us, ‘From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera.’ Likewise, Matthew 2 tells us the Magi (that is, astrologers) knew of the coming Messiah because they had ‘seen his star in the East.’ So astrology is perfectly biblical.”

In reply, the Catholic might answer that a better way to put it is that astrology is imperfectly biblical. That is, both the examples cited are specimens of incomplete revelation, and are certainly not licenses for disobeying God.

The basic very biblical and very Catholic truth that astrology imperfectly reflects is this: Everything is connected. However, what neither astrologers, nor the author of Judges, nor the Magi understand very clearly is how everything is connected. Modern astrologers understand the least of the three. They assume there is a direct connection between us and the stars and planets. The author of Judges knows a bit more than this. He has the added revelation of the existence of the God of Israel, and so he says (poetically), “the stars fought against Sisera” or, in plain English, “God arranged everything to help Israel.” But the author of Judges does not clearly understand to what end God was helping Israel, he just knows He was.

Likewise, the Magi are also murky, but they know a smidge more. They do not clearly understand how all this Israelite religion fits in with their Babylonian lore of the stars, but they are convinced (just like modern astrologers) that everything is connected; they know (just like the author of Judges) that God is somehow doing the connecting and they are aware (just like Catholics) that it’s somehow entangled with the long-foretold “King of the Jews.” But the crucial fact which eludes them all is the nature of this connection between everything.

It is precisely here that we, as Catholics, do have perfectly biblical revelation the modern astrologer does not. For we know the end to which God was leading Israel when He arranged everything to fight against Sisera. He was leading to Jesus Christ, Who is the fulfillment of the hope of Israel. Likewise, when He graciously spoke to the Magi in terms of their own culture, He led them, not into more astrology, but to the Incarnate Word of God, and thus to the fullness of His revelation. His grace built on their Babylonian nature and helped them to understand the perfectly biblical revelation that everything is connected in Christ, and only in Christ. God can and did use the innocent astrological attempts of the Magi to help them understand the connections at work in Creation.

But once the revelation is given that everything is connected only in Christ, any further attempt to seek from the creation what is proper to the Creator is to try to make an end run around the Creator and thereby sin against the First Commandment. It is also, by the way, silly. For in Christ “the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily . . . in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:9, 3). To continue looking to stars or tea leaves for supernatural revelation in the face of this overwhelming gift is analogous to a man dying of thirst turning his back on Niagara Falls and trying to catch rain in a thimble.

The Babe at Bethlehem said to the Magi, in essence, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you . . . The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:23, 30).

“Speaking of repentance,” says our Evangelical friend, “when are you Catholics going to repent of your doubletalk? After all, you pray to the dead. What’s the difference between that and a seance like Saul attended in 1 Samuel 28?”

The difference is Jesus Christ.
Catholic teaching, as we have seen, forbids as strongly as Deuteronomy 18:10 all attempts to “consult with the dead.” It forbids it, as we have seen, because any attempt to make an end run around Jesus Christ and acquire knowledge and control apart from the life of the Blessed Trinity constitutes idolatry. Saul was not guilty of some vague sin of creepiness when he summoned the spirit of Samuel by the Witch of Endor. He was guilty of attempting to wring power over events from a creature so he could outwit the Creator. The lesson Saul learned was the lesson of the Psalmist: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? . . . If I make my bed in Sheol [the grave], thou art there” (Psalm 139:7-8). It is a lesson the Church wants every one of Her members to know and heed: idolatry is a grave sin.

“But Saul summoned up a demon and was punished by death [1 Chron. 10:13-14]. Isn’t Catholic prayer to the dead also likened to summoning demons?”

Actually the text gives us no reason at all for thinking Saul summoned a demon. The sacred writer is quite emphatic that the spirit who appeared was the prophet Samuel himself. In fact, the spirit of Samuel even utters a true prophecy: Saul is to die tomorrow. How to explain this? One reasonable explanation is simply this: Samuel, who was among the prophets who awaited the Messiah, was, like all the dead in Christ, not dead, any more than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were dead. For as our Lord says, “He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:32). This being so, it is quite possible that God allowed Samuel to appear to Saul, just as He allowed Moses and Elijah to appear on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). As we have seen, God is free to do what He likes, but Saul is not thereby exonerated of his attempt to make an end run around God. He must discover that our connectedness to the dead is not direct and that the dead, like the living, have no power and no hope that is not ultimately centered in Christ. Saul must learn not to sin against the First Commandment. In short, the story corroborates precisely what the Church teaches.

“But,” persists our Evangelical friend, “How can you say the Church honors the First Commandment when you pray to the dead? Isn’t that idolatry?

Pray to the dead?
No. For prayer to a saint is not worship, any more than bowing to an audience or kneeling to propose marriage is. “Pray” is simply an old-fashioned word for “request,” as in “I pray thee, do thou get me another beer, and I shall reckon it an act of kindness withal.” Thus, in asking me to pray for you, you are “praying to” me in the sense the Catholic Church means it. To “pray to” the saints is not to adore them as gods. Rather, it is simply to address them as fellow members of the Body of Christ. This is very significant, for it is to do precisely what those who consult the dead do not do, which is to consciously place both oneself and the saint addressed in the communion of saints, which is united with the Blessed Trinity and, in the Trinity, with us. In other words, Catholic prayer to the dead fully acknowledges our connectedness entirely within Christ.

Thus, prayer to the saints is sharply distinct from “consulting the dead” precisely because it does not attempt to make an end run around God, nor to treat a creature as God, nor to acquire from the dead forbidden knowledge or power. Rather, the entire point is to enter fully into the reality that, in Christ and only in Christ, we are “members one of another” (Rom. 12:5).
The theology behind prayer to the saints, then, is straightforward and solidly biblical. It is centered in the Light of the World, of which the “angel of light” is a cheesy imitation.

First, Scripture clearly shows that the blessed dead, connected with us in Christ, are indeed aware of earthly doings (Heb. 12:1). Also check out the story of the Transfiguration in the gospels (Matt. 17:1-8).

Second, Scripture promises that those in Christ shall, in glory, “be like him,” conformed to His image in every way (1 John 3:2; Rom. 8:29). And so, even on this earth, we are given the glorious task of carrying out His work by praying for one another and exercising spiritual gifts for the building up of the Body (Rom. 12). The Church, believing the reality that we go from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18), has always believed that this glorious participation in the saving work of Christ will be ours in even fuller measure when we enter into Heaven. And since we are “members one of another,” we can, in Christ and only in Christ, seek the prayers and help of fellow members of the Body, both here and in Heaven.

The bottom line is seances are not the same as prayer to the saints, for the same reason magic is not the same as miracles, and horoscopes are not the same as prophecy. Seances, magic, horoscopes and divination are parodies of a reality which God offers us, the reality of our connectedness in Christ.

The Devil’s tricks.
The basic insight behind occultism is, like many of the devil’s tricks, a biblical one (Luke 4:9-11). It is true that everything is connected. By exploiting the truth that everything is connected, the devil tells a grand lie: He tells us everything is connected apart from Christ. But as usual, the devil promises a Ferrari and delivers a Yugo.

Based on his lie, he tricks people into trying to gain revelation apart from God, into treating creatures as though they are God, and into trying to “become as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil.” In so doing he can then a) send crooks to rip us off and thereby harden us against faith in a supernatural God, b) send lying spirits to lead us into the supernatural but away from God or c) make it impossible to distinguish between what God has cursed and what God has blessed so that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the irony is, all the while that we were hankering to “become like gods,” the Lord had been longing for us to . . . become like God (Matt. 5:48).

For everything the occult claims to give us is a cheap imitation of what God actually wills us to have. Wisdom, knowledge, power, love, true riches, assurance about the future and even communion with the whole Body of Christ, both living and dead, are all our proper heritage in Christ (Eph. 1:18-19; 3:14-21). He even promises to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29), which is to be like God. That is why the whole strategy of the powers and principalities who hate God and us (Eph. 6) is concentrated on getting us to forget those two little words “in Christ.”

But if we do not forget them, if we remember our Lord’s command to obey Him and thereby abide in Him as He abides in you (John 15:4), then far from being snookered by the occult, we shall “make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9-11).

• What is Natural Family Planning?

Natural Family Planning (NFP) refers to the practice of achieving or avoiding pregnancies according to an informed awareness of a woman’s fertility.

• Why is NFP the best in family planning?

NFP provides a medically safe, healthy, highly effective and very low cost method of planning your family.  It is convenient (no birth control devices to use), and it’s immediately reversible for achieving or avoiding pregnancy. It is increasingly available throughout the world, it tells you when you have achieved pregnancy, and it’s morally acceptable.

• How long does it take to learn NFP?

In general, it takes about 3-6 cycles to confidently learn how to chart and interpret the individual’s chart although it varies from couple to couple. We recommend that couples who are preparing to get married to come to the NFP centre at least 6 months before their wedding day to receive instruction.

• Is NFP compulsory?

Every individual has their own right and choice, NFP using the Billing’s Ovulation Method is the recommended method to manage fertility in a morally acceptable way for Catholic couples.

• What’s the difference between NFP and Contraception?

This rhetorical question takes many forms:

• “NFP and contraception have the same intention of planning for the good of one’s children.  Both are contraceptive and moral.”
• “How is the conscience of someone who uses contraception different from one who uses NFP?  They both want the same things – the good of the family.”
• “NFP is the same as Contraception because both may aim to limit family size.”
• “Contraception is defined as ‘the practice of or method used in deliberately preventing a woman becoming pregnant as a result of having sex’.  Would this not mean that the rhythm method or other NFP methods would fall under this definition and be at risk of the ‘contraceptive mentality: loss of respect for women and human life, the weakening of family, and population control by governments?’ ”
• “For the same grave reasons that make Natural Family Planning (NFP) morally acceptable, wouldn’t the use of a condom instead be just as moral?  How then is the condom any different from NFP?”
• “Surely you can’t be saying that NFP and Contraception are different because one is natural and the other artificial?   What’s wrong with being artificial?”
• “If every sexual act must remain open to the transmission of life, then NFP is wrong too.” [1]  and even
• “In both NFP and Contraception the sperm cells die, so they are the same.”

The recurring theme is that similar goals or effects prove that they are the same, both contraceptive and immoral or both family planning and moral.  

The Answer:

Both NFP and contraception have to do with birth regulation but how does that make them the same?

All crows are birds and all eagles are birds but are crows eagles?   Likewise, both Men and Women are human beings but is a Man a Woman?   Or we could point to the hare (genus Lepus) and the rabbit (seven genera) which look similar but are completely different animals.   Or to apples and oranges and even dukus and durians which are all fruits yet different, one from the other. 

Good intentions alone without licit methods are insufficient.  If you eat the poisonous mushroom you will die even if you want it to be the delicious, and expensive, truffle. 

What exactly is this difference? 

Although both are used to regulate birth, they do so in different ways.  NFP modifies sexual behaviour to suit fertility while contraception suppresses fertility to suit behaviour.  

They take opposite paths, and adopting one, either one, means to develop the habits and culture that go with that practice and to turn one’s back on the other – usually with far reaching consequences.

The words themselves imply the paths taken.  

“Contra-ception” means anti-conception and is commonly extended to anti-pregnancy and anti-birth, so providing different ways of getting rid of unwanted children in a sex-sparing, anti-life package.    

Contraceptives are never used to achieve pregnancy, as the term ‘family planning’ should suggest.  They may plan for the good of some children but often at the expense of other children, some of whom may be selected for abortion.  Experience does show in fact that the trends of contraception and abortion are often in direct relation, abortion having being legalised for the purpose of recovery from failed contraception. 

Contraceptives are not wrong merely because they are ‘artificial’.   They are intrinsically evil because they rupture God’s design of Procreative Love, no matter what good intentions or results we may have for using them.   

“Natural Family Planning” on the other hand means planning a family, not avoiding one, as married couples decipher their cycles of fertility and infertility in a truly unitive relationship that does not hinder the transmission of life. ‘Natural’ refers to Natural Law, in line with the order of Creation, not to the absence of pills or devices. 

While sexual intercourse, unlike nutrition, is unnecessary for individuals, it is a part of married love and commits married couples to the gift of fertility and to accept as many children as they can take care of.   But the Designer has also given them a second gift, the gift of infertility in each cycle, and for grave reasons they can use these infertile days to space or even indefinitely postpone the next child.    

Like following instructions in the designer’s manual, NFP accommodates God’s design.   If the more serious the matter is, like surgery or flying a plane, the greater the disaster if we fail to follow the manual’s instructions, why should it be any different with the creation of human life and the way God has designed this?    

Contraception is like locking the door and sending out the rejection, “Don’t come.  You’re not wanted,” but spacing pregnancy with NFP uses the built-in mechanisms of our biology and is like taking the opportunity provided by the Creator of Life to delay the invitation to the next child.   

Using NFP and using contraceptives are thus different acts, separate from the intentions we may have for using them.  And the act must first be judged independently of these intentions.  This is because you can never do moral evil even for worthy goals or consequences.[2]  

[1]NFP does not block the transmission of life.   Sexual intercourse is given to procreation but fecundity normally means cyclical fertility until menopause – like a radio is designed to produce music even though it’s sometimes off. NFP is dedicated to this design and the sexual act is not blocked to conception if and when this is possible.  But ‘contraception’ blocks a baby that could have resulted from sex on fertile days.  It changes the design of fecund sex – like using the radio to hammer a nail into the wall.   Abstaining from sex is not ‘contraception’.   After all, celibates are not practising contraception.   Nor is it ‘contraception’ to have sex on infertile days, since conception is not possible then anyway.

[2] If we do an intrinsically evil act because there are good reasons for doing it, we would have to say that the evil act is a good thing to do.  To thus misrepresent evil as good makes good and evil indistinguishable and would open the door to all evil acts since no one does anything without a good reason.   Inevitably, this leads to the corruption of conscience and to the increasing inability to make moral choices.

• But if NFP is not substantively a contraceptive, why then do many people feel that it is?

Perhaps we can point at the anti-baby milieu in which we live.  In a culture that extols acquisitions the Child is not one of the 5 Cs.   On the contrary, decades of institutional denial and rejection of babies has created the mindset that children are accidents and unwanted burdens at worst, or optional extras or even cures for infertility at best. 

Not only does contraception violate the procreative meaning of intercourse but also its unitive meaning, as it disfigures the sexuality of husband and wife and obstructs the total self-giving that is characteristic of love[3].

People below 50 years of age are born into this culture, with a condom in the mouth, to borrow the idiom of the silver spoon.   And women may now need to work outside the home without alternative opportunities for child care, particularly during financial reversals, which erodes their biological roles as mother and home-maker. 

Adulterated by contraception, sex itself has been de-linked from procreation and is now little to do with babies. There is more and more sex without babies and more and more babies without sex.  

And even when we have sexual relations using NFP, we may use it as a contraceptive. The words we use betray us. We ‘prevent’ pregnancy rather than ‘postpone’ one;  we ‘make babies’ or ‘reproduce’ rather than ‘procreate’. And we may even greet a surprise pregnancy with, “Oh no” instead of “Thank God for the gift”.  

Choosing life is choosing love for people over things, where children are more precious than the things they replace.   So we need to cultivate or re-cultivate within ourselves a willingness to co-operate with God to accept fertility and children as gifts we value and protect instead of diseases we are afraid of and need to control. 

NFP is good in itself because it accommodates God’s design for procreation, but it is no different from a contraceptive if the goals for using it are illicit e.g. having sex using NFP to have no children at all could be illicit.  Used as a contraceptive, NFP would be a contraceptive and would then – and only then – merit the accusation, “NFP is the same as Contraception.” 

Clearly then the formation of conscience is essential, as Pope John Paul II advised on the occasion of the 20^th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae, 1988, “Another way of weakening the spouses’ sense of responsibility with regard to their conjugal love is that of spreading information about natural methods without accompanying it with adequate formation of conscience.”

If these principles are followed, marital sex will unite physical loving with fecundity, and spouses will be able to develop a fine balance between the two aims of marital sexuality, i.e. marital intimacy and children.

[3] Inner beauty does not depend on recognition by the beholder but on fidelity to God’s design.  The husband who recognizes the inner beauty of his wife is the fortunate one.  In a sense, he is seeing God.

• What’s the basis for NFP?

It is scientifically established that during each menstrual cycle a woman normally becomes fertile and then naturally infertile. The fertile time is the part of her cycle when sexual intercourse can result in pregnancy. A woman’s body provides certain physically signs to indicate her fertile and infertile times. 

• What are the signs of fertility and infertility?

The most used signs are a normal discharge of cervical mucus and other signs include changes in her cervix and a feeling called “ovulation pain”. 

Cervical mucus is nature’s way of helping a man’s sperms reach a woman’s egg. Her flow of cervical mucus generally starts in a small way several days before she ovulates (releases an egg), it is a very positive sign that her fertile time has started. About the time she ovulates, her mucus may be abundant and have a consistency something like raw egg white. After ovulation, her mucus normally disappears.

• What is the Billings Ovulation Method?

The Billings Ovulation Method uses only the mucus and the dryness as the signs of fertility and infertility. The other signs are also used by many women. 

• Is this what used to be called “the Rhythm Method”?

No, The Rhythm Method was the Calendar Rhythm Method developed in 1930. It was based on some biological averages, but it did not work well for women who had irregular cycles. It was the 1930’s model of NFP, and great progress has been made since then.

• Can NFP work with irregular cycles?

Yes, Modern NFP assumes that every woman is irregular at least some of the time. In general, if her fertile time comes earlier or later than usual, she knows about it because the start of her cervical mucus comes earlier or later.

• Does NFP take much time?

No,  With NFP’s Billing’s Ovulation Method, during the day she takes a moment now and then to become aware of her cervical mucus and at night she records a symbol to describe her mucus. This simple process gives them an accurate day to day picture of her fertility.

• Is NFP SAFE?

Yes, Natural Family Planning uses no birth control devices or drugs.  Every drug has potential side effects and should be taken only when necessary to cure or relieve an illness etc. But fertility is a normal process, not a disease.  Birth control pills and implants are unnecessary drugs, and most intrauterine devices (IUDs) were taken off the market because of health related lawsuits;  some physicians have linked spermicides with birth defects.

• NFP is HEALTHY ; What does it mean?

NFP is health enhancing.   Through NFP charting, a woman becomes aware of her normal fertility – menstrual cycle.  Some kinds of cycle irregularities can alert her to possible underlying problems and she can seek early health-care assistance.

• How EFFECTIVE is NFP?

Numerous studies including one by the World Health Organisation have shown that NFP can be used at the 98% level of effectiveness for AVOIDING pregnancy. That’s equal to the birth control pill and better than all the barrier methods.

• Can NFP help ACHIEVE pregnancy?

Yes, with NFP you will become aware of the most fertile days in your overall fertile time, and you will learn how to maximize your mutual fertility.

In addition, your charted cycles may reveal certain patterns that can contribute to infertility and which sometimes can be corrected simply by better nutrition.  Many couples of marginal fertility are helped by NFP training to achieve much wanted pregnancies and the charts of those who may need medical help can assist the knowledgeable physician.

• Can breastfeeding space babies?

Yes, but only when a mother practices a very natural form of baby care characterized by mother-baby closeness.   This is called “ecological breast-feeding” to distinguish it from “cultural breast-feeding” which does not space babies. 

In addition, ecological breast-feeding helps you to keep your baby healthy and contributes greatly to the emotional enrichment of both mother and baby.

• Is NFP morally acceptable?

Yes, all the major religions including the Catholic Church accept the use of natural family planning when couples have a sufficiently serious reason for spacing babies or family limitation.

On the other hand, the teachings of the Catholic Church, some Orthodox churches, some part of the Judaism and an increasing number of Protestants are opposed to sterilization and the use of contraceptive or abortifacient drugs and devices.   It should be noted that intrauterine devices and birth control drugs (both the pill and implants) can cause very early abortions.

• Is Natural Family Planning “Natural”?

In other words, is it natural for a married couple to practice sexual self-control?. Yes. No one denies that at times this is difficult, but such difficulties do not make periodic continence “unnatural”.  “Natural” means living up to the demands of our human mature “created in the image and likeness of God”. All of the Ten Commandments are sometimes difficult to follow, but all of them spell out the challenge of being true to our own nature.

• How does NFP affect a marriage?

Sexual self-control can help build the marital relationship and therefore most couples report that NFP has a positive effect on their marriages.  They find that periodic abstinence helps keep their sexual relationship fresh, improves their communication, and gives them a deeper respect for each other.

In addition, the practice of NFP helps to develop the same strength of character that is necessary for marital fidelity and lifelong marriage.  NFP couples have an extremely low divorce rate. This makes sense because couples who respect the natural moral law, God’s order of creation, can expect to enjoy its benefits.

• So NFP builds better marriages?

Yes, but not automatically.   Couples rarely begin to practice Natural Family Planning out of a desire to improve their marital relationship.   However, if they are going to practice NFP harmoniously, they soon find that they have to communicate more fully and creatively with each other.  Couples do not ignore each other at times when they choose to avoid sexual relations, rather they develop non-genital ways of expressing their love and affection, which is the art of marital courtship.

Related To NFP

• Catholic News 6 July 2008 – Assorted articles on Humanae Vitae and NFP
• Understanding Humanae Vitae

The Heart of an Apostle
If you want to make converts, begin by converting your own heart.
By Patrick Madrid

The wind howled and the snow began to fall more heavily as nightfall gathered itself around the young priest. Though he had been riding since early afternoon, there were several miles yet to go before he would reach his destination. He kept to the path as best he could, but the drifting snow made it difficult for the horse to go much faster than a walk.
The temperature had dropped well below freezing, and after having ridden in the frigid open air for several hours, he was having trouble gripping the reins. He held them as best he could, hoping the thin wool gloves a Catholic couple had given him the previous winter would keep at bay the aching numbness in his hands long enough for him to revive them before the fire later that night. Shivering within his cloak, his teeth chattering, the priest continued reciting his evening prayers and plodded on into the night, his head bowed slightly against the wind.

His name was Francis de Sales, a Catholic priest not yet thirty years old who had volunteered for an arduous pastoral assignment in the Chablais region of southeastern France,1 an area that had in recent decades become a mission field. He was on his way to a modest farmhouse in an outlying town a few miles away, the home of a Catholic family who had offered him hospitality whenever he was in the area. He knew he would be greeted with a hot meal and a fire in the hearth where he could warm himself and let his clothes dry out.

From that “safe house,” he planned to spend the next week ministering to the few Catholics living in that town, preaching, celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing and, if the non-Catholics in the area would listen, giving public talks on the Catholic faith. Most of the inhabitants of the region were not Catholic, so he knew he would face challenges and obstacles to his ministry.

This was nothing new to him. Riding alone through this cold night in January of 1596 was like many other such nights for the tired priest. He often traveled by night and in harsh weather to carry out his priestly ministry. Getting soaked and chilled, even chased, had become a way of life for him.

He smiled at the grim memory of another winter night he spent in the limbs of a tree, safely out of reach above the snapping jaws and threatening growls of a pack of dogs that had been set on him by a farmer who was displeased to see a Catholic priest venturing into the area. The dogs eventually wandered away in search of more accessible prey, but, fearful that they might return, Francis used his belt to lash himself to a sturdy branch so he could avoid the danger of falling out of the tree once he had fallen asleep. It was one of many such “adventures” he had endured cheerfully and out of love for Christ as he carried out his spiritual search and rescue mission.

A Man on a Mission

Though Francis de Sales had been assigned by his bishop to a region that had been deeply Catholic for centuries, his presence there was not welcomed by most of the local inhabitants. Some sixty years earlier, the gloomy, powerful Protestant scholar, John Calvin, had taken up residence in Geneva, less than thirty miles from where the priest was riding. With the help of the armed might of the Protestant Duke of Savoy’s troops, Calvin’s iron grip rapidly closed itself around the population of the Chablais district, crushing the Catholic Church’s influence there, and converting most of the local population to Protestantism. The area thus gradually became encased in a hardened, Calvinist anti-Catholicism.

In recent years, however, under the protection and patronage of Charles Emmanuel, the new Catholic Duke of Savoy, the Catholic Church had been allowed to reestablish itself. But uprooting the now-entrenched hatred of Catholicism was, as one can imagine, an extraordinarily difficult, if not seemingly impossible, task. And that was exactly why young Francis de Sales volunteered for it.

His work would involve not only the pastoral care of souls, but also a full-blown effort to re-evangelize the populace—and that, he knew, would be a formidable challenge. He faced vociferous opposition from the many Calvinist ministers in the region. They constantly thundered from their pulpits against the “evils” of Catholicism.

The priest’s ministry in the towns and hamlets surrounding Geneva had been especially challenging. Few people would gather for, much less listen to, the open-air sermons he often preached in the town square. His Masses were poorly attended. It seemed that, aside from a few recent converts and those hardy Catholics who had managed to weather the decades-long Calvinist winter and remain true to the Church, no one was willing to listen to his arguments in favor of Catholicism. They had been too thoroughly indoctrinated against the Church.

Other priests had come and tried to gain a foothold for the Church there. Most had left soon afterward, deflated by their inability to get through to the people. But not this priest. Francis was persistent and patient. He felt a deep inner certitude that the mission of evangelization could be accomplished, but it would require resourcefulness as well as tenacity. He knew that in due time, if he remained faithful to his apostolate, God would provide the graces necessary for the True Faith to flourish once again within the hearts of these good people.

With God There Are No “Impossible Dreams”

Francis had been sent out in search of not just one lost sheep, but tens of thousands of them, the ones who had strayed or were led out of the fold and had been grazing on the arid prairies of Calvinist Protestantism. His mission was to lead them back to the green pastures of the fullness of Truth. To do that effectively, he had to remain faithful to his personal prayer life.

The life of a missionary, enduring bad weather, illness, hunger, rejection, persecution, and other hardships, will be filled with joy and grow fruitful only with a solid prayer life. This aspect of reaching out to others and inviting them home to the Church is often ignored. But as Francis knew, nothing meaningful can be accomplished in this arena without prayerful reliance on God and his grace. As Christ told us: “What is impossible for human beings is possible for God” (Lk 18:27 NAB).

The situation Francis de Sales faced when he arrived looked, by human standards, to be an impossible one. But he knew better.

Marks of a True Apostle

Because he was faithful in his prayer life, a fountainhead of God’s grace welled up within him and flowed outward, reaching untold numbers of people. Conversions occurred, not as a result of clever preaching, but because he was a man of deep prayer and trust in the power and mercy of God. He was a true apostle of Christ who was not daunted by the seemingly impregnable resistance to the Church he saw in the people he had come to evangelize. He knew God’s grace could melt even the hardest hearts. What God needed was someone to take the message to the people (see Rom 10:14-18).

Above all, this priest was a model of charity and unassuming virtue. Even when he felt exasperated or angry with the negative reactions many people gave him, he was kind and helpful to all he encountered in spite of the indifference, anti-Catholic scorn, and even outright physical threats he sometimes encountered. As he would relate in later years, it was his reliance on God and commitment to daily prayer and the sacraments that enabled him to carry out this difficult apostolic work. His fidelity to the “little things” in his daily life, especially his consistency in prayer (even when — especially when — he didn’t feel like praying), was his loving response to Christ’s words: “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones” (Lk 16:10 NAB).

In addition to having the heart of an apostle (literally, “one who is sent”), he also had the heart of a shepherd (one who cares for the flock). He had the tender heart of the Good Shepherd Himself (see Jn 10:1-16), and so he went in search of those sheep who had wandered away. He went in search of them with the love of Christ and, ultimately, that loving patience is what conquered error, dispelled confusion and mistrust, and brought reconciliation and peace to a troubled people. In response to God’s age-old question “Whom will I send?” he answered, “Here I am. Send me!” (Is 6:8).

Francis didn’t go out of desire to win arguments, nor was he interested in accumulating converts as if they were trophies, monuments to his efforts at apologetics and evangelization. He certainly didn’t hate or disrespect the Protestants whom he had been sent to evangelize. Rather, he had a deep love for them as fellow Christians, and he recognized them for what they were: men and women who were loved by Christ with the same intensity and passion that Christ loves everyone — but men and women who had drifted away from the fullness of the True Faith.

These weren’t bad people, he reminded himself often. And in spite of the antipathy many of them felt for the Catholic Church, Francis de Sales saw them as his brothers and sisters. He loved them with the love of Christ — not in a superior or haughty way, but with the humble love of a man who goes in search of a lost brother. And, by the grace of God, that selfless love for others eventually yielded a vast crop of good fruit.

Try New Methods

Francis realized that his preaching and good example, as important as they are in the life of any priest, weren’t sufficient to persuade the intransigent non-Catholics he had worked so hard to win over to the Church. Circumstances required ingenuity. So Francis developed a methodology for sharing the Faith in a way that proved extremely effective.

He knew that the good Protestant folk of the Chablais region had for decades been taught by government and religious authorities to reject and even fear the Catholic religion. So strong was the negative “peer pressure” exerted on those who were curious enough about the message of this new Catholic priest to make them want to attend his conferences that many stayed away simply because they didn’t want to be reproached by their neighbors. Recognizing this problem, Francis changed his strategy.

Each week, he composed a brief apologetics essay on some aspect of the issues that separated Catholics and Protestants: the Eucharist, the authority of the Church, the infallibility of the pope, Mary, the sacraments, and other subjects. He wrote simple but very convincing biblical explanations for these Catholic teachings, and he took great care to respond (always charitably) to the standard objections and challenges raised by the Protestant ministers who opposed him wherever he went. He had each essay printed up in bulk quantities and he personally distributed them.

Being an astute judge of human nature, Francis disseminated his writings in a way that was “as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove” (see Mt 10:16). Early each morning before the townspeople had awakened, Francis made his way quietly down the streets, slipping his tracts under the door of each home, Catholic and Protestant. He knew that if the people could just read for themselves the biblical and historical case for the Catholic Church he presented in his writings — in the privacy of their own homes and free from the negative peer pressure of their neighbors — they would be much more likely to consider the Catholic message. And that’s precisely what happened.

For four years, Francis de Sales offered this remarkable combination of personal sanctity, preaching, apologetics essays, and outreach to those around him with his unselfish charity and genuine Christ-like love for them. At last, God began to work a miracle of grace. Conversions appeared. At first they were scattered and intermittent, but within months the trickle had turned into a steady stream.

Within a few years more, the stream had reached flood tide proportions. Not surprisingly, Francis was made bishop of Geneva to guide this rapidly growing flock. By the time he died in 1622, nearly sixty thousand former Protestants in and around Geneva (Calvin’s stronghold) had converted to the Catholic Church and re-embraced the Faith of their fathers. Indeed, many prominent Calvinist theologians and ministers were among those who converted to the Catholic faith as a result of the gentle apostolic zeal of this holy priest.

It’s not hard to guess how this happy story ends. After his death, Francis de Sales was widely regarded as a saint. That belief was confirmed when the Church canonized him in 1665.

What Can We Learn From St. Francis de Sales?

You may be thinking to yourself, “Yes, Francis de Sales was an impressive man. But I’m not like him. He had an obvious gift for explaining the Catholic faith and bringing people into the Church. I don’t. He was a priest, he was trained for that sort of thing, and he lived hundreds of years ago when things weren’t nearly so complicated as they are now. And besides, he was a saint — and I’m definitely not.”

That reaction is understandable, but it’s incorrect. True, the courageous example of St. Francis de Sales can seem so beyond our own abilities and circumstances that we are tempted to dismiss it as unattainable. But to do that would be a big mistake.

Even though you will probably never be called by God to brave physical hardship or danger in sharing the Faith with others, the Lord is calling you to live as an apostle, to be ready, willing, and able to help Him help those around you. Christ wants all people to come to Him and His Church (see 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pt 3:9). He works through us to make that happen: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ . . . and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us” (2 Cor 5:18-20 NAB). 2

God wants to work through you, regardless of your circumstances — in your office, your home, your social circles, your parish — to search for and rescue those who have drifted or are starting to drift away from the Faith. You can reach people in your own daily life who have been put there by God’s mysterious providence. Though your own personal temperament, abilities, and circumstances are unique and differ from those of others, God wants to make you His coworker in the vast drama of salvation. He has a vital role for you.

The great things God did through the apostolate of St. Francis de Sales are not out of your own reach. Whether you’re a housewife, a dentist, a student, retired, a factory worker, a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, you can effectively bring people into (or back into) a close relationship with Christ and His Church.3

As the old saying goes, we Catholics today are “sitting on the shoulders of giants” — that is, we have the advantage of two thousand years’ worth of good examples to follow, plus effective techniques in evangelization that have been developed by the saints down through the centuries. From that vantage point, drawing on the wisdom accumulated during the Church’s long missionary journey, we can learn the secrets of the great saints and how they were able successfully to search for and rescue the lost sheep they encountered. You must learn to apply that wisdom in your own life. Just call out to Him: “Here I am, Lord. Send me!”

Ask for God’s Help

And here is the first of the secrets the saints can teach us: If you ask God for His help as you seek to bring your friends and family members, coworkers and even total strangers, closer to Christ and His Church, He will give it to you. He promised, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Mt 7:7 NAB; see also verses 8-11). 4

Do you know someone who is far from Christ? Away from the sacraments? Estranged from the Church? Ask Christ for the graces you need to be an apostle to that person — He will give them to you. Seek out those who are wandering far from the Lord — you will find them. Knock gently at the door of that person’s heart — it will be opened to you so that God’s grace can pour in and transform him.

All success, of course, comes from God’s grace. As the Lord said, “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5 NAB). But He also stands ready to provide you with all the graces necessary to be a true apostle, regardless of your state in life, so that — with the help of the Holy Spirit — you can go out in search of those who have wandered away from the Catholic faith and have success in bringing them home again. You will be able to say with confidence and joyful humility, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).

That’s precisely the attitude St. Francis de Sales had. He knew he could never make any headway among the Calvinists (a deeply religious, Bible-believing people), unless he relied on Christ for his strength and guidance. Despite his brilliant intellect, his gift for writing, and his many other talents, St. Francis de Sales’ success as a “search and rescue” evangelist was, ultimately, not a result of those things.

Let me repeat that point for maximum impact: His being a clever, well-spoken, master theologian was not responsible for his success in making converts. Someone with few intellectual gifts and minimal social grace could also have accomplished such a mission of converting souls to Christ, and in the course of the history of the Catholic Church, many such people have done so.5

The Key to Making Converts

So what was it about St. Francis de Sales (and all the other effective apologists and evangelists) that provided the key to their ability to make converts? That key to success is within your own reach. It lies in the quiet recesses of your own heart. It’s the grace and virtue of supernatural charity — love.
Above all else, Francis de Sales had the heart of an apostle. True, he was intellectually gifted, he had an amiable and mild disposition that helped him make friends easily, and he was an effective writer and public speaker. But none of those advantages would have amounted to anything substantial in his mission had he not possessed a burning love for Christ and for his neighbor, a love that radiated and warmed those around him. This wellspring of charity (purely a gift of God’s grace) animated all his actions and made effective his efforts to spread the kingdom of Christ.

You might think that making converts is reserved for only the great saints, but you would be wrong. You might imagine that the powerful graces of conversion that God showered on people through the efforts and prayers of St. Francis de Sales are unattainable for someone like yourself. But if you think that, you’re mistaken.

God can accomplish great good through you. All He needs is for you to say yes to His invitation.