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letters from our readers
Editor: I was struck with dismay in reading Matthew Delany’s letter in the January 1997 issue of HPR. One of the great heresies of our time is the “god” of rationalism and the denial of the supernatural. His ridicule does not even rise to that level. I was awed by the article “Plain Jane” (August-September 1994) and impressed with the “evidence” of support presented by the author. To ridicule the article is to equate the author with a fabricator or liar. I myself am a trained “rationalist” and professional physician. I have been exposed personally to one similar supernatural event but it lacked the profoundness of “Plain Jane.” “Plain Jane” was published as a humble occurrence of profound witness to a personal, loving God. James A. Ostlund, M.D. Editor: I have just finished (a) reading Msgr. Kelly’s review in the February number of HPR of Msgr. Weber’s biography of the late Cardinal McIntyre and (b) ordering a copy of it for myself. I never knew the powerful Cardinal Archbishop which most of the review describes. However, I did have some acquaintance with that same man described as curate in St. Basil’s Church after his retirement. His retirement years touched the hearts of those of us who were parishioners of St. Basil’s in those years, even “commuter parishioners” like me who worked and went to school in the area for the six or seven years prior to his death. Msgr. Kelly’s use of the term “curate” is literally accurate. He wore a simple black cassock, the chain from his pectoral cross being the only sign he might not be just an elderly parish priest. And he wasn’t just “in residence.” He said his daily Mass for the parishioners, usually an early one as I recall; St. Basil’s also had a noon and an evening Mass. St. Basil’s had confessions several times each day; the Cardinal took his turn in the confessional. Many of his duties must have been very painful for him. With the assistance of a cane, he walked very slowly, with short, shuffling steps. His eyesight was very bad. When he said Mass, he not only wore glasses, but needed a magnifying glass to read the Altar Missal. Neither was his hearing of the best, although his understanding was. At this point I wanted to indicate the lightness and graciousness with which he bore his infirmities, the joyfulness of his expression, the kindness with which he treated the people. But I don’t have the writer’s skill to do it. Time and again I remember seeing his slow progress back to the rectory in this downtown parish being interrupted by someone who needed to tell him their troubles. I never saw him anything but gracious and attentive. I don’t know what all those who dealt with the great prelate might think. But as for me, you can canonize the curate any time now. John P. Cahill
Editor: First of all I would like to thank you for your wonderful publication. It is helping me, as it must be helping others, understand and know the Catholic Faith. I enjoyed reading Mr. Robert A. Stackpoles’s “On Consoling the Heart of Jesus” (January 1997). The article was very informative and inspiring. I totally agree with what he wrote, though I am not a theologian nor a history major. Speaking from a purely practical, layman, non-theologian’s point of view, our devotions to the Sacred Heart surely must assuage offenses to the Divinity and console our much offended Lord in real time as well as retrogradely in his Passion. Furthermore, I would think that Jesus Christ’s resurrected body continues to feel the human emotions of compassion, sorrow and emotional pain as well as joy, love and divine anger. I would think that a resurrected body no longer feels physical pain. But, do not the faculties of the soul (spirit) persist after death? I may have to be corrected but it is my belief that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is truly offended and is truly sorrowful in real time because of the many sins we commit in this day and time. Of course, to God all is present and time is of concern only to man. “Always bearing in mind, of course, that our acts of reparation have compensatory value only on the basis of the merits of Jesus Christ,” still our free will practices of devotions to the Sacred Heart in real time must please and console our Lord Jesus and hold back the anger of the Father also in real time. It is my thinking that when our merciful Lord appears to visionaries as a gentle and affective Lord with a wounded heart and requests us to console his Sacred Heart, he is using imagery. I would think that God would come to us and speak to us at a level that our very limited human capacity can accept and understand. It would be more at our human level for God to say “Console my heart” than to appear in all his power and glory and say, “Make reparations to your much offended God.” The latter would be too formidable. We could die on the spot! Mila C. Flores, M.D. Editor: I believe I can count on one finger the number of sermons I have heard in the past 30 years on the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. That is, of course, until I arrived at St. Agnes parish in Manhattan. It was there that I met Fr. John Perricone, whose daily, devastating, five-minute, napalm bomb homilies left me breathless, teary-eyed, and yearning for even a fraction of the same from my regular Sunday parish priest. Fr. James Buckley’s fine article, “Contraception: A Challenge to Catholic Preaching” (January 1997), is just this kind of brutal honesty that the Church, and indeed the whole world desperately needs to hear. We have been spoon-fed milquetoast, guilt-free sermons from the pulpit for years, and whether we know it or not, we are starving to death. When the awesome hard truths of the Catholic Church are preached fearlessly and un-apologetically by our priests, the effects on the faithful can be overwhelming. I am living proof. Jim Morlino Editor: I just finished reading the article on marriage annulments in the November 1996 Homiletic issue. How happy I am to see someone come to the defense of marriage tribunals. For many years now I have been involved in submitting cases to the local tribunal. My involvement started when a local Domestic Relations Court judge asked me to act as an advisor. He was so concerned about the number of divorce cases that he appointed ministers of different faiths to act as intermediaries. In my case I got all the Catholic couples that applied for civil divorce. The judge would not hear their case until they had first talked to me. Needless to say this gave me more experience with marriage than any textbook could ever have given. I use what I learned in those six years every time I give a marriage instruction. I also use that knowledge when it comes to submitting a case to the tribunal. The author is so correct. There is many a case that I would not submit simply because I was convinced that there was no case. I know that I am no canon lawyer, but my experience with the divorce court more than makes up for that. At least all the cases I did submit were given affirmative decisions even on appeal. What the critics don’t seem to understand is the general breakdown in morals that has taken place in the last twenty or thirty years. You can’t tell me that this does not interfere with marital consent. I had a case involving a marriage at which I presided. It turns out that the bride did not want children. When I confronted her with her sworn testimony to the opposite, all she said was: “So I lied!” Might I suggest that the critics of the annulment process come down from their ivory towers. Get involved with real people in the real world. It is amazing what my six years with the civil court taught me. The De Matrimonio in the moral theology books couldn’t come close to what I learned from the courts. It really is quite possible that only the promising cases reach the Tribunal, the American tribunal system with the American “can-do” spirit. More power to them! Rev. Celsus Griese, O.F.M.
Editor: A long time ago at home, in the Catholic school and especially in the seminary, we were trained to be men of principle. That meant that we were not to be guided by public opinion, feelings, sentiment or what people wanted. We were taught that “if we don’t stand for something we’ll fall for anything.” As priests we were to be prophets—men who speak for God. If necessary, we were to be confronters. We were to be watchdogs that barked. We learned that justice rests on truth and that all morality rests on reality. As priests, we were to preach God’s message whether or not the hearers welcomed it. We learned that conscience was a pupil, not a teacher: “It is not sovereign but the herald of the Great King whose will man must obey” (HPR, January 1997, p. 24). We realized that preaching the truth might provoke the anger of parishioners. We were taught that “God does not ask me to be successful; he asks me to be faithful” (Mother Teresa). St. Augustine said that as proclaimers we were not to be “pursuing after temporal advantages, grasping for gain, coveting honors from men.” He states that if someone has sinned grievously he ought to be rebuked, that is, confronted. A real prophet will say what people need to hear and not just what they want to hear. He places needs over wants. Too many of us priests wear a false face. We wear a false face when we tell people what they want to hear rather than the truth. We need watchdogs that bark, men of principle and not mere people pleasers. We need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing less. That is what “Catholic” means—the whole package and not just some of it or even most of it—but all of it. Fr. Alvin L. Herber, C.PP.S.
Editor: Father Aidan Nichols is to be commended for his scholarly insights and spiritual courage in bringing to our attention the need for every member of the clergy to seriously consider his proposal of celebrating the “Liturgy of Sacrifice versus aspidem” (December 1996). I together with other priests with whom I have shared my thoughts, continue to experience a degree of spiritual exhaustion after celebrating the Mass which I was not able to completely explain. Fr. Aidan accurately describes the reasons for this when he says that “though priests are there for the people, they are not to be devoured by them.” Without wanting to be accused of exaggeration, I wonder just how much of the spiritual tiredness so prevalent amongst the clergy could be attributed to the physical posture of saying the eucharistic prayer facing the people (for which there has never been any official mandate). I firmly believe that the question of “psychological balance” which Fr. Aidan speaks of must have something to do with what has become a permanent feature of Catholic worship. I try to counteract this by frequently taking the opportunity to stand and face the altar during the singing of the recessional hymn before processing off the sanctuary. Somehow this helps in restoring that sense of leading the people in their worship of God: Being as it were the head of a pilgrim people praying with them and for them rather than to them and at them. The “careful preparation of the Faithful” to bring about such a revision in our manner of offering the Sacrifice has to be thoroughly examined and I share with HPR readers Fr. Nichols’ own suggestions as a possible way forward. Quote: 1) A series of sermons on the nature and ends of the Mass, to which a comment on the Sunday Gospel could lead in. These could be framed in such a way as to raise the question of the community-ward/God-ward dialectic. 2) In the last sermon, one could comment directly on what the Church was trying to achieve in the liturgical reform (roughly a better balance of integration of the two) and how this is something we have continually to re-assess. Our religion must never forget that God is its goal, and that we are moving—with each other certainly—toward him. 3) This could be allowed to sink in for a period and then perhaps in one of the penitential seasons propose returning to the ad apsidem position for the second part of the Mass either as an expression of our waiting for God (Advent) or conversion to God (Lent). The word “con-version” fits nicely. This would be for a defined period only, such as until Easter. 4) Where there is a parish council, one could give a fuller account, details of history, references to the literature or whatever. One would have to ascertain whether there was sufficient support (not just by counting “votes,” but weighing them) to make it a permanent feature of parish worship. 5) It would be desirable to present what one was going to do at deanery level as well, not just to obviate criticism, by showing that one has good reasons but in the hope of others following suit. In response to my personal letter of support for his ideas, Fr. Nichols agrees with me that quite a number of clergy and laity might just respond positively once the change is tried at least. I suppose it’s the “nothing ventured, nothing gained” principle which he’s applying and I must admit that, on that basis alone, I am inclined to agree with him. I feel that I am so in need of this liturgical initiative that perhaps if older priests and younger clergy can rediscover and be exposed—respectively—to the real truth and beauty of this tradition, then just as we would be genuinely edified by the experience, so too would our people. Could it be after all, when there appears to be endless discussion both at diocesan and national level about the so called “identity crisis” facing the priesthood, that the “Liturgy of the Word” ought to be ad populum and the “Sacrifice” be ad Deum? I wholeheartedly agree with Fr. Nichols that if celebrating in this way is the most valid expression of the worship of God who is our “primary point and goal,” then our vocation can only be a happy one. Rev. Edmund P. Adamus Editor: I appreciated Fr. Linnebur’s comments regarding the Church’s position on capital punishment and Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (February 1997). I remember when I first read The Gospel of Life I was truly struck by how pastoral the Pope’s outlook was. In my arrogance I was surprised to see how much more encompassing John Paul’s view and understanding of the Church is than mine. It is this realization that continues to challenge me to love all in the light of Christ. I would like to clarify a couple of issues that I found confusing. Though I may be misreading him, Fr. Linnebur seems to imply that since a majority of American people does not indeed feel safe, that this fear is sufficient cause for making capital punishment absolutely necessary. He seems to arrive at this conclusion even after stating that “it (capital punishment) should not be used at all—if bloodless means are sufficient to protect society.” It is important to clarify the difference between a real threat and what is perceived. Even in regard to the use of self-defense the state requires that a person not only feel threatened but that there is sufficient cause for this feeling and for the person’s subsequent response of deadly force. The need for this stipulation is common especially in light of the deteriorating cohesiveness of our society. A pervasive xenophobia has taken such deep roots in contemporary American society that many people view others outside their inner circle of friends and family not as possible brothers and sisters, but as probable enemies. Fr. Linnebur further seems to suggest that since a “majority of American people” does not feel safe, that “public authority must respond to the people” and legislate the death penalty. This line of thought is usually quite proper to any government which looks to serve the needs of its people, and is especially central to a Democracy. However in matters of legislating morality, a simple “majority rules” philosophy can not be supported. A law is not morally just or unjust simply because more people wish it to be. God is the author and creator of all life, and because he wishes “that all may have life” even by bearing mankind’s fears and sins to the point of suffering death by crucifixion, we must strive to draw all to the fountain of his mercy—not only for their sakes but for the sake of each individual in society who in struggling to understand God’s gifts finds awe, love and mercy in the depths of his own heart. Hector Guzman, M.D. |