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letters from our readers
Evolutionism promotes
the permissive society
Editor: Dr. Arthur C. Sippo’s letter (HPR, July 2000) illustrates the effectiveness of the brainwashing students receive in their formative years in favor of the evolution world-view. He is prepared to believe the “new evidence” that feathered creatures found in China are transitional between dinosaurs and birds despite the fact that the old evidence, the Archaeopteryx, has been found to be inconclusive. (See Of Pandas and People [1993] Davis and Kenyon, Haughton Publishing Company, Dallas, Texas, at pp. 104-106).
He also summarily dismisses the perfectly logical argument of Professor Michael Behe, backed up by unimpeachable evidence, that there are many living systems that are so irreducibly complex that they must have been immediately created by God at the same time; otherwise they would not have been able to function.
Despite Herman Baumgartner’s admission, which Dr. Sippo applauds, the term microevolution is only conveniently used to describe changes within types that can be better described as genetic variation. The science of genetics gives no support to macroevolution or Darwinism.
Dr. Sippo’s claim that the Church tolerates evolution is misleading. The Church in this context must surely be the Magisterium because only the Magisterium has the protection of the Holy Spirit to teach faith or morals when its (or his, in the case of the Pope’s) teaching is founded upon divine revelation. But not even the Magisterium has that protection when it or he teaches new doctrine that has no foundation at all in Sacred Scripture or the Apostolic tradition. (See the document Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I and affirmation of this in Lumen Gentium para. 25, Flannery p. 381.).
What else is evolution other than a new public doctrine that not only has no foundation at all in divine revelation but is also opposed to Magisterium teachings based upon Holy Scripture? I refer here to the teaching of Lateran IV concerning the creation of all living creatures (except man) out of nothing at the beginning of time and following their creation the human creation. This is undoubtedly founded upon Genesis, Chapter 1. This teaching was reaffirmed by Vatican I, which based canons upon it. It is assuredly a dogmatic teaching of the Church.
Furthermore, Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X each upheld the acceptance of the literal and historical meaning of the creation of our first parents, as described in Genesis 2.
The truth of the matter is that, like Lyell’s “history” of geological time, evolution is only a made-up (so so) story for which there is not a scrap of conclusive evidence, despite the fact that evolutionary research is almost 150 years old. Far from being a proven scientific theory, it is not even a testable one.
Honest evolutionists, like the late Sir Karl Popper, have admitted this, while others, like, Dr. David Raup, when curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which has one of the largest collections in the world, has admitted that the fossil record isn’t near so Darwinian as people outside of geology and paleontology imagine it to be. Evolutionary geneticist, Professor Richard Lewontin, in a burst of honesty in an article in the New York Review in January, 1997 said that evolutionists accept these so so stories because they are compelled to do by their adherence to the philosophy of materialism and the fact that they cannot afford to allow a divine foot in the door. Lewontin is reputed to be a Marxist.
The tragedy of all this is that evolution is now not only taught as scientific fact in secular colleges and universities, but also Teilhardian evolution is taught as fact by most Catholic colleges and seminaries. The lack of strong Catholic opposition to evolutionism, as well as that of other Christian Churches, has allowed materialists to freely publicize their doctrine of naturalism, which is the chief support of materialism, without serious opposition. Thus our Western society is now governed by the ethic of materialism, which having ousted the Christian ethic, has successfully promoted the permissive society.
Clement Butel
Pymble, NSW, Australia
Preparing for first communion
Editor: It was consoling reading the article in your August 2000 issue confirming that it is parents, rather than pastors, who have the God given right to prepare their children for first communion. In this the author, Father Taphorn, was but following the teaching of Pope Saint Pius X as found in his decree Quam Singulari. There one reads: “It belongs to the father, . . . and to the confessor, . . . to admit a child to his First Communion.” Elsewhere in the same decree we find: “No one can better judge than the father and the priest who is their confessor at what age children are to receive the Holy Mysteries.”
The decree thus confirms that confession must precede first communion and that both are obligatory “when a child begins to reason, that is about the seventh year more or less.” As for pastors the decree says “he should admit . . . also others who have already approached the Holy Table with the consent of their parents or confessor.”
Greater attention to this decree would have saved the Church much trouble these past forty years.
Joseph Pope
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Witness of the Roman collar
Editor: In a hotel in Ballyliffen, Ireland, last year, I noticed a priest at breakfast, obviously on vacation, sit down each morning dressed in his clericals and on the last day of my stay approached him and thanked him for the witness of his Roman collar. Some years ago I wrote a letter to Homiletic & Pastoral Review stating my deep appreciation for priests and nuns who wear their clerical garb in public. So Father Stefanski’s beautiful article on the subject confirms me in my belief that while we may have fewer people emerging from our seminaries of late, what we are getting is great quality.
William J. Quinn
West Chester, Pa.
Mistaken identity
Editor: Like most priests I am behind in catching up on back reading material. Perhaps reading all of it is impossible. But today, providentially, your November 1999 issue of HPR was delivered. My eye was drawn to the “My Favorite Priest” article by Fr. James Gilhooley. It is very good, but we have here a case of mistaken identity.
The priest he identified as “Fr. William Curran” is actually our fellow Maryknoller, Fr. William T. Cummings, whose life and death in a Japanese prison ship was written up by Sidney Stewart in his unforgettable gook, Give Us This Day. I read that book back in the 1950s as a seminarian. Last year, yours truly celebrated forty years as a Maryknoll priest (class of 1959). Praise the Lord!
Fr. Paul O’Brien, M.M.
La Paz, Bolivia
Enormity or enormousness?
Editor: I’m a subscriber to and a big fan of Homiletic & Pastoral Review. For septuagenarian “cradle Catholics” like me, it’s a breath of fresh air, and I look forward to each issue.
Now drops the other shoe, as they say. I was a little disappointed to see the misuse of the word “enormity” avoid the editor’s eagle eye in Msgr. Smith’s section of the July, 2000 issue (p. 68, “Another View on Holy Days,” answer: “Out of respect for the enormity of the sacrifice of Our Lord. . . .)
Curiously, the same word, “enormity”, appears elsewhere in the same issue, used correctly, when Mr. O’Brien (p. 51), discussing a charlatan named Crowley, refers to “. . . the enormity of Crowley’s behavior.”
My dictionary defines “enormity” as “1. outrageous or heinous character; atrociousness; 2. something outrageous or heinous, as an offense.”
Maybe Msgr. Smith should tell the anonymous Massachusetts priest who prepared the answer that there’s a considerable difference between enormity and enormousness, even though TV’s talking heads don’t know it.
As one of the teachers at my Jesuit college was fond of saying a half-century ago: “Words have a meaning, whether we mean that meaning or not.”
Justin Laforet
Fredericksburg, Texas
When is capital punishment moral?
Editor: I appreciated Carl Horst’s recent article on capital punishment (June 2000, Homiletic & Pastoral Review). He made a number of important points, including the fact that the Church has never considered capital punishment “intrinsically evil”; that many in the Church mistakenly argue that capital punishment is contrary to the teaching of the Church; and that many fail to make the proper distinctions between capital punishment and other life issues. In addition, he rightly emphasizes the value we must place on the protection of the general public from violent, criminal acts.
Yet I’m equally convinced that Horst’s article does not give adequate weight to the Church’s deepening understanding that non-lethal means of punishment are more in keeping with the good of society and the dignity of the human person.
Pope John Paul II identifies the issue of capital punishment as arising within the context of legitimate defense, and states the principle that resort to capital punishment is moral only when it is necessary to protect society from an unjust aggressor. We may disagree on the application of this principle, but the Holy Father and our U.S. bishops clearly understand and teach that once a criminal is apprehended and incarcerated, the threat to the common good (i.e., the need for legitimate defense) is past, and it’s not necessary to proceed with an execution.
Much can be said on the state of the judicial and prison systems in the U.S., and the rampant violence that surrounds us. However, the Church says that the goals or ends of deterrence or the reduction of violent crimes (even if demonstrated) are not legitimate bases for imposing the death penalty. The action of executing a criminal must be good in itself, and it can’t be if society has other means of protecting itself from this particular criminal.
While the various life issues are distinct, they are indeed related. Our right to life is primarily rooted in our being created in the image and likeness of God. For this reason, our Holy Father affirms that “not even a murderer loses his personal dignity” (Evangelium Vitae, no. 8).
Leon J. Suprenant, Jr.
Steubenville, Ohio
Are two recent Popes “extreme Mariologists”?
Editor: In a letter in the June 2000 issue of HPR, Robert McCarthy attacks the views of those who believe Mary is Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces. He labels such people “extreme Mariologists.”
Putting aside McCarthy’s unfortunate name-calling, it is a matter of public record that Mother Teresa asked the Pope to solemnly declare Mary both Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces. St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1923 made a similar request for a Papal definition of the dogma that Mary is Mediatrix of All Graces.
Are Mother Teresa and St. Maximilian “extreme Mariologists”? If so, then the Popes are also, for they have taught these doctrines in their “ordinary magisterium.” For instance, the specific word “Co-Redemptrix” has been used by Pius XI (November 30, 1933 and April 28, 1935) and by our current Pope, John Paul II (January 31, 1985; March 31, 1985; and October 14, 1991). Of many Papal statements that could be quoted, here are two examples:
On Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces (Pope Leo XIII, September 22, 1891):
And therefore no less correctly can one affirm that absolutely nothing of that great treasury of all grace which the Lord brought us (for ‘grace and truth came by Jesus Christ’)—nothing of it is given to us except through Mary, for such is the will of God: so that just as no one can go to the Most High Father except through the Son, in much the same way no one can come to Christ except through His Mother.
On Mary as Co-Redemptrix (Pope Benedict XV, May 22, 1918): With her suffering Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her Mother’s rights over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind, and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race.
Rev. Paul G. Driscoll
Levittown, N.Y.
Deacons as preachers of the Word
Editor: In the June issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Dr. Frederick W. Marks addressed the issue of “Silence in the Pulpit” and how clergy have succumbed to the I want them to like me reluctance to address the issues of abortion, premarital cohabitation, reverence to the Blessed Eucharist, and in general to the teachings of the Church. Father Jonathan Toborowsky hit the nail on the head about “Dress at Mass.”
Both were addressing their articles to bishops and priests, but should have included permanent deacons. Deacons because of their background can often be more effective when and if they address these issues, especially moral issues because we can relate our own experiences to the parishioners.
I am the Parish Administrator for a small parish and preach every other week and have a weekly article in the Sunday bulletins, and I never miss an opportunity to preach and write about the issues discussed in the articles.
Every bishop, priest and deacon should remember their ordination to the diaconate when the bishop had them place their hands on the Book of the Gospel and were instructed to delve into the Gospels, to live by what is taught, and to preach the Gospel message to all. It is time we preach and teach the Gospel of Jesus and forget about who will like us, for if we teach the Gospel message Our Lord will love us.
Rev. Mr. Richard Chamberlain
Dewey, Okla.
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