letters from our readers

Mary, wife of Joseph

Editor: In her article, “Freedom and the Fatherhood of Priests,” in the January 2002 issue, Sr. Prudence Allen states: “At first St. Joseph had decided to not marry the pregnant woman to whom he was engaged.” Jesus was the “unwanted child.” Oh? Sr. Prudence is VERY wrong about the marriage of Joseph and Mary. Jesus was conceived legally within proper context of the legal marriage of Joseph and Mary. “Espoused” means married; and Joseph was told by the angel “do not be afraid to take THY WIFE MARY to thyself” (Matt. 1:20).

Now, perhaps Sister Prudence referenced an ICELized version of Scripture; but she did not document her reference source for that erroneous bit of information. How could this well-educated teacher not understand the very first chapter of the New Testament? The Annunciation is a Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary.

How did this article get by your discerning editorship? Sr. Prudence should read the fine article by Dom Bernard Orchard, O.S.B., “The Betrothal and Marriage of Mary to Joseph” in the October and November 2001 issues of HPR.

Margaret M. Murray of Seattle, Wash.

Deeper into the swamp

Editor: Thank you for the fine article (March 2002) concerning teens by June Archer. We must think of the future of the Church. Too often the Me generation can only think of their own problems. Youth these days have many temptations: drugs everywhere, booze and fast driving, sex for fun, and violence. Without Christ they cannot go through the jungle of our half-pagan society.

We in our school try to teach teens about the saints. If they know the saints they will know how precious Christ is in life. If they know the saints they will know that prayer is the most important thing they can do. If they pray, they will be humble and “humility is the beginning of wisdom.” The disease many people suffer from today is pride. No one can tell them anything. They think religion is to please them, not to please God. The proud are blind and they go off deeper into the swamp.

Fr. Rawley Myers of Colorado Springs, Colo.

Absurdity of all absurdities

Editor: Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical letter Arcanum Divinae Sapientae of 10 February 1880, stated: “We record what is known to all, and cannot be doubted in any way, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom he miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was asleep. God thus in his most far reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved with unfailing faithfulness throughout all futurity of time.”

Dr. A. C. Sippo (HPR February 2002) would have us believe that our first parents came about as the result of random changes in an evolutionary process and therefore to hold to the traditional doctrine would be to invoke a belief in magic. He claims support from recent popes in the stand he has taken. However, no pope has gone so far as to overrule the doctrine of the special creation of our first parents, which had also been affirmed by Pius IX and Pius X.

Before Pope Pius XII gave permission in 1950 to experts to research and discuss the question of human evolution, it had no place at all in Catholic teaching. In giving that permission Pius XII warned the likes of Dr. Sippo not to transgress the freedom of discussion by treating evolution as though it were proven beyond contradiction and as though there was nothing in divine revelation that called for the utmost discretion in discussing this issue.

Concerning scientific facts, Dr. Sippo has the horse by the tail. Such is the complexity of the living cell that the mathematical odds against even the simplest bacterium coming about by random changes are prohibitive. They have been calculated by a Yale physicist, Harold Morowitz, as being one chance in one followed by a hundred billion zeros. Mathematical specialists say that if an event has only one chance in one followed by fifty zeros, it can be said that it could never happen. Furthermore, as the agnostic molecular biologist, Dr. Michael Denton (see Patrick Newman, HPR, October 2001) tells us, there is more going on within that tiny cell than is going on in all the factories of the world. The design and miniaturization of the cell surely shows that it is the work of an omnipotent Designer/Creator. To say, therefore, that life has come about by blind chance, as the evolutionists do, is the absurdity of all absurdities.

By equating special creation with magic, Dr. Sippo insinuates that God could not have exercised his fiat to create from nothing at the beginning of time all those things referred to in Genesis, Chapter I. This is a serious error.

Dr. Sippo is either unfamiliar with teaching of Lateran IV and Vatican I on the ex nihilo creation or he simply ignores it.

If he is not aware of the fact that most scientists are evolutionists because the case against it is strictly censored in most institutions, he is naive indeed. I am writing this letter reply in place of Mr. Patrick Newman, who at present is unwell.

I therefore would like to point out also that Dr. Sippo infers that Mr. Newman’s letter, with dishonest intent, cited a passage from a letter by Dr. David Raup out of context. The full context of Raup’s letter does not in any way water down the factual statements cited and therefore I find Dr. Sippo’s insinuation to be offensive.

Clement Butel of Primble, N.S.W., Australia

How to smash theology

Editor: IF there is an omnipotent God who is capable of creating a universe and everything in it (as described in the Bible), then it stands to reason that he crafted each and every creature basically as it is. It would be senseless for God to create a couple of primal life forms, then turn them over to a process called “evolution” for their perfection—a process that reason tells us is unworkable.

All you have to do is consider a whale washed up on the beach. How many times has that happened throughout history? And each time it happens, do their fins become more like legs? No. (If they did, the evolving critter would find it harder to swim as a whale.) No, they just die, high and dry.

And conversely, how many times has a man fallen overboard? Sure, many can swim —for a while. But eventually they all drown before they develop gills, or the lung capacity of a whale.

The only purpose for the theory of evolution is to fill in the big blank for people who can’t (or won’t) believe in the God of the Bible.

As Marie Marra wrote in the March issue of HPR, “Communists use Darwin.” Indeed they do. In a letter dated December 12, 1859, Frederick Engles wrote to Karl Marx: “I am just reading Darwin and find him excellent. One side of theology had not been smashed yet. This has happened now.” Marx replied: “This is the book which contains the basis in natural science for our view.”

Charles L. Grove of Reedsport, Oregon

An interesting hypothesis

Editor: In a recent letter to the editor [HPR February, 2002] Dr. A.C. Sippo chides Mr. Patrick Newman for skepticism concerning biological evolution. Dr. Sippo states that all popes since Pius XII accept that biological evolution is compatible with the Catholic faith “within due limits” [this term is not further defined].

Dr. Sippo accepts the fact that the whole universe was created “from nothing” [quite a miraculous event]. However, he states that instantaneous “popping up” of species stretches credulity beyond reasonable bounds.

Dr. Sippo then defends classical Darwinism in the following paragraph. “The evidence of the fossil record is clear and support Darwin’s theory of gradual changes over several [many?] generations. The record is by no means complete but a review of the individual elements in the record allows one to infer many of those transitions that are not clearly preserved there. Please note the hedging that occurs in this paragraph.

He then infers that the fossil record [like the individual frames of a movie] is not complete because the transition species are too unstable to be detectable.

The hypothetical inferences are reasonable. Unfortunately, the supporting empirical data obtained over the last 140 years are tenuous at best and non-existing at worst. When new species appear in the fossil record, they appear very abruptly. The time frame for appearance seems too short for gradual Darwinian evolution.

Nature is very protective of existing species. It does not allow two different species to mate and yield stable offspring. For instance, donkeys and horses can mate and yield mules; however, the male offspring are always sterile so that a stable species of mules cannot exist. Scientists have tried very hard in the last 100 years to generate new species without success. It seems that man “cannot fool with Mother Nature.”

Dr. Sippo’s argument for Darwinism reminds me of St. Anselm’s proof for the existence of God. St. Anselm argued that God is a being “than which no greater can be thought”; that is, our thought of God is a thought of a perfect being. From this he concluded, “hence, our thought is a thought of a truly perfect being; therefore God exists. The problem, of course, is that I can think of many things, which are not objectively real. Darwinism like St. Anselm’s proof must be supported by more evidence than I see now.

As I have previously stated, I consider Darwinism an interesting hypothesis, not yet even a good theory and certainly not the dogmatic answer for the appearance of species as we observe them in nature. Until that day arrives I, like Mr. Newman, can believe in the instantaneous “popping” into existence of fully formed species. After all God created the universe “from nothing.” Why is it so hard to believe that he can do likewise with the species as we see them?

Herman J. Baumgartner of Houston, Texas

We will never be lonely!

Editor: I would like to comment on Kenneth L. Davison’s article, “The Value of Children,” in the October 2001 issue. This is not a criticism of Davison but I wish to point out where he, and other authors of articles on the subject of children or the subject of large families, do not indicate or mention the value of children in preventing loneliness, which can lead to depression and other ill effects on grandparents who are widows or widowers, or senior citizen retirees who are widows or widowers without children or had only one child who visits once a year; crave to meet and talk with some person(s). I am talking about widows whose husbands were CEOs or executives, or widowers who were executives, each having money to buy anything in this world or travel everywhere in this world. I have witnessed this in an apartment building where my mother lived as a widow with fifty or more widows and widowers, some of whom had millions, and were the loneliest people in this world with no children or grandchildren to visit them or for them to visit. They would ride the elevator by the hour hoping that some person would enter the elevator with whom they could talk or go to the laundry room and sit by the hour hoping some persons would come to do their laundry with whom they could converse.

They go to the malls early in the morning where only a restaurant is open and they have their cup of coffee with their buddies and as the other stores open for business you see these lonely people sitting on benches watching the people go past and all the while looking for some person to sit and talk with them. They crave companionship.

In discussions with young married persons or couples planning their marriage, I try to encourage them to have a large family for the following reasons;

1) Children are the only reason for your marriage and the only thing worth working for in this world. Children appreciate and new homes, new cars, all material things depreciate.
2) You will never be lonely and I describe the situations mentioned above
3) You are joining with God in the creation of children and are following his admonition to increase and multiply. I have always believed that when the Sacrament of Marriage is consummated that God has ordained that so many children, from zero to some number, should come from this marriage.
4) I tell them that I also believe that at the Last Judgment I will have to account for every child that God ordained that should be with us, my wife and me, and account for those that are not there but should be.
5) Regret of delaying or planning too late to have children bothers the conscience after it is too late to be able to conceive; which can be traumatic and require the counseling of a priest, a psychologist, or even a psychiatrist, particularly those who used artificial contraception in preventing conception.
6) An animal pet is no substitution for a child. As Fulton Sheen says, “Every woman inherently desires whether she realizes it or not) to be a mother of her own baby.”
7) At the Last Judgment an accounting of missing children who God would have chosen to be a priest and perhaps a bishop had they been conceived and born. How many souls are lost because that priest did not come into existence? I heard a priest advise a group many years ago, “At the Last Judgment you had better have a good answer to the question: How many persons did you bring along with you?”

We have found that being parents of nine children we received quite a few derisive remarks and questions, such as, how do you expect to educate those children? I would not want to pay your grocery bill (for six boys!) plus your shoes and clothing expenses. I told them I meet those situations as they arrive and do not worry about conditions too far, beyond one week, into the future. I minimize my money problems by tithing to the Catholic Church and suggest that they try it sometime. Regardless of the snide remarks some of these same persons in a few years expressed regrets and stated how they envied my wife and I in having nine children plus nineteen and counting, grandchildren (at this writing all under ten years of age). The clinching statement I usually make is: We will never be lonely!

Edward and Dorothy Kenna of Pittsburgh, Pa.

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