LETTERS
1999 LETTERS
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
APRIL 1999
NO EXCEPTIONS
Last month one of your readers commented on an article [See News, December, 1998] which appeared in the December edition in a letter titled "Questionable Pro-Life Tactics." The letter charges that our organization, CA Right to Life Political Action Committee (CRL-PAC), backed two state-wide candidates who were not pro-life but were for exceptions to abortion.
I do not know how that conclusion was derived from your December article as it does not mention whom we backed...but I do want your readers to know that CRL-PAC does not back any candidates that are for exceptions on the abortion issue and other life issues. We have been criticized for our stand on no exceptions but we are firm in our resolve. As far as I know, we are the only pro-life PAC in our state that holds that position.
If your readers want more information they can reach us by telephone and FAX at (805) 682-5721; by e-mail at right2life@thegrid.net, or visit us on our rather new website: "ProLifePolitics" (sub-title: Putting life before politics).
And, if you want to help our organization, please send much-needed contributions to P.O. Box 4143, Napa, CA 94548.
Mary Ellen McCaffrey, Chairman
CA Right to Life Political Action Committee
SCANDALIZED, DEVASTATED AND HURT
Recently I went to a nearby church for confession and weekend Mass. I had not been there since the former pastor, an exemplary priest, was removed and a new pastor installed. When communion time arrived, out came a large kitchen bowl filled with consecrated hosts and the precious blood contained in a glass goblet. I was scandalized, devastated and hurt to the point of tears. Not only do they think so little of the precious body, blood and divinity of Our Savior Jesus Christ, but they are defiant and disobedient to the rules of the Church which state that the ciborium or chalice which contains the Sacred Species must be made of precious metal and, at least, the lining must be of gold.
One questions what is to become of the gold ciboria, bowls and chalices formerly used? Are they to be sold a la Judas Iscariot who admonished Mary Magdalene for bathing Christ's feet in precious perfume? I guess this could bring in monies to further demolish and redo churches to make them look like airport waiting rooms or worse.
To desecrate means "to violate the sacredness of" something (Webster's Dictionary) and the above fits the description. We must pray and make reparation for these indignities.
Barbara Belting
Northridge
DONE WITH TOUGH LOVE
Editor's note: the following letter appears to be a response to an article we ran in our March 1998 edition, "They are Petrified of this Woman" about the principal of St. James Catholic School in Torrance.
Both my wife and I are products of public schools and public universities. We came from good families that worked hard to prepare us for our adult lives. It must have worked because have a very good life by any standards.
But our sixteen year old daughter is getting a better deal because, since the sixth grade, she has been educated in a Catholic school. There was no pressing reason to switch her from the public school she attended. She was a good student and enjoyed her school, which was a large, modern facility.
But at Saint James School in Torrance, our daughter learned so many of the lessons about life that are impossible to come by in a public school system. Her principal, Sister Mary Margaret, and the teaching staff taught her well, pushed her hard and introduced her to what it means to be a Catholic. And they did it with so few of the amenities most public schools have. Much of it was done with tough love, teaching skills, discipline and the daily challenge that every student would not only be smarter, but a better person when class was let out at the end of the day.
We are immensely proud of our daughter, who just turned sixteen. She's on the Principal's List and the varsity soccer team. She loves Bishop Montgomery High School with a passion. A Catholic in the true sense of the word, she fulfills her obligation to help others and serve her community. Her potential as a student, athlete and person has increased greatly because she is being educated in a Catholic school. Her adult life opportunities will be unlimited.
There is no way we can adequately express our appreciation to the administrators, teachers, staff and clergy who created and maintained the schools she has been allowed to attend.
Bill and Cindi Kirchhoff
Redondo Beach
COME OUT OF BABYLON
Thank you for sending your paper to me. However, I am writing to ask you to stop sending it. The subscription was not solicited and no fee has been paid.
While I am not against Muslims, atheists, Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, Buddhists, Satanists, sinners, homosexuals, murderers, liars, fornicators, idolators, or any other practitioner of "religion or sin, I DO stand against those things that God is against, and I stand FOR those things that God is for! God stands FOR his commandments, and so do I.
Catholicism, together with most religions and religious organizations, not to mention sinners, has rejected God's commandments and substituted their commandments. God specifically commands against idolatry. The pope says we should bow to the image of the Virgin Mary and the "cookie god"! God says, keep the Sabbath day holy and go to church on that day. The pope says, forget God--keep Sunday, and if you don't, I'll kill you for heresy! Read the bloody records of the infamous inquisition carried out by the "Holy" Office! You should come out of Babylon if you do not want to burn with her. God is going to judge the world--not the pope. What will you say when God asks why you kept the pope's commandments instead of God's?
J.H.
SIGNS OF GROWTH
Editor's note: the following is a letter sent to the Chairman of Concerned Roman Catholics of America by Larry Carstens of Loyal Catholics of Southern California. Mr. Carstens was among those who protested February's Los Angeles Archdiocese's Religious Education Congress in Anaheim.
Mr. Chairman:
As I'm sure you recall, I attended the [Religious Education] Congress last year, and I saw you and your colleagues protesting outside; I sympathized with you, but I did not care to join you. I did, however, take your literature and read it. I came to realize that you were right and our cardinal was wrong (not for what he says, but for what he does, and whom he appoints). And so I determined that God was calling me to join you this year. I had my initial doubts about if it was the right thing to do, but now I am more certain than ever that God called us to be there and we followed His call faithfully.
As I expected, a lot of people were hostile and critical of what we were doing, but what I did not expect was the high number of people who came up to offer us support and thanks for being there. One lady spontaneously gave us $20, and a young teenage girl came out of a workshop in tears, and saying she had decided to leave the Church but was reconsidering her decision because of us. Many of those who thanked us for protesting had just attended a workshop where they witnessed an assassination of Catholic truth by a skilled "sparkling" speaker and an enthusiastic crowd (at least they weren't yelling "crucify Him"--not yet, anyway). So it was a pleasant surprise to be approached by so many supportive people who had been expecting Catholic truth, and encountered pseudo-Catholic feminism and neo-paganism. I am now more confident than ever that we are right, and that we represent the majority of active and faithful Catholics of this or any archdiocese. The only reason the cardinal's grievous actions have gone unchallenged for so long is that most people are ignorant of what he is doing against the Magisterium, and he is very skilled at "playing politics" and masking his subtle undermining of the Holy Father. He also has tremendous power and money at his command: what he does not have is God's truth.
One of my most memorable encounters involved a young man who approached our table and pointedly asked me if I knew that St. John's was only graduating five candidates for the priesthood this year (implying that the solution was to create priestesses). I pointedly replied that he had just illustrated the problem with the feminist leadership at St. John's. Young men who are too orthodox or "traditional" (too Catholic, to be precise) are screened out, or discouraged from applying; then the same feminists who cause the numbers to drop cry "vocations crisis." I told him how there is no shortage of seminarians in the dioceses of Archbishop Chaput in Denver, Bishop Bruskewitz in Lincoln, or Cardinal O'Connor in New York. Then the young man told me he was a student at St. John's and I was right. He ceased his argumentative tone and walked away sadly.
Finally, there were two changes which I observed this year, which I would consider signs of growth of our cause. For one, we seemed to represent more of the "mainstream" of Catholic faithful who, given the choice, would reject the feminism and neo-paganism offered by the cardinal's minions, and would side with the Holy Father. Our opponents tried to cast us as Lefebvrites, or "out of touch" eccentrics who do not accept the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council, or the papacy of John Paul II. However, it seemed clear to a surprisingly large number of people who approached us that we are in touch with the "mainstream" of Catholic truth, and that we represented the majority of Catholics throughout history and throughout the world today.
Secondly, I noticed an increase in "young blood" among our ranks. I was only one of a number of participants who come from a generation of post-Vatican II Catholics, and who are more and more visibly rejecting the "60's catholicism" which dominates the American Church. We reject the feminist matriarchs of the American Church and those who kowtow to them, no matter how powerful they may be. We love Catholic tradition, the saints, the Latin Mass, and the Holy Father, and we refuse to be misled by those who tell us to put our society's American feminist ideology ahead of our obedience to the Magisterium. Unlike the cardinal's minions, we do not assault the sacrament of Holy Orders by demanding the ordination of women. We do not assault the virtue of obedience by claiming the moral high ground against the Holy Father. Finally, we do not seek to re-make the Church or the Pope into our image by quoting them in part, when it is to our advantage, then betraying them before the cock crows even once. Rather, we seek to be led, to obey, to serve, and to surrender ourselves to Christ and His Holy Church.
Larry A. Carstens
North Hollywood