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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
JANUARY 1998
BIZARRE HEADLINE
Although I'm a Nichiren Buddhist, I enjoy reading Mission. Even so, I found the headline, "Evil Like Buddha," in your December issue to be bizarre. The story accompanying the headline was about the persecution of Catholics in China, which I -- and all the Buddhists I know -- find unconscionable. No one -- in China, America, or anywhere -- should be persecuted for their religious faith. So I wonder why you chose such an obviously pejorative headline for your article. I assume that it was chosen out of ignorance or misunderstanding of Buddhism rather than out of malice.
In Nichiren Buddhism, "Buddha" is not a god or an external entity or even a historical person; "Buddha" is life itself. It's all-encompassing. At its heart, Buddhism is a philosophy and practice that celebrates the interconnectedness of all living beings, all phenomena, all environments and life's eternity.
All teachings and religions, no matter how noble, can be perverted to suit the tyrannical aims of so-called "religious authorities," and Buddhism is no different. Buddhist "literalists" adhere to the letter of Buddhist law and, consequently, destroy the spirit of Buddhism. Biblical literalists, in my opinion, likewise destroy the spirit of Jesus Christ. The spirit of Buddhism, like the spirit of Catholicism, is not evil -- but it's teachings can be twisted and used by some people to enslave and inflict suffering rather than to liberate and spread joy.
I feel that human enslavement in the name of religion is evil, and that this one evil is the common enemy of all people, regardless of religion or creed.
Lisa Jones
West Hollywood
THE MISSION IS NOT TRASH
I want you to know that we appreciate your paper very much. Please continue to chronicle and expose the rot that is overtaking the Church today. Your continuing focus on the nefarious "Cardinal" Mahony and his ecclesiastical flummery is very much needed and I am sure very much hated by the clerical mafia in the chancery.
I would also like to respond to Father Malcolm Smith of Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, where he referred to the Mission as "trash" [See Letters, December, 1997]. How, Father, can you have the temerity to call the Mission "trash" and swallow the obfuscation, heresy and cowardice coming out of Mahony's chancery? You should instead thank God that there is a newspaper courageous enough to print the truth about the destruction of our Holy Church and of the antics of our so-called "shepherds." Keep up the fine work, Mission. Continue to tell it like it is.
David D. Jones
Inyokern,CA
YOUR CHURCH OPPOSED UMBRELLAS
I write to ask you not to waste further postage and printing on me.
I must explain: I agree with you on the rightly emotive and moral issue of abortion. There are many great problems surrounding the matter--whether foster-parents or adoptions always provide safe havens for those babies saved from abortion--but on the whole, even in an imperfect world, there are ways of preventing abortion and saving life with acceptable safeguards. But risk cannot always be eliminated. Without being contentious or point-scoring, even the placing of such children in Catholic orphanages is not foolproof given the number of priests who have been convicted of the merciless sexual abuse of such children in their care--and who, until recently, have been universally protected by the Church hierarchy from exposure and prosecution!
I disagree your blanket opposition to abortion as a means of saving a mother's life or sparing both parents a lifetime of agony--even if this is attended with love and faith--caring for a severely and predictably handicapped child. Of course, no one in that situation would choose abortion joyously but always with the heaviest of hearts. But they should not, in addition, if they are Catholics, be made to feel that by burdening themselves with a helpless irredeemable parody of a human being they are somehow advancing their sanctity and winning God's approval the hard way.
I should also mention, importantly, that it is insufferable in a democracy (a state of society the Church routinely opposed violently, to the unforgivable and unforgettable extent of coming to an accommodation with Italian Fascism), that movements such as yours seek to write into lay law of the land the forbidding of these choices to non-Catholics. Keep your own consciences, crafted in centuries of unquestioning Catholic rigidity. They have much to answer for. And leave us to ours. They are very frequently born into good traditions--of freedom.
This wholesale condemnation of abortion is just the latest in the long and dreadful line of embargoes which Rome has pumped out for the laity while tolerating and hiding married popes, popes with illegitimate children and even a female pope. At the same time, priestly celibacy has been institutionalized and enforced even though I cannot find a single word of Christ's which even suggests this, and so must conclude that it came about so that priests would have no one but the Church as heirs to their material property.
Has it occurred to you: on every occasion you switch on electricity, take an aspirin, change your clock to Summer time, benefit from medical students who work on cadavers properly donated, go under anesthetic, have surgery or a tooth pulled, use an umbrella, read of vital murder evidence being obtained by autopsy, see a woman wearing slacks (though, somehow, it is no sin for a priest or choir boy to sport a dress) or view a love scene--that all these and thousands more are a few examples of matters which your Church literally, religiously and tenaciously opposed and would oppose to this day if the sheer force of human common sense hadn't swept such idiotic attitudes away, even out of the fastnesses of the One and Only True Faith?
As they say in the bargain-sale ads--there is much much more. There is also much acknowledged good--true and humble Catholic practitioners, ordained or not, who minister to the poor and oppressed--while the memory of a shoeless carpenter from Nazareth is enshrined in gold, silver and gems in towering structures built alongside the homeless and the uncared for.
In the area of abortion, the Church's dogma has misled it into heartlessness and pomposity, as so often, and so harmfully, before. In any civilized--and truly Christian--society, it simply isn't acceptable that unmarried priests should seek to inflict decades of crushing misery on decent, God-loving (why always FEAR Him?) people for the sake of the problematical and sadistically baffling intentions of a Deity they, demonstrably imperfect, alone claim to understand and serve.
Norman Hudis
Woodland Hills
NOTHING WRONG WITH "PRESIDER"
In your article about Cardinal Mahony's pastoral letter on the liturgy ("Forget the Middle Ages", November, 1997), you quoted a priest who was upset by the use of the word "presider," and who complained "anyone can preside... but only the priest can offer the sacrifice (or) consecrate." No mention is made of a term he would prefer.
Only priests and bishops can preside at Mass. The use of the word "presider" indicates the priest's role as the one who leads others in the Eucharist, which is actually celebrated by the entire gathered assembly (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1071-72, 1136-44, 1188), including the priest.
Terms such as "presider" are not meant to make priests feel insulted or threatened--they are an attempt to make our people less passive, and to express more accurately our Catholic belief about what happens at liturgy.
Father Bill Brown
Redwood City
A MATTER FOR PENANCE
Please remove my name from your mailing list. I find the persistent--and sometimes unChristian--editorializing offensive.
I hope that, besides an apology in your paper to Bob Hurd, someone personally met with him to ask forgiveness for rash judging of him. Perhaps such a judgment is also matter for the Sacrament of Penance for the careless or malicious person who made the original judgment.
Sister Marie Wiedner, OP
Capitola
NO MEALY-MOUTHED EQUIVOCATION, HERE
In the first paragraph of his letter to the editor (See Letters, November 1997), William C. Freda takes issue with the "editorial" flavor of Mission's reporting. His criticism has some merit, but it is much ado about nothing. The news media has long set the standard for propaganda and bias under the guise of alleged "objectivity." So it is refreshing when a publication unhesitatingly denounces the bizarre and sacrilegious and the heretical infiltrating the Catholic Church, which that obsequious rag, the Tidings, palms off on the faithful as tolerable orthodoxy. It is to Mission's credit that it exhibits justifiable outrage for these abuses rather than mollifying its readers with mealy-mouthed equivocation and politically fashionable liberation theology. One may not agree with its view, but there is no mistaking its message. And I would remind Mr. Freda that in doing battle with error, it is not incumbent on the good guys to give polite credence to the devil in deference to "objectivity." Jesus was less than solicitous when driving the money changers from the temple. And that was not a feather in his hand.
Mr. Freda dismisses the Tridentine Mass as a recent construct of the 16th century. In fact, the Mass was well defined by Pope Gregory the Great in the late sixth century, and only formally codified with minor additions by St. Pius V in 1570. To suggest that the Novus Ordo Missae ("New Mass") is a hearkening back to ancient rituals is a quaint fiction fostered by our New Age ministry, but utterly unsupported by the facts.
What is significant is that the Mass, under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit, underwent slow, organic evolution over the centuries, ever advancing in beauty and reverence. Never was it changed for the sake of change until the "Spirit of Vatican II" seemed to grant license for every conceivable novelty.
As to his allusion to the "obsessive treatment of homosexuality" by the Mission, I don't wish to be unkind, but Mr. Freda's understanding of homosexuality, its devastating sociological and physiological impact and of related biblical narratives is incredibly naive. To state that Jesus made no comment on the subject is to presume His every utterance is incorporated in the Bible (which the Bible specifically refutes) and that the abundant remonstrations of His apostles and disciples regarding fornication were not the expressed will of Jesus. And did Jesus disavow the Old Testament in which sodomy is clearly condemned? Such a nonsense catechism is popularly espoused by that heroic video icon (and ecclesial ignoramus) Father Ray in "Nothing Sacred." To quote Cyrano, "No, sir. You are too simple."
To characterize homosexuals as merely "individuals whose greatest offense [is] loving one another..." is a denial of all clinical, sociological and self-descriptive data available. If Mr. Freda can tolerate some objectivity, and distance himself briefly from the false compassion excusing all sin in today's Church, I would recommend to him Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far by Charles Socarides, M.D. Then, if he is not enlightened, I would suggest a tour of the gay bars, clubs and bath houses to witness first hand the ennobling, uplifting and virtuous lifestyle out of which bonds of true and enduring "love" are fashioned. And, lastly, a visit to an AIDS ward of a hospital or hospice where gaunt and sallow forms waste away in gruesome tribute to the hedonism of their "alternative lifestyle." If you haven't emptied your stomach by this time, offer a brief prayer of compassion for the real victims--the innocent women and babies who have been robbed of life by this malevolent evil parading boldly about in the cloak of self-righteousness.
As John Vennari stated in Catholic Family News, "Equating opposition to homosexuality with bigotry is dishonest propaganda--a groundless but useful slogan to shame unthinking people into believing they are being un-Christian in opposing moral perversion. The facts of history bear out that when a civilization becomes ridden with widespread immorality, particularly homosexuality, the collapse of that civilization will follow. Homosexuality destroys souls, destroys family life, and, therefore, destroys society."
Mr. Freda, the Mission is not engaged in "obsession"--it is engaged in war.
Larry B. Johnson
Duarte