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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
APRIL 2002
RENOVATION CONCERNS ALL CATHOLICS
In your article on the proposed St. Charles Borromeo renovation ["Vain, Vapid, Fatuous, Inane, and Patronzing," March 2002 Mission], one of the participants at the St. Charles Borromeo meeting said they felt people, in addition to actual St. Charles' parishioners, should be involved. What was omitted, probably due to length, was the reason, which I feel is vitally important.
Other parishes have already undergone the sort of destruction being proposed at St. Charles. Some have been completely taken by surprise; others have put up resistance, only to see their opinions and the fruits of previous generations of parishioners disregarded, derided, and disdained. My particular parish removed the beautiful altar rails without any prior notice being given.
Our churches are being destroyed against the will of the majority of people. We all share in the patrimony of the Church Universal, no matter where we are registered or not. Thus, it is not only the registered parishioners of any particular parish that have a stake in saving any one individual church building from the destruction being foisted upon us through a series of deceits, subterfuges, and outright lies.
Tesa Becica,
Van Nuys
SOME VALUE IN VOSKO
After reading the article about the renovation of St. Charles Borromeo, I went to Rev. Vosko's website (www.rvosko.com) where there are many links to illustrate his various projects. Some of them I like because they bring more people to the front. I see that as a positive because I believe that when families can be close to the altar, the children will not be lost in a sea of adults, and the adults and children can participate with awareness in the liturgy.
There are other projects on Rev. Vosko's website that did not appeal to me. In some, the "after" seemed darker, though that may be a photographic problem. I don't care for the frequent use of bent pews. Some pews, rather than being straight, had one or two angular bends in them. I think this might be a problem for persons with limited mobility, and families with children. I saw one church in a traditional long rectangle where the altar had been moved to the center of a side wall and it appeared the stained glass windows above the previous altar location had been removed or walled off. Also, as mentioned in the article, Vosko seems to have a preference for chairs over pews. I can't help but wonder what happens to pews and other furnishings which are removed. Are they just thrown on the rubbish heap? I can't help but recall the article in the Los Angeles Times about the wrought iron fencing from St. Vibiana's. An apparent scrap metal collector took it away for free. When someone decided they really did want them after all, the man who had them was willing to sell them back.
Phil Van Kamp,
received via e-mail
BISHOP DE ROO AN ANTIQUARIAN?
Your February report by Soren Filipski on Bishop Remi de Roo's presentation in Bakersfield [see "If She Wants Your Head on a Platter, She's Got It"] made him sound like a real charmer -- original, insightful, and even amusing. But it seemed apparent that he has been lured into the historical fallacy: what is ancient is better. It seems to me that our leaders have become antiquarians delving into liturgical and doctrinal archives for practices and beliefs that, over time under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and by the principle of the development of doctrine, have been superceded. His Excellency, for example, mentions that standing at Mass was the ancient practice and had important symbolic value in those days. He infers that kneeling at Mass is, therefore, a bad practice. This argument is typical of our modern antiquarians.
Brendan Kneale FSC,
De La Salle Institute,
Napa, California
YOU EXPRESS THE OUTCRY OF FAITHFUL CATHOLICS
It is so refreshing to read your newspaper that from time to time arrives here. Everywhere I go, most of our faithful Catholics desire to be loyal to Holy Mother Church -- your paper expresses that outcry regardless of what some us priests, women religious, and members of the hierarchy say or do.
Father Bob Sickler,
Holy Apostles Seminary,
Cromwell, Connecticut
CASINOS DON'T FEAR BEAUTY, WHY DOES MAHONY?
I was just browsing through some past Mission articles. "It's Just Big," about Cardinal Mahony's new cathedral, reminds me of something a confirmed liberal priest told us recently after a trip to Europe. He said that the churches in our town are ugly. He said that beautiful architecture is supposed to make us think of heaven. This from an admitted liberal! Everybody who sees Mahony's ugly cathedral or any ugly church architecture should protest that the emperor has no clothes. Where has all the beauty gone? Visit the gambling casinos. They have no qualms about beauty. These gambling halls that have nothing to do with God, are encrusted with gold, with ornate decorations; crystal chandeliers, huge marble statues, hallways lined with pots filled with real flowers. They have no fear that beauty will distract the public from their spending money there, or from their concentration on the games and slot machines; yet we hide our statues for fear (they tell us) that they will distract us from thoughts of God. So where do our eyes go? From bare walls to maybe the mini skirt or the tight fitting clothes of our fellow parishioners, etc. I would rather not elaborate...
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said that whatever the church discards the world picks up. Nobody would even dream of building a house as ugly as most of today's new churches that hide the presence of God, hoping, no doubt, that He will be forgotten and the purpose of the building will be forgotten as demonic infested minds try to erase God from our thoughts and diminish, little by little, our belief in His Real Presence among us.
Recently I attended a parish mission where the priest, for three nights, pranced back and forth in front of the altar, in back of which was the tabernacle with the Real Presence of Christ within. The first lesson we learned from this prancing -- with never a genuflection -- is that genuflection is unimportant. As the mission continued, he spouted one heresy after another, which included an order to make a list of the good things about ourselves, much like the Pharisee in scripture who made his list of good things about himself in the front of the temple while the sinner asked for mercy in the back.
This mission priest also spent over an hour denying the miracle of the loaves and fishes. The real miracle, he said, was in getting the people to share what they had. The third night he quoted a nun who had taught him that "nothing," mind you, "nothing," without exception, "should ever prevent you from receiving the Eucharist." This is what she said to him after he told her he thought he should go to confession first. One woman who had been to this mission said it was very nice. I told her it was full of heresy. "Oh, I didn't hear that part," she said. "I'm almost deaf, so I only got the good parts."
Pauline Moulder
Pensacola, Florida
MORE BIERSACH, PLEASE
I was very happy to see your excellent book review of The Endless Knot and your interview with author William Biersach in the February 2002 issue of the Mission.
This book has been the most amusing, exciting and absolutely heart-warming book I've read in a long time. It is an engaging mystery story, no doubt about it, but it is much more -- and that is the surprise and the pleasure. Through the skill of the author, Father Baptist, and Martin, his endearing but outrageous gardener, and St. Philomena's became very real to me. When I closed the book, I missed them. I still do, I guess. When do we get the next book in the series?
Anne Hale
Grants Pass, Oregon.
ENDLESS KNOT, GOOD READING
I enjoy reading your paper. It is interesting and sometimes consoling to hear the truth about events taking place in our Church in this area of the country.
I was pleased to read the review of the book, Endless Knot by William Biersach [February 2002]. I received a copy for Christmas and found it to be good reading. His style and humor are different from most books I read and I enjoyed it immensely. I would recommend it highly.
Darlene St. Onge
Red Bluff
WHY, FATHER PEROZICH?
In the Peace of Jesus Christ I come, and respectfully ask of Father Perozich, why, throughout his whole response to D.C.M. Googe in the "Letters" section of your February issue, did he not once say there is -- or could be -- or probably is -- a spiritual cause of homosexuality?
Now I address the members of Christ's Body in the Roman Catholic Church.
Here we are, the Body of Christ, with members suffering cruelly from homosexual oppression. Bishops, priests, religious, and lay people, all suffering horribly, with such depths of shame, because it affects their very beings. Why is the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church so reticent to acknowledge the spiritual origin of this orientation?
We are told by Paul in the New Testament to "renew our minds." Why are we to renew our minds unless we have accepted into them not only thoughts of our own generation which are wrong and/or sinful, but also because our minds have been attacked by Satan and his cohorts.
It is said that sexual feelings begin in the mind and then the body responds. Homosexuality comprises sexual attraction to others of the same sex. Since sexual feelings begin in the mind, then homosexual feelings begin in the mind. And now the question poses itself: who has access to our minds? God does. We do. Satan does.
Whatever we think about has come into our minds, because, one way or another, we have been exposed to whatever it is from one source or another. Even fantasies about things that we have never known to exist spring from prior knowledge of things that have existed. Our minds are finite. God's mind, alone, is infinite.
We have been told by Paul that we who belong to Christ have the mind of Christ. Let us then ask Jesus Christ, dear bishops, priests, religious and lay people, from whom, originally, comes the thoughts of the homosexual orientation? How do those thoughts come into even a child's mind? An intelligent being is being dealt with here. Who would want to harm God's own, those who are yet to be His own, and those who will never be His own?
In the beginning God created them male and female -- and who came along with the temptation and lie that one could be like God and could then be the arbiter of what was good and of what was evil? It is not hard to know. The knowledge is not even hidden from us. We have the mind of Christ.
As long as we in the Body of Christ in the Roman Catholic Church continue to wear blinders concerning this hellish oppression, we will have no ears to hear nor eyes to see the answer God has for the helps and deliverance of our suffering brothers and sisters. Satan does have a stronghold in our Church in this area. God sees this stronghold, and He is waiting for us to take hold of the courage and power He is willing to release through us for the setting free of His children from homosexuality: the young, the middle-aged, the old. Let us receive all He has for us so that we may truly love our neighbor as ourselves.
Claudia-Marie Person
Sacramento