The Anti-Semites

We have all heard the charges. Mel Gibson’s movie is anti-Semitic, as are the Gospels he drew from. Never mind that Gibson specifically showed several Jewish leaders protest Jesus’ unfair trial. Ignore the fact that Mr. Gibson wove together Jesus’ discourse “I lay my life down. No one takes it from me” with clips of the Jewish elders precisely to demonstrate that no one could have harmed Jesus if He had not permitted it. Ignore too, that Mr. Gibson made a point of dressing Joseph of Arimethea as a Jewish leader when he placed him at the foot of the Cross as Jesus body was taken down. Close your eyes to the piercing gaze Mary gave each one of us as we gazed upon what we had done to her Son.

Let us throw all of this to the winds. We will not dwell on the fact that this movie was about the Jew who saved the universe, instead, we will grant every assertion of anti-Semitism without a fight.

There. Don’t you feel better? Now that we know what anti-Semitism is, we must all stand up and condemn anti-Semitism wherever we find it. When we consider anti-Semitism according to these most excellent new rules, horror strikes. A most notorious book, a work of nearly pure anti-Semitism, has not yet been properly exposed for what it is.

This infamous book asserts that Jews are adulterers, thieves, murderers, harlots. Open the book up to any page: here is a story in which virtually an entire Jewish family tries to kill their own blood relative, there, an eyewitness tells us how Jews killed and ate their own children. It goes on in nauseating detail. The pages are filled with anti-Semitic stories of this kind.

But the authors of this book hold Jewish leaders out for special attack. They assert that the leaders of the Jews stole from the poor and the orphan, ground the widow under their heel, took bribes, lied, raped, enslaved: men were callously sold for the price of a pair of sandals. It lists the most horrific crimes, the most perfidious blood sport, and places them all at the feet of the Jews.

Now that we all know what true anti-Semitism is, we should turn with one voice and repudiate this book and its authors. But the situation is actually worse than I painted. You see, this is not just a single book, it is a whole series of books, a virtual travelling library of anti-Semitism. It is read regularly in synagogue every Sabbath. It is the best-selling book in the United States.

An old man named Moses wrote the first five volumes of it. This barbaric Moses person shows that the founder of the Jewish Faith was an adulterer, willing to send his consort and his illegitimate son to certain death just to keep his wife happy. A family with a son named Joseph sold him into slavery after their attempted murder failed. Moses personally saved Joseph’s descendants from slavery and death only to see them mock everything he had worked for when he came down the mountain. Moses is the first, but not the worst. Dare we even read the so-called “prophets”?

Nearly every one of the rabidly anti-Semitic “prophets” in this collection accused the Jews of the things listed above and worse besides. Book after sickening book in the “Bible” lists the crimes of the Israelites. Thank heavens the Mel Gibson controversy opened our eyes! Now we can clearly see that anti-Semitism has a long history. Given the kind of disgusting man Mr. Gibson is, he would probably blush to be compared with the authors of this book. Still, he undeniably has their vision of the world. His movie is the kind of nonsense you can expect from Adonai’s men.

If anyone were to write a book today that contained a tenth of the nasty statements made in the Law and the Prophets, what Christians call the Old Testament, the ACLU lawyers would go into shock while B’nai B’rith would have an epileptic fit. One can only guess what Andy Rooney would say, “I won’t waste nine dollars to get a few laughs out of a lousy book like the Torah,” he might opine, “That kind of violence and bloodshed is just mindless.” B’nai B’rith would immediately agree.

Historically, there has been one major difference between the Jews and all the rest of the nations of mankind. The Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, the Germans, the French, the Americans, the Russians, we work hard to forget the perfidious cruelties, the blood-drenched evils our people have perpetrated on others and on ourselves. We like to believe we are all wonderful people. Inconvenient historical facts are ignored.

The Jews, on the other hand, turn the historical list of their own evils into Sacred Scripture. Why? Because the Jews are wiser than modern secular man. They know Scripture isn’t just about the evils – it is also about the heroic virtue displayed by the people of Israel, the incredible courage, the noble self-sacrifice, the enormous gift and burden of making all of humanity aware of the one God and His love for broken humanity.

Unlike other peoples, the Jews don’t just keep the history they like and throw the rest out. They are honest enough to keep both before their eyes constantly, so that they might do what Adonai commanded: we have before us the path of life and the path of death. He asked them, He asks us through them, to choose life, so that we and our children might live. To do any less is to betray the Faith.

So, let’s stop playing games and state the facts. A small group of evil men, Jews and goyim, killed a noble man, the Jew who saved the world. A small group of heroic men, all Jews, carried the news of this Jewish hero to the goyim. This is the constant story of the Torah: Jewish Joseph was nearly slaughtered but Jewish Joseph brought Adonai to Egypt. The nation of Israel was enslaved, but the Israelites brought Adonai to the desert people and the Promised Land. David committed adultery and murder, but King David brought Adonai to the nations.

The Gospels simply compress the millennia-long story of the Law and the Prophets into three short years, three years in which one man lives all the trials and the prophecies of Israel in His own body. He dies at the hands of his family, just as Joseph nearly did, but He brings Adonai to the world, for He is Adonai.

The New Testament and the Old Testament are both anti-Semitic by today’s standards precisely because they both celebrate the single mystery that only Jews have known and only Jews could bring unto us goyim: Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One, and He is to be loved with all our heart, all our soul, all our might. These words we are commanded to place upon our heart, and teach diligently to our children. We are to talk of them when we sit in our house and when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. The Jewish Saviour of the world bound it through His own hands and made it a crowned frontlet to his eyes, and so the Cross has become the doorpost of our house and of our gates.

This is The Passion of the Christ. It captures the whole of Jewish and Christian Scripture at a stroke. The whole world conspired together to kill Him, both goy and Jew, but when it came time to save that same world, only the Jews could manage it. Where sin abounds, grace abounds more. Where pagan goyim and apostate Jews conspire, faithful Jews overcome. As the strains of fascism swept pre-war Europe, Pius XI famously told a group of German Catholics that all Christians are spiritually Semites. He was right, of course, but he left unmentioned the choice that still remains: will we be Joseph? Or will we be his brothers?
Choose.

Solving the Education Problem: Part II

As many of you have noted, parish schools are virtually the only thing in many parishes that will bring adults out of their homes. For this reason, the parish school can be absolutely vital to adult formation.

You may think this an odd position for me to take, given what I’ve written so far. It isn’t. Successful adult formation is built on sales. As a friend of mine likes to say, “No need, no deal.” Gas can be twenty cents a gallon, but I won’t stop if I have a full tank. On the other hand, it may be twenty dollars a gallon, but I’ll fill up if it’s the only station in town.

Adults are driven by interest and by need. We are often not interested in learning the Faith but we will come when we have to. How does your parish get adults into formation sessions right now? That’s easy – nearly all parishes require six months of marriage formation. Nearly all parishes require one or more session of adult instruction in order to get a child baptized in the parish. The adults all come even though most of them hate it. Why? Because they want to get marred in the Church or they want that baptismal certificate and celebration. They’ll put up with the sessions. The price is worth the trade.

So, we use that principle and expand the concept. We all know the Sunday homily is not sufficient for adult formation. The popes have said this for roughly a century. It makes sense. Can you name any subject that you can master simply by listening to a 10-minute talk once a week? Neither can I. We need to demonstrate that the Catholic Church actually has useful things to say to adults.

Get the parents first
But first, we need bait to get them in. We have it: the parochial school. Most schools already require the parents to invest a certain amount of “volunteer” hours. Simply require some of those hours to be spent in weekly or bi-monthly adult formation session as a condition for their children’s attendance in the parochial school. Sure, some of the parents aren’t Catholic – so? They don’t have to convert. They just need to listen. This is informed parenting – the parish insists on making sure every parent knows what the school teaches. Run short session series: an hour or so a week for four weeks, with free baby-sitting (the eighth-graders can pitch in here), perhaps with a light dinner thrown in. Then they can take a break for four weeks. Keep in mind that some parents work split shift, so schedule accordingly.

Motivate the parents of younger children. Parents are supposed to be doing sacramental preparation, so the classes in kindergarten and first grade teach them how. When this first parent class hits second grade, close down the First Confession/First Eucharist component in the parochial school and the CCD. It’s the parents’ job from now on. For third grade and later, continue the sessions – now the parents have to prepare their children for confirmation, after all. If your parish is one of several in a big city, get other parishes on board, get the bishop behind the plan. Otherwise, parents as lazy as I am will flee to other schools in a wild attempt to avoid the coming responsibilities.

Now, sweeten the pot. Getting them in the door is a start, but we have to keep them coming back without rebellion. So, parents or parochial school teachers who attend a certain number of weekly formation sessions get a cut in tuition, a bonus, or cash payments/prizes. Maybe a local travel agency will donate a cruise, the local appliance store a refrigerator. Ask parents and teachers what they would like for prizes, and get those prizes. Make the sessions look and feel like an adult event. It should resemble what professional people see when they walk into a conference in their field of expertise - classy.

“But not all parents will do this!” the pastor exclaims. “I am responsible for seeing that those kids are prepared for the sacraments!” Not really, Father. The parents are responsible for that. They are the primary educators. Pastors need to get to the parents – without the parents, the kids will generally abandon the sacraments. Remember, priests assist the parents, not the other way around. Assistants often have to live with bosses who are impossible, as we all know. Does a priest take over another pastor’s parish when he dislikes what the pastor next door is doing? Parents are the priests of the domestic Church, the family is their parish. In the family, every priest is a visiting priest. When it comes to the children, treat the parents the same way you would treat a brother pastor. They are, you know. And they’ll respond well to that level of respect.

American Parish Idol
Pastors, you have an enormous resource staring you in the face. Homeschoolers are the best teachers and mentors you could ask for. They know the Faith, they know how to transmit it, and they know what it is like to be scared doing it, so they know how to deal with parental fears. Have them run your adult education classes, especially the sacramental prep sessions. Pay them.

In fact, pay professional speakers to come in on a regular basis. Most charge somewhere between $500 and $1000 for a talk, plus travel expenses. Put them up in the rectory and book travel well in advance to minimize costs. Forty weeks of that will cost forty to sixty thousand dollars, or the price of four parochial school teachers, and you get top-notch presentations. But only 20 adults show up! So? How many kids do you need to fill a grade school class? Why is this different?

Now, I could plug the speakers at places like Bridegroom Press, Catholic Exchange, Catholic Answers, St. Joseph’s Communications and the like, but there’s no need. A parish can generally roll its own speakers’ bureau. Set up a committee and have an audition night. Anyone who wants to speak on a topic can audition for a spot on the roster. Make it clear that you are paying several hundred dollars for a person to give a one-hour talk plus Q&A on any subject that touches on Catholic Faith, and people will come out of the woodwork.

Have the committee decide who makes the cut after a ten-minute sample presentation. Then have the full talk previewed and vetted for orthodoxy. For the first year, take anyone remotely good, have the audience vote, and invite popular speakers back for four-week or six-week series. It’s the parish version of American Idol. You might even use one of the many fund-raising cruise firms to put together a cruise for the parish, with popular parish speakers as the highlighters – they get a reduced price or free berth in exchange for talking on the cruise. That way, the cruise pays for the adult education and the educators have a prize to compete for all in the same boat, so to speak.

Once adults start seeing that the Catholic Church actually has useful things to say, form parish small groups around specific topics: men’s group, women’s group, health group, etc. Family groups should figure prominently. Families are supposed to band together to support one another. Start a group reading Familiaris Consortio or John Paul II’s Letter to Families. There are good study guides out for both, and I’ve never met a parent who studied either one and wasn’t delighted by them.

What to use for material?
Start a Catholicism 101 class and give out certificates of completion at the end. Do a series on Catholic-Protestant differences. A presentation on medieval and Renaissance artwork brings enormous numbers of people out – you can download pictures off the web and run an overhead to show them. Run the RCIA series slightly adapted for Catholic adults. Catholics who have been sponsors in orthodox RCIA programs love it: they’re finally getting the Faith at an adult level.

I will try to make available on my website the talk outlines I used when I was teaching RCIA. The first six weeks of that instruction is essentially found in my book Sex and the Sacred City, and it is written to be used for group study. As I get the opportunity, I will make available the class notes from the graduate theology courses I took. These notes will be free downloads. I’ll also set up a web discussion board at www.bridegroompress.com for blog readers to throw ideas around. Watch for it before the end of the month.

Other good resources to build a class around: Frank Sheed’s A Map of Life or Scott Hahn’s A Father Who Keeps His Promises. For Bible study, Jeff Cavin’s Great Adventure timeline is a good start. Both Emmaus Road and Ignatius Press puts out good Scripture studies, and the Navarre Bible study series is excellent. The Little Rock and Collegeville series are short on doctrine, but some people like them for the emotional support they provide.

Ask the adults in the parish what they want; maybe a series on stem cells or medical research or gay marriage or the problem of pain. A talk on annulments and divorce is almost always popular. Debunk The Da Vinci Code, discuss The Passion of the Christ, take your topics from the news media headlines and let the pagans do your advertising for you. Give Catholic adults a list to choose from, poll them, collect the forms along with the collection envelopes. Listen to them, answer their needs, and they will respond.

Advertise, talk to your friends and start your own group in your home or at the parish center. This is both the right and duty of lay Catholics, described in the documents of Vatican II, and we need to start living it. But most of all, pray. Gather a small group regularly in front of the Eucharist and ask God for assistance. He will send it.

Solving the Education Problem: Part I

For the last three weeks, we’ve looked at the problem of Catholic education. What must we, as parents, do in order to keep the Faith alive in our children?

At Home
First, don’t despair. God ordained us in the sacrament of marriage to deal with exactly this problem. We have the grace, we just have to figure out how to use it. Remember, the Magisterium doesn’t require us to do much actual formal instruction: we have to prepare our children for the sacraments and teach them common prayers. That’s it. You and I are under no obligation to homeschool in all subjects, or even to formally school our child beyond the areas just mentioned. If you want to do more formal schooling, that’s fine, but don’t let anyone bully you into thinking you have to. You don’t.

For at-home sacramental preparation, keep in mind that your child only needs three things to be properly prepared. (1) the child must know enough about the ritual to move through it successfully, (2) he must know how the sacrament changes him, and (3) he must desire that change.

That’s it. Really. The rest is just window-dressing to make the curriculum look imposing. So, for reconciliation, your child needs to know an act of confession and the prayers that will likely be assigned for penance: Hail Mary, Our Father, Glory Be. For the sacrament of Confirmation (which is an obligation, not a choice), know that it perfects the gifts of baptism and it empowers you to tell others all about Jesus. For Eucharist, know that the species is Jesus: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, present entirely in the host and present entirely in the cup, and be able to make a sign of reverence prior to receiving. Read John 6 with your child to show them why Eucharist is important. Make sure they know their Sunday obligation to attend Mass.

For all three, the child needs to be aware of the liturgy surrounding the sacrament, that is, he should know when absolution takes place, what words are used at confirmation, when consecration takes place and the two major parts of the Mass. Your seven-year old can master this and receive all three sacraments the same year, if you want. By the way, the decision on when to present your child for confirmation is yours, not the bishops’. He may set the time by which the child must be prepared (“must be ready by high school,” for instance), but you can present the child earlier (in second or third grade, for instance), if the child is prepared and you feel it is best for him. As long as the child is of the age of reason and prepared, confirmation cannot be denied solely on the basis of age.

Still concerned about sacramental preparation? Contact Catholic homeschooling parents in your area and tap them for advice. They’ve done it before, they’ve been just as scared as you, they’ll know how to help. The Pope encourages families to band together to accomplish things. It’s good advice.

For parents of grade/high school children
Your local parochial school or high school may be a very fine private school, even if it is not good at transmitting the Faith. There is nothing wrong with sending your children to a private school. Just remember that it is only a private school, despite the pleasant “C-word” in the title. As long as you (1) know this, (2) have an adult grasp of the Faith, and (3) are careful to correct the inevitable mistakes that good but misinformed people will make as they attempt to teach the Faith, you’re fine. Learn the Faith on an adult level, live it in front of your kids, and discuss the instructional problems frankly both with them and with their teachers. Honest teachers know they aren’t qualified – they’re doing the best they can, just like everyone else. They will appreciate support from home.

As the parent, you have both the right and the duty to decide what is best for your children in regards to schooling – no one else has the right to interfere, not even your pastor or bishop. You are the primary educator of your children, not them. Point this out to them if they start implying that you are a sinner for not sending your kids to “Catholic” school. If you think the local parish school is teaching too much heresy or is oozing with too much hypocrisy to be a safe environment for your child’s soul, pull them. On the other hand, if the public schools in your area pose an even greater threat to your child’s safety, by all means, keep them in the parish school. This is your decision, no one else’s.

If you choose to pull your children from the school, write the principal, copy the pastor and/or bishop. Do exactly the same thing the parents of college students are doing (see below). Describe in your letter exactly why you are pulling your children and exactly how much money the school will lose. Write a separate letter to the pastor and/or bishop asking them to show their solidarity with Catholic families by joining you in recommending to all Catholic families that these unfaithful schools be avoided.

If the pastor or bishop accuses you of harming community life, point out our Holy Father’s words, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, as the family goes, so goes the Church!” You build community by safeguarding your family. Pastors and bishops build community by supporting Catholic parents. They should appreciate your work, and encourage others to put family before parish school. To the extent that pastors do not encourage and support parents in this, they are the ones attacking the community, not you. Depending on how your state law is written, a pattern of heterodox teaching in the school might be grounds for malpractice and/or fraud lawsuits. This would not look good in the local papers (diocesan papers tend not to print this kind of thing, since the editors like their jobs). Although pastors don’t like to discuss it, they know this is a real possibility. Point out that you know it, too.

If you choose to keep your child in Catholic school, keep a close ear to the spiritual practices and the teachings. Get involved the minute heterodoxy is alleged. First, meet with the teacher. Children have a habit of mis-characterizing what teachers say, especially if the teachers are not well-liked. If that doesn’t resolve it, meet with the pastor and teacher together. If that doesn’t resolve it, bring it to the bishop’s attention. If this is likewise fruitless, you still have several options. You can appeal to the apostolic nuncio for the United States, you can sue the school for malpractice and fraud, or you can let the secular newspapers in on the conversation, or any combination thereof.

For parents of college students:
Here is a list of schools that require the mandatum . If you had considered a college or university, but had to reject it due to the lack of mandatum, then write the president of that university and copy the bishop of the diocese in which it resides. Point out to the president that you would have encouraged your children to go there, but faculty unwillingness to proclaim the Catholic Faith changed your mind. Take the university’s yearly tuition, multiply it by four and add 3% - that’s the minimum amount of money they lost from a faithful Catholic because of their unwillingness to be faithful. Point that out in the letter. All faithful Catholics are going elsewhere, along with their money.

This is a boycott. As people who advocate social justice, Catholic university presidents will certainly appreciate it why it is necessary. To be honest, more many bishops will be quietly cheering you on from the sidelines, even though their public face may be neutral. Encourage the president to join you in this boycott and tell all the Catholic parents they know to stay away from their school, just as you will inform all the Catholic parents you know to do the same. Write a separate letter to the bishop, urging him to warn Catholic families to avoid this university. According to the Magisterium, all segments of the Church are desirous of displaying solidarity with the Catholic family so you know they’ll be interested in assisting you spread the message.

Then write a letter to the president of the college you will be attending, thanking him for his school’s fidelity. Copy the bishop of his diocese and the bishops and presidents of the colleges you won’t be attending. We want to show them that we don’t just denigrate the negative, we actively embrace the positive, as good Catholics should.

And when you are considering places of higher education, don’t forget to check out secular schools with great Newman centers! Newman centers, like Catholic universities, are of varying quality, but some of them are absolutely stellar. One case in point is the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is the largest, most active Newman Center in the country with one of the best college retreat programs in the nation. Its current director, Msgr. Stuart Swetlund, is renowned for his orthodoxy and vibrant ability to transmit the Faith. The Sisters of the Contemplative Life who assist there are marvelous at spiritual direction. Don’t be put off by their lack of habits. It is the only order of order of profoundly orthodox consecrated women I am aware of that was founded without a habit. There are other marvelous Newman Centers across the United States. Investigate them. Look for kneelers in the chapel, proper central placement of the tabernacle, and interrogate the pastor of the center about his position on abortion, contraception, women’s ordination, and the like. Look at their library. Investigate.

If the Newman Center isn’t orthodox, write the pastor, copy the bishop and copy the university president, telling them why you had to choose against their school. Point out to the university president that the bishop is always open to input about what kind of pastor best suits a particular environment. If a secular university president gets enough of those letters, he’ll write the bishop himself to ask for a new priest at the Newman Center. That’s the kind of thing that carries weight.

If your child is already in a heterodox university and the administration won’t respond, document instances of heterodox teaching or practice, then follow the methods outlined above. If you don’t get satisfaction, investigate the possibility of suing the school for malpractice and fraud, and make sure the suit is well-publicized. They want to be secular institutions – fine. We should give them the same respect any secular entity gets.

Be bold. Make a nuisance of yourself. Jesus did.

Next week, we’ll discuss how to address the adult formation problem in the parish. We’ll also provide some links to help you get the job done.

Please Write CBS

March 1, 2003

Assignment Desk
CBS 2 News
6121 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028

To the Editors:

Andy Rooney’s recent comments concerning the content of the film, The Passion of the Christ are unacceptable. He went beyond commentary on the movie to a bigoted, essentially racist attack on the spiritually Semitic heritage of Catholic Faith. His comments are indistinguishable from those associated with the Know-Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups of American history.

What would be done to a CBS commentator who said about a movie concerning Martin Luther King’s assassination, “I don't plan to see it. I don't want to pay nine dollars for just a few laughs”? I would hope that such obvious, nationally promulgated bigotry would result in the guilty individual being summarily removed from his position. I certainly expect CBS to do no less to Mr. Rooney.

The recent coarsening of American television, highlighted in the disgusting anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic bigotry of people like Mr. Rooney and the escapades of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, are precisely what is causing Congressional investigations into operations such as yours.

Mr. Rooney’s remarks were the subject of lively commentary at my place of business today. Speaking as president and owner of my company and for all my employees, I am happy to inform you that CBS will no longer have any viewers from among my company’s ranks until Mr. Rooney leaves employment with you.

Gentlemen, either Mr. Rooney goes or your viewer ratings do. Choose.


Serious as a heart attack,
Steve Kellmeyer
President-CEO Bridegroom Press

Missing the Passion's Point

Secular commentators are now decrying the brutality of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in a fruitless, last-ditch effort to keep people from seeing it tomorrow. They say it isn't appropriate for children. It leaves even adults emotionally drained. The commentators routinely ignore the fact that Mel warned parents to leave children 12 and under at home.

I have two points to make in response to their inane remarks.

1) Every time I see these reports, I think of all the children who have seen exactly that level of violence during the course of their lives. Take in the long run of history, contemplate the dreary years before the crucifixion up to the present day. In 21st century America, our children are mostly sheltered from this level of violence through the fortune of having been born in the right place and time, but historically that film pretty much depicts the way people treated each other for centuries.

2) I don't doubt that churches are organizing grade schoolers to see the movie despite Mel's warning. Christianity is primarily for children, after all. That's the constant practice of Catholic parishes in this country for well over a century.

What the secular commentators are shocked at is the idea that Christianity might be something only an adult can really stomach, and even then, just barely.

Catholicism is for adults. We can teach children a pale imitation, but the full flavor of the cup makes it an adult drink. Historically speaking, martyred children who tasted it to the dregs did so only through the miraculous power of the Spirit.

Shooting the Messenger

Many people have written me personally and provided comments in this space concerning my articles on Catholic education. Here is an outline of my argument. You can look at it minus the rhetorical flourishes that drew both so many boos and bravos.

There are two parts to the Catholic educational system as it has commonly been used in this country over the last two centuries: the parochial school and the university. Because they are treated in quite different ways, they need to be studied separately. The USCCB informs us that the bulk of parish resources is to be devoted to adult education and formation. That is, they add a third leg to the traditional two-tiered Catholic educational system.

At one point in history, the parish school was totally funded by the collection plate and totally staffed by men and women with formal theological training. In most parishes, neither of these are true anymore. Today, the parish school absorbs between 60-90% of the total parish budget and still comes up short. Tuition, often quite high, has to make up the difference. Furthermore, it is staffed either entirely or largely by men and women without any theological training at all.

While individual school teachers may be uniformly outstanding in delivering individual subject areas, a Catholic school is characterized by the fact that the Catholic Faith permeates every subject taught, from math through science, reading, writing, music, art, etc. Unless every subject presentation is permeated by and integrated into the Catholic Faith, the school is not Catholic.

Catholic schools generally require university training, i.e., a teacher's certificate, in a subject area in order to teach the subject. One would expect the same level of education would be required in order to teach Catholic Faith. Since every subject has to be permeated with Catholic faith in order for the school to be a Catholic school and not just a private school, this means every Catholic school teacher needs two areas of concentration, or a double undergraduate major: one degree in either elementary education or a secondary school subject area, the second degree in Catholic theology.

Even if all of these conditions are met, it is the case that parents have the responsibility of doing the sacramental preparation for their own children themselves. This does not mean the parents need to homeschool their children in all subjects, or even that they need to do religious education for their own children entirely by themselves. Indeed, the very description of a Catholic school indicates that the integration of all subjects into a Catholic worldview is the purpose of the Catholic school. However, in the very narrow area of sacramental preparation, that is, preparation for First Confession, Confirmation, First Communion and remote preparation for Marriage, all of these supposed to be done by the parents. Introducing our children to the life-giving nature and principles of the sacraments is part of what makes each of us a fully Catholic parent.

Obviously, these conditions create problems. Let's make a short list of these problems:
1) If the parochial school takes 51% of the budget, it is impossible to do what the bishops request.
2) Virtually no Catholic school teacher has that second area of formal training. Indeed, many Catholic school teachers are not Catholic, those who are Catholic may not have had any formal training in Catholic Faith since their grade school or high school confirmation. Thus, it is not possible for subjects like math or science to be fully integrated with a presentation of the Faith.
3) It is not unusual to discover that even the individual who teaches religion has had no formal training in the Catholic Faith since confirmation. If an adult who only had a grade school education were asked to teach math, reading or social studies at the Catholic grade school, few parents would be pleased, yet when it comes to the Faith, that is often exactly what we get at the parochial school level and it is not uncommon even at the high school level.
4) Catholic parents have no more formal training in the Faith than most of the teachers at the Catholic school.

Now, when we examine these problems, we see a common theme to three of the points. Points 2, 3 and 4 are all problems in adult formation. If we can solve the adult formation problem, our parochial school problems might largely go away. Indeed, with proper adult formation, even the funding problem would go away, as Catholic adults would be more likely to give generously at the collection if they felt the Church were actually vital to their lives. Adult formation is clearly the problem to be solved.

Parochial schools do not do adult formation.
That leaves the parish and the Catholic university.

Let's look at the parish first.
We already know that there is not enough resources in the parish to do adult formation well. The parochial school eats the majority of the parish budget, and needs tuition besides just to stay afloat. There is no money for adult formation. As long as this financial situation continues to obtain, adult formation cannot really be done at the parish level. No one will come because the quality will not be good enough. There aren't enough resources left to make it good enough to entice adults. That leaves the university.

So, let's look at the university. Here are some facts.
Catholics who attend Catholic university are more likely to lose the Faith than are Catholics who attend secular universities.
A survey of Catholic elementary school books in 1997 showed that most of them were heretical.
A survey of Catholic high school texts in 2003 showed that most of them were heretical.
These heretical texts were written by graduates of Catholic universities.
The bishops investigating these texts admit that catechists are not being properly formed in the Faith at the university level.
Now, the ones who study the Faith aren't properly formed. So, we can only assume that the ones who don't study the Faith in formal university coursework are doing at least as badly.
Professors of theology and philosophy at Catholic universities are supposed to take the mandatum, an oath of obedience to transmit accurately and vibrantly the truths of the Faith to the students in attendance.
Only twelve universities are known to do this. The rest refuse to answer when parents ask. When parents ask the bishop who has taken the oath, most bishops also refuse to answer. The universities claim it is a matter of academic freedom.

So, the universities also appear to be out of action. Apart from twelve American universities, we have no evidence that the other universities are doing a good job in forming adults in the Faith, and quite a bit of evidence to demonstrate that they are not.

To sum up:
The parochial school is no longer likely to be Catholic in any real sense because adult formation has failed.
Despite the bishops' cajoling, the parish cannot solve the adult formation problem, because the parochial school eats the majority of the resources, leaving insufficient resources for adult formation.
The universities won't solve the adult formation problem because they see it as an infringement on their academic freedom. The bishops largely refuse to intervene.

Worst of all, this situation is not new. Given the evidence from the 1997 study, and the fact that it takes at least four years to get an undergraduate degree and a position as a textbook writer, we can assume that the Catholic school system has been broken since at least 1993, probably earlier. So, even if the resources were sufficient to put on a good adult formation program, we have at least a generation of adults who think Catholic formation is exclusively for children. In fact, as anyone who has Catholic parents knows, adult formation at the parish level has been dead for decades (plural, not singular). Thus, the very culture of the parish has already destroyed the idea that adults need formation.

All three segments of Catholic education have been severely wounded: parochial school, university and parish.

Those are the facts. Given these facts, how do we dig our way out? I suggest closing the parochial schools in order to free up the resources necessary for the parish to do the job that most desperately needs doing: adult formation. Parochial schools cannot work unless the teachers and parents involved in them are as capable in passing on the Faith as they are in passing on a proper understanding of math or English. If lengthy higher education is required for the latter, how can we honestly require any less for the former? You may disagree with this solution, but if you do, you should at least suggest an equally viable solution of your own.

Solving the Catholic Education problem

Many readers seem to think that the Catholic parochial school solves a problem. The argument is that if we get the kids today, they will be faithful Catholics tomorrow.

It is indeed hard to educate adults about the Faith, but overall, it is easier to educate adults than it is to educate children in such a way that they will be educated adults.

Let me list some of the problems encountered as you try to set up a new Catholic grade school:

You won't be able to pay for it. Catholic schools suck 70-90% of the money a parish generates, leaving nothing for any other activity - including the activity which the entire Magisterium says is the most important thing a parish can do besides liturgy,, i.e., the education of adults.

You won't be able to build a Catholic curriculum, because that requires the trivium and quadrivium, not the Prussian Protestant "subject" curriculum popular in most schools today and required for state licensing.

If you can find a trivium and quadrivium curriculum, you won't be able to find teachers for it, since no one knows how to teach subjects outside of the Prussian Protestant system. Furthermore, there are no universities whose education degrees include coursework showing adult Catholic teachers who know their Faith how to integrate their Faith into integrate the curriculum, no matter which curriculum you use.

Worse, you won't be able to pay these teachers a just wage, so you'll be violating a basic principle of Catholic social justice.

If you can find these teachers, you won't be able to implement the curriculum because the parents will oppose it. It's not how they were taught, and it "doesn't seem to prepare their children for life."

If you can get the curriculum past the parents and actually implemented for a grade school, now you have to do the same thing all over again at the high school level. As anyone familiar with child psychology and child development knows, the ability to reason may be available at an early age, but it really begins to blossom during and after the high school years. That's why the Pope insists that catechesis which ends at the threshold of maturity is quite useless. If the teens aren't re-catechized from the ground up, the grade school instruction will disappear.

So, everything you did to establish a decent grade school and middle school has to be repeated from scratch in the high school, or the children won't retain the Faith. Indeed, it has to be reinforced after they graduate high school (either in university or in an adult formation process) or they will fall away from the Faith.

No matter how good your grade school, high school will undo it if the high school is no good.
No matter how good your high school, college may well undo it if the college is no good.

And even if you manage to build a decent Catholic grade school, high school and locate good colleges, you still have to let the parents do the sacramental preparation, because that's what the Catechism requires.

So, you're building an enormous and expensive structure which has to work perfectly or you'll be faced with the same damned problem you had before you started: the adults don't know the Faith.

The only difference is that you'll have the illusion of having made progress. From this point on until the end of time, the parish can repeat to itself, "Well, we'll get the next generation, Well, we'll get the next generation..."

Did Vatican II happen in a vacuum?

Which is more likely: heretics fell out of the sky and all the orthodox believing adult Catholics suddenly start taking stupid pills in order to bring about the level of lost Faith that we saw after the Council

or

The adults never knew the Faith to begin with because we spent a century teaching nothing but a children's catechism to everyone.

Is it not likely that all those "orthodox" Catholics of the forties and fifties fell away like leaves in the forest precisely because they had no intellectual grounding in the Faith? They had no adult formation? They were completely unable to identify heretics because they were at a loss by any question which wasn't in the Baltimore Catechism? Was it not the case that this loss occurred because people just did whatever Father said, and when Father said sin was just a psychological problem and not a teaching of the Church, that Purgatory didn't exist, that Hell was a figment of our collective imagination - we all just went along with it?

Was it not the case that the loss after Vatican II merely highlighted a festering problem that no one had addressed: the fact that adult formation had essentially ceased?

Pope Pius XI points out in Divini Illius Magister #80, “...the mere fact that a school gives some religious instruction (often extremely stinted), does not bring it into accord with the rights of the Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic students. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and textbooks in every branch, be regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal supervision of the Church; so that Religion may be in very truth the foundation and crown of the youth's entire training; and this in every grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the higher institutions of learning as well. To use the words of Leo XIII: It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence.”

Catholic schools won't solve today's problems because the people who need Catholic education today aren't the children. They are the adults.

If anyone can show me ANY evidence that the early Church established parochial schools, I will believe that Catholic parochial schools matter. Until then, I don't.

Eating Children Alive

America got a wonderful present this Christmas past. On Christmas Eve, 2003, Catholic news services reported the findings of a special commission investigating Catholic school resources. The commission found nearly two-thirds of high school catechetical materials used throughout the United States are trash. That is, these texts are not in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When asked about the problem, Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans, the head of the commission, replied, “The committee recognizes that the causes are manifold. A particular area of concern is the way in which catechetical leaders, catechists and potential textbook writers are being taught and formed in our institutions of higher learning.”

It is a masterpiece of understatement.

A short while ago, I explained why Catholic schools don’t matter. Now let me explain why they do. The Pope’s apostolic letter on the Catholic universities is entitled Ex Cordae Ecclesia – “Out of the Heart of the Church”. Put that together with what he said in his letter on catechesis: for “instruction in the Faith to be effective, it must be permanent. It would be quite useless if it stopped short on the threshold of maturity.”

The university is the heart of the Church because the students at a university are on the threshold of maturity. When a person has the capacity to undergo university training, he has the capacity to be truly taught the necessary adult understanding of the Faith. True, not every Catholic adult has gone to university. But university training is arguably the pre-eminent method of adult formation. At the university, adults spend their lives teaching other adults. If the university method of adult formation is not safe-guarded, it is unlikely that other adult formation methods will be safeguarded either. Without an adult formation in the Faith, a man or woman can be a biological parent, but he or she cannot be a fully Catholic parent.

This matters. In fact, it is critical. Correct formation of Catholic parents is critical precisely because the family is the core building block of society and the Church.

You see, while begetting a child is certainly an enjoyable experience and it is certainly part of being a parent, the biological act of begetting the child is not sufficient to fully make me a parent. God may have reached out and given my wife and I the gift of a child, but unless and until we teach our child about the God who touched us with his life, the God who endowed him with life, we have not become fully parents. We only become fully parents when we instill in our child an understanding and love of the God who enlivened him.

That’s why the Catechism says what it does in article #2221, “Conjugal fecundity is not limited to procreation, but also includes moral education and spiritual formation.” In this, the Catechism simply paraphrases Aquinas, who said the same nearly a millennium ago. He pointed out that the ministry of parents is comparable to that of priests, with one exception: priests only give spiritual life. Parents give both physical and spiritual life.

So, we can only be fully parents when we teach our own children about God. But we can only teach what we know. And we only know what we have been taught. Like any other knowledge, knowledge about God is a “use it or lose it” proposition. Since we are adults, we will only use knowledge of God that is applicable to our adult lives. Just as I can’t run a business based on a twelve-year old’s understanding of finance, so I can’t live an adult Catholic life using a twelve-year old’s understanding of God. If my last encounter with Catholic theology was my confirmation class, I’m trying to deal with mature adult experiences using a teenager’s understanding of God. That is a disaster waiting to happen.

The family is the first school, the parents are the primary educators. If we as parents don’t have adult understanding, we will not pass on the Faith effectively. We can’t be given an adult understanding in grade school or middle school. That is, after all, why universities exist – only as we approach our twenties are we capable of absorbing a universal education. Thus, the university is the heart of the Church, it is ex cordae ecclesia. Or at least, that’s what it is supposed to be.

Re-read Archbishop Hughes’ words. The textbooks stink because universities aren’t teaching catechists correctly. In a word, the “catechetical leaders” (read the professors) in the Catholic universities are often heretics. The young adults in their care, men and women who are finally capable of adult understanding, the baptized men and women who need adult understanding, who have a right to correct teaching, are instead trained to be heretics too. Assuming they don’t fall away from the Faith altogether, these young men and women will most likely follow their teachers’ heresy.

In 1901, the bishops told Catholic parents it was a mortal sin to send their children to a non-Catholic school. Today, most bishops will not tell parents whether an ostensibly Catholic faculty is, in fact, Catholic. It is a simple, startling fact that a student is more likely to lose the Faith at a “Catholic” university. Conversely, he is more likely to keep his Faith if he avoids Catholic universities and sticks to secular universities. Most “Catholic” universities aren’t. Because many bishops refuse to tell parents whether the universities in their dioceses are orthodox, because they refuse to state whether the professors in the universities have promised to faithfully pass on the Faith, parents are unable to complete their God-given task: helping their own children grow in the Faith.

So it is here, at the university level, at the heart of the Church, that the loss occurs. What we do at the parochial school or even the high school level is really just moving deck chairs around on the Titanic. If we fail in the Catholic university, all the schooling prior to it is quite useless.

The parents have a divine right to assistance in completing this last, crucial step in their children’s formation. The children have a divine right to be taught the Faith. The bishops have a divine duty to assist the parents. By and large, the bishops ignore these rights and duties.

Ideally, the bishops should clean the heretics out of the universities. Failing that, the bishops should at least let parents know which professors are loyal to the Church. To refuse parents this information is to silently ignore their own vocation as bishops. This silence, in fact, arguably constitutes a sin of omission against the family. Because the family is the basic cell of society, this failure is an attack not only on Catholic parents, but on our culture and on the Church itself. Yet this is where many bishops stand today.

So it comes as no surprise to discover Archbishop Hughes’ statement in the news. In fact, it isn’t really news. The heresies, the deficiencies, the heterodoxies found in texts today are almost exactly the same heresies, deficiencies and heterodoxies the commission found in 1997 , when the last public statement on catechetical texts was made. Apart from Archbishop Hughes’ admission of where the problem lies, nothing has changed.

A handful of American bishops have done their jobs. The rest allow the wolves to ravage the family. Even as young Catholic men and women finally reach maturity, even as they finally have the capacity to begin to grasp the fullness of the Faith, their parents unknowingly hand them over to the ravening maw of the heretic who lies in wait within the heart of the Church. As the parents watch in horror, their children are disembowled before their eyes. The bishops watch in silence.

Let’s stop pretending. If we refuse to have Catholic universities and we won’t provide decent adult formation in the parish, then let’s at least save a bit of money. Without adult formation, parochial schools are quite useless in passing on the Faith. Close them. Put the money into parish formation for adults. Stop the hypocrisy.

The Clowns at Georgetown

Did you hear the news from Georgetown University? You remember Georgetown. It’s the “Catholic” university whose Jesuit-led administration adamantly opposed putting crucifixes in the classrooms. In fact, if it weren’t for a groundswell of support from the alumni and the undergrads (including the Muslim and Jewish undergrads, let it be noted), there would still be no crucifixes on the walls.

Well, now we know why the administration didn’t want crucifixes on campus. Who wants reminders of suffering and death when you’re in the middle of ripping apart living children on campus using government funds? Yes, it seems Georgetown is involved in slicing and dicing embryos in order to sell their organs… oh wait, no, it’s just their stem cells, so that makes it all better, doesn’t it? Well, it does according to the Reverend Kevin T. Fitzgerald.

According to the Reverend Fitzgerald (it’s hard to call a man “Father” when he advocates using the remnants of children torn apart for research) using these cell lines for research is acceptable because:
1) The researchers didn’t know they originated in abortion,
2) The abortions weren’t specifically caused in order to get the cell lines,
3) The abortions which produced them happened 25 to 40 years ago,
4) The research might one day provide health benefits,
5) Who wants to lose government funding?

If this is the level of ethical reasoning in Georgetown, it’s time to re-orient the university towards a more intellectual level of discourse. I suggest a hair salon or barbershop, although those familiar with Georgetown insist a set of pick-up basketball courts would not only provide the necessary elevation in moral reasoning, but would also provide excellent calisthenics for all involved while better blending into Georgetown’s culture.

We can see why Georgetown is better off being converted into a parking lot by examining the good priest’s reasoning. The first is impressive in its audacity. These researchers are working on tissue and they don’t know it’s origin? How does that work, exactly? There are hundreds of cell lines: researchers typically decide which cell line to work based in part on its origin. After all, you would hate to get a grant for a project on kidney cells only to find out your secretary actually used the funds to order lung tissue. But let’s say she got the lung tissue right. Well, which lung tissue line? There are always concerns about a cell line’s history – how has it been used in the past, how stable is it, does it give reliable, reproducible results, etc. In the normal course of researching the line you want to use, you will ordinarily discover its source. To say these researchers didn’t know the source of the tissue they were using is arguably a statement about the level of research taking place at Georgetown.

But that’s just the beginning. Next, he tells us the abortions weren’t specifically caused in order to get the cell lines. That is the most rank absurdity a man could utter without being struck by lightning from the heavens. Perhaps the woman who had a sharp knife shoved between her legs and had her child torn apart inside of her didn’t know or intend a cell line to be established, but the man wielding the blade certainly did. Cell lines require absolutely fresh cells. The minute that knife starts cutting the child to shreds, those cells begin to die. They have to be put in a culture immediately, or there won’t be anything to culture at all. Thus, researchers who establish cell lines from aborted children typically kneel right at the foot of the abortionist’s table, placing the bits of the baby into their culture dishes even as the abortionist’s suction machine is whirring in their ear.

So, yes, the abortion was intended to produce a cell line. What does the good priest think, that the researcher clubbed the abortionist over the head and took the cells out of the aspirator while the nurse looked on in surprise? Or maybe he thought the researcher dug through the garbage after hours and scraped the cells off of an old bit of newspaper and coffee grounds? If so, he should give up his job as a medical ethicist, since he clearly doesn’t know squat about cell cultures or basic biology.

Then we hear that the abortions were performed decades ago, so they aren’t relevant. In the parlance of the modern “ethicists”, that makes the action sufficiently distant so as not to contaminate the research ethically. Yvonne Bontkowski, a member of Children of God for Life, pointed out that this meant she didn’t need to go to confession anymore. After all, the Fall of Adam and Eve was a long time ago, so it certainly doesn’t impact her actions today. And since there’s no definition of what “distant” means, what’s the difference between an abortion committed yesterday and one committed twenty-five years ago? To God, a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day, so if it isn’t a problem in one case, it sure isn’t a problem in the other one either. You can build a whole new theology out of this: if I just wait long enough to go to confession, I never have to go at all. The effect of evil actions apparently evaporate over time. As the king said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “This new learning amazes me! Tell me again how we know the world is banana-shaped.”

But the priest isn’t finished shoveling yet. He says the research on embryonic stem cells from sliced and diced children “might” provide health benefits. Very nice. Tell that to the people who got injections of aborted fetal cells into their brains to treat Parkinson’s. Apparently no one told the fetal cells they weren’t in the womb. They started growing into fetal parts inside the patient skulls, putting enough pressure on their brains to kill them. The technical term for this is “teratoma.” Teratomas happen a lot with cells from aborted embryos. Cells from abortion are so darned unstable that they act like cancer cells when they are implanted into a patient. That’s why embryonic stem cells from aborted children have never healed anyone. Researchers can’t get them to stop turning cancerous.

The funny thing is, we could go elsewhere to get embryonic stem cells. Umbilical cord blood is rich in them. Milk the cord blood after a child’s birth, after the cord is tied, and you can treat hundreds of diseases. The same goes for stem cells obtained from adult tissue in a simple, non-life-threatening procedure. Neither of these techniques for obtaining stem cells harm anyone. Hundreds of people are walking around today, alive, healed, because there are ethical researchers who get stem cells from the umbilical cord right after it is cut, or from simple blood or bone marrow aspiration, even a scraping of fat from adults. That’s right, liposuction provides eminently useable stem cells, stem cells that can be used to treat hundreds of diseases today.

So why does anyone insist on slicing and dicing children in order to get stem cells? Because some people just like to slice and dice children. That’s why the media never reports on advances in adult stem cell use, or on how easy it is to use stem cells from cord blood and fat. They want to justify abortion, so they keep pursuing medical uses for abortion. Meanwhile, the cells obtained from these abortions keep maiming and killing people. God’s funny that way. But some people just don’t take a hint.

One of those people is Cardinal McCarrick. An otherwise staunchly pro-life man, he has apparently been bamboozled by the clowns of Georgetown in what can only be described as a moral shell game. “Just keep your eyes on the shells, ladies and cardinals! The hand is quicker than the eye! Can you guess where the pea is hidden? Lay your money down, Cardinal, lay it right down!” He bought the arguments hook, line and sinker. Ah, those clowns at Georgetown! Just watching them brings a grown man to tears.

Why Catholic Schools Don’t Matter

“Our parish can get along without the school. But that school cannot get along without the parish.” That shocked the parish council. One gentleman gently chided the pastor, “Oh no, Father, the parish exists in order to serve the school.” Father shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.” Council members shook their heads. A new pastor came in a year later. He said the same thing. He got the same reaction. That’s why the Catholic Church in America is in trouble.

When the apostles started out, they knew they had work to do. The whole world needed conversion. Everyone was pagan. That is, the world looked very much like it does today. The apostolic approach to the problem differed from ours.

Peter, for instance, did not set up a single parochial school. Luke did not write a children’s Gospel. Not one of Paul’s epistles were decorated with yellow duckies. In short, according to the Scriptures and Church history the apostles didn’t bother teaching children the Faith. They taught only the adults. Why?

Because the apostles understood the principle of subsidiarity. Pope Pius XI in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno described the principle succinctly: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.”

The apostles knew they could not replace parents. Through the sacrament of marriage, God endows parents with the ability to teach their own children about Him. The apostles only needed to teach the parents the Faith, it was the parents’ responsibility to teach their own children. So, what has changed in the last two millenia? The answer to that is simple. Nothing.

A child’s primary catechist is his parents. The bishop is the primary catechist of the diocese, but he is not the child’s primary catechist. The priest is the pre-eminent catechist in the parish, but he is not the child’s primary catechist. The Director of Religious Education (DRE), the CCD teachers, the parochial school teachers, all of these people are somewhat useful in passing on the Faith, but none of them are the primary catechists. The parents have the first and primary responsibility to pass the Faith onto their own children. No one else does.

The bishop does not delegate this responsibility to the parents. Neither does the priest or the DRE or the Catholic teachers. At the moment a man and a woman exchange vows in marriage, each consecrates the other as both spouse and catechist.

Let us be absolutely clear. The Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, God Himself, consecrates the bride and bridegroom to be the primary catechists to their own children. Canon law, the Catechism and the documents of the Church are all quite clear on this. Bishops, priests and their lay employees all exist to assist the parents, not to replace them. It is their job to make sure the parents know the Faith and know how to pass it on. It is the parents’ job to do the passing on.

But parents can’t teach what they don’t know. The Pope understands. In his very first encyclical, “Teaching the Faith Today” (Catechesi Tradendae), article #23 points out, for “instruction in the Faith to be effective, it must be permanent. It would be quite useless if it stopped short on the threshold of maturity.”

Quite useless. That means all the time, money and effort poured into the parochial school, the Catholic high school and the CCD program, all of it is money poured down a rat-hole if adults, if parents, are not taught the Faith.

Let me repeat that.

Without adult formation, the entire Catholic parochial and high school educational system is a complete waste, a total failure, an abject defeat, a colossal shibboleth, an empty shell, nada, nothing, goose egg, empty set, we keep knockin’ but there’s nobody home. It is useless.

This is especially true today. Lay teachers in Catholic schools are trained by secular humanists. Their last formal instruction in the Faith could easily have been their confirmation classes. They had zero college coursework showing them how to integrate Catholic Faith into the curriculum. Indeed, many lay teachers aren’t even Catholic. They may be otherwise fine teachers, but they have neither the knowledge nor the ability to integrate the disciplines.

Even if they were good enough, it wouldn’t matter. Children cannot absorb the whole of Catholic Faith. Only an adult mind has the capacity. So where should the bulk of our efforts lie? With teaching children or with teaching adults? Which is more important, the parochial grade/high school or the parish?

Bishops, priests, DRE’s, catechists, all of these people are supposed to be teaching the adults, not the children. After the parents are taught, the parents are meant to prepare their own children for the sacraments. The bishop, the priest, the DRE, the other catechists might give the parents pointers, advice, supplementary material, etc., on how to do this, but it is the parents who are supposed to prepare their own children for First Confession, Confirmation and First Eucharist. The bishop, the priest, their lay employees are required by canon law to verify that the child is indeed ready to receive the sacraments, but it is the parents who are supposed to prepare them for these sacraments. Others might teach other points of Faith, but sacramental preparation is the parents’ job.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly says this. Open it to article #2225, “Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith.” The Catechism is divided into four major sections. Flip back to the Table of Contents and read the heading to Section II. It is called “The Christian Mystery”. What are the contents of Section II? The sacraments. From the earliest days of the Church, the sacraments have always been called “mysteries of Faith”. Indeed, the Greek word for sacrament is still “mysterion”: mystery.

The American bishops know all this. The even wrote a letter, “Our Hearts Are Burning Within Us”, that says adult education is of central importance and that the bulk of parish resources are to be devoted to adult education. The bulk of parish resources. Hmmm….

Look at your parish. Consider how much time, money and effort is poured into your parish school, the physical plant devoted to it, the raw number of personnel. Now do the same for the adult formation program(s) in your parish. Hmmm…

Everyone agrees the family is under assault. Everyone fails to notice the local parish is often in the vanguard of the assault. Attempting to replace Catholic parents violates parental rights, violates the principle of subsidiarity, and attacks the family, yet the attitude of a significant number of DRE’s, priests and bishops is precisely this, “Parents are not qualified to teach their own children because they are ignorant of Catholic Faith, so it is up to me to do the job.”

To any bishop, priest or DRE who thinks this, let it be said as succinctly as possible, “No, it is not up to you to do their job. It is up to them to do their job. It is up to you to teach them to do it. Stop enabling their co-dependence. Start doing your job so they can do theirs.”

Building the Wall

“Religion and politics makes a volatile mix,” or so many are in the habit of saying. That is, after all, the basic justification for Thomas Jefferson’s famed “wall of separation between Church and state,” a wall that was out of date almost from the New Year’s day in 1801 when it was proposed. To see why, let us consider our present situation.

Communism and socialism are the purest of economic theory, completely unencumbered by any hint of Christian fundamentalism. Yet, together, the rulers of communist and socialist nations have imprisoned, maimed and slaughtered more people than the last two world wars combined. According to the UN Genocide convention, Stalin alone killed 62 million people, slaughtering more Ukranians then his nearest mustache-laden rival.

Likewise, Mao tse Tung produced 3 million body bags, all opponents of his economic policies, in his first five years in power. The number who died in subsequent years, especially during Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the economic policy that drove huge sections of the countryside to starvation and cannibalism, will probably never be known.

Pol Pot only killed a million, but he did as well on a per capita basis as either of his more well-known rivals. And, of course, we can’t leave out the most well-known economist of all, the national socialist Adolf Hitler. Though he started well, he was relatively ineffective, killing only 12 million in death camps during the war and several hundred thousand in the years leading to it.

It is, of course, unfair to limit ourselves to the 20th century. Essentially every European war since the mid-1700’s has been driven in whole or part by the science of economics. The French Revolution guillotined tens of thousands, millions more died during the Napoleonic wars that subsequently swept the whole of Europe. The American Civil War tested the economic viability of slavery. England killed tens of thousands of Chinese in the Opium Wars, a kind of reverse drug war. In that episode, the British trade imbalance with China was solved by forcing China to become a nation of opium addicts – the British controlled the opium trade, you see.

Clearly, we cannot be too careful. There should be a wall of separation between economics and the public sphere. After all, economics and politics are a volatile mix, as two centuries of decaying corpses illustrate. But wait. There’s more.

What about biology? Ignore the dissected frogs and newts, concentrate solely on severed human heads. Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871, just a year after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. Most people don’t realize just how strongly Darwin’s work influenced European intelligentsia. In the dozen years between 1859 and 1871, the ruling class of Europe embraced the “survival of the fittest.” They spoke of the “French race”, the “British race”, and the “German race.” The Franco-Prussian war was seen on all sides as an expression of scientific principles, a necessary Darwinian struggle. Of course, that war led directly to World War I which itself led directly to World War II. Indeed, many historians refer to this three-fold slaughterhouse as the modern Thirty Years’ War, our hymn of praise to the science of biology.

John Dwyer, in his remarkable work War Without Mercy, demonstrates that World War II was just as much about race as the Franco-Prussian war. The Japanese saw the Chinese as inferior, Americans saw the Japanese as inferior, and Germans saw Jews and Slavs as inferiors. The rationale that allowed Auschwitz also allowed the US to build Japanese internment camps for West-Coast citizens and prompted FDR to suggest that the entire German people should be sterilized; separated by a wall of impotence from the rest of human kind.

Obviously, biology and politics are a volatile mix. Federal grants for biological research, like tuition vouchers, violate this much-needed wall of separation. The wars of biology have built a much higher pile of corpses than all the wars of religion combined, while the internal and external wars of economics dwarf them both. If religion is banned from the public sphere, can anyone really assert that the others can safely stay?

Why did Jefferson think this wall of separation was needed? Because the American Revolution happened two hundred years too soon. Thomas Jefferson, was a well-read man, but he was completely ignorant of evolutionary theory. How could he be otherwise? It wouldn’t be invented for another fifty years. He knew Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, but knew not a thing of what Marx would write twenty years after Jefferson died. Besides, Jefferson was the man who re-wrote the Gospels by taking out all references to miracles. He didn’t believe in them, you see. He thought Jesus was a nice moral teacher, but not God. C.S. Lewis was not yet a gleam in his father’s eye, so Jefferson was unaware of the Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument, and he wasn’t smart enough to figure it out for himself.

Because economics was just barely becoming a science, Jefferson could not fully appreciate to what extent it contributed to the widespread carnage it wreaked even in his own day. Similarly, biology was not yet on a scientific footing, and its potential to promote slaughter was not appreciated.

Jefferson and his associates wanted a wall between religion and politics because religion was the only known cause of war. Take away religion and you take away reasons for conflict. They didn’t realize that religion was the language of war for the simple reason that it was the only mature system of thought Europeans possessed, the only language articulate enough to speak. No other system of thought had been sufficiently developed. Thus, when someone wanted to justify a war, a pillage, any sort of carnage at all, they used the only words available – religious words.

But here’s the interesting thing. As other systems of thought were developed, people had a choice: they could use religious rhetoric or they could use scientific rhetoric. As even a simple study of armed conflict since the Enlightenment shows, the ruling class has consistently used the language of science to justify their aggression, not the language of Christian faith. The reason is simple: Christian faith does not really lend itself to war. As soon as other languages were sufficiently strong to bear the burden, “Christian rationales” dropped away.

We should be clear. For whatever reason, the words of religious faith are still the preferred language for war in many parts of the world, but it is worthwhile to note that these rationales almost never employ words of Christian faith. Hitler invoked Wotan, jihadists invoke Islam, Indians invoke Hinduism, and the West uses the priests of science, but progressives who seek a firmer road towards mass murder have abandoned Christianity. For them, Jesus Christ is not the door. He is a wall that blocks their road.

Preparing for The Passion

We’ve all seen the advertisements and the reviews. Mel Gibson’s The Passion is an enormous event – if you’re like the rest of us, you’re actually looking forward to Ash Wednesday instead of Fat Tuesday this year. After all, Ash Wednesday, 2004, is the movie’s U.S. release date.

As we get ready to see Gibson’s masterpiece, we may be making lists of people we would like to take with us. Perhaps my semi-Christian next-door neighbor, or the atheist who helped the family so wonderfully last year. Or maybe my old high-school buddy, who is “spiritual, but not religious” - he doesn’t go to church anymore, but does believe in UFOs. Or, more likely, a brother or sister, father or mother, daughter or son who fell away from the Faith. We’ve been waiting to ask them, trying to figure out the best way, hoping they say yes.

Well, what if they do? Maybe you and I will actually convince such a friend or relative to accompany us, and we will see the movie with them - but what will happen after the movie? How will we answer the questions about God, about Jesus, that Gibson’s work is bound to raise? You know the questions:

“Why did God have to take flesh and die?”

“If the smallest drop of Christ’s blood is sufficient to pay for all the sins of mankind – past, present and future – wasn’t the circumcision enough? The scourging? Why that?”

“What is Faith, exactly? How do I know if I have it? What about Hope? Love?”

“How am I supposed to make sense of what happened?”

How do you answer questions like these?

The word “crucial” comes from the Latin “crux”, or “cross.” Questions like these are crucially important to Catholic Faith. These are questions about the folly of the Gentiles, and the stumbling block of the Jews; they are questions about the Cross. They must be answered.

Mel Gibson and the people associated with this film spent years of their lives and millions of dollars preparing this one magnificent spark of evangelization. If we don’t spend a few hours preparing ourselves to view it, we will have wasted their efforts. So, let’s think about how to prepare.

Before the movie

Pray. A half an hour in adoration, fifteen minutes, even a sign of the Cross as you drive past your Catholic Church on the way home from work. Do it. Ask God to prepare your heart, mind and soul to help someone else find Him.

Read. Start with the four Passion accounts. They aren’t very long. In the Gospel of Matthew, that would be chapters 26 and 27, Mark is chapters 14 and 15, Luke is chapters 22 and 23, John is chapters 18 and 19. For a quick overview, take a look at the free one-page Gospel concordance of the Passion, the Passion Timeline.

Read at least one good commentary on at least one of the Passion accounts: the Navarre Bible study series is excellent, and any of the Gospel studies would work well for this purpose. So would any commentary collection of the early Christian Father’s on the Passion narratives.

Learn one or two basic logical arguments supporting the existence of God. Memorize three Scripture passages that tell us why priesthood is necessary, or memorize three Scripture passages about suffering such as Heb 5:7-8, Gal 6:2, or 1 Cor 12:24.

Or, best of all, learn how to talk about the Passion using John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. One such book, Sex and the Sacred City, uses the enormous conversion power of the pope’s synthesis to describe who God is, why He took on flesh, and why He went through that enormous suffering. It describes the purpose of the Church, the sacraments, the family, even God Himself, through a serious study and deep understanding of the one thing we always have with us – our bodies.

The great virtue of this book lies precisely in its clarity and precision. A busy person can read it in a day or two, or read it twice in a week. Short, clear useful resources are the key to fanning an evangelistic spark into flame. In the days leading up to the movie, look for more gems like this.

After the movie

Be ready to listen. We cannot predict what questions will arise. It is important that we answer their questions, not simply parrot our answers. Give a hammer to a three-year old and suddenly, to him, everything looks like a nail. We are the same way. If we have only one bit of Catholic doctrine in our head before the movie, we may be tempted to trot that one answer out, no matter what the question is. Don’t fall into the trap.

Once you are consciously prepared to listen, ask your movie partner for comments. Listen carefully to questions, think carefully about whether or not you know the answer, and then answer honestly. “I don’t know,” is a superb answer, as long as it is followed up with, “but I would like to know as much as you do. Let’s find out.” Then go and do just that.

Summary
Locate deeper resources now. You don’t have to read them all right now. Just find books and people who can help steer you and yours in the right direction, take note of where you can lay your hands on those resources when you need them and be prepared to use them when the time is right.

There are other ways to prepare yourself as well, ways known only to you and to God, but this will give you a start. Buy your tickets, invite your movie partners, and get ready to handle the questions that are sure to come. Mr. Gibson has done an enormous amount of work just to give us the single spark – we must do at least a little work ourselves so as to be ready to feed the flame. Honor both the artist and the Artist who guided him. Prepare.

You Were Once Exiles

“You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt. I, the LORD, am your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Now, some people would find that kind of Scripture quoting offensive. Indeed, some would simply mutter “and the devil himself uses Scripture for his own devices.” And they would be right. A single verse does not an argument make. However, the debate about immigration is raging, and we have all heard from the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and independent quarters. It might be worthwhile to find out what the Catholic take is.

The Church has actually said quite a lot about immigration. The issue first came up in Scripture, with the migration of Abraham in the Old Testament and the migration of the Holy Family in the New. In the medieval period, the fourth Lateran Council (1215) began the first modern conversation on the problem: “Since in many places within the same city and diocese there are people of different languages having one faith but various rites and customs, we strictly command that the bishops of these cities and dioceses provide suitable men who will, according to the different rites and languages, celebrate the divine offices for them, administer the sacraments of the Church and instruct them by word and example.” Over the intervening centuries, as the Church has contemplated the movements of peoples, She has had time to reflect on what is just. Though She has written much in the last thirty years on the problem, these two millenia of reflection can be boiled down to essentially six principles:

1) There is a natural human right to migrate in search of a better life.
2) Although the right to migrate is not an absolute right, it can only be restricted for grave reasons related to the common good.
3) Immigration laws should be generous.
4) Immigration laws should not favor the most well off, skilled immigrants, and such people should not emigrate for selfish motives.
5) Immigration laws should favor the unification of families.
6) Immigration workers have a right to be treated equally with other workers.

Clearly, given post-9/11 America, good Catholics can disagree about how these principles might best be implemented. People who prefer stricter immigration controls would undoubtedly emphasize the “grave reasons” (terrorist concerns) of the second point, while those who prefer greater immigration would emphasize the first and third points. But it is in the fourth point that the trouble lies.

America’s immigration policy is weighted to keep “useless eaters” out. We look for the most well off, skilled immigrants; we intentionally siphon the best and brightest out of other countries in order to stay ahead in the world. It reflects our capitalist outlook – when a resource is limited, the price goes up. We limit how many people we allow in, so we demand that those who enter pay a high price in terms of marketable skills and intellect.

In this regard, the flood of illegal immigrants could be viewed is an interesting corrective to an unjust immigration policy. But putting it in these terms is really not very helpful. There is another way to look at it.

Whatever one may say about America’s history as either a Christian or a secular nation, one thing has always been true: America has always been anti-Catholic. The forms of anti-Catholicism in America have been many and various.

The Know-Nothing Party formed in the 1840's as a reaction to the heavy influx of Irish Catholics. When the Pope donated a granite stone in 1853 to be placed in the Washington Monument, a group of masked men, either Freemasons or Know-Nothings, threw it into the Potomac river. The 1915 formation of the Ku Klux Klan was the violent anti-Catholic response to a similar wave of immigration from Catholic Southeastern Europe.

The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment viewed Catholic immigrants as something lower than pond scum. The country violently divided over the possibility of having a Catholic president twice in sixty years, once in 1928 over Al Smith and again in 1960 over John Kennedy. Some of the country’s most prominent figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black were virulently anti-Catholic. Today, Protestant anti-Catholicism has been replaced with secular anti-Catholicism. The opponents have changed, the sentiment has not.

Now consider another fact. Like the rest of the developed world, America is not replacing its own population. If it were not for both legal and illegal immigration, we would have a negative population growth. Alan Greenspan described the consequences: “[T]he aging of the population in the United States will have significant effects on our fiscal situation. In particular, it makes our social security and Medicare programs unsustainable in the long run, short of a major increase in immigration rates, a dramatic acceleration in productivity growth well beyond historical experience, a significant increase in the age of eligibility for benefits, or the use of general revenues to fund benefits.”

We are lucky. Europe faces an even worse situation, and her immigrants are primarily Muslim, not Catholic. Fifty percent of Dutch children, for example, will be born to Holland’s Muslim immigrants by 2020.

So what are Catholic Americans supposed to be upset about? America needs immigrants. U.S. immigrants, legal and illegal, are primarily Catholics with a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin, a much superior translation of the Mass, and wonderfully rich Catholic devotions. Get an English translation of a Spanish hymnal or discover the origin of posadas and pinatas, for instance. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. Sure, these immigrants pose a strong threat to America’s current Protestant-atheistic culture, but that’s a good thing, not a bad one. We get rid of a culture of death and replace it with a culture of life. We may have to add a second language (Spanish) to our skill set, but in return, we get a pension system that is much less likely to go bankrupt and a liturgy which is more accurately translated and richer than the one we have. Finally, we don’t have to face the prospect of living under the Muslim law of sharia within two generations, as the Europeans do.

In short, don’t panic. They’re Hispanic. Thank God.

Note:
My commentary on Abraham Lincoln was in error.
Abraham Lincoln on Catholics

Harrowing Hell

“We anathematize [both] the inventors of the new error… [and the pope] who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.” With this statement, Pope Leo II affirmed the conclusion of a general council: Pope Honorius was condemned as a heretic.

In the early 600’s, Pope Honorius faced a heresy within the Church. When he was asked how to handle the heresy, he replied by forbidding discussion of the topic at all. Because he failed to teach the Faith, and because he forbad the use of both orthodox and heretical phrasing, the council found him derelict in his duties and condemned him as a heretic. His condemnation was confirmed by two ecumenical councils and the very liturgy of the Church, which for two centuries repeated the condemnation in the papal oath. The condemnation still stands.

Note well: he was not a heretic for having mis-taught. No Pope has ever mis-taught Church doctrine. Rather, his heresy lay in his silence.

Now, he was a good bishop in all other respects. He did much good for the people of Rome and for the Church as a whole. He died well-respected in most circles. But, his silence on one point of doctrine eventually condemned him.

From all the evidence, he was silent because he didn’t know what to do. That’s the problem with being infallible: infallibility means you won’t teach the wrong answer. Sadly, infallibility doesn’t mean you know the right answer, or that you are able to competently teach the right answer even if you do know it. Competent teaching is a skill like any other skill: use it or lose it.

As everyone knows, North American bishops have had a similar problem. Many of them dealt with actively homosexual priests primarily as if they suffered from a psychological problem instead of a sin problem. When the psychology Ph.D.’s treated these priests and told the bishops the priests were cured, the bishops believed the experts. They put the priests back in ministry.

Bishops don’t know anything about psychology. They had to rely on the secular experts. They had to rely on psychologists about sex because they had stopped teaching Church doctrine about sex. Since they weren’t regularly teaching sexual morality, they lost their ability to think clearly about it. They didn’t know the right answers anymore. That’s why they were stuck with the answers of lay Ph.D.s.

When did bishops stop teaching sexual morality? We in the United States can point to June 22, 1965 and Boston’s Cardinal John Cushing amazing statement, "I could not in conscience approve the legislation [supporting legalization of contraception, but] I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others… I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do."

Every bishop and every priest is responsible for the salvation of every person living within his diocese and/or parish. He is not just responsible for teaching and sanctifying the Catholics in his diocese, he is responsible for teaching and sanctifying everyone in his diocese. What would we say of a math professor who said, “I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my belief that 2 + 2 = 4 on students who just do not accept the same mathematics I do.” The Catholic Faith is more true and certain than the sunrise, indeed Catholic truth is the source from which the sun draws its ability to rise. But Cardinal Cushing reduced the eternal and divine Truth to the level of human opinion. He repudiated his responsibility to teach this Truth to the people of the world.

Pope Honorius was condemned simply because he forbad discussion of a doctrine. In a single statement, Cardinal Cushing denied both the truth and his own office. He labored under a materially heretical misunderstanding. The religious beliefs he held were not his anymore than the Mass he celebrated was his or the baptisms he conferred were his. These are all Christ’s, that is, they are all God’s. He did not hold beliefs, he held truths. We believe these things because they are true, and they remain true whether or not we believe them.

It is important that we fully understand this point. The Creed I repeat every Sunday is not a statement of what I believe, it is a statement that I recognize reality. The secular world has a somewhat similar practice: psychologists will sometimes ask a mental patient what year it is. If the patient answers correctly, it is likely he has at least some grip on reality. So it is with the Creed. I repeat the Creed at Sunday Mass to demonstrate that I am not yet theologically insane. I hold to the teachings of the Church because I am made for Truth, and this is it.

It is therefore somewhat disconcerting to listen to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In the December 12th New York Times, Cathy Cleaver Ruse, the pro-life spokeswoman for the USCCB said, "When it comes to contraception as a policy issue - access, availability - the Catholic bishops do not get involved in that debate. But when it comes to abortion, that's a different matter. It's far greater than just a religious issue. It's a human rights issue."

The statement is breath-taking on several levels. Let’s consider a few.

First, every hormonal contraceptive acts as an abortifacient. The morning-after pill is the same damned thing (literally) as the birth control pill. Neither one really prevents ovulation, rather, all hormonal contraceptives keep the developing embryo from implanting in the uterus. That is, all hormonal contraceptives interrupt an existing pregnancy by causing a chemical abortion. Now, the bishops are no more embryologists than they are psychologists, so we can, perhaps, forgive their abysmal ignorance on this point.

But even if we ignore their ignorance of biology, it is certainly the case that abortion becomes necessary in any culture that sanctions contraception. The U.S. Supreme Court specifically recognized this fact when it upheld legal abortion in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. Abortion is a necessary backup for contraceptive failure. The Pope understands and acknowledges this connection. So do secular American judges. Why doesn’t the USCCB?

And what on earth could the spokeswoman mean by implying that contraception is “just a religious issue”? As has been pointed out in an earlier column, religion binds back together what is broken. Part of what is broken in us human persons is our human rights. We are only fully human when we are free from sin. Thus our right and ability to be fully human is inseparable from religion, the binding together of the human nature broken by sin. Whenever we consider a truly religious issue, we are necessarily dealing with a human rights issue.

That’s why Cushing’s statement was material heresy, after all. He thought it was alright for the non-Catholics in his diocese to be slaves to sin, just as his American Catholic bishop predecessors prior to the Civil War heretically taught that it was sometimes alright for non-Catholics to be slaves to other men.

The Canadian bishops are scarcely better off. Consider the Winnipeg statement (http://www.therosarium.ca/winnipeg.html ) issued by those bishops in 1968. For nearly forty years, both secular and heretical Catholic commentators used this strangely worded statement as proof that contraception is acceptable for Canadian Catholics. For nearly forty years, the Canadian bishops have done essentially nothing to contradict this idea. They could elaborate, they could give a detailed explanation of the statement to demonstrate that it does not support the use of contraception. Instead, they are as silent as the USCCB, as silent as a condemned pope.

It is a matter of supreme irony that the Comstock laws, the American laws which made the sale or use of contraceptives in the United States illegal, were almost entirely the work of Protestant churches and politicians near the end of the 1800’s. These Protestant laws were overthrown by secular courts nearly a century later precisely because the Catholic bishops were silent at precisely the moment their voices were most needed. Many still are. Apparently, slavery loves company. It is not for nothing that St. John Chrysostom, a father and doctor of the Church, said, “The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”

But all hope is not lost. Nearly a decade ago, the bishops of the Philippines discovered their voices, saying:

"It is said that when seeking ways of regulating births, only 5% of you consult God. In the face of this unfortunate fact, we your pastors have been remiss: how few are there among you whom we have reached. There have been some couples eager to share their expertise and values on birth regulation with others. They did not receive adequate support from their priests. We did not give them due attention, believing then this ministry consisted merely of imparting a technique best left to married couples.

Only recently have we discovered how deep your yearning is for God to be present in your married lives. But we did not know then how to help you discover God’s presence and activity in your mission of Christian parenting. Afflicted with doubts about alternatives to contraceptive technology, we abandoned you to your confused and lonely consciences with a lame excuse: 'follow what your conscience tells you.' How little we realized that it was our consciences that needed to be formed first. A greater concern would have led us to discover that religious hunger in you."

A few bishops on this continent have also begun to re-join the eternal college of bishops and are now speaking out against contraception. Continue to pray for the bishops, to sacrifice for them, and to make your voices known to them. Commemorate the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Write, phone, talk to your bishops, request private audiences throughout this coming year and personally insist on public orthodoxy and public teachings against contraception. This insistence on the part of the laity is a spiritual work of mercy towards the bishops, and God insists we be merciful.