HAVING FUN WITH HERESY

I received an interesting letter from a man named Ron Sutter yesterday.  He is a former Catholic that is afraid that all Catholics are going to hell and he wrote to me hoping that I will have a change of heart and start leading Catholics according to his way of seeing the Gospel and Jesus’ mission.  It is a form a letter so I wonder how many of you may have received it.

I rarely have a problem with anybody who accurately presents Catholic teaching and then respectfully disagrees.  I will still think them incorrect, but I can respect that.  But when someone misrepresents the Church and then violently rips the false teaching apart in a slight of hand to prove how wicked (or in this case extremely cruel) the Church is, then I get my liturgical underwear in a bunch.  

The letter is three pages long and I have only a short time to write today.  But if you receive such a letter, it might be a good exercise to read it and then get the catechism out see if you can discern the flaws in the reasoning, find the straw men, and weigh the theology.  

In this letter, he states that he grew up Catholic but that he did hear the Gospel until age 19.  It was the first time that he heard that Jesus was the way to heaven.  I have a difficult time believing that he went to PSR, was baptized, received Communion, and was confirmed, went to Mass every weekend, and did not hear that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Another major theme in the letter is that Catholics believe that they earn their way into heaven.  “Ask any Catholic,” he asserts, “and they will tell you they are going to get into heaven because they do good works.”  We know, however, that we not only cannot, but we have no need to earn heaven.  If we could earn heaven, one of us would have pulled it off before 2,000 years ago and we wouldn’t have needed Jesus.  Jimmy Akins puts it succinctly: “To come to God and be saved, you need to repent, have faith, and be baptized. If you commit mortal sin, you need to repent, have faith, and go to confession.”  In all of this it is Jesus Who will save you.  Read more of his article HERE.

Here are two more sentences and then I will call it quits.  1) “The Catholic Church is clearly false because you preach another Gospel.  God is Holy.  He cannot tolerate even one sin and demands moral perfection: something we don’t have to offer.” 

Here is straw man case,  Does the Church teach that you must be morally perfect in this life in order to get into heaven?  Let us take the case of St. John Paul II.  When he was canonized there was a flurry of activity online and in the news about how he was not perfect.  (If he were perfect, he would’t have needed Jesus.)  We don’t claim that he was perfect, just a great model of true Christianity, and example of Christian living in our day and age.  No-one who knows and understands the teachings of the Church (which are the teachings of Christ) thinks for a moment that the saints had reached moral perfection in this life.  In fact, that is heresy.  “Anyone who says he is without sin calls God a liar.” 1 John 1 :8

Finally, “He justifies, he sanctifies, and He glorifies.  In the end, God gets one hundred percent of the glory for our salvation.  No one in Heaven is boasting in themselves about being there because everyone there knows i was all Him.”  

Well . . . yes.

But this is a clever ploy to make it sound as though this is something that the Church does not teach.  We actually agree but it is an attempt to make the Church look bad.  It is a clever but dishonest, underhanded letter with a fraudulent presentation of Catholic teaching.

And a fun way to build you knowledge of your own faith.

WINDOWS VS WALLS

Here is a typical scenario:  I am walking my dog in the park and meet up with some people from the neighborhood who once had some association with the Catholic Church but have moved on for various reasons (kids no longer in the parish school – found something different – do nothing now) and they mention the pope.  “This guy just might get me back into the Church.”

 

People come in to the Church for all kinds of reasons, some better than others.  Hence the phrase, “Lord, I was duped and I let myself be duped.”  But I am always a bit wary of numbers growing because of the personality of the pope, the priest, or even the youth director.  When the emphasis is too much on the personality of a person, faith in God can remain anemic.  So when the youth director must move on, the youth program disintegrates.  When the priest is moved, the people drift away.  When the pope says or does something unpopular (and he will – it’s the nature of the job – even Jesus found Himself in that position), then those who needed an excuse to go to Church find the reason to stay at home in bed.

 

At all times we are to be fingerposts, always pointing away from ourselves toward God and the Eucharist.  I must decrease and He must increase.  After all, we are finite and fallible.  We will disappoint and get in the way.  Rather, during that brief, glorious moment with a person when our charisma might, by the grace of God, have some sway, we welcome and rejoice and then point the way deeper inside.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: BE IT EVER SO DIVIDED, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

It’s been a long time since we had a rant/counter rant.

 

It’s about time.

 

Last week in the Plain Dealer there was a front page story, above the fold, about the Community of Saint Peter, the priest with about 300 parishioners who decided to break away from the authority of the bishop and establish what has become, in essence, a new Church and thusly avoiding the closure of their parish as so many others experienced during the recent downsizing in this diocese.  The current article was about their music minister, a nun, who was “pressed to quit breakaway church.”  Apparently a nun, in good standing with her order, the Sisters of Notre Dame, has been worshipping and ministering in this community since before they established their own Church and continued to do so until very recently.  The superior of the order is quoted as saying, “It’s a very sad situation and very complicated.”

 

Sad?  Yes.  Complicated?  Not so much when one doesn’t weigh all factors equally but places first things first. 

 

The man in charge of the congregation made the statement that it is a horrible loss for them, which no doubt it is, and that the persons responsible for inflicting such pain should be ashamed.

 

I agree.

 

But the Church did not leave Sister Susan nor the congregation, they left the Church (granted, under very difficult circumstances.  But no other congregations left en mass.)  Sister Susan did not have to stop worshipping with them.  She could have freely chosen to stay.  But you can’t live in two houses at once.  The bishop did not “cause” the split, their pastor did. 

True, there are nuns and clergy who work with non-Catholic institutions even for worship services.  What is so different about this situation?  This community does not exist alongside but in opposition.  Must they cease to exists?  Who can stop them?  But a choice was made and one must either be a part of it or not. 

 

Many will see the situation differently.  But the point is to see it from the point of view of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church is very much a family.  Christ is the bridegroom, we are the bride.  In this particular instance the bride (or part of the family) has decided to keep enjoying all the perks of living in the bridegroom’s house, but wants to spend weekends with someone else.  We don’t – we can’t work that way. 

 

Now here’s the great question to which we are not privy (and it is only remotely our business at all and only since those involved decided to go public:)  Does Sister go to Mass in addition to worshipping with this community?  Okay, maybe there is some complication there. . .

 

In Carsten Jensen’s book, “We the Drowned,” one of the characters (who is agnostic at best) said, “But a church is like a ship.  Certain rules apply and once you come aboard, you have to adhere to them.  And if you can’t, you should stay away.”

WHAT'S LOVE GOTTA TO DO - GOTTA TO DO WITH IT?

This is an ugly story. It was one of my most disgraceful acts as a priest.

At my last parish we had an outrageously large confirmation class. We did everything we could to notify people that the time was coming to register your child for confirmation. There were announcements from the pulpit, notices in the bulletin, and letters sent home to parents. We were going to be inundated, stretched to our limits, and there would be a point at which we would just no longer be able to accommodate any more exceptions to the program. They would have to wait until next year.

Of course a parent showed up a week or so before confirmation begging to have her child confirmed. It matters not one iota how she acted or treated anyone at the parish including me. The important part of the story is that at one point I curtly asked her to leave. Following some last comments she had standing on our front stoop, I slammed the door.

It would not be that Fr. Valencheck had treated her poorly but that the Catholic Church had treated her disrespectfully. This damage might not be limited to her alone but to her children as well, perhaps even into the next generation. So I sent a letter of apology and offered to do what I could to help her. There was no reply.

At the other end of things I have had a number of meetings lately in which persons have said that they had a poor experience of Church in the past, usually that involved some sort of incident with a priest, and that I was able to set things right. That is a good feeling tempered somewhat by the tale above.

We want (me included) priests to be perfect. We want them never to be angry, irritable, or short. They are supposed to be close to God are they not? They are to set the example for all are they not? And this at all times and in all circumstances. That would be nice. But unfortunately priests are men and some are better men than others and better at certain times than others. Besides, anything you want and demand your priest to be, you better be prepared to be.

That being said, an unfavorable incident with a priest does not constitute an unfavorable treatment by the Church. If a surly priest yelled at you for parking on the front lawn of the Church or for talking too loudly before mass, a surly man yelled at you, not the Roman Catholic Church. There is nothing I can imagine that a priest could do that that would warrant leaving the Eucharist, the sacraments, and the one true Church.

Of course there is a priest for everybody. I am not for some people just like some counselors or doctors or artists do not work for everybody. That does not make them bad counselors or doctors or artists, neither does it invalidate a counseling method, a type of medicine or a style of art. So if it is possible you go see another priest. If it is not you keep your eye focused on the Eucharist.

It’s John Chapter 6. It’s the Eucharist, the Eucharist, the Eucharist. Nothing else matters.

Which brings us to the flip side of the equation. Of course it matters. We see that in evangelization. You can have all the right answers, they can be irrefutable, but if you do not love, if you do not have a relationship with the other person, it is next to impossible to bring them to truth. Love and trust will win more people to Christ than all the truth, fact, and verse you can muster. It may be a sad truth we learn in heaven that donuts have brought more people to Christ than warning them that they were going to hell.

Maybe not.

But maybe.

But what is clear is that it is about relationship that they actions of another cannot destroy and the love of another can demonstrate. Such is the perfection of God as dealt among flawed men.