Hospital talk.

A year ago, I had to have my gall bladder removed. After the surgery, I was taken to a semiprivate room, with a woman already there in the other bed. She had her curtain drawn and was having visitors, and I was a bit groggy and out of it, so we didn’t properly say "hi" or introduce ourselves. At one point, the visitors let up and I managed to say "hello" and tell her my name was Lucy; hers was Barbara. The visitors began to stream in again. I figured out that one was obviously her teen-age son and there seemed to be some low, stern talking going on there.

Finally, around 9 pm, visiting hours were over. I was kind of zoning out when all of a sudden, Barbara comes over and stands against the wall next to my bed. She says, "I don’t know what to do. My husband died two years ago, my son is flunking out of high school, and I have just been diagnosed with breast cancer." A few seconds went by as I registered her situation. Finally I said, "Do you believe in God?"

"No," she replied. "I’m a scientist." Well, that was my opening. I began to talk, and she just stood there and listened, patiently and thoughtfully. I told her there are many scientists who believe in God and that, in fact, I’d just finished reading a book called God: The Evidence. I related to her my own conversion, how it had transformed my life. And I urged her to pray, even if she wasn’t sure anyone would listen. I even gave her an example of what that prayer might be like, because I figured maybe she’d never prayed and didn’t know that you can just talk to God like you’re talking to a friend.

She told me she just couldn’t understand how these things could have happened to her — she’d "done all the right things," eaten the right foods, done the right exercise. Barbara was touchingly naive for a scientist. She said that she had some relatives who had recently urged her to go to a Bible study, and that maybe she’d consider it.

Anyway, the conversation lasted about 45 minutes — me in bed, her standing there in her hospital gown. She left the next day before I did, and came to say good-bye. I told her I’d pray for her — and I have, every day. I wish I’d thought to give her my phone number, but I didn’t. Since that time, I’ve often thought that perhaps the Lord gave me the gall bladder problem so our paths would cross just when they did. Pray for Barbara and her son, David.
Lucy Tucker, New York NY

Broadcasting with blinders on

A couple months ago, I had an e-mail exchange with a Protestant regarding John 6 and the Eucharist. He asked if he could quote some of my correspondence in a letter he was sending to a local Protestant radio program and I agreed. After receiving his letter, the two hosts of the show, entitled "In Search of Truth," ended up spending part of the show giving their reasons why John 6 was not only metaphorical, but had nothing to do with the Eucharist or the Last Supper.

As a former Evangelical Protestant, I was quite familiar with the sort of approach they were using, so I wrote them an eight page letter with a number of reasons (exegetical, historical, logical) why John 6 was most certainly about the Eucharist and the Lord’s Supper. To my surprise, the following week, the hosts spent the entire two hour radio program reading through my letter, attempting to disprove my arguments.

Since it is a call-in program, I phoned in during the last half hour and had a charitable and illuminating exchange with one of the hosts. While he had been very polite in reading through my letter, it was clear he was becoming rather exasperated with it. He finally said, "If the Catholic Church thinks the Eucharist is so important, then why doesn’t Paul talk about it in the book of Romans?"

After trying to explain to him how important the specific context of each epistle or gospel is in trying to understand it, I turned the subject to that of the early Church Fathers. "How can you ignore the unanimous agreement of the Church Fathers that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ?" I asked him.

"Well, I just don’t find the writings of those men to be very important," he said. "If I were to choose between reading Ignatius of Antioch or John Calvin, I’m going to choose Calvin."

"But what about the fact that Ignatius was writing around A.D. 110 and was likely a disciple of St. John, who wrote the passage we’re talking about? Wouldn’t he be worth consulting on this matter?" I asked. I was referring to Ignatius’ famous remark about the Docetist’s refusal to believe the Eucharist was the actual body and blood of Christ — a passage I’d included in my letter.

"That carries little weight with me," he replied. "In fact, I believe most of the Church was going into apostasy during the lifetime of the Apostles." And with that the show ended.

Although I’ve had similar talks with other Protestants, it was fascinating to hear the host, a man who claimed to be open-minded and honestly searching for truth, refuse to even respect or consider the testimony of a martyr like Ignatius! It reminded me once again how deeply ingrained are the assumptions and prejudices of so many non-Catholics and how my reasons and arguments can only go so far in presenting the Catholic Faith.
Carl E. Olson, Eugene OR

A knock on the head . . . er . . . door.

In the early 1970s, I left my career as a young social worker to start a family. While awaiting the "rapid" onset of pregnancy (ten years later we adopted), I looked about my parish for a Bible study to attend. There was none. One day, as I sipped coffee in a friend’s kitchen, loudly bemoaning this deficiency, there was a knock at her door. Looking out, my friend spied two women.

"Oh no," we groaned, "Jehovah’s Witnesses." Nevertheless, she answered the door, only to return and announce, rather breathlessly, that these were local women from the Evangelical church a few blocks away, inviting us to a neighborhood Bible study.

"Tell them we’ll be there!" I said, with great hubris. "We’ll show them Catholics aren’t completely ignorant about Scripture."

Fast-forward 25 years. Yes, I suppose those dear ladies did lose some of their presuppositions about Catholics. They certainly ministered to us in the way they tried to live the gospel. In the subtle and mysterious plan of God, the two visitors that day became my lifelong friends. One in particular, with her husband, has shared prayer, dialogue, works of mercy and retreats with us and acted as Protestant witnesses (please note, not Godparents) at our daughter’s baptism. The wife has written a wonderful pro-life book endorsed by both Mother Teresa and Fr. Paul Marx, O.S.B. The husband, who is theologically sophisticated and teaches, has incorporated a more "catholic" outlook into his work, wherever he’s able to accept the truth of it. Our apologetics skills have been forced to develop (Envoy columnist, Tim Staples, was hosted by our parish last summer), and my husband is much more open in his Catholic witness.

The Evangelical/Catholic dialogue is really just in its infancy. If Catholics are prayerfully prepared in truth, God will not disappoint us.
Carol E. Bishop, Long Beach CA

E-mail your Random Access encounters to brianpl@erols.com, or mail them to Random Access, Envoy Magazine, P.O. Box 640, Granville, OH 43023.

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