Merci!

Thank you very much for you to have sent to me an issue of Envoy. I’m a thirty-year-old Catholic priest of the diocese of Pontoise (near Paris, France). We don’t have this kind of Catholic newspaper. It’s too bad! Do you have any desire to make a French version of Envoy? It would be great! God bless you all!

Father Guy-Emmanuel Cariot, Sannois, France

Permission to reproduce (make that permission to recopy)

My request concerns an article published in your September/October 1998 issue, entitled “Little Lost Lambeth” by Steve Kellmeyer. I would like your permission to print copies of it to distribute to my RCIA catechism class. I personally found this article to be a real eye-opener and I’m sure they will too.

Michael E. Ehinger, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY

Editor’s note: “Little Lost Lambeth” and other past articles are available on our website at www.envoymagazine.com.

 

Creationism strikes again

In comment on Robert Ferdinand’s letter [“As Received,” November/December 1999] regarding Mark Greene’s letter [“As Received,” March/April 1999], which I haven’t read, I must point out that there is absolutely no way possible to prove by any physical science that God did not create the world at a particular slice of time, six thousand years ago, giving the false impression that it had existed for millions of years.

This is just as it is with an author of fiction, who starts his story at a particular point in time in the life of his characters. It is assumed that they have a past, with ancestors all the way back to Adam and Eve. But of course they don’t, because the creator (the author, in this case) never wrote about it.

In a “pre-expanded universe,” the remains of the nova would have been created to be 60,000 light years away from earth, as would the light from such a nova, which would also exist in transit for the astronomer to detect as if it had been traveling for 60,000 years. The difficulty in perceiving this to be true is based, in part, on the difficulty in understanding why an all-perfect God would create such a massive deception, like the ultimate April fool’s joke, on humanity.

While the proposition does point out how inconsequential we are in comparison to God’s power, we, the immortal mortals that we are, must deal with the facts as we perceive them to be. The real refutation of this proposition lies in logic. In order for God to have created the world 6,000 years ago in such a state as to imply its creation took place millions of years ago, God would already have had to think through the process of such a creation and the subsequent event of millions of years to arrive at that point in time of only 6,000 years ago.

Now God does not think the way we do, at least not with the limitations we have. His thoughts are perfectly formed the instant He thinks them. He never discards a thought as pointless or useless, because He cannot have such thoughts.

The entire reality of the spiritual and physical universe is nothing more and nothing less than God’s thoughts. Everything He thinks of comes into existence the instant He thinks of it. He has a perfect memory and is quite capable of thinking of every aspect of our reality simultaneously. We are mere figments of His imagination and yet we will never cease to exist. The very act of God thinking through all of the events leading up to a point in time of only 6,000 years ago would cause the entire sequence of events to really exist.

John J. Summe, Jr., Covington, KY

But I was confirmed years ago!

I’d like to see an article about the lack of adult education programs in the Catholic Church geared at the parish level. I am talking about adult catechesis. Many Catholic adults have not had any training in our faith since grade school.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November 1999 put out a statement called “Our Hearts Are Burning Within Us . . . A Pastoral Plan for Adult Faith Formation.” Please read this article and encourage all readers of your magazine to demand more adult faith formation at the parish level. The lack of adult faith formation is a primary cause of “non-practicing” Catholics and — worse yet — of Catholics’ being attracted to more “upbeat” Protestant movements.

Bob Todaro, Floral Park, NY

Read this and other documents by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops at their site on the web: http://www.nccbuscc.org/education/ourhearts.htm.

Girzone’s Joshua

I recently read Joshua by Fr. Joseph F. Girzone, and I am curious as to what other Christians (especially Catholics) think about it. While doing Internet research, I came upon your web page. I’m amazed that someone who has taken on the responsibilities of hosting a Christian question/answer forum, which millions of people can access, could say so much about a book of which they merely “attempted to read a few pages” and based most of their opinion on some “readers comments” from Amazon.com.

You remind me of those kids in school who write book reports from the information on the back cover of the book, which is probably a more reliable information source than Amazon.com. Read it, then tell us what it says! I’m embarrassed for you!

Richard Hughes, via email

Father Brian Wilson responds:
Don’t be (embarrassed, that is). I’m not. I am not one of those persons who believe that you can’t make any judgment on anything unless you have personally experienced it.
People whose judgment I respect (more than my own, I might add) fortunately read many books and write reviews of them or refer me to them orally. In this case I took particular account of what people who like the book have to say about it. However, that and the few pages I read only reinforced the (negative) opinion I already had of it.
My reading time — like everyone else’s — is limited, and there are many thousands of books I would choose to read before reading that one. I would hope what I wrote might help others to save their time for good books instead. What a weird world it would be if we had to read all the bad books to “prove” they were bad. There would be no time to read the good ones!
It would have been much more helpful if you — having read it — could contradict what I said based on your reading. Absent any evidence to the contrary, I stand by what I said.

Fr. Brian Wilson, LC

 

Our work is definitely cut out for us

I would just like to say from the kindness of my heart, “Find the truth.” You know as well as I do that Catholicism is false. How can you worship Jesus, peace be upon him, when He never said or claimed to be God. If you can find me one place in the Bible where Jesus says that He is God and to worship Him, then I will become a Christian.

I would just like to say from the kindness of my heart, “Find the truth.” You know as well as I do that Catholicism is false. How can you worship Jesus, peace be upon him, when He never said or claimed to be God.

If you believe in a Supreme Being, how can you worship a prophet, a man. If you can find me one place in the Bible where Jesus says that He is God and to worship Him, then I will become a Christian. Search. You will come back empty-handed.

The First Command-ment says not to worship any other God but God, not the messengers of God. Moses and Jesus prophesied the coming of a prophet after them. Who was this prophet? Who? Who? It was Muhammad (PBUH).

What religion is so perfect other than Islam. None. What book is more perfect than the holy Qur’an? As Muslims we must believe in all the books of God (Torah, Psalms, Gospel, and Qur’an). But people have tampered with the books of God and changed things and also added things. This still goes on today with all your revised versions. But the Qur’an has remained the same as it was revealed 1,400 years ago. No one can even dispute that. The facts are there.

Search and you will find out. Embrace Islam for your salvation. The true religion, the religion of Abraham (PBUH). There is no religion purer than Islam. Islam is free of assigning partners with God. God has no partners, no sons, no mother. God is neither male or female. He begets not, nor is He begotten. There is none comparable unto Him. He is the one and only, and Muhammad (PBUH) is His last messenger.

Gezime, via email

Scouting for homosexuals

The thing that strikes me as odd about allowing homosexual demands to influence youngsters [“Scouting for Homosexuals,” volume 4.3] is that people would be upset if heterosexuals made the same demands.
Let me make myself clear: I don’t want to be beaten up over the sins of the flesh that I’m attracted to (by, say, an irate husband), but I don’t want society to approve of them, either. And as for the argument that homosexuals are born that way, remember when people were worried that AIDS would spread through the general population because most adult homosexuals were actually active bisexuals? And according to statistics, most of the teenagers who have tried homosexuality — about half of those who have ever committed a homosexual act — go completely straight by the time they’re eighteen. So I have to question the attempt to convince teenagers that if they ever had a homosexual urge, even if it passed, they’re born homosexuals who should stay that way.

Besides, look at how homosexuality is promoted: Consider The Truth About Jane, a TV movie that aired on the Lifetime channel last August. It got a three-page write-up in the cable edition of TV Guide.
Jane’s parents tell her to stop when she starts having sex at the age of fifteen, but they don’t put their feet down until she’s sixteen and starts coming home drunk at 4:00 a.m. (Her first girlfriend dumped her, and the bars have been closed for a while, so we can assume that promiscuous sex is going on.) But she threatens to commit suicide, accusing her parents of hating her, so they fold and start taking her younger brother to gay rights rallies. Would this have been considered healthy if she were seeing boys?

Don Schenk, Allentown, PA

Extra ecclesiam nulla salus or . . . he’ll be back

Hey, Padre! I just finished reading your article [Fr. Peter Stravinskas, “Can Outsiders Be Insiders?” September/October 1988 — available online!]. I was baptized a Catholic as an infant. When I attained adulthood, I left. I would never go back to that band of killers and liars.

When I was a child I used to think that the term Papal Bull was kind of funny. As an adult, I can see just how appropriate it is. The article mentioned in the title is so full of bull it makes me ill to read it.
The more you jerks try to explain away your past mistakes, the deeper you dig the hole that you are burying yourselves in. I have never in my life heard such convoluted “logic.” It must be all that wine you drink while saying Mass. And you have the gall to call pride a sin!

Hah! The church’s days are numbered. And the digits are getting smaller all the time.

Hugh Smith, via email

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