Catholic Replies
Editor’s Note: Regarding a recent reply about the Society of St. Pius X, the writer said that he could not find a Traditional Latin Mass in the Los Angeles area. After reading the reply, R.W.H. in Vermont e-mailed the following: “Would you charitably notify him to log on to www.ecclesiadei.org, click the second item (Directory of Latin Masses), and scroll down to California Los Angeles Diocese. There are 14 different entries, but carefully check the scheduled days and times.”
Thank you for the information.
Q. It aggravates me to hear people say that Jesus would not be against “gay marriage” if two people really love each other since He so often told us to love one another. What can I say to these people? — K.E.R., Connecticut.
A. Probably not much if they really think that God now approves of a relationship that contradicts His divine establishment of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. To Jesus, love does not mean doing whatever we want, but rather doing what is right. His kind of love is a sacrificial love that always puts the other person first, as when He put our salvation ahead of His own well-being when He suffered so terribly for us on the cross.
The love of Jesus is always identical with the truth, said Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in his 1991 book The Yes of Jesus Christ. The future Pope Benedict XVI went on to say (pp. 94-97):
“A Jesus who is in agreement with everybody and anybody, a Jesus without his holy wrath, without the toughness of the truth and of true love, is not the true Jesus as Scripture shows him but a miserable caricature. A presentation of the ‘gospel’ in which the seriousness of God’s wrath no longer exists has nothing to do with the biblical gospel. True forgiveness is something other than weakly letting things be.
“Forgiveness is exacting and makes demands on both the person who forgives and the person who receives forgiveness in that person’s whole being. A Jesus who approves of everything is a Jesus without the cross, because the tribulation of the cross would not then be needed to bring men and women salvation.
“In fact, to a noticeable extent the cross is being interpreted out of theology and its meaning changed so as to become merely an unpleasant accident or a purely political affair. The cross as atonement, the cross as a way of forgiving and redeeming, does not fit into a certain modern pattern of thought….Forgiveness has to do with truth, and for that reason it requires the cross of the Son and it requires our conversion….
“A pastoral practice of appeasement, of ‘understanding everything and forgiving everything’ (in the superficial sense of this phrase), stands in glaring contrast to the biblical evidence. The correct pastoral practice leads to the truth, arouses love for the truth, and helps people to accept the pain of the truth. It must itself be a form of accompanying people on the difficult but beautiful way into new life that is also the way to true and lasting joy.”
Q. Can you find a quotation by Karol Cardinal Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II about the coming crisis facing the Church? How are we to deal with this crisis that seems to get worse each day? — M.K., Florida.
A. The statement by Cardinal Wojtyla was made at a Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976. Here is what he said:
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American society, or the wide circle of the Christian community, realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is therefore in God’s plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.”
Confirmation of this statement came from another source decades later. According to the web log Rorate Caeli, Sr. Lucia, the Fatima visionary, also spoke of a final confrontation between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. In an interview on February 16, 2008, three years after the death of Sr. Lucia, Carlo Cardinal Caffarra, the archbishop of Bologna, told the monthly magazine Voce di Padre Pio that he had written a letter to Sr. Lucia “through her bishop as I couldn’t do so directly.”
He said that he didn’t expect an answer since he had only asked for her prayers, but then was surprised to receive a long letter with her signature. Among other things, the Fatima visionary said:
“The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way because this is the decisive issue. However, Our Lady has already crushed its [Satan’s] head.”
During her appearances at Fatima in 1917, the Virgin Mary said that praying the rosary was the key to peace in the world. This was confirmed recently by Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme of Nigeria, whose people are being murdered daily by Islamic terrorists operating under the name Boko Haram.
Speaking of a vision he had, the bishop said that Jesus appeared to him and extended a sword toward him. “As soon as I received the sword, it turned into a rosary,” the bishop said, adding that three times Jesus told him, “Boko Haram is gone.” No further explanation was necessary, said the prelate. “It was clear that with the rosary we would be able to expel Boko Haram.”
Q. With so much killing, mass murders, beheadings, and perhaps chemical genocide happening in the Mideast, how should we react regarding aid and military intervention, or should we restrain ourselves regarding St. Augustine’s just war principles? It would seem that at the least we should airlift the thousands of displaced Christians to safety. I do not believe our quasi-Islamic administration would do such an endeavor, but how about our open-borders Catholic bishops advocating it? — R.B.K., Virginia.
A. You are rightly appalled and saddened at the murderous rampage against our fellow Christians not only in the Middle East but in Africa as well, as noted in the previous reply. How should the United States respond? A humanitarian airlift, even if the Obama administration were so inclined, would be a logistic nightmare because of the numbers of Christians involved and the ferocity of the Islamic enemy. Several years ago, the late Francis Cardinal George, OMI, of Chicago wrote a book (God in Action) that included a chapter on applying just war principles to terrorism. He said that there were several major obstacles:
One is that “the enemy is not a sovereign state. The enemy is a movement. It is a well-organized group….How can one conduct a just war when there is no visible opponent who is engaged according to the rules of warfare?”
Two is the challenge of humanitarian intervention “in order to save people from their own government or from a civil war or genocide. . . . Violence against a sovereign state is unjust unless that sovereign state has invaded another country, not because it is killing its own people.”
And three is the question of a preemptive strike, which can be morally justified if a country is poised to invade the United States.
The cardinal noted that there is serious doubt about the morality of the preemptive strike against Iraq in 2003, and in fact “the obligations we incurred to the Iraqi people because we invaded their nation have not been met. Iraqi citizens’ right to live in peace in their own country was not adequately secured during the years of occupation, and they are still not secured even as the U.S. military leaves Iraq. The last state is as bad, if not worse than, the first, at least for Iraqi religious minorities, especially Christians.”
So as noted in the previous reply, the best response to the atrocities against fellow Christians will ultimately be not the sword but prayer, especially the rosary.
