Q. The Church teaches that a marriage after divorce is adultery, but the state disagrees. Must a Catholic county clerk refuse to issue a marriage license to a divorced person? — J.K., New York.
A. Many Catholic public officials are increasingly being put into situations that require their cooperation with evil, whether it is adultery, or same-sex unions, or something else. Catholics are forbidden to engage in formal cooperation with evil, which means willing the evil, either by an explicit act of the will or by sharing in the evil act itself (e.g., assisting at an abortion). Then there is material cooperation in which the cooperator performs an act which in itself is not wrong (issuing a marriage license), although it can be used by the principal agent to help commit a sin (adultery).
The general rule is that material cooperation in an immoral act is morally permissible when a sufficient reason exists. For example, refusal to provide the license would probably result in loss of one’s job, combined with the knowledge that a new position would be difficult to obtain in the near future. But while an isolated act of material cooperation might be justified, one cannot justify repeated acts of such cooperation, which would surely be the case with a county clerk.
Over the history of Christianity, Catholics have been willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, rather than cooperate in evil. They have followed the example of St. Peter and the apostles, who said that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). So a Catholic county clerk who is being put into the position of repeatedly cooperating in actions he or she knows to be immoral must say no, even if it means giving up a good job.
Q. I have a non-Catholic Christian friend who said his pastor told him the word they used for young woman in the Old Testament was “virgin.” I had heard that the name was later changed to young woman purposely to nullify the miracle of the Incarnation. After all, what is so special about a young woman having a baby? Can you shed light on this subject and let me know if what I heard was correct? — C.C., California.
A. In Matt. 1:23, the evangelist says that the virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary was a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, which says that “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” The Church has always seen this quotation from Isaiah as prophesying Mary’s conception of Jesus not through a human father but through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Scholars over the centuries have debated whether the word Isaiah used for virgin was the Hebrew word almah, which can mean virgin or young maiden, or the Greek word parthenos, which means virgin. Those who would dispute that Isaiah 7:14 is a messianic prophecy opt for the translation “young maiden,” while those who agree with Matthew’s interpretation translate the word as “virgin.”
Q. In the March 24th edition of The Wanderer, writer Rey Flores takes exception to blogger Matt Walsh’s recommendation that Catholics abstain from voting this fall, assuming that the general election will be between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. (Full disclosure: I am Matt Walsh’s mom and am not at all offended by Mr. Flores’ opinion. We were a thick-skinned family, even before Matt’s rise in the blogging world. Matt and his five siblings were home-schooled for religion. In the high school years, we used your book Catholicism & Reason.)
Here’s my question for you: Do you agree with Rey Flores? Or do you think that abstaining from voting in a general election is a morally defensible option for Catholics? God bless. — I.W., Maryland.
A. We think that it can be morally defensible to abstain from voting for a particular office when one finds both candidates for that office objectionable. However, one can still vote for other offices on the ballot while skipping president. Or when faced with a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, one can write in a name, as this writer has done on numerous occasions over the years when confronted with a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In other words, you are not staying home on Election Day; you are simply opting not to vote for certain offices or for certain candidates listed on the ballot.
By the way, Catholicism & Reason, which was revised in 2009, remains one of the best apologetics books on the market. It can be ordered by visiting our website at www.crpublications.com.
Q. Do you know anything about an organization in Los Angeles called Tradition in Action? We have received a brochure from them advertising many publications and, from the titles and descriptions, I wonder if they are more Catholic than the Pope. The author of many of them is Atila Sinke Guimaraes. — F.K., Louisiana.
A. You don’t have to look too far on the Tradition in Action website to realize that this is not a reliable source of information about things Catholic. For example, they are peddling the nonsense that there were “two Sr. Lucys,” the one who received apparitions from Our Lady at Fatima in 1917, but who had died by 1967 and was replaced by an imposter who carried on the charade until her death in 2005.
Basing its conclusion on “computerized age progression and regression photos” over many years, an article by Homer Sweeney says that “the pictures showed the shape of the face, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, teeth, and chin were all different, as was her general appearance.”
Thus, says the article, “it is realistic to believe that the real Sr. Lucy was dead by 1967 when the new Sr. Lucy made her inaugural public debut with Paul VI at the 50th anniversary of the first Fatima apparition. Then, it was the first time she played the role of Lucy, deceiving the world for nearly 38 years.”
The reason for the deception, said Sweeney, was to silence the real Lucy so that she could not make known the “true” Third Secret of Fatima, as opposed to the one revealed by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
All of this raises some questions, said Sweeney, including, “How could the Catholic Church allow this deception?…Who trained the new Sr. Lucy so she could even fool her relatives?…Did John Paul II know he was part of a worldwide charade meeting with the imposter Sr. Lucy at Fatima in 1982?”
The question it raises for us is how anyone could believe this foolishness? We haven’t seen such kookery since the folks in Bayside, N.Y., claimed that Pope Paul VI had been replaced by an imposter. They published a 40-page tabloid newspaper containing more than 120 photographs of the Holy Father and his alleged imposter and purporting to prove that they were two different men by pointing out differences in the size and shape of the Pontiff’s nose and ears.
The pictures were taken over a period of 15 years, and they were taken from different angles and in different light, which would explain why the Pope didn’t always look the same.
Could those who came up with the crazy “two Lucys” theory have gotten the idea from those who put together the bizarre Bayside tabloid? Does that mean that there were two imposters in the photograph of Paul VI and Sr. Lucy that appears on the Tradition in Action website? No way. The only imposters in this case are those involved with Tradition in Action who pretend to be responsible journalists.
Q. In the Gospel reading at Mass today, which was about the miraculous catch of fish, John says that when Peter and the others hauled their catch to the shore, the net was full of 153 large fish. Why the number 153? — J.F., Texas.
A. Here is the explanation offered in a footnote to that verse in the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament:
“The number of the fish hauled ashore is symbolic. St. Jerome claims that Greek zoologists had identified 153 different kinds of fish (Comm. in Ezek. 14, 47). If this is the background, the episode anticipates how the apostles, made fishers of men by Christ (Matt. 4:19), will gather believers from every nation into the Church (Matt. 28:18-20).”
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