Editors’ Note: In his weekly bulletin at the Church of St. Michael in New York City, Fr. George Rutler is once again the voice of reason:
“In recent days, a woman in Britain gave birth, although she was bearded after hormonal treatments that made her appear as the man she had ‘transitioned’ to be twelve years before. Her partner is ‘non-binary’ — which means neither male nor female, and the ‘sperm donor’ was a man who thinks he is a woman, while the obstetrician, according to vague reports, was either a man who claims to be a woman or a woman who claims to be a man.
“Thus, our rattled culture poses a dilemma: Either these people are mentally ill, or Christians are. And this is not confined to the esoteric. An Ivy League institution has just mailed forms to alumni, asking them to choose the descriptive pronoun they prefer. This gives new meaning to ‘institution.’ And this is why sane voices increasingly are banned from speaking in such places, because the function of prophets is to point out that inmates are running the asylum. Observant souls never take for granted the sanity Christ brought into the world. Salvation means sanity. ‘For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints’” (1 Cor. 14:33).”
Q. I don’t understand why a public figure makes a true statement about some issue and then, when he or she is criticized for the statement, not only retracts what was said, but grovels in front of critics. Why don’t they stand by what they said? It drives me crazy. — R.K., via-email
A. It drives us crazy, too, especially when these prominent persons could help bring some truth and sanity into the public square. However, maybe the tide is starting to turn.
Back in December, J.K. Rowling, author of the wildly popular Harry Potter series of books and films, got into a spat with the transgender movement.
Rowling, who is no conservative, went to the defense of a woman, Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job for stating that men cannot become women, and women cannot become men. An employment tribunal judge said that Forstater’s views could cause “enormous pain” to transgender persons, and her views are “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
This was too much for Rowling. “Dress however you please,” she tweeted. “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya.”
This was also too much for the transgender mob. They heaped vitriol on Rowling, calling her a “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and demanding that she retract her statement. But, wonder of wonders, she didn’t back down, didn’t withdraw the tweet, and declined to meet with LGBT activists. She refused to follow the tiresome LGBT script and go on an apology tour to explain how wrong she had been.
Her refusal caught the attention of Princeton Professor Robert P. George, who said that “the gender gnostics invite J.K. Rowling to re-education camp and she says no. They realize that there’s now a lot at stake, and they must bend her to their will. If she refuses to cave and survives cancellation, she licenses wholesale dissent from Woke orthodoxy. This is now a Big Deal.”
Agreeing was Megan McArdle, who wrote in The Washington Post:
“Institutions reward the mob by firing employees, yanking advertising, or inflicting other punishments. Those in the mob-ridden middle quietly think this insane, but also quietly think the better of saying so out loud. Which is how the Terrible Tens became the decade of the online mob. It would be too neat a bit of plotting if the decade ended with the discovery of the antidote to this proscription plague. Yet I wonder if that isn’t what happened when the mob decided to cancel J.K. Rowling, and she demurred….
“If Rowling provides an unmissable public demonstration that it is safe to ignore the current crop, we can hope others will follow her example, and the dictatorship of the proscriptariat will fall as quickly as it arose.”
Q. So we’re told that some 71 percent of Catholics do not believe in the True Presence. I believe this reflects a significant number of priests and bishops who likewise do not believe in the True Presence and have managed to communicate this disbelief to the laity. Do you suppose that when the celebrant at Mass does not follow the rubrics surrounding the consecration of the Sacred Species, this might signal his disbelief? Such as not genuflecting after consecrating the bread and wine? Or using his own language for the words of consecration? — J.A., via e-mail.
A. While too many Catholics apparently do not think Jesus is present in the Holy Eucharist, the poll numbers need to be qualified regarding whether the respondents are practicing Catholics who attend Mass each week, or Catholics-in-name-only who just show up for weddings and funerals — but who still go to Communion! In any case, the example of those celebrating Mass in an irreverent or haphazard manner can influence the beliefs of the faithful.
Thus, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal says that “the wondrous mystery of the Real Presence of the Lord under the Eucharistic Species…is proclaimed in the celebration of the Mass, not only by the very words of consecration by which Christ is rendered present through transubstantiation, but also with a sense and a demonstration of the greatest reverence and adoration which strives for realization in the Eucharistic Liturgy” (n. 3).
Regarding changing the words of consecration, the GIRM says that “the priest will remember that he is the servant of the sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass” (n. 24).
Q. More than 1.7 billion Muslims believe the Koran is the unadulterated, pure word of Allah (God), eternal and perfect. It was said to be verbally revealed by Allah to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel (Jibreel) gradually over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609, when he was 40 years old, and concluding in 632, the year of his death. The angel Gabriel’s annunciation of Jesus’ birth in the Koran differs from Gabriel’s annunciation in Luke 1:30-35. In the Muslim book, Jesus is identified as a “word” from Allah (sura 3:45) and is called “Messiah,” or “Christ,” but not “Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32).
In the biblical account of some 600-plus years earlier, the angel Gabriel contradicts the theology of the Koran. This Gabriel calls Jesus the “Son of God.” Given the Koran’s frequent vehement denials that Allah has a son, it is surprising that there is no hint of Mary’s Son also being called the “Son of the Most High.” Indeed, the concept of divine sonship is rejected in sura 19:3. Muslims persist in saying it is blasphemous to say that Allah has a son (sura 5:17; 10:68).
So do Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and which is the real angel Gabriel? — A.G., Maryland.
A. The real angel Gabriel is the one who appeared to the Virgin Mary in chapter one of Luke, and Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. In his book Forty Anti-Catholic Lies, Gerard Verschuuren explained:
“Christianity and Islam…may both refer to the same God in Heaven, but the way they talk about this common reference is very different. Yes, they both talk about ‘love of God and neighbor,’ but for Muslims this extends only to other Muslims. The Muslim God commands Muslims to kill or subjugate Jews and Christians, unless they accept the God of Islam. But most of all, the Christian God is a ‘triune’ God — not three Gods, but one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s certainly not so in Islam.
“Even the Koran itself suggests that the God of the Koran is radically different from the God Christians worship. The Koran specifically tells us that Christ was not divine, was not crucified, and that believing in the Trinity is polytheism. To affirm these teachings constitutes blasphemy for Muslims. Their religion, in short, cannot be ‘just like ours’” (pp. 157-158).
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