Catholic Replies

• 2 years ago

Editor’s Note: John and Sheila Kippley have authored another important resource for use by priests, deacons, and lay people in preparing couples for marriage. Entitled The Ecology of Christian Marriage, the 41-page booklet provides a soundly Catholic perspective on helping couples to achieve a happy and mutually beneficial interaction in their married life. Some of the important points stressed by the Kippleys include:

First, breastfeeding benefits both mother and baby and is a natural way of spacing out children.

Second, the correct use of Natural Family Planning based on the awareness of the female fertility cycle can be used both to achieve and to postpone pregnancy.

Third, resorting to unnatural and immoral forms of contraception (condoms, the Pill, withdrawal, masturbation) contradicts the Creator’s plan for love, life, marriage, and the family. They also note that the Pill increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

Fourth, placing God at the center of a marriage will help couples remain faithful to each other for better or worse until death.

Fifth, Christian marriage is a covenant that is renewed and deepened when couples give themselves totally to each other and generously remain open to new life. In the words of the Kippleys:

“The human sexual act is a vitally important act because it is the natural means of making babies and expressing marital commitment. It is the act by which those in the covenant of marriage are called to carry out the first commandment of the Bible: ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen. 1:28). It is the act by which the family is started” (p. 29).

The booklet is only $4 and can be ordered by going to www.amazon.com/dp/BO9P4M5YMD. Shipping is free if you order at least seven books.

Q. Is there any credible evidence that Pope John XXIII was a Freemason? – G.P., via e-mail.

A. No. However, there is evidence that he was a holy man, notably the miracles attributed to his intercession that paved the way for him to be declared a saint and the fact that his body was incorrupt when it was exhumed in 2003, 40 years after it was buried.

Q. I notice that at least half the attendees at Sunday Mass raise their arms with palms extended during the Our Father in imitation of the priest’s actions. Did this practice originate with Vatican II and is it an authorized gesture for the laity? — C.B., via e-mail.

A. No, the gesture did not originate with Vatican II and it is not an authorized action by the people in the congregation. The Vatican Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of the Priest says that the laity are not to use gestures proper to the priest: “Neither may deacons nor non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant” (n. 6.2).

Q. Pope Francis has called for a Synod on Synodality in 2023. Who will be invited to attend, what is the purpose of the synod, and what can we expect from this meeting? — D.M., via e-mail.

A. Synods are supposed to be gatherings of select bishops from around the world who, after consultations with priests, theologians, and lay experts, issue statements regarding the beliefs and practices of the Church. Pope Francis has said that “synodality is a style, it is a walk together, and it is what the Lord expects from the Church of the third millennium.” Curiously, he has said that the consultations should include not only members of the faithful, but also fallen-away Catholics, non-Catholics, and even opponents of the Church.

After the consultations, each diocese is to forward a 10-page report on what was concluded to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which will submit its own report to a committee in Rome. That committee will summarize all the reports from around the world and present its findings to those at the synod next year. What could go wrong?

Well, we have attended enough “listening sessions” over the years, regarding the closing of parishes or the selection of a new pastor, to be very skeptical of the process. Even among practicing Catholics there was much disagreement over the proper course of action. Imagine what disagreements will arise when fallen-away Catholics and even foes of the Church are involved!

Agreeing is Fr. John C. De Celles, pastor of St. Raymond Parish in Springfield, Va., who said that his long experience with these “listening sessions” found that they yielded “many unhappy results.”

What might happen, he wrote in his February 28, 2022 parish bulletin, could include the following:

1. The listening sessions could become “a hodgepodge of gravity and triviality, as well as orthodoxy and heresy,” without any correction from “wise and orthodox priests.”
2. The person who summarizes the sessions could introduce his own “ideological or personal preferences” and not accurately report what was said.
3. Some participants might expect action to be taken on what they proposed and might become disillusioned or angry if that does not happen.
4. The bishops in charge of the synod, and even the Pope himself, could ignore the recommendations and come up with conclusions based on their own preferences and could deflect any criticism by saying that, after all, “they listened to the people.”
5. Instead of listening to the participants in the sessions, some of whom are dissenters, said Fr. De Celles, it would be better to “listen and obey Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.” He expressed the concern that those pushing for the “Synodal Way” may have an agenda of watering down the Church’s teachings to appeal to the secularists in our society. Q. How do you answer a person who says that the Catholic Church disappeared or apostatized in the fourth century and that the true church only reappeared after the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century? — T.C., via e-mail.
   
   A. This claim is false because Jesus said that He would be with His Church always, “until the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). So there could never be a time when His Church could disappear from history. In Matt. 5:13-16, Jesus says that His Church would be like “a city set on a mountain” that cannot be hidden. And so, the Church has been that city on a mountain for two thousand years. Furthermore, Jesus said that the gates of Hell would never overcome His Church, so a worldwide apostasy is not possible.
   
   The claim is also false because the Church and its saints have been visible to all the world in every century since the time of Christ. The Creed that we say at Mass every Sunday comes from two councils of the Church that were held in Nicaea in 325 and in Constantinople in 381. Hundreds of Catholic bishops attended both councils.
   
   In the fifth century, we know of two famous saints, Augustine and Patrick, who were Catholic bishops. And what about Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi, two other famous Catholic saints, who lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? Furthermore, Protestants spread a false picture of the Catholic Church’s role in the Crusades and the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, but how can that be true since, supposedly, the Church didn’t even exist then?
   
   The bottom line is that there has never been a time since the first century when the Catholic Church did not exist, and it will continue to serve as the Mystical Body of Christ on earth until He comes again at the end of the world.