Catholic Replies
Q. Your article on deathbed conversions was great, but what about someone who has been good all their life and finds it harder to keep going until the end and maybe even contemplates suicide. I just want to throw in the towel. — Name and State Withheld.
A. Feelings like yours are not unusual as the end of life draws near and one finds it difficult to persevere to the end. But persevere is what you must do. Our true home is in Heaven and we must do all we can to get there. What a tragedy it would be to throw Heaven away just when you are so close. Feelings like yours come from only one source, the Devil. He is trying to snatch souls away from God up to the last moment of their lives.
Don’t listen to the whispers of the Devil. Ask your priest for the Anointing of the Sick, the special sacrament for those in danger of dying from sickness or old age. This sacrament helps one to face pain and suffering, to overcome the fear of death, and to resist Satan’s temptation to despair. Pray to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death, for perseverance. Say the Hail Mary that you have prayed so often in your life, asking our Blessed Lady to “pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.” Pray to Jesus, who invites us to “come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt.11:28).
Q. On the front of my parish bulletin on the Feast of the Ascension, the caption on the painting says, “Jesus was taken up into Heaven.” This infers that the Lord ascended not on His own, but through the initiative of His Father. I always thought that Jesus ascended into Heaven on His own volition. — Name Withheld, Indiana.
A. Luke says in his Gospel that “Jesus was taken up to Heaven” (24:51). He uses the same language three times in the first chapter of Acts (“he was taken up . . . he was lifted up…this Jesus who has been taken up from you into Heaven”). There is the same apparent contradiction regarding the Resurrection. Both the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed say that Jesus “rose” from the dead, but St. Paul says that He was “raised on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:4). This really presents no problem since Christ is both God and man. He is capable as God of rising or ascending on His own, and as man of being raised or being taken up to Heaven by the Father.
Q. I attended a series of classes on the Book of Revelation taught by an excellent Catholic professor. Lately, there is a lot of news about UFOs, but not once did they come up in our Bible classes. My question is whether there is any place in Scripture that talks about the existence of UFOs? My coffee friends say that these are forecast in Bible passages about the end times. I’d like your take on this. — D.L.H., Iowa.
A. We don’t know of any reference in the Bible to Unidentified Flying Objects, not even in passages about the end times. The only things coming from the heavens are God, His angels, clouds of fire, and chariots. In the last days, says Jesus in Matt. 24:30-31, all those on Earth “will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds.”
Ezek. 1:4-5 talks about “a huge cloud with flashing fire” containing within it “figures resembling four living creatures.” Isaiah 1:1 saw the Lord “riding on a swift cloud on his way to Egypt.” Isaiah 66:15 says that “the Lord shall come in fire, his chariots like the whirlwind.” Zech. 6:1 says that he saw “four chariots coming out from between two mountains.” And Psalm 68:17 says that “God’s chariots were myriad, thousands upon thousands.”
None of these phenomena was unidentified.
Q. Does the Church still prohibit Catholics from becoming Masons and, if so, for what reason? – M.M.C., via e-mail.
A. Yes, the prohibition remains in effect. But, you say, l know Masons in my community who are good people and do a lot of charitable works. That’s true, but both the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1983, and the U.S. Catholic Bishops, in 1985, said that the principles of Freemasonry are “irreconcilable with the Church’s doctrine,” that those Catholics “who knowingly embrace such principles are committing a serious sin,” and that membership in Masonic associations is prohibited to Catholics.
Writing in the September 1996 issue of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, moral theologian Msgr. William B. Smith explained the Church’s stand:
“Masons as Masons accept the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the immortality of the soul; but the inspiration of the Bible, the unique claims of Jesus Christ, the authority and teaching role of the Church, and the Sacraments as means of grace, these are ‘particular opinions’ they are asked to keep to themselves and not disturb the brothers in the lodge.
“Perhaps a religious naturalism is better than no belief at all, but for the professing Christian this is a retreat from the Gospel. Freemasonry clearly rejects dogma and the possibility of absolute truth. The inspiration of the Bible and the divinity of Christ cannot be periodic lay-asides for believing Catholics. When revealed doctrines are relegated to the harmless status of private opinion, will it or not, one contributes further to the endemic relativism that John Dewey so much fostered in education and Oliver Wendell Holmes advanced in jurisprudence.”
Q. I watched a 1950 movie entitled Perfect Strangers. It was about two married people who meet while serving on a sequestered jury and fall in love. They agree that after the trial is over, they will wait six months and, if they still love each other, they will divorce their spouses and marry. The National Legion of Decency at that time gave the movie a B rating, that is, they found it to be “Morally Objectionable in Part for All” because it “reflects the acceptability of divorce.” My question is whether a movie that would have been a sin to watch in 1950 would be permissible to watch today? I doubt that anyone would find this movie objectionable today, even Catholics, although our standards should not have changed. — J.C., California.
A. Sadly, you are correct that few would find this film objectionable today. The Legion of Decency was established by the U.S. Catholic bishops in 1934 to promote high moral standards in the film industry and to encourage Catholics to stay away from morally offensive movies. The bishops set up a national ratings system (A, B, or C) and, for three decades, many Catholic filmgoers across the country consulted these ratings when deciding which movies to avoid. So influential was the Legion that Hollywood producers would fly to New York to talk with Legion officials when a film was threatened with condemnation, and then agree to clean up the film to avoid the Legion’s most severe rating.
In the late 1950s, factions within and outside the Catholic Church, including some Jesuits on college campuses, began to tell Catholics that they could go to condemned movies since it would be good for their education. When Legion officers challenged this advice, they were given other assignments and a Jesuit was put in charge of the Legion’s New York office. It wasn’t long after that when the Legion’s voice was muted and it became a division within the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Department of Communications. The division is now called the Office of Film and Broadcasting, and it still issues ratings classifications.
The office says that it no longer keeps tabs “on the levels of sex, violence, and coarse language in a film,” but “evaluates films for artistic merit and moral suitability.” Its classifications are A-I (General Patronage), A-II (Adults and adolescents), A-III (Adults), L (Limited adult audience), and O (Morally offensive). It has nowhere near the clout of its predecessor, and it doesn’t do nearly enough to oppose the dreadful moral climate we face today.
