What's the Immigration Situation Where You Live?

Check out this interesting, interactive map of the U.S. which gives the immigration statistics for every county in the country. You can also search according to specific foreign-born groups to see the trends in where they settle across the 50 states.

Catholic Edition: A Great New Source for Breaking News

I have this page bookmarked. Check them out!

To Twitter or not to Twitter? That is the Question

In recent weeks, quite a few Catholics I have met at my parish seminars and at conferences around the country have asked me what I think about the social networking tool known as Twitter, what it is, and whether it's worth using. In fact, a good number of you who follow this blog have started "following" me on Twitter. I tell those who ask that Twitter can be a very useful communications tool, when used properly, or it can be just another worthless form of self-broadcasting with no other purpose than to tell people what you're doing at any given moment.

Since I have been using Twitter for the past 3 months or so, I can say that I definitely put myself in the former category.  

Like I did when I started using Twitter a little over 3 months ago, a lot of you have (or will) start off wondering what exactly Twitter is and what it does and why anyone would bother with it. This is normal, and it will pass.

To help you make more sense out of why Twitter is such a useful and potentially beneficial tool, especially for Catholics around the world who want to be in communication across time and space (which is actually the only kind of communication we humans can engage in, this side of eternity), here's a link to a helpful article that does a good job of explaining the basics of Twitter, including answering the perenniel question, "What is Twitter, anyway?"

Well, check this out: http://www.clicknewz.com/1385/twitter

Now, please note that I don't use Twitter to tell people on my network what I'm doing at any given moment (as some people do). That's just a nuisance that normal, busy people, like you and I, don't need. That's why I don't post the mundane details of my life.  Rather, I use Twitter to instantaneously communicate news, information, updates, happenings, prayer requests, etc., to my network.

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll get the important things — 140 characters at a time — not riff-raff stuff. I promise.

Oh, and since I am steadily building an ever-expanding network of Catholics, once you've read up on the benefits of Twitter, please join my network. Set up your free Twitter account (it's quick and easy, then add "patrickmadrid" to the "find people" search bar, and "follow" me. I'll take it from there. 

Like the old Alka-Seltzer commercial used to say, "Try it. You'll like it." I certainly do.

Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander

In my mid 20s, I went through a kind of creeping spiritual crisis that led me into a reconversion to Christ that was neither sudden nor dramatic, although it shook me powerfully and reached the deepest recesses of my heart.

Like a painful, prolonged medical treatment that’s necessary to save a patient’s life, my reconversion entailed pain and uncertainty, but the result, thank God, was a cure — not an instant one, forever banishing the symptoms of the disease we call “sin,” but a cure nonetheless. As St. Paul explained, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.” This malaria of sin, contracted in the Garden of Eden through the bite of an apple, courses through our veins with all its deadly effects. Only God’s grace can combat and overcome it. His love is the sole antidote.

At the height of my conversion of heart, I discovered, or more specifically, the Lord showed me, that through years of infrequent and minimal use, I had allowed the “muscles” of my interior life — prayer, mortification, and recollection — to atrophy and wither. My spiritual “arteries” — which carry the love of Christ as the lifeblood of the soul — had hardened and constricted as a result of the lukewarm, halfhearted complacency into which I had settled. . . . (continue reading Patrick Madrid's "Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander")

You Don't Mess Around With Jim

What's in a name? Plenty. A word of caution to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint: Get ready to feel woefully inadequate.

 

By Jim Moore

Envoy Magazine

 

Do you ever lose track of your name? I do. Hey, this is a legit, faith-based question here. The answer isn't packed with doctrinal revelation, but anybody who reads this space on a regular basis ought to be used to that by now.

For those of you who may be stopping by for the first time: This column is basically about being a cradle Catholic who came late to the effort of truly understanding and appreciating the Faith. It's about being somebody like me. I would have called the column "Rocking the Clueless Catholic," but I thought that would be unfair to the rest of you.

Today's question for the clueless: Do you ever lose track of your name, the way I do?
Everybody stop a second and say your name out loud. The whole thing. Confirmation names, too.
Any saints' names in there? Do you know anything about those saints? How often do they even come to mind?

Personally, I don't think along those lines very often at all. I've been "Jimmy" to my family and "Jim" to friends and colleagues for so long, that I rarely think of myself as "James." Yet that's a pedigree that shouldn't be neglected. Though I imagine St. James wouldn't lose any sleep over not being consciously connected with me.

Of course, if St. James ever is consciously connected with me - or with any of the other kajillion guys going around giving his name a bad name - it's probably only when the other saints are giving him a hard time.

"Hey, James! Did you see what that clown with the cradle Catholic magazine column came up with this time?"

I've been "Jimmy" to my family and "Jim" to friends and colleagues for so long, that I rarely think of myself as "James." Yet that's a pedigree that shouldn't be neglected. Though I imagine St. James wouldn't lose any sleep over not being consciously connected with me.

"Yeah, James. I mean, come on. What a moron."

Not very nice of them, I know. But I understand both John and Paul have been extremely pleased with themselves since 1978.

"All right, you two. I'll tell you again. Linguistically speaking, James is only as close as English can come to my name. All those guys and I hardly have the same name at all. And if you two would quit wrapping yourselves in the papal flag every chance you get, I could show you a John or a Paul or two who aren't all that much to write home about."

In order to spare my namesake at least some ribbing, and in an attempt to learn better the worthy lessons associated with my name due to his writing, I decided to turn my biblically bereft cradle Catholic mind to St. James' epistle.
Epistle.

Remember when we used to call them "epistles"? Made 'em sound as important as they are. I have a few dim memories of hearing the word at Mass when I was little, but it faded out of sight not long into my grade school years.

It had to happen. "Epistle" is a word doomed to failure in America. And it has nothing to do with liturgical preferences. It's just not very singable. Try it yourself.

"I'm gonna sit right down and write myself an epistle." No.

"My baby just wrote me an epistle." Uh, uh.

"Mr. Postman, look and see/If there's an epistle in your bag for me." No chance.

Anyway, I got interested in the Letter of St. James because it was featured prominently at Mass during the month of October. I wasn't named after St. James due to any special affection my parents had for him, but I do know that the tradition of saints' names for children played at least some part in the choice. So I figured it couldn't hurt to pay special attention to what the man had to say.

A word of caution to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint: Get ready to feel woefully inadequate. I didn't get through the first chapter of James without self-esteem problems. Here are just a few from among numerous examples:
James 1:19: "Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger . . . ."

And my Irish ancestors became Catholic how?

James 1:26: "If a man who does not control his tongue imagines that he is devout, he is self-deceived . . . ."

No self-deception? And Americans became Catholic how?
Then, in 1:27, he talks about "keeping oneself unstained by the world . . . ." Personally, I can't even keep myself unstained by lunch.

A word of caution  to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint:  Get ready to feel woefully inadequate.

You could spend a lifetime just trying to live up to a single sentence in that first chapter. But there's always chapter two. Right?

James 2:2-4: "Suppose there should come into your assembly a man fashionably dressed, with gold rings on his fingers, and at the same time a poor man in shabby clothes. Suppose further that you were to take notice of the well-dressed man and say, 'Sit right here, please' whereas you were to say to the poor man, 'You can stand!' . . . Have you not in a case like this discriminated in your hearts? Have you not set yourself up as judges?"

I think I may be okay here, simply by virtue of changing times. You see, just about nobody shows up for Mass wearing fine clothes these days. And if they're wearing gold rings, they're wearing them in places most traditional people would judge less than formal.

I just typed "judge," didn't I? Strike two. And forget about chapter three.
James 3:6: "The tongue . . . exists among our members as a whole universe of malice. The tongue defiles the entire body."

Even I won't look for a way around that one.

And just in case the message hasn't hit home by the time he gets to chapter four, St. James, being the thorough kind of guy he is, states things even more plainly there.

James 4:14: "You are a vapor that appears briefly and vanishes."

That says it even more succinctly than Ash Wednesday. As a matter of fact, I understand there was once a James-ist movement to institute Vapor Wednesday as a Lenten alternative for communities where ashes weren't available. The local bishop would eat something with pungent spices, then breathe on people as they approached the altar.

Among the truly great things about the Letter of St. James is his ending. After raising the bar hopelessly higher and higher for five chapters, he ends with a word of encouragement to those of us who hope people will learn the truth of Catholicism, and that they'll learn it somehow through us.

James 5:19-20: "My brothers, the case may arise among you of someone straying from the truth, and of others bringing him back. Remember this: The person who brings a sinner back from his way will save his soul from death and cancel a multitude of sins."

I've learned a lot from St. James in those five brief chapters of his. And maybe he's turned me around in a few respects. If only because I now feel a need to live up in at least some small way to his name. If my parents had named me after anyone other than a saint, the notion would never have occurred to me.

Maybe the tradition of saints' names for children is one we ought to hold on to.

By Jim Moore, jimmoore [at] rocketmail.com
Source: Envoy Magazine
Copyright: Envoy Magazine, 1996-2009, all rights reserved. 

Here in Miri

Well, after a long day in the air yesterday (Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur [layover], KL to Miri), I made it safely to my destination here in Miri, which is located on the west coast of the Island of Borneo. I got to my hotel room last night around midnight, and my first talk of the conference starts this morning at 8:30. So all Ihave time to do right now is say "Selamat pagi," or "good morning" in Malay. I probably should also say "Malaysia Adalah Sebuah Negara Yang Menarik" ("I like Malaysia"), at least the little I have seen of it since getting here.

More soon. I'm off to get some strong coffee and then start my seminars. Selamat jalan.

Japan: the Land of the Rising Sun Is the Land of No Son

I arrived here in Tokyo yesterday afternoon around 3:00 (actually I'm in the city of Narita, where the main area airport is located). I stayed at the same western-style airport I always stay at when I'm spending time in this area. After 16 hours of flying yesterday, between Columbus and here, I wanted nothing more than to just take a hot shower, get a quick meal (Japanese gyoza, a small bowl of white rice, and a bottle of water), and then some much-needed sleeeep. And sleep I did. I closed my eyes at 6:00 p.m. and woke refreshed at 5:30 a.m. 

The view of Narita from my hotel-room window, today, 7:00 a.m.

Japan is one of the countries I most enjoy visiting. I love it here and wish I could speak the language better -- much better -- though I do my best to stumble around in my pigeon Japanese that elicits more good-naturedly embarrassed smiles from the locals than anything else ("well, at least he's trying," I imagine them saying to themselves). As soon as I utter a few phrases in Japanese, they perceive my lack of conversational skills and politely switch to English. Sometimes, to Engrish, which provides me with no end of divertment. (But that's another story for another time. I could tell you some funny Engrish stories from my visits to Japan over the years!)

Its missionary possibilities are endless, although (or maybe because) it is a decidedly secularized society, and aside from a patina of Buddhist and Shinto cultural religious sensibilities, the Japanese are, sadly, generally atheistic. Not in the aggressively anti-God way that many atheists are in the West, but more out of a general apathy, a lack of any interest in the possibility that God may have a personal claim on their lives. I very much enjoy meeting and observing the Japanese. Even though it's clear that I, as a Westerner, am not someone they'll typically get beyond the merely superficial formalities of giving directions or answering questions about the local weather, etc., I do sense in these extremely polite and gracious people a deep reservoir of latent yearning for God. The hard part, as any missionary to this land will tell you, is getting past the hardened secularist/consumerist/complacency that so many Japanese are in the grip of. 

It surprises some to know that if the Japanese Shoguns had not brutally persecuted and wiped out the thriving Catholic communities that existed here in the 16th century, and had the Church not been hindered in its growth, it is quite likely that Japan would have been a thoroughly Catholic country -- much like the Philippines are today. I think the same would have been true for China, had not the Communists stomped on the Catholic Church when they came to power in the late 1940s. 

When I arrived at my hotel, in addition to the Japanese-English edition of the Gideon Bible in the nightstand, I also found the obligatory copy of The Teachings of Buddha, also in a Japanese-English translation. 

Although I don't know this for sure, I suspect that hotel guests are going to be much more affected by the teachings of Jesus Christ, as found in the New Testament, than they will be by the bland aphorisms of Buddhism. Not to mention the fact that in Buddhism, even with its Four Nobel Truths which are in themselves expressions of certain truths about this life, there is no real solution to the problem of evil and suffering beyond an identification of (some of) the causes of suffering in this world. The endless cycles of Karmic rebirth cannot explain nor resolve the problem of Evil. By contrast, Jesus Christ is the answer to this age-old conundrum that men have puzzled over since time immemorial. But then, that goes back to my thoughts about how successful Catholic missionaries could be here in Japan if there could be found a way to break through the shell of indifference and complacency that so many Japanese seem to be encased in. I don't know. Perhaps it would take a national catastrophe of some sort to reawaken in these good people their hidden, dormant desire for the ultimate good, God Himself. Perhaps someday I will have the privilege of helping the local Catholic missionaries in their efforts to reach out to the Japanese people with the Good News of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, I can only just enjoy each visit I make to this wonderful country, enjoying the people and their society from the outside, but praying for them to discover Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. Who knows? Perhaps in God's inscrutable providence, Japan may yet become the Catholic country it might have been. Deo Volente.

My flight to Kuala Lumpur leaves soon. I'll be back in touch when I get there. And thanks again to all of you who are praying for me. 

Eastward Ho! The Start of My Journey to Malaysia

Greetings from the DFW Airport's Admiral's Club (my second home, it seems), where I'm waiting to catch my flight to Tokyo. I'm on my way to Malaysia to give a series of multi-day lectures in the city of Miri. I'll be conducting a Catholic leadership conference, followed by an apologetics and family-issues conference for men of the diocese. I'm looking forward to it, though not to the 13-hour flight from here to Tokyo. Tomorrow, from there, it's another 10 hours by plane to Miri. But I won't complain. Just imagine what St. Paul and his companions could have accomplished if there were jet air travel in their day. Just imagine what St. Ignatius of Loyola could have accomplished if he and St. Francis Xavier had had fax machines!

Of all the many foreign trips I've undertaken over the past 20+ years that I've had the privilege of doing this kind of public speaking,  this will be the first time that I will have blogged about the journey and my experiences along the way. At least, that's my plan. Assuming I have regular internet connection in Malaysia -- which I have no reason to assume I won't -- I hope to give you regular updates on this apostolic adventure.

Please pray for me, especially for my safe travel, to and fro, for the happiness and wellbeing of my family while I'm gone and, just as importantly, that the Lord would grant me the graces and strength necessary so that I might glorify Him and serve the local Church in Malaysia as well as I possibly can. God bless you all.

A Routine Doctor's Visit Reveals More Than Expected

I know I'm raising my kids in a culture that is anti-morality and anti-Catholic. The blatant garbage is easy to explain. Blasphemous art exhibits, scandalous motion pictures, maniacal N.O.W. protesters at a pro-life march. Those I’m prepared for, and so are my kids. We talk about it at the table or at bedtime or just after we’ve read something in the paper.

Check-up, Wake-up

By Kristine L. Franklin
Copyright: Envoy Magazine

It’s the subtle stuff that often knocks me for a parental loop. Like when my good, conscientious, Christian family doctor offered birth control pills to my twelve-year-old daughter. I’m not making this up. Jody said I should write about it so other parents would be prepared. We were definitely unprepared.

It was time for Jody’s seventh grade check-up so I made an appointment with my own doctor we’ll call Dr. X. Dr. X is a Christian, someone I trusted to be sensitive with a twelve-year-old. I told Jody that everything would be fine even if it felt a little embarrassing. I explained about my own yearly physical, and that hers wouldn’t be nearly that extensive. It was just a school physical, but because of her age the “growing up” topics would probably come up.

And indeed they did. I went with Jody into the examination room. Doctor X was friendly and kind. When Dr. X asked if Jody had any questions about puberty, she smiled and said, “My mom has already told me everything I need to know.”

“That’s wonderful,” said the doctor and then proceeded to check Jody’s heart, lungs, ears, and throat. When Dr. X asked me to leave the room for a moment I didn’t think twice. I winked at Jody and left, honoring her privacy and modesty. 

Not five minutes later the doctor called me back in. One look at Jody and I knew she was distressed. My motherly alarm system kicked in and I felt my heart speed up. Dr. X left the room and I said, 

“What’s wrong?”

“The doctor asked me about birth control,” said Jody. “I don’t even know what it is.”

Stunned is an inadequate description. I felt my face turning red with rage. Dr. X returned and I literally bit the inside of my cheek to keep from spewing forth loud invective. I knew I needed the whole story before I did or said anything. When Jody and I got to the car she told me everything.

Here’s the gist. When they were alone the doctor asked Jody if she was drinking or using drugs. Jody said no and the doctor then told Jody in a firm way how important it was to keep drug- and alcohol-free. Then the doctor asked if Jody had a boyfriend. Jody said no. Then the doctor said, “If you ever get a boyfriend, and you’re having sexual relations, I can give you birth control pills.”

I told Dr. X that both Jody and I were offended and that what had been said to my daughter violated the physician’s oath to “do no harm.” Dr. X apologized for offending, but told me that it was a routine  conversation for  girls Jody’s age.

Pause a moment and let that sink in.

In the calmest voice I could muster I told Jody, “The doctor was totally out of line to say that to you. It was wrong, it was inappropriate, it embarrassed you and I am so sorry I left you alone.” I then explained very briefly what “birth control” means, to which Jody replied, “How stupid.”

I prayed and fumed. When we got home I phoned the doctor. In a calm, divinely-assisted tone of voice, I asked for the other side of the story. It squared exactly with what Jody had reported. Then I told Dr. X in no uncertain terms that both Jody and I were offended and that what had been said to my daughter violated the physician’s oath to “do no harm.” Dr. X apologized for offending, but told me that it was a routine conversation for girls Jody’s age. “It’s part of a community-wide effort to cut down on teen pregnancy.” 

I told Dr. X that offering to prescribe dangerous hormonal drugs to a preadolescent child behind her parent’s back was a horrific practice (I really said “horrific”) and that the message on premarital sex should be as firm as the message against drugs and alcohol. “You passed up a perfect opportunity to help a child remain committed to chastity.” The doctor didn’t say much.

I don’t know if that conversation did any good. That doctor is a product of our culture and I’m just one of those ultra-brainwashed Catholic mothers who naively assumes that her children can and will abstain from sex before marriage. I can only hope that some of my words sunk in. 

Jody wanted me to write this down so all Catholic parents would know to be careful. Even a good doctor with good intentions can point your child toward the path of destruction.

Consider yourself forewarned.

Source: Envoy Magazine, vol. 5.2
Author: Kristine L. Franklin
This article is copyrighted by Envoy Magazine 1996-2009, All rights reserved.

My Newish Book — Perfect for Your Lenten Reading

It came out last fall. Order now from my website!

The Mysterious Case of The Unfollowed Blogs

A few days ago, something weird happened with several of the blogs I follow. Unbenkownst to me, and not due to anything I did, the Blogger system somehow made me stop following a number of great Catholic blogs I like to keep track of. I never did find out how that happened, but several of you good people contacted me in puzzlement to find out why I stopped following you. In actual fact, I didn't stop, Blogger stopped me.

I was able to go back in and re-follow most of the ones that dropped off (by the way, that same day a good 15-20 of my blog's followers mysteriously and suddenly disappeared), but one of you in particular sent me a note about this through e-mail? Twitter? Facebook? I can't remember where the note came from and, therefore, I can't find it or respond to it! Nor can I re-follow your blog till I figure out who you are. You know who you are. I'm really not ignoring you.

But here's a clue. This particular person posted on his blog a clever picture of the Tombstone lawmen saying they were going to track me down and bring me back. But as I say, I can't remember which blog that is. 

So, okay, Tombstone Guys, here I am. Out here in plain sight in the middle of the street at high noon. If you want to bring me in, show yourselves, and we'll get her done.

The White Man's Burden

Are you interested in Catholic / Protestant debates and discussions on central theological issues, such as the authority of Sacred Scripture? If so, you'll likely enjoy listening to this classic debate on sola scriptura I did with a certain Protestant apologist back in 1993.

A lot of folks (several thousand, in fact) have listened to the recording of this debate over the years with great profit. You can download it instantly as an MP3 file here. And, of course, it's also available as a 2-disc CD set.

You might also want to check out “The White Man's Burden,” a follow-up article I wrote, discussing this debate, in This Rock Magazine, shortly afterward.

And if you're interested in exploring my other public debates with Protestant ministers, Mormon spokesmen, and others, you'll find many of them here. Enjoy.

Houston, We Don't Have a Problem

With my good friend and dear Catholic brother, Chris Aubert, at his bookstore in The Woodlands (Houston), Texas. November, 2008.

The 5 Most Pathetic Words: “I Am a Pro-Choice Catholic”

How does a formerly pro-life Catholic college girl morph into a pro-abortion zealot who identifies the roots of her transformation as including attending the National March for Life?

You read that right.

As implausible as it might sound, Kate Childs Graham says that this happened to her, and the results are not pretty. In her recent article “I Am a Prochoice Catholic,” which appears in that notorious bastion of contumacy, The National Catholic Reporter, Ms. Childs Graham reveals:

“I wasn’t always a prochoice Catholic. During college I attended the annual March for Life on more than one occasion. The first time my friends and I traveled to the event from Indianapolis, Ind., was with a bus full of high school students — most, seemingly, only going for the trip to Washington, D.C., with their friends, sans parental supervision. Needless to say, it was a noisy bus ride. After I transferred to Catholic University, I volunteered for the Mass for Life two years in a row, helping to herd all of those high school students into every crevice of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.”

One must wonder if Ms. Childs Graham herself was one of those young people who made the journey to Washington, not to protest the evil of legalized abortion, but simply because she wanted the freedom of a little road trip, “sans parental supervision.”

She claims that, “Each time I attended the March for Life, I felt overwhelmingly conflicted. On one hand, it was moving to be among so many people, all energized by their faith around an issue. On the other hand, I sensed that I wasn’t getting the complete picture — I wasn’t being told the full story.”

Hmm. Unless this young woman was comatose during her high school and college years, how could she not have been “told the full story”?

The pro-abortion screamers have done nothing but tell their “story” in the most strident ways possible, including counter-demonstrating and handing out their propaganda to anyone who will take it at the Washington March for Life.

Their side of the story has thoroughly dominated the public consciousness through the sheer force and high-decibel volume of the pro-abortion diktat purveyed in the movies Ms. Childs Graham watched growing up, in the television programs she enjoyed during middle school and high school, and in the biased and often inaccurate coverage of the U.S. abortion debate with which the mainstream news outlets have persistently and perniciously inveigled their viewers and readers for the past 30 years.

But then, maybe Ms. Childs Graham never watched television growing up. And maybe she never saw any movies or watched the network news or read a mainstream secular newspaper or magazine. 

Maybe, but I doubt it. I’m pretty certain she got a great big dose, for years on end, of the pro-abortion crowd’s side of the story.

If she was raised Catholic, as it appears, was she raised on a desert island somewhere, far away from any means of encountering Catholic teaching on the evil of abortion? Perhaps she never heard of Pope John Paul II nor listened to or read any of his many teachings on this subject?

Perhaps she attended parishes where the priests never preached on the evil of abortion, and she may never have visited any of the many Catholic pro-life websites or read the many Catholic periodicals that clearly proclaim what the Catholic Church has always and everywhere proclaimed, namely, that abortion is murder.

It’s possible, I suppose, that Ms. Childs Graham never opened and read her Holy Bible or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, both of which are as clear and forceful and unambiguous as can be about telling the other side of the story — you know, the side about how killing unborn babies through abortion is murder and how murder is always a mortal sin.

Maybe she never came into contact with any pro-life Catholics (who number in the tens of millions in this country, incidentally) and heard from them the other side of the story.

Maybe, but I doubt it. In fact, given her admission that she attended, at least a few times, the Washington, D.C., March for Life — as a participant, not a counter-protestor — I'm quite confident that Ms. Childs Graham heard both sides of the story and that, tragically, she has simply chosen to believe the lie, the fairytale, the fable about how “protecting a woman’s right to choose [i.e., to murder her unborn child]” is a good thing. How it “helps” women. And how illegal abortions are “unsafe.” I wonder if it has ever dawned on this deeply misguided woman that, legal or illegal, abortions are always “unsafe” for the little child being killed in the procedure.

After reading her NCR article and the vacuous rationale she gives in defense of her ideology, I have to wonder.

I wonder if she has ever stopped to think about all the millions of unborn women who are being subjected to the unsafest of unsafe medical procedures when they are aborted.

I wonder.

During her trips to the Washington March for Life, did Ms. Childs Graham ever listen to what was being said? Did she listen to any of the many eloquent speakers and teachers of the Catholic Faith — bishops, priests, religious, and laity — who travel there to explain to the March attendees the fundamental reasons why the Catholic Church teaches that abortion is murder and that murder may never, under any circumstances, be countenanced, much less promoted? Perhaps she was too busy herding all those high school students into all those crevices of the National Shrine to pay attention to what was going on all around her. It’s hard to say. 

Ignorance of why life issues like abortion and contraception are inextricably linked and how both do incalculable damage to women and men, marriages, and society as a whole (prescinding for the moment from the wanton destruction of human life entailed in these two activities), seem to be the root problem here. Ms. Child Graham assures her readers:

“[F]or me (and for many others), being prochoice does not end at supporting the right to safe and legal abortion; it extends to discovering the best methods to prevent unintended pregnancies. Contraception promotion, comprehensive sexuality education, and access to affordable child care and healthcare are just some of the methods that are paramount to reducing the need for abortion.”

One thing is for sure. If she never really heard the pro-abortion side of the story, as she alleges she didn't, since becoming a pro-abortion advocate, she sure has made up for lost time! She can parrot back with the best of them the vapid and long-discredited Planned Parenthood talking points that she spouts in her article.

But you’ve got to give her credit for sheer persistence, if not for clear thinking. To borrow another writer’s turn of a phrase, she is speaking from “a pinnacle of near-perfect ignorance.”

“I am a prochoice Catholic,” she asseverates, “because my Catholic faith tells me I can be. The Catechism reads, ‘[Conscience] is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.’ Even St. Thomas Aquinas said it would be better to be excommunicated than to neglect your individual conscience. So really, I am just following his lead. After years of research, discernment and prayer, my conscience has been well informed. Being a prochoice Catholic does not contradict my faith; rather, in following my well-informed conscience, I am adhering to the central tenet of Catholic teaching — the primacy of conscience.”

Ms. Childs Grahamn claims to have a “well-informed conscience.” Really? Perhaps she is being sincere when she says this (c.f., CCC 1790), but it appears that she completely missed that part in the Catechism where it declares:

“Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777);

“Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings” (CCC 1783); and

“Conscience can remain in ignorance or make erroneous judgments. Such ignorance and errors are not always free of guilt” (CCC 1801).

It’s not necessary to explain here what St. Thomas actually said about man’s duty to follow his conscience in observing the commandments and teachings of the Church, as that would simply be piling on and would be a further cause of embarrassment for Ms. Childs Graham. So it will suffice to simply read the above statements from the Catechism about conscience in light of this other statement:

“Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law: ‘You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.’ ‘God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes’” (CCC 2271).

Ms. Childs Graham, please, please, come to your senses. Wake up to the hideous realty of what you’re saying and doing and supporting here. You have fallen for the wrong side of this story. 

You are wrong about what the Church teaches about conscience and human freedom. You are wrong in your opinion that, when it comes to being proabortion, “My Catholic faith tells me I can be.” No, the Catholic Church tells you exactly the opposite.

I urge you take the time to honestly study what the Catholic Church really says on this issue. I call upon you in fraternal charity to be intellectually honest with yourself.

Please don't forget that, in due time, you, like the rest of us, will have to meet the Lord Jesus Christ face-to-face and be judged by Him (Hebrews 9:27). On that day, you will have to give an account for why you defied the clear teaching of His Church on the evil of abortion.

“I am a proabortion Catholic” are the five most pathetic words you could say.

For the sake of your own immortal soul and for the sake of the lives of the unborn children your ideology menaces, please rid yourself of this delusion.

— Patrick Madrid is the director of the Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College and publisher of Envoy Magazine. His personal website is www.patrickmadrid.com.

Bam! Bam! The “Pebbles” Argument Goes Down

A bedrock Protestant argument against the Papacy gets reduced to rubble.

The scenario:

You participate in an employee Bible study every day on your lunch hour. This particular Monday, Fred, a new employee, is introduced to the group. He announces he's a former Catholic and is also a part-time minister at a nondenominational “Bible church” in a nearby town.

As you begin, Fred opens his Bible and begins to “explain” why the papacy is “unbiblical.” The other Catholics in the room look to you expectantly. They know you've been attending a Catholic apologetics training course at your parish, and as you look around, you realize you're the only one in the room who is ready to respond.

You take a deep breath and interrupt. “Fred, what exactly is your main objection to the Catholic teaching on the papacy?”

Fred's response is as blunt as it is sincere. “It's unbiblical.”

You grin to hide your nervousness. “Actually, it is biblical, and if you turn to...”

“No, it's not.”

“Yes, it is.”

Man, oh man, this is getting off to a great start, you think to yourself in exasperation as you open your Bible to Matthew 16:17-19 and read aloud: “And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' “

“That passage does not refer to Peter as the rock!” Fred emphatically declares. “Contrary to the erroneous Catholic interpretation, it refers to Christ as the rock. For 30 years, I believed that Peter was the rock, but then I found the original Greek proves he wasn't. There's a distinction between the two “rocks” in Greek. The text actually reads, 'You are petros,' which means small pebble, 'and on this petra,' which means massive boulder, 'I will build My Church.' The first rock is Peter, the second rock is Christ. See? Christ didn't build the Church on Peter, but on Himself.”

Your response:

“I understand your argument, but there are problems with it. Petros is simply the masculine form of the feminine Greek noun petra. Like Spanish and French, Greek nouns have gender. So when the female noun petra, large rock, was used as Simon's name, it was rendered in the masculine form as petros. Otherwise, calling him Petra would have been like calling him Michelle instead of Michael, or Louise instead of Louis.”

“Wrong.” Fred shakes his head. “Petros means a little rock, a pebble. Christ didn't build the Church on a pebble. He is the Rock, the petra, the big boulder the Church is built on.”

You take a deep breath, calm your nerves a little, and continue. “Well, what would you say if I told you that even Protestant Greek scholars like D.A. Carson and Joseph Thayer admit there is no distinction in meaning between petros and petra in the Koine Greek of the New Testament? [Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 507; D.A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), vol. 8, 368.] As you pointed out, petra means a 'rock.' It even usually means a 'large rock.' And that's exactly what petros means, too — large rock. It does not mean 'pebble' or 'small stone,' as you've been told. The Greek word for 'pebble' or 'small stone' is lithos, not petros.

“In Matthew 4:3,” you continue, “the devil cajoles Jesus to perform a miracle and transform some stones, lithoi, the Greek plural for lithos, into bread. In John 10:31, certain Jews pick up stones, lithoi, to stone Jesus with. In 1 Peter 2:5, St. Peter describes Christians as 'living stones,' lithoi, which form a spiritual house. If St. Matthew had wanted to draw a distinction between a big rock and a little rock in Matthew 16:17-19, he could have by using lithos, but he didn't. The rock is St. Peter!”

Wilma, the VP of finance and a member of your parish has a thought, “Fred, how do you explain the fact that Jesus addresses St. Peter directly seven times in this short passage? It doesn't make sense that He would address everything to St. Peter and then say, 'By the way, I'm building the Church on Me.' The context seems pretty clear that Jesus gave authority to St. Peter, naming him the rock.”

Fred shakes his head. “I don't think so. And even if petros and petra mean the same thing, Jesus surely made the distinction with His hand gestures or tone of voice when He said, 'You are rock, and on this rock I will build My Church.' “

Betty, another young Catholic in the group, chimes in. “I don't think it's much use to conjecture about what Jesus' hand gestures or voice intonations might have been, since we can't know what they were. And doesn't that kind of speculation contradict your belief in the 'Bible alone' theory? Anyway, speculation aside, we do know that Jesus definitely said, 'You are rock, and on this rock I will build My Church.' Going from the text alone, His meaning seems crystal-clear to me.”

You notice several heads nodding in agreement. Fred's isn't one of them. “But getting back to the Greek, Fred,” you say, “notice Matthew used the demonstrative pronoun taute, which means 'this very,' when he referred to the rock on which the Church would be built: 'You are Peter, and on taute petra,' this very rock, 'I will build My Church.'

“Also, when a demonstrative pronoun is used with the Greek word for 'and,' which is 'kai,' the pronoun refers back to the preceding noun. In other words, when Jesus says, 'You are rock, and on this rock I will build My Church,' the second rock He refers to has to be the same rock as the first one. Peter is the rock in both cases.

“Jesus could have gotten around it if He'd wanted to. He didn't have to say, 'And,' kai, 'on this rock I will build My Church.' He could've said, 'But,' alla, 'on this rock I will build My Church,' meaning another rock. He would have then had to explain who or what this other rock was. But He didn't do that.”

Fred flips through his Bible. “God says in Isaiah 44:8, 'And you are My witnesses! Is there a God besides Me? There is no Rock; I know not any.' And 1 Corinthians 10:4 says, 'And all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ.' See? These passages tell us Peter could not have been the rock of Matthew 16:17-19. Only God — Christ — is a rock.”

“That's a good point,” you say. “Yes, God is called 'rock' in Isaiah 44:8 and elsewhere. But notice that just seven chapters later in Isaiah 51:1-2, God Himself calls Abraham the rock from which Israel was hewn. Is this a contradiction? No. Jesus is the one foundation of the Church in 1 Corinthians 3:11, but in Revelation 21:14 and Ephesians 2:20, we're told that the Apostles are the foundation of the Church. Jesus said He is the light of the world in John 9:5, but the Bible also says in Matthew 5:14 that Christians are the light of the world. Jesus is our 'one teacher' in Matthew 23:8, yet in Ephesians 4:11 and James 3:1, it says 'there are many teachers' in the Body of Christ.

“Are these contradictions? Of course not. The Apostles can be the foundation of the Church because they are in Christ, the one Foundation. The Church can be the light of the world because she is in the true Light of the world. A teacher can teach because he is in the one true Teacher, Christ. In the same way, St. Peter is indeed the rock of Matthew 16, and that doesn't detract from Christ being the rock of 1 Corinthians 10:4. St. Peter's 'rock-ness' is derived from Christ.

“Aside from everything we said earlier about the Greek,” you continue, “there's an even stronger case that can be made for Christ meaning Peter was the rock on which He would build His Church. When Jesus gave Simon the name 'Rock,' we know it was originally given in Aramaic, a sister language of Hebrew, and the language that Jesus and the Apostles spoke. And the Aramaic word for 'rock' is kepha. This was transliterated in Greek as Cephas or Kephas, and translated as Petros. In Aramaic, nouns do not have gender as they do in Greek, so Jesus actually said, and St. Matthew first recorded, 'You are Kephas and on this kephas I will build My Church.' Clearly the same rock both times.

“And just as Greek has a word for 'small stone,' lithos, so does Aramaic. That word is evna. But Jesus did not change Simon's name to Evna, He named him Kephas, which translates as Petros, and means a large rock.”

“No way,” Fred shakes his head. “There's no evidence in Scripture that Christ spoke in Aramaic or originally gave Simon the name 'Kephas.' All we have to go on is the Greek, and the Greek says Simon was called Petros, a little stone.”

“Actually, Fred, you're mistaken on both counts. The second point we've already discussed, and as far as your first point, well, take a look at John 1:42. 'Jesus looked at [Simon] and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).' See? St. John knew that the original form of the name was Kephas, large rock, and he translated it into Greek as Petros, or Peter.”

Just then, your watch beeps 1:00, signaling the end of your lunch hour. You close in a quick prayer, then grab a Catholic apologetics tract from inside your Bible and catch Fred on his way out.

“Hey, Fred,” you smile warmly. “I really appreciate your input in this group, and I'm glad you've joined us. You're going to add a great new dimension to the group. Welcome!” You extend your hand to shake his.

Fred shakes politely, but you can see on his face that he's not pleased with the way the day's discussion went. But he's a good sport and he promises to be back tomorrow for “round two,” as he calls it.

On the way out, you hand him the apologetics tract and smile inwardly at the odd look he gives you as he slips it into his Bible. He's clearly not used to being on the receiving end of a tract, especially not one that's handed to him by a Catholic.

— By Tim Staples

Source: Envoy Magazine. Copyright 1997-2009, all rights reserved.