Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/misc/assortx2/crisis.txt

Text File | 1993-07-31 | 11KB | 186 lines

[The following article is taken from the August 1, 1993 issue of _Our
Sunday Visitor_, published by Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., Huntington, IN
46750.]

WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING ENSNARE THE FAITHFUL

Anti-Catholics use slick video techniques to disguise their message of
bigotry and confusion

By Karl Keating

Fundamentalist critics of the Catholic faith no longer restrict
themselves to mimeographed tracts. Today's anti-Catholic polemicists use
the latest techniques. The best example of this is "Catholicism: Crisis
of Faith," a slick, 54-minute video featuring interviews with former
Catholics who claim their one-time co-religionists are not really
Christian.
        Produced by Lumen Productions of San Leandro, Calif.,
"Catholicism: Crisis of Faith" is packaged to look like a Catholic
video. On the front is an illustration of priestly hands raising a host
and chalice. On the back is a photograph of a giant statue of Mary. The
words on the slipcase are almost neutral in tone.
        "Follow the journey of devout Catholic clergy and laity who
courageously faced a crisis of faith and emerged with a life changing
experience of Jesus Christ." This could describe a pro-Catholic video
about people who rediscover their faith and become more fervent
Catholics. There is no hint in the copy that the video features
interviews with some of the most sharp-tongued anti-Catholics in
America.
        The low-decibel design of the slipcase is mirrored in the
advertising for the video. Spring Arbor Distributors, a major wholesaler
of mainly evangelical books and tapes, has carried in its catalogues an
ad that calls "Catholicism: Crisis of Faith," "an ideal training
resource for churches, Bible schools, seminaries, and mission agencies.
Learn the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and how
they compare with Scripture."

False advertising

Spring Arbor's promotional blurb from Hal Lindsey, author of the
best-selling "Late Great Planet Earth," says the video "presents a
startling investigation of the world's largest religious
denomination...must see for anyone seeking to understand the times in
which we live."
        John MacArthur, Jr., pastor, author and radio personality, says,
"I appreciate very much the direct, clear, biblical treatment of
Catholicism....For anyone who wants a clear understanding of how
Catholic theology differs from the Bible, this is a helpful tool."
        Even _Christianity Today_, the evangelical monthly founded by
Billy Graham, has run full-page ads for the video. In them, MacArthur is
quoted, saying, "This is so needed today when ecumenical efforts have
done everything to blur the lines and to endorse the heresy as if it
were truth."
        Lumen Productions was begun by James G. McCarthy, a former
Catholic who explains: "I could not remain in the Catholic Church and
claim to be trusting Christ fully for my salvation. Every Mass,
sacrament, penance and offering is an insult to the finished work of
Christ."
        McCarthy runs a ministry called Good News for Catholics. Its
newsletter printed a letter from an unnamed Dominican nun. She charged
that in the video "priests in good standing with the Catholic Church
were quoted and made to appear ridiculous." McCarthy answered, "I assure
you that no interview was taken out of context." But that's not what one
of the priests interviewed said.
        Paulist Father Richard Chilson has written eight books,
including "Catholic Christianity" (Paulist Press, 1987) and "An
Introduction to the Faith of Catholics" (Paulist Press, 1975).
        "McCarthy approached me saying that they were doing a video to
help Christians understand the Catholic Church. He was all sweetness and
ecumenism. I spend a lot of my ministry fighting fundamentalists, and I
must admit to having been duped by this one. I figured they were
evangelical Christians rather than fundamentalists and so agreed to
cooperate in the interview," Father Chilson said.
        The interview lasted an hour and a half and covered a wide range
of subjects. Father Chilson said he was never offered a release to sign,
but some months later he received a check for $125. (McCarthy says all
interviewees signed releases.) Father Chilson was never sent the video
and never had a chance to review his edited interview.
        Much of the interview concerned the Mass as a sacrifice. "The
first extended quote from me in the video is part of that explanation,
but it is not easy to give the Catholic understanding of eucharistic
sacrifice in a sound bite. That discussion went on for at least 15
minutes, and McCarthy kept coming back to the idea of sacrifice," Father
Chilson said.
        Then comes a bit of slick editing. The voice-over narrator says,
"Other Christian denominations celebrate that the sacrifice is finished.
We asked Father Chilson why the Catholic Church chooses to focus on it
continuing. Why not leave it finished?"

Manipulated interview

The visuals show Chilson leaning back in his chair and passing his hand
across his head, as though searching for an answer. He looks weary and
replies, "I don't know if I can answer that. I am sorry. I know
that's--that's a real issue between Protestants and Catholics, but I
don't know if I can answer that in any better way I've already kind of
stumbled on."
        Frank Eberhardt, once a Catholic seminarian and now a
fundamentalist proselytizer of Catholics, then appears and says, "The
Catholic priest cannot really explain how the finished work of Christ on
the cross is continued today in the Mass."
        "They of course made it look like I had nothing to say," said
Father Chilson, "whereas I had been trying to explain the issue for a
good quarter hour. I would stand by what I said in the first shot,
although taken out of context it does not stand well on its own.
        "The second shot is dirty pool. Indeed I was suspicious that my
response there may not even have been to that exact question. But even
if it was, this was not lack of an answer on my part but frustration and
exhaustion at going over the same ground again and again."
        Father Chilson noted wryly that in the interview as much time
was spent on salvation as on the Eucharist, but "none of that was used
because I gave them the Gospel answer of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Certainly biased sampling was at work. If you fit their stereotype of a
Catholic, you were on the screen. If you presented the Gospel, you were
ignored."
        Later the narrator asks nine lay Catholics how they think they
can get to heaven. "Well, you know, by being a good Catholic and being
nice to one another," replies one woman. "As a woman you have to follow
Mary's way to go to Christ," says another.
        A man answers that he will go to heaven "by treating people
properly. Be fair to everyone." Another says, "I don't know. Just
behaving myself." An equally lost man replies, "By trying to live a
clean and decent life, I guess."
        Not a single one of these is an apologetically good answer,
though each one contains a partial truth. These people are easy foils
for fundamentalists, and their confused ideas are allowed to represent
the Catholic position on salvation.
        Lumen Productions makes a transcript of the video available for
$5. Footnotes flesh out the on-screen arguments, but often
disingenuously. In one scene, the narrator claims that "Catholicism has
continued to add new doctrines to the Catholic faith from the traditions
of men.
        "The belief that the nature of the bread changed at the Mass was
not added to official doctrine until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
This was the first time the Church sanctioned the theory of
transubstantiation."
        The footnote gives a lengthy quotation from The New Catholic
Encyclopedia. The reader is left with the impression that the Real
Presence was a doctrine "invented" shortly before the Fourth Lateran
Council.
        The transcript does not quote from the second paragraph of the
encyclopedia's article on transubstantiation: "Although the term is
neither biblical nor patristic, the idea it expresses is as old as
Christian revelation. The scriptural evidence [five passages are cited]
requires that the bread cease to exist and that Christ's body be made
present."
        Further paragraphs demonstrate that the Fathers of the Church
taught the Real Presence, even though the technical term
"transubstantiation" was not used until the medieval period.
        The Fourth Lateran Council thus imposed a new word, not a new
doctrine. The doctrine came straight from the New Testament, but that is
not the impression left by the video or its transcript.
        Meanwhile, the original release of "Catholicism: Crisis of
Faith" showed a statue depicting a woman nailed to a crucifix. The
statue was said to be located in the cathedral in Quito, Ecuador. The
narrator explained that Catholics have so confused the role of Mary in
redemption, equating her word with her Son's, that they believe she too
suffered for their sins.
        But the confusion was the video's. According to Auxiliary Bishop
Antonio Arregui of Quito, the statue is not in the cathedral but in a
monastery in Quito, and the woman depicted is not Mary but a local saint
known as Santa Liberata, "she who received liberation." She is said to
have been the daughter of a Portuguese prince. "Her father wished to
marry her to a non-Christian and corrupt prince," explained Bishop
Arregui. "When she refused, her father ordered that she be crucified."
        To McCarthy's credit, the scene with the statue was excised from
the video once the falsity of the representation was brought to his
attention. But the fact that such an outlandish claim--that Mary, too,
was crucified--appeared in the original release tends to undercut
McCarthy's comment that the video "was produced under the direction of
former Catholics aware of Catholic senitivities. Care was taken to avoid
unnecessary offense."
        McCarthy refuses to reveal how many copies of "Catholicism:
Crisis of Faith" have been sold, but, if the ubiquity of the ads are any
indication, this video has become one of fundamentalism's most effective
attacks on the Catholic Church.
        It bolsters the fundamentalist argument that, as McCarthy put
it, "Roman Catholicism has added to the Christian faith and to the
gospel itself from the traditions of men."
*****************************************************
Keating is the author of "Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on
`Romanism' by `Bible Christians,'" published by Ignatius Press. He
operates Catholic Answers, which publishes a monthly journal of Catholic
apologetics entitled _This Rock_. Their address is: P.O. Box 17490, San
Diego CA 92177. [phone].