FROM THE POST OFFICE
I just finished reading your articles relating to the pressure on good priests. You are so right! As the mother of a good priest, I cannot speak out publicly from fear that my son would be crucified for my comments. The negatives here go on and on but I do have a positive suggestion.
The bishops hear immediately when a good priest gives orthodox homilies because the liberal Catholics who agree with abortion, divorce, homosexual rights, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia complain fast and loud. It happens to my son all the time! He is invariably called on the carpet by the vicar of priests after giving a solid homily teaching the Faith. Squeaky wheels do get the grease!
Please appeal to your readers to stop being lazy! When their priest is giving good homilies, he will be attacked by cowards. The best help to a priest is for solid Catholics to actually sit down and write a glowing letter to the pastor and also send a copy to the bishop. Those letters go into their files. If the only comments come from heterodox liberals then that priest’s file condemns him.
Name and city withheld by request
Nominations for “painful” liturgical music library
Some more musical ideas for your painful Catholic musical library: For weddings, Ease on Down the Aisle from THE WIZ: “Come on, ease on down, ease on down the aisle. Come on, ease on down, ease on down the aisle, For funerals: "Hallelujah Baby!" from HALLELUJAH BABY by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Lyrics go like this for the first verse: This takes the place of the In Paradisum at the very end of the funeral mass. “Watch out, I'm busting out,
I gotta shout, I just found out what life's about, Hallelujah baby! Glory be, Had a vision, big decision, I believe, I believe in ME...no doubt...I used to doubt...like Moses in the dark when all the lights went out! Hallelujah baby! Glory be, light the neon, turning me on! I believe, I
believe in ME!”
By the way, I don't know how to love him is just too funny. How about this? "He's a man, he's just a man, or a piece of bread, and since we are his people, and we are the church, and if he is the bread, well, if you think about it, then WE are just a loaf of bread.
V.S. Arlington, VA
Bishop Vaughan preached that hell is real!
In your From the President's Kitchen Table Vol. 12 No. 2, Summer 2007, you had some very pertinent things to say about the horrible lack of preaching from today's pulpits on the dangers of Eternal Damnation, Hell. It reminded me of one of the last conversations I had with our beloved late spiritual advisor, His Excellency, the Most Reverend Austin Vaughan. After first asking him if the last paragraph of the Bible, the one dealing with those who add or take away from "the things that are written in this book," applied to just the Apocalypse or to the whole Bible; and whether or not it applied to his brother bishops. He replied that it applies to all the Bible and certainly to his brother bishops. I then said I did not think most of his fellow bishops believed in Hell. I told him that by their actions they sure don't seem to believe.
The good bishop then replied, "Oh no, Ken, they believe in Hell; they just don't believe anyone goes there, and that is silly because why would Our Lord have gone through the hell he went through to save people from a place nobody goes to!" Thought you’d like to know what a true Shepherd and Theologian had to say about what you have just written.
Kenneth M. Fisher,
Chairman
Concerned Roman Catholics of America