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The World Seen From Rome
Daily dispatch - April 04, 2009
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LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
Praying for Students
Not All Is Lost
Notre Shame
Criticism Is Regrettable
Above Ideology
Truth About Reiki
A response to: Praise for Notre Dame Students
I also praise (am praying for them) and thank God for those Notre Dame student groups who protested Fr. Jenkin's decision. The surest way to strengthening the Catholic Church in America is for clerics to be united with their bishops, and the bishops acting collegially in union with the Supreme Pontiff. God bless all.
Fr. Isaias D. Tiongco, OP
University of Santo Tomas
Manila, Philippines
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A response to: AIDS Worker Says Africans Don't Need Condoms
Thank you very much for this enlightening article. It's nice to know that things aren't as hopeless as the media likes to paint it, that changes in behavior is possible and that there's still compassion in the world. If only the mainstream media could see the truth.
Therese Poh
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A response to: Notre Dame Student Groups Lead Graduation Protest
If this degree is conferred upon the current U.S. president by the University of Notre Dame, I am personally sending my degree back to that once august institution devoted to Our Lady -- and I encourage other alumni to do the same. This is not the university I was proud to attend under full-scholarship and certainly not the school I had hoped my children might attend.
Kevin di Camillo, '95 M.A.
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A response to: Open Season on the Pope
It is indeed regrettable that so many have taken it upon themselves to criticize the successor of St. Peter at every twist and turn. It is even more regrettable that this comes from among those who are supposed to assist him and make his burden lighter.
However, I am grateful to the Holy Father for bearing so much pain that goes with being misunderstood and still show so much grace. His willingness to go so far as to explain his decisions and the humility that is dripping from every word in his recent letter to bishops is exemplary. His learning, faith and humaneness so well displayed is inspirational.
We pray for him for more strength as we can expect more attacks from a decadent world. Must there be such unwarranted attacks from within his "household" also? We should be contending with so much that threaten to erode the basis of our faith than to be criticizing, unnecessarily, the person and decisions of our Holy Father.
Alfred Adewale Martins
Diocese of Abeokuta. Nigeria
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A response to: A Question of Identity
In discussing current problems with and within our Catholic universities, we must, first and foremost, understand what we mean by the expressions "Catholic tradition, Catholic culture, and Catholicism."
One meaning of the word tradition is to be found in the sense of the Greek word paradosis: "passed on orally from generation-to-generation." However, in the current debate about Catholic education, the phrase Catholic tradition refers to the Church's part in the development of cultures and civil societies. That distinction is important because the Church's role involved more than the transmission of revelation. The Church also recognized and continues to champion the part that reason plays in human affairs.
Some Catholics (and many anti-Catholics) regard the other two expressions, Catholic culture and Catholicism, as synonymous because they confuse Catholic doctrine with ideology. History has recorded instances in which Catholic clergy with civil power ruled through clericalism and/or Puritanism, both of which are ideologies. These misguided clerics cast a shadow over the Church's true mission, providing caricatures that ideologues outside the Church continue to point out. Most people who use the term Catholicism aren't referring to these historical incidents, but the word itself provides aid to those critical of the Church, and Catholics should avoid it. Ideologies are closed systems by nature and deny the interdependence of faith and reason. In other words, ideologues fail to acknowledge that everyone has faith -- whether that faith includes God or not. As for Catholic "culture," there isn't and never was one.
Pope Benedict recently observed that, "Belief in the one God, far from stunting our capacity to understand ourselves and the world, broadens it. Far from setting us against the world, it commits us to it." These statements were made in conjunction with his plea for reason in the world: "I believe a particularly urgent task of religion today is to unveil the vast potential of human reason."
From a purely intellectual standpoint, then, everyone may apprehend the pre-eminent position the Catholic Church occupies in human affairs. Whether or not one accepts its doctrines, he or she will if guided by reason admit that its very existence stands as a reasonable account of what the human race is and why it exists, something no ideology has ever done, nor will ever be able to do.
C. Edward Collins
Sarnia, Ontario Canada
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A response to: US Bishops Declare Reiki Therapy Unchristian
Praise to Jesus for printing this article about Reiki, a plague for the Catholic Church here in Canada. Catholic people are so ignorant as to this practice and we need teaching, as most of our nurses are recommending it to patients. Again, thank you.
In Our Lady,
Patricia Duggan
Combermere, Ontario
Canada
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