Uninspired Leadership

Relative to “Missing Millennials — What Must the Church Do to Reach a Generation?” (July 9, NCRegister.com): It’s hard to understand the young man’s position in Joan Desmond’s article on the Church losing Millennials. Most Catholic high schools of which I’m aware have really promoted the social-justice aspects of the Church’s teaching with multiple service projects, both domestic and international. However, even after that experience, these young people leave the Church.

My feeling is that we have not inspired a basic conversion to Christ and his Church in Millennials. Without an admission of sin and the need for redemption, Jesus and the Church don’t make any sense.

         Deacon Steve McGlone

         Tacoma, Washington

 

Untapped Potential

The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) is very pleased to see the Register report on recent research we conducted, designed to strengthen the marketing efforts of the nation’s thousands of pregnancy-help centers (PHCs; “Pro-Life Centers Offer Cure for Planned Parenthood?” page one, Aug. 23 issue).

CLI was honored to undertake this research in partnership with current and former leaders of two major center networks, Heartbeat International and Care Net. The new CLI research makes several recommendations to increase center effectiveness, but our research strongly supports the idea that the PHC movement has been a miracle of voluntarism and service to women and families.

A few points are worth elaboration for Register readers. CLI believes that centers have made demonstrable progress in reaching women considering abortion. The more exacting classification of women as “abortion-minded” or “abortion-vulnerable” was a direct response by the centers themselves to the problem of identifying women whose verbal responses and cues express an intention to carry to term, when, in fact, the force of circumstance makes an ultimate decision for abortion well within the realm of possibility. The CLI study specifically noted “that increased numbers of women at risk for abortion have been visiting PHCs over the last 14 to 15 years, and they constituted roughly 50% of pregnancy-center clients in 2014.” This is a hallmark of great success.

Our study does indeed support continued expansion of medically oriented centers, but there are dozens of examples of this trend, and it has been under way for the past two decades and more. New entrants are always welcome, and the study does support the value of a national brand, but such a brand has vulnerabilities as well; and the existing pregnancy-center networks have historically focused more on their services to member centers than on building their own national name recognition. Finally, while it is true that locating a center in an upscale community demonstrates an ability to reach a certain market segment and change the image of a PHC, the need for PHCs in lower-income communities is compelling, and the need for market segmentation in advertising content and methods is ever present. This was a central theme of research that CLI team members helped to produce in 1997-1998, and its value was reinforced by our new work.

In this time of intense public focus on the negative impact of abortion on women and families, and the need for alternatives, it is crucial that every element of the PHC movement — from resource centers to advanced medical models to advocates in Washington and the state capitals — pull their oars in similar directions. A million more women — they, too, victims of abortion — need the centers’ help every year, and that is the untapped potential to which our attention should be devoted.

         Chuck Donovan

         President

         Charlotte Lozier Institute

 

Arrogance of the Majority

“Founders’ Freedoms” in the June 28 issue (In Depth) highlights the arrogance of the majority of Supreme Court justices who handed down the decision that same-sex “marriage” is legal in all 50 states. They’re telling us, in effect, that the natural law is unconstitutional.

St. John Paul the Great tells us, “Truth is not always the same as the majority decision.” There is no truth in the court’s decision, just as there was no truth in Roe v. Wade (1973), which declared that the unborn child is not a person, nor in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1851), which declared that black people could not be U.S. citizens.

         John Vinsko

         Maryknoll, New York

 

Antidote to Modernism

Regarding “Understanding Cardinal Walter Kasper” (Vatican, July 26 issue):

I would like to thank the Register and Edward Pentin for their comprehensive interview with Thomas Stark on theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper. For years now, many orthodox Catholics have been frustrated by the Church’s inability to articulate the composite system of modernist thought and how its resurgence has had a disastrous impact on Christ’s Church.

As noted by Pentin and theologian Stark, Kasper is one of many in the Church who have once again been infected by this diseased theology that had been driven underground in the early 1900s by Pope Pius X.

Pentin does a great job in allowing Austrian philosopher Stark to clearly explain the philosophical errors tied to the likes of George Hegel, Emmanuel Kant and the pantheist thought of Teilhard de Chardin. A thorough catechesis to the average, hardworking Catholic in the pew is long overdue as a counterbalance to the modernism — which uses secularism as its masked accomplice — that has infected Catholic thought.

We pray for the Holy Father and the synod on the family. We pray that St. Michael and the Holy Spirit may give us courage in a pivotal time in history, and we thank the Register for bringing to light the modus operandi of the modernist movement within the Church.

Pius X implored us to be diligent. We haven’t been. So, now, the question is: Are we willing to be used as tools of sacrifice in standing for truth?

         Dave Palladino

        Birmingham, Alabama