Letters
The Mandatum Margin
Regarding the “Mandatum Secrecy” investigative series:
As an orthodox Catholic young person, I was pleased to see the Register run a series on the mandatum among Catholic universities and colleges in the United States. Many Catholic centers of higher education must be challenged to fulfill their mission of offering authentic Catholic theology. Your series not only serves that end but also attempts to be a guide of Catholic character at these universities for parents and future students.
While I applaud this purpose, I am disappointed that you have failed to place the mandatum series in the larger context of each university's character as a whole. Your series, while rightly critical of the mandatum stance, thrusts the mandatum — an important but narrow measure of a school — as the decisive and putatively definitive feature of the Catholic character. There are many indicators of the Catholic character of a university and the potential Catholic education offered to the students than just the mandatum.
YURI MARICICH
Seattle
Luke's Lessons
We read with great interest “Judge to Doctors: Ignore Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion” (June 13-19). We were amazed to read that, on June 1, a federal district court in San Francisco decided doctors can continue the practice of partial-birth abortion even though the U.S. Congress and President Bush have banned it.
Ironically, just two days earlier, on May 30, my wife went into premature labor on the first day of her 23rd week of pregnancy. We were blessed to welcome into the world our fifth child, Luke Joseph. Luke came into the world perfectly formed but weighing only 1 pound, 2 ounces. We quickly began to admire his fingernails, toenails and even caress the hair on his head. During that time we listened to his soft cry as we loved him as best we could.
Luke was welcomed into eternal life just two hours after he was born. Thank God, we were able to baptize him (holding him in the palm of our hands) within the first 30 seconds of his life.
As we go through our grieving process, it's sad for us to think that the other option we had was, as Dr. Maureen Paul from Planned Parenthood states, “to collapse the skull and bring the fetus out intact.”
Luke's short time on earth has been a blessing for our entire family. He has taught us firsthand about the fragility of human life. More importantly, while we have always been pro-life, he has taught us how to defend life at a time when others are choosing to abort their children so far into their pregnancy.
We're convinced that no parent who witnessed what we did on May 30 would ever defend partial-birth abortion again.
Thank you, Luke Joseph Clossick, for teaching us in two hours' time what some people will never know during their entire lives. We promise you that your memory will live in our hearts forever.
SHARON AND JOE CLOSSICK
Wakefield, Rhode Island
A ‘Strict and Stingy' God?
Regarding “Cardinal Will Meet With Law-makers on Communion” (May 30-June 5), along with the reader responses to “On Receiving Communion” (editorial, May 9-15):
Have we American Catholics confused our country's Constitution with our Church's canon law? My parish priest is not “obligated” to absolve me of a sin for which I do not profess contrition (Canon 978, Section 2).
My parish priest is not “obligated” to marry me to someone else merely because I've decided that my current marriage is no longer a sacrament (Canon 1085, Sections 1 and 2).
Similarly, my parish priest is not “obligated” to offer me the body and blood of Christ if he is aware that I am unrepentantly supporting this nation's abortion “rights” (Canon 227, Canon 915).
Would the 43 million aborted unborn American children consider such an act of denial, born of love and done with great pain, to be in the service of a “strict and stingy” God?
JIM BASS, M.D.
Fruit Cove, Florida
Support for Bishop Sheridan
Regarding “Church-State Separation Group Asks IRS to Investigate Diocese” (June 13-19):
I find it interesting that those who claim to support separation of church and state are more than willing to interfere with the Church. If that group truly valued this separation, they would realize they have no business trying to tell Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Colo., how to shepherd his flock. Separation of church and state cannot be one-sided like this.
My prayers are with Bishop Sheridan, and I would like to have his address where I could send a donation. I think Catholics should support him and his decision by helping to compensate for those who are withdrawing money because he has chosen to follow the Gospel values instead of the world's values.
JANICE MCCOWN
Troy, Michigan
Elective Edge
I am amazed that seemingly intelligent Catholics can write with such authority on Catholic subjects and be so wrong. I refer to the letter of Mark Jameson titled “Communion Rights” (Letters, May 30-June 5).
He says “baptized Christians in good standing with the Church absolutely have the right to receive it [the Eucharist].” First off, any such right applies to a baptized Catholic. A baptized Christian (e.g., Baptist or Methodist) has that right only under certain extraordinary circumstances. This is common teaching of the magisterium and encoded in Canon 844. The writer is also wrong when he says his pastor “has an obligation to give me holy Communion.” Communion can and should be withheld when the serious sin of the recipient is publicly known by a large part of the community (Canon 915).
I personally believe that, where a public figure not only votes for such “hideous crimes” (Vatican II) as partial-birth abortion but also goes the extra mile to promote its legalization in extra-legislative meetings — and persists in such behavior despite admonition from the Church — then it is scandalous for him or her to receive Communion. Scandal demands reparation to the injured in the process for forgiveness. A public statement of a change of heart would be expected.
Having baptized many infants during my 32 years in the deaconate, I was surprised to learn that the baptismal ritual required me to announce to the baptized (or parents) at the end of the ceremony that the baptized has the right to hear the Gospel and receive the sacraments. I do not find such an instruction in my Ritual for Baptizing Infants. The book does expect me to announce the joyful expectation of receiving other sacraments, but expectation is not a right without qualification.
This matter of excluding from Communion is a complicated and judgmental decision in today's society. The responsibility of the bishop or pastor is great and worthy of our prayers. But I would take very seriously the words of St. Justin Martyr, a Father of the Church: “And this food is called among us [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.”
Does anyone really believe that Christ would tell a politician it is okay to sanction abortion in order to get elected? Would he not say, instead, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and leave your election in the hands of God”?
DEACON JIM AWALT
Baltimore
