Gonzaga University: K of C discriminatory, denied right to form student organization

CWR reports (April 5, 2013) that Jesuit school denies Knights student group status because members must be Catholic.

Well, there are Jesuit universities, and there are Catholic universities ... and one can't even be too sure of them anymore. The best education is that gotten on your own no matter where you get your union card.

[Hat tip to JM]

Look! Obama's returning 5% of his salary!

He's one of us!!! He's making common cause with federal workers who may have to make a similar paycut because of that nasty bourgeois Republican sequestration (that was only incidentally initiated by President Obama). In fact, the President is a true proletariat, a comrade!

But wait, there's more! There's his incessant golfing with Wall Street buddies, his vacation of the month club, and, well ... THIS PIECE from Richard Cohen at the PostPartisan (April 4, 2013):

What’s the difference between $789,674 and $769, 674? Will the kids not go to camp? Is Hawaii out of the question for next summer? ...


President Barack Obama drives a golf cart with Robert Wolf, former chairman of UBS AG’s Americas unit,
at Mink Meadows Golf Club in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
... The president was apparently responding to the symbolism of him living like a pasha while asking others to sacrifice. I understand. But his taking a wee haircut on his salary is just a PR stunt from the White House that’s more insulting than it is empathetic.

Let's face it: the President of the people, of transparency and hope and change, has become the first presidential winner of the Nobel Peace Prize with his own kill list, living in some ways outside or above the law. He and his wife are living as emperor and empress, Michelle with something like 40 ladies in waiting, while Calvin Coolidge had a milk cow on the White House lawn. Put that in your bong pipe and smoke it, Berry.

Oh, but I forget, Michelle calls herself a "busy [virtually] single mother"! (see below):

Inter-faith relations with the Church of Satan

Mr. Hugh Moore, Executive Director of the St. Laphatdis Foundation (www.laphadisfoundation.net) in Chicago announced today 4/1/2004 8:41:00 PM at a press conference the discovery of a previously unreleased version of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II document on inter-faith relations. The document outlines efforts by the council to reach some level of ecumenical understanding with the Church of Satan. In Germany, an ecumenical Cardinal who prefered to go unnamed gave ghostly praise to the new document, calling it "a breakthrough in the Catholic Church's journey toward fully reconciling herself with the many gifts that those who reject Christ bring to our cultural heritage."

###

NOSTRA AETATE (Part II): Declaration on the relation of the Church to Satan

In this age of ours, when men are are drawing more closely together and the bonds of friendship between different peoples are being strengthened, the Church examines with still greater care the relation which she has with Satan.

When God created the angels, He appointed Lucifer the "anointed Cherub" over paradise (Ezek 28:14). Since "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29), it follows that, by virtue of his original office, Satan shall forever enjoy a special place and dignity before God. Men always ought to show him respect therefore. Not even the Archangel Michael dared accuse him of wrongdoing (Jude 8-9).

The Apostle James reminds us that Satan still possesses the virtue of faith, something that not even all men possess (see James 2:19; cf. 2 Thess 3:2). In fact, it was not Peter or any of the Apostles who first recognized and confessed Jesus' identity, but Satan and his demons (Mt 4:1ff.; 8:29; Mk 1:24). Satan has therefore retained a deep religious sense. This is especially apparent in his efforts to establish religious institutions all around the world through which men have been invited to explore the divine mystery of that One "who is in all" (Eph 4:6) and "who would have all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1Tim 2:4)

Sounding the depths of the mystery which is the Church, this Council remembers the spiritual ties which link the people of the New Covenant to Satan. This link is most poingnantly observed in Satan's angelic nature. The Church of Christ acknowledges that in God's plan of salvation the beginning of her faith and election is to be found in the angels who were the first of all God's rational creatures (cf. Job 38:7). She also professes that in the resurrection all Christ's faithful shall become "as the angels." (Mt 22:30).

Many of the early Fathers, including Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St.Maximus the Confessor, Didymus the Blind and Evagrius Ponticus, speculated that Satan would one day be restored to his original place in Heaven.

Ought the Church to share in this hope? Perhaps not, but does it not at least strike a resonant chord deep within the human spirit?

The Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy about Satan. She has high regard for his nature, office, dignity and faith. Although she differswith him on many points of doctrine, nevertheless he often relects a ray of that truth which enlightens all God's creatures. Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found within the person of Satan as well as his social and religious life and culture.

###

For more information, see www.laphadisfoundation.net

[Hat tip to L.S. I trust no one here is so thick as to take this post seriously!]

Humility proportioned to each station in life

An excellent article over at Unam Sanctam Catholicam, "Humility and Station in Life" -- well worth reading.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

1.4 million French march against gay ‘marriage’;police tear gas crowd, children

Pope to review Vatican bureaucracy and scandal-ridden bank?

Now that would be a nice first step. A nice second would be cleaning house of the lavender rat-infested bureaucracy itself. Remember that 300-page report in a red binder that Benedict XVI left under lock and key for the next pope to deal with before retiring?

In any case Reuters reports: "Pope Francis to review Vatican bureaucracy, scandal-ridden bank" (The Times of India, April 2, 2013)

Catholic seminary rector beaten to death in India

Murder described as 'brutal, terrible and senseless'

Nirmala Carvalho, "Bangalore, seminary rector murdered on Easter" (AsiaNews.it, April 2, 2013). The attackers killed Fr. K.J. Thomas hitting him in the face and head with a brick. Motive and identity of the killers still unknown. Archbishop of Bangalore "brutal and senseless murder, this is a great loss for us all." The funeral will be held in Ootacamund, his native diocese.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) - Dozens of priests, seminarians and lay Catholics celebrated a mass in memory of Fr. K.J. Thomas this morning, the rector of the seminary in Bangalore (Karnataka) murdered yesterday morning at dawn. Meanwhile, the police continue to investigate a murder described as "brutal, terrible and senseless" by Msgr. Bernard Moras, Archbishop of Bangalore, speaking to AsiaNews. In the coming hours the priest's body will be transported in Ootacamund, his native diocese, where the funeral will take place. The local bishop will communicate the date as soon as it has been decided.

[Hat tip to New Oxford Review]

Cantalamessa: "the residues of ceremonials" must be "knocked down"

This is really the story of two myths; but first, the one referenced by Candalamessa here: It is the one referenced also by von Balthasar in his famous title made popular by a textbook used in many seminary classes, Razing the Bastions: On the Church in This Age, which views the Church of the past as having erected barriers between clergy and laity making the Church a colossal failure. (Anyone who believes that should check what Joseph Pearce says about the "burgeoning Catholic revival" and "unprecedented heyday of notable conversions" in the generations preceding Vatican II.)


In any case, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, preached in the Vatican Basilica on Good Friday what was formally a homily but what Rorate Caeli calls truly "a panegyric to the new pontiff with an embedded program of great ambition." The post is entitled "Cantalamessa's Panegyric: 'a new time is opening for the Church', 'partitions, staircases, rooms and closets' and 'the residues of ceremonials' must be 'knocked down'" (Rorate Caeli, April 1, 2013).

Here are the key excerpts (emphasis added by RC):

We know what the impediments are that can restrain the messenger: dividing walls, starting with those that separate the various Christian churches from one another, the excess of bureaucracy, the residue of past ceremonials, laws and disputes, now only debris....

As happens with certain old buildings. Over the centuries, to adapt to the needs of the moment, they become filled with partitions, staircases, rooms and closets. The time comes when we realize that all these adjustments no longer meet the current needs, but rather are an obstacle, so we must have the courage to knock them down and return the building to the simplicity and linearity of its origins. This was the mission that was received one day by a man who prayed before the Crucifix of San Damiano: "Go, Francis, and repair my Church"....

May the Holy Spirit, in this moment in which a new time is opening for the Church, full of hope, reawaken in men who are at the window the expectancy of the message, and in the messengers the will to make it reach them, even at the cost of their life.

In short, the message is that we must heed the call of the Holy Spirit, and knock down the residues of traditional ceremonials that stand in the way of the Gospel.

This is a very inviting and common-sensical to many today, particularly those in the Evangelical Catholic community and those in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. What counts is the "spirit" of the law, not the "letter." The forms of liturgy, memorized 'set' prayers, Q & A (Baltimore) catechism styles all strike them as rigid, empty, lifeless "forms" that should, at best, be viewed as something like "training wheels" for mere beginners who haven't yet learned to fly.

(Here I can't help remembering Peter Kreeft's story about how he came to the rectory and told the Irish priest, while in grad school, that he wanted to convert, and the priest asked, "Who's the girl?" When Kreeft persisted with serious theological questions from the Summa of St. Thomas, the good priest handed him a copy of an elementary catechism entitled, Fr. Smith Instructs Jackson, and told him: "Walk before you fly, son. Walk before you fly!" But this, of course, is indeed another story.)

As to this first myth about knocking down traditions and razing bastions, however, Sandro Magister recently recalled, as noted in Rorate Caeli, one possible response that may be made:

In the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new pope, imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.

But it is not for this that the saint of Assisi lived. In the dream of Pope Innocent III painted by Giotto, Francis is not demolishing the Church, but carrying it on his shoulders. And it is the Church of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, at that time recently restored and decorated lavishly, but made ugly by the sins of its men, who had to be purified. It was a few followers of Francis who fell into spiritualism and heresy.

The second myth is referenced somewhere by Peter Kreeft, but I think comes originally from G. K. Chersterton who once said "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up." That, too, is a kind of common sense, at least to many people it would be so. It is elaborated upon in a book by Kreeft entitled The Best Things in Life, one of his playful dialogues between an imaginary Socrates and imaginary contemporary characters. But here again, it's hard to say where the ideas originate. Others out there write in a similar voice these days, as does Bruce Herman in the following quote:

Taboos fence in a particular experience -- and what is fenced in also fences other things out. Case in point: sexuality. The fence around sexuality is there to protect something that is very vulnerable and precious. If you knock the fence down, you no longer have the sense of preciousness, and eventually all sensitivity is lost.

I have addressed this issue before and some time ago in connection with litugical ceremonials ("'Making it Real' - Part II: The Sacrament of the Altar," Musings, March 9, 2007). The point would be, essentially, that these forms that hedge about the sacred mysteries, far from being "empty forms" or "senseless taboos," or "mere letters of the law" that serve to impede evangelization, in fact serve to preserve and protect that which is most precious and central to the heart of the Catholic Faith, apart from which the living faith of the people would wither and die.

There is another writer who puts the two myths in still other terms. The writer is Thomas Howard. The book is An Antique Drum, which was re-published by Ignatius Press under the unfortunate title of Chance, or the Dance? The first myth is that nothing means anything. In this instance, forms, rituals, gestures, vestments -- all these things are essentially meaningless externals in themselves, the operative word being meaningless. The second myth is that everything means something. In this instance, the altar boys bowing their faces to the floor during the Confiteor, the faithful receiving the sacrificial victim on their tongue rather than taking Him in their fingers, genuflecting at the et incarnatus est in the Credo and at the verbum caro factum est in the Last Gospel -- all of these things point beyond themselves, such that they are tiny instances of the way things are in the universe as a whole. It's always the little things.

I don't know that I can prove or disprove one or the other of these two myths. I can certainly testify to the existence of these two competing myths in the Catholic world today. Readers will have to put two-and-two together for themselves and see what makes sense from their vantage points. Certainly I believe in the Holy Ghost. Certainly I believe also in the Magisterium. I do not see them as working at cross purposes. Never have.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Douthat on the importance of Church cleaning house

As a reader remarked to me recently, a couple of the sanest pieces written about Pope Francis amid the recent cacophony of conflicting voices may be found, of all places, on the Op Ed page of the New York Times.

The most relevant piece at the time of this posting is Ross Douthat's article, "Lifting the Shadow of Scandal" (New York Times, March 18, 2013). Douthat writes:

There has been so much enthusiasm around the public style of Pope Francis — who has been populist, self-effacing and unscripted in his first few days as pontiff — and so much eagerness from so many quarters to see him as the reformer that the Catholic Church needs, that I felt like a bit of a downer accentuating the negative in my Sunday column, and emphasizing all the moral credibility that still needs to be rebuilt. But if personal holiness and seriousness of faith were sufficient qualities in a Roman pontiff, the last ten years would not have been a period of crisis in Catholicism, and the shadow of the sex abuse crisis would be fully lifted from the church. And it’s especially important, at the outset of a new pontificate, to understand the precise nature of that shadow, because at this point it’s no longer really about priestly sex abuse itself. Rather, it’s about a church that has cleaned house effectively and set up impressive structures of accountability everywhere except at the most prominent levels of the hierarchy.

Here are two names whose cases richly illustrate that problem. First: Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, one of the cardinal electors who just cast their votes in Rome — and among the worst of the worst when it comes to prominent hierarchs who kept predator priests in circulation while protecting them from prosecution....

Second: Angelo Sodano, formerly the Vatican’s Secretary of State under John Paul II, now Dean of the College of Cardinals. Sodano is alleged to have intervened on behalf of two prominent churchmen accused of sexual crimes — protecting Hans Hermann Groer, the former archbishop of Vienna, from canonical proceedings related to charges of sex abuse in the mid-1990s, and then protecting Father Marcel Maciel, the drug-addicted, seminarian-molesting bigamist who ran the Legionaries of Christ, from a church investigation until 2006, when the newly-elevated Pope Benedict finally barred Maciel from ministry....

* * * * * * *

[W]hile I can appreciate the qualities in Pope Francis that so many people have found immediately attractive, I would trade all the humble mannerisms and charming gestures for the promise that the Mahonys and Sodanos of the church would be consigned, once and for all, to lives of penitence and silence.

* * * * * * *
There are other names and cases I could cite, but Mahony and Sodano are particularly high-profile figures, and thus particularly representative of the unfinished business that Benedict’s papacy left behind.... [T]aking more punitive steps [than allowing age-mandated resignation to take its course] would have required Benedict to serve as a kind of “one-man Supreme Court” within the church — not the pope’s normal role, the mythology of papal power notwithstanding, and one that he clearly shied away from claiming.

But extraordinary crises call for extraordinary steps, and the choice to shy away from them was a fateful one: The absence of real accountability within the hierarchy helps explains why Benedict never earned sufficient credit for the many things he did right on sex abuse, and why the church as a whole is still struggling to put the era of scandal behind it. It ensured that the sex abuse crisis would recede only very gradually, that the closure that many ordinary Catholics want to feel would remain elusive, and that the crimes of the past would keep intruding, with every public appearance by a compromised cardinal, into an otherwise much-improved present.

If real closure is to come, if the sex abuse era is to be firmly ended rather than ever-so-slowly left behind, the beginning of this papacy is probably the church’s last, best opportunity. And so while I can appreciate the qualities in Pope Francis that so many people have found immediately attractive, I would trade all the humble mannerisms and charming gestures for the promise that the Mahonys and Sodanos of the church would be consigned, once and for all, to lives of penitence and silence.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Happy Caesar Chavez Day

Well, that's what Google wants to make of March 31st, which would have been Chavez's 86th birthday. That's fine for what it is.

It's not something that gets me all bent out of shape, because I recognize that those at the levers of power in this country and probably about half of our populace is no longer Christian in any substantial sense of the word. In fact, ours has been a post-Christian country for some decades now, and I've gotten "over" that fact long ago.

But this particular day of this particular year is the commemoration of the resurrection of the Creator of the world and King of the universe, whether anyone recognizes it or not. Happy Easter everyone!

Extraordinary community news

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (March 31, 2013):

Religion and Art – Part 2 of 5

We continue our reprint of excerpts from an essay entitled Religion and Art by Fr. James Bellord, originally published in the 1910 book, A Pulpit Commentary on Catholic Teaching. The lessons contained are as relevant today as when they were first published.

The Church of God is beautiful. “Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is no spot in thee” (Cant. iv, 7). She is so, as being one of the chief of God’s works, His special dwelling, and the manifestation of His perfections to men. Her doctrines are beautiful. The mysteries of Religion, the perfections of God, the life of Jesus Christ, the glory of His blessed Mother, the sacred Scriptures, have been the continual delight of thousands. The solemnities and ceremonies of divine worship in the Catholic Church, how impressive they are for their stateliness and beauty! Those who have come out of curiosity or hostility have often felt as if they had seen a glimpse of heaven. Whether splendid or poor, whether celebrated under the dome of the noblest Church in Christendom, or in a wooden hut, or a cavern beneath the ground, the worship of the Church is always stately. She cannot be frigid or lifeless on the one hand, or grotesque and fanatical on the other. Her action, like that of God, is always beautiful.

The Catholic religion does far more than any other to elevate and ennoble its followers’ characters and beautify their lives. Among the simple, the poor, the suffering, in remote corners of the world, among an industrious and Christian peasantry, there is found a spirit of contentment, courtesy, faith, patience, purity and fervor, which go to make up the most lovely of spectacles. Religion is the only antidote to that sordid selfishness, meanness, cruelty and lust, which stain our civilization with such unloveliness and produce such hideous results. It is being discovered that the creation of wealth degrades the workers, that mere knowledge and industry cannot elevate them, and that the sight of artistic and beautiful things is necessary to nourish the imagination and bring light into their lives. Of old the Catholic Church supplied this need of the mind with its sculptured cathedrals, its pictured glass, its wealth of statuary and painting, its histories of the saints, its festivals and bright processions, pulpit eloquence, and moving strains of music. The Reformation in some lands swept all this clean away, condemned it for the very reason which is its great merit, that its vividness and splendor appealed so much to the artistic sense and gratified the imagination. Time has brought its revenge. Legal holidays, popular concerts, and galleries of art, are an attempt, all too tardy, to supply the toiler with some few crumbs of the banquet of beauty which the Church of old dispensed abundantly to all.

I must quote in substance the words of a distinguished non-Catholic author on this point: “One method by which Christianity has labored to soften the characters of men has been through the imagination. Our imaginations affect our moral character, and, in the case of the poor especially, the cultivation of this part of our nature is of inestimable importance. Rooted to a single spot, excluded from most of the interests that animate the minds of other men, condemned to constant and plodding labor, their whole natures would have been hopelessly contracted, were there no sphere in which their imaginations could expand. Religion is the one romance of the poor. It alone extends the narrow horizon of their thoughts, supplies the images of their dreams, allures them to the supersensual and ideal. … It is the peculiarity of the Christian types that, while they have fascinated the imagination, they have also purified the heart.” He then recalls some of the externals of Catholic worship and concludes, “More than any spoken eloquence, more than any dogmatic teaching, they transform and subdue his character” (Lecky).


As Religion is so closely connected with uncreated Beauty and with the Beautiful in most of its forms, so it has been the chief agent in originating and inspiring Art. Faith has supplied noble images to the mind, and breadth and dignity to the characters of men, and these qualities have expressed themselves outwardly in architecture, painting, poetry, music, etc. From these arts, first employed in the service of Religion, all modern Art has sprung. Painting, decoration and sculpture began in the Roman catacombs with the endeavor to express Christian hope in symbols on the martyr’s tomb, and Christian reverence around the Altar of the Holy Sacrifice; and they were brought to perfection by the need of representing the doctrines of religion on the walls of Churches for the instruction of the faithful. The requirements of a new class of buildings for religious purposes created the glorious architecture of the Middle Ages, more living and progressive than the massive Egyptian, the stern Doric, and the elegant Corinthian; more capable of yielding in its details to the varying fancy of each nationality; more capable of development on many different lines, ranging from rude massiveness to fair delicacy, but always marked by truth and perfect taste. Musical notation was invented by Pope St. Gregory the Great, and later the simple but exquisite hymns of the liturgy were one by one composed.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 04/01 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Easter Monday)
• Tue. 04/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Easter Tuesday)
• Sun. 04/07 3:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Divine Mercy Sunday/Low Sunday) – Confessions start at 2:00 PM, Chaplet of Divine Mercy at 3:00 PM, followed by Holy Mass

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat (Detroit) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for March 31, 2013. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

Bernstein & Zimermann

Edith Schaeffer, RIP

Edith Schaeffer, wife of the late Evangelical apologist Francis A. Schaeffer and co-founder of L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, died today (Holy Saturday) at the age of 98. A prolific author in her own right, she was also a beloved matriarch of L'Abri Fellowship and leader of various Bible study groups, as well as a conference speaker around the world.

During her last years, she had been cared for reportedly by her daughter Debbie and her son-in-law Udo Middelmann, in whose home I had the honor of spending a year between my sophomore and junior years of college long ago.

Together with her late husband Francis, Edith influenced many lives through L'Abri Fellowship, including those of Dr. Eduardo Echeverria and my own at Sacred Heart Major Seminary whose years at L'Abri nearly overlapped back in the 1970s.

Born in Wenzhou, China as the daughter of missionaries to China, like yours truly, she had an international vision of the task of the church in the world.

She will be buried in Rochester, MN, where, sometime later, a public memorial service will be held.

A message from the L'Abri Staff on the passing of Edith Schaeffer may be found HERE on The Aquila Report on the website of the Reformed Theological Seminary (March 30, 2013).

Her son, Franky A. Schaeffer has written "A Tribute to My Evangelical Leader Mom-- Edith Schaeffer RIP" (The Huffington Post [There's a backstory on that], March 30, 2013). Franky includes a bibliography of his mother's works.

Into the long silence and loneliness of Good Friday night and Holy Saturday

Fr. Z on what Pope Francis is really up to

"What is Pope Francis really saying?" (WDTPRS, March 28, 2013). Fr. Z. writes:

Here is what I think Pope Francis is up to.

In this explanation I am not necessarily endorsing specific things that he is doing (washing the feet of females in a prison) or not doing (refusing the mozzetta, etc.).

... Before liberals and traditionalists both have a spittle-flecked nutty, each for their own reasons, try to figure out what he is trying to do.

Firstly, we are not succeeding in evangelizing. We are going backwards, globally....

In the wealthy west, the Church is often perceived (and it is so very often portrayed) as not being compassionate. The Church doesn’t care about women in crisis pregnancies (and therefore we don’t condone abortion or contraception because we are not “compassionate”. The Church doesn’t care about the divorced and remarried (because we don’t admit them to Holy Communion and therefore we are not “compassionate”).

I think what Pope Francis is up to is trying to project, re-project, is an image of the Church as compassionate.

... I’ll wager that, as a Jesuit, Francis doesn’t care about liturgy very much. He is just not into – one whit – either what traditional liturgy types or what liturgical liberals want....

Francis wants priests to talk to people and find out what they need and get involved in their daily struggles. Liturgy, for Francis, seems to be involved precisely in that. Do I think Francis may be missing huge points in this approach? Sure, right now I do. But I am leaving the jury out.

I don’t have to 100% embrace what Francis is doing even as I struggle to see and understand what I [think he] is up to.

This post raises all sorts of good talking points. Too many for Good Friday night. One that comes to mind however, is that the chief problem with our "not succeeding in evangelizing" is not so much our lack of good public relations icons to put a compassionate spin on the Catholic public image, so much as a failure to evangelize. Witness the total collapse of Catholic missions over the last half-century.

What would it require for us to begin evangelizing in earnest? Changed lives, souls converted to our Lord and Lady through the heart of Christ's Church. Cleaning house. Letting go all those whom our former Pope Benedict called "professional Catholics," those sacramentalized pagans who inhabit administrative positions in the Church with no shred of personal faith, along with DRE's, Catholic university and seminary professors who dissent from Church teaching and exhibit no personal enthusiasm for the propagation of The Catholic Faith or salvation of souls.

If hearts were converted to the Catholic Faith, compassion would follow and there would be little need for public relations undertakings for shows of compassion. On the other hand, there is little guarantee that shows of compassion will necessarily yield a harvest of Catholic Faith.