While I was in the Roman Catholic System for seven years, and even after, there were many things around me that were not only unfamiliar, but also distressing. The local Catholic newspaper, for example, carried articles by a Father Wehage that definitely spoke to the party line on modernist Catholic thought. He once took on I, the Moral Majority, of Jerry Falwell fame.

I considered myself, by then, more on Jerry’s side than on the side of liberal Catholicism, of which this paper was a tool, so I sent this reply:

Dear editor,

I am responding to Father Wehage’s article, “Count me out of the moral majority.” I want you to count on me.

No, not the political organization; not the Baptist superstructure…

But I do think there are still a lot of things that are clearly right and clearly wrong. They are right and wrong because God the Holy Spirit inspired his Son, His apostles and his Church through the centuries to SAY they are right and wrong.

Many who write for your article delight in “bubble bursting,” so I’ll try to pop one myself: it’s simply that what took 1,900 years of inspiration to form cannot be swept away by the vain imaginations of modern theologians. . Adultery is still adultery. Homosexuality is still homosexuality. Drunkenness is still classed with these as a serious sin. Abortion is still murder. Sin is still wrong. Justice is still correct. And the path to that Justice is STILL the daily encounter with the One who is just.

As long as the Americans continue to cash in on this justice, God will save it from the Russians, the Iranians, and anyone else who comes along the way. But when America stops caring about “goodness,” morality, it will stop caring. The story is explicit.

And the Christians were better in the minority? What about the coming Kingdom of God when the knowledge of the Lord fills the whole earth, and “all shall know me, from the least to the greatest”? Talk about a “moral majority”!

The really valid criticism of fundamentalist preaching is not that it is narrow, or that it is “dangerous,” or that it is “right-wing,” or that certain immoral men are involved in it, or that it offers simple answers to difficult problems. problems. The problem is that preaching justice has often become SELFEUR’s proclamation of justice. I don’t think most “moral majority” people’s principles can be argued against, but their spirit leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s hackneyed… but we must hate sin and love sinners. I think many Falwellites hate both. And many modern theologians love both. It’s hard to say which is the greater evil… In short, I believe that our generation is hungry for simple answers, has been fed too much theological rubbish that has only led to confusion, and that when individuals hear and accept the Good News of Jesus…join a worldwide community of believers who, far from being a minority, will one day encompass the entire earth and the heavens as well…

Some of the letters continued to be published, others received personal responses from the editor. Some lively exchanges began. Even at the time of the search, God was using me to plant some seeds. Time was far from lost!

Even after my separation from Rome, for a while I felt better about Catholic schools than public ones. Then my oldest daughter started having some of the same conflicts that I had experienced. The reports of the priestly teachings were becoming quite disturbing, and again I had to respond. More than once. Here is a sample of a correspondence I sent to my daughter’s EUR religion teacher priest.

Cheers,

I trust this letter finds you well and in good Christmas spirits.

I introduce my comments with this personal note. I want to make it clear throughout the following pages that I have no desire to cause pain, to insult, to attack. I have no knowledge of your personal life and if I did, I would have to compare it with mine… there is no doubt that I would lose that kind of confrontation.

No, my concern in putting all this on paper has to do with the commonly accepted teachings (today) that you continue to uphold, things that we’ve discussed before, almost pleasantly, but lately have become offensive again.

My argument is not with classical Romanism. My girls are taught separately about certain Marian doctrines, etc. I do not need to mention that, nor the fact that for seven years I resided among the Catholic people, sometimes not altogether strange. The things I couldn’t refute, I tried to stay silent about…

But there were, and are, certain issues that seem beyond the need for constant reproof. There are some things that are fixed, established, on which we build, or if we don’t build, we shipwreck. One of these is the trustworthiness of the Word of God. Through seven years of attacks on my faith, I could never shy away from that fact, although I, too, was the subject of much ridicule and rejection.

But again, Romanism is not the source of these new teachings. In fact, both the Councils and the Popes have condemned those malicious teachers of the past who dared to manipulate the Holy Scriptures. Or, to put it in more Catholic terms, that he dared to alter the ESTABLISHED INTERPRETATION of those writings by the Church. Interpretations, you will agree, that were quite conservative, quite literal. Origen’s school notwithstanding, the Catholic group was to religion what the John Birch Society was to politics.

Many millions of people were killed in those dark days, I’ll give you that.

Protestants later tried to catch up to this orthodoxy and slaughter (but never did). During all the brutality, there were a few things that shone quite clearly, the main one being that the authority of the Church INMUEBLES and its Word INMUEBLES are not being questioned.

Well now you do. And the more you do, the higher your star rises. It makes serious seekers question the ancient claims of Catholicism, questions that I have regularly offered myself and my daughters, with, I believe, appropriate answers:

1) Is the Catholic Church really changing?

2) Is she really the guardian of revealed truth and its only interpreter?

3) If so, can these interpretations ever change?

Even my brief history sketch above answers those questions. Either he speaks with authority about the whole truth, or about none. If she is so willing to compromise in some areas, she won’t listen to me in others.

But other questions arise, not so easy to answer:

1) Why does this world organization intend to change its face so much as to hide some of its original beauties and strengths?

2) Why has faith been traded for intellectual groping?

3) Why does he offend thousands with his new doctrines, to save a few compromisers who will never reach full faith in this way?

In this last question I refer to your (representative) comment that justifies your teaching of the (still unproven) theory of evolution. You said you wanted to prepare these poor darlings (in my words) for the “real world” and the impact they will find on their faith.

I ask you, who is preparing you for the shock of unbelief within the walls of the Church?…

Honestly, Mike, it’s sick to the bone to keep listening to the drip, drip, drip of disbelief coming out of that classroom. First is those early chapters of Genesis. Then the rest of Genesis and Exodus…

Surely you must be aware of the ULTIMATE source of unbelief and the question, “Did God really say that?” On the right, the Garden of Eden. Every time a priest or pastor cites that idea, he just has the Father of Lies to thank.

…I don’t believe in miracles and in the Word of God because my church says that I should or should; I have not followed any man’s choice of what is Divine and what is not. They simply told me that the Bible is true… I read it, I met the Author, I was filled with Him… and I KNOW THAT THE BOOK IS TRUE.

And every time I read it again, it makes more “sense,” though not always to my intellect.

YOU believe in the resurrection, don’t you? Certainly not because of his intellect! Either by faith in his church, or faith in God. My faith, which is in him, applies in that way to the WHOLE STORY.

…by denying God’s miracles, evolutionists have created some of their own! No evolutionist has adequately explained the jump from inanimate to animate. And that “leap” is not happening now. A MIRACLE

..what about the evolution of the family (species) to another family. It certainly isn’t happening now. A MIRACLE

..and the passage from the simple to the complex, a complete violation of the second law of thermodynamics. A MIRACLE

I prefer the miracles of the Bible. Much easier to believe…

As for the weird creations coming out of your classroom… You have time and time again, by explaining the miraculous, CREATED a whole new set of problems for God to overcome. Actually, he’s in enough trouble to be believed, Mike. I suggest you leave enough alone, and let the Holy Spirit speak through the Word AS IS…

…Mike, what you’re doing is serious business. And I think without correction, it could seriously be labeled BAD. please listen to me,

To be honest,

Robert Faulkner