by Carl E. Olson

(Catalyst 12/2004)

Two years ago I was engaged in an e-mail exchange with a Fundamentalist pastor, who wrote:

But as an effort to still save your soul, if indeed my concerns for you are true, may I urge you to reexamine the Mariolatry of the Church you have bought into. I will not badger you with the unscriptural practice of making Mary “the mother of God” or “the Queen of Heaven” which comes from Babylonish paganism not Christianity or Scripture.

It was typical Fundamentalist fare, but the man who penned it was no ordinary Fundamentalist. He was Dr. Tim LaHaye, one of the most influential Christians—Catholic or Protestant—in America over the past thirty years. A founding member of the Moral Majority, LaHaye is best known today as creator/co-author of the mega-selling Left Behind books, the most popular works of Christian fiction in history. Since 1995, when the first Left Behind novel appeared, the “end times” series (now twelve volumes strong and with two more coming) has sold some sixty million copies.

Since entering the Catholic Church in 1997, I’ve written over two dozen articles and a major book about the Left Behind theology propagated by LaHaye and many others through books, television, and radio. As a former believer in the “Rapture” and premillennial dispensationalism (the most common form of the Left Behind theology), I know how confusing this topic can be for Catholics. But I was—and still am—surprised by how many Catholics fail to see how biased against Catholicism are the Left Behind novels and companion volumes produced by LaHaye.

For example, one Catholic fan of the Left Behind books scoffed at my concerns about the novels. “You know,” he said, “they actually have the Pope raptured. So they cannot be anti-Catholic.” I encouraged him to read the books more closely since the passage he referred to, from the second book of the series, Tribulation Force, is actually an example of how the Catholic Faith is attacked in the Left Behind books:

“A lot of Catholics were confused, because while many remained, some had disappeared—including the new pope, who had been installed just a few months before the vanishings. He had stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide more with the ‘heresy’ of Martin Luther than with the historic orthodoxy they were used to.” (Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind [Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1995], p. 53.)

In other words, the new pope is secretly Raptured despite being Catholic because he embraces the views of Martin Luther and has therefore renounced Catholic teaching. So those Catholics who reject the Catholic Faith can be “saved” and Raptured, with the logical conclusion being that Catholics who are loyal to the Church are not “saved,” are not true Christians, and will not be Raptured.

The leading Catholic character, the American Cardinal Mathews, is a greedy, power-hungry, Biblically-illiterate egomaniac whose devious actions apparently result from his adherence to “normal” Catholic beliefs and practices (Tribulation Force, pp. 271-278). He becomes the new pope and the head of Enigma One World Faith, an evil, one-world religion. Taking the title Pontifex Maximus Peter, he declares war on anyone believing in the Bible. His anger is especially directed towards true Christians from “house churches, small groups that met all over the suburbs and throughout the state,” an obvious reference to Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants.

Cameron “Buck” Williams, “a senior staff writer for the prestigious newsmagazine Global Weekly” presses Cardinal Mathews for his explanation of the disappearance of millions from earth and his interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9:

“‘Now you see,’ the archbishop said, ‘this is precisely my point. People have been taking verses like that out of context for centuries and trying to build doctrine on them.’ ‘But there are other passages just like those,’ Buck said.” (Tribulation Force, p. 54-55.)

Afterwards Buck writes an article in which “he was able to work in the Scripture and the archbishop’s attempt to explain away the doctrine of grace.” In other words, Catholicism is a false religion based on works, not grace, and the Catholics who were Raptured were those who went against official Church teaching.

This reflects LaHaye’s beliefs in sola fide (salvation by “faith alone”) and sola scriptura (no authority except the Bible), two cornerstones of the Protestant Reformation. In Revelation Unveiled, his commentary on the final book of the Bible, LaHaye writes, “Rome’s false religion too often gives a false security that keeps people from seeking salvation by faith. Rome is also dangerous because some of her doctrines are pseudo-Christian. For example, she believes properly about the personal deity of Christ but errs in adding Babylonian mysticism in many forms and salvation by works” (Revelation Unveiled, p. 269). Anyone familiar with the early ecumenical councils will find this amusing, but Fundamentalists unfamiliar with Church history take LaHaye’s depiction of the Catholic Church as Gospel truth.

When a reader complained online that Tribulation Force was anti-Catholic, Left Behind co-author Jerry B. Jenkins vehemently insisted that the books are “not anti-Catholic” and that “almost every person in the book who was left behind was Protestant. Astute readers will understand where we’re coming from. True believers in Christ, regardless of their church ‘brand’ will be raptured” (Amazon.com, August 26, 1999). In June 2003 the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement condemning the Left Behind books and related materials as anti-Catholic. LaHaye responded by insisting that “our books are not anti-Catholic. In fact, we have many faithful Catholic readers and friends” (Religion News Service, June 26, 2003).

He added that the series is “not an attack on the Catholic church” and, according to a Chicago Tribune column (June 13, 2003), “said the bishops are ‘reading into these books something that’s not there.’ The books don’t suggest any particular theology, he said, but try to introduce people to a more personal relationship with Jesus.” In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times (June 6, 2003), LaHaye explains that the character of Cardinal Mathews is simply that: a character. “What [the bishops] don’t seem to realize,” he said, “is that every church has some renegade people in it, and we just picked one out of theirs.”

But in that same column I insist that LaHaye is “a rabid anti-Catholic.” Why? Because LaHaye “is convinced, and he teaches very clearly in his nonfiction books, that the Catholic Church is apostate, it is false, and it is not Christian.” He has established a lengthy and consistent pattern of harshly condemning the Catholic Church, attacking her beliefs, and using inflammatory language and factually baseless statements in the process.

LaHaye resorts to the sort of nativist attacks on Catholicism common in the United States during the 1800s, notably in the writings of Alexander Hislop, a Scottish pastor whose book The Two Babylons the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (originally written in 1853-1858) attempted to prove that every distinctive Catholic belief and practice is pagan in origin and Satanic in orientation. In Revelation Unveiled LaHaye writes that “the greatest book ever written on [Babylonian religion] is the masterpiece The Two Babylons . . . This book, containing quotations from 275 authors and to my knowledge never refuted, best describes the origin of religion in Babylon and its present-day function.” (p. 266). He summarizes Hislop’s main ideas: Catholicism is idolatrous, Satanic in origin, based on secrecy and fear, and filled with pagan doctrines and practices. He then proclaims that “[a]fter reading the above quotations, you may be inclined to think me anti-Catholic, but that isn’t exactly true; I am anti-false religion” (p. 269).

Yet it’s hard to deny LaHaye’s unreasonable (he never provides citations from actual Catholic documents) and even hysterical animosity towards Catholicism in light of his claims that:

• Roman Catholicism, “apostate Protestantism,” Hinduism, and Buddhism will form a system of “pagan ecumenism” and will facilitate the rise of the Antichrist during the Tribulation era (The Beginning of the End, [Tyndale, 1972, 1981],148-51).

• Hindus can become Catholic without renouncing any of their Hindu beliefs (The Beginning of the End, 151; Revelation Unveiled, p. 275).

• “All that inhibits the ecumenical movement today are the fundamental, Bible-believing Christians…. They are the group called ‘the Church’ that Christ is coming for … so-called Christ-endom is divided basically into two main groups, the apostates and the fundamentalists” (The Beginning of the End, 151-2).

• The Catholic Church is an apostate Church that has mixed paganism with Christianity, resulting in the “dark ages” and the existence of “Babylonian mysticism” (Revelation Unveiled, 65-68, 260-277; Are We Living in the End Times? [Tyndale, 1999], 171-176).

• “The Church of Rome denies the finished work of Christ but believes in a continuing sacrifice that produces such things as sacraments and praying for the dead, burning candles, and so forth. All of these were borrowed from mystery Babylon, the mother of all pagan customs and idolatry, none of which is taught in the New Testament” (Revelation Unveiled, 66-67).

• Catholics worship Mary, saints, and angels (Are We Living in the End Times?, 173).

• The Catholic Church, in large part due to Augustine, removed the Bible as the sole source of authority among Christians and “spiritualized” away the truths of Scripture, and kept the Bible from the common people (Are We Living in the End Times?, 174).

• The Catholic Church killed over forty million people during the “dark ages” when “Babylonian mysticism controlled the church” (Are We Living in the End Times?, 175).

The Left Behind books and their non-fiction companions are filled with poor writing, bad theology, and anti-Catholic bigotry. It’s best to leave them behind and rely on Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church when studying the end times—or anything else.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of IgnatiusInsight.com. His best-selling books Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”? and The Da Vinci Hoax are available from Ignatius Press (1-800-651-1531). Visit him at www.carl-olsen.com.

Pauline Magee-Egan

Psychology’s War on Religion, edited by Nicholas Cummings, et al. (Phoenix, Arizona: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen, 2009) Order online at www.zeigtucker.com or call 1-800-666-2211

The editors of this important volume have assembled the writings of various experts to comment on several religions and the impact of psychology’s stand on religious beliefs. The collection maintains that psychology has systematically attacked all religions, without exception.

In the introductory chapter, the editors offer an accurate account of the movement within the profession, as exhibited by the American Psychological Association (APA), and the way religious values and beliefs have been attacked. The statements made by the APA have been influential in the resignation of psychologists who practice their religion. The APA does not speak for all psychologists, and in recent years it has introduced outrageous positions when it comes to abortion and homosexuality. A supposedly professional organization has been enlisted in the anti-religious movement evident in our culture. Indeed, years ago I resigned from this once professional organization since their professed beliefs were directly antithetical to mine, and to my training as a Catholic psychologist.

This professional organization, controlled by leftists, lacks sensitivity towards its membership and the patients who are subjected to their anti-religious viewpoints. The chapter titled, “The Culture Wars and Psychology’s Alliance,” written by William T. O’Donohue, offers a great summary of the ways the profession has been politicized. Psychology, because it is a social science, requires sensitivity and objectivity, but too often it not only lacks understanding, it demonstrates a belligerence that typifies our culture.

In setting the stage for the very title of the book, the editors have emphasized that our culture today is in turmoil, especially with regards to ethics. Psychology has literally declared war on religion. They wisely point to the specific issues which are continually being fought: abortion; homosexuality; gay rights; the status of women; ethical absolutism versus ethical relativity; the definition of normative sexual behavior; the definition of mental health; bioethics/stem cell research; the death penalty; creationism, intelligent design and evolution. These issues are cause for concern because they affect everything from law to education.

Why the attack on religion? Logically, they maintain, if standards of morality are attacked, then we can live in a world which knows no barrier or parameters. We can throw out the golden rule, values, commandments and any laws which we don’t like. No wonder ethics is viewed with askance. Indeed, ethical relativism has crept into business and politics, contaminating our thinking. Such “erudite” thinking is exactly what is happening in our professions and particularly the psychology profession.

In the chapter on paradoxical relationships, Nicholas and Janet Cummings (father and daughter) illustrate the historical beginnings of the founders of psychology. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, we had G. Stanley Hall and William James, both of whom had deep spiritual roots. Together with Hugo Munsterberg, a physician who taught philosophy, they viewed religion as part of psychology. Those familiar with the history of psychology in the United States know that many graduate programs grew out of philosophy departments. Little was anticipated regarding the tremendous upheaval that was about to take place in the APA.

In the 1950s many Catholic psychologists felt that the divide between the professional organization, and what they ascribed to, was widening. Various schools of thought regarding psychoanalysis injected thoughts of abandoning religion and its tenets, finding them “infantile and neurotic.” It was around this time that the Reverend Father Bier, S.J. formed the American Catholic Psychological Association. Meetings were held at its  national conference on issues regarding values, ethics and religion. It was a safe haven for those of us who did not agree with many of the positions the APA was taking.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the APA moved to attack “faith-based” programs in clinical psychology. A subtle but effective movement was launched. Since then psychology as a social science has struggled to identify itself. Abandoning its philosophical and spiritual roots, and trying to represent itself as the scientific study of human beings, psychology has become a conflicted field of study. In fact, psychology has had an identity crisis and it is still persisting in its endeavors to emulate science. The key element here is that science deals with objective truth, whereas psychology deals with aspects of it.

There are several chapters on the conflict between religion and psychology. For example, homosexuality was eliminated as an official “psychiatric disorder” by the American Psychiatric Association in the 1970s. An informative chapter on the problem of religious gays written by Michael Lavin clearly wrestles with the problem of the dictates of the APA on homosexuality and the subsequent counseling and treatment of people who are inclined towards this behavior. The difference lies in the belief that homosexuality is a “behavioral” issue.

Transformational counseling has entered the field in the past few years. Not content with stating that homosexuality is not a disorder, the leftists have damned the idea of anyone who serves as a counselor who might support the transformation of a homosexual to switch to a heterosexual life. Lavin stresses that good counseling is predicated on sensitivity and respect for the religious beliefs of patients; the therapist should not impose his beliefs but rather respect the patient’s beliefs and help him in dealing with whatever conflicts that he may have. The Catholic Church recognizes that homosexuality exists but emphasizes the need for chastity in regulating one’s life: All human beings possess the free will to change their behavior. Other religions have different judgment calls but the essential thought is to recognize what part religion plays in one’s life and support a change in behavior if it is disrupting to the person.

The chapter reviewing the battle regarding sexuality by Mark Yarhouse is a marvelous treatise on the impact of policy throughout the psychological profession. The line has been drawn on anyone talking about abstinence; the counseling of post-abortion women; the discussion of alternatives to leading a “gay” lifestyle, etc. Even the discussion of child abuse is now called “adult-sex” relations. The policies made by working groups, or  “task forces,” within the APA and the American Psychiatric Association, evince an almost total neglect of religion and its impact on behavior. Furthermore, graduate and undergraduate students today are exposed to derogatory commentaries about religious beliefs. Some might even be denied entrance into a graduate program if an investigation suggests they are “too religious.” The pomposity and general bias of the left has invaded the ivy halls so much so that the normal candidate who belongs to an authentic religion feels alien to what is being taught.

A scholarly and serious treatment on the subject of “Judaism and Psychotherapy” by Dr. Isaschar Eshet introduces the reader to a contrast to what he refers to as two “world views,” i.e. the Jewish worldview and the worldview of psychotherapy. In Israel, he says, most of the psychotherapists belong to the secular leftist intellectual group. He then launches into a discussion of the basic beliefs of Judaism. To his credit, he emphasizes the need for mutual respect of the two worldviews. Dr. Eshet hopes that the “evolving psychotherapy can also provide one with tools to unravel hints from the divine worldview.”

In the chapter on the “War on Catholicism,” William Donohue of the Catholic League gives a very well researched synopsis of the history of psychology and the evolution of the distrust that it shows for Catholicism. Occasionally injecting his usual humor and insights, he points to the very people responsible for such chaos in the 1950s and 60s (which I well remember). He spares no one in his ridicule regarding the research that was done, misinterpreted and taken as solid truth, taking particular aim at the work of Maslow and Rogers. Unsuspecting priests and nuns welcomed the views of these two psychologists with open arms, much to the detriment of their religious orders (some no longer exist).

Fear not, however, because Donohue always sees the bright side and illustrates all the positives that are present in what the Catholic Church has effected in our present culture. The aid that is given to the sick, troubled and least among us is endless and reflective of the generosity of those who believe in our faith. This is well stated and worthy of note despite the trashing the Church receives on a daily basis; the author is well situated to see this happen every day.

The chapter on Protestantism, by Cummings and Cummings, shows that “one size fits none.” What they mean is that there is a “buffet” of different beliefs, tenets, and values among the various denominations. Disarray is evident, and liberal thought has been injected into all the different churches.

Subsequent chapters dealing with Mormonism which has been attacked by the APA as a religion, exposes the outright trashing of the beliefs which some 13 million people follow. The bigotry of the APA which is fully documented in this chapter is as provocative as the injustice is blatant. Dr. A. Dean Byrd does an admirable job with his research and fact finding here.

Subsequent chapters dealing with a thorough synopsis of Islam and Buddhism illustrates some interesting concepts.  Psychology has been kind to Islam perhaps out of political correctness. Islamic beliefs differ in terms of two perspectives, namely the fundamentalist and the extremist. Both viewed, psychology students may very well open up an interesting area for scholarly study in the future.

For the general reader who relishes information on all religions and their basic beliefs this book is invaluable. It is well organized and the contributors are obviously scholars in their respective fields. This is a “must read”!

Pauline Magee-Egan, Ph.D,   is a professor at the Department of Management, Tobin College of Business, St. John’s University. She is also a New York State certified psychologist.

Peter E. Dans

Christians in the Movies: A Century of Saints and Sinners by Peter E. Dans (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)

This book documents the changing portrayal of Christians in film from 1905 through 2008.  Films respectful of Christianity such as “Lilies of the Field,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “The Sound of Music,” and “A Man for All Seasons,” were made well into the 1960s. This changed to disparagement and outright ridicule around 1970. The principal reasons were the abolition of the Motion Picture Production Code (the Code was replaced in 1968 by a weaker Motion Picture Association of America film ratings system), the elimination of the Legion of Decency, and a radical change in American culture.

In 1922, reacting to complaints by predominantly Protestant groups about Hollywood sex and drug scandals as well as the proliferation of movie censorship boards, filmmakers established the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America with Will Hays, a Presbyterian, as director.  Hays’ efforts to reconcile disparate censorship criteria led to the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code aimed at maintaining good taste, especially when filming scenes that involved sex, violence, religion, and other sensitive subjects. The “Hays Code” required that “the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home should be upheld” and that no picture should glorify “crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin.” It also stated that “No film or episode should throw ridicule on any religious faith. Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains. Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.” Hays hired as his deputy the devout Catholic, Joseph I. Breen, who became the face of the Production Code Administration Office to the industry.

In 1933, partly in response to films flouting the Code, like “Sign of the Cross,” American bishops established the Catholic Legion of Decency. Because many Protestant and Jewish clergymen signed on, the name was changed to the National Legion of Decency in 1934. The Legion rated films from “acceptable for all” to “condemned” and wielded great influence because the economic clout of the large Catholic population could be harnessed through the extensive network of Catholic schools and churches. Breen and Legion director Martin Quigley were often consulted about scripts and final cuts in enforcing the Production Code.  Although many critics denigrate the Code as censorship, the inconvenient truth is that its enforcement coincided with “Hollywood’s Golden Age,” with 1939 recognized as the “Golden Year.”

In the 1940s and 1950s, Howard Hughes, Otto Preminger and others challenged the Code’s strictures. The importation of critically acclaimed, sexually explicit foreign films, which were not subject to the Code, added pressure to modify or abolish it. The official end came in the legal challenge to Dallas banning the French movie, “Viva Maria!”, starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. In April 1968, the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of filmmakers to show their films, but ordered the Motion Picture Industry to develop a self-policing system promptly, which it did.

In the mid-60s, the Legion of Decency was replaced by the National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures’ much more permissive advisory rating system.  At the same time, the decrees of Vatican II led to sweeping changes in distinctive practices, many of which were used as convenient shorthand for depicting Catholicism in films. These included the abandonment of the proscription against eating meat on Friday, the need to fast overnight before receiving Communion, the requirement that nuns wear distinctive habits, and the use of Latin in the Mass. These changes sent shock waves through Catholic circles, polarizing many believers. The next few decades saw a sharp drop in vocations to the religious life, the release of many priests and nuns from their vows, a decrease in attendance at Sunday Mass, and the marked diminution of regular confessions, which had also been a favorite staple in movies with Catholic themes. After Vatican II, catechetics and liturgies were watered down and an increasing number of those identifying themselves as Catholics began to reject Church teaching beginning with birth control, premarital sex, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and later in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research, assisted suicide, and, in rare instances, cloning.

Protestant and Jewish denominations attempting to hold on to orthodox dogma that codified right and wrong with regard to abortion, premarital sex, and homosexuality, also saw declines in membership. By the 1970s, the so-called “Me Generation,” began to turn more inward, placing more emphasis on self-actualization and self-fulfillment. As Americans became more affluent and secure, there seemed to be less of a need for regular Church attendance and practicing a faith whose God demanded behaviors that restricted lifestyle choices. This was replaced by widespread attitudes of cultural relativism and the philosophy of secular humanism.

This philosophy was reinforced by Supreme Court rulings beginning in the 1940s regarding various “church-state” issues.  The result is that, as Yale Law professor Stephen L. Carter noted in his 1993 book The Culture of Disbelief, a wall of separation has been erected between church and state such that believers are encouraged “to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith doesn’t matter.”  Indeed, the courts have increasingly become the principal venues for adjudicating contentious and complex moral issues. This has led to an escalation in the conflict between the orthodoxy of religious believers and that of secular non-believers as Princeton professor Robert George pointed out in his 1999 book The Clash of Orthodoxies.

That such a gulf in orthodoxies exists between filmmakers and their audiences was shown in a 1998 University of Texas survey of a representative sample of Hollywood writers, actors, producers, and executives in that only 2 to 3 percent attended religious services weekly compared to about 41 percent of the public at that time. This cultural disconnect was reflected in their movies and the reaction to “The Passion of the Christ” (2004).  Although many believers and nonbelievers were moved by the film, most critics seemed both incredulous and seemingly threatened by its broad popularity. However, that the film went on to earn over $700 million did not escape Hollywood’s notice.

Fundamentalist Christians have been almost uniformly portrayed negatively as charlatan preachers, unenlightened dupes, and mean-spirited hypocrites, the only saving grace being their appearance in relatively few films. Mainstream Protestant sects, once prevalent in movies, have virtually disappeared from the screen. Catholics turn out to be the most ubiquitous in film, both favorably early on and disparagingly after 1970. In part, this is due to Roman Catholicism being the largest Christian sect in America, and because of the Church’s role in the strict enforcement of the Hays Code and its adherence to politically incorrect dogma. Anti-Catholicism, which Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. called “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” persists. As Philip Jenkins describes in his 2003 book, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Respectable Prejudice, the animus against the Catholic Church is now most evident in academic circles and those media outlets which seek out dissident Catholics whenever reporting on controversial moral issues.

Ironically, though, many of the contemporary films that ridicule Catholicism most severely have been made by “cradle Catholics” who attended Catholic schools. These directors have either become “fallen-away Catholics” (or “recovering Catholics” as some prefer to be called) or “liberal” Catholics who reject much Catholic dogma. Prominent examples include Robert Altman, who aimed some of his sharpest barbs at Christianity in “M*A*S*H,” and Kevin Smith, who considers himself a devout Catholic while not buying into Church dogma on abortion, homosexuality, etc. His disdain for dogma and the institutional church permeated his 1999 film “Dogma.”

By contrast, the only unalloyed encomia Hollywood has recently bestowed on believers seem to be reserved for those who practice Eastern religions like Buddhism, as in the 1997 films “Kundun” and “Seven Years in Tibet,” or forms of New Age spirituality as in the 1996 film “Phenomenon” and the numerous “angel” films. The major distinction here is that unlike Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, they are more personal in nature and can be embraced without requiring any commitment to specific dogmas, especially those related to sexual and reproductive matters.

Why should Christians care about how film and the other media portray them? The simple answer is that feature films remain, as they have been since their inception, powerful tools for framing public opinion. Admittedly, Christians, including Catholics, may not have been as good as they were depicted in their glory days, but they are certainly nothing like the hateful stereotypes in today’s movies. In short, it’s time to restore balance. Constant negativity is not only detrimental to institutions and professions, but has a polarizing and corrosive effect on society.

My wish is that this book will stimulate readers to take another look at films they once enjoyed and to discover hidden gems that they have never seen before. I also hope it will encourage orthodox Christian believers who have stopped going to movies to get more involved in helping to reshape this important industry, which all agree has badly lost its way. As the Christopher movement points out, if one of us lights a candle, we can illuminate our space but if each of us does, we can illuminate the world.

Peter E. Dans is an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. The book can be ordered from Barnes & Noble by calling toll free (800) 843-2665 or it can be ordered online at www.barnesandnoble.com

Kenneth D. Whitehead

What Happened to Notre Dame? By Charles E. Rice. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009. Order online at www.staugustine.net or your favorite online bookseller.

Many people were shocked when the University of Notre Dame, long thought to be America’s premier Catholic university, in May, 2009, invited President Barack Obama to be its commencement speaker and to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. It was not the first time that Notre Dame had hosted a U.S. president, but since President Obama had come into office with such a pronounced and unapologetical pro-abortion stance—verified within the first few days of his administration when he quickly removed by executive order those obstacles to untrammeled abortion put in place by previous administrations—it was hard to understand how a Catholic university could single him out for special honors.

In 2004, in fact, the Catholic bishops of the United States had issued a statement on “Catholics in Political Life,” in which, among other things, the bishops had declared that:

The Catholic Community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.

Notre Dame’s honoring of President Obama was thus a direct contravention of the position that the Catholic bishops had expressly established on the question of honoring pro-abortion politicians. The bishop of the diocese in which Notre Dame is located, the Most Reverend John M. D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, pointedly declined to attend the university’s commencement and declared that Notre Dame had chosen “prestige over truth.”

In the controversy that blew up and lasted for several weeks after the announcement of Notre Dame’s invitation to the pro-abortion president, more than 80 American Catholic bishops publicly spoke out against it. This was an unprecedented public reaction by bishops, but then the university’s action was an unusually defiant and even crude and insulting rejection of the bishops’ responsibility to lay out and make clear what the proper reaction of Catholic institutions ought to be on one of the principal moral issues of the day. Equally unprecedented were the more than 350,000 signatures of Catholics who signed a petition protesting the university’s action and asking Notre Dame’s president, the Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., to rescind the invitation.

Thus, many Catholics were scandalized and, indeed, shocked that a Catholic university would turn out to have so little regard or respect for Catholic teaching on the very grave issue of legalized abortion in America—against which the Church’s opposition has been made so unmistakably clear in the numerous statements issued over many years by the bishops and the popes. Abortion is not just another neutral or indifferent or optional matter in the Catholic view.

According to Charles E. Rice, emeritus professor at the Notre Dame law school and the author of this new book which, ably and concisely, tells what did happen to Notre Dame, Catholics are right to be dismayed and scandalized by the university’s action. However, according to him, they should not have been shocked by it, or perhaps even surprised. For according to him, what happened to and at Notre Dame went back a very long time. He shows that Notre Dame “made a wrong turn four decades ago,” and has been acting on wrong principles—antithetical to authentic Catholic faith—ever since. Notre Dame, according to him, has not been a Catholic university in the true sense for quite a long time.

Professor Rice traces the university’s wrong turn back to something called the “Land O’Lakes Statement,” a manifesto issued by a group of Catholic academics and college presidents meeting in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin, back in 1967. This Statement was subscribed to (if not largely inspired by) the very well-known president of Notre Dame in those days, the Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. According to the Land O’Lakes Statement:

The Catholic university today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to and concern for academic excellence. To perform its teaching and research functions effectively, the Catholic university must have a true autonomy in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth, and indeed of survival, for Catholic universities, as for all universities.

In practice, this claim to “autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind,” amounted to a declaration of independence by the university from the authority of the Church. The Church was no longer seen as necessarily defining what was authentically “Catholic” and what was not. In no way did Notre Dame and the other Catholic colleges and universities that subscribed to the Land O’Lakes Statement cease to be subject to the rules and laws of the state, or of accrediting, licensing or of funding agencies and the like. It was just the Church’s rules that were effectively set aside. The Land O’Lakes Statement was very instrumental in the secularization of many Catholic institutions, beginning in the 1960s.

It was primarily to counter this pernicious secularization of Catholic higher education that prompted Pope John Paul II to issue his apostolic constitution on universities Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”) in 1990. Subsequently, the U.S. bishops issued their own “Application” of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for this country in order to try to modify or even reverse the secularization of so many Catholic colleges. However, the fact that Notre Dame nevertheless felt justified in honoring President Obama in defiance of the bishops’ policy indicated that the bishops still have a long way to go to restore the integrity of Catholic higher education.

In this book, author Charles E. Rice accurately and effectively chronicles some of the deleterious effects of this straying off the right path of authentic Catholicism on the part of Notre Dame (and many other Catholic institutions!). By declaring the teaching authority of the Church to be “external” to the university, as the Land O’Lakes Statement did, these institutions, in effect, set themselves up as competing moral authorities to the Church. Henceforth, the university would decide what was right and wrong according to its own criteria, regardless of the Church’s teaching.

Professor Rice discusses a number of cases where Notre Dame went off the moral tracks long before the Obama invitation. As early as the 1960s, for example, the university was holding conferences with such organizations as Planned Parenthood and the Population Council to examine whether there might not be an alternative “Catholic” position on birth control different from the traditional teaching which Pope Paul VI reaffirmed in 1968.

Later, in 1984, Notre Dame famously provided the platform for New York Governor Mario Cuomo to inform the world that Catholic politicians could be “personally opposed” to abortion while enabling and promoting it through the public offices held by them.

Then there was the inexplicable refusal of Notre Dame president Father John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., to come out against campus performances of the obscene play “The Vagina Monologues.” Professor Rice records a statement of Father Jenkins that no anti-Semitic play or speech would ever be permitted at Notre Dame since it would be “opposed to the values of a Catholic university.” Yet over a number of years Father Jenkins could never bring himself to affirm that this wretched play crudely exploiting women and depicting, yes, actual violence against them was even more opposed to those “values.”

The arguments of Father Jenkins aiming to justify the Obama invitation are no more convincing than his arguments justifying the performance of this obscene play on campus. They are embarrassing, in fact. One can only wonder how the trustees of Notre Dame could countenance such leadership as that of Father Jenkins. Professor Rice recounts the whole sad tale of the commencement fiasco in several brief but hard-hitting chapters. It is all here, not only the serial missteps of the university administration, but the admirable, dignified, and prayerful counter-steps, mostly led and inspired by students. The book thus fulfills the promise of its title in answering the question, in adequate and carefully documented detail, of what happened to and at Notre Dame.

In addition, the book contains a very informative Introduction by long-time Notre Dame Professor Alfred J. Freddoso throwing further light on the whole affair. It also reprints the inspiring talk to the Notre Dame Response Rally by Father Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.—showing, thankfully, that not all of the Holy Cross fathers on the campus are of the caliber of Father Jenkins!

Although Professor Charles E. Rice thus provides as lucid and cogent account of the whole Notre Dame/Obama affair as could be expected—and abundantly shows what happens when the Church’s teaching authority gets laid aside!—it still remains something of a mystery how America’s one-time premier Catholic university came to such a sorry pass. One tantalizing clue, however, perhaps lies in the reported statement of former ND president Father Theodore Hesburgh that before a university can be “Catholic,” it must first be a “university” as understood by the secular “modern world.” This was to get it exactly backwards: a university must first be in conformity with the Catholic Church as “the teacher of truth” (Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, 14) before it can be a true Catholic university.

Kenneth D. Whitehead’s latest book is Mass Misunderstandings: The Mixed Legacy of the Vatican II Liturgical Reforms (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Catholic League.

Want a gift of easy reading for a young guy this Christmas season? All Things Guy: A Guide to Becoming a Man that Matters by Teresa Tomeo, et al. might be just right. This short inspirational volume, the work of four committed Catholic women, asks such questions as, “Do you want to grow up to be a happy successful man?”, and, “Do you want to make something of yourself on earth and then, when your life is over, go to Heaven?”

The book is appropriate for Catholic boys aged 9 through 14. These are formative years, and in our society today, young guys need all the help they can get to keep on the straight and narrow. The temptations are many, and the right answers are harder to find.

All Things Guy contains chapters on such issues as dignity, virtue, vocations, family and friends, body, etc. Importantly, it does not talk down to readers, but neither does it equivocate on critical issues. It also has a chapter on “Strong Catholic Men,” that features a short look at Tom Monaghan, Bill Donohue and Father Frank Pavone.

Donohue says of this work, “Never preachy, the book should have wide appeal to Catholic young men trying to sort out contemporary issues in a confused culture.”

To order a copy go to www.BezalelBooks.com or e-mail the publishing house atBezalelBooks@gmail.com. To call, phone (248) 917-3865.

Dinesh D’Souza

Life After Death: The Evidence By Dinesh D’Souza. Regnery Publishing, 2009. Order online at www.regnery.com or your favorite bookseller.

Many cultures and religions affirm life after death but only one asserts that someone actually died and returned to life. This claim is made exclusively by Christianity. No one says of Moses or Muhammad that after their deaths they were seen again in the flesh. So if the Christian claim is true, it shows not only the possibility of life after death but also legitimizes the specifically Christian understanding of the afterlife. So let’s for the purpose of argument treat the resurrection as an historical claim no different from any other historical claim.

Here are the four historical facts that have to be accounted for. First, Christ was tried by his enemies, convicted, and crucified to death. Second, shortly after his burial, Christ’s tomb was found to be empty. Third, many of the disciples, but also one or two skeptics, claimed to have seen Christ alive in the flesh, and interacted with him, following his death. Fourth, inspired by the belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection, the disciples initiated a movement that, despite persecutions and martyrdom, converted millions of people to a new way of life based on Christ’s example and his teachings. These facts are in the mainstream of modern historical scholarship. They are known with the same degree of reliability as other facts that are taken for granted about the ancient world: say the fact that Socrates taught in the marketplace of Athens, or the fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or the fact that Alexander the Great won the battle of Gaugamela.

In history, we take the facts that we do know and we try to make sense of them. Historian N.T. Wright, in a mammoth study, argues that the hypothesis that Christ actually rose from the dead may sound intuitively implausible to many but it has great explanatory power. In other words, if it happened, it makes sense of all the other facts listed above. It would help us to understand why the tomb was empty, why the disciples thought they saw Christ after his death, and why this astounding realization motivated them to evangelism and strengthened them to face persecutions and martyrdom without renouncing their new convictions. Wright goes much further, though, suggesting not merely that resurrection is a sufficient hypothesis but also that it is a necessary one. What he means is that no alternative hypothesis can explain the given facts with anything approaching the same degree of plausibility. Since skeptics have been advancing alternative theories for two thousand years, this is quite a claim. So let’s briefly review some of those alternative theories.

Perhaps the most popular one, at least since the Enlightenment, is that the resurrection is a myth; the disciples made it up. “The myth of the resurrection,” writes Corliss Lamont in The Illusion of Immortality, “is just the kind of fable that might be expected to arise in a primitive, pre-scientific society like that of the ancient Hebrews.” The disciples expected that their leader would return, so they concocted the story that they saw him alive after his death.

While this is the view perhaps most widely held by skeptics today, it is actually the weakest attempt to make sense of the facts. First, as Wright shows, the idea that dead people don’t come back to life is not an Enlightenment discovery. The ancient Hebrews knew that as well as we do. Second, Christ’s Jewish followers did not expect him to return to life. Jews believed in bodily resurrection but not until the end of the world. The disciples were utterly amazed when they saw Christ in the flesh, and some refused at first to believe it. Third, it is one thing to make up a story and another thing to be willing to endure persecution unto death for it. Why would the disciples be ready to die for something they knew to be a lie?

A second theory is that the disciples stole the body. This theory is a very old one; in fact, it was advanced by Christ’s Jewish opponents to account for the empty tomb. Jewish polemics against Christianity for two centuries continued to emphasize this theme. The theory, however, has several obstacles. Christ’s tomb was barred by a stone and guarded by Roman soldiers. How could the disciples have gotten by the guards?  Moreover, if the disciples stole the body, they would know for a fact that Christ wasn’t raised from the dead. We come back to the problem with the previous theory: why would the disciples’ mourning turn to gladness? Why would they embark on a worldwide campaign of conversion? Why would they refuse to recant their beliefs on pain of death?

What really requires explanation here is not how the disciples stole the body but why Christ’s critics would so tenaciously advance such an implausible explanation. The answer seems obvious: they had to account for the fact that the tomb was empty. The empty tomb is significant because we know that Christ’s followers were proclaiming his resurrection in Jerusalem almost immediately following his death. If they were simply making this up, it would be easy to disprove their claims by producing Christ’s corpse. This didn’t happen, and the obvious explanation is that neither the Jews nor the Romans could do this.

A third theory holds that Christ didn’t really die but was merely in a swoon or trance. In the tomb he revived, made his getaway, and then showed up before the disciples. There are two main problems with this theory. For starters, it presumes that Roman soldiers didn’t know how to kill people.  Typically crucifixion is death by asphyxiation, and if Roman soldiers weren’t sure the victim was dead they would break his legs. Christ’s legs were not broken, evidently because the soldiers were convinced he was dead. So the idea of Christ reviving in the tomb is far-fetched.

But even if he did, he would have been barely conscious, at the point of death. Imagine a man in this condition rolling back the stone, eluding the guards, and then presenting himself to his followers. Their expected reaction would be, get this man to a doctor! But this is not what happened. The disciples, disconsolate over Christ’s death, did not claim to experience a wounded man in a swoon; they claimed to see a man who had triumphed over death and was fully returned to life and health. Because of its complete incongruity with the historical evidence, even historian David Strauss, a noted skeptic about the resurrection, rejected the swoon theory.

Finally there is the hypothesis of the hallucinating disciples. We find this view defended in Gerd Ludemann’s The Resurrection of Jesus and also in the work of John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar. Ludemann says that in the same manner that today people claim to have “visions” of the Virgin Mary, the disciples then had “visions” of a Christ returned from the dead. According to Ludemann, these visions proved contagious and “led to more visions” and eventually just about everyone was reporting Jesus sightings. The hallucination theory has gained credibility in recent years with the emergence of a substantial number of people who claim to have seen UFOs, or Elvis returned to life.

But the great problem with the hallucination hypothesis is that hallucinations are almost always private. Except in very rare cases, more than one person does not have the same hallucination. If ten people report seeing something very unlikely, it is not convincing to say they are simply dreaming or imagining things, because you then have to account for why they are all having the same dream or imagining the same thing. Historian Gary Habermas asks us to envision a group of people whose ship has sunk and who are floating around the sea in a raft. Suddenly one man points to the horizon and says, “I see a ship.” Sure, he may be hallucinating, but then no one else is going to see the same ship. Now if the others on the raft also see it, forget about the hallucination theory, it’s time to start yelling for help because there really is a ship out there.

Apply this reasoning to Elvis sightings and it’s obvious that if several normal people say they saw Elvis in Las Vegas, they most likely didn’t make it up. Probably they saw one of the many Elvis impersonators who regularly perform in night clubs and casinos. In the same way, when people report witnessing a UFO they are almost certainly not hallucinating; rather, they did see something in the sky but didn’t know what it was. The problem in most cases isn’t hallucination but misidentification.

Now Christ is reported to have appeared many times to the disciples. Paul notes that on one occasion he appeared to more than 500 people. Many of these people were reportedly alive and in a position to dispute the veracity of Paul’s account. James, who was a skeptic about Christ’s ministry, reportedly became convinced Christ was the messiah only after seeing his resurrected body; so too the apostle Thomas, the famous doubter, was convinced of the resurrection only after he touched the wounds of Jesus. Paul himself was by his own account a persecutor of Christians until Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Never in history have so many diverse individuals, from different backgrounds and on different occasions, reported the same hallucination. Nor can hallucinations account for the empty tomb, or for why the Jews and Romans could settle the whole controversy by producing Jesus’ body.

The remarkable conclusion is that for all their veneer of sophistication, none of the alternative theories provides a remotely satisfactory account of the historical data before us. The resurrection hypothesis, however fanciful it appears at the outset, turns out upon examination to provide the best available explanation. There is no attempt here to definitely prove the resurrection. One of the most striking discoveries of historical research is how little we know for certain about the past. What I am trying to show is that the resurrection cannot be cavalierly dismissed as religious myth.  Rather, based on scholarly standards uniformly applied, the resurrection survives scrutiny and deserves to be regarded as an historical event.

Dinesh D’Souza is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and an author of many books. He serves on the board of advisors of the Catholic League.

Robert P. Lockwood

Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal by Gregory Erlandson and Matthew Bunson. Our Sunday Visitor, 2010. Available at www.osv.com

The title doesn’t make you want to read it—Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis. The daily carpet-bombing of the Church in media has given us more than our fill on the topic and many of us would be reluctant to go through the rack and rope of a book-length treatment.

But that would be a mistake. This is an important book that is neither a whitewash of the Church or a tabloid rehash.

Instead, the authors offer a serious study of the extent of sexual abuse in the Church, how the Church responded and, more specifically, how Pope Benedict XVI has responded.

The book, published by Our Sunday Visitor, is written by Gregory Erlandson (president of Our Sunday Visitor) and Matthew Bunson (general editor of the annual Catholic Almanac and editor of the bi-monthly magazine, The Catholic Answer).

The book provides a solid response to the over-the-top sensationalism that has created more heat than light in understanding sexual abuse of minors yesterday and today. While they don’t pretend to answer why sexual abuse happened within the Church, they make it clear that it did happen, the Church as a whole did not always respond properly in the past, and that it is vital that reform and renewal take place to ensure that it does not happen again.

They make certain strong points in regard to the sensationalism that surrounds the issue today.

There is the not-so-thinly-veiled accusation in media, particularly the New York Times, that Joseph Ratzinger—as a German archbishop, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and as Pope Benedict XVI—was at best negligent and, at worst, attempted to cover-up and protect abusive priests.

The authors make the definitive case that this is a “defamation of one of the Church officials who has understood clearly the scale of the crisis of sexual abuse and who has labored to end it and to reform the Church in such a way that it can never happen again.”

At the same time, they point to the extensive progress—virtually ignored in media—which the Church has made to address the issue, particularly in the U.S.

The Church in the United States provides a “road map to reconciliation, reform and authentic justice,” through a dynamic program to ensure a safe environment for young people that is a model not only for the Church universal, but for any entity, secular or religious.

The authors cite four factors that created the sexual abuse crisis within the Church. The first factor is the scale of the crisis. While the numbers are small, they are universal with cases of abuse in Catholic environments taking place everywhere from Brazil to Newfoundland.

Second, the modern crisis became very public. In the past, sexual abuse of children was generally kept private. Whether the environment of abuse was in the home, public schools, or the Church, cases rarely became public because neither the family nor the institutions wanted it public.

Third, for whatever reason civic authorities themselves stayed out of the picture. It was a crime, but one that was rarely prosecuted.

Finally, the authors argue, many in Church leadership simply refused to believe “that such a profound evil” could exist within the Church.

From the mid-1980s on, particularly in the United States, cases of abuse and what was perceived as a cover-up by Church leadership began to go public. Public cases in Louisiana and Fall River, Massachusetts, involving two priests who were serial abusers, led the Church in the U.S. to a series of reforms codified in 1992.

The 1992 reforms, built on practices adopted before hand in dioceses such as Pittsburgh under Bishop Donald W. Wuerl, called for immediate reporting of accusations to civil authorities, quick removal of priests from active ministry for credible allegations, assistance to the victims and their families, and transparency in responding to the issue publicly.

The flaw in the 1992 guidelines, the authors contend, was that they had no force of law. Dioceses could pick or choose what to and what not to implement.

In 2002 the abuse crisis exploded in the Archdiocese of Boston when the Boston Globe won access to Church documents involving an abuse case. The documents showed Church authorities moving a serial abuser from one parish to another and aggressive reporting soon exposed the names of other abusive priests.

The scandal then went national as many dioceses faced cases of abuse—many from decades past—going public. Lawsuits were filed and attorneys for victims were providing the ammunition reporters needed to build an ugly case against the Church.

The bishops responded by expanding the 1992 norms with additional stress on the screening of anyone in the Church involved with young people, as well as mandatory “safe environment” programs in every parish and an independent audit to verify Church practices.

The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” along with the Essential Norms that put canonical teeth behind the legislation were approved by the U.S. bishops in Dallas in 2002.

The Holy See, with the support of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, quickly approved the Essential Norms which became law for the Church in the U.S.

Outside the U.S., however, the reaction of the Church was often much slower even as the abuse crisis went worldwide. The authors outline cases that exploded in Australia, Canada, Germany and Austria with devastating impact.

Today’s crisis—in the sense that the crisis has once again dominated media recently in America —began with the release of two in-depth government reports in May and November of 2009 of abuse that took place in Ireland.

The first report document decades of abuse inflicted on children in residential institutions run by 15 religious orders. The second report, focusing on the Archdiocese of Dublin, found “a systematic willingness on the part of Catholic leaders to ignore terrible cases of abuse and sexual misconduct—in the hope, mainly, of protecting the good name of the Church.”

Coverage of the scandal in Ireland resulted in the same kind of media scrutiny elsewhere. A case in the Archdiocese of Munich led to media charges that Cardinal Ratzinger had been involved in keeping an abusive priest in active ministry. A case from the 1970s in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee— involving a priest who molested deaf children—lead to charges that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger had impeded the priest being removed from ministry.

In both cases, it became clear—after the headlines—that Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up or keeping a priest from being removed. However, media had begun to take aim at Pope Benedict, which is where the story stands today.

The authors are at pains to refute the charges against Pope Benedict. Not only do they point to his innocence, but they make the strong case that the rooting out of abusive priests, and bishops who hid abuse, and safeguarding against future misconduct, are part of an ongoing reform and renewal that the pope has been shaping and directing.

They note that immediately after his election, Pope Benedict proceeded on the case of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a worldwide and influential religious order. Accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians of his order, he was removed from ministry.

The book details the pope’s ongoing campaign to rid the Church of what he calls “filth,” and to put in place universally a screening system to make certain that abusers will never be ordained again. At the same time, he has accepted resignations one after the other of bishops who failed to address the issue of abuse within their dioceses.

“Pope Benedict, both as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as pope, has played a historically pivotal role in the Vatican’s response to the crisis: From leading the CDF’s efforts before and after 2001 in reviewing the case files of suspect priests to his own efforts to address the issue forthrightly as pope, Benedict has grown into a leadership role just when the Church has most needed him,” the authors conclude.

“He has met with victims. He has rebuked the abuser priests. He has challenged the bishops. He has overseen a series of procedural reforms that have allowed the Church to respond more quickly when it is necessary to restrict, suspend, or even laicize a priest,” they state. Pope Benedict has made it clear, the authors state, that “avoiding scandal” cannot be the response by the Church to claims of abuse and that victims and their families must be the Church’s deep pastoral concern.

The authors acknowledge that the Church has been unfairly singled-out for condemnation and that “there are many agendas at work in the current round of controversies.” They rightly dismiss any implication that abuse exists uniquely in the Church, or that practices such as celibacy, or the doctrine of a male-only clergy, are contributing factors to abuse.

They also dismiss both the secular and religious agendas that exploit the abuse of young people for their own causes, particularly agendas that are at odds with the moral teachings of the Church.

But they clearly see that the sexual abuse crisis has presented the Church with the challenge of continuous reform and renewal.

The sexual abuse crisis, they write, requires “accountability that the pope has already established (and) must be continued.” Those who have abused children must be held accountable in both civil and Church law. And this accountability must continue to be extended to Church leadership.

The authors write that the Vatican should also make certain that the norms and policies established in the United States, and England as well, should be principles implemented universally.

The review and screening that has been established in the Church of the United States for anyone involved in dealing with children should also become an example for any entity, government, or institution that deals with children.

Finally, they state, “the renewal of the priesthood and religious life must continue, with the ultimate aim of renewing the entire People of God in their relationship with Christ.” This is a strong, courageous and necessary book.

Bob Lockwood is a member of the Catholic League’s Board of Advisors.

CHILDREN OF TERROR
Inge Auerbacher and Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride

This book tells the unforgettable stories of two young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, who are caught in a web of terror during World War II.

Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride is a member of the Catholic League and is very active in Polish-Catholic issues.

Bill Donohue said of the book: “Most Holocaust survivors are no longer with us, and that is why this volume is so important. It is a moving testimony by two courageous women, one Catholic and one Jewish, about their youthful ordeals at the hands of the Nazis. They succeed in ways even the most astute historian cannot—they literally capture history and bring it to life. It is sure to touch all those who read it.”

It is available at Amazon.com for $12.95.

THESE STONE WALLS

Father Gordon J. MacRae is no stranger to the members of the Catholic League, but his blog site may need some introduction. MacRae, who convincingly maintains his innocence for a crime he did not commit, writes from a prison in Concord, New Hampshire. His blog can be found at www.TheseStoneWalls.com; pointedly, he subtitles his blog, “Musings from Prison of a Priest Falsely Accused.”

MacRae provides the reader with a wealth of information about Catholic issues, as well as material surrounding his ordeal. Bill Donohue continues to correspond with him and encourages league members to visit his site.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT,
SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND SOCIAL POLICY

This two-volume encyclopedia, which covers more than 800 topics from over 300 contributors, is a “comprehensive introduction to the Catholic vision of society, social relations, and the human being.” These volumes appeal to individuals seeking a “clear and accurate introduction to Catholic social thought and a Catholic-informed social science and social policy.”

These invaluable reference volumes belong in every college and university library and in the home of every Catholic researcher.

Authors Stephen Krason and Joseph Varacalli serve on the Catholic League’s Board of Advisors. The encyclopedia is available at Amazon.com.