In Defense of AOL
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I would like to make a note about the Editor's Note at the end of the article Having it Out with James Fitzpatrick [Viewer Letters, Dec. 14]. I imagine you were trying to make a point about email received on Catholic Exchange vs. email received on AOL but I was slightly offended by the wording as both my husband and I are AOL employees and financial supporters of Catholic Exchange.
Please be aware that AOL does not send X-rated email to its members but rather tries everything in its power to keep this email from coming into AOL and passed on to members. Know that AOL does not accept any advertising for pornography.
Thank you for your time,
Joy Schwartz
Dear Mrs. Schwartz:
I'm very sorry to have given offense — certainly none was intended. Here's why I make the comment on the site:
Two weeks ago an associate and I were on a fundraising trip in the Philadelphia area. At one point we were sitting in the home of a faithful Catholic couple who were interested in possibly supporting Catholic Exchange and who use AOL email. When we sat in front of their computer to walk them through our site we were unexpectedly barraged by explicit X-rated enticements via email. Our hosts were terribly embarrassed by this. They said it happens frequently and there was nothing they could do about it.
This experience made an indelible impression on me and I have since begun pursuing the possibility of offering an ISP service to our users as another attempt to shield them from the pornography which is so pervasive on the Internet and so difficult to effectively filter.
It is good to hear that AOL does not accept advertising for pornography and is in fact making a good faith attempt to prevent e-mails like this from passing through to its members. This is one of the more serious problems of our time, I'm afraid, and I wish them well in their efforts to prevent these aberrations from occurring.
God bless and thank you for your support.
In Christ,
Tom Allen
Editor, President
Catholic Exchange
Talking with Muslims about Jesus Christ
Dear Catholic Exchange:
Hi! Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ now and forevermore!
I would like to bring Muslims to Christ Jesus and I am wondering if you have some pamphlets that are written for/geared especially to Muslims. How would you go about bringing a Muslim 1) to Jesus 2) to the Catholic Church? Any suggestions?
Your input is much appreciated. May the Lord bless you and yours.
Bye for now,
Christine
Dear Christine:
I'm afraid we don't have much in this department at present. We have a small team of people and simply have not had the manpower available to deal with issues of Islamic/Catholic interreligious dialogue. Our best suggestion would be to get the following books:
Answering Islam, Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993), and
Quran and the Bible in the Light of History and Science, William Campbell (Upper Darby, PA: Middle Eastern Resources, 1992).
Hope that helps!
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
The Catechism on Baptism
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I was just curious who answers these questions? [See Catholic Exchange’s Truth Tracts.] In particular, on the baptism part.
We have been wanting to baptize our son who is 2 1/2 and our deacon came to our home to do a baptism class first. He told us not to expect anything profound or magical to take place. That baptism is just a traditional ritual done that is mainly for parents to profess that they are going to bring their child up Catholic. We told him that we felt he should receive a grace from the Lord and he told us the only grace given would be from the parents as they teach the child–otherwise, nothing special.
We were upset and talked to our priest who agreed with the deacon. Also, he told us that since Vatican II infant baptism has not been as important any more so not to worry about it.
My husband and I are pretty upset over this. He is a cradle Catholic and I am in RCIA class trying to learn the religion. I was raised Protestant and this is all so confusing. I came across your site while doing a search and just read where a child DOES receive grace from God when he is baptized! Shouldn’t our priest and deacon have known this and upheld that? They really downplayed the whole baptism thing. Who wrote this answer because I want to show it to them but it doesn’t say who answered.
Thanks,
Shirley Garrity
Dear Shirley:
I wrote the answer. It is based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1262-1284, which describes the effects of baptism.
First, don't immediately attribute to false teaching what may be explicable in terms of bad communication. I note that your deacon warned against baptism having “magical” effects. Not knowing him, I am guessing it might be possible that he was concerned to head off the notion that baptism would produce a super saintly baby who doesn't fuss or do other things that normal babies do. If that was his purpose, then he was right. Baptism is grace, not magic. And, of course, a great deal of grace for your child will come through you.
However, from your description of the other things your priest and deacon said, this does not appear to be what they are saying. It appears, from your description, that they are either ignorant of or dismissive of the Church's teachings about the effects of the sacrament on the person receiving it and talking as though it's sort of a ritual pep talk for parents with “sacramental” effects that are purely psychological and aimed at giving you a bit of confidence.
The nice thing about being Catholic is that you can, when you are getting such hooey from people who ought to know better, go to the Magisterial Horse's Mouth—the Catechism of the Catholic Church–and find out what the real deal is. As the paragraphs cited above clearly show, baptism is not a ritual to strengthen Mommy and Daddy (though Mommy and Daddy will receive grace from God to help the person receiving the sacrament). Rather, in baptism, your child's original sin will be healed, he will become a new creature in Christ, he will be joined to the Body of Christ, and he will receive an indelible seal upon his soul which will mark him forever as Christ's.
Paradoxically, this incident has been providential and grace-filled for you and your son. In addition to all the graces your son receives in the sacrament, you shall indeed receive grace as well to parent your son (every parent does). Let the first effect of that grace be to teach you “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Your priest and deacon appear to have given you a bad fish. This does not mean you should never listen to your priest and deacon. But it does mean that you should learn to fish for yourselves as well–and that you should teach your son the same thing. To that end, I herewith append the web address of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Simply click on the title to see the Catechism online.
I also suggest you get a print copy of the Catechism. A great deal of confusion can be avoided by applying to it for information about what the Church actually teaches.
Hope this helps!
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
