WCR Letters to the Editor

God is permanent and unchangeable

Simply put, evolution justifies the sins of avarice and usury, and thus it is a major contributing factor to social injustice.

In all this confusion, it isn't surprising that subtle evolutionary misconceptions would creep into our modern Catholic thinking and reporting.

However, Father Diarmuid O'Murchu's theology, (WCR April 22), seems to have gone into the realm of an absurd blasphemy if he really believes that "God evolves with creation."

The central underlying theological doctrine of Judaism and Christianity, which has been derived from the revelation of God's most holy name "I Am Who Am," is deeply rooted in the conception of God's permanence and unchangeability.

Throughout the history of Christianity numerous Catholic scholars, saints, and doctors of the Church have confirmed this essential doctrine.

St. Augustine explains Plato's unique insight that God "really is, because he is unchangeable" (City of God, Book VIII, ch. 12), and he warns against the "ungodly" heretical philosophers and theologians who try "to make us join them in walking in circles" (Book XII, ch. 18).

St. Thomas Aquinas based his whole divine theology on the Aristotelian notion of God's permanence.

He starts his Summa with a profound philosophical analysis of basic terms, (such as time, change, continuity, eternity, etc.), and concludes that God does not alter because he is not in time.

Indeed, the first of his five famous proofs of God is based on the notion of change, and it says that there must be an unchangeable Prime Mover who changes all temporal and perishable things.

Various popes in the last 200 years have ratified this essential dogma, and the new catechism confirms such theology when in article 212 it elaborates on the statement that "God alone is," as it reflects on Psalm 102 and on the familiar James 1:17, which, incidentally, is also used in the Roman rite liturgy.

Father O'Murchu, not unlike most of us, is concerned about social justice, yet it must come to him as a shock in the form of a Gargantuan contradiction, that, (as the article concludes), even the perishable "just world" he yearns for, cannot be evolved, and that it must be willfully "created."

Peter Hala
Edmonton

Celebrate and preside mean different things

The title of this article is misleading. It leads one to think that if you don't or cannot preside at Mass, you can't celebrate. Are we not all, the baptized as well as the ordained, celebrants of the Eucharist, with one of the ordained presiding?

When I was pastor in Slave Lake, the leaders of the liturgy, before Mass started, would say, "Let us stand and welcome the celebrant."

Some time later, after several of us had taken a graduate course in pastoral and biblical theology, the leaders would say, "Let us stand and welcome the presider of our Eucharistic celebration."

Many in the congregation were led to understand their dignity and role in the Mass and what the Eucharistic prayers meant when the presider says: "we come to you, father... we honour the saints . . . we remember. . . .

Grant that we who are nourished . . ." we celebrate. . . ." The ordained priest, bishop or pope never says, "I celebrate". It's always we.

Neither should the presider be called the main celebrant. That would make all the rest of the baptized second-class celebrants.

The above-mentioned title should read: "Pope May No Longer Preside." Surely Pope John Paul will, in union with the whole People of God, keep on celebrating the Eucharist even if he can no longer preside.

Fr. Maurice Joly
Fort Macleod

Develop Catholic spiritual practices

Perhaps serious Catholics may experience Jesus in the Sacrament of Penance, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and, closer to home, Lectio Divina with the practice of contemplation.

It is sad that Catholics, as a whole, have not attempted to master their own faith traditions and practices; with the resultant desire to embark on shopping expeditions for techniques in a "I want it now" world.

Yoga is a Hindu religious practice many thousands of years old. Mother Teresa, who lived and died in India, experienced Jesus in the face of the other while performing the works of mercy.

Mary Bouz
Sundre

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