Letters to the Editor: July-August 2024

Shut Up, Hippies

Please cancel my subscription. I can’t take it anymore.

I’ve spent most of my life listening to stories of the glory days of the 1960s — and now, even in the NOR. I’m guessing the average age of your writers and editors is 75. Some issues back, a guy wrote of his travels on the Hippie Trail to Marrakesh and how great it was. Amazingly, he wasn’t kidding! And then, in the May issue, a guy tells us of the greatness of Jack Kerouac, who said he was Catholic while drunk out of his mind and acting the idiot and boor on national television. He’s the founder of the hippies! Of the thousands of good Catholic authors and thinkers he could tell us about, this guy can’t get over his love affair with that incompetent clown and buffoon. As if we’re supposed to waste our time with On the Road. What’s next, the greatness of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg?

For me? No. No more hippies. You have destroyed enough. You’re the most wasteful, degenerate, and self-absorbed generation we’ve ever seen. Instead of doing penance and trying to shut up for a change, we have to hear more of your blather.

I had small hope for the NOR when you got rid of David Mills. One more column in which he praises his favorite rabbi would have spurred this cancelation letter years ago.

If I thought you could change, I’d suggest you rethink your purpose in the Church. Is it to provide consolation for aging hippies? Things have changed. The younger Catholics are on an entirely different level — that is, much higher and better. But I don’t think you can or will change. So, as with all the older Boomers, I look forward to the day when the NOR just retires. Or not. It doesn’t matter because I won’t know what you’re up to.

William R. Basile

Rochester, New York

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

First, it’s necessary to correct some misperceptions. Neither I nor the NOR’s associate editor, Barbara E. Rose, are old enough to have been hippies. We’re Gen X’ers, thank you very much. The youngest editor on staff, Magdalena Moreno, is a Millennial. We have one Baby Boomer, Elena Vree, and she was never a hippie. Our writers cover all age ranges, from the so-called Greatest Generation to Generation Y (or the Millennial Generation).

The “guy” who wrote about his experiences on the Great Hippie Trail (April and May 2023) has a name. It’s Thomas Basil. In case you missed the point, the adventure he had in 1976 laid the seeds for his eventual conversion to Catholicism. Or is that a bunch of baloney, Mr. Basile, because Basil is now associated in your mind with degenerate hippies?

If you were a more careful reader, you would recall that Basil was careful in his articles to distance himself from what he described as “drug-fueled” hippies who often “wandered about stoned and oblivious” in dangerous circumstances in foreign countries. (N.B.: Basil makes no mention of Marrakesh.)

The “guy” who wrote about Jack Kerouac also has a name. It’s James K. Hanna. Rather than extolling Kerouac’s “greatness,” Hanna spends most of his guest column describing Kerouac’s personal shortcomings — his alcoholism, most prominently. When addressing his writing style, Hanna simply notes that, despite his disorderly personal life, Kerouac “weaves order, tenderness, and piety” — and “Catholic symbolism” — into one of his early novels. Yet you call Kerouac an incompetent clown, as if he were no good at his craft.

Yes, there are “thousands of good Catholic authors and thinkers,” as you say, and the NOR likely has discussed nearly all of them. Like it or not, Kerouac, too, was a Catholic author. Why shouldn’t he get some honest coverage?

Yes, Kerouac was a fallen man. We can’t all be saints. But he did not consider himself the “founder of the hippies.” As Hanna recounts, Kerouac emphatically rejected that assertion.

To demand, as you do, that an entire group of people “shut up” is extreme. Can nothing good come from an entire generation? Even old hippies may repent and avail themselves of the compassion of Christ. Not even they are beyond redemption, should they seek it. And when they do, we should celebrate, as happens in Heaven, where there is “more joy” over “one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Lk. 15:7).

I would like to believe, as you do, that the younger generation of Catholics is “better” — nobody was “higher” than the hippies! — but that’s not only too broad a generalization, it’s too boastful an assertion, as it would seem to include me. I will neither condemn nor praise any generation of people. That is for Christ alone to do. Only He can read the hearts of men.

Enough with the Arrogant Triumphalism

Barbara E. Rose’s review of Thomas Storck’s The Prosperity Gospel: How Greed and Bad Philosophy Distorted Christ’s Teaching (May) suggests that Storck continues the theme running through many articles in the NOR that everything bad is derived from Protestantism. As one of the NOR’s (likely very few) Protestant subscribers, I found it ironic that Storck, according to Mrs. Rose, “often returns to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s infamous statement” from Planned Parenthood v. Casey “as a fitting summary of American radical individualism” without mentioning (at least not in the review) that Kennedy is a Catholic. And, oddly, the contrasting quotation pointing out that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” comes from John Adams, a Unitarian.

Rose’s review indicates that Storck sees the Reformation as the point at which avarice was no longer regarded as a sin. This is nonsense. The seduction of riches is not a Protestant problem but a human problem. The Old Testament warns against it (cf. Eccl. 5:10-13; Deut. 6:10-12). Every Protestant church of which I have been a member has recognized the Prosperity Gospel as a perversion of Christ’s teaching.

Protestant cultures in Britain, the United States, and northern Europe gave rise to the economic systems that created the prosperity we enjoy, but Catholics as well as Protestants and non-Christians have been seduced by it. Returning our society to a truly Christian worldview, if it is to be accomplished, would be advanced by more mutual understanding and less arrogant triumphalism.

Preston R. Simpson, M.D.

Plano, Texas

THOMAS STORCK REPLIES:

Preston R. Simpson is not happy with Barbara E. Rose’s review of my book The Prosperity Gospel. But what he really objects to is not the review but my book itself. Hence my reply.

First, a point of agreement. Dr. Simpson writes, “The seduction of riches is not a Protestant problem but a human problem.” Of course, as regards the fact that greed is part of our legacy from the sin of our first parents, this is true. In my book I write, “On one level, the disordered desire for riches is present in the heart of every person. Hence the harsh warnings about the pursuit of riches in Holy Scripture…. In this respect, Americans are neither worse nor better than others. We all share equally in the effects of original sin.”

Examining the matter more carefully, we encounter another point. Msgr. John Tracy Ellis expressed it in his 1955 address “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life”: “From the time when the Duc de Liancourt traveled through the states along the eastern seaboard in the 1790’s and wrote one of the earliest books by a foreigner on the new Republic, to the essays of recent observers like Evelyn Waugh, few visitors from abroad have neglected to comment on the American attachment to material goods and the desire to make a fortune as dominant characteristics of our society.”

What are we to make of this charge? Should the fact that it offends the American amour propre lead us to reject it angrily? I don’t think so. From where does this “American attachment to material goods and the desire to make a fortune” come? Not from Catholics, who played no important role in forming the culture of the English-speaking colonies.

I originally wanted to title my book Seedbed of the Prosperity Gospel to indicate the fertile cultural soil that has given rise to such monstrosities as the Prosperity Gospel. As I discuss in my book, the United States is the only major Western nation that has no collective historical memory of being Catholic. Hence, we were at the mercy of tendencies that originally arose in Europe but were tempered by a lingering Catholic sensibility. But not here, where both Calvinistic Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism fused into an odd mixture that created our national culture.

Simpson also criticizes me for failing to note that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom I cite more than once for his deplorable statement about creating our own reality, is a Catholic. Sad but true. But I’m sure most NOR readers are familiar with the legions of unfaithful Catholics who populate our national and even ecclesiastical life. As to the quote from John Adams, although Simpson cannot be blamed for not knowing this, the quote nowhere appears in my book.

At the end of his letter, strangely enough, Simpson appears to give away the show. He writes, “Protestant cultures in Britain, the United States, and northern Europe gave rise to the economic systems that created the prosperity we enjoy, but Catholics as well as Protestants and non-Christians have been seduced by it.” That’s pretty much the exact point of my book! My only disagreement would be that what we call prosperity is very often a fake appearance of prosperity. Otherwise, I would want to place this statement on the dust jacket of my book as an endorsement of it.

Standardization by Low Standards

In his article “Junkspace: The Empty Slogans of Our Politicized Linguistic Regime” (May), Randall B. Smith looks closely at the state of public discourse and basic civility in our contemporary culture. He writes, “Discussions in the public square have become more like a children’s mud fight than the rational discourse America’s founders hoped would characterize our civic life.” He goes on to say, “Most of what passes for political discourse is the verbal equivalent of a WWE SmackDown.” Today’s “emotionally charged” debates over such topics as taxes, abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and the many important life issues are “less debates than dueling attempts to emotionally manipulate listeners.” Add to this sloganeering, often mistaken for argumentation, with words now “little more than avatars: ephemeral entities to be manipulated in the pursuit of power.” And, as George Orwell said, “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.”

As I read Smith’s article, I was reminded of an address G.K. Chesterton delivered in the Great Hall of the University of London in 1927 titled “Culture and the Coming Peril.” Some of the most threatening perils at the time were Bolshevism, socialism, anarchy, and economic instability. Chesterton, however, said the coming peril “is something that is coming of itself, more or less independently…. I suppose that the simplest name for it is Vulgarity, a flattening, a repetition, a staleness, lack of dignity and distinction — ultimately, standardization by a low standard.” Chesterton’s talk was met with a standing ovation.

Chesterton was not only prescient but prophetic. What Dr. Smith describes is a culture that has become vulgar — in language, entertainment, politics, the arts, and even religion — and guided by standardized low standards.

What was happening at the beginning of the 20th century was alarming to those able to perceive the “coming peril.” T.S. Eliot, a contemporary of Chesterton, saw the same steady decline. His major poems, such as “The Wasteland” (1922), “The Hollow Men” (1923), and “Ash Wednesday” (1930), paint bleak images of the emptiness in men’s souls. In “Choruses from The Rock” (1934), Eliot explores the theme of the loss of vitality, nobility, and human dignity. He writes, “It seems that something has happened that has never happened before…. Men have left God, not for other gods, they say, but for no god.” To which the chorus responds, “Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep…. / Where the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed and men have forgotten / All gods except Usury, Lust, and Power.”

Aldous Huxley was a contemporary of Chesterton and Eliot. His dystopian novel Brave New World (1933) describes a society in thrall to the very lowest of human standards. It is a society of assembly-line gestation and “births”; the complete absence of families (the words father and mother make people cringe); social engineering; mandated sexual promiscuity; government-rationed narcotics; ongoing, required titillation through vapid, silly games, as well as quasi-worship sessions called “orgy-porgy”; euthanasia at the age of 60 or so; and cremation, with the gases captured to be recycled. Huxley was shocked years later to find that much of what he foresaw had come to pass. The parallels today are far worse.

Smith makes a strong appeal to “live in the truth,” to “want the truth,” and to “avoid resorting to euphemisms or vague categories that obscure the truth rather than reveal it.” However, in our vulgar culture, with its standardized low standards, “truth” is a slippery thing, tending to slip down to the simplest and the easiest version of itself. Unless there is a wholesale, radical reversal of the standardization by low standards that dominates most of modern life, things will only grow more vulgar, and the value of human life even cheaper.

Where to begin? Perhaps the answer will be found in the Catholic Church and her age-old, noble truths.

Bob Filoramo

Warren, New Jersey

The Final Destruction

Thank you to Pieter Vree for laying out so helpfully and so perfectly the eschatological aspect of the liturgy and the role of the “restrainer” (“Was Pope Benedict XVI Holding Back the Destroying Flood?” New Oxford Notebook, May). I am convinced that Holy Pope Benedict XVI was indeed the one holding back the flood of evil that has become an ocean of raging waves since his death. St. Paul speaks of the katechon just as Vree has written (cf. 2 Thess. 2), and it does seem that the katechon stood for Benedict, who gave us back the Traditional Latin Mass — that is, until Pope Francis withdrew this great channel of grace, and Hell was able to multiply evil and spread darkness and depression over the earth.

The Mass brings the most grace into the world, according to the exorcist priest Fr. Chad Ripperger, “and more or less grace according to the way it is said.” Within the pages of the Masonic document The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita we read, “Our ultimate end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution…the final destruction of Catholicism, and even of the Catholic idea.”

Mary Anne Sheehy

Plymouth, Massachusetts

PIETER VREE COMMENTS:

Don’t look now, but there are rumors coming out of Rome that “an attempt is being made to implement, as soon as possible, a Vatican document with a stringent, radical, and final solution banning the Traditional Latin Mass,” reports Robert Moynihan, editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican. These “persistent rumors” come from “circles close to [Arthur] Cardinal Roche,” who, in his role as prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, was tasked with implementing Traditionis Custodes, Francis’s 2021 motu proprio removing permission to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. According to Moynihan, the idea is to “ban it [the Latin Mass] and shut it down everywhere and immediately.” Those proposing the ban want it done “while Francis is still in power. They want to make it as wide, final, and irreversible as possible.” Sounds like an end game for the end times!

Predestination & Free Will

Ed. Note: In our May issue, Jim Rice wrote a letter in which he admitted he was “taken aback by St. Augustine’s claim that we are predestined for Heaven or Hell.” If that’s the case, Rice said, “then what’s the point of our supposedly having free will? Assuming I’m one of the unfortunates, how could a loving and merciful God create me knowing full well that an unfathomably agonizing eternity awaits me, and leave me in ignorance of my final fate until I take my last breath?” In attempting to resolve this dilemma, Rice suggested that because God created us in time (and is, therefore, “stuck here with us” in time) and endowed us with free will, He “can never be entirely sure of each choice we make until after we have made it.” Thus, Rice concluded, “predestination is dead.”

I replied, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St. Augustine’s City of God, that Mr. Rice’s notion of a non-omnipotent and non-omniscient God is flawed, that God’s knowledge is “not bound by temporal constraints or formulations,” and that the freedom He has bestowed on us “diminishes neither His omniscience nor His omnipotence.” God knows “who will freely respond to His grace; these He ‘predestines’ to salvation.” Yet, by our free-will choices, we can also lose the gift of salvation, and God “will not necessarily prevent that dreadful outcome.”

Knowing, however, that mine was not the final word on the topic, I invited NOR readers to weigh in. What follows are their responses.

We should investigate predestination through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas found in the Summa Theologiae. God, who in His very nature is omnipresent and omniscient, knows all things, as He is outside time and, in fact, the author of all things (cf. ST I, q. 8). To deny this is to deny God. Therefore, it follows that God knows the salvation of all intellectual creatures, both angels and men. From His infinite love and through providence, God orders the good in all His creation toward an end, especially the last end, which is eternal life (ST I, q. 22, art. 1).

With this in mind, predestination, according to St. Thomas, is “fitting” for God, as all things are subject to His providence (ST I, q. 23, art. 1). Not that God wills anyone to eternal damnation; instead, He orders the good in His creation toward an end. Remember, our salvation, regardless of our works or deeds, is not achieved by our merit. Rather, it comes from the Father through grace and the sacrifice of Christ in His passion. Even without Original Sin, man requires supernatural grace for salvation, as it is otherwise beyond our nature to attain.

Now, predestination is known only to God, and not to the predestined, as part of His providential plan. We find infinite love and goodness within this providential plan through participation in the grace given to us from God (ST I, q. 23, art. 4). Our participation in this grace is an act of reason through the intellect and will, which is to know the good and then order our will toward it.

For those who do not participate in God’s grace — namely, through sin — this nonparticipation acts as the cause of God’s reprobation and eternal punishment (ST I, q. 23, art. 3). God ultimately orders all men to salvation; however, those in grave and mortal sin “fall away from that end” as a choice through their free will.

The difficulty in understanding all this is the difficulty in understanding God, whom no man, Aquinas or otherwise, can truly understand. It is through faith that we trust in God and His will, with the hope that we can achieve salvation through His grace and mercy.

Tom Schneider

Cedar Hill, Tennessee

As a Catholic revert, I came across the Catholic doctrine of predestination in a book by John Salza titled The Mystery of Predestination, which references Scripture and St. Thomas Aquinas. But I tell you, this book scares me, because what if I am not one of God’s elect, and I have to work harder if I want to attain Heaven, and with less grace to do so? It makes me think I fit St. Paul’s admonishment to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

St. Thomas teaches that divine election is not based on merits foreseen by God. The Angelic Doctor writes, “Nobody has been so insane as to say that merit is the cause of divine predestination as regards the act of the predestinator.” Sacred Scripture compels Aquinas to so hypothesize, for God “called us by his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace” (2 Tim. 1:9). Predestination still relies on free will, as we are warned, “Wherefore brethren, labor the more, that by good works you may make sure your vocation and election” (2 Pet. 1:10).

I don’t sense that I’m “predestined” for Heaven because I don’t perceive a holiness about myself. I’m Catholic in the same way my father seemed to be Catholic: only the Catholic faith makes sense logically. I’m inspired intellectually to remain Catholic even though I cannot discern much grace (from the Holy Spirit) working within me. Any relief comes from knowing I’m given sufficient grace to attain Heaven. St. Paul tells us, “To everyone is given grace, according to the measure of the giving Christ” (Eph. 4:7).

Finally, there is the grace of final perseverance, that is, dying in the state of grace. The Catechism tells us to “hope for the grace of final perseverance and the recompense of God” (no. 2016). The Council of Trent declares, “If anyone shall say that he who is justified can either persevere in the justice received without the special assistance of God, or with that [assistance] he cannot: let him be anathema.” So maybe not just me (and my kind), but even the elect, should “work out” their salvation “with fear and trembling.”

Dan Arthur Pryor

Belvidere, New Jersey

I offer a crude analogy that may simplify this complicated theological issue.

Consider a carmaker who designs a model with high hopes that its sales stats will break all records. He wants it to have such superior performance that it will be canonized in the automobile hall of fame (a.k.a. Heaven). He does not want it to end up in the scrap­yard for spare parts (a.k.a. Hell). However, most of his models do.

This analogy breaks down unless our carmaker endows his model with some sort of free will. He can give it the choice of accelerating swiftly, from zero to 60 in six seconds, or lazily taking its time. It can choose to swerve out of its lane and crash when in auto-drive, or steer strategically true. Its overall performance and functionality will make or break it. He can estimate early in his model’s road career with a high degree of confidence whether it will achieve fame (entry into Heaven’s auto museum) or flunk (relegated to Hell’s junkyard). The final outcome depends on its endowed “free will.”

So it is with us humans. Most of us will end up in Purgatory or Hell, and very few enter straight into Heaven (cf. Mt. 7:13-14). But our Creator did not foreordain or predestine us to Purgatory or Hell. God made us with high hopes that we will all go straight to Heaven. But He knows that our free will is the variable that will decide the outcome. We determine our post-mortem destiny by our lifelong moral conduct. God thereby chances an early prediction, but a last-hour repentant conversion may alter that, as it did for the likes of Buffalo Bill, Oscar Wilde, and John Wayne.

Richard M. Dell’Orfano

San Marcos, California

As a Reformed Presbyterian and a Calvinist, I began reading what I thought was going to be a great editorial reply to Jim Rice’s letter. It starts well: God’s omnipotence, like paper covers rock, will always overcome free will. The greatest of all Reformed confessions, the Westminster Confession of Faith, in its chapter on effectual calling, says the Spirit calls the elect by “enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving them an heart of flesh, renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace” (10:1). “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power” (Ps. 110:3).

Omnipotence ought to have been reply enough, but the editor brings in the attribute of omniscience to try to strengthen his reply, saying, “God offers us salvation as a gift, and He knows from all eternity who will accept His gift of salvation and who will reject it.” Salvation, then, is made to hinge not on what God knows He will certainly do, but on what He foreknows man will or will not do. According to this scheme, man, though dead in sin, is able to resist almighty grace. B.B. Warfield, in The Plan of Salvation, writes, “Resistance is…an activity, and the successful resistance of an almighty recreative power, is a pretty considerable activity — for a dead man.”

It gets worse. The editor then takes up the subject of John Calvin’s “heresy” of double predestination, “whereby God arbitrarily (and irrevocably) selects certain individuals to be saved and others to be damned, no matter what they do in this life. This is not what we believe as Catholics.” Well, it is not what we believe as Calvinists, either. (We do believe God’s election is irrevocable, for we cannot believe in a God who changes His mind.) I have never read or heard of any reputable Calvinist who taught that God’s election is arbitrary. In fact, I venture to say that no disreputable Calvinist would say so. We only say that the reason for His election is not known to us. “The secret things belong to God” (Deut. 29:29).

Concerning the statement that some may be damned no matter what they do in this life, I am reminded of an axiom that came out of early Scholasticism: “God does not deny grace to one who does what is in him.” Truth told, Calvinists do not deny that statement. We would only ask, concerning he who does what is in him, “How did what is in him get in him?”

Catholics teach that a sinner can do nothing unless God is first gracious. The editor acknowledges as much when he speaks of predestination including each person’s free response to God’s grace. He continues, “God, as omniscient, knows who will freely respond to His grace; these He ‘predestines’ to salvation, based on this knowledge.” The problem is that this makes the determinative factor in one’s salvation to be one’s response to God’s grace, rather than God’s grace itself, contrary to Paul’s question, “What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7).

How about free will? Calvin called it an empty name. Luther said free will is good only for milking cows and building houses. The editor’s comment that this is “one of the great controversies in theology” is almost understatement. The distinctions formulated over the centuries to explain it are endless: merit congruo or condigno, necessity absolute or conditional, grace operating or cooperating, and a thousand others. Catholics and Protestants both agree that the freedom of the will is different in each man’s fourfold states. In innocence, man was able to will good, yet mutably, in that he might will evil also. After the fall, man, before regeneration, can only will sin. (This, by the way, is not just a Calvinist notion. Augustine and Aquinas also taught the same.) After regeneration, man can again will what is spiritually good, yet not perfectly, because of remaining corruption. In Heaven, man will be able to will only good. That the will’s freedom in Heaven is such that it can only choose good says a lot. It shows that a supposed equal facility to choose either good or evil is not necessary to the idea of freedom.

God’s attributes of omnipotence and omniscience go a long way in unraveling the mystery of predestination. Yet there is another attribute that sheds even more light: God’s sovereignty. The Reformed churches have always taught that God is sovereign in His decrees of election and reprobation. The entire first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians tells us that God does all things according to His own purpose and for the manifestation of His glory. The Letter to the Romans describes God as a potter, and sinful men as clay (cf. 9:21). From that clay, God makes some vessels unto honor and some unto dishonor. I remember reading a commentary on this text wherein God is likened to the sun, which, shining on clay and wax, softens the wax and hardens the clay. Paul, however, seems to anticipate this interpretation, for he says, “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump…?” It is not two lumps, but one lump, out of which God fashions His vessels. It is one lump of men “equally involved in ruin,” as the 17th-century Canons of Dort describe it.

To sum up, God is sovereign, and men, by nature, have free will, but fallen men, being slaves to sin, will, apart from grace, only choose sin. God’s decrees take account of and use the sinful acts of men to accomplish His purposes. “[Christ], being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23).

I suspect this will do little to address Mr. Rice’s concerns. After all, he states, “I’m not about to surrender my belief system.” I suggest he read Jonathan Edwards’s masterpiece, Essay on Free Will. “If the Son shall therefore make you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36).

David Landon

Warners, New York

Greater Than Expected

It’s with gratefulness of heart that I accept your offer to renew my subscription to the NOR through the Scholarship Fund. It’s truly a blessing to me and countless others in my dorm. Each issue is read by and passed around among six Catholic men who currently reside in my housing unit. We then discuss and sometimes debate many of the articles and other features. I especially like The News You May Have Missed, not to mention the theology and religious history contained in virtually every issue.

After the six men in my dorm read an issue, I take it with me to Mass, and from there it gets read by another group of men who live in another dorm. This means that the reach of every issue sent to me is exponentially expanded and multiplied; thus, the seed planted by your benefactors is greatly given over and above what they might have expected.

Thank you, and God bless you all for blessing this prisoner in Florida.

Robert Bruist

Northwest Florida Reception Center Annex

Chipley, Florida

I would be very thankful if you would renew my subscription to the NOR through the Scholarship program. I do like the challenges the magazine presents in trying to understand more fully the Catholic faith and the philosophy and theology behind it.

I am in prison in Texas at the Telford Unit. Previously, I was at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville and the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. After three years of not having a priest here at Telford, we finally have a volunteer priest attending to us a few times a month. Also, we are attracting more and more inmates to the RCIA-Inquiry class, which I assist in teaching. I have a certificate of catechesis from Catholic Distance University.

Thank you for your consideration.

Rudolph E. Kos

Barry B. Telford Unit

New Boston, Texas

God bless you all there at the NOR, a very valued and needed publication in a world careening into chaos. I pray, taking all realities into consideration, that you are all well and cheerful, as God wishes us to be. At times, this is a very tall order. For me, too, as I am in my 41st year of manifestly unjust incarceration.

God has steadfastly watched over me since 1983 (indeed, since my birth in 1956), and I can attest that it has been an adventure. The good news: I was baptized into the Catholic Church this past September. I felt called to join the Church, and I feel energized, even though I turned 68 a couple months ago. We have Mass every Saturday and a new priest from Nigeria, who is quite good though burdened by a full and hectic workload.

I want to accept your offer pertaining to the Scholarship renewal and the generosity you have extended to me and others. I know God is well pleased with your service. I especially enjoy all the perspectives you print in the NOR. I do feel there is too much stridency in the dialogue (if we can call it that) we see daily. It seems the media sometimes encourages this divisive interaction.

I know writing letters is a lost art, but if any of your readers would wish to write to this raw-boned Texas Catholic penned up in desolate and completely chaotic circumstances in Idaho, I would certainly answer them.

Thank you for your time and for all you do for so many. We must all remember not to hate our opponents. If we hate them, we disregard Jesus, and we become them. Let your light shine.

Mark H. Lankford

Idaho Correctional Institute Orofino

Orofino, Idaho

A good friend of mine in our parish has a prison ministry. The other day, he read me the following “poem” (yes, I know, not a T.S. Eliot piece) that was sent by one of his prison inmates. This particular prisoner is on my prayer-partner list, and his poem certainly seems to be from the heart; at least it struck me that way. I thought of your prison outreach and that maybe you would publish it.

Highway of Life Locked Up

Ive been rollin down this
lost Highway,
To the point of no return…
Ive got a
Storm in my windshield
and a past
Ive gotta burn…

I keep yesterday in my
rearview with
A white line that wont end
in this place.
Heaven feels so far away
and Hells right
Around the bend. They say
Im too hard
To Handle and too high to
reach. And when
Im on that Highway
I cant see…

No matter how far I go I
cant outrun
The memories and it hurts
too bad to
Close my eyes. This Highway
haunts my
Dreams…The white lines no
longer hold
Me, Ive been ridin this
too long…I
Know Ive gotta change my
ways and I
Dont even have a home…So
Im pullin
Off this old Highway and
Im going
To drop this heavy load…

Gods going to take this from me.

Ive been gone too
long…The highs

Aint worth the load
and the lows…

Ive gotta lose this Highway before

I lose myself…

My God knows Ive already lost
Everything I love…
My soul is all thats left.
Its His…

George Knauer

Crossville, Tennessee

Your Scholarship Fund is a treasure, and your outreach to prisoners heartening. Please add my voice to those who realize the value of print and the way it engages the senses and reinforces the message. The NOR is a pleasure to hold and explore.

Carol Krizman

South Bend, Indiana

Thank you with all my heart for continuing to put out the very best content by Catholic writers and, by far, the best book reviews. I know you have to fight for every dollar to keep going, and I admire you so very much for your personal sacrifices to do so.

Nora Ernst

Santa Rosa, California

Ed. Note: Messrs. Bruist, Kos, and Lankford’s subscriptions were renewed at no cost to them, courtesy of our Scholarship Fund, which is entirely reader-subsidized. If you’d like to ensure that more prisoners are able to receive the NOR free of charge, we invite you to help replenish our Scholarship Fund by sending your contribution to: NOR, Scholarship Fund, 1069 Kains Ave. Berkeley CA 94706. Your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. We thank you for your generosity.

We encourage those willing to correspond with Mr. Lankford to send letters intended for him to our office at the address above. We will forward what we receive to him.

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