From: stabosz@chopin.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz)
Subject: Re: Nature of List--Fossil
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 12:06:48 GMT

In article <CATHOLIC%92111300531207@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Jim McIntosh <JIM@AMERICAN.EDU> writes:
>On Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:55:32 GMT Rae Stabosz said:
>>My note was in reaction to Jim MacKintosh's (sp) disparaging of the
>>pre-Vatican Church, as if it was a bogeyman and its practices not
>>worthy of appropriating to our own times.  That Church produced many
>>saints, and their words are available for all to read -- what they
>>had to say about the daily work involved in living out their faith.
>
>The original spelling was "Mackintosh" but over time it's changed to
>"McIntosh" -- I think when they started intermarrying with the Irish. :-)
>
>I'm sorry you thought my post was disparaging of the pre-Vatican Church.
>I think that Church was addressing the people of its day, and was doing a
>fine capable job. I couldn't agree with you more about the saints it
>produced. I'm a Franciscan and have spent more hours than I can remember
>reading Francis's writings (what few we have of them) and the other
>sources of his life. At the same time, I do feel that the changes since
>the Vatican Council have been good ones, and more change is still needed
>as we attempt to discover how to preach the Good News to the people of
>the twenty-first century, how to live the Gospel Life in these amazing
>times, and how to grow in our love and understanding of God and God's
>plan for us.

***>
Hi Jim,

	Thanks for your long and thoughtful note.  I see in this longer
explanation that you are not disparaging of either the pre-Vatican II
Church or saints.  I guess I have to say that I think a lot of the
changes since the council have been good ones, too.  I am not quite
as optimistic as you are about no need for catechism, and I find in your
notions of sin, as you have expressed them on-line, what I am used to
encountering on the liberal end of things, a more relative notion of
sin than I think is appropriate, both to my experience of human frailty
and to my reading of Church teaching.  In particular, among my own
teenages and their friends, the prevailing attitude I find is one of
"anything goes", "if it feels good do it", and quite frankly they seem
to be lost.  This is, of course, an indictment of sorts of my own
raising of them.  Which makes it perhaps not transferable to the
universal situation.  But I raised them with what I learned, in the
post-Vatican II Church: situation ethics; relatively few hard and fast
lines (okay, they knew that murder was wrong); a general trust in
God and the Church, and a great freedom of conscience.  My children are
all top-notch, wonderful human beings.  The three teens have loving
hearts and good will.  What they don't have (yet, but I am making up
for it day by day) is a strong background in Church history, teaching,
and the fundamentals of the faith.  I taught them to want to be saints
and trusted that the Catholic culture I was bringing them up in would
support their own individual efforts at discovering what this meant
for them, and to my mind it does not.

	I was happy to hear about the Church of the Savior that you
talked about.  That's the kind of integration of the active with the
contemplative life that is a joy to behold.  God bless you and all
the others who are making it work.

	Rae
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