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Mr. de Freitas has missed the point this time

Apr 17, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Newspapers certainly cannot boost religious beliefs. Please permit me to respond to one misguided Justin de Freitas in his tirade in the Guyana Chronicle (16-04-09). First and foremost, Mr de Freitas, I am not a Catholic activist.
And so what if I am? All Catholics are mandated to get to know their faith more and more each day and pass it on to the rest of the world, to defend their holy Catholic faith and correct misinformed persons like yourself from saying anything you please about Holy Mother Church.
Secondly, sir, your thought that said, “Do Catholics read the Bible anyway?” is indeed another thought wasted as Catholics were the ones who were inspired by God to pen the entire New Testament. Saints John, Matthew, Mark and Paul, among the other New Testament writers, were Catholic Christians! The Church then was not referred as “Catholic” until after St Ignatius coined the term later on but they were Catholics! They certainly did not belong to the Pentecostal movement. The Bible is the Church’s book, Mr de Freitas. The Bible ‘evolved’ (if that is a suitable word) out of the Roman Catholic Church. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, sir.
And the Catholic Church, for your information, is one ever so deeply rooted in God’s Holy Word. We complete reading the entire Bible once every three years in our religious service called the Mass. We have Bible groups and lectures in our churches. We have numerous books and publications written by our priests and Biblical scholars too numerous to mention about the Bible. We have the Sunday Mass readings in the weekly newspaper, which is probably older than the writer’s oldest relative, publishing the readings and meditations upon same. Our priests (or seminarians) study the Bible for several years before they are commissioned to preach that word. The Catholic Church is a church of the Bible, Mr de Freitas. Do not be fooled.
How on earth can you say that we Catholic Christians do not read the Bible?
Yes, we have the same Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday celebrations every single year, Mr de Freitas, but somehow you do not understand that it is these same celebrations that touch our lives and hearts differently each year. We certainly do not go through these celebrations empty-mindedly and in a hum-drum manner.
Mr de Freitas has missed the point this time. Every religious belief has their religious observances and celebrations. They go through the same motions each year. Are you implying then, that we celebrate Easter, Phagwah and Eid once every two or three years then so that we do not go through the same “boring” stuff every year? This writer certainly has not experienced God as I can recognise this revelation in his writing. The pictures would all be the same, sir, but those same pictures would touch someone viewing them differently every single year.
The newspapers do not only publish religious pictures of Christian festivals but from the two other major religions in Guyana as well.
People do not experience God only in their places of worship. For if that was true, then our world would truly be a different place as persons would behave “differently” when they’re in Church as opposed to when they are outside of Church.
My faith and the faith of a billion and more people is being “boosted” through ways and means that someone like you would never ever understand. The Catholic Church welcomes you anytime, Mr de Freitas, to experience the living Lord truly and really.
The newspapers understand what I was referring to when I said that they did not carry any pictures concerning the religious aspects of Good Friday and Easter.
They cannot do my “boosting”, Mr de Freitas. Thousands joined the Catholic Church last Saturday evening in the midnight Masses through Baptism and Confirmation. The population of priests worldwide has shown a steady increase as of late. And finally, the worldwide Catholic population has edged just over 1.1 billion. What else do you need, Mr de Freitas, to be convinced that the newspapers do not need to run the Catholic Church’s ‘show’?
Leon Jameson Suseran

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