An Open Letter to Greg Cook

Dear Mr. Cook,

I would like to thank you for your kind comment which you made to my poor offering in this weblog, "A Modest Proposal."

I would also like to thank you for your published story of your journey of faith, which led you to the Roman Catholic Church, after a sojourn in several protestant and Orthodox churches. For the benefit of my readers, that story may be found here. I highly recommend it to all (of those few) who read my poor weblog.

I would agree with you when you say: "I find much of the polemical space around this issue to be most distressing and distasteful". So do I.

In order to follow your irenic example, I thus intend to combine my studies with the Holy Trinity Orthodox School website with those of a review of the writings of the last three popes: Beatus Ioannes Paulus Secundus Magnus, Benedictus XVI, and Franciscus I.

And, since I am presently an eastern Catholic, I shall endeavor to keep in mind the wise counsel of the Second Vatican Council, which may be found in the Constitution Lumen Gentium:

25. ...Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking. (emphasis added)

 At the very least, as a Catholic, I owe the Pope of Rome (and his predecessors) the duty of understanding what he has to say, from his own documents, and not what others have put into his mouth, be they from the media, or from among his opponents. I wish that more Catholics would bother to do this.

But that said, I thank you once again for your kind and helpful example. I shall do my best to follow it, in the best way that I can.

Very truly yours,

Bernard Brandt

P.S. I would normally write you privately, Mr. Cook, but I am unable to find a weblog or an e-mail address for you. I hope that this will do instead. In the event that you would wish to continue a correspondence, my e-mail address is bfbrandt at hotmail dot com.