Replies to:
"Preus Steps Out at the 2002 LCMS ACL Meeting"
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

The Reclaim News release titled "Preus Steps Out at the 2002 LCMS ACL Meeting" drew more replies than will be reproduced here. The following are two notable comments.

Father Stefanski of Cat41 writes:

I won't waste my bandwidth on the whole breadth of why the above is as stupid as it is hateful, but I will send you this snippet from last year's banquet; you can check your homemade audiotape for accuracy. The reason we like and support Daniel Preus is that we are precisely *not* what you have labeled us as...but, no, I don't expect you to see beyond your own rhetoric and speak honestly about me, CAT 41, or anyone else. Good grief, you can't even put an honest visitor counter on your web page, why should I expect you to get simple theological statements straight?

For example, having the "Mass...celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals, when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved," as the XXIV Article of the Apology states, is certainly a good and proper outcome of catechesis...but one wonders if it ought to be the *immediate concern or content* of catechesis. While retention (or 'rediscovery') of the term 'Mass' has become popular in the past few decades, is this the word that the pastor ought to use to introduce this correct practice where the term is 'foreign' to his parishioners, or, indeed, 'alien'?

Your hatred, derision, distortion and intent to divide where there is no basis in fact for division is unbecoming of a Christian, in spite of the great amount of schismatic demagoguery you seem to accomplish by it.

Our Reply:

Why doesn't Father Stefanski simply say: . . .?

"It is better to call the LCMS worship service, 'Divine Worship,' or a 'Worship Service' than to call it 'Mass.'

"It is better to call LCMS pastors 'Pastor' instead of 'Father.'"

We are waiting for his answer.

Our website counter is provided by "FastCounter" at
http://www.bcentral.com/products/fc/default.asp

They are an independent company. Why wouldn't they be an "honest visitor counter"? It seems as Stefanski struggles for things to criticize about Reclaim News he may as well attack the honesty of our visitor counter. This sounds like a resolution Stefanski should send to the next LCMS Convention, that is if he thought the voters were supreme in his congregation and had the right to vote on resolutions.

A second letter:

Rev. Cascione,

I think Rev. Preus is right on target in his criticism of the market-driven entertainment nature of contemporary worship and the encroachment of Romanist ideas in Protestant churches. I am interested in knowing how you would qualify the term "conservative" in reference to theology and the church. Most of the time in the Presbyterian Church we use the term "Reformed" to refer to traditional theology like that of the Reformation as seen in Luther and Calvin. Many churches use the term conservative to describe fundamentalism, something very different from Reformation theology. Many Baptists, for instance, who are "conservative" deny that God saves (election) and instead teach that a person making a commitment to Jesus Christ receives eternal life as a gift. I would be interested in hearing how the Lutheran Church conceives of this language that is so prevalent in contemporary discussion.

Cody Chambers
Houston


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April 13, 2002