God's Gift to You

By Fred Bert Ithurburn

The book contains copies of over 150 letters that the Catholic lay author wrote to Pope Benedict XVI expressing his constructive criticism of his Church's Eucharist, a contention that it overlooks Jonah's sign to carry the message of Jesus to the unmindful world; and, due to the non-response of his spiritual leaders has forced the author to express the good-news concerning this retained Gift of God directly to all members of the Church of Christ, made up of all people created, to whom it is given.

The contention being made was also that of the Catholic New Testament scholars after the Second Vatican Council who claimed the Catholic Church's Eucharist cannot be conditioned upon anything, neither baptism nor serious sinfulness, since everyone in the world is invited by Jesus Christ to the banquet. However, based on the 1968 opinion of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, who felt it contradicted his biblical findings, the Church's Eucharist continues to be maintained, as it had traditionally been distributed pre-Vatican II, to exclude most every human being.

Following Jesus' sign of Jonah, God's good news concerning the Catholic Church's Eucharist is hereby going global (see Luke 11:30-32 - reluctant Jonah was forced to save outsiders) to inform everyone of their invitation by God to consume of God's lifesaving heavenly meal. The author's dispute having been unresolved by his spiritual shepherds, and members of his church, has caused the author to take the issue in contention to everyone on earth as members of the body of the Church of Christ. Thus, informed, anyone created who wishes to accept their gift from God is free to share our Eucharist and gain its mysteriously divine benefits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 16, 2007
• ISBN: 9781466990296

Fred Bert Ithurburn

Christian religions have uncharitably followed the Catholic traditions to practice an anti-Christ relationship with all people. Consequently, divisions are man-made and God’s Gospel relationship is distorted.

Book preview

GOD’S GIFT TO YOU

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BY FRED BERT ITHURBURN

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© Copyright 2007 Fred Bert Ithurburn.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

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INTRODUCTION

My name is Fred Bert Ithurburn. I have a dispute with Pope Benedict XVI of our Roman Catholic Church. You may wonder why I am bothering you with this dispute. If you will favor me with your attention for a bit, you will understand that the dispute has to do with recognizing your right to receive a gift of God, entrusted to the Catholic Church, meant to be shared with you. Wait! I am getting ahead of myself.

The dispute arose after the Catholic Church held its Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Therefrom, New Testament scholars asserted that the Lord’s supper, instituted by Jesus immediately before his death and directed by Jesus to be repeated in memory of his words and death, was to be properly celebrated by inviting everyone without exception to the meal. However, Professor Joseph Ratzinger felt in 1968 that this idea, though tempting, contradicted what he found in the Bible. Unfortunately, the professor’s opinion was carried to Rome, or carried him to Rome; it re-established the traditional Church’s Eucharist to exclude most of the people in the world, including serious sinning Catholics, from being united in thanksgiving for their salvation won by Jesus. Thus, the world is left at risk because Catholics ignore the sign of Jonah (see Luke 11:30-32-reluctant Jonah is forced to save outsiders) and leave many unmindful, who should be informed of Christ by sharing the Eucharist.

Catholics surely will question how I dare criticize our Pope and the practice of the Catholic Church in respect to the Eucharist. Church canon law in the past prohibited criticizing the Pope, and, we presume the Pope’s infallibility in matters of faith and morals. But Vatican II’s council members demonstrated an enlightened grasp of reality in bringing the Church up to date in keeping with how far we have evolved. Thanks to Pope John XXIII, the college of bishops were gathered from worldwide to dialogue and the Curia was restrained. The Council members were allowed to freely reason and decide on how to modernize the Church to better reflect what Christ meant for his followers to do on earth today. Among the results was the effect of U.S. bishops whose influence contributed much to democratizing the Church, and, establishing a Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) which vested the laity with rights and duties, and was more in keeping with Jesus’ caution that we were not to lord it over each other. The Constitution’s provisions allow me, and even may require me, to criticize our spiritual shepherds on this concern. It reads, in regard to us children of God and siblings in Christ, as follows:

They are by reason of knowledge, competence or outstanding ability which they may enjoy, permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinion on those things which concern the good of the Church.

I became personally involved with this quote in reasoning that my knowledge, competence or ability fit into one or more of those alternatives and thus obligated me to constructively express a concern about the Church’s Eucharist. The Council acknowledged that Eucharist was at the center and the summit of our faith; so any constructive criticism of the Church’s Eucharist is of Church concern; and, the policy and practice of excluding most everybody from sharing Jesus is so uncharitable as to be everyone’s concern.

To present to you my qualifications to voice opinions on the subject, I first must concede that most of you with the same information can form comparable opinions so I am no expert. Most of my opinions plagiarize those of others, including those of Pope Benedict. I leave to you to judge my competence and justification to express these opinions. My opinions, and the basis for them, were far in the future when I became a Catholic in my infancy in the early 1930s. I was born to Basque-American citizens, recently emigrated from France, who practiced the religion more than most of their persuasion. As a result I picked up the virtue of daily celebrating the Eucharist. I was educated in the public schools in California until college where Christian Brothers and Jesuits added more formal Catholicism to my secular learning. I was a typical Catholic as a result, believing the Church’s guidance in practicing to obey, pray and pay.

That claim to be a Catholic stereotype may be too snug a fit for me. It seems that I am more a creature of my culture than a religious person most of the time. By hindsight I would classify myself as a juvenile delinquent in my youth, all unknown to the authorities and my parents; and, I continued a free wheeling lifestyle as an adult. Still I was found at confession on Saturdays and to go to Communion on Sundays. Continuing this pattern, I put my obligatory time in the U.S. Marine Corps where I met and proposed to my wife. Ann was a U.S. Navy nurse and she has anchored me to a more sensible life through my later quixotic ventures. We returned to my hometown where I managed the family sheep business. There one of our eight children was born; two years thereafter I returned to law school, working part time selling vacuum cleaners, and became a trial lawyer.

About 1990 my pastor suggested that I attend a laity training program, conducted by Sister Anita Minihane, R.S.M., which took a few years to complete. We had an understanding there that what we learned in those years we were to keep to ourselves because some of the new thinking might scandalize orthodox Catholics. For example, and in point with the contention in issue here, a theologian from L.A. Loyola University lectured that one should go to Holy Communion even if possessed of a mortal sin because the Sacrament itself cleansed us of all sins. I recall I was the only one of 35 students who publicly expressed my inability to do what was suggested, because of my pre-conditioning to seek prior Reconciliation (confession). However, I now urge serious sinning Catholics that they should receive the Eucharist, even though my preconditioning remains a personal problem. I believe that the theologians and the New Testament scholars were silenced on this issue by the mid-1990’s publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Opinions expressed therein by Cardinal Ratzinger, and in other edicts from the Vatican, meanfully threatened loss of privileges to teach in Catholic schools if theologians criticized the Church’s Eucharist.

Later I came to the Passionist Fathers, at Christ the King Retreat House, where I joined as a lay partner. Passionist Father Neil Parsons, C.P., then had a markedly great impact on me. He espoused, for instance, that everyone was saved by Jesus Christ’s passion and death. The God of Love that he imagined and trusted would not waste any of creation, especially those created and recreated in God’s image. Under the Passionists’ spiritual guidance I came to see that everyone is my sibling in Jesus Christ Crucified; and, that the sacrifice on the Cross, according to their founder St. Paul of the Cross, is the greatest work and sign of God’s love for us all. In time, I became convinced that the Eucharist was one sacrifice interdependent with that of Jesus’ crucifixion, which faith conviction, ironically, I learned from a Professor Ratzinger sermon. Also, I am convinced that to reciprocate the love demonstrated by Jesus on the Cross, and to celebrate the redemption of everyone, Jesus Christ instituted the Eucharist (thanksgiving) in memory of our God of Love. The words of the Last Supper and the meaning of Jesus’ sacrificial death/resurrection are one piece, and, we celebrate, in thanksgiving for God’s love, happily each time we consume the Eucharist. The Eucharist memorializes God’s pledge of everlasting life and peace on earth.

My dispute with Pope Benedict heated up when I participated recently in a Synod on the Eucharist. By the time it progressed from us grass-roots lay members to present the issue to the bishops a working document had come down from Rome removing the issue and declaring to the bishops that the Eucharist was to be enjoyed only by those of the Catholic Church. More recently, the cowed U.S. bishops followed suit by adding that serious sinning Catholics were barred from the Eucharist. Today the Church’s Eucharist clings to pre-counciliar Church tradition, blindly doing what our ancestors had always done, so that most of today’s people of God and our brothers and sisters in Christ are unlovingly excluded from their banquet of salvation. Most all differences I have had with my spiritual leaders in the past I have surrendered to them and assumed that they are correct. However, when their conduct is so blatantly uncharitable and contrary to what I am informed and believe is the will of God, I must stand up, with my informed conscience, and profess my concern to everyone.

The Magisterium, exercised by Pope and bishops duly constituted, also established our Dogmatic Constitution to state that we all are the one Church of Christ professed in Creed as catholic (meaning universal); and, to state the Church of Christ in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, (emphasis mine). The Council declared that many of the Church’s elements are found outside of its visible structure and are forces impelling toward catholic unity. (Lumen Gentium, Chapt I, The Mystery of the Church.) God calls all men and women to union with Christ in his sacrifice on the cross as well as to the memorial sacrifices of the LORD’s Supper. God pledges that everyone knows the LORD, to the effect that we need not teach each other how to know the LORD and his law of love. God’s unilateral performance of this new covenant makes us all believers who form one body in Christ; and without any merit on our part, All men are called to this union with Christ (Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, para No. 3).

Pope Benedict XVI championed the new openness of the Council, including the words subsist and those about gaining truth from outside the Church. In subsequent lectures and sermons he added opinions that Jesus did not intend to found a church that was less than for the many of the universal community. His Last Supper words, linking the blood of the covenant, to be poured out for many, as prophesied by a prophet to the nations (Jer 31:31, 1:5), prevent Christ’s Church from becoming a lesser community of the righteous while condemning outsiders to perdition. More particularly, Fr. Ratzinger preached that the Last Supper words were interdependent with and give meaning to what appears to be a mere execution; Jesus’ death and resurrection, in turn, fulfilled the universal pledge of redemption and salvation God made in the new covenant with all of humanity. Being of one piece, the Eucharist and death, its thanksgiving celebration is to remind all mankind that God loves us and from our suffering we are to be raised with Christ for eternal happiness. This is the good news that promises, except for a period of just chastisement hereafter for some, we all are meant to enjoy Oneness with God forever. A reason for each and every one of us experiencing this Oneness in life, by Eucharistic sharing, is God’s gift to everyone. Eucharistic participation reminds us that God loves us always; and, that we should reciprocate to love each other equally as the Spirit of God prods our consciences to do, individually and/or together, throughout the world.

On March 13, 2007, while I was finalizing the preparation of this book for publication, the Vatican released Pope Benedict XVI’s position on the Church’s Eucharist. His apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), purportedly based on the Synod of the Eucharist, was released. Plainly it regurgitates Fr. Joseph Ratzinger’s 1968 sermon contradicting those of the post-Vatican II New Testament scholars. Parenthetically, this opinion voiced the conversion of Professor Ratzinger amidst the social upheavals of the 1960’s, which reversed his Vatican II views, according to Jane Kramer’s recent article in The New Yorker 4/2/07. However, the Pope now added the following:

Final judgment on these matters belong to the diocesan bishops.

Our Catholic monarch apparently delegated his papal authority on the Church’s Eucharist dispute to individual bishops. However, the delegation appears to be after the college of bishops was stacked with an agreeable college (see Fr. Bernard Haring, C.S.R.’s My Hope For The Church); and, once the US bishops were committed to the Vatican’s 2005 working document, removing the issue on inviting non-Catholics, and their own 2006 statement excluding serious sinning Catholics from the invitation. But, the Holy Spirit may have won Magna Charta like rights to bishops to freely empower them not to lord it over us and decide with the Spirit of Vatican II and the commandment of God to love everyone. Anyway, whatever popes and bishops choose to do, the ultimate decider and judge of worthiness to receive Holy Communion rests on the individual would-be receptionist’s conscience. Hopefully, everyone involved in sharing this actual presence of God on earth, will accept that they are loved and invited by God Himself in accord with the imprint of His knowledge that God placed in all of our hearts as pledged by His new covenant.

At a recent Sunday Mass, had you been there, you would have heard the entire congregation’s invitation to you, in the opening hymn’s stanza, as follows:

Gather the people! Enter the feast! All are invited, the greatest and least. The banquet is ready, now to be shared. Join in the heavenly feast that God has prepared.

Don’t wait for the Catholic Church’s hierarchy to invite you to share in God’s heavenly feast (see Fr. Schroth, S.J.’s story, in letter of 7/5/06, attached). If you accept God’s invite, come and join us at Mass, and when the congregation enters into the aisles for Communion, follow them. On facing the minister have your hand out, palm up, and receive Communion. You will hear the minister say The Body of Christ, you answer Amen; and, then and there, consume what you are given.

We believe that God, thus, may transform you in faith and life to moreso be One with God and us in the Church of Christ encompassing everyone existing. In this mysterious way Jesus enables us to be One in love to better serve the Kingdom of God in and to the world. Try it. You might enjoy the hospitality if not more.

MARK, Chapt, 7, Verses 1-10, re: Jesus and those of his hierarchy

"The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him. They had observed a few of his disciples eating meals without having purified-that is to say, washed-their hands. The Pharisees, and in fact all Jews, cling to the custom of their ancestors and never eat without scrupulously washing their hands. Moreover, they never eat anything from the market without first sprinkling it. There are many other traditions they observe-for example, the washing of cups and jugs and kettles. So the Pharisees and the scribes questioned him: ‘Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of our ancestors, but instead take food without purifying their hands?’ He said to them: ‘How accurately Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites when he wrote,

"This people pays me lip service

but their heart is far from me.

Empty is the reverence they do me

because they teach as dogmas

mere human precepts."

You disregard God’s commandment and cling to what is human tradition.’

He went on to say: ‘You have made a fine art of setting aside God’s commandment in the interests of keeping your traditions! . . .’"

MATTHEW, Chapt. 23 Verses 1 to 4, and 10, re: Jesus our teacher

"Then Jesus told the crowds and his disciples: ‘The scribes and the Pharisees have succeeded Moses as teachers; therefore, do everything and observe everything they tell you. But do not follow their example, . . . Avoid being called teachers. Only one is your teacher, the Messiah . . ."

__________________________________________

January 13, 2006

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Apostolic Palace

00120 Vatican City State

Europe

Re: Take this, all of you….

Dear Holy Father:

Apparently, the Holy Spirit has placed upon you the responsibility to discern and define what Our Lord’s purpose was in gracing us with Eucharist in addition to redeeming every one of us to be God’s children and, expects you to affirm or correct the Church’s tradition that has existed since its infancy.

Unfortunately, you have publicly expressed your opinion, which conforms to the tradition, that I suggest, is nullifying God’s commands. Contrary to other New Testament scholars, you conclude that the Last Supper impliedly was an exclusive meal. You contend that the Eucharist was to be reserved exclusively for those of the same faith. A working document so directed the Synod, thus, the bishops left the deciding issue to you. To one having expressed a definite opinion on the issue, one whose sense of pride may be aroused, one who may hesitate to change a conviction even if shown that it is wrong; and, one who may be unable to make the judgment objectively and impartially, the Holy Spirit expects you to imitate Christ and resolve the issue.

The purpose of this letter is to caution you to consequences from a willful decision that you may make in these circumstances: Assume, for argument sake, that you and the human tradition withholding Eucharist from sinners and unbaptized are in direct contradiction to God’s command that all peoples take of its nourishment. Also assume that the words at Mass: Take this, all of you… evidence