I received a large response to the May edition of GraceNotes, “The Tale of the Tiara” (see http://mikeleno.net) due in no small measure to the fact that Dr. Bacchiocchi published it in his newsletter. Subsequently I am receiving subscription requests from all over the world. I thank you for your interest.

Former Home of an Adventist Nun

Although I feel like we’ve beat the subject of the papal tiara nearly to death a related and a more important issue remains lurking in the background. And that issue is our attitude toward those with whom we differ. Historically, Protestants have taken great exception to certain Catholic beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, hateful attitudes and behaviors often eclipse the real issues. Is it possible, I wonder, to honor each other as human beings even when our faith expressions differ? And even when a historical case can be made for identifying a group as a participant in the devil’s schemes, should that prejudice our attitudes today? On our way to addressing these issues, let me tell you about my friend Sister Jean Marie. I knew her for only a short time but she left a lifetime impression on me.

Sister Jean Marie

In 1978/1979 I had just graduated from College and was working at the Mt. Tabor Seventh-day Adventist Church in Portland, Oregon. During my time there, Phil Shultz, a conference evangelist conducted a series of meetings. As a 25 year-old intern pastor, it was my job to hand out Bibles at the meetings and tag along with Phil when he did his visits.

One day, Phil and I drove into the Mt. Tabor neighborhoods looking for an address on a registration card. When we found the address I was ready to turn tail and find something more profitable to do with our time. It was obviously not a house. I didn’t know what it was but it was big with high walls and few windows. But without hesitation Phil walked briskly to a small door in the side of what looked to me like a fortress.

A hooded figure came to the door and greeted us with a smile. Phil looked down at the registration card he was holding and asked, “Is Jean Marie here?” I fidgeted nervously, thinking we obviously had a wrong address. Anyone connected with this place would certainly never set foot in an Adventist evangelistic meeting. This not only felt uncomfortable, it was surely a waste of time.

But the hooded figure nodded and said pleasantly, “Yes, Sister Jean Marie is here.” Come in and I will get her.”

We entered a small waiting area and sat on wooden chairs facing a window-like opening about waist high. Soon another hooded figure appeared and greeted us. We got up and approached the window. Phil took out the registration card again and asked her if she was Jean Marie. She looked at the card and her eyes brightened.

“Yes, I’m Jean Marie.”

She seemed elderly but I found it hard to determine her age since she was covered with a long robe-like outfit with a hood that revealed her face and nothing else.

She acknowledged that she had attended one of our meetings, which is how we came to have her name on the card. Of course we wanted more details and in the next few minutes and in subsequent visits she told us her story.

Sister Jean Marie lived as a cloistered nun in the Catholic monastery on Mt. Tabor. We were surprised that she did not call it a convent, but she insisted that it was a monastery that housed cloistered nuns. She lived there with other sisters who had taken similar vows to serve Jesus by living apart from society and devoting their time to prayer and other disciplines.

At one point she leaned forward and confided with a twinkle in her eye that she considered herself an Adventist and kept the Sabbath in the monastery. “I consider George Vandeman my pastor!” she declared. She had even handed out Bibles for one of his evangelistic meetings in Canada. She said she created quite a stir when people saw her dressed in her nun’s habit standing at the Bible table in the foyer of the auditorium. Several years later when Vandeman spoke at Oregon Camp Meeting I had a chance to ask him about Sister Jean Marie. He confirmed their acquaintance and asked how she was doing since he had lost track of her. By that time she was confined to a nursing home.

Apparently, the good sisters of the monastery took some liberties in the range of their spiritual activities. Sister Jean Marie not only watched Elder Vandeman on TV, she was also able to attend an Adventist Church occasionally. A couple of the other sisters, she confided, liked attending a Four Square Church in the area.

Evangelist Phil decided we should do something to keep in contact with the nuns. So he offered to have me bring our 16 millimeter projector to the monastery once a week and show a series of films on the life of Christ, the ones he was showing every night at the beginning of his meetings. This turned out to be quite enjoyable. The sisters allowed my friend Don Ritterskamp (now a pastor in Tennessee) and me to lug the projector and screen up a flight of stairs into a classroom. And there we sat together watching the life of Christ. The nuns were all very friendly and freely expressed their appreciation for the film series. I found them to be very spiritual and not at all stuffy. They expressed their deep love for Jesus in a way I found most sincere and unaffected.

During one conversation, Sister Jean Marie acknowledged the irony of being an Adventist Nun. She explained that she took her life-long vows very seriously and that she didn’t feel free to break them. It was not the church that bound her, however. She had made vows to the Lord, she said. Besides, she felt that God had given her an opportunity to be a witness inside the monastery. And she did not flinch, either in her conversation with me or with her fellow sisters, when addressing the abuses of power for which the Catholic Church was responsible. “Just look it up,” she would tell the sisters.” “It’s all there in your history books.”

Apologizing to the Catholics

We now fast forward to the year 2001. My church in Conyers, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) was preparing for a series of meetings to be conducted by a visiting evangelist. Before the evangelist arrived, we mailed flyers to all the local zip-codes. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the flyer until after it was mailed. Prominently displayed inside was a drawing of the pope. With black letters on a red background, the caption over the picture said: “The ‘666’ System is here! The Government, The Number, The Card, The Mark.” Included in the text beside the pope’s likeness was the sentence, “You will be totally controlled if you have ‘the mark of the beast,’ or persecuted if you have ‘the seal of God.’” And below that I saw a small rectangular area that said “World Wide Moneycard,” with an international bar code and the number 666 again displayed.

If the flyer wasn’t so offensive I might have regarded it as rather clever. I couldn’t believe we were actually mailing such inflammatory literature to our entire community, which included two Catholic congregations. Although I understood the historical reasons why Protestants have at certain times legitimately regarded the Church of Rome as the beast power of Revelation, that did not give us reason to demonize the present day people in our own communities. I knew all the arguments; how we are against a system, not the people. And I noticed that the designer of our handbill had cleverly included the words “666 System” and technically had not identified the pope as the beast. But I’m sure such subtle distinctions remained unrecognizable to our Catholic friends in the community, or anyone else for that matter.

And speaking of system, do we really understand what “system” we are talking about? Ah, you say, the Roman Catholic system with its bloody heritage from the Middle Ages is the persecuting power spoken of by Revelation. And I agree that the treatment of reformers like Huss, Jerome and Martin Luther, the systematic brutality of the Inquisition and the blasphemous claims of Popes who claimed infallibility and God-like authority, point inexorably to a fulfillment of the beast characteristics described in Revelation. And when a similar modern system emerges, whether wearing the Catholic, Protestant or any other label, exerts church/state power, puts tradition over scripture, forces the conscience and actively persecutes those who stand up to its tyranny, I hope we all get in line to identify it and oppose it in love. But we border on hate-mongering when we make inflammatory innuendos about a group of people who, in the communities I’ve lived in, exemplify peace and charity. And didn’t Jesus tell us to love our enemies? Doing that sincerely usually leaves one with a lot fewer enemies!

I don’t deny that things are different in other parts of the world. Certainly, many people have a different experience in countries that are dominantly Catholic. But we find the same sort of dominance in places populated by other faiths such as the Greek Orthodox in Greece, the Islamic faith in Muslim countries and even fundamentalist Protestant churches in certain communities in the United States. I haven’t seen evidence that any one group maintains a corner on intolerance.

I couldn’t recall the evangelistic flyers that were already mailed. But I needed to do something. So, with the support of my church board I sent a letter to the Catholic priests in our area. Here is the body of that letter.

I recently became aware that a brochure with a picture of the Pope was mailed to the community. I am writing to you to apologize for the way this brochure may have offended our Catholic brothers and sisters. It is not our practice to promote this type of advertising and it is not our intent to foster any kind of prejudice or alienation in our Christian community. Unfortunately, this brochure was designed without consultation with either myself or with our church board.

On behalf of the Conyers Seventh-day Adventist Church Board, I extend to you our sincere apology concerning this matter. Furthermore, I invite you to convey my sentiments to your congregation or other concerned parties if necessary. If I can be of any help to you in this matter, please call me. I would welcome an opportunity to visit with you.

I wish I could say that everyone understood my motives for such an apology. I know our evangelist was not impressed. And others probably thought I had gone soft on the pillars of our faith. After all, don’t we have a responsibility to warn people to “come out of Babylon?” The problem with Babylon is that it doesn’t confine itself to one denomination. And we certainly don’t reach anyone by insulting them.

After sending the letter, I resumed my routine and didn’t think more about it. On the following Sabbath morning, however, I looked up from the desk in my office to see a dignified man dressed in a black shirt with a white square in the front of his collar. He introduced himself as Father Kieran, pastor of St. Pius X Catholic Church in Conyers. He said he was there to thank me for my letter! I was dumfounded that he would go to all the trouble of finding me on a Sabbath morning when he could have simply sent a letter or made a phone call. We agreed to meet for lunch the next week.

At our lunch meeting I found John Kieran to be a kind and thoughtful Christian. He didn’t mind at all when I asked him pointed questions like “What do you believe concerning papal infallibility?” He patiently explained that papal infallibility only applied when the pope’s proclamation represented the consensus of the church’s leaders. He didn’t see the pope as having any individual infallibility. Hmm… sounds a little like what some Protestants believe concerning the decisions of their own counsels and general conferences. But I didn’t mention that.

The people I have met who say they are against Catholics would hasten to explain that it’s “the system” not the people they are against. But I sometimes wonder if they actually know any Catholics or have any knowledge about the system besides what they’ve read in anti-Catholic literature. It makes a big difference when you actually get to know someone as a living, breathing, caring individual rather than as just a member of a group you fear. When we promote animosity toward a system, we alienate the people within the system. When traveling in Turkey a couple of years ago I came across considerable anti-American sentiment, mostly aimed at our president. Now in my private conversations I also may criticize my president. But he’s my president to criticize and as an American I have a built in defensiveness when I hear other nationalities express hate toward my country or its leaders. I suspect everyone feels the same way about their country, to a greater or lesser degree. I had to swallow hard a couple of times in order to accept friendly gestures from people who appeared to act hatefully toward someone who, for better or for worse, represents me and my country. I’m not impressed with the attitude “You’re OK but we hate your country.” And neither should Catholics, or any other group feel befriended if we should say something similar about them and their “system.”

I don’t ask that everyone in the world agree with my country, my president or even my religion. But well reasoned criticism is one thing. Hatred or anything that promotes animosity is another. In general, I abhor the history of persecution and the Catholic institutions that were responsible for it. And I disagree with many present day policies and find Catholic theology bound up in too much tradition and ecclesiastical authority. But I also find it unwise and downright unchristian to judge any church, even those with bad histories, on the basis of denominational labels. As a man of German ancestry, I am not culpable for the sins of the Nazi’s. And similarly I hold no grudge against modern Catholic Churches for what the Church of Rome did during the Middle Ages.

The Real Enemy

The problem is, Satan is alive and well on Planet Earth. While we continue to criticize each other and people who wear a different label, real evil does exist and it often masquerades as an effort to set something right in the name of God. For example, today in Uganda, kidnapped children are made into soldiers and then forced to rape, torture and kill other children in the name of religious and patriotic devotion. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), headed by Joseph Kony promotes the Ten Commandments in the worst possible way and mixes Old Testament scriptures with the Koran and witchcraft. The result is one of the largest terrorist groups in the world. Kony teaches his child soldiers to replicate their brand of terror in the power of the Holy Spirit in order to purify the unrepentant. Although we hardly ever hear of this kind of terrorism because it doesn’t affect us directly, the media has not ignored it entirely. National Geographic, Vanity Fair and Christianity Today along with TV shows such as Dateline and Nightline have all reported this present day horror. (http://www.worldvision.org/about_us.nsf/child/eNews_uganda_041806?OpenDocument&lpos=main&lid=0406uganda)

What is going on today in that part of the world is just as bad or worse than most of the stories from the Middle Ages. Yet very few of us take much notice, much less bring any biblical lessons to bear. Maybe we’re too busy nursing old grudges or perpetuating labels based on out-dated information. Meanwhile, a tragedy of holocaust proportions is taking place that makes what happened in the Inquisition look almost civilized.

If you need an enemy; someone to be against; find the real enemy. Fortunately, Satan is, from beginning to end, a defeated enemy; defeated by the blood of Jesus Christ. In that day of deliverance, when the Lord will descend, “he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” (Matthew 24:31) We will all be gathered into one people. For “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,” Adventist nor Catholic. We are all “one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

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The Mt. Tabor Monastery is now the St. Andrews Care Center

Built in 1892, the original Greek-Revival style monastery and chapel served as a convent for an order of cloistered nuns. A new Spanish colonial style monastery was constructed in 1922, and the chapel was further restored in 1931. St. Andrews opened its doors as a non-denominational residential care center after a complete renovation of the building in 1986. http://home.pacifier.com/~sarcc/index.html