Disturbing news about Catholic Answers

[Paladin D]

I just received a disturbing letter from Karl Keating, from Catholic Answers, they're having serious financial problems. I won't quote the whole letter (oddly it isn't on the site), but ever since Pope John Paul II passed away, they've had a major slump in donations. Not to mention, other non-profit Catholic organizations have been suffering the same thing ever since his death.

They need to pay [b]$40,000[/b] in last-minute expenses, which is part of the [b]$250,000[/b] dollars they need to get out of the hole their in. I'm definately gonna send a donation, I hope they post something about this soon on their website with the details (that I have in my letter).


EDIT: Also I just found out, [b]they need it within 30 days[/b].

Edited August 23, 2005 by Paladin D

[dUSt]

Hmmm. Phatmass donations have went down too.

Only our budget is more like we need $40 in last minute expenses and $250 to get out of our hole. hahaha

[Paladin D]

[quote name='dUSt' date='Aug 22 2005, 08:43 PM']Hmmm. Phatmass donations have went down too.

Only our budget is more like we need $40 in last minute expenses and $250 to get out of our hole. hahaha
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Yeah.

Also I just found out, [b]they need it within 30 days[/b].

[philothea]

[quote name='Paladin D' date='Aug 22 2005, 07:37 PM']I just received a disturbing letter from Karl Keating, from Catholic Answers, they're having serious financial problems.  I won't quote the whole letter (oddly it isn't on the site), but ever since Pope John Paul II passed away, they've had a major slump in donations.  Not to mention, other non-profit Catholic organizations have been suffering the same thing ever since his death.
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I suspect the slump in donations has nothing to do with JPII's death, but with the ever rising gas (and thus, everything else) prices.

Donations to charities are the first thing to go when money gets tight.

[Carnanc]

is there a place on the website to make a donation?

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

its a good recourcse in some areas but its a tad liberal for a lot of Conservative Catholics who attened the Novus ordo
Robert Sungenis is not a Karl Keating fan.

[JP2Iloveyou]

I've never found anything liberal at Catholic Answers. Everything I have ever read there has been in perfect obedience to the Magisterium.

Anyway, Philothea makes a good point. Everything costs more these days. Gas prices are ridiculous, and I don't even own a car! The average family has to make a house payment, a couple of car payments, pay for gas, possibly school tuition for their children, groceries, taxes, higher utilities, etc, etc, etc. It is really depressing. The funny thing is, the economy is actually doing quite well right now and taxes are going down under the Bush administration. I know my family has had to cut back on what they give to the Church. They are usually quite generous, but my mom had to start her own business (thank you President Bush, without his tax cuts, this wouldn't have been possible) but starting a business is slow at first. Money is tight, and charities, unfortunately, are often the first to go. I know God is never outdone in generosity, but sometimes it is easier to say that then to believe it. God always provides though.

[Brother Adam]

Karl Keating a liberal Catholic. I guess Pope Benedict XVI is liberal too. Oh wait. They actually think he is, if they even are willing to admit he is pope.


That said - many Catholics as it seems don't know anything about business or how to stay in business (specifically refering to bookstores or other retail outlets). So it doesn't surprise me. There is a reason I buy all Catholic items from Amazon.com.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

Keating has a big issue on Catholics who accept the theory of Geocentrism. so he attacks them why?

this is from catholic apologetics international a much better apologetics site operated by Robert Sungenis.

[quote]In the July/August 2003 issue of This Rock, founder and president of Catholic Answers, Karl Keating, says that advocates of a young earth (i.e., an earth 10,000 years old, or less) are akin to those who “garner for themselves Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.” (1) Can someone tell me why the president of an established Catholic institution, on display to the whole world, has to resort to such inflammatory characterizations of other Catholics and their motives? Unfortunately, Keating’s condescending approach to those of a differing opinion has become quite common in his rhetoric of late. People close to him have told me that he has already lost a substantial number of his fan-base due to his vicious judgments, some of which I addressed in The Remnant a few months ago. Other layers are made of debris or sharply eroded, softer rock and are caned at about 45 degrees. The Tonto Platform, about a thousand feet above the river, is the closest one comes to the horizontal, but it undulates constantly and is never truly level...At an elevation of about 3,000 feet, the scrub-covered Tonto Platform – which is nowhere really level – allows one to traverse the Grand Canyon more or less horizontally. The Tonto Trail...runs for about 92 miles.
For the record, evolutionists believe that the Tonto edifice of the Grand Canyon occurred during the 70-million year Cambrian period, since it contains many fossils associated with the “Cambrian explosion.” But again, this is all based on the unproven and anomalous theory of uniformitarianism, besides the fact that evolutionists have found no fossils before or after the Cambrian period, in addition to the fact that the fossils in the Cambrian period reveal no transitional forms.

The Work of Johannes Walther:

Other secular scientists have proposed a different scenario. A few years after the work of Hutton and Lyell came the geological studies performed by Johannes Walther in the latter nineteenth century. Walther began his studies by examining sedimentary deposits that stretched from land to ocean. To test a hypothesis of his, Walther drilled out a vertical cylinder of sediment midway in the advancement. He found that the various layers in the cylinder were in the same order as the leading edge of the advancement into the ocean. From this evidence he reasoned that the layers were being laid horizontally (not vertically, as Hutton and Lyell had proposed).

Walther performed the same testing in the bay of Naples. He found that after drilling out a vertical column of sediment, it revealed the same sequence of layers as the sediments laying horizontally. He concluded that Hutton and Lyell’s theory (i.e., that layers on the top were forming later than the layers on the bottom) was wrong. After Walther, however, not much experimentation was put into his discovery.

But in 1965, the American geologist Edwin McKee found evidence of Walther’s horizontal sedimentation in one of the branches of the Colorado river after it overflowed its banks from a torrential rain. The stratified layers reached a thickness of twelve feet in only forty-eight hours, and showed the same particle sorting and bedding planes as in all other sites previously investigated by Hutton and Lyell. Hutton and Lyell would have had to interpret McKee’s evidence as interruptions in sedimentation wherein one strata would have hardened before the next layer was placed on top, but, of course, this type of hardening would be impossible within the space of forty-eight hours.

Horizontal sedimentation was also confirmed by experimental evidence from coastal marine floods. In the 1970's and 1980's several teams of scientists bored vertical columns in the bottom of the Pacific ocean. To their amazement, they found that their samples confirmed Walther’s theory. Thus, not only were layers of sediment being laid horizontally in bays and beaches, but also in the deep sea. Germane to our topic is the fact that the same tests were performed on the Grand Canyon, and with the same results – the deposits showed evidence of being laid horizontally, not vertically.

With this evidence in hand, various other scientists set out to confirm or deny this intriguing phenomenon. In the 1994 publication, Grand Canyon: A Monument to Catastrophe, geologist Stephen Austin offers an explanation by citing the work of sedimentologist D. M. Rubin on the relation between hydraulic conditions and stratified structures in San Francisco Bay, which Rubin had originally published in Sedimentary Geology. Rubin found that with a certain speed of current, depth of water, and size of sedimentary particles, a specific sequence of layers were formed. Austin also refers to Jay Sufford’s work in Sedimentary Patrology, which summarized a series of thirty-nine flume experiments on the relations between hydraulics and stratification, and which found the same results as Rubin.(8)

To his amazement, Austin discovered the same sequential depositing of layers in the sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon as those in Rubin’s experiments. One of these was the 800 kilometer sample of the Grand Canyon, which Keating recognized as the Tonto Platform. It comprises three layers which extend east to west. The upper layer is made of limestone; the middle layer of clay; and the lower layer of sandstone. As predicted by Walther, the same sequence of layers are found side-by-side as those found from top to bottom.

From this evidence, Austin determined the hydraulic conditions which would have been necessary to form the horizontal layers observed in the Tonto Group. Austin found that a velocity of water moving at two meters per second, and causing the water to rise nearly 2,000 meters above the ocean level, would have been sufficient. He further found that all this could happen within a matter of two days (not millions of years). Not surprisingly, the velocity of the water needed to build the Tonto Group corresponded precisely with the velocities discovered in the thirty-nine flume experiments performed by Jay Sufford.

How Was the Grand Canyon Formed?

Thus, sedimentation occurs as follows. The advancing water travels at differing velocities. Heavier or coarser particles deposit before lighter particles in a fast-moving current. As the water level increases, the speed of the current decreases, and at that point the sediments deposited would be proportionately finer, yet all of the particles would be deposited at or near the same time, resulting in the sandstone-clay-limestone sequence as we see in the Grand Canyon. During the point at which the river or ocean arrived at its maximum level there would be little or no current. The finest particles would deposit at a rate of about 2 centimeters per day. (This, of course, shows that superposition does, indeed, occur, but not over millions of years). This process would be interrupted when, as the waters began to subside, the current reappeared.

The curious feature about the layers in the Grand Canyon, and all other sedimetary depositions, is that the layers are almost perfectly bordered against one another. That is, you see a few vertical feet of limestone layer with hardly any variation in the width of the layer extending for hundreds of feet. The next layer of clay, or sandstone, is just as perfect. That doesn’t happen very easily with vertical sedimentation dependent on the bottom layer hardening before the top layer is added. Conversely, it occurs quite easily in horizontal sedimentation.

Moreover, it is quite unlikely that erosion over millions of years could have produced what we see in the Grand Canyon, for erosion is not locale specific. It erodes all that it touches uniformly without distinction. Cataclysms, on the other hand, are locale specific, as well as possessing the tremendous forces necessary to make dramatic changes in the landscape (as we see in the Grand Canyon), and they do their damage in a matter of days or weeks, not millions of years.

As for the huge gorges in the Grand Canyon, they would have been formed as the water from the cataclysm began to recede. As it recedes, it creates velocities of current that are sufficient enough to cut deep gorges into the lightly-packed sediments deposited during initial stratification. This does not happen today on a similar scale because the sediments, over thousands of years, have become hardened, and thus relatively resistant to effacing.

I say “relatively resistant” to effacing, because not too long ago we had even more proof that gorges the size of those in the Grand Canyon can be formed in a very short time. In 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted. The most remarkable things have happened in the years following the eruption. In the May 2000 issue of National Geographic, geological scientist Peter Frenzen writes concerning a canyon cut by the water flow created by the eruption: “You’d expect a hardrock canyon to be thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old, but this was cut in less than a decade.” Not only were the geologists shocked, but ecologists were just as surprised. Ecologist David Wood writes: “All of us were surprised at the rate at which this landscape was colonized again. We were thinking, Gosh, how long is it going to be before anything come back here?” The rest of the article answers the question: “Within just a few years scientists found flora and fauna pioneering in the niches created by the eruption’s various geological disturbances.”(9)

In conclusion, apparently unknown to Keating, there is abundant experimental evidence for the Grand Canyon being made in a matter of days or weeks, not over millions of years. Conversely, since the stratification theory used by evolutionists has never been proven experimentally, only assumed, then there remains little objection they can raise to these findings. As a result, their whole theory of the geologic column, including the multi-millions of years separating the Cambrian from such periods as the Jurassic or Pleistocene, will have to be discarded until they can provide experimental results to the contrary.(10) In the meantime, I thank Mr. Keating for allowing me to make this evidence available to the public.

Robert Sungenis
Catholic Apologetics Intl.
8-25-03 [/quote]

[JP2Iloveyou]

I don't see anything liberal in opposing that viewpoint. Everything you quoted was a matter of science, which is proper to the field of science. It is not a matter of faith and morals. Thus, the Church has nothing to say about it. We can question the prudential judgment of Keating's criticism of Catholics who disagree with him, but simply pointing out that there is scientific evidence that the world is billions of years old is not speaking against the Church at all. On the contrary, if this were a matter of faith, then the Church would have been in error, thus proving that the Church is not infallible, when she criticized Galileo for claiming that the earth revolves around the sun, heliocentricism. Modern scientific study has proven Galileo correct. Moreover, Catholics are permitted to believe many things about geology, biology, and other sciences, provided that they recognize God as the ultimate author of all creation and the ultimate orderer of all creation. Pope John Paul II said as much.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

niether do i see anything liberal in opposing Geocentrism. But many Catholics hold geocentrism as true. and Keating need not attack them.

[Brother Adam]

I think it is depressing and dumbfounding that Robert Sungenis would resort to building his whole basis of attack on Karl Keating based on one line. He barely even quotes a single sentence, and it has nothing to do with Keatings scientific defense. Mr Sungenis displays a classic attitude of "I can't find anything in your writing that is wrong so I will point out where you are being uncharitible and through a hissy fit about it". I respect both Keating and Sungenis as theologians, and they are theologians, of course they will end up disagreeing. It is in their job discription to disagree, argue, and figure things out. It's how ultimately we develop doctrine. I also strongly disagree with Geocentricism, but am a young earth creationist, but that hardly makes me a bad Catholic.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

nobody said it did..........

[Era Might]

[quote]I respect both Keating and Sungenis as theologians, and they are theologians[/quote]

Neither Keating nor Sungenis are theologians. Aside from not having the necessary education, a theologian must be formally commissioned by his Bishop to act as a theologian. George Weigel and Scott Hahn are theologians. Keating and Sungenis are simply lay apologists.

So long as Sungenis pushes geocentrism side-by-side with his apologetics apostolate, and generally persists in his weirdness, he will be taken about as seriously as Geocentrism is.

[Brother Adam]

Thank you for the semantics.