Russ Ford The Missionary’s Catechism Marty Barrack’s Review Paul Likoudis’ Review Sheila Kippley Review Prison Apostolate Biography First Century Christian Ministries Catholic Church Behind Bars

Paul Likoudis Review

Paul Likoudis reviewed The Missionary’s Catechism in the The Wanderer, December 21, 2000 issue. This is his review in its entirety:

At last month’s meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, among the major issues the bishops discussed were the need for a national catechism and the growing social problem of a burgeoning prison population.

Providentially, as the bishops struggle with their national and diocesan bureaucrats over a projected catechism’s contents, an Alabama inmate in the prison system they deplore has produced an admirable catechism which is already tested and found to produce excellent results.

The author, Russell Ford, may be one of the country’s most successful evangelists, having brought more than 200 hardened criminals into the Catholic Church, some 60 of whom are now his godsons.

And of these several hundred new Catholics, about half have been released from prison, and only one has returned – a recidivism rate of less than 1%. So not only has Russell Ford written an admirable catechism, but he’s probably running one of the most effective and efficient restorative justice programs in the country – on a budget of almost zero dollars.

Other converts of his are working as catechists in the same prison, and one, a man notorious throughout the entire Alabama prison system, is now teaching Church history.

Here is a timely reminder that the Catholic faith, lived according to God’s laws and the Church’s dogmas, is, indeed, an instruction manual from the Creator Himself for joyful living, even in hard times and hard places.

Russ Ford’s The Missionary’s Catechism (Magnificat Institute Press) is a catechism that has both an imprimatur and “attitude”, as Karl Keating observes in one of the three introductions. The imprimatur is from Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, and the “attitude” is street smart, sharp, direct, and non-nonsense.

The catechism is comprised of some 600 questions and answers on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments and the precepts of the Church, followed by a list of recommended readings, prayers, and an examination.

Parts of Russ Ford’s story may be familiar to Wanderer readers. Ford began writing to the From the Mail section some seven or eight years ago, offering bits of biographical information, seeking gift subscriptions to this paper for himself and fellow inmates, and recounting the persecution he and other Catholics suffered in the prison system. Russ, himself, forfeited his opportunity for parole after serving half of his 25-year sentence because he filed a lawsuit against the prison for its routine attempts to force priests to disclose the sins of penitents revealed during Confession.

As Ford related at the time in pages of the Wanderer, his parole hearing was going well, the prison chaplain had testified that he was living a deeply Catholic life, he had a job lined up, but an anti-Catholic feminist on the parole board demanded that Ford release the priest from his seal of the confessional so he could reveal Ford’s sins. The priest replied that no force on earth could force him to violate the seal, and the feminist responded there would be no parole.

As he recounts in the introduction to The Missionary’s Catechism, Ford entered prison a “hate-filled and embittered agnostic.” Toward the end of his first year, he met a fellow inmate who was inspired by Pope John Paul to be an evangelist to prisoners.

“Because of that providential meeting, the young agnostic began the long and painful process to conversion. God stripped him down to nothing, and rebuilt a whole man where only the shell of a man had been.” Russ entered the Catholic Church on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1989. At the request of the prison chaplain, Ford began to teach his fellow prisoners the Catholic faith, and to write for Catholic publications, including The Wanderer and Karl Keating’s This Rock.

The tone of Ford’s catechism is refreshingly blunt, confident, and yet humble, exemplified by this passage, also from his introduction. “I am not a great man. I’m not even a particularly good man, but I am a product of something which God seems to relish. God has taken one of the lowly status of prisoner and given this convict a talent for teaching the truths of Catholicism evangelistically. It would be an injustice to God to deny that my work here in prison has been less than amazing in terms of conversions. But God did not give talents for evangelization for myself and those with whom I deal alone. These were given to me to share with the world.

“The Missionary’s Catechism is, to my knowledge, the only one of its kind. It is written in the tenor and method I have used to teach many people. The style is question and answer, and the posture is assertively evangelistic.”

The Environment

To appreciate the quality of Ford’s achievement, it is helpful to understand first the prison environment where he evangelizes and writes. A description was provided in the July-August 1999 issue of This Rock, by Carl Monroe, a fellow prisoner serving a life sentence, whom Ford converted five years ago, and who now, himself, is a catechist:

“When I came to prison in 1970, there were 1,250 inmates living in a concrete building designed to house 650. They slept on the floor or in the bathroom or anywhere they could. The mattress was an armful of cotton in a sack that had been urinated on many times. There was no hot water in the winter, no panes on the windows, no blankets. Rats and mice were unafraid of humans. Cockroaches were everywhere – the beds, the clothes, the food. There were no lights, only bare wires.

“We cut cane or picked cotton from 6 a.m. until 4 p.m. For lunch we had greens that were brought straight from the garden into the pot and cooked until there were mushy. Each serving held a spoonful of mud and bugs. Hogshead stew was common – made with real hogs’ heads, beaten with a hammer, put into a pot, and served. If you like hot snout, and ears with hair still attached, then an Alabama prison is where you should be. Our favorite was the fish on Fridays, until we learned that the Oriental characters on the box it came in said, ‘Not fit for human consumption.’

“The beds were (and still are) 12 to 15 inches apart, and since we had no say in who sleeps next to us, we get used to the smell of the ones who do. Radios went full blast 24 hours a day, seven days a week, each on a different station. Now it’s TV, which is paid for by the inmates. Hollering and horseplay have taken the place of the stabbings, and rapes and killings. But robberies, fighting, homosexual acts, and masturbation are rampant.”

In such an atmosphere, it takes enormous strength to maintain one’s dignity, and enormous courage to evangelize for the Catholic Church, especially because the prison population (and guards and management) are predominantly black evangelical Protestants, who have animosity toward the Catholic faith.

Ford has told how prison guards would routinely interrupt the Mass during the consecration, and order the priest to stop so they could take a head count of the inmates. Likewise, guards would barge in during Confessions.

Ford’s catechism has, as reviewer (and friend and fellow convert) Marty Barrack noted in a review published in Fr. John Hardon’s The Catholic Faith magazine, “a sense of being handcrafted. As an Alabama prisoner, Russ had no access to a computer or even a typewriter for his writing. The Missionary’s Catechism was entirely handwritten. Russ’ hands have become arthritic during the years of his incarceration; every word was wrought from pain.”

The Catechism

Ford’s catechism is structured along the lines of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, beginning with an explanation of each article of the Creed, followed by a section on grace and the seven sacraments, Christian morality (conscience and the Ten Commandments), the precepts of the Church, the life of virtue and the life of prayer.

Like The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ford’s catechism is based on the teachings of Vatican II, the fathers of the Church and papal encyclicals; but what emerges much more strongly from Ford’s catechism, perhaps because it is written specifically with a prison population in mind, are the repeated, emphatic reaffirmations of Church teaching on free will and the necessity of frequent recourse to the Sacrament of Penance.

In the comprehensive discussion on the first article of the Creed – “I believe in God the Father, Creator of Heaven and earth,” question 24 asks, “Why did God give us free will?”

The answer: “God created us with free will so we would love Him by our own choice. What good is the love of a robot who is programmed to love? It serves no purpose. By giving us a free will, He allows us to choose – with His help – to do what is good and avoid evil. In this way, He can reward us for our good choices.”

At a time when the modern world is in deep denial of the Judeo-Christian notion of free will, Ford brings it up over and over again in this section on the Creed, and especially in his treatment of the sacraments.

For example, in his treatment of the ‘Tenth Article of the Creed – “The forgiveness of sins” – Ford asks in Question 127: “What is personal sin?”

The answer: “Actual (personal) sin is any sin we commit ourselves by a free and willful thought, desire, word, action, or omission that is against the law of God.”

Question 150, in the section on the 12^th article of the Creed – “And life everlasting” – asks: “How can a loving God send anyone to Hell?”

The answer: “In actuality, God does not send anyone to Hell, but rather we send ourselves. He created us with free will, then gave us an objective set of moral norms by which to live. He respects the free will he gave us. If we choose to ignore Him and abuse the gift of free will by way of unrepentant mortal sin, then we choose Hell.”

In many ways, the Catholic understanding of free will has eroded under the pressure of evolutionary theory, but Ford makes it clear to his readers in his treatment of the first article of the Creed that “evolution is just a theory.”

“The actual proof of the descent of man’s body from animals is inadequate, especially in respect to paleontology. The human soul could not have been derived through natural evolution from that of the brute animal, since it is of a spiritual nature. If evolution is ever proven to be a fact, we are to believe that only the body evolved – with God’s help – and not the human soul. The soul cannot evolve, since each soul is individually created by God. The Catholic Church teaches that God created the world and all its creatures but defers to science on when any particular creature appeared on earth. The Church firmly declares, however, that the appearance was by God’s action.”

What separates man from the beasts, furthermore, is conscience, and Ford’s questions and answers illuminate an area made murky by so much dissent over the past 35 years.

The third question under the heading “Conscience” asks: “But isn’t conscience merely a formation of thought from a person’s culture or religious belief system?”

The answer: “No, conscience is not of human origin. Each human person ‘has in his heart a law inscribed by God.’ The conscience is the most secret inner core of man, and is a part of the soul’s faculty of intellect. We are not aware of our conscience from the brain, a mere human organ, but from the movement of the soul. No neurologist or scientist can tell us what part of the brain governs the conscience, because the brain is incapable, as a organ, to judge the difference between good and evil.”

Question 375: “Are we truly responsible for our actions?”

The answer: “Yes, we are responsible for all our actions, because God gave us an intellect and free will. We must use them to fulfill the purpose for which we were created, which is to know, love, and serve God in this life so we can be happy forever with Him in the next. To use the intellect and free will for anything contrary to God’s laws is an abuse of those gifts.”

Question 376: “What is a right conscience?”

The answer: “A right conscience is one in conformity with the natural law, divine law, and the Church’s moral teachings.”

Question 377: “How can a right conscience be formed?”

The answer: “We form a right conscience by studying God’s moral code, as authoritatively taught by the Church. By learning and understanding Christian morality, and with the aid we ask from the Holy Spirit, we can form a conscience that will lead us to sanctity and salvation.”

Ford’s treatment of the Ten Commandments is especially fine, as these two illustrations from the Fifth and Six Commandments show:

What does the Fifth Commandment forbid?”

The answer: “The Fifth Commandment forbids intentional homicide, abortion, euthanasia, child abuse, sterilization, suicide, and all that can lead to physical or spiritual harm to oneself or others, such as anger, fighting, revenge, drunkenness, drug abuse, torments inflicted on body or mind, hatred, and bad example.”

Question 470 asks: “What are some of the sins committed against the Sixth Commandment?”

The answer: “Some of the sins committed against the Sixth Commandment are adultery, fornication, contraception, homosexual activity, prostitution, premarital sex, masturbation, and pornography.”

Question 473 asks: “Why is contraception sinful?”

The answer: “Contraception is seriously sinful because it rejects chaste love and defies God by wanting to increase pleasure while avoiding the God-given responsibility of procreating children. Furthermore, the irresponsible use of sex via contraception leads to a lack of respect for both sex, the marriage partner as a person, and life.”

Question 474: “What about the Pill?” Answer: “The Pill is evil morally, ethically, and medically. It condemns women to a premature death, impedes the conception of children and destroys life in the womb. Furthermore, use of the Pill leads people into other immoral sexual activities that lead to eternal punishment in Hell.”

In his treatment of the related Ninth Commandment, Question 492 asks: “What are the main dangers to chastity?”

The answer: “The main dangers to chastity are laziness, unbridled curiosity, bad company, excessive drinking and drug use, immodest dress, pornography, suggestive music, and obscene talk.”

Russ Ford’s 330-page The Missionary’s Catechism is a remarkable achievement: thorough, comprehensive, readable, extraordinarily clear and convincing. Its audience is not just prisoners – who could benefit immensely from it – but every Catholic, and its appearance – like Ford’s conversion – is a sign that the Holy Spirit has not abandoned the Church, but continues to raise up great men to defend it and spread its mission.

Perhaps one is to wish that, just as the Soviet Gulag produced spiritual and literary giants such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, America’s burgeoning prison industry will produce more converts like Russell Ford.

Order The Missionary’s Catechism from: Magnificat Institute Press, P.O. Box 60591, Houston, TX. 77205. Phone orders to: 281-370-8200, or e-mail to: mipress@compuserve.com. Copies are $12.95 each, plus $3.95 for shipping and handling. Add one dollar per extra book ordered. Volume discounts to bookstores.