you make good points and I had forgotten about Bill Cork!!

However, I have seen from personal experience that Alpha seemed to cause more problems than help at my parish.. I actually saw people regress in terms of understanding the sacraments etc… Perhaps, it was how it was run as opposed to the program itself.

But, I take your points seriously!

Have a great Canada Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve seen these sorts of objections before, but to be honest they don’t impress me. Basically they present Alpha as some sort of “infiltration” of the pure Catholic faith. They ignore that the Catholic faith is pure only when considering the Church as a whole: the practical pastoral reality is that an individual person has at best an approximate grasp of the Catholic faith. If Alpha can help a person with a more distant approximation come to a closer approximation, then it is pastorally good. The problems mentioned by articles such as these only arise if Alpha is itself taken to be a “pristine” presentation of the Christian faith – a claim it actually never makes.

In my opinion, these articles reveal a great deal about the psychology of the authors. They seem to be coming not only from the idea that the Catholic faith is pristine (it is, in itself) but that it can even be pristine in the way it is understood and lived by individuals. But the faith can only be pristinely lived by the Church as a whole – for individuals, we must accept that our personal understanding is subject to revision based on our current grasp of Tradition and the legitimate development of doctrine. An individual who believes that they have “got it” in their grasp of the faith (when they actually need to see things more humbly) would find himself often ill at ease – especially in the presence of admittedly-non-pristine things like Alpha. But again, Alpha does not claim to be the be-all and end-all of catechetical programs, and why should we not simply accept it for its good points?

BTW, the author of the second article, Bill Cork, abandoned the Catholic faith shortly after writing that article to “go home” to Seventh Day Adventism. In itself this does not invalidate his arguments, but again I’d be cautious about the mentality and hidden assupmtions behind them.

http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=7562

http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent/alpha1.htm