INTERMARRAIGE AMONG JEWS AND CHRISTIANS WORRIES READER

Q: You answered a question recently concerning a Jewish man with a Christian wife who was angry that the daughter was converting and all of his grandkids would be Catholic.

This is a case of the "chickens coming home to roost." If he hadn't married a Gentile in the first place, the Jewish man wouldn't be in this pickle. This whole situation is his fault. "Do as I say, not as I do" won't work here.

What is it about Jewish mothers (and to a lesser extent, Jewish fathers) that so many Jewish sons want to run in the other direction to marry Gentiles? This has led to the worst intermarriage rate in history, and it's only getting worse. Jewish men, and to a lesser extent, Jewish women (who can't find Jewish men), are marrying Gentiles, and the vast majority of their children are either being raised Christian or so wishy-washy religionwise (with Christmas trees, etc.) that they will also marry Gentiles.

The Jewish male intermarriage rate is unfortunately becoming another "final solution" which Jews don't seem to realize until it's too late. Your thoughts? - Anonymous, via godsquadquestion@aol.com

A: I understand your sadness but not your anger. I too am saddened that after the Holocaust took one third of the Jewish people worldwide, we're now compounding that loss with the loss of many children of interfaith marriages and most of their grandchildren. The statistics are not precise, but at the last measure, 52 percent of all Jews who marry will marry a person who is an unconverted Christian.

However, the cause of the catastrophic decline in the population of Jewish people worldwide has not been due to the Nazis, the Cossacks, or marauding tribes of anti-Semites. The cause of all this freedom and acceptance is historically low levels of anti-Semitism.

In 1960, the overwhelming majority of Christians surveyed said they wouldn't consider marrying a Jewish person. Today, those numbers are reversed. Most people marry whom they love and this, in a cosmic sense, is a very good thing. I would never trade our freedom and acceptance for a ghetto in which both intermarriage and freedom didn't exist, and anti-Semitism was rampant.

We must try to make Jewish people proud of their heritage and faith so they want to transmit it in a proud and loving way that also acknowledges the greatness of other religions, to a new generation.

There was another bit of blowback from my recent column urging people to avoid psychics. Atheists don't like me because they think I'm not rational enough. Spiritualists don't like me because they think I'm too rational. I think I'm in just the right place.

Q: If we're not supposed to talk to the dead, why do people pray to saints and ask them for help? Clearly, these saints are the souls of people who once were alive. I've had more than one personal communication from the other side, and so have millions of other people. This happened to me without any help from psychics, by the way.

My mother never went to visit a psychic, yet she clearly saw the ghost of someone she knew who'd passed away. Why do people like you continue to ignore the truth? - P., via godsquadquestion@aol.com

A: It's one thing to talk to a dead person, and quite another to have a dead person talk back to you. Praying to saints is totally different from visiting a psychic. Proper prayers to saints are not laundry lists of requests for material things. Rather, they call to mind the courage and faith exemplified by the saints and express the hope that such qualities might also be present in the penitent person.

Praying to dead people is an attempt at an actual conversation. The easiest refutation of this is to say that contacting the dead is impossible and therefore, trying to talk to them directly or through a medium is spiritually misguided. It's also explicitly prohibited by Scripture. In my earlier column, I referred to Psalm 115, but did not include the specific prohibition in Deuteronomy 18: 9-14:

"When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners, but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do."

In this passage, a necromancer is a person who talks to dead people. The Bible, interestingly, doesn't base its condemnation on the basis that these acts are not real. They may be real but are prohibited because they are abominations, violating the boundaries God has set for life and death. They are a part of pagan idolatry and are sinful.

I know the need, and I appreciate the grief that drives people into the arms (and bank accounts) of psychics, but there is a call to each of us from life that is more spiritually healthy for us than a call from beyond the grave.

(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or email them to godsquadquestion@aol.com.