>> “You can call this “polemic” for all you want, but the sola scriptura adherents are thankfully a fast-disappearing fringe group...” <<
.
This was prophesied by Paul in his letters to the Thessalonians. He called it a “falling away.”
.
No surprise that a catholic would be encouraged by such.
.
You have all heard this phrase before that “there are as many Baptists as there are flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream. “
Jesus was no “itinerant preacher.” That’s a pedantic phrase reserved for Al Sharptons, David Goreshs; and Jeremiah Wrights and the likes of Billy Graham, Rev. Schuller, Joel Osteens, TD Jakes.
Jesus preached in the Temple with Divine authority. Hence the passage from Scripture:
“And when he was come into the temple, there came to him, as he was teaching, the chief priests and ancients of the people, saying: By what authority dost thou these things? and who hath given thee this authority? “ Douay-Rheims Bible
Fundamentalists are basically anti-intellectual because they are unable to defend the whole of Scriptural text and interpretation by the very sources the early Church Fathers used to select what books constituted the Bible. That is, the received oral tradition, ritual, practice, and Divine infallibility that empowered Peter and his successors to preach THE Word of God. Not different flavors. This power was absolute: “Whatsoever thou shall bind on earth…” as it was enduring until the end of time “The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against thee.”
This is why Fundamentalists cannot explain how great theological minds have through studied debate and inquiry, assiduous research, and analysis conducted through the centuries confirmed the irrevocability of Petrine authority. Fundamentalists in many respects are not unlike Muslims interpreters of the Quran, where faith and reason are incompatible. To Catholics, faith and reason are braided together. Therein lies the difference!
Don’t for example expect any Fundamentalist to take the time to read such brilliant encyclicals like those of Benedict XVI: dubbed by The London Economist as the “theological Einstein of our times” whose works fill up the libraries of theological departments in every major university that has a School of Theology or at Harvard or Yale’s Divinity School. Fundamentalist minds are either incapable of grasping a higher level of thinking or as is usually the case they are, like Muslims, impermeably closed to acute reasoning and analysis: Hence why the crack open the Bible and toss out snippets of scripture.