"A title like that will cause YOPIS-followers to go into apoplexy just from seeing it, you know. Tsk-tsk."
Wow. With not a single Prot comment on the thread, you fire the "YOPIS" shot. Nice. Does your comment count as "protestant bashing"? Is "Catholic bashing" therefore now allowed?
FormerLib is Orthodox, not Roman Catholic if I am not mistaken. What is YOPIS?
"Is "Catholic bashing" therefore now allowed?"
To my formerly protestant, then agnostic, and now Catholic (but always military) mind, I guess that's what freedom of religion means. You're allowed to "bash" other religions verbally, so long as you don't actually interfere with people in the real world.
The very word "tolerance," after all, requires that there's something that we disagree with or even despise, but which we are through an act of will tolerating.
From a Catholic perspective, when Catholic-bashing occurs here on FR, it's generally an opportunity to say, "No, that's not what Catholics believe." For it is true, as Archbishop Sheen said, that "There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church—but there are millions who hate what they mistakenly think the Catholic Church teaches."
What puzzles me is that there are some people who refuse to be persuaded no matter how many times you tell them that they are misinformed as to some Catholic tenet, and no matter how much material you post from Church sources showing what the Catholic tenet actually is. These discussions take the form...
"You Catholics are bad for believing X."
"We don't believe X; we believe Y."
"No, you don't. You believe X."
"Here's documentation that we believe Y."
"No, you don't. You believe X."
"Y."
"X."
"Y."
"X."
"Y."
"X."
...et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a puzzlement.
I think it's this, more than anything else, that gives Catholics an attitude about protestants. From my childhood and youth as a Protestant, I can remember many sermons ripping Catholic "idolatry," drinking of alcoholic beverages, "the Whore of Babylon," and so on. But I have never heard protestantism torn into like that in a Catholic homily.
Yes, we believe that the Catholic Church posesses the fullness of Revelation, while protestant churches only teach a part of it. But when we get to the "and therefore" part of the syllogism, there is a real difference in attitude between the way Catholics regard protestantism and the way *some* protestants view Catholicism.
Perhaps it is significant that Catholics who convert to a protestant denomination tend to be bitter and angry toward Catholicism, while protestants who convert to
Catholicism tend to look back on their protestant experiences not with bitterness and anger, but as something that, while good, was ultimately insufficient.
It seems to me that "YOPIOS" is pretty mild, especially given the protestant emphasis on sola scriptura, but if you want to take a slap at Catholicism in retribution, I won't mind. Maybe some productive discussion will ensue.
Actually, I'd expect Proti's to regard threads with "Mother of God" in the title the same way that I treat threads with "Arminian" in the title (Hint: I don't go there).