Posted on 07/23/2007 3:36:15 PM PDT by annalex
Sunday, July 22, 2007
As a young Catholic I was unaware of the amount of irrational hatred that was directed toward the Catholic Church and Catholics themselves. Growing up in Los Angeles I was not subject to the Fundamentalist “tracts” being placed on my family car while we were at Mass as I would have been had I lived in the “Bible Belt”. My exposure to people of other faiths was frequent and always positive. The majority of my friends growing were Jewish as were the girls whom I had the honor of dating. My babysitter growing up was Mormon, as was my Paternal Grandfather. My Paternal Grandmother is a Methodist and my Father was an atheist for most of his life. My Maternal Grandfather was a Presbyterian from a family that produced many deacons. However, my Maternal Grandmother was an Irish Catholic and thus my Mother was a Catholic and therefore we were raised Catholic. None of this was seen as a conflict. None of the above people in my family ever acted as though anything was “wrong” with my siblings and I being raised Catholic.
In my college years I essentially fell away from the faith. I still called myself a “Catholic” but had no particular belief in any of the dogmas that makes one a Catholic. I just knew that I was of Irish ancestry and thus was “Catholic”. My beliefs were for the most part agnostic. I thought that true believers were absurd (I included both theist and atheist true believers as absurd).
While in college I heard all about how the Catholic Church was responsible for the Dark Ages, the destruction of the Native Peoples of the Americas, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, pimples on teenagers, Milli-Vanilli and just about everything else that negatively effected anyone anywhere at anytime everywhere. I learned how peaceful and wonderful Muslim societies were and how Christians lived very well under Islamic rule. And how the Crusades were an evil move by a corrupt Pope to throw off that wonderful balance and have a huge land grab for greedy Churchman and Nobles. I heard how nothing good happened in the Christian world and no good men were produced in the Christian world until Marin Luther and later "the Enlightenment". I look back now and marvel at how I remained a Catholic even if it was in name only. All my history professors with their fancy PhDs thought Catholicism was a force for evil in the Western World who was I to disagree? Of course I just went along and got good grades and degrees not really challenging the idiocy that I was being taught.
There I was just a young guy going through life not contemplating the great issues of life and certainly not contemplating being a Catholic when I had the misfortune to meet a Rabbi that was a friend of my wife’s family. During our discussion, the rabbi told me about things that Christians “buy into” like the Trinity and the fact that Jesus was God. I was told that I could never understand Jews and their suffering at the hands of Catholics. I was told that I “would never know what it is to be a Jew or how it feels to have your children forced to sing Christmas carols (oh the horror! the horror!)”. I would never know what it is like to look at someone like me and see the Inquisition and the Crusades. Now, anyone who is not a self absorbed bigot would know that talking to a person who is half Irish and Catholic knows a little something of prejudice and persecution. My ancestors could not own land in their own country. They had to pay taxes to a foreign English master and support his foreign Church that was a parasite on their own land. They had real persecution. If they could have gotten off with simply singing Church of Ireland songs rather than pay taxes to and be persecuted by the British, I'm sure they would have gladly accepted. But why look past ones on victim-hood in order to see truth, when victim-hood is so much more of a commodity in our modern society.
At that point I made a commitment to understand my faith. I would never let someone attack the beliefs of my ancestors as this rabbi did without making a strong defense. My ancestors were willing to be persecuted (the real kind of persecution not the Christmas Carol kind) rather than abandon their faith. The least I could do is understand what they found so important as to endure what they did. Thus starting my journey toward becoming a passionate believer. The irony of a anti-Catholic bigoted rabbi bringing me closer to the truth of Christ is absolutely wonderful.
I started reading books by the usual authors that are sold at Borders and Barnes & Noble like George Weigel. While informative they were, upon reflection, very superficial. However, I happened upon a book called “Catholicism verses Fundamentalism” by Karl Keating. I thought it was simply going to be an analysis of Catholic beliefs versus Fundamentalist beliefs. What I had purchased was a wonderful combination of satire and apologetics. It has become the definitive apologetics book produced in the last 30 years. The title of the book itself mocks Jimmy Swaggarts silly book “Catholicism and Christianity”. Throughout the book I was baptized by fire into the world of anti-Catholicism. I learned about such Fundamentalist writers and “thinkers” as Lorraine Boettner, Alexander Hislop, Jimmy Swaggart, Jack Chick and others. Keating dismantled their arguments so thoroughly that one wonders how these people are not all routinely dismissed even by honest Fundamentalists. Sadly, low rent bigots like Hislop, Boettner and Dave Hunt are still widely read in Fundamentalist circles. Swaggart has fallen out of favor as we all know. Keating opened up a new door to me. I now was ready for the next step and started buying every book by Chesterton and Belloc I could find as they are the greatest apologists for the Catholic faith in the last 100 years.
The Holy Spirit has a funny way of working. I became friends with a wonderful guy who happens to be a Fundamentalist Christian. As we would talk he would mention some of the things that Keating talked about in his book. I was informed that Peter never went to Rome and that the Church was founded by Constantine the Great, and that Easter is really “Ishtar” and other scholarly insights that occupy the minds of Fundamentalist writers. I was told all about Catholicism and how it is really just paganism re-written. To his and most Fundamentalists credit, they literally do not know they are repeating lies. These books are sold at Protestant Book Stores and Churches. Also, he informed me of these things out of love as he believed my soul was in peril. So he could not process the refutations that I would make to him and just go on to the next attack. Most Catholics know about this tactic that Fundamentalists use. They will tell us what we believe and how stupid we are for believing it. 99% of the time they are wrong. The problem is that they have been told by Dave Hunt (his bio is from "rapture ready") or James White that the Calumnies that they are stating are Gospel truth.
After a while I began to pick up more and more apologetics material to refute my friends claims. I also decided that I would no longer play defense with him. I would attack his belief in sola scriptura (scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone). When I would press him and ask about where those teachings are found in the Bible he would have no answer. This lead to his anger that I was asking too much to show me where the Bible taught either one of those Protestant Traditions (Traditions of men, not of God I might add). I would also repeat what he would say to me but re-phrase it to see if he really was willing to stand by it. For instance, he once told me that he was passionately anti-Catholic. I responded “Really? So if I were Jewish would it be okay for you to tell me that you are passionately anti-Jew?” He was taken aback and responded “Of course not!” I then responded “I guess some hatred is acceptable while others is not”. His response….silence. And then move on to the next attack. That is generally the tactic of the anti-Catholic. Never acknowledge that they are wrong, just move on to the next attack until they find something that the Catholic cannot answer. Usually it ends with some obscure Pope from the 7th century that no one knows about.
Anti-Catholicism rots the mind. It blinds people and they become obsessed with the destruction of something that they cannot destroy. People have been trying for 2000 years. Churchmen like Roger Mahoney have done their best. But the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. So this leads to desperation. Which then leads to all kinds of ridiculous theories and outright lies about what Catholics believe and do. It does not stop with Fundamentalist Christians though. Before we think “well that’s just those weird bible-thumpers” let’s examine some things that people just “know”.
People "just know" that the Catholic Church did nothing in the Americas but persecute the indigenous people and massacre them. We "just know" that Priests never stood up to the Spaniards. Of course this is untrue. It is true that there were Catholic Priests who conducted themselves terribly during colonial times. However, it was Catholic Priests who sought to make life better for the indigenous people. Jesuits armed Indians against the Spanish in Paraguay, Francisco de Vittoria pleaded with the Spanish King in defense of the Indians. Most people in the Americas have never heard of Bartoleme de las Casas. Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican Priest has been called the Father of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. There is also Antonio Montesino who was the first person, in 1511, to denounce publicly in America the enslavement and oppression of the Indians as sinful and disgraceful to the Spanish nation. There of course were villains in the Spanish system but so were there in the American and English systems that were dominated by Protestants. We don’t hear about the brutality of Protestant lands in the US. We hear about those backward Spanish Catholics (who built the first Universities in the Americas) but not about the theocratic police state established in Geneva by John Calvin or the massacres carried out by Anabaptists in Munster.
In some cases anti-Catholicism is not only profitable it can allow for common bullies to slander and desecrate the memory of men finer than themselves without repercussions. Take the case of Daniel Goldhagen. He has made a career out of slandering the Catholic Church. Commenting on Mr. Goldhagens slanderous book A Moral Reckoning, Rabbi David Dalin, described Goldhagens work as "failing to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship.” He went on to say “That the book has found its readership out in the fever swamps of anti-Catholicism isn't surprising. But that a mainstream publisher like Knopf would print the thing is an intellectual and publishing scandal." This statement is absolutely correct. Let us be honest though, Goldhagen simply represents the double-standard that exists in our society. He is a left wing Jew who attacks the only group that it is acceptable to attack in modern American society, the evil Catholics. If a right wing Catholic were to make his living by attacking Judaism and slandering a prominent rabbi while blaming Judaism for the Marxist massacres under the NKVD he would be an out of work “conspiracy kook” and a anti-Semite. He would certainly not be published in the New Republic. Goldhagen has made the absurd statement that Christianity is anti-Semitic at its core. Imagine if one were to say that Judaism is anti-Gentile to its core. They would be isolated as an anti-Semite. The message is clear. A Jewish bigot like Goldhagen gets published by Knopf and the New Republic while his mirror image would be isolated and vilified.
I would like to wrap up with some other observations. All Catholics are told endless stories about Catholics persecuting people. Generally it starts with a Catholic King who orders the persecution of a group and despite the Bishops or Pope condemning it, "the Catholics" are to blame. An example of his would be during the Crusades when Crusaders massacred Jews along the Rhine. That was “the Catholics” despite the local Bishops hiding and protecting Jews. When a Protestant barbarian like Oliver Cromwell slaughters Catholics at Drogheda and sells the women and children into sex slavery or sacks Wexford that’s not “the Protestants”. That’s just Cromwell.
Much is made about Hitler being a baptized Catholic by ignoramuses like Dave Hunt. Other bigots like Goldhagen argue that Nazism was an extension of Catholic bigotry through the ages. Yet these people do not mention that Karl Marx was a Jew and that the ranks of the NKVD, some of the greatest murderers of all time, were filled with Jews. By using Goldhagens logic should we not attack Judaism and Jews? If we Catholics are and our faith are responsible for a former Catholic who later went so far as to persecute the Church, should not Jews be held responsible for Karl Marx and Genrikh Yagoda and the fact that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish. The answer is of course not. Your Jewish neighbor has likely not heard of the NKVD, Yagoda let alone support what he and they did.
As I wrap up my thoughts on this I should say thank you to all of the people that I mention above. Especially the Rabbi who started my journey. Had he not been a self absorbed bigot, he would not have angered me and I would not have explored my own faith. I would have continued in my ignorance and would not have understood the faith that built Western Civilization and sustained my ancestors. I would not have understood the faith that Christ taught to the Apostles, that was passed on to their successors, our Bishops. I would not truly know the joy of being a Catholic. His ignorant statements brought about my reversion back to the true faith and my wife’s conversion to it. For that, I will literally be eternally indebted to him.
You just keep doing it. Provide evidence for YOUR CLAIM. If you make a statement it is up to YOU to provide evidence. Unless you can do that you should retract your statement.
Well maybe there’s information for the masses and information for others in your church. All the evidence points to a whole stratum of it immersed in magical thinking. One Hail Mary will fix this, 300 Hail Mary’s will take away that. This medal and this Saint will protect me from this, and that Saint will protect me from that. If that is not true, then you still have people believing it
So is this why most Catholics take the side of atheists against creationists?
Hey, I’m not the one coming into funeral threads slamming Catholic FReepers.
Remember the Jerry Falwell funeral thread?
My eyes are JUST fine.
“Thanks, but just who are you praying to for us?”
Why, Jesus the Lord, third Person of the Holy Trinity, of course.
See, there is where you go way off into some idea that doesn’t have basis in reality.
Best of the day to you.
I have to do damage control now after that 222 drop.
He's the Second. The Holy Ghost is the Third.
Directly to the Lord or to Mary first?
lol, after Mary
Thank you so much for your very kind post.
Do you see what your new co-religionists are writing on this thread? Do you see how they are defending evolution and saying that the Bible is only partially inerrant? And those who do not say these things say nothing whatsoever to those who do; instead they attack me for pointing these things out.
Unfortunately, the Catechism is worded in such a way that one can justify either total or partial inerrancy by appealing to it.
I hope you are treated better than I was, but if you read this thread you have an idea of what you may be in for.
Thank you again.
>>Well maybe there’s information for the masses and information for others in your church. All the evidence points to a whole stratum of it immersed in magical thinking. One Hail Mary will fix this, 300 Hail Mary’s will take away that. This medal and this Saint will protect me from this, and that Saint will protect me from that. If that is not true, then you still have people believing it<<
In your realm of reality and maybe in your own mind. But as I stated before, just because you state it, doesn’t make it true.
And here I thought you had made real progress.....
Does the Bible not say “Dead to sin but alive in Christ”?
At what point does that become untrue?
“Directly to the Lord or to Mary first?”
To Jesus.
I ask Mary to pray for us. That is as much as I’d ask you.
There is where the bogdown comes into play. You believe people die. I do not. Besides being good physics, I believe every soul is immortal for eternal pleasure with God, or pain in Hell.
Adios
Don't start, you're going to sound like a Mohammedan. They believe that the Christian's concept of the Trinity is Allah, Jesus, and Mary.
Okay, since Saint Christopher never existed, what is the point in a St Christopher medal? Why is grace even associated with objects, when God said “My grace is sufficient for thee?” Is God’s grace not sufficient? When we pray, as Jesus taught us, that God’s will be done, not our own, what is the idea of asking anyone to go petition God for you? If I could reconcile the Catholic rationale with God’s word I would “get it”. Until then, there is no hope
Ok, but again respectfully, don’t pray for me, thanks.
-A8
It’s not my denomination. It’s Jesus’.
I wonder if you could elaborate a tad further on your understanding of the whole business of tens of thousands of denominations and the role of the Holy Spirit in assisting a person in deciding which road to take.
There is much Scripture in Jesus’ declarations of the role of the authority of the Church in teaching the Word and providing guidance and correction to individuals and congregations, as well. In examining the differences in doctrine amongst the various faiths that we have recently taken on, I would say that it’s not just iron sharpening iron. Arianism is alive and well again in the LDS. Many other heresies once thought eliminated now abound. Hmm. I think I’ll open a thread on heresies.
Christ really is the focus. But the understanding of who Christ is, what He wants for us, our responsibilities to ourselves, to others and most importantly, to Him, and what we are to believe differs very significantly. I cannot accept that such diversity is meant to be. I might as well join the Unitarian Universalists and be done with it.
Psalm 119
By what doth a young man correct his way? by observing thy words ... I will meditate on thy commandments ... I shall keep thy words ... I will search thy law ... I have greatly hoped in thy words ... All thy statutes are truth ... The declaration of thy words giveth light
Yes, the scripture is to be obeyed and researched, contains the truth and justice, gives us hope and guidance. all true. My question stands though. We continue...
col 3:16
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God.
Of course. We are to keep the scripture, and use it in teaching and for correction (also see 2 Timothy 3:16f). My question stands...
1 Corinthians (your post 242)
Not sure what exactly is supposed to support Sola Scriptura there. My question stands...
rev 19:10
And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
True, but this does not address the scripture an any way, except to state that the testimony of Jesus is its spirit. My question stands...
John 5: 45
Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
Yes, we are to believe the Old Testament. My question stands...
Let me make it easier for you. Your best prooftext is 2 Timothy 3:16-17. That says that the Jewish scripture is profitable for a memeber of the clergy in order to render his education complete; specifically, it is good to "teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice". It does not say anything about the New Testament, not yet completely written, and it does not address the question of what to do with notions not in the scripture. It does not answer my question, in other words, although it does condemn Luther for throwing out the books of the Septuagint that he did not like, as it says "all scripture [that Timothy knew form infancy] is inspired".
The scripture is replete with the Word of God praised, called inerrant, commanded for study, used for correction, etc. There is no scripture that says anything that you want it to say: that whatever is not found in the scripture is not to be believed. It stand to reason why: the Christian Church, -- the Catholic Church you set out attacking -- has sustained the deposit of Faith given her by Jesus Christ for near three centuries before the scripture was canonized; for generations before most of the New Testament was even written. The Jews did not get around canonizing their own scripture till AD 90. The faith was sustained and propagated by oral instruction primarily, -- and that is a good thing because much of what Christ did and taught was not recorded at all (John 21:25). As St. Paul said, "hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle" (2 Thess. 2:14).
For more on the subject, see On Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition.
>>Okay, since Saint Christopher never existed, what is the point in a St Christopher medal?<<
The Vatican stated that it did not have enough evidence that St. Christopher existed. That doesn’t mean he didn’t. My own best friend wears a St. Christopher medal because her name is Christine. Her name comes from his historic name. She shows that she is Catholic by wearing it.
We don’t feel that grace comes from objects. We use them as reminders of our faith. My crucifx is not a little “lucky charm” around my neck. It is a visable reminder to pray in times of trouble and give thanks in times of joy.
But this position has been refuted repeatedly by the Church because it necessarily limits God’s inspiration of the sacred texts. Leo XIII explained inspiration and inerrancy cannot be restricted only to religious matters of the Bible:
“[I]t is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. As to the system of those who . . . do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond . . . this system cannot be tolerated” (Providentissimus Deus, II, D, 3, emphasis added). The Bible must therefore be inerrant not only in “religious truths,” but in all its intended affirmations.
Pope Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus (1920) also emphasized the Bible’s absolute immunity from error. He went so far as to say that “belief in the biblical narrative is as necessary to salvation as is belief in the doctrines of the faith” (III, 3). After explicitly condemning any position that restricts inerrancy only to so-called “religious” elements of the Bible, he quotes St. Jerome, the “Father of Biblical Science,” who wrote more than 1,500 years ago that “[i]t would be wholly impious to limit inspiration to only certain portions of Scripture or to concede that the sacred authors themselves could have erred” (III, 1).
Thank you so much for posting this!!! You are the first and only person so far on this thread to respond to those Catholics who are evolutionist and advocates of partial inerrancy. Unfortunately the number of Catholics like you here at FR is very small, and the percentage is probably much smaller in American Catholic society as a whole.
Avoiding Fundamentalism: The Problem of Literalistic Interpretation The Church teaches that the Bible is inerrant in all that the sacred writers intended t o affirm. The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church makes the important distinction between the literal sense of Scripture and a literalistic interpretation. The literal sense is “that which has been expressed directly by the inspired authors.” To arrive at the literal sense, one must interpret the text according to the literary conventions of the time, considering the author’s intention, literary genre, and historical context. A literalistic reading disregards these considerations.
For example, when Christ warns that it is better for you to cut your hand off if it causes you to sin (Mk. 9:43), He is using a literary metaphor. However, a literalistic reading would take this teaching of Christ at face value and wrongly encourage cutting off portions of the body that cause one to sin! Similarly, when Ps. 73:20 speaks of God awakening, this is not meant to teach that Yahweh actually sleeps at night and gets up in the morning, but rather this figurative language describes how God, after remaining seemingly unresponsive to a situation, begins to take action like a man awaking from sleep.
Do you know of a single Fundamentalist Protestant (Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, "snake-handler," whatever) who believes in cutting of their hands or that G-d sleeps? Defined in this way "fundamentalism" doesn't exist! So why the slap at "fundamentalism" if it is defined in such a way that no one holds it? Unfortunately, it seems that the Catholic Church simply doesn't want to be associated with simple Bible-believers so it has to condemn "fundamentalism" defined out of existence.
This doesn't completely undo the good in the earlier paragraphs, but this was a totally unnecessary slap at American Heartland Protestants.
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