Anti-Catholicism, Hypocrisy and Double Standards

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.

No, no, no.

The candles magically appear from heaven. No one has to BUY them. When they get to the bottom, POOF, a new one appears. In fact, if you go to any parish and find that all the candles are lit, you turn around three times, click your heels and point east. Shazam! A new one will appear! God knows our hearts so either a day candle or a five day will appear.

My neighbor’s, boyfriend’s, mailman’s third cousin on his mother’s side had a whole new bank of candles appear while she was worshiping Mary to get a wart to go away. I think it had something to do with the lamb she slaughthered the night before on the altar in her backyard by her Immaculate Conception yard statue. Not long after, the statue was stolen. Hmmmmmmmmm.

(the myths about Catholics are pretty silly, aren’t they?)

I’m sure that the Church’s doctrine seems like Mary worship to you. What do you suppose the motive is for denying this Mary worship? The fear that ecumenism might be set back(har har har)?

Freegards

When someone attributes sinister motives to everything that someone else does, thinks, or believes, that to me is slander.

From Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary:

“Slander: the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another’s reputation”

It’s one thing to find out the truth about someone’s beliefs and then to disagree with them, but it’s entirely another thing altogether to make up lies, spread them, and then be unwilling to hear the truth or to understand. People who purposefully look for something sinister in someone else’s beliefs, without trying to understand, are determined to find fault and that, to me, is not charity. Sometimes it borders on hatred, which is against Our Lord’s commands. “Love one another, as I have loved you.” John 13:34. Love “thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;” I Corinthians 13:5b-6

Exactly. Can one really call ones self a Christian if if they do this? It seems antithetical to Christianity to spread lies and be unwilling to accept the truth.

Whatever “buzzes” your noodle.

I am not fond of syrupy icky stuff either, but I when I drink with Mr. Soprano, we always have “Anisette.” It’s his call, if you will. I prefer Paddy or ‘Jack Black’ personally.

Exactly.
I was smacked down a bit ago because one particular poster continually misquoted the Pope stating that he was saying Protestants won’t go to heaven.

After a few days of directly linking to the Vatican document and politely correcting the poster, I lost it. AGAIN he came onto a thread and spewed the same garbage.

I called him a liar and a slander. IMO, this was the intent. Who got the slap? Me.

At what point does a person go from being mistaken to intentionally slandering? Never, according to the powers that be. We are not allowed to make it “personal”.

Proving that I don’t kick my dog is really hard to prove when a poster keeps stating, against all proof, that I kick my dog.

Post 408 is grand. It’s that Thomistic influence on your eloquence.

The stuff I drink usually says “bottled last Thursday.” Hate to see it go bad before next Sunday!

;-o)

And I don't worship Mary, offer bullocks to her, equate her with God, offer coins to her or can be considered to be a "Mary Worshipper" which is a constant refrain on these boards. The equation appears to be: "if Catholic, then Mary worship." It is more like, "if Catholic, then 'one, big, happy, boisterous, raucous, sometimes off the reservation, and always sinners,' family." If you can understand the "Communion of Saints," it would all fall into place, I s'pose.

I have an image of her on the wall; she is Jesus' mother. I also have a picture of my own mother who is deceased. I am fond at looking at both. They bring a certain joy to my heart each time I see the image. It is not graven; it is akin to the photo of your son or daughter on your desk at work.

Have an apple, blue Honda William. Nice car. I owned one myself and it was dark blue! Had to let it go at 214,000 miles and it was just getting broken in.

Well, I guess I messed up because I was asking for a million bucks, I offered up some Kentucky Fried Chicken and it didn’t work. Do you suppose Mary doesn’t like chicken? I just wonder what secrets the cradle Catholics are keeping from me.

I interpret that statement with the Church, who teaches what I explained to you. I do not reject Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, I firmly believe in it. Naturally, when one faces Particular Judgement with a disposition that permits his salvation, he becomes, among other things, subject to the Roman Pontiff. Note that Pope Boniface did not say that the subjection to the pontiff has to occur at some particular time; it can take place at the time of death. Everyone who is saved is saved as Catholic.

Every Protestant rejects Catholicism

They should hurry to correct their error.

there is no Scriptural backing for the concept of multiple Churches that each follow their own doctrines.

And there is plenty scriptural basis for condemning "denominations":

house divided against itself shall not stand. (Matthew 12:25, Mark 3:24f, Luke 11:18)
11 For it hath been signified unto me, my brethren, of you, by them that are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. 12 Now this I say, that every one of you saith: I indeed am of Paul; and I am of Apollo; and I am of Cephas; and I of Christ. 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul then crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor. 1)
that they may be one (John 17 multiple times)

contributing money to a recepticle by a statute representing an appearance of Mary

That is not idolatry.

no mention of worshiping an image by Paul

Of course not; that would be idolatry. You said that making of Holy Images was prohibited; do you now retract your error?

Where is you Biblical guidance for [venerating Mary]?

We do it in order to worship God, as I already explained.

After the birth of Christ and some scenes in the Gospels, Mary disappears from the New Testament entirely

Riiiight. She is at the beginning of Christ's ministry (Luke 1), following Him around (Luke 11), present at His death (John 19), present at the Pentecost (Acts 1), making war on the Satan in Heaven (Acts 12). In Acts 13-22 she disappears completely.

As a former Roman Catholic and a current Anglican Catholic (not Episcopalian - we are the Traditionalist Catholic), I appreciate the need to honor Mary. But I echo what another poster said about the Marianism present in the RCC - they have to my eyes stressed that salvation can only come through her now, and I find that offensive. The ACC’s position is that soliciting Mary’s intercession is a Good and Holy thing, but not necessary for salvation. If I choose to ignore her and talk to Christ directly, I think Mary would join in prayer WITH me, but I will not sin by not including her in my prayers. I think, however, the RCC has been stressing this necessity all too much and is one reason why I am no longer with the RCC.

The ACC’s position is that soliciting Mary’s intercession is a Good and Holy thing, but not necessary for salvation.

That's the Catholic position as well; if you were taught differently, then you were taught incorrectly.

Note I said the "Catholic" position, not the "RCC", because the "RCC" is a misnomer, invented mainly by Henry the VIIIth and his ilk, to create animosity towards Catholics. By labeling all Catholics "Roman", it implied that all Catholics were thus subject to Rome, and not the English King, and thus, were traitors to the King.

The correct term is "Rite", as in "Latin (or Roman) Rite", one of the 23 (or 24 depending on how one counts) separate Rites in the Catholic Church.

Don't fret though, most on FR say "RCC" and I usually don't say anything about it, since I'd have to be probably typing this same response, constantly, for months on end to address each time the misnomer is used. There are even some Catholics who call their own Church the "Roman Catholic Church", so it's not something worth battling over, but it is something I'll comment on from time to time, if not to change the world, if only to educate a few.

There may be folks who take things too far; my indications are taken from the Catechism (sometimes after being REMINDED about something that I’ve said) as to what is right.

As it happens, we have no icons of Mary in our house - not that we object to them, we just don’t happen to have any - and we do have crucifixes and crosses. We don’t worship the crucifixes or crosses; neither do we worship Mary.

I have been in conversation with an individual here who has had a bad road with individuals within the Church and was offered lousy guidance. I am very sorry for that occurring; it still doesn’t make the Church wrong, only those individuals.

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