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.
“Song book? What the heck are you talking about, that’s from a Divine Liturgy book, the sort we use every week.
Or are you just using the pattern described in the original article and changing the subject now that I’ve shown that asking the saints for their prayers is no different that asking any loved one for their prayers?”
Or are you trying everything you can to ignore the instructions found in the Bible?
#520
Yes I'd say this is just what you believe. Built into it, it sounds like only the RCC can help you earn enough works to secure some sort of salvation. So given that definition of the salvation process, what does the term saved or Christian even mean?
That's quite the cheap shot.
Yes, the author is obviously a vicious bigot....
Honestly, if one blinks, one misses it.
Pretty startling, but normal for the Hollyweird crowd. We are an easy target because we are visible. How do you show a Methodist zealot or a Presbyterian zealot?
It was originally a John Waters movie afterall.
Now it’s straight PG.
Does the Bible tell you to dodge every question in this manner or it is something else?
Very well, quote the Scripture that forbids me from asking loved ones to pray for me.
Excorcism might involve that, to be sure. It is all in the tone, as we've been told.
It is true that Christ had encounters with Mary Magdalene that suggest sensuality. So, let us make the Temptation of Christ and get an Oscar.
It is true that pederast priests exist in the Catholic Church. Let us make a primetime documentary a day about it.
It is true that Robert Hanssen, the FBI mole who spied for the Soviets, was a devout Catholic. Let us make a movie about him that has more rosaries, crucifixes and confession boxes than guns, cameras and car chases.
It is true that Le Louvre has an art collection. Let us make a movie how ... well... I am not sure what it all means, but Catholicism is the Con of Men for sure.
It is true that the Constitution has the First Amendment. So let us put a crucifix in a jar of urine, call that art, and get a government grant.
Just let us all get along, please.
I was offended by the cheapshot about tactics and never admitting I’m wrong and changing the subject when I’m losing.
SO you all say that if one hears of Christ and believes Him and in Him one is in good shape as regards after-life AND one can turn to the BIble for help understanding details and moral issues and like that. And those who do all that are in the Church, which has no defining perceptible characteristics, though we can pretty much guess that unless something happened in the Bunker Hitler ain't in it and, say, that girl who was killed in Columbine and the killer asked her if she believed in God, and she said, "Yes," and then he asked her,"Why?" and murdered her -- pretty safe bet she's in.
I have to go enjoy my new deck and some barbaqued chicken. This is going to take some thought and untangling. Some aspects are sort of write but the language is so negative it's like axing if I still beat my wife.
Saved means one who upon death has been judged by Christ as "blessed of my Father" and who for eternity will "possess the kingdom prepared for [him] from the foundation of the world". The opposite is condemned.
Christian means validly baptized.
That's quite the cheap shot.
It is true, and is evident on this thread, and in any polemical discussion a Catholic might have with a Protestant. The fundamentals of Protestant faith are found without scriptural or logical support, and the discussion moves to peripheral issues or progressively less and less importance. Any Catholic who ever defended his faith knows that.
“Quote me the scripture that says”
God has provided Jesus as the sole moderator between God and man Tim 1:2:5
We know that Jesus is the sole moderator between man and God, so why would your dead loved ones have any position superior that to Christ himself, is not Immanence one of the attributes of God?
I highly recommend it.
He spent a chunk of his youth as an adherent of Manes...
False confidence.
PETA activists and Marxist agitators protesting the G8 summits have as much confidence in their beliefs. The most interesting hypocrisy that I’ve seen in these here threads is the fact that the entire foundation of Christian doctrine is found entirely within the Catholic Church; the Protestant Reformation said that while they had the foundations, they lost their way; the Restoration said that the Reformers had lost their way; the NT and emerging churches say that the Restorationists had lost their way and so on and so on.
Everyone has it wrong but the individual in question.
It’s all here in the institution that Christ left. I do not have the arrogance to form my own religion. I pray that others who are travel their own road to Damascus.
Not quite as violent, I would hope.
padre35 saith:Or are you trying everything you can to ignore the instructions found in the Bible?
Mad Dawg saith: There's evidently no shortage of cheap shots.
What can we do to make a shortage?
And clearly one thing is to make sure it was intended as a cheap shot. I do have to say, DM, that I have often approached what I thought was a clincher in an discussion with a non-Catholic only to find the subject changed. And when you did the "blessed assurance" question (I don't mean that as a negative, it's just how I think of that doctrine, the name I file it under) I was wondering, "Where did THAT come from.
I do want to adumbrate something I said. Judging by death-bed words spoken by +Terese of Lisieux (I give up trying to spell that) and also by +Dominic, both of whom said something along the lines of, "Don't grieve overmuch; I can do more for you in heaven than I ever could on earth," I have the impression that at least some Catholics were quite sure of their salvation.
I would say of myself that I do NOT know where I'm going to be, but I'd put money on Heaven (after a stint in Spiritual Therapy, aka Purgatory). (If I'm wrong, how ya gonna collect? If I'm right, I won't care if I collect. Come ON: TAKE The BET! I can't lose!) I FEEL great confidence/refuge in Jesus, working with me, working for me doing what He can, which is a lot! But I KNOW I'm a big jerk. So I don't know. BUT I don't lie awake about it. I pray - and not in the way of, "Please, please,please,please,please,please, save me and bring me to heaven." It's more,"Oh God I love you," or, "Oh God I'm unhappy [or worried, or happy,or ashamed, or whatever] about this or that. Please help me [or WOW! THANKS! or whatever]"
It's almost a style thing. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
You may misread me Mad Dawg, my only stirving is for the Bible, and what it instructs Christians to do in this life. It is not my idea that such things as praying to Saints, are neccessarily some sort of deviance in the Faith in Christ as Lord and Savour.
Rather, it’s that the Bible doesn’t support it.
Faith in Christ is a gift in this fallen world, “if” one believes and asks in prayer for a departed loved one to intercede on your behalf, I don’t find that some sort of heinous conclusion to draw, rather that it is not a sound Scriptural teaching, and it falls upon the Holy Spirit to guide one into such a prayer.
If there were baptisms for the dead, then sound reason would presume that there also could be prayers to the pious and departed.
That being said, I would put forth, that it is better to pray to our High Priest and Advocate before the Father who died once and for all.
Pacium in Christi Mad Dawg
But by the time that request reaches your response it's
“Quote me the scripture that says”
You leave out the particular question FormerLib was asking -- and then answer some other question!
Your answer (interesting translation: moderator. I would have thought "mediator" was the word we were after. I am interested in the rationale behind differing translations.) addresses itself to an alleged assertion that our "dead loved ones" have a position "superior that to Christ himself."Is ANYONE, if Any CATHOLIC on this thread asserting that ANY SAINT WHATSOEVER has a "position" fundamentally superior to that of Christ"?
He humbles Himself and makes himself the servant, slave, and -- finally -- punching bag of all, but we have never said and, I dare say, WILL never say that Mary or Dominic or any creature at all is superior to Christ.
So why are you arguing against THAT proposition, a proposition none but maybe a few weird feminist heretics in some convent in East Overshoe made sometime or other? We all agree that no one is superior to Christ.
There may be just complaints about the charge the Protestants change the subject when pressed. But here the subject is changed before you are pressed! Really I'm amazed.
No, Im sorry...no links...wasnt thinking of websites...just perceptions and observations Ive made on my own. Look, maybe I didnt think hard enough about what I was trying to say. The perception I have been getting is the RCC is stressing Mary over the Trinity, Mary over Christ. Instead of talking about the meaning of the Resurrection and Christ’s suffering, every time I visit an RCC service, I hear more about what amounts to (in my view) “what can we do for Mary.” I understand the Immaculate Conception, I understand what her acceptance of God’s purpose for her - I think its beautiful. But when I joined the ACC and read for the first time the language of the Book of Common Prayer (1928), I heard language and thought and prayer that said everything *I* wanted to say to God...and it wasnt dependent on my dedication to Mary. My priest explains that in the ACC if one feels close to Mary to ask for her intercession and to pray with you, then by all means - this is the rule for all the saints - but the bottom line has always and always WILL be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I hear the RCC push Mary way too much and I have an aversion to that. That’s really what I meant to say...I apologize for the confusion
The question was asked and answered, one may not like the answer, but res ipsa luquitor.
Look: it is clear as can be that we all have our feelings rubbed raw. DM thinks something I posted in an effort to be efficient but light-hearted was full of negative language and like asking him if he'd quit beating his wife (as opposed to tying her up and dousing her with Holy Water, which we all agree is good clean fun.)
But you asked something like if someone was looking for excuses to disregard Scripture?. "Looking for excuses," does not sound all warm and fuzzy.
About praying to saints you write:
I don’t find that some sort of heinous conclusion to draw, rather that it is not a sound Scriptural teaching, and it falls upon the Holy Spirit to guide one into such a prayer.Okay. But yet we pray together, and we DO ask people, those who have not "departed" and those who are on the other shore, to pray for us. In a strict logical sense I suppose time spent praying to Augustine is NOT time spent praying to the God and father of us all. And yet we are reassured when we here that others will be praying for us. Is there a contradiction here? I don't know. That's not a rhetorical question.If there were baptisms for the dead, then sound reason would presume that there also could be prayers to the pious and departed.
That being said, I would put forth, that it is better to pray to our High Priest and Advocate before the Father who died once and for all.
But, I would guess the Calflick fall-back position is that we see God making promises to the Church, and describing the church as having organic rather than homogenous structure, so that not all are teachers and not all are clowns like me and so forth. All the same spirit, lots of different gifts.
So, en-passant/i>when you say the all your concern is for Scripture, we'd answer that as Moses wrote of Christ, so also the NT writes of His body, the Church, and there in those writings we find grounds for, well, a different approach to Scripture.
The one thing that interests me about it is that just as the Israelites must have been a tad queasy walking between walls of water which, as far as they knew, "only" the promise of God was keeping from flooding back in and overwhelming them, so we look at the bozos who have been bishops, cardinals, Popes, and local alcoholic and perverted Fr. So-and-so, and sometimes get a tad queasy also.
But the walls are holding. The vessels are still earthen and not only undistinguished but visibly flawed, yet the treasure is still treasure, and God's promises are still reliable.
Et cum spiritu tuo, padre!
A question was asked, an answer was given. But the answer was not to the asked question but to some other. But enough of this.
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