Anti-Catholicism, Hypocrisy and Double Standards

ConstantinesRant ^ | Sunday, July 22, 2007 | Constantine

[annalex]

Anti-Catholicism, Hypocrisy and Double Standards

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.

[William Terrell]

You are right. It doesn't matter what I think. It's only my duty as a Christian to point out false paths that are unscriptual. Paul did as much for the churches sprang up all over.

It does matter what God thinks, according to His law and to the principles that Christ clearly laid out for us and the practical application of those principles that the Paul and the disciples preached in their venues.

Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducee for departure from the Law in favor of their man made customs.

I pay no attention to the private ruling of councils and srtificial entities. They have no soul. Only each individual has a soul that must be saved.

The only for sure guidance we have in the spiritual path to God is in the writings of those who were close to the events. Therefore, I pay attention to those. If there is a departure from those principles, I point out the departure.

You may accept or reject, but I will speak. Once I speak, I discharge my duty. I'll continue to speak so long as you continue to respond.

[Mad Dawg]

The whole impression thing is tricky, and one reason is that a good deal of devotion is done in private. I "read my office" at home by myself. I do gather for a rosary almost daily (except Sunday) but I also go to Mass daily.

On a percentage basis the bulk of my time is aimed at the Most Holy Trinity, an the vast majority of my thinking is headed thataway as well, with the Second Person getting the most processor time, I guess.

I've never been involved in a Marian procession. I have been involved in processions of the Blessed Sacrament (twice, as a matter of fact, at Smokey Mary's in NYC when I was an Episcopal acolyte back when the earth was young.)

The onoly Catholic Monastery I've hung out at was a Trappist establishment in Missouri. Mary got a little hymn at the end of the day -- that was it.

Just becuase a sore thumb sticks out, doesn't mean it's the biggest part of the body. People know about Rosaries and Hail Mary plays, and such like. They see the statues and the little old ladies reciting their rosaries in obedience to Fatima and for the conversion of Russia. (worked too!) But I think a flase impression is formed.

I mean I"ve been praying the rosary off and on since the late 1960's, and ON WAY more than off for several years. But it's still a small part of my prayer and thought. Wonderful but small.

But, I'd still say every one should actively explore a relationship with Mary, out of piety (in the Roman, not Church, sense) because

1. SHe is the Mother of Christ.
2. She is the mother of all the members of His Sacred Body.
3. She is the mother of His mystical Body
4. She is the mother of all the members of the mystical Body.
5. Therefore she is your mother-- not in a way that takes what belongs to your natural mother, but that gives you to her and her to you.

So from our POV it's almost indecent, in the Roman sense, not to show respect to your mother.

[FormerLib]

...so why would your dead loved ones have any position superior that to Christ himself...

Wow, you've really twisted my words around, haven't you?

Let's state my correction position again.

My "dead loved ones" are Alive in Christ, just as Scripture says they are.

Asking my loved ones for their prayers is no different than you asking your loved ones for their prayers.

I can't even guess where you pulled the "superior to Christ" stuff out off, but, as I never said any such thing, anyone who says that I did say that is bearing false witness against me (HINT: that's against Scripture as well).

[William Terrell]

It was for donations. But a sacrifice is a sacrifice. If it were associated with the statue, it was a sacrifice to an idol. Mary was not God nor was she Christ; she was a human being doing a task for God. Even the angels in Revelation said, "Do it not".

[William Terrell]

A sacrifice is a sacrifice. Candles is a good excuse, but what God thinks of the practice according to His law, especially if associated with the worship of a human being, should be your concern.

You guys have the responses to the objections figured out. But God judges according to His law and I doubt He notices rationalizations.

[William Terrell]

The scriptures teach that God is worshiped through His son, Jesus Christ. No other is mentioned.

[William Terrell]

All the scriptures teach is the worship of God through Jesus Christ, do so with faith through belief. Mary is nowhere taught in that chain of command.

Do what you will, and councils of men will, but scripture is the only sure guidance we have; men are easily corrupted.

[William Terrell]

Rationalizations, from my point of view. I do my duty. Do what you and councils of men will.

[William Terrell]

The Gospels had to do with the birth of Christ and His teachings. Mary is rarely mentioned as He taught, and twice Jesus was clear that she was no more important to Him than the multitudes that followed Him.

Nowhere does His disciples, or Paul, have anything to say about any supposed divinity of the woman. What you follow is made up from whole cloth by men.

[Pyro7480]

Nowhere does His disciples, or Paul, have anything to say about any supposed divinity of the woman.

The Church doesn't teach she is divine. She is a creature.

[Ransomed]

Hi W.T. — my question is why do us Catholics not own up to our Mary worship? You do think we worship Mary, right?

Freegards

[Running On Empty]

“twice Jesus was clear that she was no more important to Him than the multitudes who followed Him”.

This is a classic example of private and personal interpretation of Scripture.

So many times this very concept has come up on threads about Catholic beliefs and Mary in the Scriptures, and even though Catholic FReepers come on to explain these Scripture passages with clarity and in a wholly different way than you have expressed here, it hasn’t made a bit of difference.

The charge remains that Mary was no different than the rest of us and making that claim from an interpretation of the Lord’s words.

This is in contrast to the first chapter of Luke: “Blessed are you among women” and “all generations will call you blessed”. So that is also to be interpreted as Mary being the same as everyone else? God did not ordain from all eternity that the one He created to bear and nurse and then live with Jesus for 30 years was just an ordinary person, no more important to Him than any one else? God thought that as He created her for this incredible and irrepeatable destiny as the Mother of His Son?

I think not.

[rmlew]

Marx was a Lutherin before becoming a atheist communist. However, all communists from Marx on hate Judaism. Go read "On the Jewish Question".

As for the Rabbi, he is an example of the aggrieved descendants of the abused. Don't follow his error. Tell him to grow up.

[annalex]

I don’t understand what in the article are you referring to.

[Dahlseide]

I’m not so certain as you are; some know why/what they are protesting but not all. Protestant has been so diluted as to be similar to Gentile to many/most(?); since I am not RC I must be Protestant; since I am not Jewish I must be Gentile.

[rmlew]

I was talking about this passage

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.

[samiam1972]

bump

[annalex]

Right, and neither Hitler was Catholic by anything but baptism.

What this passage is about, I think, is that both anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic arguments are the same fallacy, mutatis mutandis.

[republican4ever]

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.
[The first paragraph seems good enough. Maybe too nice.]
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.
[A little exageration, maybe?]
I learned how peaceful and wonderful Muslim societies were and how Christians lived very well under Islamic rule.
[I never heard this, ever!!!]
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".
[Has the author ever stopped to think about how all of this might have some truth to itÂ… even if it is not an absolute, as nothing usually is?]
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
[Easy to qualify what others think as idiocy, right?]
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.
[Maybe the Rabbi was refering to things like: In the early Church stage  They were denied religious and governing privileges  They could not proselityze  They could not be in the military  (Saint) John ChrysostomÂ’s preached some quite virulent sermons against Jews at Antioch around 400 C.E And then, in the Middle Ages:  They could not own any land  They were forced to live in ghettos  And, a few decrees from the early Catholic Church:  Synod of Elvira (306)_prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, and prohibited them from eating together.  Councils of Orleans (533-541)_prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews and forbade the conversion to Judaism by Christians.  Trulanic Synod (692)_prohibited Christians from being treated by Jewish doctors.  Synod of Narbonne (1050)_prohibited Christians from living in Jewish homes.  Synod of Gerona (1078)_required Jews to pay taxes to support the Church.  Third Lateran Council (1179)_prohibited certain medical care to be provided by Christians to Jews.  Fourth Lateran Council (1215)_required Jews to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians.  Council of Basel (1431-1443)_forbade Jews to attend universities, from acting as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, and required that they attend church sermons. 1  LetÂ’s not even mention the Inquisition. Pope Inocent IV authorized the use of torture to extract confessions from JewsÂ’ some 3,000 to 5,000 were killed  The oppression and further expulsion from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
I was told that I “would never know what it is to be a Jew
[No, he wonÂ’t].
or how it feels to have your children forced to sing Christmas carols (oh the horror! the horror!)
[Do I detect some sarcasm here?]”.
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.
[Like the many persecutions against the Jews?]
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.
[Here, I agree 100%]
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
[Like all the items a couple of paragraphs above?])
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”
[Correct name of book: Catholicism and FundamentalismÂ…
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.
[Meaning such Pope never exizted?]
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 to obliterate Jews and Judaism for 6,000 years. To name some the Assyrians, 670 BCE; the Persians –V Century BCE; the Greeks with Alexander the Great; the Babylonians -586 BCE-, the Sassanids –III Century CE;; and Romans –70 CE- in ancient times and by Nazis and the Soviet Union more recently. Guess what… we’re still around.]
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.
[I have, I am from Guatemala. Do you know blacks were brought as slaves to the Capitanía General de Guatemala around 1542 to substitute Indian slaves and De Las Casas did not fight that?]
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.
[Another exaggeration.]
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.
[Even if we agree on this issue, and it is likely true, since GoldhagenÂ’s tenure has been turned down at Harvard, one should look at his premise and examine it closely. His methods, which is mainly what has been critized for, might be totally wrong, but that does not mean the premise is wrong too.]
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.
[Just like a bunch of Jews taking Jesus to the Romans for trial 2,000 years agoÂ… all Jews are t blame.]
An example of his would be during the Crusades when Crusaders massacred Jews along the Rhine. That was “the Catholics”
[Crusaders were indeed Catholic kings and Catholic soldiers, right?]
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.
[OKÂ… lets see, around 700 civilians and clergy killed in Drogheda and 1500 killed in Wexford by CromwellÂ’s soldiersÂ… 20,000 Huguenots killed in France by the mobs during the St Bartholemew's Day massacre of protestants in Paris, instigated by the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.]
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
[By birth, yes, a child born to a Jewish mother is a Jew… but that does not guarantee the child will be a “practicing Jew”. His father converted to Christianity –Lutheranism, by the way. As a matter of fact, it has been argued that he was an anti-Semite. Quote from his essay On the Jewish Question, (1843): “The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. … In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism”.]
and that the ranks of the NKVD, some of the greatest murderers of all time, were filled with Jews. [Source???] 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 wifeÂ’s conversion to it. For that, I will literally be eternally indebted to him. 1The Holocaust--A Guide for Pennsylvania Teachers Gary M. Grobman http://www.remember.org