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.

>>I don’t seek to correct all your errors. I just seek to correct the Catholic church’s errors. You’ve just been mislead, in my opinion. But, since I can’t speak with the church leadership directly, all I can do is speak with individual members. >>

This is really funny because you have continually told us how we do things that were wrong and why we do things that are wrong, all if which are false.

So now I pose these questions to you.

A parent has two children.
One makes me a birthday card with circles and scratches
One spends the whole piggy bank on a card with a poem and great art work.

Which child whould that parent love more?
Which would the parent correct?

All of the attitude towards and actions in response to Mary by Catholics add up to worship. I really don't know what else to call it. Yet, each Catholic I talk with here denies any such behavior.

Therefore, they must be unaware of the behavior. But someone not inducted into the belief system looks at the overt action and thinks "idol worship". There are any number of those observers who have posted that opinion on these threads for years.

I severely doubt that they all met and decided in concert to level this accusation, which means each came to the same conclusion independently.

You declared that you would return later and correct all my errors. I then stated that the only One who could do that is God, and that He is doing that through the offices of His Church.

From your posts, I am building an image of Pope William Terrell, successor to King Solomon, replete with wisdom, speaking for and giving instruction to God Almighty. Who says that you cannot speak to the Church leadership? Have you tried? If you ask the Bishop of your diocese for an audience with a pure heart, I have little doubt that he would comply.

What many don’t appear to understand is that while the Way is difficult and the path narrow, all those with a sincere heart that would follow Christ are accepted into His Church. An audience with the Bishop or even your parish priest might go a long way to unstiffen your neck and soften your heart.

Here are the passages at issue:

Mark 3:32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.

Mark 3:33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

Mark 3:34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

Mark 3:35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

How you possible can spin this into veneration for Mary, I can't figure out.

Wouldn't you expect, should your interpretation be the case, that Jesus would have sought out His mother and brother, since they were right there, once the multitude pointed out they sought Him?

But no, He made no move to do this, saying those around Him were His mother and brethren. Then He actually says that anyone who does the will of God is His mother (siblings).

How much much clearer can this get?

Luke 11:27 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.

Luke 11:28 But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

Here is a woman that attempt to venerate Mary for giving birth to Jesus. But He said. . . Obviously the expected response would be to agree and bless His mother, the "but" means He gave an unexpected response, i.e. to downplay any special spiritual allocation to His mother and spread out the "veneration" to all those who hear the word of God.

I've opined this before and I'll do so again. The Catholic interpretation of passages like these are clearly of a process: make the policy to be disseminated to the flock first, then find some Biblical passage that can possibly be spun to support it.

Nobody reads these passages and comes away with the meaning the church places on them without prior conditioning.

This is really funny because you have continually told us how we do things that were wrong and why we do things that are wrong, all if which are false.

Not funny at all. The things you do are actions from Catholic policy. I can't criticize the policy without, by association, criticizing those who actually do them.

The parents love their children regardless. The church loves you for the power and wealth it gets from you and other Catholics. It is an artificial entity created and run by men, each one of which, and you and every other individual, has a soul to be saved, but the church aggregate has no soul.

Organizations, regardless of their charters, exist for the continuity of that organization and itself only, and those who run them are subsumed into that goal over time.

This is the dilemma you face with the church, and some Protestants face with their churches.

Returning to God's word is the only solution.

>>Funny how the author has been proven correct throughout this entire thread. The Prottys here should have just said “he’s right” and moved on with their day.<<

Exactly!
And no one has answered this....

A parent has two children.
One makes me a birthday card with circles and scratches
One spends the whole piggy bank on a card with a poem and great art work.

Which child whould that parent love more?
Which would the parent correct?

>>>Here is a woman that attempt to venerate Mary for giving birth to Jesus. But He said. . . Obviously the expected response would be to agree and bless His mother, the “but” means He gave an unexpected response, i.e. to downplay any special spiritual allocation to His mother and spread out the “veneration” to all those who hear the word of God.<<

LOLOLOL!
You are conditioned too!
Where is it that Jesus tells this woman NO to venerating His Mother?
But, yes, rather, NONE of this is Don’t.

Hey, keep plugging and chugging. Annalex is correct, you’re proving the point of the article.

Hi W.T.

I think that your insistance that Catholics worship Mary because it seems so to you has nothing to do with vitriol on your part.

If Catholics are ignorant of their Mary worship, do they choose to worship Mary? If not, that must be a little better than making an informed choice to start up goddess worship, like say a wiccan with “the earth-mother” or a neo-norse pagan with freya. Plus, it’s not like Catholics don’t worship God too, right?

If a Bishop came outta the Mary worshipping closet, and there were articles posted on FR about it (I reckon there would be one or two), I think we both know what the Catholic freeper reaction would be to such a heretic. The Bishop would be vilified, and rightly so. Now to you that might seem funny as you think we all are Mary worshippers anyhow, but in effect the Church and it’s members would be rejecting an avowed goddess worshipper, just like any other type of good Christian. I reckon you could find some solace in that, right?

Freegards

I am having trouble—real trouble—in following your logic.

Abraham is our “father in faith”, and Catholics acknowledge that—even in the words of our liturgy (Mass).

But to dismiss Mary as the archetype of the New and Eternal Covenant is to miss something very important. To dismiss her offhandedly—almost condescendingly—as no different from any other believer is—to me—an incredible decision.

Recall that the pregnant Mary was not recognized for who she was and Who she was bearing when there was no room for her (and her unborn Child and St. Joseph)at the inn. The fact that she was not recognized at that time was all in God’s plan for her. But she was recognized by the shepherds, who had been told by the angels. We are told that they “found Jesus with His mother”. First revealed to the lowly shepherds, He was in the arms and the care of Mary.

That she was not recognized publicly for the next 33 years was all in God’s plan, for He knows that when the time is ready, He will reveal all that is hidden.

She appears again in Scripture—”at the foot of the Cross was Mary His mother, Mary Magdala and John”. The saint, the sinner and the evangelist—they are all there together to share in spirit the Passion and Death of Christ.

Jesus saw that she would be cared for after He had ascended into heaven. “Son, behold your mother”.

And in His divine plan, she was there at Pentecost, though the Holy Spirit had already overshadowed her, as we know from the first chapter in Luke.

That God choose—in His infinte wisdom—not to reveal everything about Mary, until the day for it has come, isn’t for us to question or to postulate. He knows what He is about. We only know that all that is hidden now will be revealed to us.

Meanwhile, we honor Mary as we know her Son did—and as all sons and daughters are commanded to do in the Decalogue.

You may see it differently. But that doesn’t mean that you can confirm your authority about your beliefs over all the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers—all the followers of Jesus.

I will happily take Mary into my household until her Son returns again in glory.

With this, I have responded to your last post to me.

I have finished my exchange with you about this.

spin [Mark 3:32-35] into veneration for Mary

The "whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother" passage is not veneration of Mary. It is a universal call to sainthood. Do the will of God and you will be like Mary, Christ said. What it certainly is not, it is not any kind of dismissal of Mary.

[Luke 11:27-28] is a woman that attempt to venerate Mary for giving birth to Jesus. But He said. . . Obviously the expected response would be to agree and bless His mother, the "but" means He gave an unexpected response, i.e. to downplay any special spiritual allocation to His mother and spread out the "veneration" to all those who hear the word of God

Yes, correct. So we have an example of veneration - not an "attempt" but a full fledged act of veneration. The form of the veneration is challenged by Jesus: rather than venerating Mary as some kind of fertility figure, Jesus explains why we should venerate His mother: for her role in keeping Him, the Eternal Word, and for her obedience to God. Further, Jesus repeats the same theme as in the other passage, that all who keep and obey the Word should be likewise venerated. This passage provides an example of actual veneration, explains the reason for it, and suggests the expansion of the practice to a wider circle of saints.

make the policy to be disseminated to the flock first, then find some Biblical passage that can possibly be spun to support it

You mean, the woman in the crowd was told by the Church that the policy is to venerate Mary, and the Church later conspired to make Luke record the incident?

The woman most likely symbolizes a nation, belief system or group of devotees giving birth to an idea, way of thought or another nation

Now this is a good example of starting with a notion that Mary cannot possibly be mentioned in any soteriological sense, THEN spinning the existing passage where she is thus mentioned into some nebulous "dream" about giving birth to ideas. The child she is giving birth is a child, not an idea. He is named in the passage, "the Christ" and "the Lamb", and they combat Satan, not an idea or nation. The birth is described in stark physiological terms. Read more, spin less.

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