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 believe the reaction is self-sustaining by now. Some scheming people way back when made up the myth, but it maintains itself by itself now. The entire Church leadership are like blind automata, stumbling around in the dark making stuff up. So the conditioners are conditioned.

I'd like to be air-conditioned ....

I don't hate Catholics, but I'm deeply contemptuous of the mere men in the Catholic church that declare policy and doctrine, and regard them as running a con job on innocent folks.

Well, "mere men" have always declared policy and doctrine, since the days of the apostles. We trust that they are guided by the Holy Spirit, but I can understand how one can dismiss that notion when seen through his merely human perspective.

I wonder if they (the original conditioners) made it up or if they actually were goddess worshippers, and they knew that they were goddess worshippers. I think it’s hilarious if the the original “scheming people” were actually not goddess worshippers, they just wanted other people to worship Mary, so they tricked them not only into worshipping Mary but also to be ignorant of the fact that they were in fact worshipping Mary.

Freegards, Onglay ivelay theay Ultcay ofay Arymay orshipway!!

America reputed the divine right of kings and all that malarkey long ago. It must be likewise invalid when applied to a faith, especially when applied to a faith, else the founding fathers were flat wrong to create a representative republic and should have replicated a monarchy.

Please make this point clearer. If you are implying that the papacy follows the hereditary model that the founding fathers repudiated, then you are mistaken. If you are implying that the founding fathers were possibly wrong for creating a rep. gov. then you would need to elaborate.

Onglay ivelay theay Ultcay ofay Arymay orshipway!!

'Scuse me while I duck in this closet to get my mask and rattle.
[sound of rustling, bumps, bangs, various objects, small bones, Mad Magazines from 1957, stacks of old Our Sunday Visitor newspapers, and a pair of ruby red slippers fly out the door. Then ...]

Okay? Everybody ready?

Hunh ahyah ahyah ahyah.
Hunh ahyah ahyah ahyah.
Hunh ahyah ahyah ahyah.

Okay, now people? I can't hear you folks in the back there. We're all going to have to try a little harder here. We all want to sound and look our best when Bishop McGillicuddy Mary Wascowicz Lorenzo visits us next week, right?

The real sorrow here is that a wonderful, beautiful, and consoling, in the strict sense of the word, relationship is rejected by most of our separated brethren. Pearls before swine is one thing, but here are thirsty and enervated people recoiling in fear and disgust from the very drink which would quench their thirst and make them stronger.

Catholics are stupid, deceived, idolaters, etc. You are Catholic. But don’t take it personal.

The problem, as I see it, is that the poster might truly think the generalization. And he must, I think, be allowed to make it. But I would say that it should be made in a way which invites discussion rather than trumps it. And I guess it wouldn't hurt if the occasional use of phrases like "No offense, really, but it sure seems to the best of my thinking" )that Catholics are dimwits or schemers or whatever) ....

What further stifles conversation is people's thinking that they are better at discussion than they truly are, and especially the failure to distinguish between elaborations of their proposition and defenses of it.

In any event, the practical side of the rule is that,"You're another!" is out while "People who think that Catholics are dimwits and schemers seem themselves to fall under that condemnation," is in.

The question I have is: Why a priori should there be any relationship between Church polity and civil polity? Should hospital procedures and policies be determined by plebiscite?

"I'm sorry, that LOOKS like a aggressive malignancy. Of course we'll have to run the results of the test past the community and then debate the proper treatment. The elections shouldn't take more than a year or two."

I'm not saying a Church is like a hospital in every respect, but it might be in enough respects to make a representative form of government inappropriate.

Besides if it were a matter of representation, then the Baptists, the Roman Catholics and in a few areas the LDS folks would take over. OR you can bet this idea of "joining by dropping by" would undergo some examination as people sought to "qualify" for a ballot.

But then the only reason I allow the US to be as it is is that I can't get made king. If I could, y'all could forget politics and go about your business.

Jesus Christ forms a 2000 + year old church and Man thinks he knows better on how to obtain Salvation...Go Figure!
No, we think we are ALL part of that same Church Jesus formed. All who believe and follow after Him
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Do you follow the Sabbath by Going to Mass? Do you follow the code layed down by GOD in the Old testement... Do you accept the Eucharist as the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.. Do You accept the Sacrament of Confession? Confirmation? Sacrament of Holy Ordination? Do You accept the Pope as the apostolic succesor of St Peter.? Do you accept the Saints in Heaven? The BVM?

As you define your beliefs through your private interpretation of your reading of Scripture, I read Scripture and follow the Holy Spirits promptings and illumination. He has never failed to do instruct me.

By which you mean you use the interpretations of the church magisterium. The Catholic interpretations placed on certain scripture must be known in order to come away with that meaning.

I read the scriptures with no prior interpretations and absorb the meaning they say without presumption. In the rare times where interpretation is necessary instead of just untangling, I use what is said in other places in the scriptures to build my presumptions, then apply them until the scripture makes sense.

Any interpretation of any scripture that has the effect of accruing centralized power to the Catholic leadership, being as how they are the very ones with that interpretations, I can say I find suspect.

The question I have is: Why a priori should there be any relationship between Church polity and civil polity? Should hospital procedures and policies be determined by plebiscite?

Yes, that is why I sought some clarification. The implications of what was written suggests a lot of error, but the error could be mine if I was extracting an unintended meaning.

You are absolutely right. Representative government cannot be applied to every institution. Not in families, businesses, schools, or as you ably suggest, in hospitals. It just wouldn't work. So to use the logic employed by William, one could say that, if democratic principles are inapplicable to a family, then they are inapplicable to governance.

Moreover, there is trouble with the perception of the papacy as being the kind of monarchy that the founding fathers are said to have reputiated. And there is trouble even with the attitude toward monarchy in general. After all, we are subjects in the kingdom of God and there is a ruler of that realm, and He wasn't voted in, at least that is what the bible says, even the esteemed version named after a monarch. :o)

Let's look at it logically. Finding salvation of your soul is the point.

If salvation is had without the necessity of the one true church, there is either no point of having a one true church, or the number of points for have a one true church is reduced by each instance of being able to achieve salvation outside the church.

So the specific criteria revolves around "no fault of their own", which your quote calls "by their conditioning". (also note "not necessarily cut off from God’s mercy") And the instances that are covered by those criteria must be minimal, or no use for the Catholic church.

I would guess that Protestants conditioning is not included. If it were, the Catholic church could be said to have no ordained place to play in individual salvation that is claimed.

Of course, those who read the scriptures and take them as they're written and figure out the meaning inconsistent with Catholic doctrine would be at fault or not considered as being crippled by conditioning.

If the church controls the definition of "fault" and "conditioning" then I can't say I'm impressed.

I rather you didn't give me a link; instead, please sum up what its point is. Thanks. Maybe I'll read it when I have time.

The point on hand is much simpler: there is no scriptural basis for believing that the journey of faith is a one time even following which one is “saved”. It is a lifelong process for both the elect and the condemned.

How would getting saved end the journey, unless you just don't agree with the concept of believing and being saved and then starting a new journey with the Lord.

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