Replies

LOL! You seem to have a serious reading comprehension issue. Please read slowly and carefully. Whose story is it you claim has changed? Mine, right? Not yours. Mine. *My* story is and has always been that I understood you, from the beginning, as referring to all Protestant apologists. You furthermore confirmed to me that I understood you correctly during our email conversation, noted above, where you clearly *accepted* rather than *rejected* my use of the now contested term “Protestant apologist” without challenge. Only now, in the light of public scrutiny, do you start making this bizarre distinction between Protestant apologists in general versus some special subspecies of Protestant apologist who is also bigoted and anti-Catholic. You are truly a wonderment. :)

(BTW, I invite the reader to observe: As I anticipated, Vlad will now neither admit nor deny the proposition that all Protestant apologists lie, though when he spoke to me in private he was, as I have shown, less guarded. I am sorry to say this latest evasion was entirely predictable, though I wish to my heart it was not.)

Back to you, Vlad. A couple of points I overlooked before. In our email conversation, you stated to me that none of the evidence you related to me is hearsay. I’m sorry, but if all I’ve got is *hearing* you *say* it, then its *hear*-*say*, one person’s word against another’s, generally worthless as evidence (with some specific exceptions). Doesn’t matter how real it is to you. To me you’re just some anonymous poster who has no problem “ascertaining” the dark motivations of every Protestant apologist on the planet. That sort of wildness is hardly a good basis for trusting your other statements, which most certainly are hearsay. If you don’t believe me, ask any attorney you trust. Please.

As for the Newman quote, er, summary as you say, if it is true these are your own chosen words and not Newman’s, then it is YOU who offered them without the additional qualifiers of “bigoted” or “anti-Catholic.” See here:

“As John Henry Newman said, Protestants, by necessity must lie. It’s all they have.”

So why would you say these words if you didn’t mean them as you said them? And frankly here it is even broader than merely Protestant apologists. It is the absolute set of all Protestants. Do you now admit you were wrong, that the scope is far more limited, that you meant me to magically understand you were only speaking of some special, small group of haters? Those are your words. Will you own them?

Daniel, as for the actual quote for which Vlad’s words are offered as a summary, I have found nothing. I’m not saying there’s no such thought in Newman’s body of work, only that I have not yet discovered it. However, I did find Newman saying this in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

“It never could be, that so large a portion of Christendom should have split off from the communion of Rome, and kept up a protest for 300 years for nothing. I think I shall never believe that so much piety and earnestness would be found among Protestants, if there were not some very grave errors on the side of Rome.” See in context here: http://books.google.com/books?id=fksE0AvRGXAC&pg=PT273&lpg=PT273&dq=john+newman+protestants+lie&source=bl&ots=xaaV3zI_nt&sig=5K0i1hUwbDoBxNfDAeWkLI4qKAM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ujU-U-aPLfK_sQSe_YKIBw&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=john%20newman%20protestants%20lie&f=false

So at least at this point in his life, he draws a conclusion nearly opposite the summary proposed by Vlad. I find that … unsurprising.