Don’t take my word for its- the collapse of Protestantism is all around you. It lacks solid theological and intellectual foundation. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their grandmother have their own conflicting view of Scripture. So Benny Hill is ok on his theology because he is “honest” as if we all know that folks like Joel Osteen; Rev. Schuller; Billy Graham; David Koresh; Jim Jones; were/are all “honest” despite the personal and family fortunes these individuals have made peddling their own brand of Bible Scripture.
So Benedict’s Regensburg Address is “flawed” reasoning because he is talking about “Catholicism” and never mind his address is widely studied in the theological departments of major universities. Are we supposed to cut some slack on Bible Christians because they are bereft of real scholars and theologians, and the more reputable ones have ditched their brand of Protestantism and converted to Christianity. Indeed, the great John Henry Newman is a convert to Catholicism. Of Course, and here I am guessing, 99.99% of Protestants have never bothered to read his works. Those who do apparently convert to Catholicism.
Catholics with “even gumption” What does this mean? Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, Benedict XVI are cowards? intellectually dishonest? Richard Neuhaus, America’s foremost Lutheran scholar and pastor who converted to Catholicism and become a Catholic Priest converted because of “gumption” or was it because Protestantism and all its multi-brands to thinking-people is a shallow and bankrupt faith?
Protestantism resulted not in the “greatest Reformation” but more appropriately in the words of one of the renowned English essayists, Hillaire Belloc, Protestantism “spawned a cluster of heresies.”
They all say the same things...Nothing new...They just keep repeating each other...Besides, I have no interest reading anything from a queer Catholic, or a queer Protestant...But you help yourself...
Eamon Duffy on John Henry Newman: “He came to see Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on religious feeling and on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, as a Trojan horse for an undogmatic religious individualism that ignored the Church’s role in the transmission of revealed truth, and that must lead inexorably to subjectivism and skepticism.”