A 'faithful fanatic': Stephen Bennett shares his thoughts on the O'Reilly interview

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, September 10, 2002 | Stephen Bennett

[exmarine]

All Catholics believe that the Bible in its entirety is 100% "the inspired Word of God."

Not all certainly.

[marcde]

Orielly was dead-on in the Red cross situation. The red cross obviously does some good, but the attempted power play with the billion given by compassionate Americans was a disgrace. Every dime of that money should have been given to the families quikly and efficiently, the Red cross was trying to control that huge sum of money as thay saw fit, thier original plan was to hold onto most of the cash for future disasters, unacceptable! That money was given for specific purposes, not to sure-up or contribute to a growing beuracracy. As far as the gay issue, Orielly sounded like a pathetic liberal fool attacking Bennett claiming he wanted all homosexuals to go to hell. In this case Oreilly literally carried the tolerance and diversity waterbuckets. Bennett was badgered and dismissed as "fanatic", without even a reasonable chance at a reply. Noone wants to see a troulbled child without a home. Oreilly's assertion was at least this child had a chance at a loving home, with this I cannot disagree, but there's an even larger issue which Oreilly's moment of misguided zeal unscrupulously disallowed into the debate(?). Once any child is placed in a homosexual enviornment, homosexuality is immediately portrayed in an acceptable and normal light, in effect the child is indoctrinated. No homosexual couple is going to present homosexuality in an objective manner, they will explain to thier adopted child how only bigots and intolerant fools frown upon thier "perfectly normal" lifestyle. Placing a child in a homosexual atmosphere immediately interjects homosexuality into that childs life, no doubt in an exceptable and normalizing way. "Do what thou wilt", it is a free society in which we live, but there will be consequences in raising a generation on moral relativism and a belief that biological fact can be trumped in favor of desire.

[Jim Scott]

I saw the interview and O'Reilly angered me with his absurd definition of what the bible is about (only the Gospels are truth, the rest are made-up stories) and his treatment of Stephen Bennett. It was an ambush but Stephen didn't handle it well; he should have stopped trying to quote scripture and instead, challenged O'Reilly as to why he dismisses all but four books of the bible when his stated religion accepts all the books as the Word of God.

I've come to this conclusion about Bill O'Reilly; he can be useful to conservatives in some instances but he's no conservative and he's no use at all on anything moral. He's bought into the homosexual agenda and now defends gays, except that he thinks they are a little too 'forward' with proclaiming their sexuality. Fine. He can think what he wants but his angry dismissal of Bennett as a religious fanatic shows that O'Reilly isn't all that comfortable with his pro-gay stands when he has to demonize and name-call a sincere man who believes otherwise.

I don't use TV commentators as my guide for anything so O'Reilly is not a big 'factor' in my life, but Bill O'Reilly is certainly going downhill in many respects. I don't think he's any more abrasive than he always was, but he doesn't wear well over time. His religious 'beliefs' are certainly music to the ears of many agnostic/atheist types and those who play at religion as long as it doesn't intefere with anything they want to do or make them feel guilty in any way. So be it, at least Bill isn't pretending too be a religious man any more, or if he is, the mask is off.

[egarvue]

I agree that O'Reilly was right in the Red Cross situation. But I think his victory (really, he was the big name pushing and pushing in the media, until the Red Cross gave in) went to his head. Wayyyyyy into his head. I have been real disappointed in O'Reilly since then - he is wrong on the gay issue, he is wrong in his bashing of Christians, he is wrong on the Saudi Arabian girls issue that just came up this last week. Like I said before, I would love it if someone posted up a comparison or history of O'Reilly's ratings numbers, I would like to see if his current attitudes on the show have had a positive or negative effect on his ratings.

[marcde]

Orielly's got some faults no doubt, but he's still miles ahead of the rest. I dont believe power has gone to his head, any power Orielly wields is not soley his, it belongs to the folks who are tired of the Liberal lie. The American/Saudi girls are coerced and brainwashed, nothing more he can do there. His stance on homosexuality has been compromised by emotion toward his gay friends, while I dont agree, I understand. Orielly can afford to stumble a bit, the fact is noone out there even comes close to his tenacity or courage. I would love to debate him myself on certain issues. As far as credibilty and informing the folks he's the best there's ever been. Disagreement is no reason to write him off. Pray that God continues to send us couragous and capable individuals with a public forum, perhaps Orielly's perspective on certain aspects of the homosexual agenda are scewed by personal experience, that in no way impedes all of his rationalizing skills. Turning off Orielly is the wrong thing to do, too much prosporous information would be lost to you and yours. I was as enraged as anyone else at his pathetic dismissal of Bennett, but I wont diregard the man's entire intellect because of it.

[RaceBannon]

O'Rielly is an example of modern conservatism:immoral on morals, and right wing on money

[wideawake]

O'Reilly is also a supporter of abortion and euthanasia.

He is also, I believe, divorced and remarried outside the Church.

He isn't a Catholic: he just says that in order to make people think he believes in God. In reality, he only believes in Bill O'Reilly.

[wideawake]

All Catholics who adhere to the catechism believe in the complete inerrancy of Scripture. There are, of course, many Catholics who are Catholic in name only.

[wideawake]

The sad thing is, he's really not very financially conservative either. He just seems conservative compared to people on other networks.

[truthandlife]

Very sad indeed about Mr. O'Reilly. I predict this will be the mindset of the majority of Americans in another 10 years or so. Every Christian in America who believes that homosexuality is wrong will be persecuted beyond belief. It is starting to happen now. If you would like to know where we have gone and are going as a nation you can read Romans 1:21-31:

21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

[syriacus]

I wonder if Bill listened to his teachers during any theology or religion classes he took while he was a student.

O'Reilly really showed his stupidity by engaging in an argument in an area (Scripture) where he obviously knows very little.

He should be ashamed of his poor performance.