Posted on 02/22/2007 9:46:01 AM PST by Alex Murphy
My catechism teacher, Sister Mary Lou Petrillo, was a smart and scrappy nun who drilled into us the basics of Catholicism without demeaning other Christian churches or religions.
Too bad Sister Mary Lou isn't available to teach a few intensive lessons on tolerance to the campaign people of presidential candidate John Edwards.
Within the last few weeks, two bloggers for the former North Carolina senator resigned after being hit with criticism from conservative Catholic organizations angered by past anti-Catholic remarks the bloggers posted on the Web, according to CNN.
Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte quit after groups like the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights protested the online messages, some of which used profanity and vulgarity to skewer the Catholic Church.
In a mock question-and-answer session, the postings asked, among other things, what would have happened if the Virgin Mary had taken an emergency contraceptive, and responded, "You'd have to justify their misogyny with another ancient mythology." Another message said the pope has to tell women that have stillborn babies that their babies will be "cast into Satan's maw."
Yet another barb called Christian supporters of President Bush his "wingnut Christofascist base." Edwards responded that he was offended by their remarks, but refused to fire them.
As a practicing Catholic, I say good riddance to McEwan and Marcotte, especially if the Democrats are serious about their new openness to religious folks. But what I don't understand is this: Why would anyone be surprised by their comments?
As many Catholics can attest to, anti-Catholicism is still thriving in America. Slurs such as "popery," "Romanism" and "priestcraft" may no longer be common, but some mentalities have not changed from the days of the Know-Nothings of the mid-1800s. The political group, officially called the American Party, targeted Catholics and immigrants, preferably Catholic immigrants.
That's why I've met apparently sincere people who distinguish between Catholics and "bible-believing" Christians, as though anyone loyal to the pope must believe the Scriptures are a lie. It's why a minister asked me once why Catholics practice idolatry with their statues of the Virgin Mary. He seemed to think it was a perfectly normal question.
I've noted one thing may be different these days from the anti-Catholicism of the 1800s. Sometimes, we Catholics get it from both sides. We get slapped by the fringe religious groups that swear the pope is the Antichrist, and we get kicked by the self-proclaimed intellectuals convinced that Catholicism is a backward religion with preposterous doctrines that no one could possibly believe unless the pope threatened eternal damnation.
The fringe groups are easy to dismiss, but the stereotypes about Catholicism are especially hard to take coming from people who should be smarter, like those working for presidential candidates.
As for McEwan and Marcotte, I'm not sure what they plan to do now that they're not working for presidential candidate Edwards. But whatever it is, I hope they don't run into my feisty former catechism teacher.
Or maybe, I hope they do.
Not sure about the misogyny part, but they most certainly do throw a mythology-based accusations. The false accusation that one or another feasts or doctrines are based on (Egyptian|Babylonian|Norse|whatever) "mystery religions" has appeared repeatedly on this very forum. I've seen that nonsense from "leftists", as well. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
Perhaps you meant something else by "invok[ing] ... mythology".
Sorry I'm a "redneck" instead of one of those high IQ Polish or Paraguayan peasants who are so far above me.
Furthermore, to assume that a bigot is stupid is merely to be charitable. The alternative is to assume that he is willfully bearing false witness against his neighbor. It is to assume that he is evil.
I'm referring to people who honestly don't know anything about Catholicism and don't know better.
Please identify in what particular my post #21 was not true.
Wow. Given Rutles4Ever's post #15, the implications are just downright scary.
Furthermore, to assume that a bigot is stupid is merely to be charitable. The alternative is to assume that he is willfully bearing false witness against his neighbor. It is to assume that he is evil.
Gee . . . I never realized how opposed to "bigotry" the Catholic Church has always been (what with Pat Buchanan, Fr. Coughlin, and all those pogroms).
I guess that as long as you belong to some historically liberral Democratic urban immigrant group you simply can't be a bigot (kinda like a Black person can't be a racist).
Pardon my tainted and unworthy descent.
That's fine. No one is forcing them join. And since it's not being forced on them, the question is, why do they insist on bashing it?
One of the first lessons I learned in salesmanship is to never disparage your competitor. If you can't make a sale based on the merits of your product alone, you either have a bad product, or you are a bad salesman.
Isn't this hilarious? Throw a bone to the uninformed, and the bigots come out of the woodwork. I think what's pertinent about the "bigotry" issue is that, as we've seen here, they tend to identify themselves in grand fashion.
You know what's really fascinating about all this? All I did was extend an olive branch to these people, and their response is to virulently attack our Church. I think that says it all.
Mythbusters should examine that one.
Why, thank you for your kind words.
Only rednecks can be bigots. Everyone else in the world is a misunderstood victim of the neanderthals who stalk the American Heartland (without whom conservative Catholics couldn't elect a dog catcher). Every time a Protestant missionary gives a Jew a tract the Holocaust has occurred anew. Every time a Protestant missionary puts a flyer beneath a Catholic's windshield wiper it's a repeat of Oliver Cromwell and the Irish Potato Famine. Every time a Southern Baptist dares to "witness" to an Eastern Orthodox chr*stian it's the fall of Constantinople all over again. American redneck Protestants are dumb, hateful, bigoted, inbred, and toothless, and it's all their fault.
And since no one has said a thing about the treatment of Protestants in majority Catholic countries, I assume that, as will all liberal minority groups, "tolerance" is expected to be a one-way street.
On the other hand are those who jump all over every falsehood about that which they oppose, who reject the truth in favour of lurid half-truths, distortions of the truth, and outright fabrications. Some, sadly, are dumb and gullible. Others should re-read the eighth (ninth) commandment, and take it to heart.
And yes, the implications of deliberately, knowingly violating the eighth (ninth) commandment are scary.
You really have some issues to work out. You keep banging this drum about "rednecks" and no one knows what the heck you're talking about. We're all sorry if you've had some bad experience with some uncharitable Catholics, but your vitriol towards the Church is uncompared on FR, and it's not going to be taken lying down. Your agenda is clear to everyone here, so pardon me if I don't shed a tear for some alleged "intolerance" of rednecks or quakers or extra terrestrials or whatever it is you're talking about.
I thought your use of crows was actually a fitting description.
I'm referring to people who honestly don't know anything about Catholicism and don't know better.
How can I possibly know better, since I'm a typical ignorant inbred redneck? Don't you know we're all stupid? As ever good urban ethnic groups knows, the hookworms in my blood have a higher IQ than I do.
I notice that you refuse to admit the simple, unvarnished truth that some Catholics are ignorant bigoted bumpkins just like some American Heartland Protestants are. I would have thought that Catholics knew what it felt like to be accused of "hatred" and "bigotry" and "prejudice" by folks like the ADL and the feminists, but instead you just sail into the name-calling as if the Catholic Church has never had a single bigot among its membership. Is the Baptist-bashing perhaps a way of dealing with liberal canards against you? Do you simply go out and call a Baptist a "bigot" and that makes it all better?
You have no patience with people who because of their background do not or cannot understand Catholicism. You just pull out the "bigot" charge and that takes care of everything. Kindly point out any of my posts where I've repeated any hoary old reformation or nineteenth century fables. I have pointed out that if Catholics are going to play the "we're a victimized minority group card" it's going to come back and bite you in the end. I've pointed out the hypocrisy of pretending that only Protestants have bigots among them. There was a thread on this forum last week about the pesecution of Protestants in Mexico. I din't post it, and I didn't make it up. Catholicism in historically Catholic cultures is very different from the ultra-liberal, ueber-sophisticated American variety. It wouldn't kill you to at least say that if such things are going on that they shouldn't. You don't even have to admit that they are going on. If you'd just say that they shouldn't. But know, once again Billy Bob and his ignorance is the only thing standing between the world and a multicultural utopia.
Let me tell you something. I am aware that Protestants in Northern Ireland can't draw a breath without condemning "popery." Most American Fundamentalist Protestants don't think about Catholicism that much (the only Catholics they see are on TV anyway), yet Catholics act as if every Fundamentalist Protestant in the country were a murderous beast. And you want to lecture me about "bearing false witness!"
Catholicism is strange. On the one hand it's the "true home" of every chr*stian (including, I assume, those brain-dead rednecks); on the other it touts its position as a persecuted alien minority and flaunts the very things that rednecks find hardest to understand and won't even stand up for the veracity of its own Bible.
All the name-calling in the world cannot change this.
"Did someone get up on the wrong side of the rock?"
Is this a road we really want to go down?
When are Protestants going to apologize for the 100,000+ Catholics who were killed by Protestants in the German Peasant's Revolt of 1524-1526?
When are Protestants going to apologize for the 10 MILLION+ of various faiths who were killed by Protestant Nazis during World War II?
When are Southern Baptists going to apologize for routinely giving sermons supporting slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War?
When are Protestants going to apologize for organizing the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War?
You see, it gets real easy to point fingers.
What is the difference between Protestant Fundamentalists attributing Catholic rituals to pagan origins (and this is a well-known fact, considering that the Church was so opposed to "Judaizers") and the almost universal position in the Catholic Church that the "old testament" and its stories and rituals are adaptations from ancient Babylonian and Canaanite mythology?
"Conservative" apologeticists like Fr. Peter Stravinskas are higher critics and actually use the JEPD theory of the opening of Genesis in order to discredit sola scriptura. In fact, some Catholics (perhaps most?) seem to be unable to tell the difference between sola scriptura and Biblical inerrancy, and invoke the "mistakes" and "errors" in the Bible in order to illustrate the need for the magisterium.
But since most posters on this thread actually seem to regard the Fundamentalist's inability to understand as amusing (and goodness knows, Catholics are too good to actually lower themselves to the level of a Baptist and actually proselytize someone), there is little use in my continuing to say anything here.
Other than I've lost an awful lot of the respect I used to have for you.
I note with some amusement, and more than a little dismay, the the real target of the author's ire is a pair of petty-minded blasphemous bloggers, whose only claim to fame is brief employment with John "Breck Girl" Edwards' quixotic Presidential campaign.
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