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http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/a137.htm

Evangelical Pastor John F. MacArthur’s Ignorant Misrepresentation of Catholic Teaching
From posts by P and others on the Catholic Answers boards, December 2006
MacArthur is clearly wrong and ignorant

Sandusky << ...none of you can deliver on this final point, namely, that MacArthur has materially misrepresented the Catholic Church....No one has provided any factual misrepresentation made by MacArthur concerning the Catholic Church. >>

When MacArthur quotes the Catechism, the Council of Trent, or Vatican II documents, he is not misrepresenting the Catholic Church. When he goes on to say, “therefore the Catholic Church teaches X....” The X is where the misrepresentation comes in, whether we’re talking Mary, the Pope, the priesthood, Justification and Salvation, or sacraments and grace, etc.

“If he believes his salvation is provided only through grace by faith in Jesus Christ, he could be saved. But, if he accepts the full sweep of Catholic dogma, there’s no way. He has cluttered up the simplicity of salvation with a works/righteousness system.”

“Works/righteousness” means salvation is earned. You won’t find that in Trent or the Catechism which specifically rejects the idea salvation is earned. He also thinks no Catholic can be saved.

“We could talk about the idea that God is a tough guy, and if anybody wants grace out of God, it’s only Jesus who could get it from Him; but you can’t expect to go to Jesus because He’s pretty tough himself, so you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother.... “

That’s baloney too, you won’t find that in the official sources of doctrine. If he would just stick with the official sources (Catechism, etc) but he does not. The above is a misrepresentation, a material misrepresentation of official Catholic teaching.

“We could talk a lot about those things; concepts of purgatory, concepts of the sinlessness of Mary, the virgin birth of Mary, a lot of things about Catholic theology...”

The virgin birth of Mary? Please give me the Catholic document that speaks of the “virgin birth of Mary.” If he means the Immaculate Conception, fine, that is Catholic doctrine. If he means the Virgin Birth of Christ, fine, that is Catholic doctrine. But he doesn’t say that. He says the “virgin birth of Mary.” That is not Catholic doctrine, that is just ignorance.

“They also possess pastoral power, and the way they define that is quite interesting. In the Catholic dogma, it is refined as — defined as legislative, judicial and punitive. Their idea of pastoral work is not comfort and care and compassion. It is legislative, judicial and punitive.”

Show me the Catholic document (Catechism, etc) that says pastoral ministry does not involve comfort, care, and compassion.

“He never makes a mistake, and nothing he says, therefore, can ever be altered.”

Show me the Catholic document (Vatican I, etc) that says papal infallibility means the Pope never makes a mistake and nothing he says can ever be altered.

After quoting a lot from the Council of Trent, MacArthur says:

“That is why in the history of the Catholic church, nothing ever changes. The church absorbs its dissidents. It absorbs its immoral. [?] It absorbs its heretics. It absorbs everybody, and perpetuates the system. The one thing the Catholic church cannot tolerate is any kind of schism. And so it just keeps absorbing the dissidents in the perpetration of the system. And, therefore, it is full of all wretched kinds of beliefs, all levels of immorality and all different kinds of disregard for Catholic law down through the laity.”

That’s nice, but you won’t find any of that in the official sources: Catechism, Trent, Vatican II and the Councils, etc. When a person is excommunicated, he is not absorbed. Show me the official Catholic document that says heretics and schismatics are “absorbed.” If you can’t, that is a material misrepresentation of official Catholic doctrine. “Absorbed” is not a Catholic term, that is a MacArthur misrepresentation.

(The above from The Scandal of the Catholic Priesthood, 2002 by John MacArthur)

He also doesn’t know anything about Church history when he suggests the Catholic Church was invented at the time of Constantine, or that the Catholic Church takes her doctrines from Babylonian paganism (i.e. The Two Babylons by Hislop), or that the Fathers have anything to do with his evangelical fundamentalist Protestant doctrines (he has quoted St. John Chrysostom by name on his GTY program). That shows a complete ignorance of early Church history, the Church Fathers, and the history of Christian doctrine. I suggest a good reading of

JND Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines or
Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition (volume 1)
P

More MacArthur ignorance

Oh, I’m not done yet. Try these on:

From The Scandal of the Catholic Priesthood

MacArthur: “In the eyes of the priesthood there is an inherent uncleanness in marriage and it’s a hangover from that sort of Manichaean/Gnostic idea of the evil of the flesh. There’s an uncleanness in romantic desire. There’s an uncleanness in normal love. There’s something shameful in that. And the desire for procreation is somehow the enemy of spiritual devotion.”

Show me the official Catholic document (Catechism, etc) that there is an inherent uncleanness in marriage and we have a Manichean/Gnostic idea of the evil of the flesh, that the desire for procreation is the enemy of spiritual devotion. Where does he get that one?...........

“Works/righteousness” means salvation is earned. You won’t find that in Trent or the Catechism which specifically rejects the idea salvation is earned. He also thinks no Catholic can be saved.

Canon 32 similarly states, "If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema." (Trent, Canons Concerning Justification, Canon 32.

Shortened, this teaches, "If anyone says that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God does not truly merit eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself, let him be anathema."

As regards merit, the Roman Catholic catechism states,

The term “merit” refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members..., (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2006)

"Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal life (Catechism of the Catholic church, Part 3, Life in Christ, Merit, 2010)

It is true that God under grace rewards faith in the light of its deeds, though man owes all to God and it is God who moves and enables man to believe and to obey. And it is in the light of works that a man is accounted to have eternal life and is fit to be rewarded. (Mt. 25:30-40; Rv. 3:4)

But the RC emphasis on merit leaves RCs believing they will earn eternal life if they are good enough, and Rome actually teaches that one must become good enough in character to enter Heaven. In contrast to justification by faith, with works justifying one as being a believer.

you can’t expect to go to Jesus because He’s pretty tough himself, so you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother.... “ That’s baloney too, you won’t find that in the official sources of doctrine. If he would just stick with the official sources (Catechism, etc) but he does not. The above is a misrepresentation, a material misrepresentation of official Catholic teaching.

Pleading "official sources of doctrine" is invalid, as in reality what one merely says does not establish what one really believes, but what they do. And Rome has implicitly sanctioned and exampled the idea that "you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother."

According to Eadmer (A.D. 1060–1124), an English monk and student of Anselm, “sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus...[who] does not at once, answer anyone who invokes him, but only does so after just judgment. But if the name of his mother Mary is invoked, her merits intercede so that he is answered even if the merits of him who invoked her do not deserve it.” Through her “the elements are renewed, the netherworld is healed, the demons are trodden underfoot, men are saved and angels are restored.” — Andrew Taylor, “Three medieval manuscripts and their readers,” University of Pennsylvania press; page 173

Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him that he accepts them as commands in the sense that he never resists his dear mother’s prayer because it is always humble and conformed to his will.... — St. Louis de Montfort, in Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, #27, 246. http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/TRUEDEVO.HTM

The virgin birth of Mary? Please give me the Catholic document that speaks of the “virgin birth of Mary.” If he means the Immaculate Conception, fine, that is Catholic doctrine.

It is quite certain he meant the perpetual virginity of Mary. Yet of historical note, the Collyridians, an obscure Early "Christian" movement [whom some believe were responsible for Muhammad's belief that Mary was part of the Trinity] that Catholics come close to being like, "imagined that Mary herself was born of a virgin, and they established the worship and offering of manchet bread and cracknels, or fine wafers, as sacrifices to her." - http://www.orthodox.cn/patristics/apostolicfathers/mary.htm

Show me the Catholic document (Catechism, etc) that says pastoral ministry does not involve comfort, care, and compassion.

Show me once place where the Holy Spirit uses the exclusive word for priests for NT pastors , outside being part of the general priesthood of all believers.

Show me the Catholic document (Vatican I, etc) that says papal infallibility means the Pope never makes a mistake and nothing he says can ever be altered.

Show me the Catholic document (Vatican I, etc) that says papal infallibility means the Pope can make a mistake when speaking infallibly. and something he infallibly says can be changed .

Rather, it is not material misrepresentation of official Catholic doctrine as seen in practice, which is what manifests belief, as Rome characteristically does not excommunicate even publicly known impenitent proabortion, prosodomite pols, but treats them as members in life and in death.

And her own claims of perpetuation require such "absorption" as holding men who were morally more like Judas than Peter to be popes.

As early as the 4th c. you have pope Damasus 1 employing murderous thugs in seeking to ensure to seat from his rival, and a litany of unholy popes and political elections, and the conditions which preceded the needed, if faulty, Reformation:

"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation.

"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)

And as the oft-invoked Newman confesses,

In the course of the fourth century two movements or developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways by Eusebius [Note 16], that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us.

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church. {374} The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition in the West than in the East. - John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power; www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html

I suggest a good reading of JND Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines

Which is what testifies to pope Damasus 1 employing murderous thugs in seeking to ensure to seat from his rival, and that that Ireneaus, Tertullian, and Origen all felt Mary had sinned and doubted Christ

None of these theologians had the least scruple about attributing faults to her. Irenaeus and Tertullian recalled occasions on which, as they read the gospel stories, she had earned her son's rebuke, and Origen and insisted that, like all human beings, she needed redemption from her sins; in particular he interpreted Simon's prophecy in Luke 2:35 that a sword would pierce her soul as confirming that she had been invaded with doubts when she saw her son crucified. (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian doctrines, p. 493)

And on Cyprian:

"Cyprian made plain, that each bishop is entitled to hold his own views and to administer his own diocese accordingly...[In Cyprian's view] There is no suggestion that he [Peter] possessed any superiority to, much less jurisdiction over, the other apostles. - (Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], pp. 205-206)

Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition (volume 1)

And who stated,

"Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity..." — Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 46),

“The reformers were catholic because they were spokesmen for an evangelical tradition in medieval catholicism, what Luther called "the succession of the faithful." The fountainhead of that tradition was Augustine (d. 430). His complex and far-reaching system of thought incorporated the catholic ideal of identity plus universality, and by its emphasis upon sin and grace it became the ancestor of Reformation theology. … All the reformers relied heavily upon Augustine. They pitted his evangelical theology against the authority of later church fathers and scholastics, and they used him to prove that they were not introducing novelties into the church, but defending the true faith of the church.”

“...To prepare books like the Magdeburg Centuries they combed the libraries and came up with a remarkable catalogue of protesting catholics and evangelical catholics, all to lend support to the insistence that the Protestant position was, in the best sense, a catholic position.

Additional support for this insistence comes from the attitude of the reformers toward the creeds and dogmas of the ancient catholic church. The reformers retained and cherished the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the two natures in Christ which had developed in the first five centuries of the church….”

“If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear. (Pelikan, pp. 46-47).

“In the end, the Council of Trent ended up (in true Roman fashion) condemning the true heritage, and canonizing its own path. In its decrees, Trent "selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification [found] in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone -- a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers-- Rome reacted by canonizing one trend [the wrong one] in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted (justification by faith and works), now became required. What had been previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned its own catholic tradition" — Jaroslav Pelikan [later EO], "ibid, pp. 51-52).

The (changeable) church law which requires all clergy to be celibate (at least after their spouse dies where a wife is even allowed), flows in part from the unbalanced views of certain "fathers" as Jerome. Who even wrested Scripture to support his antagonitic views on marriage as unclean:

this too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, “God saw that it was good,” on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus Book 1 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html

So much for 2 x 2 evangelism! And behold how the scholar resorts to this false dilemma, as on First Corinthians 7 he reasons:

It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. (Against Jovinianus (Book I, v. 7)

He furthermore stated,

It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil....Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow, whose land brings forth thorns and thistles, and whose crops are choked with brambles. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold.(''Letter'' 22; http://epistolae.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/letter/447.html).

It is the RC who is ignorant of history, and Scripture.