And to continue the theme...

Can you imagine this kind of prejudice directed at any non-Christian group?

Jimmy Carter reaches back into his redneck Southern Baptist roots and declares Catholics to belong to the Anti-Christ....where "anti-christ" means not conforming to his cultural views.

In a TIME Magazine interview with Elizabeth Dias published Sunday (H/T The Deacon’s Bench), prior to the start of a Carter Center conference titled Mobilizing Faith for Women, former President Jimmy Carter blithely blamed the Catholic Church for the abuse and oppression of women throughout history and across cultures. No veiled hints here:

". . . I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think."

Not content with that ignorant and intolerant slur (which tarred Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the side, though unnamed) Mr Carter went on to foment anti-Catholic sentiment by urging Americans to be wary of Catholics in the workplace:

"To repeat myself in a way, I think that what the major religious leaders say is used by others who discriminate against women as justification for their human rights abuse. For instance if an employer, who might be otherwise enlightened, if he is a religious person and he sees that, he might be a Catholic, and a Catholic does not let women be priests, then why should he pay his women employees an equal pay [as men]?"

Hey, Jimmy, don't like Catholic teachings, then don't become Catholic.

Until then, shut the hell up with your senile rantings about how Catholic employers are just waiting to discriminate against women employees.  That's hateful BS and you should know.

Not to worry, Catholicism will be around long after Jimmy Carter is forgotten.

So, basically, in Colorado everyone is equal under the law...

...except Catholics.

Catholic hospital agrees not to cite black-letter law applicable to everyone else even though the law has nothing to do with abortion or the sanctity of life because idiots who know nothing about law decided to use this case as a way of holding the Catholic church up to contempt....

So, let's all sit back and listen to everyone express admiration for the fact that a Catholic hospital has voluntarily chosen to submit to a discriminatory application of the law in order to really, really make the point about the need to protect the unborn from being killed in utero.

*Crickets*Churping*

So, is the Colorado Supreme Court supposed to ignore Colorado law?

What if the Colorado Supreme Court does decide that fetuses are "people" under the Wrongful Death Act? Will the Catholic-haters really agree that abortion is also illegal?

Exactly.

Remember when George Bush came out wearing a "Medicine Man hat" to pardon the Thanksgiving Turkey?

And how he rattled the sacred gourd over it?

High-larious!

Of course, that didn't happen. That couldn't happen because it would have been culturally insensitive. Bush would have been excoriated for days over that kind of thing.

But, hey, Catholics making the sign of the cross, now that's comedy gold.

If we were to put on our finely nuanced "see the 'cultural insensitity' everywhere" glasses that leftist wear on a daily basis,then in light of the injury that he intends to infict on Catholic institutions, we might find that Obama was mocking Catholicism in making the sign of the cross as a "dispensation" over the pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey.

Naw, forget it.  Catholics aren't permitted to ever think that they or their religion is being mocked.

The great thing about the internet is that...

...you can get a real idea of how many people with untreated mental illness there are roaming the streets.

Pope gets twitter acount; bigots and haters respond.

Anti-Catholicism in the Media.

Brent Bozelle watches trash TV so we don't have to.

Could you imagine this being inserted for humor in any Hollywood production if it was directed at anyone but Catholics (or, to be fair, Mormons or Evangelicals)?

NBC's sitcom "The New Normal" isn't just trying to remake society for the Gay Left. It's trying to remake Christianity, which is to say, destroy it. For its October 22 episode, "The Godparent Trap," NBC ran promos with the gay character Brian in the confessional, and the priest sneering, "If you're not going to take this seriously, I'm going to go back to playing Angry Birds."

As the plot unfolds, we're told Brian was raised Catholic, and as he sits in a pew and looks around at religious pictures, he cracks gay jokes in his mind. He sees the Apostles: "Twelve dudes sitting around gossiping and drinking wine. You call that the Last Supper? I call that a Tuesday night."

He sees a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary: "Hey, Mary — I'm a virgin, too. I've also slept in a barn with three wise men." Then he turns to an image of Jesus on the cross, and says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be talking trash about your mother. But you know who judges me? Your father."

The priest asks Brian if he came for confession, so he enters the confessional. But he's really not there to confess, but to continue the wisecracks. "Commandment-wise, I've pretty much done them all, except kill someone and covet my neighbor's wife." That earns the Angry Birds line NBC liked so much.

Brian then says he wants to find godparents for his forthcoming baby from a surrogate mother, but he feels he doesn't have a religious foundation. (Ya think?) The priest insists "the church is not anti-gay," and to which predictably, Brian retorts, "Yet any chance he gets, the Pope treats gay marriage like (actress/reckless driver) Amanda Bynes treats pedestrians."

Then the priest himself turns on the Vicar of Christ as a crazy old loon: "Come on, haven't you ever had a lovable old uncle who popped off intolerant comments at a family barbecue?" Brian asks, "Can't you get fired for saying stuff like that?" The priest wisecracks, "I don't know if you've noticed, but it's pretty hard to get fired around here."

When the priest suggests there are churches "geared to your community," Brian shoots back "I don't want to be forced to use a separate water fountain. Why can't the church just accept all people? ... You toss Jesus' name around. You don't exactly practice what you preach.Jesus wouldn't judge people on their sexuality because Jesus loved everyone."

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "New Normal" creator Ryan Murphy admitted the show is based on his life. Surprise, surprise. He was raised Catholic, and Brian, the bitter, wise-cracking gay man, "is clearly me."

This priest not only bashes the Pope as an intolerant old fool, he's recruiting Brian to Fight the Power in earthy language. He says, "I never bought that Jesus-is-a-blissed-out-hippie crap. The man was pissed off." He was "the Chuck Norris of his day," and to turn the other cheek was "an act of defiance. It meant: I will see your insult and raise you a 'suck it!'" Jesus "saw hypocrisy and injustice and said 'Seriously? You guys are idiots. This has got to change!'"

Yup, that's what Jesus said in the Book of Tinseltown, Chapter 90210.

Brian replies, "So you're saying the church can change?" The priest then unspools a gay rights lecture, complete with soothing musical accompaniment: "Well it would. I've seen gay people battle discrimination and march for marriage equality. They demanded the right to fight for their country, but for their souls? Nope. They just give up and walk away. Jesus was a fighter, son. How about you?"

No one on this show expressed an authentically Christian opinion. There are only leftist lectures — predictable, boorish, amateurish. (Unsurprisingly, Murphy is a huge Obama backer who held a fundraiser at his house with the president because "I just can't imagine a world in which he does not win.") You can also find the "cool, rebellious priest" model at the movies. A new film called "The Sessions" takes on the story of a 40-something disabled man who weighs about 70 pounds employing a "sexual surrogate" (a sort of therapeutic prostitute) so he can lose his virginity. People magazine reports he's supported in this quest by a priest, "who in hilarious chats about just how sinful this particular sin would be, gives his blessing." The movie is based on real life, where the disabled man consulted "Father Mike," a young, bearded priest from the neighborhood church who "told me Jesus was never big on rules, that he often broke the rules out of compassion."

Hollywood wants to remake God in its own image, full of its version of "compassion" and shattering every traditional value. This mission is too important to weigh down with authentically Christian characters instead of wise-cracking and cartoonish propagandist puppets.

Now playing with "Der ewige Jude" at Hell's Octoplex.

"The Perfect Family" is probably not going to be the "come-back vehicle" for Kathleen Turner's career, particularly since it netted $14,301 on its opening weekend.


The Catholic Sentinel discusses the hijinks and frivolity that go into making a propaganda vehicle that would have made Dr. Goebbels proud:

A more appropriate title for "The Perfect Family" (Variance) would be, "The Year's Most Virulently Anti-Catholic Movie."

Staged by newcomer Anne Renton (director) and screenwriters Paula Goldberg and Claire V. Riley, this dramedy ridicules just about every aspect of the Catholic Church, its teachings and members, offering broad caricatures of clergy, religious and laity to score negative points.

The film's opening scene sets the perplexing and often sacrilegious tone.

Eileen Cleary (Kathleen Turner), supermom and "ultimate Catholic," is the altar server at Mass, assisting Msgr. Murphy (Richard Chamberlain, channeling his Father de Bricassart role from "The Thorn Birds"). It's time for Communion, and Eileen holds a platter of consecrated hosts. The monsignor turns to her, takes a host, then turns to the communicant and offers the Eucharist.

That detail -- entirely alien, of course, to the reality of Catholic liturgy -- is a pretty good hint that no one involved in this bilious project has any familiarity whatever with the life of the church they're attacking.

Distracted, Eileen brushes lint from her server's robe, jostles the platter, and several hosts fall to the ground. She proceeds to kick the body of Christ under the altar so the monsignor will not notice what's happened.

"The Perfect Family" sinks even lower. The parish announces the "Catholic Woman of the Year Award," setting up a vicious rivalry between Eileen and a den of superficially pious vipers. The award will be presented by the archbishop of Dublin, who will bestow the "prayer of absolution" on the winner, wiping away all her sins.

As if.

In the Catholic Church that actually exists, of course, absolution -- at least of mortal sin -- requires sincere and sacramental confession (unless the airplane is going down), and is not some kind of booby prize.

The idiots who made this movie remind me of Rex Mottram. As I wrote a few years ago:

Evelyn Waugh was lampooning this kind of thing in Brideshead Revisited over fifty years ago. Here's part of the relevant passage that describes Father Mowbray's report to Lady Marchmain about his success in catechizing Rex Mottram:

“I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic,” he said…. “The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are.…these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed. Take yesterday.

“He’d learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord’s Prayer, and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, ‘Look, Father, I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I want to join your Church, but you’re holding too much back.’

“I asked what he meant, and he said, ‘I’ve had a long talk with a Catholic—a very pious, well-educated one— and I’ve learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that’s the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I’ll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d’you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone’s name on it, they get sent to hell? I don’t say there mayn’t be a good reason for all this,’ he said, ‘but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.’”

“What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!” shouts Cordelia, Julia’s impish little sister. “Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he’d swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican—all kinds of things!”

The difference is that in Waugh's day, Rex Mottram was an extreme type; today, he would be a thoroughly post-modern man as entitled to believe that there are sacred monkeys as you are to believe in your "truths."

Another difference is that the modern idiots have no excuse. There is an internet. Unlike England between the wars, it's not hard to find a Catholic Church to go in and, you know, do research.

These idiots will their own ignorance because they love the warm feeling fed by their loathing.

We may not listen to her like we should...

...but no one messes with Mom without our saying so!

6 Catholics in 10 disapprove of Obama.

There goes the Catholic vote. Nearly four years after President Obama won 54 percent of Catholic voters, their support has plummeted to just 40 percent in the first poll conducted after he imposed a new birth control mandate on employers, including Catholic agencies.


In a new Rasmussen poll, 59 percent of Catholics now disapprove of the president's job. Rasmussen reports that 44 percent strongly disapprove. About 40 percent at least somewhat approve of Obama's job.

"Catholics strongly disapprove of the job President Obama is doing as the debate continues over his administration's new policy forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception they morally oppose," the pollster said in releasing his new survey. He added that while Obama's approval rating in other groups has improved, among Catholics it has remained stagnant.

Washington Secrets reported earlier that the president's controversial insurance mandated, rejected by Catholic bishops, was uniting Catholics politically, something rarely done by a politician or his policies.

Gingrich denounces media bias of debate questions during the debate.

Via Wintery Knight.

Good question, but is it true and ...

...does it suggest something malevolent.

Why is Rome keeping schtum about Pastor Nadarkhani?

The blogger Archbishop Cranmer has done some excellent work drawing attention to the case of Pastor Nadarkhani, who is to be executed in Iran because he refuses to recant his Christian faith. One doesn’t have to be a martyrologist, or even a Christian, to recognise the Pastor’s courage. Three times he has been asked by the Iranian Supreme Court to renounce Christ, and three times, on pain of death, he has refused. Reports today suggest that the Iranian authorities are on the verge of acquitting Nardakhani, but Cranmer says that “the ‘people who know’ are treating these reports with great caution.”


Cranmer also says he has alerted the Foreign office, Lambeth Palace, and the Vatican about Nadarkhani’s situation. William Hague replied within an hour and the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed “deep concern”, but the Vatican has kept schtum. Cranmer is cross, “Iran views Evangelical Protestants as ‘corrupt and deviant’,” he writes. “Does His Holiness agree?”

Steady on. It’s possible, I suppose, that the Holy See is reluctant to intervene for fear of endangering Catholics in Iran. Or perhaps they are working behind the scenes. But I suspect the Vatican’s silence is more to do with bureaucracy and incompetence. Cranmer tends to think the worst of Rome (the clue is in his name). But he is absolutely right to say that the churches really should be united, clear and loud in response to this outrage, and they should speak out now.

Anyone who has read Pope Benedict XVI's writings knows that Cranmer is nuts.  B16 has gone on record repeatedly to denounce the irrationality and oppression of Islamic extremists.  Likewise, it has been no secret that Catholics are the ones who tend to catch it in the necks in most of the Middle East.

On which point, where is the Protestant denunciation of the many, many attacks on Catholics in the Mid-East?  I assume there are some, and I further assume that all Protestants are opposed to such attacks.  Finally, I assume that they have many other worthwhile things that divert their attention such that they don't have to keep repeating things we know they stand for.

Should the Vatican denounce this situation, if it hasn't already? Absolutely. But notice that the White House got around to denouncing it only last night. 

Bureaucracy is undoubtedly the answer here.

Shoot,  ever since one of our first bishops sold out Christ for 30 pieces of silver, it's been all uphill from there.

There's another book out on the sins and vices found in the historical record of the papacy that has the anti-catholic faction slavering for a fix. The New York Times gave "Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy” by John Julius Norwich the cover and assigned its top editor to give it a rave review, which was an odd choice according to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway:

We don’t typically spend too much time looking at mainstream movie or book reviews, but I thought the cover of the New York Times Sunday Book Review was worth looking at. For one, it’s written by Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. For another, the Review has this curious note from “the editors”:

Through the years, The New York Times’s coverage of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican has received sharp criticism from practicing Catholics — including the past eight years that Bill Keller has been the paper’s executive editor. Yet Keller, who wrote this week’s cover review of “Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy,” by John Julius Norwich, was raised within the fold.

“My parents took their faith very seriously — especially my mother, who had the fervor of a convert (from Episcopalian),” Keller recalled in an e-mail. “My brothers and I had nuns and priests as our teachers through high school, and I look back on that education with real gratitude. I’m now what my friend Dan Barry calls a ‘collapsed Catholic’ — beyond lapsed — but you never really extricate yourself from your upbringing.”

I love that “Yet” in the first paragraph. Why “yet”? I mean, the next paragraph explains that he’s “beyond lapsed” to “collapsed.” If being raised in the faith is supposed to mean something about how the coverage can’t be unfair, what is collapsing from it supposed to mean?

And then we read the first paragraph of the review:

John Julius Norwich makes a point of saying in the introduction to his history of the popes that he is “no scholar” and that he is “an agnostic Protestant.” The first point means that while he will be scrupulous with his copious research, he feels no obligation to unearth new revelations or concoct revisionist theories. The second means that he has “no ax to grind.” In short, his only agenda is to tell us the story.

Since when does being “an agnostic Protestant” mean that ipso facto one wouldn’t have an ax to grind against the Roman Catholic Church or the papacy? But also, how does this relate to the editors note? Are we to presume that Keller does have an ax to grind since he’s a “collapsed” Catholic? I know he’s acted contrary to the faith in which he was raised (he and his wife aborted a son, for instance). Is that playing a role in The Times’ coverage of the Catholic Church? And then, there’s this famous Keller column — “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Here's a paragraph from the "famous Keller column":

Probably no institution run by a fraternity of aging celibates was going to reconcile easily with a movement that embraced the equality of women, abortion on demand and gay rights. It is possible, though, to imagine a leadership that would have given it a try. In fact, Pope Paul VI indicated some interest in adopting a more lenient view of birth control, and he handpicked a committee of prominent Catholics who endorsed the idea almost by acclamation. The pope agonized, and then astonished Catholics by reaffirming the old ban.

Ah, Keller is one of those "collapsed Catholics" - a person who puts his allegiance to the totems of his tribe, upper-class liberalism, above that of his faith.

And - lo and behold - Mollie finds that the nonscholarly book by a nonscholar "Protestant agnostic" that retails myths and slanders as scholarship is congenial to the prejudices of said "collapsed Catholic":

Here’s the thing: This review is not up to snuff. Many folks across the Catholic spectrum are talking about problems with the review and its uncritical look at the book in question. For instance, the book author gives quite a bit of time to a fictional incident of a female pope — a full chapter. Keller gives another couple hundred words in his short review over to discussion of this fictional character.


The review is stunningly uncritical. I actually laughed out loud at Keller’s kicker — simply a quote from the book:

“It is now well over half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age,” he writes. “With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day — on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.”

Wow. It’s almost like the author has the same lack of an ax to grind as The Times, doesn’t it? Brilliant reviewer choice there, editors.

But it's in God's plan to turn every bit of evil to good, or an opportunity for snarky humor, which in this case is supplied by Diary of a Wimpy Catholic, who points out that when Catholics sin they sin on an epic scale:

What a prince Bill Keller is. In reviewing John Julius Norwich’s Absolute Monarchs, he warns that this “rollicking narrative” featuring “265 popes (plus various usurpers and anti­popes), feral hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths, expansionist emperors, Byzantine intriguers, Borgias and Medicis, heretic zealots, conspiring clerics, bestial inquisitors and more” might not appeal to “devout Catholics.”



It’s a nice little warning label: The following history contains scenes that might shock or upset readers. Not recommended for expectant mothers or members of the Mystical Body of Christ.

I have one question for Keller: son, just who the hell do you think you’re talking to?

Tony Montana told the INS goons that they could do nothing to him that Castro hadn’t done already. Well, John Julius Norwich can’t tell us anything that Garry Wills hasn’t told us already — in Papal Sin, Return of Papal Sin and Bride of Papal Sin. (I myself have been on tenterhooks, waiting for Papal Sin: The Gay Blade.) And then there’s James Carroll. I used to mix him up with Jim Carroll, the Basketball Diaries guy. It’s not an unreasonable mistake: the Jim Carroll Band’s greatest hit was “People Who Died”; James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword might as well be subtitled: Six Million People Who Died, And All Because of Us. Have you ever seen the thing? It’s 750 pages of pure j’accuse. I’d as lief be spitted on an actual Roman gladius as suffer a copy to fall on my foot.

And:

There’s real pride to be taken in knowing that even our screw-ups are epic and spectacular.


What’s the worst thing a fundie pastor’s ever done? Kiss another guy? Smoke some glass? Rip off the faithful? Junior varsity. Nickel and dime. Amateur hour. When one of our popes feels like living in infamy, he sells an entire hemisphere into slavery. That goes for their kids, too. You say Franklin Graham was a real hell-raiser? Cesare Borgia could have stolen his Harley and his girl, gotten his blue-tick hound in the family way, and carved “AUT CAESAR AUT NULLUS” in his forehead with a stiletto before Lucrezia finished pouring arsenic in his grits

And:

Even recently have Catholics been going bad in style. Having decided that Charles de Gaulle was a traitor and a tyrant, French military officers — all being well-bred graduates of St.-Cyr and l’École Polytechnique — didn’t lower themselves by floating any rumors about his birth certificate. (Since de Gaulle was born in Lille, an excellent case could have been made that his nose was a Belgian citizen.) No, asking themselves, “What would Thomas Aquinas do?”, they came up with the answer: take him out. An air force colonel named Bastien-Thiry engaged five gunmen to ambush the presidential car on the Rue des Petits-Clamarts. De Gaulle survived; most of the conspirators escaped to Argentina, where they found jobs teaching naval midshipmen to deliver electric shocks to dissidents’ testicles in a properly Thomistic fashion.


Bastien-Thiry himself was arrested, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to death. He went to the firing squad clutching his rosary.

He had been a Boy Scout. His specialty was designing air-to-surface missiles. His given name was “Jean-Marie.”

Even our sissypants wonk patsies are hardcore.

Oo-rah!

Leftists suddenly concerned about Anti-Catholicism in America.

Tears welling up in my eyes...the Atlantic Magazine cares that the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church (WELS) keeps faith with Luther's teaching that the Pope is the Anti-Christ in its official doctrines....because Michelle Bachman belongs to a WELS church.

Here is the Atlantic smear-piece.

Newsflash! The Lutheran Conference - Missouri Synod (LCMS) also keeps this bit of hateful history, as do a few other denominations.

Unlike Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright, where he could hardly have missed the Anti-American sermons preached by Wright, there is - as yet - no evidence that Bachman knows about or agrees with this noxious bit of Lutheran doctrine.

Are we going to start outing all Lutheran politicians.

Best use of Les Miserables in a Blog Post in 2011.

Devin Rose ponders how it is possible for a hardcore Calvinist to judge a former Calvinist as being damned.

Unsurprisingly then, when a Catholic is engaging in dialogue with (this kind of) Reformed Protestant, there is no parity in the discussion. One side thinks the other is a Christian who is doing his best to follow Jesus, and the other side thinks he is talking to a wicked and damned creature.


A blindness thus arises that clouds their hearts and minds, making it incredibly difficult for them to see the Catholic Church for what she truly is, and even to objectively weigh the arguments for and against her. This is not all Protestants, but many. It becomes a case where the disdain and revulsion takes on a life of its own, and no acts of love or courage or faithfulness on the part of Catholics can overcome it. Only God can. Consider Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables where Inspector Javert cannot believe that Jean Valjean–whom he classes as one of the reprobate–could possibly have repented and become a good man:

Here is the original post:

TurretinFan" says Christ did not die for me


From "TurretinFan":

David, You've turned your back on Christ and the church to follow Rome. You don't get to claim His blood. At least, as it stands, when you come before the Lord, he will simply tell you "I never knew," despite your claims. -TurretinFan

The thread is HERE. This is the insanity of the "true" Reformed mindset. Even those who specifically trust in the shed Blood of Christ are to them (and by them) to be condemned to hell simply by becoming a Catholic. He actually says that "I don't get to claim" Christ's blood for my salvation. I am speechless. If I can't claim Christ's Blood, what can I claim? I guess it must be Christ's Blood PLUS TurretinFans aproval. Makes me sick

Feel the love.

Linked by Turretinfan update:

Feel the Reformed Love.

Apparently, "Turretinfan" finds it noteworthy that anyone would dare - dare! - cast a light on his recent example of "Christian love." 

Roman Confusion

Devin Rose posted some less than complimentary thoughts (and Peter Sean Bradley tagged on) about Reformed apologists (myself as an example). Rather than dwelling on the caricature drawn from Les Miserables, I'd like to address one point that seems to be a common misconception:

Under Reformed Protestantism, God has predestined the elect to salvation and the reprobate to damnation. Being a faithful Catholic therefore means, practically by definition, that you are a reprobate. And here’s the kicker: if you are one of the reprobate, many of the passages from the Gospel on forgiving your brother and helping him do not apply (at least as they interpret them). Once you cross the Tiber, you are anathema and damned.

If you leave a gospel-preaching church for Rome, of course we do (or ought) to treat you as lacking a credible profession of faith. Normally, for such a departure from the faith, a Reformed church will provide the Biblical discipline of excommunication.

That discipline, however, is discipline not condemnation. Through excommunication, it is hoped that a person will be brought back to the faith. It is hoped that he will see the error of his ways, repent of his sin, and return to the flock of Christ.

There is certainly no judgment as to the election or reprobation of the person. Only God knows who the elect and reprobate are - moreover, "to him that is joined to all the living there is hope," (Ecclesiastes 9:4) and we hold out that hope even for the most anti-Reformed, anti-Evangelical member of the "Called to Communion" blog.

It is our desire to see those who have apostatized from the church of Christ brought back to her. I realize that pointing out that the church of Rome is a synagogue of Satan is going to make those in the church of Rome unhappy - surely it made the people unhappy to whom the phrase was originally applied. Nevertheless, the point of such comments is to warn those of the danger.

When I tell you that your house isn't comfortable warm, it's on fire, I'm not attacking your house or pouring out vitriol against your air conditioning unit. It's an expression of love to warn those who we care about to avoid danger - not an expression of hatred.

One might think that Mr. Rose would appreciate this, since he wrote:

To their credit, they have this hatred for the Catholic Church (or “Romanism,” as you will hear) because they believe it is leading people away from Jesus and the Gospel. And good for them! If I believed that some church or denomination was doing that, I would oppose it too–perhaps not using their same vitriol and methods–but I would not want people to follow those beliefs.

And Rome does lead people away from the Gospel, encouraging them to trust in Mary, angels, martyrs, and saints and not in God alone - requiring their submission to a man who sits on an earthly throne in an earthly palace, claiming to be the earthly head of the church.

But unto us, there is one Lord (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Got that?

OK, here's the question.  How does the statement of Turretinfan in this post, to wit:

There is certainly no judgment as to the election or reprobation of the person. Only God knows who the elect and reprobate are - moreover, "to him that is joined to all the living there is hope," (Ecclesiastes 9:4) and we hold out that hope even for the most anti-Reformed, anti-Evangelical member of the "Called to Communion" blog.

Square with his statement in his comment, to wit:

Turretinfan said...


David,

You've turned your back on Christ and the church to follow Rome. You don't get to claim His blood.

At least, as it stands, when you come before the Lord, he will simply tell you "I never knew," despite your claims.

-TurretinFan

Answer: it doesn't.  TurretinFan is claiming an ability to judge the stae of David's soul "as it stands now."  In doing that Turretinfan is claiming an ability and a prerogative that no pope or apostle has ever claimed. The purpose and effect of excommunication was never understood to "damn" someone, but rather it was understood to leave the excommunicated to their own devices to make their own way - as essentially as impossible as that might be.

While no pope has ever declared that anyone is in Hell, Turretinfan seems to think that he has an ability to reach that determination on his own authority.

Amazing.

And, if that's the case, then why is Devin Rose wrong?  It is a very small step from deciding that you believe that a person is damned "at least as it now stands" to deciding that they were eternally damned, and then to deciding that they are not your brother and that the gospel's commands to forgive one's brother do not apply.

So, apart from a droit de seigneur of logic - i.e., it is not true because we say it is not true - why is Devin Rose wrong?

Internet Fever Swamp.

Check out the comments to this May 11, 2011 article on Vatican sets rules for Latin Mass.

It would be like an article on Israel opening a new consulate being followed by dozens of comments on the purported Jewish control of international finance and/or the use of Christian blood in making matzohs.

The internet is a place where every anonymous crank is free to express the hatred that gives them an identity.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal on San Francisco's Anti-Catholic Resolution.

According to CNS:

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal challenging a San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ resolution which condemned Catholic teaching on adoption.


Bill Donohue of the Catholic League called the decision “regrettable” but said that the case has helped blunt negative comments towards Catholicism in the city.

“I’m delighted that ever since this lawsuit came down, we’ve seen a pivot. Catholics are not treated with the same sort of invective and vitriol that were thrown at us in San Francisco before this lawsuit began,” Donohue told CNA on May 3.

“So I think the message was delivered. I’d like it to be delivered in a legal way as well, but there has been a taming there. I think they realized that perhaps they overstepped.”

Several individual Catholics from San Francisco and the Catholic League accused the city supervisors of expressing hostility to Catholicism and violating the constitutional requirement of government neutrality toward religion.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution in March 2006 that attacked the Catholic Church’s opposition to the adoption of children by homosexuals. It reacted to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith head Cardinal William Levada’s instruction that Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco stop placing children with same-sex couples.

The board’s resolution referred to the Vatican as a “foreign country” interfering in the affairs of the city. It deemed the Church’s teaching on homosexuality to be “insulting to all San Franciscans,” “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” “defamatory” and “insensitive and ignorant.”

Following several court decisions, in October 2010 11 justices of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco split several ways. Only three sided with the plaintiffs outright while five justices held that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.

On May 2 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

Strangely, the RealClear Religion entry on this is "Court denies appeal on Catholic adoption."

The reason why Catholics are constantly hearing ridiculous nonsense about their faith....

...is that some Protestant pastors actually teach that ridiculous nonsense.

I previously mentioned Apologetics 315's link to a series of lectures by John MacArthur on the "Heresies of Catholicism."  For the record, I appreciate Apologetics 315 as a useful resource for Christian apologetics.  I particularly like it as a source of debates on various theological/philosophical issues.

I also appreciate the fact that the blog-owner has permitted me to post comments that are critical of MacArthur's lectures.

With that disclaimer, here's a comment I posted:

A last point, I think, from one of the lectures I missed on so-called Marian doctrines:


MacArthur argues:

That’s why when you go into a Catholic Church you see all the candles everywhere, certain people praying for certain people. As long as the candle burns, the prayer goes on. And as long as the prayer goes on, the merit in the prayer is accumulating on the benefit of the person in Purgatory and the merit is being drawn out of the treasury of merit which merit essentially belongs to Christ, belongs to the saints who have excess merit and to Mary.

I've been a Catholic for over 50 years and I have never heard such nonsense about the reason for lighting candles. The reason is that it is total nonsense. All of that part about "as long as the candle goes on, the prayer goes on" and "as long as the prayer goes on, the merit in the prayer is accumulating" is apparently such a secret Catholic doctrine that Catholics have never heard it. I do pray the souls of the dead and I have lit candles - with a donation to the poor - in their memory, but my inchoate reason for doing so was, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "candles" says, to express solidarity with person I am praying for and in some way offer a token of my desire to extend my prayers for that person, not because I have some kind of mechanistic desire to "maximize my return on investment" by having a really, really slow burning candle.

This passage - and others - reminded me of the passage in Brideshead Revisited where the priest trying to catechize Rex Mottram despairs that someone has taught Mottram that there are "sacred monkeys in the Vatican" and that "if you put a pound note with someone's name on it in the poorbox, they go to hell." The point of that passage was that Cordelia was "screwing with" Mottram by playing on his deep ignorance of Catholicism, and, thereby, showing what a doofus he was.

I'm not saying that MacArthur is a doofus, but Protestants listening to these lectures might want exercise some skepticism about his description of Catholic doctrine and practice.

Bloody Henry.

Apologetics 315 has this link to Explaining the Heresy of Catholicism by John MacArthur.  MacArthur is supposed to be something of a heavy hitter in Protestant circles, but the two lectures I've listened to make me doubt that reputation.  In the first lecture on the Mass, MacArthur spent 20 minutes accusing Catholicism of the Donatist heresy, requiring for the effectiveness of a sacrament that the priest be morally "pure."  Anyone with a passing interest in history knows that Catholics like St. Augustine were on the other - and winning side - of that issue and that the Catholic doctrine is "Ex opere operato":

A technical phrase used by theologians since the 13th century to signify that the sacraments produce grace of themselves, apart and distinct from the grace dependent upon the intention of the person conferring the sacrament; the latter effect is designated by the phrase ex opere operantis. The phrase is first found in the writings of Peter of Poitiers (c.1130-1215),

"The act of Baptism is not identical with Baptism because it is an opus operans while Baptism is an opus operatum."

The phrase was not in general use in the time of Saint Thomas but it was officially adopted by the Council of Trent and used to signify the objective character of the sacraments as producers of grace in opposition to the subjectivism of the Reformers. According to Trent, therefore, the term opus operatum signifies that the correct use of the sign instituted by Christ produces the grace irrespectively of the merits of either minister or recipient (ex opere operantis), though the intention of conferring the sacrament is required in the minister and the intention of receiving in the recipient, if he be an adult, for a valid and worthy reception of the sacrament. For the council clearly states that the sacraments "confer Grace on those who do not place an obstacle thereunto."

This is ironic since MacArthur's constant point is how ignorant Catholics are about their "satanic system." It seems that the ignorant one is John MacArthur, who apparently thinks that the Donatists won the schism.

In the second lecture on the Mass, MacArthur vented for a full 20 minutes on the 180 martyrs who were put to death under Queen Mary Tudor, aka "Bloody Mary."  Certainly, no would defend that religious oppression in this day and age, but for the sake of balance it might be worth pointing out that Mary's dad, Henry VIII, killed numbers that would not be eclipsed until the totalitarian Twentieth Century:

Mary I burned 284 Protestant heretics, according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which is unlikely to be an underestimate. Estimates of the number of executions carried out by Henry VIII range from 57,000 to the 72,000 claimed in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (the mass murder following the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace should be taken into account). The troops of his son Edward VI massacred more than 5,500 Cornish Catholics in the wake of the Prayer Book Rebellion. Elizabeth I was more sparing of formal executions, though St Margaret Clitheroe was pressed to death at York and Mary Queen of Scots beheaded; but the butchery in Ireland was appalling. There, Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, supported a policy of extermination by artificial famine on a scale that was not exceeded until Stalin in the 1930s.


So, why is it “Bloody Mary”, but “Bluff King Hal”, when the executions he ordered exceeded his daughter’s by more than 56,000 at the least? Why not “Bloody Harry”? Obviously, because he was the founder of the Church of England. That did not prevent him from burning the more advanced Protestant Anne Askew, who had the privilege of being racked in the Tower of London by the Lord Chancellor in person, which suggests that the divisions between conflicting wings of the Church of England were at least as vicious then as now.


The most recent study of Mary’s reign, Eamon Duffy’s Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor, authoritatively demonstrates that England at her accession remained a Catholic country at heart and was relieved to return to the practices of the old faith, which had not been abandoned out of mass apostasy but only in obedience to the personal policy of Henry VIII, enforced by terror.

In that regard, one interesting thing about MacArthur's reading from Foxe's book is the apparent mass support for the incineration of Protestant's under Mary.  Foxe's description has the martyrdom's attended by thousands.  Giving due credit for the idea that executions were popular, might there also be some element of "pay back" by a population that had been repressed during the reigns of two kings who were trying to exterminate the old religion?

The bottom line is that MacArthur's sermons explain why a lot of anti-catholicism seems stuck in the 16th Century: it is stuck in the 16th Century, in the living memory of people like John MacArthur.

United States Government Declares that Stigmatizing Muslims as "Scary" and "Un-American" is Perfectly Alright.

Ha, ha!  Fooled you!

Obviously it would be horribly bigoted to stigmatize Muslims. Saying something like that could get you fired.

The government would never permit Muslims to be described as a threat to our way of life. That might cause the public to react against Muslims.

No, rather, the subject of the resolution describing a particular religious group as a threat to the "San Francisco way of life" were those scary and dangerous Catholics, about whom it is perfectly acceptable to stigmatize because (a) they aren't Muslim and (b) they take positions that the Left disagrees with.

And if you can't see the principled distinction between stigmatizing Catholics and Muslims, then you are hate-filled homophobic racist.

Ninth Circuit rejects lawsuit against San Francisco resolution that Catholicism is "Un-American."

A splintered federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday by Catholics who objected when San Francisco supervisors condemned the Vatican for prohibiting Catholic Charities from placing adoptive children with gay and lesbian couples.


The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied requests by a Catholic organization and two local residents to order the city to repeal the supervisors' 2006 resolution.

But the 8-3 ruling failed to decide whether the city had expressed official hostility toward Catholicism, in violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

It makes perfect sense.  It's only religion. It's not like it was something explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, like abortion or homosexuality or something really important.

OK, let's set up those detention facilities for Catholics, like the ones that they had for the Japanese-Americans during World War II. Because while we know those were wrong, wrong, wrong, I just get the feeling that detention facilities for Catholics will be completely different.

And we need to refer the issue to Rachel Maddow of whether - although one has a right to be Catholic - one has a right to a job while being Catholic.
Sometimes I wonder when I dropped into this weird alternate universe.

I consider myself to be a Supreme Court justice, but the United States government disagrees...

.....which is why I am not a Supreme Court justice, and, if I was serious, why I would be considered insane.

Time Magazine strikes again, by making the ordination of women as Catholic priests a "he said, she said" story:

Like any good priest, Judy Lee knows how to use a Bible story. One of the readings for Roman Catholic Masses on a recent Sunday, from the Book of Wisdom, recounts how the Hebrews defied the pharaoh by worshipping God "in secret." That passage resonates at the house in Fort Myers, Fla., where Lee is conducting Mass for 25 Catholics gathered in front of a coffee-table altar in defiance of the Pope. "Rome says you'll be thrown out of the church for being here," says Lee, "because I'm a woman."


Lee, 67, considers herself a validly ordained Catholic priest. The Vatican disagrees. "The Catholic Church ... has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women" because Jesus had no female Apostles, Lee was told in a letter from the local bishop, the Rev. Frank Dewane — who also informed her that she had been excommunicated for ignoring that doctrine. Lee's reply: "Rome can impose all the rules it wants on women, divorced people, gay people. But it can't stop us."

The Magisterium of the Media.

As a Catholic when you really need to get the final word on matters of faith and morals, you obviously turn to Time Magazine, which has determined that women claiming they are Catholic priests are actually Catholic priests.  In the opening paragraph, the "journalist" Dawn Reiss states:

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master's degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says being a priest is what she was called to do.

So, Jacko really is an "ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church" is the burden of the opening paragraph.

Of course, this is nonsense inasmuch as the Catholic Church says that Jacko is no such thing.  So, Reiss weasels in the next sentence:

Officially, of course, the Catholic Church's Canon Law 1024 says that only baptized men can receive holy orders.

Oh, sure, "officially" Jacko is no more a priest than she is a potted petunia, but the text has already set up the notion that "unofficially" or, better still, "really" Jacko is a priest.

Get Religion observes that this article is unmitigated journalistic malpractice:

Time Magazine has an interesting story. Here’s how it begins:


Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. Jacko says that playing baseball is what she was born to do.

Just kidding.

The Get Religion post is worth reading for dissecting all the other tropes of bad religion writing, particularly bad religious writing involving the Catholic Church, which includes lining up quotes only from the liberal side and using weasel words and unsourced claims to advance the political goal of the author.  Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion concludes:

Perhaps the story is so laughably bad, so unbelievably silly, because the reporter failed to speak with anyone she disagreed with. That’s bad enough in a story that quotes only one or two people. But in a story of this length, in this high profile of a publication, it’s an embarrassment. It’s as if Time is going after the Newsweek demographic.


Also, these stories are so routinely and increasingly bad that I’m almost beginning to wonder if there’s some kind of Bulwer-Lytton-type contest for who can come up with the worst.

Mollie Hemingway also notes that Reiss responded to criticisms of her article at another blog by (a) waiving around her credentials as a journalist and (b) using more weasel words.

And the media wonders why it is dying.

Pope Benedict is an "Emmanuel Goldstein figure, who allows them to get their moralistic rocks off."

The Libertarian webzine Spike is disappointed with the recent crop of radicals:

Yet just because this campaign springs from neediness rather than political clarity, that doesn’t make it endearing or entertaining. On the contrary, there is a sharp authoritarian edge. Things turned ugly outside Downing Street when Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society branded the pope an ‘enemy of the state’, giving rise to the cacophonous chant: ‘GO HOME POPE, GO HOME POPE.’ It was like a scene from 1984. I have been on many a radical demo that has challenged the branding of some group or individual as ‘enemies of the state’; but this is the first radical demo I’ve been on where the protesters themselves demanded the silencing and even expulsion from Britain of someone they decreed to be an ‘enemy of the state’. Even one-time ‘enemies of the state’ - the so-called queers and the old left - were using that criminalising phrase, that piece of political demonology, to chastise the pope. It was the world turned utterly upside down. Being ‘an enemy of the state’, an ‘enemy of women, an enemy of gay people’, there is nothing for the pope to do but ‘go away and leave us alone’, said Sanderson.


It was extraordinary stuff. Consider what is being said: that because the pope’s views run counter to the British state’s views, he has to leave the country. Because he does not support gay rights or women’s equality, he must go home. Partly this is a creepy echo of the old prejudice about Catholics not being sufficiently loyal to the state - but more fundamentally, it speaks to a serious warping of the liberal humanist outlook. If you had to distil the profound, historic tradition of liberal humanism into one principle, it would surely be that no one should be persecuted for having views that are the opposite of the state’s or of mainstream political thought. Yet here was a gathering of so-called humanists clamouring for the expulsion of the pope on the basis that he does not accept ‘British values’, as the QC Geoffrey Robertson described them on Saturday.

And:

Beneath the radical garb, what the liberal fury over Benedict’s visit really represented was a demand that every individual - even the goddamn pope of Rome - should genuflect before the altar of ‘British values’ - that is, the state’s values, the liberal elite’s values - or else face the consequences. Demonisation, perhaps, or expulsion; certainly removal from polite society. No dissent from their creed can be tolerated. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll have to say it again in the future: I don’t agree with anything that the pope says. But I come from the kind of humanist tradition where, even when that is the case, you will still defend to the death his right to say it.

Tolerance is the space between the breathing out of one orthodoxy and the breathing in of another.