Hi Tomy,
Oh I pretty much understand Protestant thinking since I was one of them for over 30 years, but I see your point though I think your analogy may be badly flawed.
It’c certainly not perfect. Just an analogy to a situation where trust has been gravely violated.
If you’ve ever tried to reconcile a feuding couple, you know one of the first things that has to change is to stop the mutual accusations, whether they are right, wrong or whatever, and you ask each how that person can change so the other person can feel loved, valued and trusted. The emphasis being not on what is wrong with the other person but what each can do to change and stop changing the other person.
Catholic-Protestant relations, on the whole, is still at the “I am so not talking to you” level for some people. And here is a sample dialog this thread got me thinking about:
Teacher: See that evil Catholic? He is walking on the right side of the street.
Student: Oooooh. That is evil.
Student: Don’t we walk on the right side of the street, too?
Teacher: Yeah, but when he does it he is up to something. Something evil.
Student: Oooooh.
I think anyone who does the horrible things he describes, like worshipping Mary (as God), idolatry, or preaching a false gospel needs to be confronted. I think Catholics agree with him that idolatry is wrong. I think you can agree with him the Gospel needs to be rightly preached and you can stand together against idolatry, wherever it is found. Catholics are all for right and proper worship pleasing to God. Catholics are all for a holy lifestyle, pleasing to God.
There are Catholics who worship Mary as a goddess. When other Catholics find out about it, they correct them. Likewise bishops correct, or should correct, priests who do not preach Catholic truth.
So, yeah, he has a case. But it is not the case he thinks he has. When he blasts idolatry, he equates it with Catholicism. Unfortunately idolatry is everywhere, and something we all struggle with, some more than others. Every time I sin, I am putting something else in place as more important than God, which means each sin is an act of idolatry. It would be far easier just to feel that I am right and righteous and someone else is wrong than to wrestle with the junk that goes on in my brain and heart. I don’t whittle tree stumps and bow down to them, but there was a certain jacket I was way too fond of that I had to give away. It was beautiful and I loved it like, well, more than God himself. And other things better out of my life than in them.
I read his shots at the pope as habitual. People shouldn’t make accusations without being able to prove it in court. I somehow don’t think his case is up to that.
