True, there are people who generally spread lies about the church and they must be called out on it. We also though need to state only what is fact and more importantly, we need to distance ourselves from this “weighing scale” behavior, for example saying that Catholics executed people in the name of the church but protestants executed more thus why come after us?
Nobody ever wants to hear that as a defense of the church during the medieval age. When it comes to talking about the issues where the church has failed to act or acted wrong (e.g. slavery, inquisition times, the Rwanda genocide…) I say the same thing that a priest instructed me say, its a simple method, acknowledge what was done wrong, make a sincere apology but also state what is being done to prevent the problem from happening again and promote reconciliation. There should be no mention of “this was not only a catholic problem!”.
I leave the confession of sins of various churches to their adherents, if the Anglicans do not want to acknowledge that King Henry founded their church on the blood of many martyrs who am I to say anything when the history of the catholic church in some places is stained with blood of innocent people, but I acknowledge that.
This is what Pope St. John Paul II did and that is why when you hear non Catholics speak of him most of the time they speak of him as a greatly respectable and honorable man!
So we Catholics need to follow his example and drop the "the whole world is against us because afterwards we wonder “why are so many people leaving”. And then the generalization comes in that “oh they just couldn’t handle the truth”. I know a priest who if he knows of any ex catholic he will talk to them to find out why they left and see what he can do to reconcile them with the church, and it really works! In his parish, people know they can approach him with anything even if you want to criticize the hierarchy from top to bottom, he will listen and explain and defend Catholicism to them and give them the real truth not the rumors that fly around. After talking to him your dissatisfaction with the church has changed from “I hate what these people are doing” to “I need to do this and others will do the same” and that is what we should do.
If we the catholic church have the truth then we should take it to the people in our actions not words.However when we generalize and say all non-Catholics are against us… the spirit of ecumenism dies before it is even birthed.
I know of a man who accused a priest of getting his wife pregnant and everyone was like “oh that guy is a protestant so its just an attack on the church!” though one priest, (I shan’t say the name of any priest I know on this forum) told me that the attitude to those who come out to call out something wrong in the church or with their members is all wrong instead of getting mad, we should thank them they are doing great service for God and the church.
When I heard I started researching into all the groups that fight for the sexually abused of priests and others wronged by church clergy and despite what I was told often from social media posts and articles online they are not all just trying to taint the church some of them are honestly pursuing Justice (these sentiments did get me kicked out of a Catholic debate group but hey?
). Next think if Catholic answers is really considered as a site for professional Apologetics, then we honestly need to review our answers to some questions here.
time to move on.
And who is doing it? Professional apologists or amateurs?