Scott Hahn and Hostile Protestants

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philipmarus

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I just found out Scott Hahn is coming to speak in my area
(here in Central Oklahoma) on Feb 19. Cheers! I was going to post this the Scott Hahn, the Holy Spirit and Rob Sungenis thread but I decided it belonged in a separate thread.

I’ve only been a real Catholic for about two years. A few years ago my late Father took my very Protestant mother hear Scott Hahn speak in Steubenville. Ever since then she seems very hostile to even hearing Mr. Hahn’s name being mentioned. Why is that? She claims to have stumped Mr. Hahn with question he could not answer - which he responded that it was a personal question. Now she will not tell me what the question was. I can only speculate what kind of question would elicit a “thats personal” reply from Mr. Hahn. What makes some Protestants respond like this to hearing
Scott Hahn name?

Another example I’ve heard from some Protestants is that Apologists (especially Catholic Apologist) are just to prove “how smart they are”. They hold up the example of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the well.
 
I can’t answer from the perspective of your mother. I am curious too, to wnder what type of question would receive a “that’s personal” response as he seems willing to talk about so many subjects.

The Protestants I havemet who find Hahn offensive are those who think by arguing for his faith he has no respect for theirs; that he is out to prove them wrong. Maybe I am mistake, but I thought the purpose of apologetics was to debate and to try to reach an answer, and that each participant beleives they are right.

I also know that many beleive that Hahn’s book “Home Sweet Rome” was condescending to Protestants. More specifically Fundamentalists, who do not think of themselves as Protestants, but as members of “the original church,” that had to operate underground throughout Christian history becuse of persecution, and only was allowed to attempt to claim public space during the Reformation. Many Fundamentalists think it is an insult to be called Protestant, which Hahn does. Forgive me limited interpretation, but I tend to agree with Hahn - either you are with the Catholic church, or you are Protestant.

I have seen a personal page for a Baptist, which i wish I saved, but it described the history of Christian Chruches, and the Baptists were considered the original authentic church founded by Jesus. I can’t remember who they claimed to have started the Catholic church. They argue too, that the foudning fathers were not Catholic.
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philipmarus:
I just found out Scott Hahn is coming to speak in my area I can only speculate what kind of question would elicit a “thats personal” reply from Mr. Hahn. What makes some Protestants respond like this to hearing
Scott Hahn name?

Another example I’ve heard from some Protestants is that Apologists (especially Catholic Apologist) are just to prove “how smart they are”. They hold up the example of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the well.
Click to expand...
I don’t understand what is meant by they hold up Jesus and the example of the Samaritan woman; who is the “they” and how is the story used for apologetics?
 
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philipmarus:
I just found out Scott Hahn is coming to speak in my area
(here in Central Oklahoma) on Feb 19. Cheers! I was going to post this the Scott Hahn, the Holy Spirit and Rob Sungenis thread but I decided it belonged in a separate thread.

I’ve only been a real Catholic for about two years. A few years ago my late Father took my very Protestant mother hear Scott Hahn speak in Steubenville. Ever since then she seems very hostile to even hearing Mr. Hahn’s name being mentioned. Why is that? She claims to have stumped Mr. Hahn with question he could not answer - which he responded that it was a personal question. Now she will not tell me what the question was. I can only speculate what kind of question would elicit a “thats personal” reply from Mr. Hahn. What makes some Protestants respond like this to hearing
Scott Hahn name?

Another example I’ve heard from some Protestants is that Apologists (especially Catholic Apologist) are just to prove “how smart they are”. They hold up the example of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the well.
Click to expand...
You are correct that this belongs in its own separate thread. I agree with Serendipity that the problem lies primarily in defining the terminology.
Anyone claiming to be Christian, who is not also Catholic, by definition is then a protestant.
Just as anyone claiming that some other church organization is the church founded by Jesus. That defies historical fact. Jesus founded the one true Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Protestants, even the evangelicals who don’t want to be called protestant, have all first broken away from the Catholic Church, the true and original Christian Church, and then from each other
That is why there are so many thousands of protestant denominations or groups. Even Martin Luther was honest enough to admit a debt to the Catholic Church when he started eliminating books from the bible. He openly said that the Catholic Church had preserved it and brought it down through over a thousand years to his time. He recognized historical fact
But the “fundamentalists” who use his truncated bible don’t want to do that because it would really force them to look at the truth.
Newman60
 
I appologize I should have been more clear.
  1. These Protestant (Fundamentalist in my neck of the woods) I’ve met try to condemn the work of Catholic Apologists on basis of John 4:7-26. They say Jesus did not evagelize the Samaritan Woman on basis of logical arguments but appealed to her through their common understandings.
  2. Some Protestants use John 4:19-26 as condemning the very idea of liturgy. In this interpretation, Jesus contrasts Samaritan attempt to worship what they do not know “on the mountain” and the Jews worship what they do know at the Temple. Jesus continues that the “hour is coming” that “true worshipers will worship the Fathein spirit and truth” as the Father desires it. The argument goes that Jesus is saying not only will the worship be extended universally from the one central place (The temple) to all over the world, but also to spirit and truth in the heart of every man. A lot of Protestants will say this means Liturgy was done away it and this why some I heard some Fundamentalist attack the Catholic worship services on this basis. I always looking for a good way to answer.
 
Well, I hope you get to see him. I can promise you with absolute certainty that he was not posed with a question that stumped him, unless maybe it was about astrophysics or neuroanatomy or something like that.

A couple of years ago we were in a Lifeway store and my wife, naively not knowing that this was a Baptist establishment, asked if they had anything by Scott Hahn. She was given a cool “no.”

I didn’t know until just recently that there were protestants - not the type you’d normally think of as being totally full of it - who claimed that theirs was the original church and that they were the ones who were facing the persecutions. People have absolutely no sense these days!! I guess if I were that truth-challenged, and someone wrote a book about how cracked my beliefs were, and proved it, and put it on tape and made themselves a big name by doing it, I wouldn’t want to hear too much about them, either.
 
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philipmarus:
I appologize I should have been more clear.
  1. These Protestant (Fundamentalist in my neck of the woods) I’ve met try to condemn the work of Catholic Apologists on basis of John 4:7-26. They say Jesus did not evagelize the Samaritan Woman on basis of logical arguments but appealed to her through their common understandings.
  2. Some Protestants use John 4:19-26 as condemning the very idea of liturgy. In this interpretation, Jesus contrasts Samaritan attempt to worship what they do not know “on the mountain” and the Jews worship what they do know at the Temple. Jesus continues that the “hour is coming” that “true worshipers will worship the Fathein spirit and truth” as the Father desires it. The argument goes that Jesus is saying not only will the worship be extended universally from the one central place (The temple) to all over the world, but also to spirit and truth in the heart of every man. A lot of Protestants will say this means Liturgy was done away it and this why some I heard some Fundamentalist attack the Catholic worship services on this basis. I always looking for a good way to answer.
Click to expand...
I think I understand where the problem is. It probably won’t be resolved by duelling bible verses although that can be stimulating. The problem most likely comes from the mistaken “fundamentalist” idea of sola scriptura. The bible, which didn’t formally come into existence until 350 years after Our Lord’s salvific Resurrection, is not the final arbiter on these matters.
The Catholic Church, God’s personally established Church, determined what is or is not the inspired word of God. That was done in three church councils starting with Hippo in either 383 or 393, then Carthage, 397, and Carthage again, 419.
Before that there was no approved bible canon but there certainly was a growing Church feeding on Apostolic Tradition.
Even after the invention of the printing press bibles were not the end all be all. So for well over 1500 years after the Crucifixion, bibles were not readily available because they were prohibitively expensive and even more importantly because most people couldn’t read.
Martin Luther, even as he took several books out of the bible, acknowledged a debt to the “papists” for bringing the bible down to him intact. He wasn’t going to fly in the face of historical fact.
It is Luther’s much abbreviated bible that fundamentalists use to this day. If they are using the King James Version, then the story is even more “Catholic”. The KJV didn’t even drop the OT books that Luther omitted until the 19th century.
But who is to interpret the bible? It is individual interpretation that is the hallmark of protestantism. That is also why there are tens of thousands of protestant variations.
Protestants don’t have Apostolic Succession. They don’t want to acknowledge Sacred Tradition. In that they miss much of what is essential in the One True Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Using a Catechism might be the simplest way to get started in answering questions when someone won’t agree to the true facts of history. After praying for them of course.
Newman60
 
Of COURSE Protestants hate Scott Hahn! He’s a traitor who has led hundreds, if not thousands, of people out of Protestant churches and into the clutches of the Whore of Babylon. His arguments simply show Protestant positions for what they are: untenable. (Albeit as a popular apologist rather than a highbrow scholar, he DOES present the arguments – both Protestant and Catholic in terms average laymen can understand.)

As for your mother “stumping” Hahn with an unanswerable question, if it was so unanswerable, she shouldn’t be shy about advertising how she bested one of the most vigorous popular apologists in the Church today. Believe me; if he REALLY had been unable to answer a serious question about the faith, your mother would be trumpeting it to the universe.
 
Wow! I’ve not heard f that interpretaion of the Samaritan woman story before. Don’t know what to say to help you with defense. Please let me know when you find a source!

I thought the Samaritan woman represented people who were outside of Christianity, just as she was outside of Judaism. Soem one who belive in God but somehow had a different concept (or nelglected) the essential role of Jesus as foreshadowed by ancient scripture. But my words are very much ueseless on this topic. I am not a member of a religious order, nor have I recevied formal schoool in Catholic biblical interpretation.

As far as the mass goes, the repetition of “do this in memory of me” always indicated to me at least that it was the format for community worship.
 
The Samaritan woman doing away with liturgy? The premise would have to be, a priori, that liturgy is “bad,” and they appropriate text in support. The earliest Church (as evidenced by Paul’s eucharistic formula in I Corinthians) clearly had “liturgy.” But they don’t read Justin Martyr.

When you look at that pericope, you have to ask yourself whether worshiping in “spirit and truth” is a contradiction of liturgical worship. A lot of Protestants set up these artificial antitheses. If you recite a written prayer, then it is not prayer from the heart, inspired by the Holy Spirit. If you have liturgical worship, then it is not true worship. It kind of reminds me of the 1960s when people used to try to sell the idea that a Mass said on the beach in bare feet, using pottery vessels, was “more” valid than a Mass said in the full panoply of ritual in St. Peter’s. Piffle. The contrast is artificial if not outright scandalous.
 
I’m not sure how to answer to the Samaritan Woman argument as I’ve never heard it before, but regarding their attacks on the Mass: the Mass is described in Acts (and maybe in other books). They talk about singing hymns of praise, then giving Glory to God (see the "Gloria), doing scripture readings, singing Hosannah, exchanging the kiss of peace, and celebrating the Eucharist. I can’t remember it in detail, but get “The Mass Explained” from the Mary Foundation and it’ll give you the Biblical references.

I find it funny that sola-scriptura Christians can’t believe what the Bible says on the most fundamental and historical matters!

They are blind…so we do need to show them the light.
 
peace be with you!

i have heard Scott Hahn say in a talk before that he wishes that he could minister to his seperated brethren, especially the Presbyterians from which he came from. but they simply do not accept him. he was a young pastor and was looked upon in their church as a great preacher who would do great things for God in their congregation. he had already preached in the White House (i think…but it may have been before members of Congress, but i am pretty sure it was the white house) in his early twenties. this is a man with great zeal and love for Scripture and our Lord. so, when someone looked upon with such promise leaves…and not just leaves, but joins a Church they are very much against…that is tough. i would imagine that Anglicans hated Cardinal Newman after his conversion…it is a tremendous blow to them.

he said it is a little bit like St. Paul and how St. Paul was given the apostolate the the Gentiles. the gentiles could listen to him but it would have been much harder for the jews because St. Paul was the best student of their best teacher…and it was as if he was a traitor. many of them hated Paul for that and wouldn’t have been able to listen to him. not that the case of Hahn is that serious or that he is comparing himself to Paul…but that similarity is very much present. He was a big deal to them and has become such a huge blessing in our Church now. since the time of his conversion he has also brought many of his friends from the seminary with him. Gordon-Conwell Seminary has produced some of our finest Catholic apologists…🙂 I guess those Carmelite prayers paid off!
 
I know Dr. Hahn personally. That guy is one of the holiest, most humble, and most brilliant men I have ever been around (he would kill me for saying this). I was shocked by how genuine both He and Kimberly are. There family is a wonderful depiction of how a Christian family should live. I have prayed rosaries with him, had dinner with and talked to him on several occassions. NEVER ONCE, has he ever uttered a negative word about Protestants. Dr. Hahn clearly believes that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth. However, he also proclaims that he is forever in debt to his upbringing as an Evangelical Protestant, which is what got him to where he is today. Dr. Hahn is a lot of things, but stumpable he is not. I am fairly certain that either your mother did not stump him, or that he had good reason for not responding.
 
I only know Scott Hahn from a distance. I have read some of his work and have seen him on EWTN a number of times. I know he is a convert.

When converts find and learn the fullness of the Catholic Faith many of them become fervent and want to tell others about it. If he had a fault it would not be that he is a “cold fish”, no, he dishes out the truth.

“Something personal”. It may have been a question such as : “Have you ever heard Jesus, Mary or God speak to you?” I think a question like that would be personal, and Scott Hahn would NOT want to answer that.
 
I only know Scott Hahn from a distance. I have read some of his work and have seen him on EWTN a number of times. I know he is a convert.

When converts find and learn the fullness of the Catholic Faith many of them become fervent and want to tell others about it. If he had a fault it would not be that he is a “cold fish”, no, he dishes out the truth.

“Something personal”. It may have been a question such as : “Have you ever heard Jesus, Mary or God speak to you?” I think a question like that would be personal, and Scott Hahn would NOT want to answer that.
 
Scott Hahn or no Scott Hahn, the protestants I know don’t want to consider anything other than what they already believe.

As a Catholic, I say thank you to Mr. Hahn for being a voice for so many of us. 👍
 
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philipmarus:
They say Jesus did not evagelize the Samaritan Woman on basis of logical arguments but appealed to her through their common understandings.
Click to expand...
This is a joke, right?

I have never, never, never, EVER been “evangelized” by a Protestant who wished to approach our common understandings.

NEVER!!!

“Evangelizers” have always approached me with the tried and true method “you’re a Catholic and you’re goin’ to hell !!!” .

Whew- I feel better.
 
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