I don’t see eye to eye with regard to your belief that Protestantism or the Reformation brought about religious freedoms, and the only way I could that was to show you examples of why I don’t believe that.
p.s. I’ll be praying for you.
I appreciate the prayers, Josie. I’ll do the same for you. My beef isn’t with Catholicism obviously. My beef is with excessive apologetics. I see it not only among Catholics here who have this full-on mega apologetics machine gun switched on in every discussion. The Catholic Church, in all fairness, went through a period especially after Vatican II, where it went undefended. Catechesis was appaulingly BAD when I was a kid. So bad, in fact, that I didn’t even know the Eucharist was the Body and Blood of Christ until someone told me in high school! Everything I learned about Catholicism was through books, countless hours of reading, and through personal studies of history. Nothing I learned about the Catholic Church came from the Catholic Church! It all came from me. So, through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and some of the 90’s, Catholics were very poorly-schooled in their faith and they just took attack after attack. They sat idly by while people accused them of worshipping Mary and praying to statues and that purgatory is a “third option” as well as that Catholics are cannibals, you name it. The Church got attacked a lot and people were ill-equipped and ignorant to defend her. With the dawn of EWTN, Catholic Answers, Ignatius Press and a host of Catholic Media and new apologetics coupled with enthusiastic, intellectual folks like Karl Keating and company, that’s no longer a problem.
In fact, it’s almost the opposite. Now Catholics are so militant at times that it’s almost impossible for them to be “non-partisan” and objective when they look at the Church. They’re LOCKED in apologetics mode 24/7 and can’t look at the history of the Church with impartial appraisals or critique. There is always a reason for everything no matter how dastardly or bad. And if the Church did something nasty and absurd, then the apologetics approach is to demonize Protestants to deflect from RCC culpability in the area in question.
I notice this in politics on both sides of the aisle. Sarah Palin will sit there and bash the Dixie Chicks for DARING to criticize George W. Bush on foreign soil. The GOP crowd slammed Clinton for protesting his country’s Vietnam policies in England when he was a young man. But when Sarah Palin went to Hong Kong and ripped Obama to shreads in front of a bunch of foreigners, it was ok.
When some folks wanted to pull us out of Iraq they were branded “cut and run” cowards. When Sarah Palin quit, and I emphasize quit, her job and failed the people of Alaska, it wasn’t quitting in the GOP apologetics outlook, she was making better use of her time and trying to evade nasty lawsuits.
Democrats are no better. They’re always locked in apologetics mode as well. Their guys can do no wrong in their eyes and they defend anything and everything a fellow liberal does. They’ll rip on Republicans for being a party of deregulation while Barney Frank was the chief architect for the Dems of the deregulation of the housing industry that single-handedly brought down our nation’s lenders in one fell swoop?
Guys like Glen Beck trash, bash, and mock people on the left every day and yet when someone lampoons them, it’s heresy and a personal attack!! Limbaugh has said the most hideous things throughout the years and yet when someone dares to chide him, they are ‘relentless attack-dogs’ out to get him.
Everyone is an apologist nowdays. It drives me nuts. Planned Parenthood are apologists for the inhuman crime of our times, abortion. They get schooled and brainwashed as to how to defend any argument against abortion. Liberals are taught to be apologists for race and make racial accusations against anyone and everyone. Conservatives are apologists for the insurance companies, the NRA, the military industrial complex, and the wealthy. Labor unions are taught to be apologists, anti-union conservatives that hate labor are taught the reverse apologetics.
I just tire of it all and wish we could call a spade a spade. I’m tired of people defending what the Vatican did to Galileo or justifying assassinations against monarchs, just as I’m tired of Protestants making up absurd things about popes in cahoots with Hitler. Silly.
I like to look at history for what it was and how it impacts us today. I can say with total honesty that if it weren’t for the Catholic Church Europe wouldn’t have been Christianized, the people of Rome would’ve been utterly doomed without the papacy’s alliances and Christianizing the pagan conquerers. I can also say that without the RCC the great works of antiquity from A to Z would likely have died a quick death. The Church brought order out of chaos and civilization to an insane period of time after the fall of Old Rome. I can also say that without John Paul II’s constant, brave, determined attacks on communism along with Reagan, the Iron Curtain and Soviet Union might still be with us today. I can go on and on about Catholic achievements for they are many.
But I refuse to diminish the bravery of Martin Luther in standing up for his ideals and feeling held captive to the Word of God and his conscience. In the Catholic world at that time your conscience meant nothing. The Church did your thinking and if you were out of line with the Vatican, you were burned. That simple. Or the Church tricked guys like Jan Huss and offered him safe passage and then executed him. But I can also criticize Calvin and his boys for intolerance in the other direction, being overly-reactionary and causing great harm to so many.
I don’t get bothered by mentioning Catholic achievements and positives so much as I get mad about omissions. And Catholis should know that sins omission are not healthy! Making an argument that the Catholic Church single-handedly created Western Civilization isn’t only boloney, it’s corney and anyone worth powder would realize how insane the whole argument is. Forget the Greeks, forget democracy existed in Athens and inspired the Americans to re-animate it, forget the Roman Republic and it’s senate and assembly that inspired the bicameral system of England and thus the U.S. Forget Reformation that encouraged more individualism and personal freedom of conscience. Forget Washington, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, DeCarte, Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, and a zilliion other non-Catholics that paved the way for the West to be what it is today…omission after omission…plugging one’s ears and just saying that it was all thanks to the Roman Catholic Church…
I just can’t buy the argument…
I’ll cherish that rude jerk comment always as a token of our friendship
