What's the craziest Anti-Catholic whopper you've ever heard?

[basinite]

When I was first converting to the Catholic Church a lot of my friends and co-workers were trying to talk me out of it. One day one of my co-workers, who is a Charismatic Protestant, told me that the Holy Spirit had been telling him on his car ride into work to warn me about the Catholic Church.

Thinking that I would hear one of the usual arguments, I asked him what his main concern was. He went on to tell me that;

"I could never become a Catholic or even enter the doors of a Catholic Church because the popes worship the Egyptian Sun god “Ra”.

I was blown away! I told him that was ridiculous and asked him where he had heard this information? He went on to explain that he had read it in a booklet that his brother had given him. He said this “booklet” proved that the popes really worshiped the Egyptian Sun god and not the God of the Bible because it showed a picture of the hat’s that were worn by “Ra’s” priest during their religious ceremonies and the Catholic popes wore this same hat.

I tried my best to convince him that the pope doesn’t worship the Egyptian Sun god, but everything I said fell on deaf ears. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stuff being taught against the Church, but this one is by far the strangest.

I would like to hear some of your stories, so think of the most bizarre charge you’ve ever heard made against the Church and share it with the rest of us. Books, conversations, Internet, radio, anything is fair game.

 

[Jermosh]

That came from Jack Chick, I have been reading those since I was a little child. Most likely know all of them. Ironic thing is, most of his tracts turned into a cult culture like “Reefer Madness”. The connection he made was a link between the eucahrist and some Ra ritual. I would not reccomend reading them unless you enjoy opposition.

In theoligical terms, Egyptians could have been attempting to worship God by the sense of the spirit has on Mans heart, but fell from the mark. So there may be some truth to it.

 

[LilyM]

In a similar vein - the claim that JP2’s ‘bowed cross’ (the one on his Papal staff that he carried around) was actually a satanic symbol - and that he once had a satanic symbol on his Papal chair when it was really the symbol of St Peter (an upside down cross)

 

[patrick457]

Yeah, many, if not ALL, of Anti-Catholic red herrings tend to be beyond the bounds of credibility that it’s a wonder why some people really buy into these stuff.

By the way, number one on my list is a certain ‘Chick idea’ (yeah, I just coined that up ) that the Vatican has a supercomputer which contains a listing of all the Protestants in the whole world (ya know, supercomputers are so 1970’s…).
Number two is, of course, that ol’ familiar belief that Jesuits are responsible for everything evil. As if the only religious order that exists in the Catholic Church is the Society of Jesus (I often say this, but I’ve yet to see other religious orders such as the Dominicans or Carmelites or Benedictines get a bad rep and be blamed for the bad stuff that happens - it’s always gotta be the Jesuits, no?).

 

[basinite]

By the way, number one on my list is a certain ‘Chick idea’ (yeah, I just coined that up ) that the Vatican has a supercomputer which contains a listing of all the Protestants in the whole world (ya know, supercomputers are so 1970’s…).

 

[basinite]

 

[basinite]

Yeah, many, if not ALL, of Anti-Catholic red herrings tend to be beyond the bounds of credibility that it’s a wonder why some people really buy into these stuff.

By the way, number one on my list is a certain ‘Chick idea’ (yeah, I just coined that up ) that the Vatican has a supercomputer which contains a listing of all the Protestants in the whole world (ya know, supercomputers are so 1970’s…).
Number two is, of course, that ol’ familiar belief that Jesuits are responsible for everything evil. As if the only religious order that exists in the Catholic Church is the Society of Jesus (I often say this, but I’ve yet to see other religious orders such as the Dominicans or Carmelites or Benedictines get a bad rep and be blamed for the bad stuff that happens - it’s always gotta be the Jesuits, no?).

It makes one wonder how they sleep at night knowing that “under cover Jesuits” are secretely collecting information about them for the dreaded “super computer” hidden in the secret vaults of the Vatican.

 

[patrick457]

It makes one wonder how they sleep at night knowing that “under cover Jesuits” are secretely collecting information about them for the dreaded “super computer” hidden in the secret vaults of the Vatican.

Who knows? Perhaps they don’t get any sleep at all…which explains why most of them can cook up and buy into some of the most humourous ideas that no intentional joke can ever beat.

 

[basinite]

Who knows? Perhaps they don’t get any sleep at all…which explains why most of them can cook up and buy into some of the most humourous ideas that no intentional joke can ever beat.

I wonder if this “super computer” is a Mac or a PC? Maybe the Vatican will let me borrow it for online gaming. It might just give me the edge I need. :newidea:

 

[kimaz]

When I was first converting to the Catholic Church a lot of my friends and co-workers were trying to talk me out of it. One day one of my co-workers, who is a Charismatic Protestant, told me that the Holy Spirit had been telling him on his car ride into work to warn me about the Catholic Church.

Thinking that I would hear one of the usual arguments, I asked him what his main concern was. He went on to tell me that;

"I could never become a Catholic or even enter the doors of a Catholic Church because the popes worship the Egyptian Sun god “Ra”.

I was blown away! I told him that was ridiculous and asked him where he had heard this information? He went on to explain that he had read it in a booklet that his brother had given him. He said this “booklet” proved that the popes really worshiped the Egyptian Sun god and not the God of the Bible because it showed a picture of the hat’s that were worn by “Ra’s” priest during their religious ceremonies and the Catholic popes wore this same hat.

I tried my best to convince him that the pope doesn’t worship the Egyptian Sun god, but everything I said fell on deaf ears. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stuff being taught against the Church, but this one is by far the strangest.

I would like to hear some of your stories, so think of the most bizarre charge you’ve ever heard made against the Church and share it with the rest of us. Books, conversations, Internet, radio, anything is fair game.

Hmm, maybe he read Babylon Mystery Religion by Ralph Woodrow. I read a copy of that a few months ago, it was hilarious, some of the most ridiculous ideas I’ve ever read (actually what was almost as funny were all the little notes my pastor had written in the margins at one point).

But the whole point of the book was to prove that the Catholic Church worships all the pagan gods…I can’t remember now what they said about Ra now, probably because I was laughing every time I picked it up. It was written in the 1960’s I believe, but I was unaware that anyone could rival Jack Chick in craziness.

 

[ALLGIRLS]

I actually “heard” (on an internet forum) someone claim that we don’t believe in the Trinity or in the resurrection of Christ (proven by our use of the Crucifix-apparently we think Jesus “is still up there” on the cross ). I then wrote out the entire Nicene Creed for them, and stated that we recite this every Sunday. I got no response, of course.

In Christ,

Ellen

ETA: what’s funny about the assertion that we don’t believe in the Trinity, is that this was put forth to “prove” that Catholics aren’t Christians. But when I pointed out that Oneness Pentacostals don’t believe in the Trinity, and they couldn’t explain why, although they thought that was wrong, they still believe pentacostals are Christian

 

[JohnCS]

I’m particularly fond of the Whore of Babylon story. The Church itself is the Great Whore who gives birth to the Anti-Christ, which if I remember right is one of the Popes. Oh and I saw somewhere that some of the Pope’s names and numbers added up eqaul 666 or some such =)

 

[Ecoclimber]

"I could never become a Catholic or even enter the doors of a Catholic Church because the popes worship the Egyptian Sun god “Ra”.

I was blown away! I told him that was ridiculous and asked him where he had heard this information? He went on to explain that he had read it in a booklet that his brother had given him. He said this “booklet” proved that the popes really worshiped the Egyptian Sun god and not the God of the Bible because it showed a picture of the hat’s that were worn by “Ra’s” priest during their religious ceremonies and the Catholic popes wore this same hat.

Actually not so strange as the Discovery Channel had a documentary which stated that Jesus was instructed and in the ancient religions of RA, Osiris and Isis when Mary and Joesph fled to the Egypt for many years and were believed to have settled in the lower Nile region around Luxor as Coptic Christians believed. They said that’s where His teachings came from.

Isis was considered a Goddess and called Queen of Heaven. Her worship continued throughout the Greco-Roman world up to 6th Century AD

In the OT In Jeremiah 44:15-18: "Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris

Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge suggests possible connections or parallels in Osiris’ resurrection story with those found in Christianity:

"The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the powers of evil, that after a great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous also might conquer death…In Osiris the Christian Egyptians found the prototype of Christ, and in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus, they perceived the prototypes of the Virgin Mary and her child

Egyptologist Erik Hornung observes that Egyptian Christians continued to mummify corpses (an integral part of the Osirian beliefs) until it finally came to an end with the arrival of Islam and argues for an association between the passion of Jesus and Osirian traditions, particularly in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus and Christ’s descent into Hades. He concludes that whilst Christianity rejected anything “pagan” it did so only at a superficial level and that early Christianity was “deeply indebted” to Ancient Egypt.

Of course all of this can be easily debunked but for the uninformed and liberal theologians who pick up on this to discredit the divinity of Jesus Christ.

 

[shondrea]

I’ve never heard anything first hand worse than the usual mary worshipping.

Although once, I stumbled across a website called Godwire or something like that, bring peace to an unsaved world. There was a woman on there making an anti catholic rant about how we’re all filthy rich and want to be as flashy and sparkly as we could be, and that all Catholics have meetings on how to hunt down and persecute Baptists, and how she’s always had problems with us catholic, with our idol worshipping and whatnot.

I felt offended until I saw some of the articles on that site-

“Do gay pets go to heaven?”
“New toy for pedophile fa*s” (it was a european anatomically correct child’s baby doll)
and
“Blazing ball of light over midwest warns of God’s hatred of the fa***** race”

 

[Wowbagger]

I read in my school newspaper last week that “The Catholic Church did not admit Galileo was right until 500 years after it tortured him to death for teaching that the Earth goes around the sun.”

First, of course, there’s the commonly-held misconception that Galileo was censured for teaching Copernican theory (in fact, he was censured for teaching it as known fact rather than promising theory, and in fact had a major endorsement from Pope Urban VIII and the approval of the Vatican establishment for his Copernican leanings). I always find it amusing when this is brought up.

But the idea that the Church either tortured Galileo or played any role whatsoever in his (natural) death, much less tortured him to death, is so outrageous as to cross the line into gut-clenchingly funny.

At least, I thought so.

 

[Annabelle_Marie]

Yeah, many, if not ALL, of Anti-Catholic red herrings tend to be beyond the bounds of credibility that it’s a wonder why some people really buy into these stuff.

**By the way, number one on my list is a certain ‘Chick idea’ (yeah, I just coined that up ) that the Vatican has a supercomputer which contains a listing of all the Protestants in the whole world (ya know, supercomputers are so 1970’s…).**Number two is, of course, that ol’ familiar belief that Jesuits are responsible for everything evil. As if the only religious order that exists in the Catholic Church is the Society of Jesus (I often say this, but I’ve yet to see other religious orders such as the Dominicans or Carmelites or Benedictines get a bad rep and be blamed for the bad stuff that happens - it’s always gotta be the Jesuits, no?).

Really? Gee then I hope they took my name off the Protestant list…

 

[Dylpickleh8]

My Favorite is the Giant computer in the Vatican.
The second is that “IHS” actually stands for Isis, Horus and Seb, the “Egyptian Trinity”.
Anyone who knows anything about Egyptian religion knows that Isis, Horus and Seb aren’t a trinity. The Closest thing to a trinity would be Isis, Horus and Osiris. According to Ancient Egyptian religion, Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis, but they weren’t a trinity. But of course Osiris doesn’t start with an “S”, so IHS must mean Isis, Horus and Seb. (Technically, the name is actually “Geb”, “Seb” is a mistransliteration)
Besides, That’s not even an I, It’s a J.
I have a crucifix that says “JHS”.

 

[jmcrae]

The weirdest one I ever heard was how photography was condemned as “witchcraft” in the 1400s by the Vatican (because apparently the principles that make photography possible were discovered in the 1400s, but didn’t actually come into use until the mid-1800s) because image-making was considered to be idolatry.

So, painters in Europe were required to hide the fact that they were using photography as an aid to painting. (Because realistic-looking paintings aren’t “images,” but photographs are?)

 

[GIR]

I was on a “mission” in Mexico with my protestant friend’s church (mea maxima culpa) and the last day we were there they grilled me about the church. I wasn’t really swayed by any of it, but I couldn’t shoot back any arguments (there were nine of them and one of me).

Anyway, they said that Catholics didn’t originally believe in Jesus.
Obviously this has some serious causality issues. If we didn’t originally believe in Jesus, what did we believe before? How did we come to believe? Who and what were the circumstances surrounding this “conversion”?

They also said there was a church called “St. Judas” (keep in mind this is in Mexico) where they charged for sacraments.
The allegation of simony may or may not be true, but it doesn’t disprove the church’s claims as a whole. Regarding the name, Spanish doesn’t differentiate between “Judas” as in Judas iscariot, and “Jude” the other apostle, they’re both “Judas”. This should have been obvious because there were spanish speakers in the group.

 

[Brywan]

“You realize, don’t you, that the next pope is going to be the anti-christ?”