It’s hard to know in his particular case how much is willful ignorance and how much is innocent.
I’d pay a fortune to be standing next to John MacArthur, James White, Robert Zins, TurretinFan, or any of the other well-known anti-Catholic Protestants at their personal judgment.
God: “If you want to get into heaven, my child, you’re going to have to go through purgatory first.”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “Purgatory? What nonsense! Where is that in the Bible?”
God: “My child… Ever read Revelation 21:27?”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “Yes. But what of it? It’s eisegesis to read some kind of process of purification after death into the text. Don’t you know that, if something isn’t explicitly stated in the Bible, it’s a papist tradition of men to be rejected immediately?”
God: “I inspired fallible men to put pen to paper. Ultimately, though, I’m the one who wrote the Bible. Are we agreed on that point?”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “Yes, sir.”
God: “Good. Well, then, don’t I have the prerogative to say definitively what I wanted to get across when I inspired that verse?”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “I suppose so. But aren’t you forgetting 2 Timothy 3:16-17?”
God: “No, I’m not. I never intended for anyone to take that passage as many have twisted it.”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “Twisted it? Enough of these Romanist lies! Purgatory is a false doctrine of an apostate church which teaches works-righteousness and statue worship and the immaculate conception of some ordinary Jewish woman… who was definitely a sinner, no matter how you might attempt to eisegete ‘I rejoice in God my saviour’.”
God: “Hold it right there. That church got a lot more things right than any Protestant has. Purgatory isn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination. Catholics don’t believe in earning their salvation. And they worship statues about as much as you worship the Bible. And Mary was in fact freed of original sin at conception and lived a blameless life. I know you’re not the strongest advocate for giving the mother of your saviour her due respect, but you’ll be apologizing to Mary for that later on.”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “This is madness. I can’t believe I’m still arguing with an ignorant, deceitful Romanist heretic, and having to preach a corrective to their false gospel, even after death! I should be enjoying heaven right now, clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ which was imputed to me when I discovered I was one of your elect!”
God: “Do you want to get into heaven, my child? All you have to do is to go through purgatory. Then you can join all the other Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Arminians in heaven purified, and partake in our liturgies in praise of yours truly and prayers for the church on earth…”
Anti-Catholic Protestant: “No!!! Calvin forever!”
head explodes
As a former evangelical Protestant, it was my observation (and personal experience) that most Protestants don’t go directly to Catholic sources to study Catholic teaching – they get it second-hand from Protestant sources that distort Catholic teaching, so they wind up with a very distorted understanding of the Catholic faith. It wasn’t until I began seriously investigating the Catholic faith that I started going directly to Catholic sources, and in the process was surprised to find that what I’d read about the Catholic faith in many Protestant sources was simply wrong.
I’ve found that, even when they read the canons from the Council of Trent and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they still don’t get it. Those documents weren’t written for material heretics reading them four centuries after the Deformation, but for the contemporary enemies of the faith and its loyal adherents.
To be honest, the ignorance of many Catholics of the basic Gospel message and saving truths of Christ reinforce the negative stereotypes of Catholics and feed the anti-Catholic perception.
Catechesis is atrocious these days. I learned almost nothing substantive about Catholicism in high school religion classes. I found out the hard way in university, when I encountered very zealous–and somewhat antagonistic–Protestants for the first time. I realized then that I had to start playing catch-up if I wanted to keep my sanity.
I don’t envy a lot of the “Catholic” “clergy” and “educators” on the Day of Judgment, when they’ll have to answer to the old man upstairs for their deriliction of duty toward the Catholic youth they were supposedly leading and instructing…
…we must NOT…answer hate with hate…Overcome with Love and Prayer! Thanks for putting that in!
