+
+ + + +
Part Two of The Dogma of Baptism Upheld & the Lie of
‘Faith Alone’ Cast Down (7 Letters Consisting of 6 Prefacing
Notes & 19 Chapters)
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+ + + +
A 2ND
NOTE TO THE READER:
The next letter is the letter which immediately preceded the one
you have just read. In it the themes of baptism & ‘faith alone’
appear that I examined in even greater detail in the letter of 14 February
2007. Focusing on four particularly plain passages of the Bible, we see how
Sacred Scripture comports with Roman Catholicism and not Protestantism when it
comes to baptism of water. It was the heretical attempt to explain away
“born of water” that led to my rebuttal of February 14th.
Notice in the latter part of this letter those verses where
+ + + 2. Letter of 21 January 2007 + + +
+
+ + 2a. The Necessity of Baptism Is Biblical + + +
Dear Father & Mother,
Every time you say you won’t argue or debate with me, you not
only have been arguing & debating with me, but, in the not-too-distant
future, you do again argue & debate with me. This is because so-called
‘born again christianity’ is diametrically opposed to Roman
Catholicism, it being impossible for truth & falsehood to mingle peaceably.
Hence, the rock solid truth of Jesus’ Body, His Catholic Church, cannot
fail to condemn the quicksand lies of manmade ‘relationships’ with
an imaginary ‘christ’. Yet whether or not I chide you for it, your
false religion in its arrogance will always seek to raise its ugly, demonic
head against “...the house of God, which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth...” (1 Timothy 3:15 KJV) A
“pillar and ground of the truth” that cannot possibly be the vague
& invisible ‘church’ of your Protestantism since the very
essence of Martin Luther’s Rebellion is an endless parade of different
opinions about what teachings are true and what practices worth keeping, no two
Protestants of the last 490 years ever able to fully agree on what their bibles
say or on what truths are necessary to believe in order to save their souls.
Some have even ceased to care altogether, acting as if the truth about what
Jesus taught or what He commanded doesn’t matter… just so long as a
person looks and sounds to them like a ‘spirit-filled believer’ in
Him.
Meanwhile, your own bibles condemn you. For Jesus said, “He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved...” (Mark 16:16a KJV)
Whereas you say, “Jesus was wrong. He that believes like a ‘born
again christian’ shall be saved --- baptism has nothing to do with
it.” But Jesus also said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except
a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
Now I ask you, my dear parents, who are we to believe --- you &
your ‘born again christianity’ or the Church of Jesus Christ &
His Bible?
And these are but four of the most obvious verses. Countless others
abound, each of them upholding what the Roman Catholic Church, like a good
“pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15d KJV), has always,
unwaveringly and infallibly proclaimed concerning baptism. To wit, that a man
cannot have his sins forgiven, cannot see Heaven and cannot receive the Holy
Spirit without being baptized in water… just as Jesus & Peter in
Sacred Scripture have said. Whereas, to the contrary, it is you who say
otherwise. Consequently, either you must give up claiming to believe in the
Bible, or else you must pretend to explain all of these verses away. But how
can you do that? For your entire religion hangs upon the idea that you get what
you believe from the Bible; or, at least, that you don’t contradict
anything in it. On the other hand, should you try to explain away what your own
bibles clearly say --- for instance, that they say water baptism really is
necessary for salvation --- then how in the world do you even begin to justify
this novel interpretation, which flies in the face of all the biblical
evidence, when many of your peers have thought the opposite? For know you not
that the very first Protestants, from whom you spiritually descend, insisted on
the same thing as Roman Catholics? That is to say, that they believed, too, way
back in the early 1500s that a man must be baptized in order to have his sins
forgiven, to see Heaven and to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Moreover, that
there are still some Protestants today --- however few they may be --- that
believe likewise? Which leaves you in a quandary. Because these Protestants
also claim, or claimed, to believe in the Bible. And they would quote the
verses above to back them up on the critical importance of baptism in water. So
which is it? Which of you really believes in the Bible and has it right?
+
+ + 2b. The Dilemma of Protestant Interpretation + + +
Neither your brand of Protestantism nor any version of
Protestantism has the ability to answer this thoroughly sensible question with
ironclad finality. Because each and every one of them springs from one source
and one source ultimately: the Rebellion of Martin Luther in 1517. Jesus Christ
did not start them; His Apostles did not disciple them. None of them has a
lineage going back further than Luther’s Revolt. Most of them began long
after 1517, imitating their rebellious, wandering forefathers by themselves
rebelling against, or wandering astray from, the teachings and practices of
their earlier Protestant ancestors.
How, then, can they know what Jesus & His Apostles taught when
Protestants weren’t around when Jesus & His Apostles taught? By
reading their bibles? Then why can Protestants never fully agree about what
their bibles say, even when it comes to deciding what is absolutely necessary to
know and do so as to save one’s soul? As Peter warned:
“...even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the
wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles,
speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also
the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing
ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error
of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.” (2 Peter 3:15b-17 KJV)
And Peter admonished additionally:
“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do
well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth
in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private
interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2 Peter
1:19-21 KJV)
Protestantism, my dear father & mother --- which includes your
particular brand of self-styled ‘born again christianity’,
‘spirit-filled believing’ or ‘full gospel living’ ---
is riddled with persons who “wrest” Paul’s
“epistles… as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own
destruction.” How so? Because in them “are some things hard to be
understood.” (2 Peter 3:16c, a, d, b KJV) What’s more, they do so
rejecting the “more sure word of prophecy”, failing to “take
heed” and thus not “knowing this first, that no prophecy of the
scripture is of any private interpretation.” (2 Peter 1:19a, 20 KJV)
In other words, no man, whether Protestant or not, has either the
right or the ability, in and of himself, to privately interpret Sacred
Scripture as he sees fit. It is difficult enough to interpret correctly the
words of earthly men… it is often difficult beyond human competence alone
by itself to interpret correctly the words of the Almighty God Who dwells in
Heaven Above! As Peter cautioned: “For the prophecy came not in old time
by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost.” (2 Peter 1:21 KJV) For this reason, then, do
“they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other
scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16b KJV) Why do the
“unlearned and unstable” end up doing this “unto their own
destruction”, that is, causing themselves to wind up in Hell? Because the
Bible is not just the words of mere men but is, most literally and truly, the
very words of the Creator Himself. Therefore, the Most Incredible & Vast
Mind of Anyone That Exists has spoken authoritatively in its pages about those
things that are crucial for men to know accurately concerning the means by
which they may obtain their Salvation. Hence, no man can read through these
pages heedless of what God’s Mind actually intended to say, following
instead his own little thoughts and opinions about the matter. This is why the
Creator did not leave the Bible to men all by itself --- indeed, why He
entrusted this Bible to His Son’s Body, “which is the church of the
living God, the pillar and ground of the truth...” (1 Timothy 3:15 KJV.
See also Colossians 1:18, 24, for confirmation that the Body of Jesus Christ is
indeed the Church.) It is this “pillar and ground of the truth”,
“the church of the living God,” that authoritatively and infallibly
tells us how the words of Sacred Scripture are to be rightly interpreted.
What’s more, this Pillar & Ground of the Truth is not, my
dear parents, nor can it ever be, your Protestantism. For your religion is not
a pillar, supporting erect and stable the saving truth upon it, or the ground,
holding up firm and solid the saving truth over it. Rather, your Protestantism
is nothing but perpetual change, evolution, fads, fancies, popular opinions,
revolutions, trends, contradictions, disputes, splits and divisions down
through the years and centuries. There is nothing of stability, solidity,
perpetuation, continuity and surety in it. The pretend ‘jesus’ of
‘born again christianity’ is not the real “Jesus Christ the
same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8 KJV) For the
real Jesus Christ is He Who spoke to His Apostles the following command:
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
(Matthew 28:19-20 KJV)
We repeat, zeroing in on the key words:
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:19-20 KJV)
This is a far cry from so-called ‘spirit-filled
believers’, who baptize haphazardly and incorrectly, thinking it of no
consequence to the eternal fate of immortal souls, and who take little or no
heed of the “all things whatsoever” the real Jesus
“commanded” His Apostles to teach to their disciples, instead
teaching whatever is most popular, most easily understood, or most familiar to
the ears of various men. These heretical rebels despise commandments and loathe
law, even though their own bibles reveal that Jesus plainly
“commanded” certain things before He left this earth and even
though the Apostle Paul (their favorite biblical writer, usually) plainly
states as follows:
+
+ + 2c. Jesus & Paul Uphold Law + + +
“And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the
Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them
that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being
not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them
that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak:
I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” (1
Corinthians 9:20-22 KJV)
Again we repeat, zeroing in on the key words:
“And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the
Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them
that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not
without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that
I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I
might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means
save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:20-22 KJV)
And elsewhere Paul declares, reinforcing the point:
“Bear ye one another’s
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
(Galatians 6:2 KJV)
We repeat:
“Bear ye one another’s
burdens, and so fulfil the law of
Christ.” (Galatians 6:2 KJV)
As a result, we see that Jesus Christ has Law & Commandments,
and understand then why He announced for all to hear who have ears to hear:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore
shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach
them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto
you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 5:17-20 KJV)
We repeat for the sake of minds unwilling or unable to see:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and
shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom
of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20 KJV)
Now, you tell me, father & mother. Have “heaven and
earth” passed yet? Has the end of this present world yet come? No? Then
“one jot or one tittle shall in no wise” have yet passed from the
law! To the contrary, whoever shall “break” the least of these
commandments “and shall teach men so” --- that is, to break the
least of these commandments --- “shall be called the least in the kingdom
of heaven…” But whoever “shall do and teach them” ---
that is, obeys the commandments and teaches men around them to do the same ---
“shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Which, by the way, means, when you think about it, that to break a
commandment greater than the least must mean that you can’t even get into
the
How can this be? How can Jesus be upholding the necessity of
obedience to the Law for Salvation when Protestants think that the Apostle Paul
teaches ‘freedom from’ the Law in Galatians and the utter
‘uselessness’ of the Law to save a man in Romans? Are Jesus’
words here to be explained away --- despite their starkly obvious meaning ---
in favor of what men such as yourselves think is Paul’s apparent meaning?
Or does Paul in both Galatians & Romans blatantly contradict Jesus in the
Gospel of Matthew?
No, he does not contradict Jesus, and we do not have to turn
somersaults to explain away the plain meaning of Jesus’ words about obeying
the Law until “heaven and earth” pass away. It is the opposite,
Protestants having wrested Paul’s words into meaning something other than
what they were intended to say. The Apostle Paul does not teach
‘freedom from’ all Law, rather, he teaches freedom from, and the
uselessness of, the ceremonial rites of Moses’ Law during the New
Covenant, after Jesus had performed His Sacrifice upon the Cross. Put
differently, up until Jesus died on the Cross it was absolutely necessary and
utterly useful for members of the
In the meantime, God’s Law --- now transformed into
Christ’s Law by the everlasting Roman Catholic teaching that Jesus gave
to His Apostles and by His dying upon the Cross --- continues unabated. The Ten
Commandments are still in effect and always will be until the end. The Law as
to how men are to behave toward God (the commandments concerning True Religion)
and the Law as to how men are to behave toward each other (the commandments
concerning Right Morality) is constantly in effect, to be observed by all men
everywhere without the least exception until “heaven and earth”
disappear at the end of our present, fallen world in fire & destruction. No
one, then, can pretend to be free from God’s Law, nor is anyone at
liberty to disobey God’s commandment that all men must enter His
Son’s Holy Body, the Roman Catholic Church, in order to worship Him as He
designed men to do, and as He made necessary for them to do in order to save
their immortal souls.
And this terrible misunderstanding upon Protestants’ part ---
this mammoth blunder of gargantuan proportions in regard to God’s Will
--- is a classic textbook example of how Protestants do exactly what the
Apostle Peter warned against. To wit, where he admonishes:
“...even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the
wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles,
speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest,
as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also,
being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own
stedfastness.” (2 Peter 3:15b-17 KJV)
Because Protestants take, and have done so since their Rebellion in
the 1500s, the words of Paul in his epistles, especially in Galatians &
Romans, and “wrest” them from what he --- and the Holy Spirit
through him --- inerrantly intended them to mean into something completely
different, being “unlearned and unstable”, neither having the
Saving Truth properly set in their minds nor truly wanting this Saving Truth in
the first place. Ergo, they do this “unto their own destruction.”
But even if most Protestants are unlearned, not understanding
things such as this (for instance, that Paul speaks of the ceremonial, sacrificial
law of the Old Covenant and not of all of the Law, carte blanche, when he
excoriates the superseded Old Covenant of the Judaizers in his letter to the
Galatians or stresses the necessity of faith in the New Covenant Teachings of
Christ & His Apostles in his letter to the Romans), and even though every
Protestant is unstable, not wanting to stand upon the Unshaken Pillar &
Firm Ground of Jesus’ Saving Catholic Truth, this is not then to concede
that this Saving Truth is totally hidden from them. It is not. They may not
see, but it is because they choose not to see, being willfully blind and
purposely closing their eyes, not because they have no minds capable of
understanding and so seeing.
For what did Jesus starkly announce in Matthew 5:17-20, I having
brought it to your attention several times through the years and which we
looked at again in the paragraphs just above? That He did not come to
abolish the Law. Rather, that Jesus came to fulfill the Law, a
fulfillment that occurs in His Teachings & His Sacrifice and is perpetuated
in His Body, the Catholic Church, through Her Infallible Teachings & Her
Apostolic Rituals, being precisely what the Creator intended and commanded for
the Church of the New Covenant. That this is so is further demonstrated
throughout Sacred Scripture, especially in the New Testament. One tiny little
example, out of dozens upon dozens I could show you were there time to spare
and you had the humility to know, is where the Apostle Paul --- almost
immediately after noting that there is a Law of Christ to which he is subject
and to which all men must be subject if they are to save their souls --- says
the following:
+
+ + 2d. What Happens to Lazy Athletes? They Lose! + + +
“Know ye not that they which run in
a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run,
that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for
the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so
fight I, not as one that beateth
the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by
any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a
castaway.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27 KJV)
This is a completely inexplicable passage to ‘born again
christians’ such as yourselves, requiring either ignorance that it
exists, willful skipping over of it should one be aware of its existence, or
pretzel-like logic that defies the rules of decent grammar and good sense in
order to make the passage mean what it can never mean provided we take its
words at face-value. That is to say, Paul is obviously exhorting his readers
to run the race well, lest they lose the race! And what is this race? It is
the contest that any real Christian --- i.e., a true follower of Christ ---
engages when first he begins to know, believe, profess & obey all of the
teachings & commandments of Jesus Christ, being baptized into His Body.
Unfortunately, there is a Devil. And this Devil is a liar and a tempter. Lying
to men about religious teachings and tempting them into immorality, he can lead
them astray… including real Christians, who are Roman Catholic.
Consequently why Paul says, “So run, that ye may obtain.”
And also, “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one
that beateth the air: but I keep under my body,
and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1 Corinthians
9:24c, 26-27 KJV)
Let us be honest, dear parents. These verses make no sense to
Protestants of your type. I know, because I was raised by you and once thought
like you. And there is no sensible, straightforward way to interpret
Paul’s words according to your prejudices without mangling their clear
meaning. We cannot pretend that Paul was a ‘born again christian’
like yourselves, just trying to give folks a pep talk about not ‘giving
up’. We cannot, because your teaching --- that you say your ‘sinner’s
prayer’ and ‘ask Jesus into your hearts’, just
‘believing’ that He forgives you --- leaves no room for the
possibility of you going to Hell. That is to say, from your false religious
perspective, there is no sin so big that you could commit that would cause you
not to go directly to Heaven as soon as you die. This is what you suppose. The
truth is otherwise. Or else there is no reason for Paul to speak like he does,
inspired inerrantly by the Holy Spirit. Because if he did believe like you,
then he should not have said what he said in the passage above. Instead, he
should have said something like this:
“Know you not that they which run in a race can all end up
receiving the prize? So run without worry, because everyone of you will win.
And most men that strive for the mastery are temperate in all things. Now they
do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we don’t have to do anything at
all since we’re going to win no matter what, Jesus having done it all for
us. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beats
at the air: but I take it easy on my body, and keep it comfortable: lest by
doing the opposite I make things too hard on myself, lest having preached to
others about freedom from the law, I myself should become a Pharisee, making
people really mad at me and God rather peeved --- although I’ll still get
into Heaven, of course, having said my sinner’s prayer.”
Obviously, this is pretty ridiculous. But ridiculous with a very
serious, serious point --- to show how silly the false religion of
Protestantism is when it comes to misinterpreting the Bible. Because the above
words are --- no matter how ludicrous --- exactly what Protestants like
yourselves actually think, if only in the unexamined instincts of your mind,
and exactly what you would have to make Paul to say in Sacred Scripture were
you to eliminate all of the passages that don’t synchronize rightly with
your manmade traditions about ‘freedom from’ the law and
‘faith alone’ saving you. Because what is it Paul is getting at
here? What is he truly trying to say when, as he actually puts it, he says,
“…but I keep under my body, and bring it into
subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I
myself should be a castaway.”? (1 Corinthians 9:27 KJV)
Is this Protestantism, dear father & mother? Is it typical
Evangelicism or Charismaticism to beat one’s body into subjection,
denying it and mortifying it by penances, fastings, abstinence, prayers and
other strenuous spiritual exercises? Or is this not routine and real Catholicism,
which has always taught Her loyal children to treat
their bodies with rigor and distrust, not capitulating to the lusts of the
flesh “lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself
should be a castaway.” For what do serious contestants in a tough race
do? Do they not subject their bodies to special diets, exercises and rigors,
concentrating and working hard so as to make themselves leaner, stronger, more
focused and more likely to win? Indeed, this is why Paul also notes:
“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12 KJV)
Ask yourself --- why the admonishment to “work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling” if there is no chance a true Christian
could ever lose his Hope of Salvation? What is there to fear and tremble about
if Jesus has done it all for you, and there is nothing left for you to do
except believe He died for your sins and rose again from the grave, saying your
‘sinner’s prayer’? What Protestant like you would ever choose
to put things like that, as Paul did in Philippians 2:12? A choice of words, by
the way, that dovetails perfectly with his words in 1 Corinthians 9:27, where
he talks about becoming a “castaway” should he not keep his body
under mastery and in subjection. For what is the prize of the race about which
he speaks in the same passage? Is it not the Reward of Heaven? And do not only
a few obtain the prize, not everyone? This in turn parallels exquisitely with
Jesus’ own words where he says:
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and
broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and
many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is
the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be
that find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV)
We repeat for the benefit of minds that find it hard to see
straight, denying what they read in their own bibles:
“Enter ye in at the strait [narrow] gate: for wide
is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth
to destruction and many there be which go in thereat: because strait
[narrow] is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV)
This, then, is what the Apostle Paul means about beating his body
into subjection lest, after he has preached to many, becoming the source of
their potential salvation by the Roman Catholic Gospel that he bore witness to,
he himself should fail to win the race --- fail to obtain Heaven --- because he
falls prey to the wicked desires and evil temptations of his corrupt, fallen
flesh, dying in the grievous sin of breaking one of the greater commandments of
God and thus failing at the end to have worked out his own salvation with fear
and trembling.
+
+ + 2e. Your Challenge --- Take Scripture Seriously + + +
So then, dear parents, let us have none of your Protestant nonsense
about John 3:16-17. To wit, where Jesus declared:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that
the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17 KJV)
You in your manmade religious prejudices mangle these verses to
mean just saying a ‘sinner’s prayer’. Or, to be more exact,
you reduce ‘believing in’ Jesus into the following pitiful handful
of propositions, as if they are all that Jesus & His Apostles ever
inerrantly preached as necessary for men to know, believe, profess & obey
unto Salvation:
1) Believe Jesus is the
Son of God;
2) Believe He died on
the Cross for your sins, resurrecting to Life afterward;
3) Tell God
you’re sorry for your sins;
4) Believe that your
sins are forgiven;
5) And do all this
because the Bible says so.
These five propositions are, more or less, all that contemporary
Evangelic Protestants such as yourselves --- and such as I used to be --- think
are absolutely necessary for Salvation. Various factions can argue over other
teachings (for instance, whether or not dying in serious sin without asking
forgiveness or without stopping it can damn someone after his
‘sinner’s prayer’, or whether or not it’s desirable to
‘speak in tongues’, be ‘filled with the spirit’ or
worship ‘freely in the spirit’, or whether or not ‘born again
christians’ are always supposed to worship on Sundays, etc., etc.), but
most of them nowadays consider such arguments to be over ‘incidentals’
and ‘non-essentials’. Consequently, they see no point in agonizing
over it.
In the meantime, such careless persons lazily ignore, or even
purposely contradict, what their own bibles say. Because, amongst many other
things --- and as I have already shown you from the words of Sacred Scripture
both at the start of this email and in the email I sent you previous to this
one on December 31st, 2006 --- this is not all that Jesus & His
Apostles taught & commanded as absolutely necessary unto Salvation. I could
spend hundreds of pages proving this to you, going one by one through the
dozens upon dozens of teachings revealed in Sacred Scripture to be necessary
unto Salvation, but only one example is needed to prove you wrong, exposing the
eternal peril of your immortal souls. Viz., the teaching of Jesus Christ &
His Apostle Peter on the necessity of water baptism for the salvation of
one’s soul. This one single example is more than enough to reveal the
heretical rebellion that you are in. For you know very well that you think
baptism is merely symbolic. A nice thing to do, certainly --- but in no way at
all ever necessary for the forgiveness of sins, the reception of the Holy
Spirit, or the salvation of a soul.
Yet what do your bibles say?
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved...”
(Mark 16:16a KJV, Jesus speaking.)
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the
“Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost.” (Acts 2:38b-d KJV, Peter speaking.)
“For Christ… preached unto the spirits in prison; which
sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the
days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were
saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism
doth also now save us…” (1 Peter 3:18a, 19b-21a KJV, Peter
speaking.)
Each of these passages is from the pages of inerrant Sacred
Scripture, the human writers inspired by the Holy Spirit. They say what they
mean and mean what they say. Still more verses exist attesting to the necessity
of water baptism for the salvation of a soul --- but these are the most obvious
and plenty sufficient to show you how heinously you err, denying the teachings
of Jesus & His Apostles. A teaching that, to the contrary, the Roman
Catholic Church does now uphold and always has upheld since the beginning of
the New Covenant Faith in the first century at the Descent of the Holy Spirit
upon the 120 believers gathered in the upper room at Pentecost. Believers who
were believers because they actually believed everything that Jesus
through His Apostles taught & commanded.
As Jesus authoritatively instructed these Apostles just prior to
His Ascension regarding the discipling of the nations:
“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:20a KJV)
And as the Apostle Paul authoritatively instructed his
protégé, Timothy, after handing over the leadership of the local
church in
“Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in
them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear
thee.” (1 Timothy 4:16 KJV)
We repeat, driving the point home:
“Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine;
continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them
that hear thee.” (1 Timothy 4:16 KJV)
Ah, so teaching, commandments and doctrines --- all of them
--- are quite necessary unto Salvation. This includes the imperative teaching
--- doctrine --- that water baptism is one of the crucial things
absolutely necessary for the salvation of a man’s soul. Numerous other
doctrines exist, too, which Jesus & His Apostles through the Holy Spirit
--- the Spirit of Truth (John 14:16-17, 15:26-27) --- taught & commanded
for the salvation of souls, establishing His Body, the Roman Catholic Church, “the
pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15d KJV), for this very
purpose, that men might know with infallible certainty precisely what the
Saving Truth is --- all of the teaching, commandments and doctrines --- in
order to receive the Hope of Salvation.
As a result, my dearest parents, I must earnestly chide and piously
mock you for trying to support your heresies by resorting to the typical
‘born again christian’ fall-back of John 3:16-17. Because in doing
so you act as if your meager pittance of ‘essential’ doctrines are
all that Jesus & His Apostles ever taught & commanded as needed to save
a soul, blindly pretending that to ‘believe in’ Jesus is the same
as ‘believing in’ the very few things you say are necessary to
believe in order to save your souls. Whereas, as both Jesus & Paul
demonstrate, believing in Jesus means to believe in all of the teachings,
commandments & doctrines that Jesus & His Apostles have told us
through His Body, the Roman Catholic Church, are needed to save a man’s
soul. As Jesus said and as I repeat again:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments... He that hath my
commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me... If a man love me, he will keep my words... He
that loveth me not keepeth
not my sayings...” (John 14:15, 21a, 23b, 24a KJV)
Examine these words carefully, dear father & mother. A man must
keep Jesus’ commandments in order to love
Him. Nay, more --- a man must have Jesus’ commandments in
the first place to even begin obeying them and hence love Him. To not keep them,
whether because one does not have them to start with or because one has them
but purposely rebels against them, is to hate Jesus.
As Jesus said:
“He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.”
(Luke 11:23 KJV)
We repeat:
“He that is not with me is against me: and he
that gathereth not with me scattereth.”
(Luke 11:23 KJV)
And as Jesus also said:
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole
world, and lose himself, or be cast away? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me
and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in
his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.” (Luke
9:23b-26 KJV)
We repeat:
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the
same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole
world, and lose himself, or be cast away? For
whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man
be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and
of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23b-26 KJV)
The conclusion is clear, my dear parents. You do not have “all
things whatsoever” that Jesus “commanded”.
(Matthew 28:20a KJV) Numerous proofs of this exist from your own bibles, yet
only one is needed to demonstrate how you are “not with”
Jesus, being “against” Him instead and thus he that “scattereth”. (Luke 11:23 KJV) For our
purposes here, I have chosen the Dogma of Baptism as that single piece of
evidence needed to convict you. Because your own bibles are stark: water
baptism is, indeed, by the words of both Jesus & Peter in the inerrant
testimony of Sacred Scripture, necessary for Salvation. Thus, should you not
“deny” yourself in this matter --- setting aside your
religious pride to acknowledge your error and admit your wrong --- and
“take up” your “cross daily”, then you shall be
like the one who, in the end, shall not “save his life” but “lose
it”. Whereas, to the contrary, should you humble yourselves by
admitting your wrong and exchanging your manmade doctrine for the true doctrine
on water baptism as given to us infallibly by God’s Roman Catholic Church
and preserved for us in Sacred Scripture to see --- as well as humbly
submitting in all things to the infallible teaching of God’s Catholic
Church through the mouth of His Papacy, the Apostle Peter’s Successors
--- then you will “lose” your life for Christ’s sake
and so “save it”. In this way you may lose the whole
world also --- all of your dreams, desires, hopes, familiarities, comforts,
acquaintances, friends, possessions and former expectations --- but you will
gain in its place the Hope of Heaven forevermore and hence not “be
cast away”. (Luke 9:23b-25 KJV)
I adjure you, dear parents, to take this seriously. Time is running
out, both in respect to the little time that I have left to remain in your near
vicinity, and in respect to the little time that you have left to remain alive
in the flesh upon this earth. The Mouth of Hell gapes wide to admit you into
its hideous torments. Leave off from the Broad Path to Destruction of your
false religion of Protestantism and enter onto the Narrow Path to Life of
Jesus’ Roman Catholicism. Act now before it is too late! For
“...behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now
is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2b KJV)
Very sincerely your always loving son,
-Paul
Doughton
A 3RD NOTE TO THE READER:
The following letter preceded the one above. In it I introduce for
the first time in this series of letters the necessity of water baptism as a
proof that Protestants --- or so-called ‘born again christians’ as
people like my parents like to style themselves --- don’t believe their
own bibles. It is here worth remarking, too, how such Protestants, whom I
entitle ‘Evangelics’, almost never perform the Sacrament of Baptism
correctly nowadays. That is to say, they invariably speak the words of baptism
and then, only after they have said these words, do they immerse the body of
their adherent fully into water, which they contend wrongly is the one right
way to baptize. But in temporally separating the words of baptism from the act
of baptism --- the form from the matter --- they invalidate what they do,
losing what they would deny is accomplished were the mistake not made.
+ + + 3. Letter of 31 December 2006 + + +
+
+ + 3a. Real Love +
+ +
Dear Father & Mother,
The gifts you gave us are about Christmas because you gave them at
Christmas time, just as you have always given us gifts at this time of year.
Were the lack of a mention of Christmas on the gifts relevant to your claim ---
that Christmas had nothing to do with it --- then you could have selected any
of eleven other months of the year to give us all gifts for no other reason
than that you love us. That you chose to do so in the month of December right
before the 25th --- and in this month alone of all months --- is clear evidence
to the contrary of what you say was your sole reason.
Concerning love, Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my
commandments... He that hath my commandments, and keepeth
them, he it is that loveth me... If a man love me, he
will keep my words... He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings...” (John 14:15, 21a, 23b, 24a
KJV) Meanwhile, Jesus sent His disciples to the nations that they might be
“...teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you...” (Matthew 28:20a KJV) One of these commandments for the nations to
observe was that they submit obediently to His disciples as the latter went
about “...baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost...” (Matthew 28:19b KJV) Indeed, Jesus even told His
disciples why the commandment to baptize them was so terribly important:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved...” (Mark 16:16a
KJV) And yet, my dear parents, you consider baptism as merely optional and
symbolic, in no way necessary to save a man’s soul.
This alone proves you heed neither Jesus nor your own bibles,
keeping neither all of His commandments, nor all of His words, nor all of His
sayings. Nevertheless, Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me:
and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.”
(Luke 11:23 KJV) Many other examples of your contradictions against Jesus &
Sacred Scripture exist, some of which are in the article I gave you called Catholic
Ritual Defended: How Even a Protestant Bible Shows Catholic Ritual &
Liturgy To Be Exactly What God Has Commanded in the Worship of His True Church
Everywhere in Heaven & on Earth for All Eternity. Should you go on
pretending you are free to believe whatever you want to believe, then you
remain among those who both hate Jesus and despise the Bible. And he who hates
Jesus cannot love his neighbor, since Jesus also declared, “I am the way,
the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John
14:6b-c KJV) Yet if no man can come to Jesus’ Father except that he
follow Jesus’ Way and believe Jesus’ Truth --- keeping all of
Jesus’ commandments, words & sayings --- then how can a man truly
love his neighbor when by his false beliefs and his bad behaviour he tempts his
neighbor into opposing Jesus’ Truth and fighting against Jesus’
Way, thereby also rejecting Jesus’ Life and so winding up in Hell
forevermore, tormented by the agony of everlasting flame? Like Jesus said as
well:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every
branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more
fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in
me, and I in you... If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and
is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are
burned.” (John 15:1-4a, 6 KJV)
You do not “abide” in Jesus, my dear parents, having up
till now spurned Jesus’ “word”. Sacred Scripture demonstrates
this, even your own translations --- translations that helped to convert me to
Roman Catholicism simply by my actually reading them and taking what they said
seriously at face value, instead of trying to explain away tons of verses by
the manmade traditions of a so-called ‘born again christianity’. History
also demonstrates it, since Christians of the first three centuries by their
own words, in writings that the world has available to this very day to peruse
and examine, show how they were Roman Catholic and nothing else all the way
back to the first century. Men who knew the Apostles personally, or who
personally knew the men who knew the Apostles face-to-face, prove, by their
testimony, that the Apostles neither believed what you believe nor taught what
you teach --- instead condemning them as eternally fatal --- Protestants by their woeful ignorance
and haughty rebellion having purposely mangled & misinterpreted a few
biblical verses into meaning what they were never intended to mean, and what
their surrounding context, or verses elsewhere in the Bible, so often of
themselves reveal cannot possibly have been their intended meaning. As the
Apostle Peter said, warning about heretics like you who twist the intended
meaning of the Apostle Paul’s letters, and other parts of Sacred
Scripture, into something damnable and diabolic:
“...even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the
wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles,
speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also
the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing
ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error
of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.” (2 Peter 3:15b-17 KJV)
In summation, your material gifts were appreciated. Unfortunately,
they will not last long on this earth. But what’s even more unfortunate,
your love on this earth will not last much longer... if at all. For by being
“unlearned and unstable”, stubbornly wresting the Apostle
Paul’s divinely-inspired words and other parts of Sacred Scripture ---
“in which are some things hard to be understood” --- into meaning
something that neither God nor the divinely inspired writers ever intended them
to mean, you put yourselves into the company of those who march “unto
their own destruction.” That is to say, you hasten down the Broad Path of
Destruction unto the Everlasting Fire of Hell. (Matthew 7:13-14) There will you
and other rebels gnash your teeth in endless anger against God, hating both Him
and your fellow humanity, whether damned like yourselves or not.
In your minds, you presume this kind of talk to be
‘harsh’ and ‘unloving’, proving all the more how little
you know or acknowledge of the contents of your own bibles. For Jesus, John the
Baptist, Peter, Paul, John, James, Stephen and many others in Sacred Scripture
said just as ‘harsh’ or ‘unloving’ things and even more
so to, or about, the men around them. And you, my dear parents, are like a man
trapped in a burning house, fast asleep. Were someone to risk his life to rouse
the man, telling him to flee to safety, would not this someone be acting in
love for the man’s life? Yet suppose the sleeping man refuses to rouse,
telling the one who warns him to go away and leave him alone so he can go back
to sleep. Would not that someone then be justified in rudely shaking the man
awake, telling him in blunt terms that he will brutally die should he not heed
his words? Then suppose the sleeper calls the one who warns him a fool and a
liar, telling his would-be rescuer that he certainly knows his house
couldn’t at all be on fire, that it is utterly secure and that he himself
is in no danger. Would not that someone --- who is risking his life even by staying
under the same roof with the man while his house burns --- then be justified in
not only having rudely shaken the man back awake, but in calling the stubborn
and haughty man the fool and the liar, excoriating him for his stupidly
complacent behaviour and willfully blind refusal to at least look at the
evidence with his own eyes? Would this someone not do everything possible, even
employing ‘harshness’ in order to snap the man into reality --- a
reality the man clearly does not want to face? Which of the two is actually
loving and which of them unloving?
Even so in our case.
+
+ + 3b. The Singularity of Roman Catholicism + + +
You claim, dear parents, that Roman Catholicism is
‘bondage’. I tell you it is not so, having stood on both your side
of things and now upon the Roman Catholic side. I thus speak out of intimate
knowledge. Rather, the man who looks into the Catholic Faith and obeys it is,
in the divinely inspired words of the Apostle James, like he who ‘...looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a
doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” (James 1:25
KJV) For as Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or
the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore
shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach
them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto
you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20 KJV)
These are verses that you do not care for, they not jiving
naturally with the manmade traditions of your false religion. I know, because I
used to be like you. And I at first as a youngster did not know about these
verses, never having read them or paid attention to them. Then, having read
them as a young man, and looking at them closely, I had to find a way to
explain them away in order to make them not mean what they very plainly say
that they mean. Such is the difficulty of being a self-styled ‘born again
christian’, of not wanting to truly take the Bible at face-value when it
says something very clearly against one’s position. Countless other
examples exist. But these few will suffice. For as long as you refuse to
honestly address them, refusing to admit that you are not infallible --- that
you could indeed, after all, be mistaken about your beliefs since you have no
guarantee from the Creator that you shall never be wrong about religion and
that you couldn’t possibly ever be misled by the Devil into believing a
religious lie or misinterpret your bibles --- then you are of obvious bad will,
clinging to your beliefs not because they are irrefutably true, but simply
because you want to believe they are true irregardless of what the truth
actually is.
And, as shocking and distasteful as it is to your ears to hear, my
dear parents, my saying this is real love. A spiritual love, in fact, that is
far greater and more profound than the mere earthly love you show by giving us
material gifts. Because my gift --- the gift of the Saving Truth --- can keep
you out of Hell and enable you to enter Heaven. I adjure you to take this gift,
to open it reverently, and to put it to good use.
Meanwhile, time grows short. You will not be alive much longer on
this earth, and we will not be around much longer in this vicinity. For I am
called to be a Roman Catholic missioner --- a missionary to those who are lost
in the slavery of all those false religions that are not Catholic --- and I
cannot waste my time on those who are of bad will, arrogantly pretending to
know that which they do not know, blindly insisting that they could not
possibly be wrong even whilst they will not dare to say that they are
infallible. Therefore, if you will not listen, employing good sense and a good
heart to earnestly seek these things out, hearkening to the words of your own
bibles, then I will soon leave your presence altogether. Please use the last
few months wisely before we move. Please talk to me seriously about the
Catholic Faith, utilizing me for my knowledge and my experience. Do not pay
attention to those who call themselves ‘catholic’ that have
embraced your Charismaticism. They were never Catholic in the first place,
having never believed rightly to begin with, or remained loyal to, the
Perpetually Unchanging & Infallible Teachings of God’s Roman Catholic
Church. Had they truly been so or done so, then they would never have converted
to your heresy. As the divinely inspired Apostle Paul said to the Hebrew
Catholics:
“Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken
unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their
conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Be not
carried about with divers and strange doctrines.” (Hebrews 13:7-9a KJV)
The first Protestants of the 16th century did not
remember this admonition, rebelling against “the rule” of
God’s Papacy by denying the God-Given Infallible Teachings of His Church,
that Body of Christ (Colossians 1:24) “which is the church of the living
God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Timothy 3:15b KJV) Being the
Pillar & Ground of the Truth, the Church founded upon the Infallible Rock
of Jesus’ Papacy and against which “the gates of hell shall not
prevail” (Matthew 16:18b KJV), Roman Catholicism is that Unchanging Faith
& Perpetual Body of Jesus Christ, He Who is “the same yesterday, and
to day, and for ever.” In this way real Catholics are “not carried
about with divers and strange doctrines.” Whereas, not only did the first
Protestants get carried away by many different, false and foreign teachings at
their beginning, losing their Catholic Faith and the Hope of Salvation by doing
so, but they have every single one of them changed teachings and altered
practices with reckless abandon every single year, decade and century since
that time. And why?
Because they have no Pillar & Ground of the Truth left to stand
upon, having left the One & Only Pillar & Ground of the Truth long ago.
As Jesus said:
“‘Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine,
and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a
rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat
upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one
that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and
the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and
great was the fall of it.’ And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended
these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them
as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Matthew 7:24-29 KJV)
Dear parents, Jesus has given His Authority to His Body, the Roman
Catholic Church & Her Infallible Papacy, not to you and your ‘born
again christianity’ or to your bibles. She is the House founded upon a
Rock, against which the winds of this wicked and unbelieving world cannot
prevail. While in contrast, your false religion changes with the winds and
tides of time or culture, evolving with every passing fad, fancy and whim. A
simple study of recent history proves this. What you believe is neither the
same as what the first Protestants believed in the AD 1500s, nor even the same
as what the first Evangelics of a hundred years ago believed. Beliefs have even
changed within our lifetimes, as both you yourselves and myself can attest. Nor
can you and your fellow ‘born again christians’ even agree about
what is ‘essential’ to believe and do in order to save your souls.
Every single Protestant, every single Evangelic, every single Charismatic, has
at least a slightly different opinion about things. There is no stability, no
constancy, no solidity. And it is because they do not stand upon the Pillar
& Ground of the Truth --- of Jesus’ Unchanging & Perpetual Saving
Truth.
No other religion rivals that of Roman Catholicism in stability, constancy
and solidity. No other religion comes close to upholding the undeviating
teachings of a Church that brooks no error or tolerates any heresy, guarding
against these diabolic lies by invoking the Gift of the Holy Spirit to teach
infallibly and thus without any chance of being wrong or mistaken.
I bid you to enter into this Church, to become Roman Catholic so as
to save your souls from the much-deserved Wrath of God upon an unbelieving,
rebellious and vile world:
“...behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now
is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2b KJV)
Very sincerely your loving son,
-Paul
A 4TH NOTE TO THE READER:
Some readers may be wondering how the rebuttals as given above came
to exist in the first place. What began it? The letter below, which immediately
preceded the letter of 31 December 2006, answers this question. Notice how
small, in earthly terms, is the spark that lit the fire. Resentment was
smoldering in my parents’ hearts. Not just resentment at being unable to
share December 25th with us anymore, a merely human sentiment, but
resentment at the Saving Truth itself. This is a diabolic sentiment and the
true attitude of all those who are not in the Catholic Church and bear no good
will, being complacently satisfied with their father, the Devil. Ergo, what
really bothered them --- and as became evident in later letters that they sent
to me --- is the fact that I would not give them the honor of bearing the name
of ‘Christian’. This infuriated them, as it will any heretic.
+ + + 4. Letter of 25 December 2006 + + +
+
+ + 4a. The Letter That Started It All + + +
Dear Parents,
Thank you for the gifts you dropped off. There was no need for you
to do so since Christmas is something we can no longer share in common due to
the perpetual rivalry between the Roman Catholic Church and all other religions
--- including those pretending to be Christian --- but we appreciate the
material kindnesses. Some are practical, some pleasant. In either case they are
useful. My family has especially enjoyed the sweets you made, mother. And I,
father, as always am glad to have a Sears card.
Sincerely your son,
-Paul
A 5TH NOTE TO THE READER:
Having gotten the large letter that begins this book, my mother
could hardly wait to reply with a sustained attack against the necessity of
baptism for salvation whilst still trying to continue to uphold the lie of
‘faith alone’. Primarily she did this by quoting lots of verses
& interspersing little liner notes that misinterpreted them based on
nothing other than the thin air of Protestant imagination. She also took a
broad swipe at other Catholic doctrines, seeking to make clear waters murky by
multiplying other subjects. Then, to top it off, she ended with a list of the
Catholic Church’s supposed ‘crimes’ down through the
centuries.
+ + + 5. Letter of 19 February 2007 + + +
+
+ + 5a. The Bible, My Letters & Truth Ignored + + +
My Dear Mother,
No, you do not believe in
the Bible, not even in one of your own translations!
Because the Bible reports Jesus as saying:
“He that believeth and
is baptized shall be
saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16 KJV ---
King James Version)
Whereas you would have Him saying:
“He that believeth shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
(Mark 16:16 RAMV --- Revised Archaic Mother Version)
Who am I supposed to believe --- you, or Jesus? Which am I supposed
to take seriously --- the Bible, or your emails telling me that the Bible
doesn’t mean what it very plainly and obviously says that it means?
For Jesus stated clearly that it is both belief and
baptism that saves a man… and
not belief to the exclusion of baptism. His words couldn’t have been any
simpler, my dear mother! And your heresy has no sensible explanation for why Jesus would blatantly
mention baptism in conjunction with belief to attain salvation in the first
half of the verse, something He should never have done were your false
religion correct. Meanwhile, and in stark contrast to your devilish unbelief,
real Catholics not only take Jesus & Sacred Scripture seriously, not
ignoring His literal words when it comes to belief, baptism & salvation,
but have no problem easily explaining the mention of baptism in the first half
of the verse whilst not in the latter half. Something you would know if you
would just put aside your prejudices and read all of my last email.
Which means you either didn’t read the email entirely or
didn’t read it carefully. Or, worse yet, that you read carefully and
understood it (if only parts of it) but, like a coward or a liar, refuse to
address my specific points with
equally specific counterpoints,
instead focusing solely on arguments or allegations that are beside the
points --- ignoring what your opponent has specifically said --- and by which Protestants like to think they
can ‘win’ the debate. Stage magicians have a name for this
strategy. It’s called ‘sleight-of-hand’. You focus attention
on the thing at hand that is not pertinent for the moment in order to get your
audience to ignore the thing that you don’t want noticed, the very thing
which actually is pertinent at
the moment. In other words, you skip over the very specific aspect of the pertinent topic that I raise, instead
grabbing at whatever other aspects --- or other topics entirely --- you think
can be made to look like they support you, refusing to see my points through specifically to the utter end and hence
reveal, conclusively, where the saving truth resides. Whether wholly
intentional or not, this is exactly what you’ve done. For example:
1.) In your
email of February 15th you still talk as if the Catholic Church
teaches ‘baptism alone’ is what saves a man, when, in fact, my last
email refutes this lie. Yet you ignore the refutation, tilting at a
straw man.
2.) In both
your email of February 15th and your email of February 19th
you still talk like ‘faith alone’ is correct, being purportedly
biblical, when, in fact, my last email went into great detail from your own bibles to show how Sacred Scripture not
only never says that it is faith alone that saves a man, but, in
reality, says the absolute and exact
opposite! Yet you ignore the scriptural evidence, clinging to the imaginary
& unbiblical ‘alone’ in ‘faith alone’.
3.) In your
email of February 15th you still talk as if Jesus means
‘natural birth’ by saying “born of water”, when, in
fact, my last email demonstrates conclusively how good sense, context, grammar & the rest of Sacred Scripture demolish the possibility of this manmade notion
being true. Yet you ignore the proof, regurgitating the same old arguments that
were already successfully destroyed.
4.) In both
your email of February 15th and your email of February 19th
--- as well as in any of your emails that deal with religion --- you still talk
as if it is the ‘bible alone’ upon which you are to base your
religious beliefs, when, in fact, my last email --- and tons of my previous
emails --- very sensibly pointed out how the Bible nowhere says in its
text that it is the ultimate rule upon which someone is to base his religious
beliefs. Yet you ignore this very sensible point, your manmade tradition of ‘scripture alone’ trampling upon
what you claim to respect by both adding to and contradicting what Sacred
Scripture really says about itself.
5.) In both
your email of February 15th and your email of February 19th
--- as well as in any of your emails that deal with religion --- you still talk
as if you can’t be wrong about your religious beliefs or interpreting the
Bible, when, in fact, my previous emails do very sensibly observe how this not
only contradicts yourselves (since, aside from a moment of anger, you’ve never
yet had the nerve to tell me you’re infallible) and contradicts reality
(since you & your peers can never totally agree about what your
bibles or ‘the spirit’ say, hence constantly splitting up over the
years to start new congregations & denominations), but is most hideously
and wickedly hypocritical (since you dare to condemn the Pope for exercising
religious infallibility, all the while you tacitly claim --- by an obstinate refusal to admit that you
could ever be wrong about your religious beliefs or your interpretations of
Sacred Scripture --- to be even more infallible than a Pope, who’s only infallible when officially
teaching the Church and not in
every religious opinion of his personal life!). Yet you ignore these
very sensible observations, pretending in your blindness & arrogance to be
incapable of believing wrongly or misinterpreting the Bible.
I could go on with more points that you ignore, but this is enough
to convict you of careless or willful neglect. Therefore, my dear mother, quit
wasting our time and knuckle down and read everything I say, both carefully
& thoroughly. It doesn’t matter if you find it offensive. Either you
care about The Truth above
all things, or you only believe what you want
to believe irregardless of what the truth is. Should you not get serious and
read everything I have written to you, proving it by grappling with the specific points I make and freely admitting where you are plainly
wrong when it comes to certain religious beliefs and private interpretations of
the Bible, then I will have no more to do with you other than what the Creator
makes unavoidable for me in this life.
And don’t pretend that it’s impossible, considering my
sometimes very long letters. If you can whip out the large letters that
you’ve sent me in your last three emails, doing so twice in less than 24
hours after my emails arrived in your hands, then you can spare the time to
read my letters carefully and to a thorough understanding, taking just as much
time to carefully & thoroughly address my very specific points in them.
Should they be confusing, then humbly say so. Call me on the telephone, or ask
me via an email to call you by telephone, and I will patiently help you to
comprehend what I’m saying. I don’t care how long you’ve lived,
how many years you’ve been a ‘bible believing christian’, how
many ‘bible studies’ you’ve participated in, or how smart you
think you are. No one is all-knowing, and that includes me. The only advantage
I have over you, religiously speaking --- aside from standing upon an
Infallible Church that is the Pillar & Ground of the Truth (1 Timothy
3:15d) --- is that I used to be in your shoes, believing everything you still
believe. Whereas, you’ve never been in my shoes and only get your
so-called ‘knowledge’ of Catholicism from the biased misinformation
of anti-Catholic sources. Consequently, you do not know real Catholicism --- and I know, having stood on both sides, once hating the Catholic
Church and now upholding it!
Nor do I expect anything out of you that I did not myself have to
do. A crush to your pride, mayhap, having to admit that you’ve been wrong
all your life and never did grasp your bibles or interpret them correctly?
Well… guess what? I had to go
through the same thing! I had to admit, back in 1997 to 1998, that I had been
wrong my entire life, that I had never properly understood my bible in spite of
having read it all the way through at least twice over, and several parts many
times more than that. What’s more, that neither was I the first nor would
you be the second, should you convert. Hundreds of thousands of Protestants,
perhaps millions, have converted into the Catholic Church since Luther’s
heinous rebellion back in 1517. Each of them once thought like you, especially
when it came to ‘scripture alone’ and ‘faith alone’ or
the multitude of ‘horrible crimes’ worldly minds love to lambaste
Catholics with, never once thinking to question the allegations, to investigate
them, or to get the Church’s side of things before swallowing whole whatever
they are told by people & historians who have an ax to grind, who hate Jesus Christ’s Roman Catholic
Church.
+
+ + 5b. Re So-Called ‘Crimes’ & Real Catholicism + + +
Which brings me to remark upon your screed against the Catholic
Church, citing various accusations and supposed ‘horrors’. Has it
never occurred to you, my dear mother, that I encountered those barriers early
on during my conversion? Of course not! You’ve never bothered asking me
about the details of my conversion, and you’ve always assumed --- out of
thin air, grounded in nothing but your imagination --- that I couldn’t
possibly have known about, or bothered examining closely, the tired list of
allegations repeated against the Church ad
nauseam since the beginning of the Protestant Rebellion. Furthermore, you
did most willfully and shamefully --- not to mention deceptively --- renege on
your word to discuss these things with me when once, for a very brief time in
May 2001, I met with both you & dad face-to-face, intelligently answering
the grievances you had against the Catholic Church. I left that late spring day
thinking that you would keep your word to continue the discussion, you putting
forth your various objections and I answering them simply, one by one. Instead,
you lied. You neither lived up to your word & our agreement nor
bothered to explain to me why you flaked out. In short, you had not even the
decency to tell me in a timely fashion that you were breaking your word --- you
just left me hanging. Shame upon you!
Meanwhile, had you kept your word, you would have discovered, as
you were already discovering then, talking to me face-to-face nearly six years
ago, that there is an entirely different side of the story from the Catholic
side of things. And, had you continued our discussions, raising more objections
or further details regarding certain objections, then you would have discovered
the historical documentation upon which the allegations are founded and upon
which the Catholic Church’s answers rest. You would, in brief, have
discovered precisely what I discovered during my conversion: that accusations
against the Church are almost always based on prejudice and lies rather than
reason and facts. But how can you learn anything about this subject that you
don’t already know, you who are never wrong about religion or about your
bibles, and whose anti-Catholic sources for such allegations are, of course,
absolutely infallible --- not to mention all-knowing and always honest? Why, if
I was infallible like you are, basing my opinion of the Church on absolutely
infallible, all-knowing & always honest anti-Catholic sources like you do,
then I, too, would never have bothered looking at the other side of things,
hearing what the Catholic Church had to say in defense of Herself!
Again --- shame upon you, mother. Your position is witless and
ridiculous, unbecoming to your intelligence. You have allowed yourself to be
ruled by mindless passions instead of governing yourself with reason and
decency. Therefore, let it be understood:
Should you wish to lob more accusations against the Catholic Church
concerning Her so-called ‘horrors’ or ‘crimes’, then I
will not listen to them unless you are willing to meet with me face-to-face. It
is tedious enough writing long letters in order to refute all of your
unbiblical heresies and anti-Catholic passions; it would be tedious beyond
description trying to address all of your allegations about the supposed
‘crimes’ of the Church for the last two millennia. Nor would it be
worth it, seeing as how you deign to read only small parts of my letters, or
skim over them quickly, and how you have not the good will in the first place
--- a sense of fairness and curiosity --- to go to a library or onto the
Internet to look up sources that accurately uphold the Catholic side of things,
and investigate them thoroughly at length instead of just rehashing
anti-Catholic diatribes & attacks. So, have you the guts to see me in
person? To look me in the eye and talk to me about religion, listening to what
a real Catholic has to say in defense of his Faith? Or are you content to
cohabit with those who hate Catholicism only, having nothing good to say about
God’s Church ever, bearing only hatred and animosity toward Her?
Finally, had you actually bothered reading all of my last
email unto a thorough understanding, then you would not have had the
temerity to accuse me of not addressing the verses by the Apostle Paul in say,
for instance, Romans or Galatians, that you want to think support your heresy
of ‘faith alone’. Because I did
address them. That’s what the whole last half of the email was about! In
it I refute ‘faith alone’. Refuting ‘faith alone’
successfully, one then sees that Paul can’t have been upholding only faith to the exclusion of all works or law, but that, rather, he
had to have been disparaging only Old
Covenant works or law in blunt contrast to all New Covenant faith and works or law. Showing this, I
next went on to dip into his letters at length, irrefutably revealing how his
own words demonstrate the very thing I’ve just said. Which is but more
proof of your failure to examine my last letter… or of a willful refusal
to address it despite having read it.
And, in closing, another piece of information that you have either
never troubled to discover by actually talking in depth with me about religion,
or that, having been told it by my wife, you never troubled to take seriously
and remember:
We are not what the world today calls ‘catholic’.
Self-styled ‘catholicism’ of the past fifty years is a charade. Almost
everyone in the world today who still calls himself by the name of
‘catholic’ is not
Catholic but is a phony and a fraud. This much you should be able to
understand. Because, however wrong you are about religion, touting your heresy
as the ‘truth’, you are right about one thing --- the world is in
apostasy. That apostasy is a wholesale rebellion against and rejection of the
saving truths of Jesus’ Roman Catholic Church. The Enemy has not only
arrayed his human servants against the Catholic Faith everywhere in the world,
animating them by horrible spirits of blasphemy & uncleanness, but he has
even entered into those who should be, or once were, Catholic, causing them to
lose the Faith by denying it & disobeying it. This has happened in such overwhelming
force in the last half century that most men have become utterly clueless about
what has happened, both knowing and caring so little about the Faith that they
don’t even realize how the men everyone imagines to be leaders in the
Catholic Church are not actually so. This includes the men that most people
think are ‘popes’.
Shocking as it might sound, it is neither unprecedented nor
unexpected. A fake pope is called an ‘antipope’. At least thirty
such men have existed prior to the past century; John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul
I, John Paul II & Benedict XVI are now five of recent times. Moreover, both
the Bible and Catholic prophets have clearly foretold the Great Apostasy in
which we are living. Hence, however terrible it is and however few we may now be,
the real Catholic is not caught off guard. We continue to live as real
Catholics have always lived… and always shall. I pray for your
conversion. Your loving son,
-Paul
P.S.:
Because you have chosen not to read my last email carefully unto a full
understanding, then I am sending it to you again. Do not dare to
‘rebut’ me until you have fully digested and thoroughly
comprehended its text! You may call me, or have me call you, should something
in it confuse you. Notwithstanding, I have confidence in your intelligence. It
is not, I wager, that you cannot
understand --- it is that you do not
want to understand. Please overcome your bias…
A 6TH
NOTE TO THE READER:
Once again my mother could barely wait to press the counterattack,
renewing the diversion of assaulting someone’s reputation --- in this
case, the spotless character of the Catholic Church --- by alleging a series of
horrible crimes. As well, she asserted the usual lies about Catholic doctrine
& practice that have been spread widely since the Protestant Rebellion in
the 16th century. Then, later, in another letter shortly thereafter,
she boasted how they would never trust the Catholic Church and would never
convert, pretending to have ‘proven’ the biblicalness of her heresy
whilst ‘refuting’ Roman Catholicism.
That same day my father, who is normally very reticent to debate,
got into the act by sending a few instructions of a business nature
(we’ve rented from them for six years) --- instructions I’ve edited
out as not pertinent to the topic at hand --- and then launching his own
counterattack. His accusations will be made plain by the rebuttal in section
seven following the response here to my mother’s letter in section six.
+ + + 6. 1st Letter of 26 February 2007 + + +
+
+ + 6a. Presuppositional Heresy With an Ax to Grind + + +
My Dear Mother,
What you have made clear is that you believe what you believe regardless of what Jesus &
the Bible say. You don’t even make any pretence at suspending personal
judgment till examining the words of Sacred Scripture thoroughly! Instead, you
judge first based upon the manmade traditions of a ‘born
again’ Protestantism, and then, having already made up your mind,
try to make your bible fit your prejudices in spite of the contradictions.
As far as ‘harassing’ you goes, stop speaking heresy in
my hearing and I will stop rebuking you. After all, I have ‘the
right’ to say what I think, do I not? Indeed, have I not ‘the
freedom’ to defend & uphold Catholicism wherever I may be in this
land of so-called opportunity? Or is this
privilege of ‘free speech’ to speak one’s mind reserved only
for heretics --- and other worldlings --- like yourselves?
Concerning the purported ‘abuses’ of the Catholic
Church, I repeat from what you either conveniently ignore in my previous letter
or never bothered to read to begin with:
“…you
did most willfully and shamefully --- not to mention deceptively --- renege on
your word to discuss these things with me when once, for a very brief time in
May 2001, I met with both you & dad face-to-face, intelligently answering
the grievances you had against the Catholic Church. I left that late spring day
thinking that you would keep your word to continue the discussion, you putting
forth your various objections and I answering them simply, one by one. Instead,
you lied. You neither lived up to your word & our agreement nor
bothered to explain to me why you flaked out. In short, you had not even the
decency to tell me in a timely fashion that you were breaking your word --- you
just left me hanging. Shame upon you!”
In short, I not only can answer your accusations against the
Catholic Church but was answering them. It is you who backed out, refusing to hear my answers any
longer, and doing so in the most cowardly & underhanded fashion.
Therefore, you are going to have to show good will and consent to meet
with me face-to-face --- or at least in real time by telephone --- to pick up
where we left off. Continue accusing the Church without hearing me out and you
are a liar twice over, slandering without taking the time to know the
other side or, worse yet, slandering despite knowing that the other side is
innocent of your evil accusations. Or do you persist in presuming that the
historians you read are infallible, all-knowing, perfectly moral & never
dishonest? Meanwhile, I am not going to waste time writing at length against
these charges when you not only refuse to read my letters both carefully &
completely --- making my efforts on your behalf useless --- but when you
won’t even take the words of your own bibles seriously, believing what
they say!
+
+ + 6b. Saintly Veneration Revisited + + +
Finally, and as I have said again and again, Catholics do not
‘worship’ the Blessed Virgin Mary as if She were God. Rather, we
venerate Her as the Greatest Creature That God Has
Ever Created. Or are you able to imagine some honor better than bearing
God-made-man within your womb, imparting to Him your very flesh? It is
therefore not Catholics who manufacture this honor but God Himself Who bestowed
it! Indignation over the word ‘worship’ is a result of archaic
English. ‘Worship’ hundreds of years ago did not mean adoration
which is to be reserved for God alone. An English-speaking man could talk casually
of ‘worshipping’ a king, ‘worshipping’ his father, or
‘worshipping’ a hero. No one then thought him to mean anything
other than honoring them with an honor proper to their position in life.
Whereas now, after the influence of Protestantism for nearly five hundred
years, the term ‘worship’ has come to be associated with adoration
of the Creator, and He solely. Consequently, indicting Catholics for
‘worshipping’ Mary is like trying to hang a 300-year-old Englishman
today for saying he ‘worships’ his father. And if it is wrong to honor
a saint in Heaven, then why can men honor people of importance on earth? As I
said in an email of 14 November 2005, which, apparently, you either
didn’t read or conveniently ignore:
“Point in fact --- you accuse real Catholics of
‘worship of a human being’ (your words). This is nonsense. No real
Catholic worships a saint as if the saint were God. The Catholic Church has
never taught their members to do so, nor has She
failed to rebut such Protestant lies. So where do you get such drivel? You get
it from out of your imaginations, imitating the hatred that your father, the
Devil, has for the Catholic Church, being the Body of His Holy Foe, the real
Jesus. Or, should I say, you have gotten it from the imaginations of earlier
Protestants, who have passed it on down the generations for the last few
hundred years. And you believe such lies because you are arrogant (being
unwilling to admit that you might be wrong when it comes to the Catholic
Religion), afraid (being unwilling to venerate and honor the saints as they
deserve and as God commands, since this would go against the wishes of your
father, the Devil) and blind (being unwilling to stop your lying about
Catholics ‘worshipping’ saints). Even though real Catholics and
their Church have said repeatedly for the last few hundred years that they do
not worship saints as though they were equal to the Creator --- and even though
I have told you this before and tell you again now. Or do you accuse me of
lying about my own intent and my own mind when I venerate and honor the saints?
Are you God? Are you able to read my mind and its intent? No, you aren’t.
Rather, you believe the lies of your heretical religion which says that praying
to saints, and honoring them with statues or bowing down or so forth, is equivalent
to ‘worshipping’ them like God or committing pagan idolatry.
“Which is in itself a foolish accusation. Or do you accuse
people of pagan idolatry for making statues of great men and putting them in
some public place where other men may honor them by looking upon them in
admiration and affection? Of course you don’t. Yet you have a double
standard, being blind, and aren’t willing --- and are unable --- to see
your own inconsistency. But you will protest that people who aren’t pagan
don’t kneel before these statues. Are you then so ignorant of what people
used to do toward mere men just a century or two previous --- and still do in a
few places --- where they bow down before a sovereign king or nobleman or
leader to show obedience and honor to him? Or do you accuse men of pagan
idolatry for doing so? Then you are also ignorant of your own bibles. For what
do we find that Joseph’s brothers did in Genesis while in
“‘And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it
was that sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph’s brethren came, and
bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.’ (Genesis
42:6 KJV)
“And later about the same:
“‘And when Joseph came home, they brought him the
present which was in their hand into the house, and bowed themselves to
him to the earth... And they bowed down their heads, and made obeisance.’
(Genesis 43:26, 28b KJV)
“Now you well know, my dear parents, that Joseph was a Godly
man, being a wonderful practitioner of the One True Religion of the Old Covenant.
Hence, we cannot accuse Joseph of tolerating a forbidden practice, of something
that displeases God. Therefore, it is not axiomatically wrong to
bow down before someone other than the Creator. No, there are only two sensible
questions to ask prior to doing so. First, is this someone worthy of our honor?
And, second, do we displease God by doing so? For instance, it would displease
God to bow down before the Devil or a demon, or before the statue of a pagan
god --- which is nothing but the image of a demon. Contrarily, saints certainly
are worthy of men’s honor since they have won the race that the
Apostle Paul talks about… [e.g., in 1 Corinthians 9.24-27 & Hebrews
12:1], residing in Heaven as perfect and sharing in the Glory of the Creator as
their reward. And how do men treat those who win great races or other important
contests or sporting events? By honoring them! That we no longer do so nowadays
by bowing down to them is simply a measure of our ‘democratization’
and ‘protestantization’. For men are nowadays so ignorant and proud
that they refuse to bow down before anyone and anything --- even the Creator.
“And statues? Well, how else is a man on this physical,
visible earth to remember the saint who is now in a spiritual, invisible
Heaven? He can’t normally see him anymore on earth. Consequently,
Catholics do the next best thing by fashioning statues of them. But if you are
still so foolish as to think that Catholics ‘divinely worship’ a
statue by bowing down or kneeling before it, then you are also so foolish as to
think that a man ‘romantically loves’ the picture of his wife that
he kisses every night prior to going to bed when he is away many miles and many
days from her. And if you do not condemn the man for fondly kissing the picture
of his far away wife --- knowing that he does not confuse the picture with her,
as if it actually were her in reality, nor that he romantically loves the
picture more than her or instead of her, but only because of her and
thus loves her through the picture as a precious reminder of her ---
then you are capable of beginning to understand why a Catholic bows down or
kneels before the statue of a saint whom he loves and admires as one of
God’s Holy Ones.”
So, then, dear mother, let us have no more of your nonsense about
real Catholics ‘worshipping’ Queen Mary as if She were God. You
have already lied about being willing to talk to me about religion some six
years ago and you lie repeatedly about what your own bibles say. Do not
compound your sins by lying again about Catholics & the Blessed Virgin
Mary. Take what I have said above --- now for the second time --- and, if you
have a beef with it, address the points in it specifically and don’t just lob accusatory generalizations at
Roman Catholicism that totally ignore the specifics
of what I have said. Either that or don’t dare to mention something
religious to me ever again… for I will admonish the falsehoods of
your heresy wherever it is necessary.
I pray for the conversion of your souls to the Catholic Faith, you
& dad both, in spite of your boasts to the contrary. I trust that you are
capable of reading & understanding what I have written despite its small
font. You will know, too, despite the lack of a large font as used in your last
email, that I also mean what I say, with this proviso:
That whether or not I remain a faithful Catholic, or even a true
Catholic, the testimony I speak today remains faithful & true forever and
ever. For, in contrast to the two of you, who can claim no infallibility
and thus are left with no sure foundation upon which to stand when
trying to divine the truth, especially when it comes to interpreting your
bibles, the Church upon which I stand is the Infallible Body of Jesus Christ
and can never teach a lie. She
is the Pillar & Ground of the Truth
(1 Timothy 3:15d), being the Body of He Who is the Way, the Truth & the Life (John 14:6b), possessing as well He Who is
the Spirit of Truth. (John 14:17a,
15:26c) Ergo, whether or not I fall away (and may the Triune God of the Roman
Catholic Church, being the Only True God & Creator of All That Exists, not
allow this to happen!), the Truth can never fall away from or deny itself.
Catholicism stands firm, unchanging by the Sovereign Command of the Almighty
Creator Himself. May Queen Mary, the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mother of God &
Vanquisher of All Heresies, by the Grace of Her Son enable you to see this.
Your always loving offspring,
-Paul
+ + + 7. 2nd Letter of 26 February 2007 + + +
+
+ + 7a. Concerning Cults & Intolerance + + +
My Dear Father…
Concerning your refusal to meet face-to-face regarding religion, I
tell you plainly:
Stop accusing the Catholic Church of so-called ‘crimes’
when you aren’t willing to hear me answer these accusations. Or have I
not ‘the right’ to speak my own mind? As a result, should you
continue to slander Catholicism, then I will continue to chastise you wherever
it becomes necessary.
As to your ‘confidence’ that I am wrong, there is no
true certainty in the face of good sense & solid facts to the contrary.
These I have offered up repeatedly and at length. You claim to respect the
Bible; I have shown in great detail how your own bibles refute your religious
lies. You & mother have either failed to read these rebuttals entirely,
skimmed over them carelessly or only in part, or perused them properly but then
chosen to simply ignore their good sense & solid facts by not addressing
their specific points with specific responses, acknowledging where
you have been mistaken. Such are not the actions of those who love the truth,
seeking it with humble hearts, but of those who love their prejudices &
opinions regardless of what the truth is.
Concerning your allegation that real Catholicism is a
‘cult’:
1.) Is it
‘intolerant’ to uphold the truth? If so, then why do you tell me I
am wrong? Isn’t this intolerant
of you? Or is it just a numbers game? That is to say, there are more of us than
there are of you --- so you must be
wrong. And yet by this reasoning (“you think everybody has to agree with
you --- you’re right & everyone else is wrong”, your words to
me, father), then the Prophet Elijah was in a ‘cult’ by being the
only man to oppose the apostate Jews, and but one of seven thousand (out of a nation of millions) who had
not kissed the feet of the pagan god, Baal! (1 Kings 18 & 19)
You see the point, my dear father. Truth does not depend on the
number of people that uphold it. One man could be wrong and everybody else is
right. Or, conversely, one man could be right and everybody else is wrong ---
dead wrong. The only way to know, one way or another, is to exercise good sense
and utilize solid facts. Refuse to do this when it comes to religion and a man
incurs the Wrath of God, He permitting that man to become enslaved by religious
deception as punishment for hating His Saving Truth. As the Apostle Paul
warned:
“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of
his coming: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power
and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of
unrighteousness in them that perish;
because they received not the love of
the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that
they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had
pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief
of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the
obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand
fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our
epistle.” (2 Thessalonians 2:8-15 KJV)
Protestants like yourself, my father, have not the love of the
truth, instead loving your own manmade traditions & personal opinions about
what the Bible says, rejecting the divine traditions God gave through His Son
& His Son’s Apostles “by word” and not merely by
“epistle”, part of this tradition of “word” being how
men are to correctly understand the meaning of the Bible!
+
+ + 7b. Anger in Defense of the Holy Is Imperative + + +
2.) There
is nothing ‘extreme’ about my anger, any more than there would be
something ‘extreme’ about your anger against a foreigner who dared
to slander the United States and blow up our cities. But, of course, I have not
threatened to choke you to death, nor have I stalked you with a gun or tried to
kill you --- all things natural to men who are enraged at the one who would
attack his country. So, then, your accusing me of an ‘extreme’ anger
must rest merely upon my words. To wit, what I have said about you when it
comes to the subject of religion. At this point the question now becomes,
“Have I said something untrue? Or have I alleged against you that which
is not just?” And the answer is, “No, my statements are true. And
my allegations are therefore just.”
This you do not want to believe in spite of all of the good sense
& solid facts that I have sent your way. Nevertheless, take a step back and
consider. However much you do not want to believe it is true, you must admit
how, given that I honestly proclaim it to be so, it is thus entirely just for
me to allege what I allege. Namely, given that your ‘born again
christianity’ really isn’t true Christianity, then, however much
you hate the idea, it is entirely just for me to denounce you as heretics and
rebels. Now, is this ‘extreme’ anger… or merely the truth as
I know it? And, given that I know it to be true, is it ‘wrong’ for
me to despise your heresy… or is my zeal not pleasing to God?
Dear father, heed the words of your own bible:
“And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up
to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves,
and the changers of money sitting: and
when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and
the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew
the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, ‘Take these things hence;
make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.’ And his disciples
remembered that it was written, ‘The zeal
of thine house hath eaten me up.’” (John 2:13-17 KJV, quoting Psalm
69:9)
Was Jesus’ anger in the
“Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which
indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s
bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear
righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build the tombs
of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say,
‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not
have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Wherefore
ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the
children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye
up then the measure of your fathers. Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the
damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some
of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your
synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon you
may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of
righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these
things shall come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:27-36 KJV)
Well, now, Jesus wasn’t too gentle
with them… was He? He spoke very bluntly, and He spoke
‘harshly’. That is to say, He said things in a way that was
guaranteed to antagonize. Why, then, did he say it that way? Wasn’t Jesus
supposed to be all ‘loving’ and ‘nice’ all the time? Or
is there, after all, a time when frankness & severity are called for ---
when someone needs to get ‘extreme’ in his anger?
The answer is obvious. Furthermore, given
both your heresy and your stubbornness by remaining in it, daring to oppose,
ridicule and otherwise attack my Catholicism, which is the Eternal Faith of
Jesus Christ, then my frankness & severity against the two of you is really
not all that frank or severe. It is, in fact, rather muted and subdued, far
less than what you deserve, and far less than what the Almighty Creator will
excoriate you with should you dare to appear before Him having died obstinately
rebellious in the lies of your heretical religion.
+
+ + 7c. Why Protestants Are Offended + + +
3.) Control, my dear father?
Control? You think I want to control what others think and believe? Has it
never occurred to you that you are the pot calling the kettle black? For what
has been the point of you opposing my Catholicism except that you want to
change me back into a Protestant and hence ‘control’ my life?
And if you think that’s ridiculous, then perhaps you’ll
want to retract your accusation. Because what you really mean to say, should
you stop and think about it carefully, is this: “Paul, I don’t like
you telling us that we’re wrong.” Yet why should this offend you? I
mean, aren’t you grown up adults and used to being told, at least
occasionally, that you’re mistaken? Then why should this be any
different? Ah, here is where we hit pay dirt. Here is where the rubber meets
the road. Because what you really, really mean to say, should you stop and
think about it very carefully, is this: “Paul, if what you say is true,
then your mother & I have to change our lives completely, admitting that we
were wrong. I don’t like this.”
Ah, there… there is
the real reason you accuse me of wanting to ‘control’ you,
of wanting to ‘control’ others. Because if what I say is true ---
and it most definitely is --- then, yes, people do indeed, after all, truly
need to change their lives entirely, admitting that they were wrong!
No one likes to do this. No one wants to admit that his whole life
has been mistaken, that his religion has been a grievous offense against God.
It requires effort to recognize this in the first place, extraordinary humility
to admit it in the second place, and incredible work to put the change into
practice in the third place. Ergo, the relevant question for you to answer
becomes the following:
Why
do you love your own comfort more than you love the truth?
In summation, father, I ‘bug’ you & mother about
religion for a very simple reason. Two simple reasons, as a matter of fact.
One, because the commandments of the Almighty Creator require me to
uphold His One True Religion of Roman Catholicism in opposition to all of the
false religions made by men, including your phony ‘born again
christianity’.
And, two, because there is no other way for you to save your souls
than that you become Roman Catholic, my proclaimed ‘love’ for you
being both useless & imaginary if I have not a love real enough to
contradict you when you are perilously wrong.
My dear father, I have given you innumerable verses from Sacred
Scripture to consider, refuting your misinterpretations. When are you going to
take the Bible seriously? Indeed, when are you going to take God’s
Church, the Pillar & Ground of the Truth (1 Timothy 3:15d), seriously? May
Queen Mary, the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mother of God & Vanquisher of All
Heresies, by the Grace of Her Son enable you to do so.
Your always loving offspring,
-Paul
A 7TH
NOTE TO THE READER:
My mother responded typically, claiming she wouldn’t argue
‘scripture interpretation’ and repeating the same old tired
allegations of ‘crimes’ against the Catholic Church. For obvious
reasons, too. Because when you can’t win on biblical grounds --- and the
heretic cannot, confronted by Catholics who actually know the Bible (and
especially by converts who know the heretics’ bibles!) --- then what else
is there to do except fall back upon ad hominem attacks against
members of the Church? I.e., aside from humbly admitting the truth, what else
can one do except to smear the reputation of the Church with false & unjust
accusations?
I thus denounced my parents for investigating Catholicism
inadequately, relying only on anti-Catholic sources such as other heretics,
traitors who converted to heresy, or the many so-called ‘catholics’
of the last century, without giving loyal Catholics a chance to defend the
Faith fully in their hearing. I pointed out the obvious --- that I was raised
by them and hence know all of their arguments against the Church already.
Consequently, I know for a fact they haven’t studied Catholicism
adequately, their accusations but a retread of years past, their knowledge
limited only to the anti-Catholic side of things and their scriptural
misinterpretations plainly not anticipating the very sensible rebuttals of real
Catholics. Nevertheless, my letter of 28 February 2007 consisting primarily of
quotes from my previous responses, it is not worth reproducing here.
My mother then responded with more of the same and insisted she had
read all of my letters. Which may be true, or became true as I chastised them
through the weeks, but, of course, reading everything isn’t by itself a
guarantee the reader will then grapple with the specifics, honestly admitting
facts & where he is wrong. Indeed, reading it all doesn’t even mean
that the reader is examining it carefully unto a full understanding!
+ + + 8. Letter of 2 March 2007 + + +
+
+ + 8a.
Getting Down to Brass Tacks
+ + +
My Dear Mother,
If, as you claim, you “have read everything” (your
words, 2nd email of 1 March 2007), then why do you continually
make statements about Roman Catholicism that are false?
For instance, in my letter of 14 February 2007, I very clearly
communicated --- and explained in some detail, referring to your own bible ---
how the Catholic Church teaches that both belief and baptism are
necessary for salvation. Whereas, in your email of 15 February 2007, you
slander Catholics, arguing against our Faith by acting as if the Church teaches
only baptism will save a man.
Or how about the charge you twice pressed on February 19th
& 21st (not to mention in years past, too) that Catholics
“worship” the Blessed Virgin Mary? This in spite of me having very
clearly, and at some length, refuted this lie in my email of 14 November
2005 and which I quoted to you again on 26 February 2007.
The conclusion is simple, my dear mother. Either you are lying
to me about reading everything or you are lying about me
despite having read everything. The former means you haven’t read
carefully & thoroughly, regardless of what you say; the latter means that
you have, yet go about slandering Catholics like me knowing full well your
allegations are false.
Meanwhile, you ignore all that is devastating to your heresy. You
pretend to be infallible --- never admitting you could be wrong when it comes
to your religion or to your bible --- thereby revealing the immense pride at
the root of your rebellion against God & His Church, as well as the
horrendous hypocrisy you brandish by shamelessly condemning a real Pope for
doing less than what you claim to be able to do! Would it hurt you simply to
acknowledge that it’s possible for you to be wrong? It’s not
even going so far as saying you’re wrong for sure about any belief in
particular… it’s just admitting the humanly obvious, that you can,
indeed, make a mistake.
Ah, but therein lies the crux. Because if you admit the obvious ---
that you can be mistaken about things, including your religion and your
bible --- then why should I or why should anyone accept your beliefs and your
interpretations carte blanche? Hence why you continuously duck this
point. Hence why you must also pretend to rely on your bibles. Because if you
aren’t infallible --- and you aren’t! --- then how in
the world can you get away with expecting anyone to accept your beliefs as most
certainly true?
Only… where in the Bible does it say that the
Bible is the sole source or ultimate authority for what a person is to believe
when it comes to religion? And the answer:
It doesn’t say this.
Uh, say again?
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Bible ‘alone’
is the source of God’s words or that the Bible ‘alone’
is the ultimate expression of God’s authority on earth.
Period.
So, um… where do you get your idea that you should rely on
your bible alone as the foundation or guide for your religious beliefs? And the
answer:
From out of men’s imaginations.
Uh, say one more time?
It is a manmade tradition that men like yourselves choose
to believe irregardless of what the Bible actually does say.
End of sentence.
Ah… but then we start to get to the bottom of this. Now we
start to see why it’s so important for you not to ‘argue’
about things. Now we see why you retract into a turtle shell, angry that
someone like me should dare to oppose you and condemn you for what you are --- charlatans.
Because in my doing so, I call your bluff. You aren’t infallible, so you
have no ironclad way of proving you’re right about your beliefs and
always correct about interpreting the Bible. Pushed up against the wall ---
confronted by me pointing out your mistakes or your contradictions when it
comes to your beliefs & your interpretations --- you then snarl nastily,
change the subject, invoke a blizzard of the Church’s alleged
‘crimes’ or make lame excuses about how you’re not going to
debate with me over ‘scripture interpretation’. Anything to not
face the obvious:
You’re not infallible and the Bible isn’t the only way
God talks to us.
But if you’re not infallible and your bibles nowhere say that
they’re the only way God infallibly talks to men, then where do you get
off acting so cocksure about, oh, say, works & baptism not being
necessary to our salvation along with belief? Especially when your very
own bibles most literally & bluntly say the opposite! For example:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved…” (Mark 16:16a KJV)
And also:
“Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and
not by faith only.” (James 2:24 KJV)
As I have said several times already, this is pretty simple stuff.
You like to boast about how easy it is to understand Sacred Scripture, how you
don’t need an infallible Church to tell you what the Bible means…
well, how about now? Aren’t the verses above starkly obvious,
mother & father? Or do you only look at the verses that aren’t so
blunt about works & baptism being necessary for salvation along with belief
in order to justify your very personal & very fallible interpretations of
the Bible?
How about it, mother? You bragged in one of your letters (email of
15 February 2007) about how the Epistle of James is one of your favorite books,
about how you memorized it as a young girl. Or did you skip over uncomfortable
parts like that quoted above?
It’s funny, in a strange sad way. Because the Bible nowhere
says baptism isn’t necessary for salvation, and the Bible nowhere
says that it is faith alone that justifies a person… So
where do you get the nerve to believe what Sacred Scripture doesn’t
say? Oh, that’s right. It’s not the Bible that guides
you… it’s your personal prejudices --- your manmade
traditions --- that determine your beliefs already for you before
you read the Bible. All you’ve got to do is to selectively squish
certain verses into your pre-established ideas while simultaneously either
ignoring or explaining away the obvious statements to the contrary in all those
verses that don’t so neatly fit into your manmade traditions!
So let me see if I’ve got this --- and I do, since I used to
be like you and believed the same thing. The Bible nowhere says
baptism isn’t necessary for salvation and the Bible nowhere
says that it is faith alone that justifies a man. Nonetheless, you
choose out of the blue to believe what the Bible doesn’t say.
Meantime, the Bible most definitely & simply does say that
baptism is necessary for salvation (Mark 16:16a) and the Bible most
simply & definitely does say that it takes works along
with faith to justify a man. (James 2:24) So how, again, do you have the
audacity to say I have to believe what you believe about works & baptism,
and where do you get the nerve to say I’m wrong and you’re right?
It doesn’t get much easier than this, my dear parents.
I’ve told you once and I will tell you again:
The truth is not the truth because you believe it is so.
Rather, the truth is what is true regardless of what you want to believe
is so.
This I faced in my own life, converting to the Catholic Church in
1997. And this is what the two of you must face in your own life, condemned to
the Flames of Neverending Hell should you lay your hoary heads into the grave
apart from Jesus’ Roman Catholic Body. Because, using those two simple
examples above, that works & baptism are, after all --- and as it plainly
says in your own bibles, it nowhere clearly saying otherwise elsewhere to the
contrary --- made by God Himself to be necessary for a man’s salvation,
we see how Roman Catholicism infallibly upholds the teaching of Sacred
Scripture in a most holy & irreproachable manner whilst your so-called
‘born again christianity’ fallibly contradicts the teaching of the
Bible in a most foul & shameless way.
Which is why I don’t ‘give it up’, my dear
mother. I cannot, since God commands the opposite, that I must uphold His Roman
Catholic Faith… and as revealed in your very own bibles, quite plainly
& simply, it nowhere saying the contrary. I also cannot, since God commands
all men to enter His Son’s Body, the Roman Catholic Church, granting Her
the Spirit-endowed gift of infallibility for the purpose of preserving His
Teachings untainted & unconquered by the heinous lies of the Devil & by
the sniveling mendacity of those men who serve him, being, like him, wickedly
unbelieving & most stubbornly rebellious. In the face of this hellish
revolt, God provides the means of salvation for undeserving men, they needing
only to humbly believe & penitently obey.
+
+ + 8b. “If Ye Love Me, Keep My Commandments” + + +
And, knowing that I most adamantly profess what I have just said
--- and I do, as you well realize, it not being otherwise explicable why I
would endure your scorn & wrath when I have so many other duties & burdens
to bear --- it is as well because I do truly & most sincerely care about
the two of you. In short, that I love you. However, love is not just doing what
the loved one wants you to do. That is not true love when the stakes are high
and the circumstances perilous. Real love means doing what is best for the
loved one especially when his wishes are horribly contrary to his own actual
welfare. Indeed, real love, as I explicated at length in my email of 14
February 2007, is to love God above all other things with all one’s
heart, all one’s soul, all one’s mind & all one’s might.
(Mark 12:30) And to love God means, both unavoidably & inextricably, to
obey His Commandments:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments... He that
hath my commandments, and keepeth them,
he it is that loveth me... If a man love
me, he will keep my words... He that loveth me
not keepeth not my
sayings...” (John 14:15, 21a, 23b, 24a KJV)
Moreover, that the fate of those who refuse to obey His
Commandments is Hell:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every
branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth
more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word [teachings & commandments]
which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in
the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am
the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in
me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not
in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men
gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned…
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in
my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in
my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his
love.” (John 15:1-6, 9-10 KJV)
This from the Apostle of Love & Jesus’ Beloved Disciple,
John.
The upshot is vivid, my dear parents. You contradict Jesus &
the Bible for the sake of clinging to your “tradition of men” (Mark
7:8b KJV) when it comes to the Doctrines of Baptism & Works. Because you
hate the real Jesus, then you also hate His Body, the real Church. His real
Church being Roman Catholic and none other --- plainly upholding what Sacred
Scripture teaches while you despise the same despite your charade of relying on
the Bible --- you do both mindlessly & vehemently loathe and excoriate Catholicism,
cursing he who dares to chastise you. And not because I have gone out of my way
to chastise you --- but because I merely dare to speak & live like a real
Catholic, and dare to oppose you when you have the temerity to speak against
God’s Church or vaunt your heresy in my hearing.
Yet you cannot defend your heresy from the Bible since the Bible
was not written to defend your heresy, it instead being the Divine Product of
Spirit-inspired men who were writing to foretell Jesus & His
Catholic Body, the New Covenant Church, or of men who were writing to fulfill
Jesus & His Catholic Body during the times of the New Covenant Church. Your
heresies, then, are nothing but perversions & deformities of Sacred
Scripture, ignoring & repudiating the same where it contradicts you. E.g.:
To uphold your heresy regarding baptism, the Bible would somewhere
have to say, straight out, that baptism of water is not necessary for
salvation. Yet it doesn’t. What’s more, Jesus would have had
to say something like the following:
“He that believeth shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16 RAMV --- Revised Archaic
Mother Version)
Instead, Jesus clearly said the contrary to what you want to
believe:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;
but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16 KJV)
Your heresy has no sensible explanation for why Jesus
would say what He said about baptism being necessary, along with belief, for
being saved in Mark 16:16a. In fact, per your heresy, this is not only the last
thing in the world he should have said, it flat out demolishes your heretical
notion. So what do you do? The only thing you can…
You totally ignore His words in Mark 16:16a, pretending they
don’t exist or somehow don’t count --- which amounts to the same
thing as pretending they don’t exist.
Meanwhile, when it comes to ‘faith alone’, you love to
harp on those passages in Romans, Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians or
what-have-you that seem, in your blinded minds, to support your heresy. And
this in spite of the fact that not a one of them says, straight out, that it is
faith alone that justifies or saves a man. Whereas explicitly
to the contrary God by His Holy Spirit inerrantly says through James
how it is works, in addition to faith, that justifies a
man… and not just ‘faith alone’.
How much clearer does it have to get, my dear mother? Or did you
conveniently skip over those passages in James as a young girl, when memorizing
his epistle, that didn’t support your ‘faith alone’ heresy?
+
+ + 8c. Further on the Jews
+ + +
Ergo, and as I have already very sensibly & factually
demonstrated from your own bibles in the letter I sent you on February 14th,
the Apostle Paul couldn’t possibly have been attacking all works, period,
when castigating ‘works’ or ‘law’ in his various
epistles. He wasn’t attacking all works sum total, rather, he was
attacking the heresy of Judaizers who were infiltrating the ranks of real
Catholics in the 1st century, spreading the lie that men in the Catholic
Church had to be circumcised & obey Moses’ ceremonial rituals in
order to be saved. This, taught Paul contrarily, is damnable heresy. It is why
he railed against the Jews, with whom he was formerly in union, religiously
speaking. For instance:
“For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God
which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things
of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed
the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and
they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to
fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is
come upon them to the uttermost.” (1 Thessalonians
2:14-16 KJV)
These are the same Jews who declared in response to Pilate washing
his hands of Jesus’ Blood:
“His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Matthew 27:25b
KJV)
A statement that poor Mel Gibson --- who is no real Catholic ---
was afraid to put subtitles to in his film, The Passion of the Christ,
which was otherwise a very loyal rendering of the Gospels. And why was he
afraid? Because almost all Jews to this day remain thoroughly outraged at Jesus
Christ and consumed with hatred against His Body, the Roman Catholic Church.
Therefore, they pulled every publicity stunt that they could contrive to paint
him as an ‘anti-semitic’ monster and his film as an evil attack
upon all Jews throughout the world everywhere. Indeed, they even dared to hint
that the Bible --- even the Gospels! --- were filled with
‘anti-semitic’ vitriol against the poor, helpless & downtrodden
Jew, nimbly ignoring how nearly all of the Bible’s primary characters are
either Jewish or the ancestors of Jews, including Jesus, Mary, Peter, Paul
& many others who figure so prominently in the multitude of Catholic saints
as holy followers of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and His Jewess
Mother, the Virgin Mary.
Nevertheless, these biblical facts the more condemn you. For you,
being the typical Charismatic Evangelic Protestants that you are, have nothing
but unreasoning admiration for Jews and simply because they are Jewish ---
which is so-called ‘racism’ in reverse. You fawn over Jews because,
say you, they are God’s ‘chosen people’. When, in fact, if
you read your bibles quite carefully, it is plain that they are now God’s
rejected people. A people suffering all the curses Moses warned them
about in the book of Deuteronomy, that the prophets admonished them with
throughout their books, and which Jesus Himself chastised them for in the
Gospels, the quote from Matthew 27:25 proof positive of the curse upon their
heads to this day.
And that curse will remain, and does remain on every one of them,
until they do penance and turn humbly to Jesus’ Body, the Catholic
Church. For only in the Catholic Church are found truly good men, who of a good
will actually have bothered to seek for and find out what it is that God
commands us, obeying Him with a ready heart. As Paul says:
“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
(Galatians 3:29 KJV)
And Jesus told the Jews:
“If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do
the works of Abraham.” (John 8:39d-e KJV)
As well:
“Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance,
and begin not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our
father’: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise
up children unto Abraham.” (Luke 3:8 KJV)
This is what the Apostle Paul battled, dear mother & father ---
the senseless pride of race that wicked Jews felt for themselves, disdaining
the gentile races around them. It is why the Jews rejected Jesus, Who came not
to glorify them with a worldly kingdom, making them masters of their own nation
and masters of the rest of the world, to rule other races and wield great
earthly wealth & power, but instead, through them, to bring salvation to
all peoples of the earth, whether of the blood of the Jews or not.
This the wicked Jews could not fathom. This they would not
countenance. Therefore, most of them rebelled, clinging at first to their Old
Covenant Religion. They also loathed Jesus’
+
+ + 8d. Christianity Has Always Been Catholic + + +
Notwithstanding, you refuse to admit this. And why? Not
because the evidence is not there in Sacred Scripture. Not
because the Bible plainly says that what I have just said is certainly not
so. But, rather, because your “commandments of men” and
“tradition of men” (Mark 7:7b, 8b KJV) forbid you to think so.
Hence, you have already decided the matter prior to studying the Bible.
You put your manmade traditions above the words of God, denying His
Sacred Scripture for the sake of opposing His Son’s Catholic Faith.
For because of hatred & envy do you attack His Church, which is Roman
Catholic and nothing less.
You even indirectly admit this, acknowledging in your second letter
of March 1st, “The early church before AD 70 was not caught in
these rituals or bondages.” Meaning, in spite of your heresy, that you
now know how Christianity prior to AD 500 had nothing to do with your version
of self-styled ‘christianity’. Perhaps you admit this because you
have actually bothered to read some of the writings of earliest Christians from
the first three centuries as I have --- and which is what began converting me
to the Catholic Faith, since it became stark to me that no one was a so-called
‘born again christian’ way back then. Or perhaps you know me well
enough to realize that I do not boast idly about the gargantuan amounts of
evidence from earliest times of the Catholicity of ancient Christians. Whatever
the case, you persist in your heresy regardless.
You, despite living almost two thousand years later, pretend to
know better what Christians are to believe & do than the earliest
Christians of the first three centuries, who were hundreds upon hundreds of
years closer to Jesus than you or I, some of whom were even intimate
disciples of the Apostles of Jesus Himself, who saw and touched and
heard and were taught by Peter and Paul and John and James and Andrew and the
other James and Nathaniel and many others who followed Christ in the flesh
personally on earth.
It boggles the sensible mind, but this is what unreasoning
attachment to heresy does to otherwise intelligent people. You would rather
have your manmade traditions that can never save you, than what Jesus & His
Apostles really taught & commanded, depositing it in His Body, the Roman
Catholic Church. A Church that is by far the imitator of what ancient
Christians believed & practiced, in hideous contrast to the pitiful &
ridiculous notions & customs of ‘born again christians’ like
yourselves --- or like I used to be.
I adjure you, my dear mother & father, give up your spiritual
pride! Let it go. Open the lids of drowsy minds and see clearly for the first
time in your long lives that it is Catholic Faith and nothing else that Jesus
& His Apostles taught & commanded. All your slanders against the Church
are practically beside the point. You would never automatically, like robots,
believe that kind of drivel without questioning the sources and examining the
other side fairly unless you first had an ax to grind against God’s Church.
Moreover, you would gladly take me up on my good-hearted challenge to talk to
me face-to-face about these grievances, instead of axiomatically assuming, like
unthinking automatons, that either you or your anti-Catholic sources (which
sources include the whole world today since the entire world is now in
rebellion against God’s Catholic Church) are infallible, all-knowing,
perfectly moral & never dishonest. And you would sensibly admit, too, that
it is only fair to allow me to do so since I’ve already spent an enormous
amount of time rebutting your heresies, the job of rebutting the Church’s
supposed ‘crimes’ requiring unwarranted efforts on my part, given
my other obligations.
So, whether or not you truly don’t remember your agreement
with me back in May of 2001, when I drove all the way up to your house by
myself to talk to you about the Catholic Faith, that you would continue
discussing with me your grievances one-by-one against the Catholic Church and
allowing me the chance to answer each of them simply yet thoroughly, you see
how it is utterly reasonable of me not to expend huge efforts in writing about
them --- particularly given how you dismiss my already substantial efforts
rebutting your heresy with a wave of your ‘infallible’ hand!
No, what I have done thus far is enough. Have you any humility and
good will to actually know the Saving Truth, the whole Saving Truth, and
nothing but the Saving Truth, then you will listen and treat the Catholic
Church with respect, suspending your disbelief and prejudices till you have
heard me out --- and the infallible
May Queen Mary, the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mother of God --- Whose Son,
Jesus Christ, is pleased to honor Her as higher & more venerable than any
other creature on earth or in Heaven --- obtain from Her Divine Offspring the
graces necessary to illuminate your minds, soften your hearts & inflame
your souls for the Roman Catholic Church, Jesus’ Infallible Pillar &
Ground of the Truth on earth, the door of which all men must pass through in
order to have hope of saving their souls from the Day of God’s Wrath.
Your always loving son,
-Paul
+
+ + + +
Part One of The Dogma of Baptism
Upheld & the Lie of ‘Faith Alone’ Cast Down (1 Letter
Consisting of 1 Prefacing Note & 23 Chapters)
Part Three of The Dogma of Baptism
Upheld & the Lie of ‘Faith Alone’ Cast Down (2 Letters
Consisting of 2 Prefacing Notes, An Afterword & 18 Chapters)
+
+ +
Pilate’s
query met:
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