Regarding ‘Scripture
Alone’, ‘Faith Alone’ &
the So-Called ‘Crimes’
of the Catholic Church
A NOTE TO THE READER:
For a month someone sent me anonymous emails meant to support the heresy
of ‘faith alone’ and crucify the Catholic Religion for so-called ‘crimes’
against purported ‘christians’, Jews & others who opposed the Roman
Church. The first two emails were merely a listing of passages from the Bible
that mention the importance of ‘faith’ without also mentioning the
need for ‘works’ & ‘obedience’. The last email was a
tallying of many ‘atrocities’ purportedly committed by Roman
Catholics against the adherents of opposing religions. In either case, the
arguments are easily rebutted. It was simply a matter of finding time to write
a refutation, which also involved adding two new questions & answers to the
already very long entry, Roman Catholic
Church, in the Q&A section of the website. It was, in fact, a recent
lengthy addition to the end of this entry concerning the so-called ‘crimes’
of the Catholic Church that led to the anonymous author’s third email
attack. Apparently, the defense I had made there of Catholics in general and Catholicism
in specific against such charges incensed the person. It was then this person’s
bounden duty to ‘shame’ me with a tally of alleged atrocities. Impossible to answer? Not really. The person clearly had
either not read carefully & understood fully what I said in the addition
already posted, or else purposely ignored what I said, regardless. Whichever,
the letter below repels these attacks without difficulty.
I present the text of the refutation nearly unchanged; the titles of four
chapters for convenience, a date at the beginning, several sentences to clarify the egregious & satanic error of ‘faith alone’, and a few typos or formattings tweaked are the only things added.
+ + + 1. ‘Scripture Alone’
Skewered + + +
8 October 2008
My Dear ‘B’emet’ or
‘Joy Given’ ---
Thank you for looking at The Epistemologic Works website. I presume
you are one & the same person since your three emails of which I am aware thus
far emanate from the same address. However, even if you are two separate people,
this single email should respond to both of you sufficiently.
I apologize for taking a long while to respond. As I note in the
Contact & Donations webpage, I have been blessed with a large family and
have many responsibilities caring for them, not to mention my religious duties
& efforts to evangelize men for the Catholic Faith. Ergo, my hands are very
full. Nevertheless, wherever it is truly needful, I try to answer requests
& rebut attacks.
But let us get to the pith of things. Your first two emails were
essentially a quote of twenty-three biblical passages that you think proves
your manmade tradition of ‘faith alone’. Which in turn also means
that you must claim ‘scripture alone’ as the basis for your beliefs
since ‘faith alone’ adherents almost always do so claiming
it’s because the Bible tells them so --- not to mention your highlighted
biblical quotes to the near total exclusion of any other comments in your first
two emails. Yet this then raises two problems:
One, the Bible nowhere says that it’s to be
‘scripture alone’ upon which a man is to base his religious
beliefs.
And, two, the Bible nowhere says that it’s to be
‘faith alone’ by which a man is to save his soul.
As to the first, think about it. If ‘scripture alone’
is to be a man’s authority for his spiritual
or religious beliefs, then how is it he can believe in the spiritual & religious belief of
‘scripture alone’ when, in fact, Scripture nowhere says
to believe this?
Does this not strike you as inconsistent? Because your belief of
‘scripture alone’ is not based on ‘scripture alone’, is it? As a matter of fact, it’s
not based on anything that the Bible explicitly says at all! Therefore, my
dear soul, you contradict your claimed belief in ‘scripture
alone’ by believing in something --- namely, ‘scripture alone’ --- that is not and
cannot ever be found said in the Bible. So how is it you can justify believing
in ‘scripture alone’ when belief in ‘scripture alone’
isn’t found anywhere explicitly taught in the Bible?
Furthermore, even if the Bible did anywhere explicitly say to
believe in the teaching of ‘scripture alone’ --- and it
doesn’t! --- what fool would believe a book just
because the book says it is so? Obviously, people only trust what a book says
to the extent that they trust the author of the book to be honest &
knowledgeable. Which is why a conservative Protestant like yourself would say that
you believe what the Bible says since God is the One Who wrote it, albeit
through mere men. Yet how do you know
that God wrote it? Does every passage of the Bible declare that it’s God
Who is speaking or writing this? No, they do not. Most of the passages, taken
at face value, don’t say anything at all about God writing them, and, in
fact, read as if written by someone else entirely. Furthermore, tons of things
in the Bible would never look like ‘divinely-inspired’
Scripture --- as if they came from God --- unless people grew up being taught
they’re a part of the Bible in the first place (for instance, the endless
genealogies of 1 Chronicles, the voluptuous words of the Song of Solomon, the
sometimes rather grotesque stories found in Judges). Or does the Bible anywhere
in its many words list the names
of all the books that belong in its collection? No, it does not. Yet without
an exact list of books to be found in the divinely-inspired words of the Bible,
then how are you to know for sure that God intends such-and-such books
to be included in the Bible’s collection? I mean, you say the Bible is
supposed to be the final word for what everybody believes, right? So how can you justify believing that the
particular collection of books which are in your bibles truly belongs in your
bibles when the Bible doesn’t tell you exactly what’s
supposed to be in it? And even if it did tell you, how would you know that
the name of a particular book is the same thing, precisely speaking, as the particular words that compose a particular
book that you think goes by this name in your Protestant version of the Bible?
Do you understand?
Your whole notion of ‘scripture alone’ as your sole,
primary or ultimate religious authority is a house of cards. Knock out just one
of them, or jiggle the table a little too much, and they all come tumbling down
like a spiritual Humpty Dumpty who sits upon the
many-splintered wall of Protestantism. I’ve already easily knocked out
four of them without hardly trying; there are lots
more ready to topple at the slightest touch! And all of your false religion’s
men cannot put them back together again… because this is simple good
sense we’re talking here. Nothing complicated or subtle.
My poor dear soul, we cannot reasonably or honestly evade the facts:
You only have
the bible that you have and believe it to come from God because the first
Protestants --- who were Roman Catholic before they became Protestant
--- got its many books & their various texts from the hands of Roman Catholics in the 16th century,
which is when Protestantism began at the rebellion of the priest & monk,
Martin Luther.
But, of course, like him you reject the authority of the Roman
Catholic Church. Consequently, you must now accept each of these individual books
& their texts as belonging in your bible solely because of a manmade
tradition. After all, the Bible itself --- not even your own versions of it
--- does not anywhere authoritatively list, as a part of its sacred text, all of the names of the books that belong in
it. Hence, if not found in the text of the Bible itself, then you must depend on a belief that’s
been passed down from generation to generation amongst yourselves since the
1500s… a tradition of men. This belief from Protestant
tradition, not the Bible, is
what tells you the books that belong in your Protestant-translated bibles,
including the texts of all of those individual books!
Yet enough said about this for now. You may find more on the topic
in the Books & Articles section of The Epistemologic Works. Specifically, Chapters
35 & 36 of Extra Ecclesiam
Nulla Salus, Chapters
8a & 9g of The Dogma of Baptism
Upheld (Chapter 9g is especially worth looking at, demolishing, as it does,
the Calvinistic notion of the Bible being ‘self-evidently inspired’
by God), and Chapter 1 of The World
Offended.
+ + + 2. ‘Faith Alone’
Annihilated + + +
As to the second problem --- that the Bible nowhere says
that it’s to be ‘faith alone’ by which a man saves his soul
--- Question #213 from the Roman Catholic
Church entry in the Questions & Answers (Q&A) section of The
Epistemologic Works sums it up pretty nicely:
• Isn’t this working for your
salvation & hence unbiblical?
(213)
This is a common complaint of Protestant
heretics, especially nowadays of those Protestants who are best termed
‘conservative Evangelic’. It results from a lazy desire not to have
to actually obey what God commands --- and from a cowardly desire not to
have to face the consequences for your disobedience. It also results
from ignorance. Evangelic Protestants try to justify their laziness &
cowardice by misinterpreting the Bible. They handily ignore those verses that
plainly say how one must actually obey God to inherit Heaven and pay
for lack of obedience by suffering in Hell, focusing instead solely on verses
that don’t happen to mention the consequences for disobedience. These
latter verses they then twist in their minds to mean the necessity of
‘faith alone’ to the exclusion of works (what in Latin is
known as ‘sola fide’), and even though the Bible nowhere at all in any of its verses explicitly says
that a man is saved by or justified through faith alone. Indeed, in spite of the Bible saying exactly
the opposite!
“Do you see that by works a man
is justified; and not by faith
only?” (James 2:24 DRC, emphases added)
This is the Catholic translation of the Douay Rheims Challoner.
The words are even a little clearer --- and ironically so --- in a classic
Protestant translation (the King James Version) that renders the question as a
statement instead:
“Ye see then how that by works
a man is justified, and not by
faith only.” (James 2:24 KJV, emphases added)
A much more contemporary & hugely
popular Protestant translation (the New International Version) puts the words
and their obvious significance even more bluntly for modern minds to see:
“You see that a person is justified
by what he does and not by
faith alone.” (James 2:24 NIV, emphases added)
In short, Protestants confuse the eternal
debt of mortal sin with the temporal debt of both mortal (serious)
& venial (less serious) sins. The eternal debt of mortal sins
(including the mortal sin called ‘Original Sin’, into which all
men, except for Jesus & His Mother, are conceived) can never be paid by a
mere man on earth. It takes Jesus Christ’s Infinitely Worthy Sacrifice
upon the Cross to do this. However, both mortal & venial sins have a temporal
debt (an obligation to pay that will not take an eternity to do so) to pay
as well. This much lesser yet still often substantial debt men can indeed
pay in God’s Sight during the course of time. For souls sent to Hell
forever, they will pay this temporal debt along with their eternal debt. For
souls entering Heaven, the temporal debt --- if any --- must be paid in that
part of Hell which is temporary, called ‘Purgatory’. Nevertheless,
because of this confusion about what a man can or cannot pay --- and because
Jesus does not pay the eternal debt of a man’s sins just by
this man having ‘faith’ in Him, which includes His Teachings &
Commandments, but also requires obedience to Him and to His
Teachings & Commandments --- then Protestants blunder horribly into
presuming their ‘salvation’ imaginarily out of thin air whilst
condemning Jesus’ Catholic Teaching & Commandment in this matter of
Heavenly Salvation as ‘diabolic’, ‘manmade’ &
‘impossible’. When, in fact, it is the other way around...
when it is they who have believed something utterly diabolic, manmade
& impossible about going to Heaven!
Yet you may learn more in the Q&A
section entitled Faith & Works, not to mention the Q&A section for
Purgatory. You may also read the book entitled The Dogma of Baptism Upheld
& the Lie of ‘Faith Alone’ Cast Down.
In the meantime, ponder the words of
“Wherefore,
my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but
much more now in my absence), with fear and trembling work out your
salvation.” (Philippians 2:12 DRC, emphases added)
Clearly he links Salvation both to
obedience & works, driving home the connection by warning us to do so with
“fear and trembling”. Now you tell me… what’s the point
of trembling fearfully while working out your Salvation if it is
only God doing everything ‘through you’ or ‘for you’,
thus making your reception of Salvation a sure thing?
What’s there to be afraid of
regarding that, what is there to fear & tremble about in such a
situation?
No, the Saving Truth is otherwise.
Salvation is not just by ‘faith’. It is obedience, too ---
right works. It is both faith and works that a man needs to save his
soul, the God-given Faith & Commandments of the Roman Catholic Church.
As a result, my poor soul, you can now see how astray you are in citing
twenty-three passages from the Bible regarding the subject of
‘faith’. Not one of these quotes, despite coming from a
Protestant-translated bible, says anything about it being ‘faith alone’ that saves a man.
Nor does any part of Sacred Scripture anywhere, period, say anything explicit
about it being ‘faith alone’
that saves someone. Whereas, to the contrary, at least one verse in the Bible
plainly says the opposite! Specifically, James 2:24. So where do you get
off thinking that your quote of twenty-three passages supports your manmade
tradition of ‘faith alone’?
There is only one way that a Protestant can think himself able to
get away with this, and the strategy (whether
consciously thought out or not) goes something like this:
“I already know that it’s ‘faith alone’
that saves a man. Hence, I don’t need the Bible to say the word
‘alone’ anywhere in its verses in connection with the term
‘faith’. I already know I’m right; I can’t be wrong.
Therefore, all of those passages in Scripture where it talks about
‘faith’ without mentioning a need for ‘works’ or
‘obedience’ are obviously proof that I’m right --- as
if any is needed, since I’m infallible & can’t be wrong about
this issue! But other born again believers like myself might need to see it
since they may not yet realize that they’re infallible, also, and can
never be wrong about the teaching of ‘faith alone’… that is, of
course, provided they think like me on this topic. What’s more, those
really obnoxious, stuck-up papists, who worship Mary and idolize a piece of
bread, need to pay attention to these passages, too. Then they’d know all
their talk about the need for ‘obedience’ and ‘works’
is a bunch of garbage!”
The problem is, this kind of thinking not only presumes infallibility
for itself (the impossibility of being wrong, something Protestants tacitly
claim for themselves while never admitting that it’s something a pope can
have, too, by God’s Power) but ignores all of those verses in the Bible
that do mention the necessity
of ‘obedience’ and ‘works’ for saving one’s soul.
Indeed, some of which even mention the
necessity of both faith and works for the salvation of a
man’s immortal soul! So how is it conservative Protestants always
focus on the former (verses that mention the need of faith without also
mentioning the necessity of works) while always ignoring or explaining away the
latter (verses that mention the need for works, or that mention the necessity
of both faith & works together)?
Infallibility, of course. However much
Protestants may hate the idea of a pope being infallible when it comes to
matters of Faith or Morals --- and despite most of them not realizing it or
being unwilling to honestly acknowledge it even if they do realize it --- there
is no way in the world for them to get away with zeroing in on verses that
mention faith without also mentioning works, unless they assume themselves to
be infallible. As in, “I couldn’t possibly be wrong about
interpreting my bible since I already know that it’s ‘faith
alone’ that saves me or anyone who just believes in Jesus.”
This is how a conservative Protestant such as yourself, my dear
‘B’emet’ or ‘Joy
Given’, can get away with, in your own mind, supposing that a series of
quotes from twenty-three biblical passages could somehow ‘prove’
your manmade tradition of ‘faith alone’ while ignoring all of those
parts of the Bible that obviously uphold the necessity of good works &
obedience, as well, in order to please God and enter into Heaven. It’s
also how you expect to convince me to abandon God’s Infallible Catholic Church to return to the rebellion (for I
was a lifelong Protestant ’ere converting to Catholicism) of your
diabolically-inspired & very fallible
religion of an imaginary salvation.
Yet enough said here about this. I have written at great length
concerning the lie of ‘faith alone’ in the book entitled The Dogma of Baptism Upheld & the Lie of
‘Faith Alone’ Cast Down. Please study carefully Part One of the
tome as found in the Books & Articles section, especially Chapters 1j to
1t. Pay particularly close attention to Chapters 1s & 1t to see how all Protestant heretics do ignorantly --- and even willfully --- misinterpret St. Paul’s attacks upon ‘the law’ and ‘works’ to mean that obedience to God’s Commandments is useless for receiving Salvation... and when, in fact, the Bible’s words make it plain that Paul was talking about the ceremonial rites & animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant Law, not the New Covenant Law or all Law, and that the importance of works for the reception of Salvation thus comes in organic sequence after Grace & Faith, not before them. To wit, that God first freely gives a man grace to convert him to the Catholic Religion, so that, secondly, the good-willed man freely responds with faith in God’s Catholic Religion, and, both consequently & lastly, then does good works as a free-willed yet necessary result of this Catholic Religion. In short, a man receives Salvation by God’s Grace through Right Faith and in Good Works! See also Chapter 9k in Part Three of the tome, which having, together with Chapters 9i & 9j, shown that Jews cannot be the ‘chosen people’ of God simply because they are Jewish (which is so-called ‘racism’ in reverse, when you think about it), drives home again the correct interpretation and plain meaning of the Bible’s words in the New Testament regarding ‘the law’ & ‘works’.
+ + + 3. So-Called ‘Crimes’ of
Catholicism Refuted + + +
We turn, then, to the last of your three emails of which I am aware
thus far. In this third letter you rack up nineteen accusations against Roman
Catholics “of murder and hate and destruction” toward so-called
“Christians and Jews etc.” [Email of 25 September 2008 from Joy
Given, Paragraph 1] And for this I must thank you. Because whether or not the
Grace of the Triune Catholic God operates within your soul to convert you
anytime soon to His Singular Church of Rome, or whether or not you exhibit
enough good will to see through the biases that enslave your heart & darken
your mind, it made me realize how I need to address in the Roman Catholic Church entry of Q&A the unofficial
rampages & riots of bad Catholics so as to close off a loophole that
Protestants like yourself try to exploit in justifying their opposition to the
Saving Truth of God’s Catholic Faith.
Actually, I had already addressed the subject at least partly in
passing (“By [‘crimes’] you mean that Roman Catholics put men
to death during the Inquisition for being heretics & enemies against the
Catholic Church, as well as that many of them were tortured to produce
confessions to such crimes, and that members of the Church of Rome killed
Muslims during the Crusades when reconquering the Holy Land of Palestine, as well as that some of them pillaged cities
along the way there.” --- Question #312, Paragraph 2, emphasis added). I,
also, before knowing about your email of September 25th, added a
slight addition prior to September 30th to another portion of the
entry to better describe the situation found in Spain at the end of the Middle
Ages (“…an enormous amount of Jews lived in Spain during the latter
half of the Middle Ages. They were, for the most part, wealthy, powerful &
rabidly anti-Catholic. And, like today, the majority of them hence loathed
& ridiculed the Catholic Church and any government that upheld Her
Teachings. Wherever possible, they opposed Her. Often
this opposition took the form of initiating or fomenting heresies, as well as
plotting coups against various monarchs. Yet
their opposition to Catholics grew even worse. Because in the wake of the Black
Plague of the 14th century, when many foolish people wrongly blamed
the Jews for causing the widespread deaths that resulted from the epidemic --- which in turn led to several bloody riots against them that popes & other bishops repeatedly condemned as grievously unjust --- and later in the 15th century, when Queen Isabella enacted the desperate measure of ousting such belligerent Jews from her part of Spain (the rest of the peninsula also doing
the same to some extent or another in the general time period), many of them
decided to ‘convert’ in order to stay put. Most of these Jewish
converts (known as conversos)
were fakes. I.e., they received baptism & conformed outwardly to
Catholicism only to keep the wealth or homes that they would otherwise have
lost. Privately they still practiced the false religion of a Talmudic Judaism.
What’s more, many of the fake converts became agent provocateurs, working within the Roman Catholic Church ---
frequently as priests & bishops --- to pervert Her
doctrines and to corrupt the behaviour of Her members.” --- Question #355, Paragraph 7, emphases added re plots, plague & resulting riots).
Nevertheless, the subject needed a more in-depth airing. You may go
to the Roman Catholic Church entry in
the Q&A section to review my latest additions, which amount to new queries
& responses for Questions #357 & 358, as well as to slight changes to
what are now Questions #359 & 360 and which presently end the webpage.
However, I put the same thing here at the end of this rebuttal to make certain
you cannot excusably overlook a real Catholic’s intelligent refutation of
your recent attack against God’s Roman Church:
• But what about the bloodthirsty
pogroms against the Jews, Protestants & etc., etc.? Surely the Catholic
Church is guilty of their violent deaths, is She
not? (357)
By ‘bloodthirsty pogroms’ I
take you to mean ‘mob riots’ or ‘vigilante justice’.
That is to say, behaviour that is unguided by official Church Authority and
sometimes even opposed to Her Authority, wherein angry passions are indulged or
rash judgments made. To which a good & thoughtful Catholic responds:
No pope ever made it formal Church
policy to indiscriminately murder, beat or otherwise
abuse Jews, heretics & etc., etc.
We repeat:
The popes have never, ever, at all,
not one single bit, made it formal Church policy to indiscriminately
murder, beat or otherwise abuse Talmudic Jews, publicly avowed heretics and
other natural enemies of the Catholic Faith.
End of sentence.
Mind you, we’re not talking about just
executions & punishments. We have already grappled with this, exposing
modern prejudices against Catholicism for what they are, and showing how there is an obvious difference between unjust
murder & an entirely just execution or between unjust abuse
& a thoroughly just punishment. A distinction that modern people
exercise, not hesitating to kill, or approve of the killing, of someone they
believe deserves to die, and not refraining from torture, or approval of
torture, of someone they think needs to suffer. It is pure hypocrisy to condemn
Roman Catholics for doing what they themselves have no qualms about doing, or
condoning, when it suits their own modern objectives & their own modern
standards. Consequently, my dear reader, don’t dare to rack up
supposed ‘tallies’ of how many died in this place or on that date
at the hands of Catholics during the Middle Ages, including in such
‘tallies’ persons that were properly investigated & justly
sentenced for a terrible crime against God’s Religion, or who had war
properly declared against them & were justly attacked for a grievous
offense against God’s People.
No, what I am addressing right now is
the possibility of unjust
killings & unjust abuses
committed by persons who call themselves Catholic. And what I am drawing your
attention to is the fact that unjust killings & unjust
punishments were never encouraged or
approved by any pope at any time, anywhere. Period!
Ergo, if & when members of the
Catholic Church rioted against Jews, Protestants and so forth --- without
justifiable charges drawn up or a rational investigation carried out, and the
accused not allowed to properly defend himself before wise & impartial
judges --- then such Catholics did so as bad
Roman Catholics and not in obedience to orders from on high or as a result of
some sort of ecclesial policy. Likewise, if & when members of the Catholic
Church attacked Jews, Protestants and so forth during military operations ---
without just cause or adequate warning, and the victims of the attacks being
not only soldiers but also women, children, elders & invalids who ought to
have been spared --- then such Catholics did so as bad Roman Catholics and not in obedience to orders from on
high or as a result of some sort of ecclesial policy.
In short, these bad Catholics acted as
ambassadors of their own angry passions or rash judgments, and not
as emissaries of the Roman Catholic Church and Her Teachings &
Commandments.
I did not deal with this earlier because
Catholics are one in government, the indisputable visible head of this
Catholic government being a pope, who is the representative of Christ on earth.
Hence, the real issue is what the head
authoritatively proclaims & commands. Catholics who act in concert with
this head’s authoritative proclamations & commands are doing what the
Church directs; Catholics who act apart from this
head’s authoritative proclamations & commands, or even in opposition
to his rightful proclamations & commands, are acting on their own
and not as an extension of the Church. Their bad behaviour calumniates the
Church in the sight of Her enemies --- it does not represent Her. To borrow an
example from a few questions back, it’s as if the parts of our bodies had
minds of their own. Then suppose that your own hand began to pummel a stranger,
offended at something he did. Nevertheless, you yourself, in your mind, have
neither directed nor willed the hand to do such a thing. Indeed, you even
inveigh against it, ordering him to stop! Does
your hand represent you, accurately reflecting your mind &
will? Of course not. Unfortunately, being a part
of your body, people who don’t like you will use the bad behaviour of
your hand to calumniate you. Your enemies will rejoice, and slander your
reputation with glee.
Such is the case with those who hate the
Catholic Church.
The point is, everything I have said up
until now regarding so-called ‘crimes’ of the Church deals with
what the Church officially did, which is why I have focused exclusively
on the Inquisition & Crusades, with only a short excursion into the matter
of the Conquest of the New World. Riots & rampages are unofficial, being something the Church never sanctioned,
never ordered, often condemned and frequently punished.
Ergo, the Church cannot be held responsible for what She
would not sanction, did not order, often condemned & frequently punished.
They are, truly, something the Church could never
countenance, the very nature of riots & rampages being a thing of disorder,
confusion, chaos, mania, irrationality & mindless impulse. Whereas the
hallmark of Catholicism is the rule of order, understanding, organization,
self-control, reason, deductive logic & careful thought. To use the words
‘riot’ or ‘rampage’ in conjunction with Catholicism is
almost an oxymoron.
• You do, nevertheless, admit that
such riots & rampaging occurred?
(358)
As far as I can tell thus far in my
historical studies, riots, rampages & other unjustified attacks by members
of the Catholic Church against Talmudic Jews, publicly avowed heretics, or so
forth, did occur. Notwithstanding, the same proviso about
inflated numbers of ‘murders’ and ‘tortures’ applies
here, too. That is to say, modern people --- despising Catholicism with
a blind passion --- will believe any figures presented, regardless of the
source making the claim or the actual documentation that exists, just so long
as the numbers are satisfyingly high & hence properly shocking to any
‘right-thinking’ person nowadays. Enemies of the Roman Catholic
Church have already condemned Her in their own
minds prior to seeing hard evidence or hearing solid testimony. They are
especially not interested in listening to Roman Catholics defend Her reputation against such charges. As a result, factual
accuracy of statistics is not uppermost in the minds of these enemies; any old numbers will do just so long as they
can pass for looking ‘official’ and thereby appear to justify
the enemy’s animosity against the Church.
But let us not quibble over statistics,
numbers & figures. Let us take at face value even the most shocking of
claims that foes of Catholicism might dare to promulgate, acting as if they are
infallible little ‘popes’ that could never be wrong in their
beliefs or judgments against the Church of Rome. What then?
My dear reader, this still
doesn’t change anything. Consider:
The Church never sanctions fornication
or adultery. She certainly doesn’t order Her
members to fornicate or adulterate, and She frequently condemns those who do
and has even punished them! And yet… members of the Catholic Church have
often fornicated. Is, then, the Church Herself to be accused of teaching &
abetting fornication or adultery? Is She to be held
officially responsible for the sinful behaviour of Her bad members? Obviously not. The very fact that people despise Catholicism
for refusing to permit Her members to divorce is proof
of this, if any is needed.
Likewise the
allegations of riots, rampages & other unjustified attacks. Riots &
rampages are reprehensible precisely because they are mindless & hence at
least potentially unjust. The
Catholic Church can never, ever, sanction such behaviour on the part of Her members. While She may
sympathize with an aggrieved Catholic, She cannot ever fail to sanction &
uphold what God gave nearly every one of us rational minds to
accomplish:
To seek out the facts carefully,
weigh them justly, and draw the correct conclusions about things.
Riots are, by their very nature, the
antithesis of this. Rampages are, as well, by their very nature, antithetical
to this goal. Therefore, riots & rampages --- for whatever reason --- are against
the Commandments of God & His Roman Catholic Church.
Yet let us not lose sight of a very
important thing. To wit, that the enemies of the Catholic Church are really not
interested in the riots, rampages or other unjustified attacks that Her bad members have sometimes perpetrated against others.
No, what really, truly & actually offends them is merely that the Church of
Rome has the audacity to oppose anyone
who dares to oppose Her --- and does so because She is infallibly
right when it comes to dogmatic truths & moral commandments.
Period.
Consequently, such enemies don’t
stop at allegations of ‘riots’ and ‘rampages’. They
throw in the whole kit & caboodle, holding Catholics as
‘guilty’ of any time
that they have had the nerve to execute or punish traitorous members or
dangerous foes, including the aforesaid examples of the Crusades, and especially
of the Inquisition, that I have already amply explained --- and despite me having already demonstrated
them to be entirely justified and almost completely just in how they were
carried out!
Which leads one to wonder… do such enemies ever truly listen to
a Catholic, think the things through that he said, or bother to address
the actual points that are important with rebuttals that are pertinent
to the original actual points which were given by the Catholic? Or do they
just talk past a Catholic, never truly grappling with what he said, neither stopping to think carefully about what it
means nor daring to draw the correct conclusions, based on the good sense &
simple facts that were presented?
My dear soul, you have a God-given mind.
Use it wisely, and don’t be ruled by your mindless passions against the
Roman Catholic Church. Follow the good sense & clear facts wherever they
might lead, even if it means admitting that Catholicism is (and here you are
permitted to gasp if the thought seems too horrible to face) at least
sometimes, upon occasion, however hard it is for you to fathom --- and however
much you might want to think it astonishingly rare --- absolutely right.
And remember, as I said before in the
response to Question #329, your real problem with the Inquisition &
Crusades, or any other official acts of the Catholic Church, is not that
the things themselves are somehow so very intrinsically ‘wrong’ or
‘evil’ or ‘irrational’. They are not. Given that there
truly is no Salvation outside the Catholic
Church, then, as a rational consequence, these things & their
accompanying deeds truly are both right & reasonable. Just as right
& reasonable, for example, as most Americans thought it was for the
It is exactly the same for the
Catholic Church, particularly in nations that are wholly & truly Catholic,
in striving with the enemies & criminals arrayed against Her.
The principle is identical.
• So what’s the bottom line to
all of this? (359)
The bottom line is that most people
don’t like the Catholic Church, which is the Body of Jesus Christ. Faced
with the good sense, historical documentation & biblical proof for Her
Dogmas --- or even with the merest hint of such evidence --- these people then
fall back upon easy-to-make, popularly-believed slander in order to justify
themselves in not taking God’s Roman Catholic Body seriously. Like
soldiers fearful of losing too much on the ground during hand-to-hand combat,
they call in air support to commence saturation bombing of their enemy. This
air support --- this saturation bombing --- is the allegations concerning the
Inquisition & Crusades, as well as to a lesser extent the accusations made
about the Conquest of the New World, or about riots & rampages that the
Church never officially sanctioned and instead openly condemned. After all, who
in his right mind wants to have anything to do with a Church that did such
‘terrible things’… and which will surely do them again if everybody
converts to Her and truly Catholic nations
exist once more?
This is what non-Catholics hate, and
this is what they fear.
• Is there anything else to
add? (360)
Let it be understood:
The accusations regarding the
Inquisition & Crusades, as well as anything else typical of people during
modern times to believe against the Roman Catholic Church, are irrelevant,
my dear reader. Because even if every one of them was right (and they’re
not!),
this changes not by a single bit all of the rock hard evidence and ironclad
sense for the Catholic Church & Her Infallible Teachings. Books
like Extra Ecclesiam
Nulla Salus and The Dogma of Baptism Upheld or articles
like Catholic Ritual Defended and The World Offended make this utterly
clear. Too, this Q&A section has given plenty of excellent reasons to take
the Catholic Faith seriously. Notwithstanding, allegations about the
Inquisition & Crusades, as well as about things like riots & rampages,
blind a lot of people nowadays. I have therefore, in
the meantime, given you enough simple points to refute the slander so that you
may, presuming your intentions are good, focus on what really matters --- the Saving Truth of Jesus’
Infallible Catholic Body.
My dear soul, this is enough for now. As time permits and Heaven
wills, I shall engage the attacks of enemies against the Roman Catholic Church
at great length & with detailed documentation in future books &
articles or entries in the Q&A section. The simple good sense of the above,
though, is plenty enough for a truly good-willed man to see how the allegations
against the Catholic Church are reasonably refuted. It takes no stretch of the
imagination to recognize this. It merely requires a man to put aside his
prejudices, think through the points carefully, and humbly admit to what is
obvious:
That
the foes of the Catholic Church do not arrive at their accusations
because of a thorough & fair investigation of the testimony from both
sides involved in the conflict, but because of an innate & unjust
animosity acquired toward Roman Catholicism that predisposes them to believe whatever
allegations are lobbed against the Roman Church without them bothering to
investigate for themselves the actual sense & evidence --- or lack thereof
--- for the allegations, and which thus also causes them to unfairly ignore
or irrationally discount the intelligent rebuttals of real Roman Catholics against
these attacks, these enemies consequently failing to pertinently answer the
actual points of importance raised by Catholics in opposition to their
attacks.
End of sentence.
+ + + 4. Where God’s Truth Resides + + +
As a result, my poor dear soul, I will not trouble to directly
address any further attacks from you on these issues --- ‘scripture
alone’, ‘faith alone’ & supposed ‘crimes’ of
the Catholic Church --- unless you
respond with pertinent answers to the actual points of importance
raised by me in this rebuttal of your three emails. Please take what I have
said seriously on behalf of the Catholic Faith. Should you have problems
understanding what I have explained, then say so. I won’t mock you for
not comprehending something, particularly when I see proof of good will in you
otherwise. Whereas I will occasionally mock, out of a sense of outraged piety,
the stubborn animosity & willful blindness of a person who refuses to use
his God-given mind rightly despite having had many chances to do so. I will
also sometimes get tough with those who are vicious against Catholicism with
smug stupidity --- the tough talk smashing their stupidity and hence an attempt
to pierce their smugness so that they have an opportunity to take Catholicism
seriously (something they’ll almost certainly have no chance of doing if
left unchallenged).
The point is, you have no reason to get
offended at me if your real aim is to know the truth. If I sound incredibly
confident about things, it’s simply because I’ve bothered doing
what most people never bothering doing: thoroughly & fairly investigate all
sides. Conservative Protestant? Already been there and
was one at one time, knowing all of the arguments against Catholicism. Macroevolutionary Darwinist? Yes, I once held to a form of Darwinism, have
studied their arguments minutely & counted many smart Darwinists as my friends
in past years. Self-denying, nirvana-seeking Buddhist?
Embraced many tenets of Siddhartha Gautama’s
enlightenment in former days, admired some of his followers, examined their
sacred writings closely, and concluded that I would gladly become Buddhist were
it not for Jesus Christ forbidding me to do so. And so forth & so on, etc.,
etc.
But now I am Catholic, and have been so for over eleven years. And
I am Catholic for one reason & one reason alone --- because it is the only
way to save my soul. And I am sure of this because of one thing & one thing
solely --- because God’s Church is the Pillar & Foundation of the
Truth. (1 Timothy 3:15) All other philosophies &
religions, however smart, clever, appealing & persuasive they may seem in
many ways, are but mixtures of lies with truth… they are not its foundation. And God, to be a God Who
actually made men in His Image and actually wants them with Him in Blessed
Union forever, must then provide a way for men to know with absolute
certainty, no possibility of error feasible, what that way is in all of its
necessary details & all of its necessary implications.
Period.
Protestantism, or ‘born again
christianity’ if you like, is not and cannot ever be this Pillar &
Foundation of the Truth. It is malleable, ever-splintering, and constantly
changing its teachings over the decades & throughout the earth wherever
people adopt it. While, to the contrary, real Catholicism is totally solid & utterly unchanging,
being doctrinally the same thing from day one with Jesus & His Apostles
until this very century, all other forms of self-styled
‘christianity’ being nothing but aberrations from this
unchanging Catholicism and in obvious opposition to it. There can be no
in-between. Either Catholicism is
Christianity, case closed, or else God doesn’t care what people believe
and there is no tangible reality beyond our material world that truly exists or
really matters. Protestantism provides no way for its adherents to have infallible
certainty. The Bible is no solution since different Protestants interpret
their bibles differently, even regarding crucial issues of salvation, and
always have from their beginning in the 1500s. Ergo, Protestantism and the
‘bible alone’ is not
the way to do it.
My dear soul, your fanciful name of ‘B’emet’
is meant to be a play on the ancient Hebrew term for ‘truth’. Likewise,
‘Joy Given’ is meant to signify the happiness you possess by
supposing ‘faith alone’ to save your soul. Notwithstanding, I have
shown you how your ‘truth’ is a lie and your ‘joy’ a
sham. I do not say this to hurt you. I have no desire to offend you. But if you
pretend yourself to be ‘infallible’ --- and even though you
won’t dare to claim this straight out --- then, of course, my words,
however charitably intended, certainly will hurt you, or, at a minimum, will certainly
offend you. This is unavoidable. I have to tell you the truth about how you may
save your soul… for real. But as
Jesus said to the first bishops (Acts 1:15-26) of His Body (Colossians 1:18,
24), the Roman Catholic Church:
“If the world hate you, know ye,
that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would
love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out
of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember
the word that I said to you: the servant is not greater than his master. If
they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my
word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for
my name’s sake: because they know not him that sent me.” (John
15:18-21 DRC)
Dear soul, my testimony to you in this email, and on my website, is
your opportunity to know Jesus for real. You can truly know the truth and
really be set free from your sins if you simply take His Catholic Testimony
seriously, obeying His Commandments. It is not impossible, as you would like to
pretend. Jesus commanded His disciples to be perfect (Matthew 5:48) and
For what was Pilate’s query?
He asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38 DRC)
Jesus is the Saving Truth (John 14:6) and His Church is the
Embodiment of this Saving Truth (Colossians 1:18, 24), being its very
Foundation. (1 Timothy 3:15) Neither your ‘born
again christianity’ nor any other false religion or worldly philosophy
--- including the atheistic science of modern times --- can rival this. My precious & beloved soul, may
Queen Mary, the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mother of God and Vanquisher of All
Heresies & False Religions, bestow upon you the graces of Her Divine Son,
King Jesus Christ of
-Paul
Doughton
+
+ +
Pilate’s
query met:
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