Former Father

From This Rock:

Among the most venomous of enemies of the faith are former Catholics, especially former priests. Catholic Answers was originally begun to counter the disinformation spread by a failed priest. Now anti-Catholic Fundamentalists have an entire book of such propaganda in their arsenal: Far from Rome, Near to God, which assembles the "testimonies" of fifty apostate priests. (To find fifty they are forced to dig up renegades from past centuries, including arch-apostate Charles Chiniquy, author of such gems as The Priest, the Woman, and the Confessional.)

Co-edited by former priest Richard Peter Bennett, the book is distributed by groups such as Christians Evangelizing Catholics, Bart Brewer's Mission to Catholics International, and Mike Gendron's Bold Truth.

Bennett tells his own story in "From Tradition to Truth." It isn't difficult to understand how Bennett, who sounds like a sincere man, came to leave the Church. Describing his "conversion," he says, "I suffered for fourteen years, no one ever having the courage to speak the truth to me. . . . I pray that the Father will give you grace that you may accept that Christ died in your place on the cross, and know that his atonement is sufficient to make you a new creature in him."

Bennett trots out the worn canards: He was disturbed by the "outward pomp" and "inner emptiness" of Rome. He was taught only "rote, set prayer" and discovered "direct personal prayer" by accident. "I did not know my way through the Bible," he acknowledges.

One is baffled by the notion that any Catholic, much less a priest, could have so failed to grasp the essentials of the faith. But Bennett's most serious gaffe, in the opinion of our resident observer of religious life, is his remark that he spent eight years in the Dominican Order "studying what it is to be a monk."

Dominicans aren't monks. They are friars. Monks live in monasteries, usually in the same monastery for life. Their chief work is prayer. Friars are apostolic religious who are sent on mission as needed, to preach, teach, and give other service.

A small distinction? Maybe. But one to which any Benedictine or Carmelite-or Dominican-would be keenly sensitive. The problem with these "converted" priests is that one never knows the full story. Were they dismissed from the ministry for misconduct? Were they even really priests? A little investigation revealed that Jack Chick's "Alberto" was never a Jesuit. We wonder what we'd find if we explored the histories of the contributors to Near to God, Far from Rome.

Dave Armstrong does an excellent job of refuting Mr. Bennett's theology here:

"Aligned with Proverbs, the Lord's strong, clear declaration in Isaiah 8:20 is: "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." The truth is this: since God's written word alone is inspired, it -- and it alone -- is the sole rule of faith. It cannot be otherwise.

It certainly can be "otherwise" since it is in fact, according to the Bible itself (thus showing sola Scriptura to be a self-defeating concept, since it cannot even be established from Scripture Alone -- the very concept under consideration). This thinking is shot-through with internal contradiction. One falsehood is accepted, and then the system is built upon it, by adding other falsehoods. But a structure with a weak foundation cannot stand.

Mr. Bennett keeps appealing to the Old Testament to "prove" his nonexistent case, as if (his hidden, unspoken assumption) the Jews of that period accepted sola Scriptura as he does. But they did not. And this fact is clearly attested by reputable Protestant scholarly sources, such as The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (edited by Allen C. Myers, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1987 -- from Bijbelse Encyclopedie, ed. W.H. Gispen, Kampen, Netherlands, 1975 --, 1014-1015)."