I'm just sayin...

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Since we had discussed the early church...

I thought the Pope's address this week was right on topic for this blog!

Pope Benedict XVI - Weekly General Audience in English: "Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our catechesis on the writings of Saint Paul, we come now to the Pastoral Epistles, the two Letters addressed to Timothy and the one to Titus. Although their authorship remains debated, these three Letters, while subsequent to the central years of Paul’s life and activity, clearly appeal to his authority and draw from his teaching. Against threats to the purity of the apostolic tradition, they insist on a discerning understanding of the Scriptures and fidelity to the deposit of faith. Scripture and Tradition are seen as the “firm foundation laid by God” for the life of the Church (cf. 2 Tim 2:19), and the basis of her mission of leading all people to the knowledge of God’s saving truth (cf. 1 Tim 2:1-4). The Pastoral Epistles also reflect the development of the Church’s ministerial structures, and in particular the emergence of the figure of the Bishop within the group of presbyters. They present the Church in very human terms as God’s household, a family in which the Bishop acts with the authority of a father. Inspired by this vision, let us ask Saint Paul to help all Christians to live as members of God’s family, and their Pastors to be strong and loving fathers, committed to building up their flocks in faith and unity"







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Candy speaks

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Pot meet kettle.

Highdesert, the "fools" on my mind when I read the above scripture are those who I've tried to reason with, but no matter what I said, they'd turn around and call me names, or ignore my response, and change the subject.

You can't reason with fools.

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With so much going on in the country and the world right now, Candy seems to be fretting a lot in her Oklahoma trailer about...the Catholics? She has a huge rambling post about the evils of Catholicism again.


I, on the other hand, have a life. So I don't have time to get into all of her points (again). This weekend. One of my son's is having a big 16th birthday bash tonight! On the other hand I'm sure Kelly and her little guy are just enjoying their babymoon! So in the spirit of having better things to do with our lives, I hope that those of you looking for rebuttals to Candy Brauer's post today at keepingthehome.com (Keeping The Home) will settle for a few reruns! I'll try to keep them going during the weekend.


There is no need for any religious Church "Masses:

Jesus said to keep the sabbath day holy and that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. Attending mass every week is the "Catholic way" of doing what Jesus said.

Catechism Catholic Church:
2042 The first precept ("You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor") requires the faithful to sanctify the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord as well as the principal liturgical feasts honoring the Mysteries of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints; in the first place, by participating in the Eucharistic celebration, in which the Christian community is gathered, and by resting from those works and activities which could impede such a sanctification of these days.

Priests of any kind are now obsolete, and NOT needed:


Someone should have told Jesus and the apostles! Because not only did Jesus designate the apostles specifically to keep his ministry going, they also "ordained" others to help them!

Catechism Catholic Church:
1536 Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate.


We have one mediator, and one mediator only, and that is Jesus Christ:
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; -1 Timothy 2:5

Catechism Catholic Church
The one priesthood of Christ
1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men."¹⁵ The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, "priest of God Most High," as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique "high priest after the order of Melchizedek";¹⁶ "holy, blameless, unstained,"¹⁷ "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,"¹⁸ that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.
1545 The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all; yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church. The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ; it is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ's priesthood: "Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers."¹⁹
Two participations in the one priesthood of Christ
1546 Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church "a kingdom, priests for his God and Father."²⁰ The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ's mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are "consecrated to be . . . a holy priesthood."²¹
1547 The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, "each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ." While being "ordered one to another," they differ essentially.²² In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace --a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit--, the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its own sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.




There is no canonization process or church you have to go to or through to become a saint of God.
On Canonization - we've been there, done that. But because of invincible ignorance our rebuttals have never been acknowledged or addressed.  Nonetheless, it's part of our Vatican Vs. God rebuttal and you can read it here. Kelly also takes on the topic here.


We don't have to eat any Eucharist wafer, and think that we are eating Jesus in the form of a wafer. Where is Jesus Christ

We, SO HIT THIS OUT OF THE BALL PARK here.

Yes, the ancient Babylonians believed in a woman who procalimed herself a virgin, in whose husband (Nimrod, from Genesis) died. The woman claimed to be a virgin, and delivered a baby, which she taught was Nimrod come back from the dead. 

Thus, to become a saint involves no works or rituals - AT ALL. This is why Jesus said - It Is Finished


Mary and pagan stuff is here.

And now a personal note to Candy. I know you read here Candy. I know you're ticked that we show up so well in Google for people looking for your blog!  But really, can you give us some new material?  Thanks a bunch!

Google Search

This is interesting. I just googled Candy and keepingthehome. The results are below!

candy keepingthehome - Google Search

Candy Is A Liar: Discernment is Not Her Strong Suit

Special thanks to Greek Chorus who "took one for the team" and read the 44 page "witness of Sister Charlotte. The timeline she came up with is quite interesting!

Candy Is A Liar: Discernment is Not Her Strong Suit







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Debunking Sister Charlotte's SS #

As if just publishing a number is "proof"that someone existed. The blogger at A Catholic Texan tackles this one!

A Catholic Texan: The False Story of "Sister Charlotte"

Sister Charlotte Collection

Elena has already posted an excellent rebuttal to the Sister Charlotte story. I thought I'd combine two other posts I wrote previously about Sister Charlotte.

Nun Revelations Revealed

When Sister Charlotte shared her testimony, she was following a template established years before. The scandalous tell-all began with a woman named Maria Monk. Maria wrote a book published in 1836, which told of her imprisonment, abuse. There was even the revelation that nuns had intercourse with priests and the resultant babies were baptized, killed, and buried in lime pits in the basement. Sound familiar?

Maria Monk's book was preceded by a similar book by Rebecca Reed, although her book is lesser known. Both books led to investigations, riots, and the burning of a convent. All investigations, tours of convents, etc., found absolutely no evidence that the stories were true. Maria Monk's own mother signed an affidavit denying that her daughter had ever been in a nunnery.

Just Another Urban Legend

Because Sister Charlotte never revealed her true identity or that of her convent, we have no proof that she ever was a nun. It is very possible that she was, as some of what she describes is true, such as the wearing of a wedding dress for the profession of vows. Regardless of how her tale began, she seems to have discovered that by embellishing it a bit, she could make for a more thrilling tale, and make her a more popular speaker among those who would be interested to hear tales of depravity from a Catholic convent.

Tales of the horrifying secret life of nuns are now something of an urban legend. Mary Crow Dog, in her book, Lakota Woman, repeats a similar story. She attended a reservation convent boarding school, and says that "everyone" knew that the nuns were hypocrites because, and then repeated the "priest + nun=dead babies" story. Only her version involved a sewer instead of a lime pit.

Urban legends are good stories. They start out in a very believable way.

First of all I always like to tell folk I’m not giving this testimony because I have any ill feeling in my heart toward the Roman Catholic people. I couldn’t be a Christian if I still had bitterness in my heart. God delivered me from all bitterness and strife and delivered me out of all of that one day and made himself real to me, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then, when you are caught up in the story, the more unbelievable elements are slipped into it. The average person listening isn't likely to know about the age you are able to enter a convent according to canon law, or the number of nuns allowed in a cloistered convent.

No, the best way to deal with any urban legend is to pepper to person telling the tale with questions, which poke holes in the story.

The priest will tell all over the whole United States and other countries that sisters, or nuns rather, can walk out of convents when they want to. I spent 22 years there. I did everything there was to do to get out. I’ve carried tablespoons with me into the dungeons and tried to dig down into that dirt, because there’s no floors in those places, but I’ve never yet found myself digging far enough to get out of a convent with a tablespoon and that’s about the only instrument.

So, the nuns are held prisoner and locked in the convents? Why did she even bother trying with a tablespoon? Did she really think she was going to dig a tunnel with a tablespoon? There are nun guards that will notice her digging with a spade, but they wouldn't notice a tunnel if it was dug by a tablespoon?

They can steal up to 40 dollars and they don’t have to tell the priest about it. They don’t have to say one word about it in the confessional box. They’re taught that. Every Roman Catholic knows it and every Roman Catholic (you’d be horrified if you know how many of them) steal up to that amount.

Why forty dollars? Is there any significance to the amount? Does is ever change for inflation? Is that $40 for your entire life, or just at any given time?

Later, she says: That's just a little idea or sample of what's going on in this country, and still there are thousands of mothers that will work their fingers to the bone to go over there and give the priest another five dollars to say a mass for loved one that is in purgatory, because that mother believes there is a purgatory.

Why do they have to work their fingers to the bone just to get five dollars? If you can steal up to forty dollars, then that's an easy way to get eight masses said, right? Or is there a rule that you have to earn money for purgatory masses?

I've had my front teeth knocked out.

I guess it's too late to ask Sister Charlotte to take out her bridge for us . . .

And most of the babies are premature. Many of them are abnormal. Very, very seldom do we ever see a normal baby.

Prematurity would certainly be consistent with starvation conditions. But why would they rarely have normal babies? These are healthy girls, with alcoholic but presumably healthy priests. Why would they have a higher than average incidence of birth defects?

You say, "Sister Charlotte, do you dare to say that?" I most definitely do dare to say it, and I intend to keep on saying it. Why? I've delivered those babies with these hands, and what I've seen with my eyes and I've done with my hands, I just challenge the whole world to say it isn't true. And the only way they can ever prove it isn't true, they'll have to open every convent door. If they ever serve a summons on me and call me into court, I'll assure you this one thing: convents are coming open and then the world will know what convents really are. And they'll have to open them to vindicate my testimony, because I know what I'll do if they ever serve a summons on me.

I think this is the crux of the whole story, here. Why didn't she go to the police? She says she's ready to testify in court. If she has traveled around, telling people this story, why didn't any of them demand an investigation as well? She's content to pray that the "little girls" escape the convent, but not actually do anything about it?

And almost equally ridiculous is the story of her escape.

And when something touched the garbage can that's a noise. Who in the world-? There's six of us and we're all together. Who is touching the garbage can? I wheeled around. They wheeled around, and we saw a man, and you know, that man was picking up the full can and leaving an empty one. I've never seen that before. I've been in that convent for years, and in the kitchen, but I never saw anything like that happen.

Okay, let me get this straight. They live in a cloistered convent. They never see anyone but priests. But the garbage man has a key, and walks into the kitchen to get the trash. Wow. How convenient for her. But I think if they were really serious about keeping the nuns prisoner, they would have at least left the trash outside the gate.

And I realized I'm on the outside. "Where am I going?" Where do you think you'd go? I'm not in the United States. I'm in another country and I don't know a thing about that country. When they took me over there I was so heavily veiled and they took me from that particular train to the convent, I was so heavily veiled I couldn't see anything.

Wait, how did she get in this other country? She said they took her a thousand miles away. How many other countries are there a thousand miles from any point in the United States? She would have either been in Canada or Mexico, right? And where did this heavy veil come from? She said she didn't get the white veil until after she had been at the convent for over a year. And since when do nuns wear veils over their faces?

Well, I've run out of time, but hopefully this gives you the general idea.

However, there is one last question to ask. If this is what is common in convent life, then why is it that The Truth Set Us Free: Twenty Former Nuns Tell Their Stories (as endorsed by Candy) contains absolutely nothing along the lines of Sister Charlotte's story?

A Refutation of the "testimony" of Charlotte Wells

Sean is moving his website the end of this month, but said we should copy any files to use in the meantime. This is his refutation of "Sister" Charlotte. Sean's new website is here.

What is up with Candy Brauer of keepingthehome.com that she keeps bringing this up, and then never responds to any challenges to it? She will not, because she cannot. T

A Refutation of the "testimony" of Charlotte Wells: "A Refutation of the 'testimony' of Charlotte Wells / Charlotte Keckler


A Refutation of the 'testimony' of Charlotte Wells / Charlotte Keckler
Update: i) One anti-Catholic named Cohen G. Reckert, who resorts to ad hominems and libelous ranting, instead of defending the alleged testimony of Charlotte Wells/Keckler, gets put in his place. See the update below.

ii) I've added some information on the logical fallacy known as "shifting the burden of proof", a fallacy which the Keckler story exemplifies very well.

Introduction

The alleged 'testimony' of Charlotte Wells is the story of a nun (supposedly) who left the Carmelite convent and became a fundamentalist Protestant in 1945. The story she tells in her alleged testimony bears striking similarities to the Maria Monk fraud of the 19th century.

In summary: Charlotte Wells (1898-1983) reports a tale of rape and mistreatment by priests in the convent, and of torture by the mother superior, the priest fathering children by the mother superior, etc., a horror story very akin to the Maria Monk story. She traveleld about for 14 years, with a companion, Sister Nilah Rutledge, telling the story of her life to various congregations.
Her story has been posted on the internet in a few different places, under both 'Charlotte Wells' and 'Charlotte Keckler'. Since the original of this article appeared in 2003, the 'Charlotte Wells' accounts have more or less all been removed, though those of "Charlotte Keckler" remain. Given the nature of the charges against the Holy Catholic Church, it is only in order that her story be critically examined. It is the purpose of this page, therefore, to show the apparent errors and falsehoods in this alleged 'testimony'.


Before we go any further, however, it is helpful to discuss a logical fallacy called 'shifting the burden of proof'. This is basically a logical error in which the side which makes an asserton tries to make the other side prove the assertion is not true. Example: 'Aliens landed in my backyard last night. Prove they didn't. If you can't prove they didn't, well, there's the proof they did. Right?' Wrong. All this does is show that ths side making the assertion has nothing to back up its statement.

I mention this logical fallacy because the case of Charlotte Keckler is a perfect example of attempting to shift the burden of proof away from the side making the ludicrous assertion (namely, that her story is true). In actual fact, the Keckler story, being an assertion of something that supposedly happened, itself bears the burden of proof. Later we shall see the attempted responses of those who knew Charlotte Keckler in real life, and we shall see how their efforts at "proof" end up as nothing more than pathetic efforts to shift the burden of proof.

Who was Charlotte Wells?

Charlotte Wells was not her real name, and she has been deceased since 1983. One wonders why she felt the need to hide her real identity behind a pseudonym; after all, it would be easy then to check if she were ever in the convent she claimed to be in, whether the events described really happened. There is substantial evidence that her real name was Keckler, among which being the appearance of the exact same story under this name. The author of this article has contacted four individuals who knew this Charlotte Keckler, two of whom are listed in the published introduction of her story (the publishers are Bible Tabernacle books). In contrast to 'verifing' her story as the introduction of the book claims, all they can repeat is that 'her story has never been disproven' (email from TF Tenney on the United Pentecostal Church International, on file). As if the burden of proof agaisnt a ludicrous story like that of Charlotte Wells lay anywhere else but on the side of those claiming it to be true. I would suggest that lying for 14 years and failing to mention a single name from that time or location puts the burden of proof right on the side of Charlotte Keckler. But she, nor those who knew her, are able to produce a single shred of evidence for this big lie. (Note: the individuals who knew this woman all knew her after her supposed convent horror. Sadly they were only too willing to believe her cock and bull story.)

In one part of her story she says:

'I'm not afraid of anybody in all of this world. I'm a child of God. And I believe God won't let anybody put a hand on me until my work is finished.'

If she was so unafraid and convinced she was doing right, why did she hide her name all the time?

But we don't have the luxury of this information, a fact which should set alarm bells ringing for anyone seeking truth. We have no way of verifying the truth of this story she related, yet people are expected to believe it? Granted, she was accompanied for the 14 years of her travels by a companion but what does that prove? It only proves that she travelled for 14 years, certainly not that her story about her life before was true.

If her story were true, it should have been possible to come up with some kind of evidence for her story. But, as with so many other anti-Catholic tales, there is none.

Now let us have a look at the errors and inconsistencies in her story.

1. Number of nuns wrong; lifestyle wrong

Carmelite convents have a maximum of 20 nuns, yet Charlotte Wells claimed 180 nuns in her own wing. Needless to say, the name of this convent is not available.

Furthermore, the Carmelites order is cloistered, meaning the nuns never leave the convent to go outside into the world. This is in contrast to an open order, where the nuns can go outside. In the story Charlotte Wells/Keckler claims to be cloistered yet aslo claims to be a nursing sister, which would mean she would have leave the cloister to get to work!

Dear reader, there is no such thing as a cloistered order which does hospital work, as the two are mutually exclusive. If she was cloistered, she could not go outside to work in the hospital!

2. Wrong terminology suggests she may never have even been Catholic

Though it is quite possible Wells/Keckler was once Catholic (I have seen a photo), the taped recording of her story uses such contorted phrases as 'going to confessional' and 'the fourteen steps that Jesus carried the cross of Calvary'? Why did she not just use the proper terms 'going to Confession' and 'the Stations of the Cross'? The defense that the terms used by Charlotte made more sense to Protestant ears is invalid: she could quite easily have defined the Catholic terms before using them in the taped testimony. In any case, as many Catholic would have heard her story as well. She also avoids the terms �novice� and �professed� which is quite bizarre for the story of a supposed nun, wouldn't you think?

So was she really Catholic? It makes little difference if she were or not. Her story remains without a shred of foundation. If she were in fact Catholic, her judgment is made all the more severe on account of her dishonesty.

3. Outright falsehoods in the book

Here is one example:

"you know a Roman Catholic can lie to you. And they don't have to go to confession and tell the priest about the lie that they've told, because they're lying to protect their faith. They can tell any lie they want to to protect their faith and never go to the confessional box and tell the priest about it."

Elsewhere she relates that it is ok for a Catholic steal $40 dollars. This is also blatantly untrue. In addition, she claims that she had to make her later vows using her own blood. What nonsense. Much of the material in the book, in fact, can only be described as sadomasochistic invention.

4. Relation of scenarios which expose a Protestant misconception of Catholic doctrine.

The story relates that the nuns are led to

'believe that her family will be saved. It doesn't make any difference how many banks they rob, how many stores they rob. It doesn't make any difference how they drink and smoke and carouse and live out in this sinful world and do all the things that sinners do. It doesn't make a bit of difference. Our family will be saved if we continue to live in the convent and give our lives to the convent and to the Church--we can rest assured that other members of our immediate family will be saved'

This is a ludicrous distortion of the Catholic doctrine of grace. It claims that one is not accountable for ones's sins before God so long as a family member is in the convent!

The distorted idea is possibly derived from a misunderstanding of the Catholic teaching of offering up one�s sufferings for the grace of conversion of others. This of course, is a thousand miles removed from the distortion presented in the story.

5. No evidence for this story: convent unknown, nun's account not verifiable

As mentioned above, the alleged "testimony" of Charlotte Wells suffers from the fact that there is no convent name where these events supposedly took place; there is no history of the individual who relates it until long after the supposed events took place (the name Charlotte Wells being a pseudonym, as mentioned earlier, for Charlotte Keckler); there was no reason for the nun in question to hide her identity, if she were speaking the truth; there are no other sources in the story, no references, no named third parties which could support this story. In total: NOTHING.

Note: Claims that such convents, complete with dungeons, existed in Mexico, as 'proven' by the 1934 opening of the convents by the Mexican revolutionary government, actually prove nothing. There was in fact only one convent 'opened' in 1934, this being the Convent of Saint Monica, in the central Plazea, Puebla, Mexico; this convent had operated secretly till from 1857 till 1934. (Convents and monasteries had been abolished in 1857 under the anti-clerical Benito Juarez and the new Constitution of Mexico which stripped the Church of its property.). It is the necessarily secretive nature of this convent's existence was used to substantiate the falsehoods about secret passages and dungeons in convents for such stories as Charlotte Wells'.

Charlotte Wells' story is in no way corroborated by this story, as this convent was the exception, not the norm. (There is another convent in the same city of Puebla, the former Convent of Saint Rose at 14 Poniente No. 305, with a museum exhibit built in 1926, of an 18th century kitchen). The stories Charlotte Wells recounts of abuse, torture, and illicit sex are nothing but fiction which can never be substantiated. In any case Charlotte Wells, conveniently for her story, does not name the convent she was in.

Summary

The 'testimony' of Charlotte Wells has all the hallmarks of an outrageous story of anti-Catholic nonsense based on the earlier work of Maria Monk. In keepng with this genre, there is not an ounce of factual evidence, no names or addresses, just sensationalism. Catholics presented with this "testimony" should recognize it for what it really is. The fact that some have identified her with one Charlotte Keckler (see below) adds not an ounce of credibility to her story, as the supposed convent, and those running it, remain unnamed.

A couple of final notes:

(i)The author has written to Sister Nilah Rutledge seeking corroboration of Charlotte Wells' story. To date, there has been no reply. I have also contacted TF Tenney, who is cited as able to verify her story in the published account of her 'testimony'. His reply was as mentioned above, to all intents and purposes asking for proof that her story is false. A simple case of trying to shift the burden of proof away from the one making the ludicrous claim. I also contacted the New Life United Pentecostal church in Napa, CA, where Keckler was a member. All the information recieved there was the same as from TF Tenney (email on file). So aside from 'verifying' Charlotte Keckler's story, these supposed verifiers have nothing to back up her ludicrous story.

(ii)For Charlotte Wells to claim that she had to change her name because was hiding from the Catholics is belied by the fact that she appeared publicly for 14 years with her so-called 'conversion'. If the 'evil Catholics' wanted to silence her they just had to show up at one of her venues.

Finally, as I mentioned at the start of the paper, we have seen how the supposed witnesses of Charlotte Keckler's story end up providing nothing more than pathetic efforts to shift the burden of proof. TF Tenney, for example, tried to make out that no one had ever proven her story false (email on file). In other words, a tacit admission that the story is completely without foundation. Why would any thinking person believe for a moment such an outlandish story is true, when its supposed defenders can only hide behind the logical fallacy of shifting the burden of proof?


Update: G. Reckert's attempted defence of the Charlotte Wells story

This update has been added to respond to a libellous charge by one anti-Catholic by the name of Cohen Reckert who is the author of an anti-Trinitarian website. Cohen Reckert makes a truly feeble attempt at defending the slanders of Charlotte Keckler, and in doing so he unwittingly exposes her as the liar she was. We shall see that he claims his own father knew Charlotte Keckler, yet this same Cohen Reckert can't even come up with the convent she lived in. Even worse, Cohen Reckert presented the story as that of Charlotte Wells, even though (by his own admission) his own father knew her real name.

He starts off with the bizarre headline 'The Papacy Seeks To Discredit Charlotte's Testimony'. Perhaps if Mr Reckert had spent some time on my site he would have seen I have no connection whatsoever with the papacy, I am in fact a Catholic layman. He then throws in a smokescreen by claiming, as discussed above, that the real name of Charlotte Wells was in fact Charlotte Keckler. The central issue of course is, is the story she presented true. All of which goes to show there is in fact nothing to back up this ludicrous story, when the one solitary defender in the last three years has to resort to smokescreens, slander and ad hominems to respond!

No Research?

Though Reckert tries to disparage my research, in actual fact I have records of correspondence with several persons named in connection with Charlotte Wells' story (Mike Blume, Nilah Rutledge, TF Tenney, Napa New Life United Pentecostal Church) all correspondence on file. I have also tried to contact representatives of the United Pentecostal Church International, of which Charlotte Keckler was apparently a member, and have also directly asked another website, which listed two members of the above mentioned sect as sources of information on the subject.

So much for "not doing research". Maybe Cohen Reckert would be better off seeking the truth of the matter rather than libelling others on his site.

Screenshots of these emails which amply demonstrate the failure of so-called 'verifiers' to provide support for Keckler's story are available here .

Anyway, let's move on to the next point. Reckert isn't finished with his verbal abuse; he next claims I used a 'false name' when contacting him because I use the anglicised form of my name. This charge coming from the guy who accused me of doing no research! How difficult can it be for him to find out what Sean tranlates to in English? Too difficult it seems.

As we see, the name 'John' is nothing more than the anglicised form of the Irish name Sean, which I often use online (if Mr Reckert had bothered to do some research, he would know I am Irish). In fact, many of my acquaintances call me John (though I prefer my Irish name now). So what's with the 'false name' accusation? Perhaps if the author in question had done a modicum of research beforehand, he would have known Sean is the Irish name for John and would not fall into his sin of rash judgment. It appears this issue about my online name (which is no secret) is yet another smokescreen from the main issue, the story of Charlotte Wells.

Cohen Reckert's laughable hypocrisy in this matter is exposed when we see that he in fact knew Charlotte Wells' real name was Keckler yet he presented the story under her false name. Then he turns around and tries to bad mouth me for continuing to use my own real name in an email! This is a case of projection, a term in psychology when one tries to impute one's fault onto another. Reckert's was one of those sites which presented the Charlotte Keckert story as that of Charlotte Wells. Anyway, let's move on.

Reckert, with no names or addresses to back up the Charlotte Keckler lie which his father unhappily bought into, continues with his ad hominems to disparage my website because it is a 'free web-site on anglefire.'

Wrong again, Cohen Reckert. This is a good example of the thorough sloppiness and hasty manner in which Reckert's ad hominem rant hit the internet (not to mention citing Charlotte Keckler's date of birth as 1989!!) For one thing, it isn't free, as I pay to keep adverts off, and for another, the webpage provider is Angelfire, not 'anglefire.' In actual fact, the credibility onus lies on the one making the claim, in this case, the individual called Charlotte Wells/Keckler and those who support her unfounded story. And as we see, there hasn't been the slightest shred of evidence to back up her wild story. Again, we see an effort to deflect from the main issue, the credibility (or lack thereof) of the story of Charlotte Wells/Keckler.

The author isn't finished with his insults. He proceeds to call me a 'dirt merchant' and ends his web page with his accusation of my using a false name. (In the meantime he gets to mentioning some imaginary Jesuits chasing Charlotte Keckler around the country, and then claims that since these imaginary Jesuits never challenged Keckler, her story must be true! Yes, dear reader, this is the best defense of Charlotte Keckler this man can come up with, the silence of some imaginary Jesuits.)

Here's one quote from Cohen Reckert, referring to yours truly ;+). Read on:

'He complains Charlotte didn't give the name of the convent she was a prisoner in and so he had no way to check her story out. So, he determined since he had not way to check it out it did not exist and was false. He then tried to claim that Charlotte stole the testimony of another former nun. He claimed Charlotte never was a Catholic and he picked on her use of words to try and prove his point.'

Er, no, I don't 'complain' about anything. I merely point out the laughable lack of evidence in this story. His interpretation of my reasoning is laughably false as he appeals to silence. Cohen Reckert proceeds then to attempt to cast doubt on my comments, but again, this is simply a denial on his part of the hopeless lack of evidence of the case. Again, he is guilty of dishonest representation when he says I claim Keckler "stole the testimony from another nun." Needless to say I said nothing of the sort.

Reckert, why don't you simply provide the name of her convent with proof of the ludicrous story? Merely misrepresenting some of my comments does not a defense make.

Let's move on. Mr Reckert claims his father knew Charlotte Keckler; what a fine opportunity then to come up with some evidence for her crazy story. Unfortunately there is none. (Mr Reckert provides a nice old photo of a nun though. Does he thinks it's a photo of Keckler in her younger days? Who cares. Even if this were provable, as I mentioned earlier, if she were in fact a nun, her dishonest portrayal of Catholic belief renders her a liar in any case.)

Towrds the end of the Cohen Reckert response, it seems he admits his defense is a lost cause, because he gives up on Charlotte and come us with this this defense of Charlotte:

'But we know this: The Catholic Church has been a deceptive and murdering institution ever since the Council of Nicaea in 325AD.'

There's nothing like objectively analyzing the facts is there? Good heavens, what rubbish. Is this the best available defense of the Charlotte Keckler lie?

Instead, therefore, of providing a "defense" of the Charlotte Wells tale of fantasy, all that web page does, besides resort to ad hominems and slander, is a)to admit Charlotte Wells was lying about her identity, and b) unwittingly prove that the people closest to her can't even substantiate her wild story. Of course we knew from the outset that she existed, and in fact I had seen photos online of her in later life. The more important question is why she was hiding her identity, not who she really was. But most importantly of all, we still have not an ounce of evidence that her story is true. And remember that the burden of proof lies with the side making the assertion. But what we do know now, by that author's own admission, is that Charlotte Wells lied about her real identity for 14 years.

One last comment or two. Cohen Reckert claims I never knew her real name was Keckler. In actual fact, when this article originally appeared, there were two exactly identical stories floating on the internet, one authored by 'Charlotte Keckler' the other by 'Charlotte Wells'. The 'Charlotte Wells' sites have largely been removed since this page has been published.

To Cohen Reckert, that you have to resort to such gutter-level ad hominem remarks to defend the story of Charlotte Keckler tells the impartial reader all they need to know.

In closing I shall leave it to the unbiased reader to discern where the truth lies: with a sensationalist story with not an ounce of evidence in support, or with the realization that the Charlotte Keckler story is nothing more than another piece of anti-Catholic slander.

Cohen Reckert has not yet responded to me. Latest I hear is he's "taking a rest". Let's hope he takes the opportunity to reflect on the seriousness of spreading false witness. Who knows, maybe someday he will discover the truth.

© Copyright Sean's Faith Website 2003 and 2005.








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Living Catholicism: Catholic Carnival 208: Prayers

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Our Debt to the Monks

I guess not everybody knows what happened to the bible between the time of St. Paul and his correspondence and the time of the Reformation. So this is a little bit of info of what happened before the age of the printing press.

From Henry Graham's Where We Got the Bible:

Our Debt To the Monks, page 74.

Day by day, year after yer, the monks would persevere in their holy labors, copying with loving care every letter of the sacred text from some old manuscript of the Bible, adorning and illuminating the pages of vellum with pictures and illustrations in purple and gold and silver colouring, and so producing real works of art that excite the envy and admiration of modern generations. Some Bishops and Abbots wrote out with their own hands the whole of both the Old and New Testaments for the use of their churches and monasteries. Even nuns, and this point I would bring under special notice- nuns took their share in this pious and highly skilled labour. We read of one who copied with her own hands two whole Bibles, and besides made six copies of several large portions of the Gospels and Epistles. Every monastery and church possessed at least one, and some possessed many copies of the Bible and the Gospels. In those ages it was a common thing to copy out particular parts of the Bible (as well as the whole Bible); for example, the Gospels or the Psalms or Epistles so that many who could not afford to purchase a complete Bible were able to possess themselves of at least some part which was specially interesting or popular. This custom is truly Catholic, as it flourishes amongst us today. At the end of our prayer books, for instance, we have Gospels and Epistles for the Sundays and various publishers, too, have issued the four Gospels separately each by itself and the practice seems to me to harmonise entirely with the very idea and structure of the Bible, which was originally composed of separate and independent portions, in use in different Churches throughout Christendom. And so we find that the monks and clergy often confined their work to copying out certain special portions of Sacred Scripture, and naturally the Gospels were the favourite part.

The work, we must remember was very slow, and expensive as well. Dr. Maitland reckons that it would require ten months for a scribe of those days to copy out a Bible; and that L 60 or L 70 would have been required if he had been paid at the rate that lawstationers pay their writers. Of course, with the monks it was a labour of love,and not for money; but this calculation of Dr. Maitland only refers to teh work of copying; it leaves out of account the materials that had to be used, pen and ink and parchment. Another authority (Buckingham) has made a more detailed calculation, and assuming that 427 skins of parchment would have been needed for the 35,000 verses, running into 127,000 folios, he reckons that a complete copy of Old and New Testaments could not have been purchased for less than L 218. Yet Protestants stare in astonishment when you tell them that not everybody could sit by the fireside in those days with a bible on his knees!

Homeschool Goodies » Blog Archive » Catholic Carnival 207 — Carpe Deum!

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Please Welcome

Vincent Peter was born at 4:30 am this morning. He weighs 8 pounds and is 21 inches long.

More nun fun!

Kansas Catholic: Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles (Part II)

On Tuesday, January 6, 2009, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of theApostles, a traditional community in the Diocese of Kansas City- Saint Joseph MO had a novice make her first profission of vows and also had the investiture in the Benedictine Habit of four postulates.

See the article for more pictures and story!

Part of the mission here in Visits to Candyland is to debunk and clarify the misinformation and lies Candy Brauer at www.keepingthehome. com has spread about sisters and the convent in general on her blog.

Enjoy!

A Rebuttal of Hislop's The Two Babylons

Candy's reading list now has her reading one of her favorite books, The Two Babylons. She references it often enough in her posts that I thought we had already written about it, but I found that we don't have anything in a single post. Here are some resources on this important book, which is the foundation for many anti-Catholic claims.

Many Bible Christians consider The Two Babylons as very authoritative on the pagan roots of Catholicism. Christians such as Ralph Woodrow, who has his own evangelistic association. Mr. Woodrow found The Two Babylons so compelling, he wrote his own book about the pagan origins of Cathoicism. But then, he started actually checking Hislop's citations, and they were not what they were purported to be. So Mr. Woodrow recanted his book, and wrote a different book called The Babylon Connection? debunking The Two Babylons. You can read a summary of his arguments in The Two Babylons: A Case Study in Poor Research Methodology.

Does Catholicism mix in pagan practices? Perhaps, but I think Candy can defend Catholicism in her own words here, from a blog post in November 2007, which is no longer available:

Moving on to the decorating of the evergreen or other green deciduous trees, we do find in history pagans celebrating winter solstice, long before Christ was born. This tree decorating was also done by other heathen and pagan peoples in the past. Does this mean that a Christian having a Christmas tree is pagan? Not at all.

The pagans had feasts. Does this mean then, that Christians should not eat? The pagans sang and danced unto their false gods. Does this mean then that it was pagan of King David to dance unto the Lord when he was celebrating the returning of the ark of the covenant?

Janice Moore writes a review from the non-Catholic perspective pointing out some of the many errors in The Two Babylons:

Before going further, let me state clearly now that I am not about to repudiate all of The Two Babylons as fruitless. However, as this website has grown it has come to my attention, that perhaps this book has been put on an undeserved pedestal. There are questions that should be and need to be answered. Again to clarify myself, I feel strongly that many of the formal doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church are not Biblical. But, the question addressed here; was Hislop right about every point he so vehemently argued?

More and more it is coming to my attention that it is time for the subject of the origins of religions and beliefs as they have come down to the present to be reexamined from a more Biblical perspective. The Two Babylons is not the exhaustive work on the subject that many have for decades been so willing to believe. At best it is but the starting ground. At worst, because Hislop's language and the press his book has received over the years have given it more influence than it merits, it has served as a stumbling block to those who found comfort in its authoritarian air and looked no further.

One of the points that Candy makes in most of her articles on Catholicism is that when Catholics allegedly worship Mary, they are really worshiping the Babylonian goddess Semaris. Janice Moore has this to say on that claim:

Also, the author of The Babylon Connection?, points out that the identity of a woman named Semiramis being the wife of Nimrod is questionable; as I have found out in my own research of ancient history and legend to develop the story lines of my own fictional stories. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (Knight), Sammuramat was the wife of Adad-nirari III (812 to 783 B.C) who reigned during the time Jehoahaz was king of Israel. According to The Oxford Classical Dictionary:

"Semiramis in history was Sammu-ramat, wife of Shamshi-Adad V of *Assyria, mother of Adad-nirari III, with whom she campaigned against *Commagene in 805 BC. Her inscribed stelae of kings and high officials in Assur. In Greek legend, she was the daughter of the Syrian goddess Derceto at Ascalon, wife of Onnes (probably the first Sumerian sage Oannes) and then of Ninos, eponymous king of *Nineveh; she conquered '*Bactria' and built' '*Babylon' ( *Berossus denied this). In Armenian legend, she conquered *Armenia (ancient *Uratu), built a palace and waterworks, and left inscriptions."

W. Schramm. Historia 1972, 513-21; F.W. Konig, Die Persika des Ktesias von Knidos, Archiv fur Orientforschung Beiheft 18 (1972), 37-40; V. Donbaz, Annual Review of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Project (1990), 5-10; Moses Khorenats'I, History of the Armenians, ed, R.W. Thomson (1978), 93-104; (Hornblower, 1383)

In this entry Sammuramat is named as the wife of the father of Adad-nirari III, the earlier reference claims her as the wife of his son. Either way the dates involved are much too late for her to have been the wife of the Biblical Nimrod. And here lies the crux of the problem, for much of Hislop's notions on ancient Babel hinges on this one point, as witnessed by the full title of the book, The Two Babylons Or The Papal Worship: Proved To Be The Worship Of Nimrod and His Wife.

There is speculation that perhaps there was an earlier Semiramis, but at this point I have not been able to even establish if Sammuramat and Semiramis are indeed the same name, one being the Assyrian form and the latter being the Greek equivalent. The truth seems to be that the name Sammuramat "…is the only Assyrian or Babylonian name discovered so far having any phonetic resemblance to that of the famous legendary queen, Semiramis." Therefore, though the two names are often cited as being interchangeable (Ann, 347; Foryan; Self), that would not seem to constitute solid proof.

For a Catholic rebuttal of The Two Babylons, try Catholicism and Paganism:

I came across a review of Hislop's book, written by a non-Catholic author shortly after the second edition was published, and I think it provides a good summary of things. It is from The Saturday Review, September 17, 1859:

"In the first place, his whole superstructure is raised upon nothing. Our earliest authority for the history of Semiramis wrote about the commencement of the Christian era, and the historian from whom he drew his information lived from fifteen hundred to two thousand years after the date which Mr. Hislop assigns to the great Assyrian Queen. The most lying legend which the Vatican has ever endorsed stands on better authority than the history which is now made the ground of a charge against it.
"Secondly, the whole argument proceeds upon the assumption that all heathenism has a common origin. Accidental resemblance in mythological details are taken as evidence of this, and nothing is allowed for the natural working of the human mind.
"Thirdly, Mr. Hislop's reasoning would make anything of anything. By the aid of obscure passages in third-rate historians, groundless assumptions of identity, and etymological torturing of roots, all that we know, and all that we believe, may be converted ... into something totally different.
"Fourthly, Mr. Hislop's argument proves too much. He finds not only the corruptions of Popery, but the fundamental articles of the Christian Faith, in his hypothetical Babylonian system...
"We take leave of Mr. Hislop and his work with the remark that we never before quite knew the folly of which ignorant or half-learned bigotry is capable."

Jimmy Akin also wrote an article about The Two Babylons in This Rock magazine:

Recently one of my coworkers asked me how to respond to a couple of panels from a Hislop-influenced tract by vehement anti-Catholic Jack Chick. The tract is titled Are Roman Catholics Christians? (You can guess his answer.) The first panel bears the image of a grim-faced Egyptian with a mascara problem (see above left). The text reads, "In ancient Babylon, they worshipped the sun god, 'Baal.' Then this religion moved into Egypt using different names."

I couldn't keep from grinning as I explained the problems with this panel. In ancient Babylon, the sun god they worshiped was Shamash. Baal was neither a Babylonian deity nor the sun god. In fact, he was the Canaanite storm god. Further, the idea that the religion of Babylon started off in Mesopotamia, crossed the Levant, where Palestine is, and then became the Egyptian religion is simply absurd. Egypt, like Mesopotamia, was one of the cradles of civilization, with its own history and its own religion.

Another of Candy's favorite characters from The Two Babylons is Dagon, the fish god. Take The Long Way Home wrote about him a while back:

Here’s the main problem with researching Dagon. There’s just not much out there! Not much is known. I couldn’t find anything, nothing at all, that described the worship of Dagon. The reason for this is that his worship died out so long ago. The very latest dates I could find for anyone worshiping Dagon was in 402 AD (and this is only if you buy the idea that the Greeks were worshiping Dagon as Marnas. And did you notice who sent the worshipers of Marnas packing? It was the Christians who destroyed the last vestiges of Marnas worship. It’s hard for me to believe they destroyed the temple, then incorporated the religion into Christianity, without any historical evidence to back it up!). Most of his followers were gone by the advent of Jesus!

Sooooo. Essentially, what I learned was, nobody (at least nobody in the historical world) knows much about Dagon. Historians can’t even decide what he was the god of, much less how he was depicted. Depending on which city you lived in, you probably worshiped him differently. His religion died out in the BC years for the most part, although it’s possible there were a few hangers on as late as 402 AD. But the mitre doesn’t appear until the mid 10^th century. And then there’s the problem that the mitre itself has gone through many stages, most of which don’t look anything like the representation that the anti Catholics claim to be identical to the fish head of Dagon’s priests. And then there is the fact that an entire sect of Catholicism (the Eastern Rite Catholics) don’t wear the Western style mitre to this day. So to believe what the anti Catholics have to say you have to believe that Western Christians resurrected a long dead religion (one that they themselves helped to stamp out the last vestiges of) sometime in the 15^th century (that’s when the mitre most closely resembles the one today). This would be after the Protestant Reformation, by the way. Who would believe this???

Hislop's Two Babylons was a big influence on Jack Chick and Dave Hunt, two more of Candy's favorite authors. We have already written about both of them. Just click on their names to see those articles.

Catholic Literacy

Jennie raised an interesting point in the comments section, and as we haven't had a new post in a bit, I thought I would explore it in a new post.

Jennie wrote:
my understanding is that, in general, protestants, or Bible-only christians, have, especially in the past, placed much more emphasis on memorizing and reading scripture than catholics have and therefore have placed more emphasis on teaching reading and scripture to their children and converts. . .

Catholics seem to have placed more value on songs and images to learn, and not on the written word, and not on preaching so much either. But God's word is the most important thing, whether you hear it or read it; it must be stressed and valued above all other teaching.

What I think when I read this is that you have an image of Middle Ages Catholicism here, as the Catholic model. Stained glass windows depicting Bible stories were certainly the norm of at that time, but that also predated the printing press.

Most of my non-Catholic friends send their children to Sunday School while they attend church services. There, their children sing songs and color pictures of Bible stories. My children sit through Mass with me. They listen to readings from the Bible, and recite prayers from Scripture. In this time period, the roles seem reversed to me.

Jennie then provides some examples:

By the mid-18th century, the ability to read and comprehend translated scripture led to Wales having one of the highest literacy rates. This was the result of a Griffith Jones's system of circulating schools, which aimed to enable everyone to read the Bible in Welsh. Similarly, at least half the population of 18th century New England was literate, perhaps as a consequence of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading. . .

Interestingly, in 1893, a company of Vaudois migrated to the United States and founded the town of Valdeses, Burke County, North Carolina. At the time, a local newspaper wrote:

"All the little Waldensian children are taught to read and write at a very early age, and their knowledge of the scriptures would put to shame many of our church people of maturer years. They speak both French and Italian very fluently, and are all apparently very bright and intelligent and very anxious to learn the language of this new country."
(cited in a review of Wylies book History of the Waldenses, on Amazon.com)


Those are both around the same time period. Let me give some Catholic examples from that time period.

St. Katherine Drexel

In 1891, with a few companions, Mother Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. The title of the community summed up the two great driving forces in her life—devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and love for the most deprived people in her country.

Requests for help reached Mother Katharine from various parts of the United States. During her lifetime, approximately 60 schools were opened by her congregation. The most famous foundation was made in 1915; it was Xavier University, New Orleans, the first such institution for Black people in the United States.

Sisters of Loretto

In 1811, Mary Rhodes came from Maryland to visit relatives and saw the lack of educational opportunities for pioneer children. Settling in Kentucky, Rhodes began teaching her own relatives basic skills and catechism. Soon neighbors asked her to teach their children, and as the number of pupils increased, Rhodes welcomed the assistance of Christina Stuart and Ann Havern. These three pioneer women, with Father Nerinckx as their spiritual guide, formed the Little Society of the Friends of Mary Under the Cross of Jesus in 1812.

After the Mexican War, the United States gained possession of the vast Southwest with a mostly Catholic population. In 1852, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy of Santa Fe requested the help of the Sisters of Loretto to work with the Spanish-speaking children of Santa Fe. Six sisters traveled by river boat to Independence, Missouri, and then followed the dangerous Missouri Trail 900 miles overland to Santa Fe. In Indian country, they came across others of their order who had been teaching Osage children in Kansas since 1847. One sister died of cholera on a river boat and another of exhaustion and terror after an Indian attack on their wagons.

In November 1852, they opened their first school, the Academy of Our Lady of the Light, an all-girls school in Santa Fe, which flourished until the late 1960s. Moving south to Las Cruces, the Sisters of Loretto founded Loretto Academy in 1870, another all-girls school offering classes in reading, spelling, algebra, modern and ancient geography, lace work and piano. This school played an integral part in the educational growth of the Mesilla Valley until it closed in June 1944.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth opened Saint Joseph's Free School February 22, 1810. It educated needy girls of the area and was the first free Catholic school for girls staffed by sisters in the country. Saint Joseph's Academy began May 14, 1810, with the addition of boarding pupils who paid tuition which enabled the Sisters of Charity to subsidize their charitable mission. Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School formed the cradle of Catholic education in the United States.

Mary Elizabeth Lange

It did not take Elizabeth long to recognize that the children of her fellow refugees needed an education. She responded to that need in spite of being a Black woman living in a slave state before the Emancipation Proclamation, where the education of slaves was against the law. She used her own money and home to teach Black children.

For ten years, Elizabeth and her friend Marie Magdaleine Balas, offered free education until, inevitably, finances became a problem. Providence intervened through the person of Reverend James Hector Joubert, S.S., who, with encouragement from Monsignor James Whitfield, Archbishop of Baltimore, challenged Elizabeth to establish a religious congregation for the education of Black children. Reverend Joubert would provide direction, solicit financial assistance, and encourage other "women of color" to become members of the first order of African American nuns in the history of the Catholic Church. On July 2, 1829, Elizabeth and three other women pronounced promises of obedience to the Archbishop of Baltimore.

I would also say that this Catholic literacy was not new to that time period. Consider the case of St. Francis de Sales.

Francis decided that he should lead an expedition to convert the 60,000 Calvinists back to Catholicism. But by the time he left his expedition consisted of himself and his cousin. His father refused to give him any aid for this crazy plan and the diocese was too poor to support him.

For three years, he trudged through the countryside, had doors slammed in his face and rocks thrown at him. In the bitter winters, his feet froze so badly they bled as he tramped through the snow. He slept in haylofts if he could, but once he slept in a tree to avoid wolves. He tied himself to a branch to keep from falling out and was so frozen the next morning he had to be cut down. And after three years, his cousin had left him alone and he had not made one convert.

Francis' unusual patience kept him working. No one would listen to him, no one would even open their door. So Francis found a way to get under the door. He wrote out his sermons, copied them by hand, and slipped them under the doors. This is the first record we have of religious tracts being used to communicate with people.

The parents wouldn't come to him out of fear. So Francis went to the children. When the parents saw how kind he was as he played with the children, they began to talk to him.

By the time, Francis left to go home he is said to have converted 40,000 people back to Catholicism.

Clearly, the people in this area had to be literate for tracts to have been effective. The tracts are in print today, and available as The Catholic Controversy, published by Tan books. I have a copy, and Francis is extremely familiar with Scripture, and makes almost all of his arguments based on Scripture.

Invincible Ignorance Exhibit A

The Catholic church, for years, tried its best to keep the Bible from getting into the common people's hands. They even killed people who tried to get the Word of God to the common man. However, the Word of God has always been available to anyone who seeks for it, as Christ promised. 


Sometimes Candy's lack of world history knowledge astounds me. None of it surprises me however.  Her perspective of the Church and the Bible is directly influenced by Samuel Gipp whom I wrote an entire series on here.

Contrary to what Candy thinks, it was the Catholic church that got the scriptures into the hands of the common man.  First of all the Catholic Church determined which books should be preserved and in the canon and then under the authority of the pope, the canon of the bible was closed.  That canon remained intact until Martin Luther and the Reformation.  So the Protestant bible is only 500 years or so old.  Prior to that, it was the Catholic version used by Christendom.

Secondly, the church preserved the written word with great perseverance. Before the printing press, scripture had to be COPIED BY HAND. The volumes were HUGE.  And although anti-Catholics like Candy will bash the church for having copies of the bible chained in the church, it wasn't to prevent the people from having access to them, but rather to make sure everyone could have access to them! Much like important volumes in the public library available to all but not available for check out and circulation.

Thirdly, the church kept the word of God alive ORALLY and in art and music because the great majority of people COULD NOT READ! The beautiful art in the great churches and cathedrals wasn't just there for atmosphere - it's there to help the people learn the bible stories and to inspire them.

Fourthly, I would point out that prior to the printing press, and a mass distribution system, producing cheap, easy to produce and distribute copies of the bible, owning a bible would have been prohibitive anyway, which is another reason I think sola scriptura is erroneous.

Here is an excerpt from How We Got the Bible - Henry Graham:
Now one could go on at any length accumulating evidence as to the fact of monks and priests reproducing and transmitting copies of the Bible from century to century, before the days of Wycliff and Luther; but there is no need, because I am not writing a treatise on the subject, but merely adducing a few proofs of my assertions, and trying to show how utterly absurd is the contention that Rome hates the Bible, and did her best to keep it a locked and sealed book and even to destroy it throughout the Middle Ages. Surely nothing but the crassest ignorance or the blindest prejudice could support a theory so flatly contradicted by the simplest facts of history. The real truth of the matter is that it is the Middle Ages which have been a closed and sealed book to Protestants, and that only now, owing to the honest and patient researches of impartial scholars amongst them, are the treasures of those grand centuries being unlocked and brought to their view. It is this ignorance or prejudice which explains to me a feature that would be otherwise unaccountable in the histories of the Bible written by non-Catholics. I have consulted many of them, and they all, with hardly an exception, either skip over this period of the Bible's existence altogether or dismiss it with a few off-hand references. They jump right over from the inspired writers themselves, or perhaps from the fourth century, when the Canon was fixed, to John Wycliff, 'The Morning Star of the Reformation', leaving blank the intermediate centuries, plunged, as they imagine, in worse than Egyptian darkness. But I ask—Is this fair or honest? Is it consistent with a love of truth thus to suppress the fact, which is now happily beginning to dawn on the more enlightened minds, that it was the monks and clergy of the Catholic Church who, during all these ages, preserved, multiplied, and perpetuated the Sacred Scriptures? The Bible on its human side is a perishable article. Inspired by God though it be, it was yet, by the Providence of God, written on perishable parchment with pen and ink; liable to be lost or destroyed by fire, by natural decay and corruption, or by the enemies, whether civilised or pagan, that wasted and ravaged Christendom by the sword, and gave its churches and monasteries and libraries to the flames. Who, I ask, but the men and women, consecrated to God by their vows and devoted to a life of prayer and study in monasteries and convents, remote from worldly strife and ambition—who but they saved the written Word of God from total extinction, and with loving and reverent care reproduced its sacred pages, to be known and read of all, and to be handed down to our own generation, which grudges to acknowledge the debt it owes to their pious and unremitting labours?

When was the Old Testament compiled? Some would decide for about the year 430 B.C., under Esdras and Nehemiah, resting upon the authority of the famous Jew, Josephus, who lived immediately after Our Lord, and who declares that since the death of Ataxerxes, B.C. 424, 'no one had dared to add anything to the Jewish Scriptures, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them.' Other authorities, again, contend that it was not till near 100 B.C. that the Old Testament volume was finally closed by the inclusion of the 'Writings'. But whichever contention is correct, one thing at least is certain, that by this last date—that is, for 100 years before the birth of Our Blessed Lord—the Old Testament existed precisely as we have it now.

Of course, I have been speaking so far of the Old Testament, in Hebrew, because it was written by Jewish authority in the Jewish language, namely, Hebrew, for Jews, God's chosen people. But after what is called the 'Dispersion' of the Jews, when that people was scattered abroad and settled in many other lands outside Palestine, and began to lose their Hebrew tongue and gradually became familiar with Greek, which was then a universal language, it was necessary to furnish them with a copy of their Sacred Scriptures in the Greek language. Hence arose that translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek known as the Septuagint. This word means in Latin 70, and is so named because it is supposed to have been the work of 70 translators, who performed their task at Alexandria, where there was a large Greek-speaking colony of Jews. Begun about 280 or 250 years before Christ, we may safely say that it was finished in the next century; it was the acknowledged Bible of all the 'Jews of the Dispersion' in Asia, as well as in Egypt, and was the Version used by Our Lord, His Apostles and Evangelists, and by Jews and Gentiles and Christians in the early days of Christianity. It is from this Version that Jesus Christ and the New Testament writers and speakers quote when referring to the Old Testament.

But what about the Christians in other lands who could not understand Greek? When the Gospel had been spread abroad, and many people embraced Christianity through the labours of Apostles and missionaries in the first two centuries of our era, naturally they had to be supplied with copies of the Scriptures of the Old Testament (which was the inspired Word of God) in their own tongue; and this gave rise to translations of the Bible into Armenian and Syriac and Coptic and Arabic and Ethiopic for the benefit of the Christians in these lands. For the Christians in Africa, where Latin was best understood, there was a translation of the Bible made into Latin about 150 A.D., and, later, another and better for the Christians in Italy; but all these were finally superseded by the grand and most important version made by St Jerome in Latin called the 'Vulgate'—that is, the common, or current or accepted Version. This was in the fourth century of our era. By this time St Jerome was born, there was great need of securing a correct and uniform text in Latin of Holy Scripture, for there was danger, through the variety and corrupt conditions of many translations then existing, lest the pure scripture should be lost. So Jerome, who was a monk, and perhaps the most learned scholar of his day, at the command of Pope St Damascus in 382 A.D., made a fresh Latin Version of the New Testament (which was by this time practically settled) correcting the existing versions by the earliest Greek MSS. he could find. Then in his cell at Bethlehem, between (approximately) the years 392-404, he also translated the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew (and not from the Greek Septuagint)—except the Psalter, which he had previously revised from existing Latin Versions. This Bible was the celebrated Vulgate, the official text in the Catholic Church, the value of which all scholars admit to be simply inestimable, and which continued to influence all other versions, and to hold the chief place among Christians down to the Reformation

How The Catholic Church Started

Candy thinks the Catholic Church started centuries after the time of Christ. Catholics however believe that Christ started the first Christian church and it was Catholic.

This site explains it very well.

How The Catholic Church Started: "The word 'catholic' means universal. Jesus created one universal church for all of mankind. The Catholic Church was established by Jesus with his words spoken in Matthew 16."

It also provides this timeline:



33 A.D.


Roman Catholic Church (moved to Rome by Peter after he fled Jerusalem) was founded by God-made-man, Jesus Christ. He said: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it... Feed my lambs; feed My sheep" (Matt. 16:18,19; John 21:15,17). He also said: "He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who gathers not with me scatters" (Matt.12:30).

100




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600




700




800


9th Century Marked The First Official Schisms Within The Church



827: Eastern Schism began by Photius of Constantinople. The primary difference in Faith at the heart of the schism was the argument over the addition of the filioque statement (Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not just the Father) to the creed. This schism eventually healed.

900




1000


1053: Eastern Schism began by Michael Caerularius of Constantinople. The primary argument was the Latin practice of fasting on Saturday and the use of unleavened bread for the Holy Eucharist. Theses two points were more for challenging the authority of the Roman Pontif. This schism eventually healed.

1100




1200




1300


1378: Death of Pope Gregory XI on 27 March, 1378 began the Western Schism. The schism came to an end in 1417.



1400


1472: Present Schism of the Eastern Church begins with the repudiation of the Council of Florence.



1500


1517: Lutheran Church was founded by Martin Luther, a former priest of the Roman Catholic Church. This marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation



1521: Anabaptist first appeared in Zwickau, in the present kingdom of Saxony. Initially, they were primarily against infant baptism.



1525: Schwenkfeldians were founded by Kaspar of Schwenkfeld, aulic councillor of Duke Frederick of Liegnitz and canon. At first he associated himself with Luther, but later opposed the latter in his Christology, as well as in his conception of the Eucharist, and his doctrine of justification.



1531: The Socinians and other Anti-Trinitarians attacked the fundamental doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. Chief founder of Anti-Trinitarians was Laelius Socinus, teacher of jurisprudence at Siena, and his nephew, Faustus Socinus.



1536: Mennonites founded by Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest and later an Anabaptist elder. They deny infant baptism and the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.



1534: Church of England (Anglicanism) was founded by King Henry VIII when he threw off the authority of the Pope and proclaimed himself the head of the Church in England, because the Pope refused to declare invalid his marriage with Queen Catherine.



1560: The Presbyterian denomination was begun by John Knox who was dissatisfied with Anglicanism.



1600


1608: The Baptist church was launched by John Smyth in Amsterdam, Holland.



1620: The Swiss Mennonites split into Amish or Upland Mennonites and Lowland Mennonites.



1671: Quakers were founded by John George Fox of Drayton in Leicestershire. He favored a visionary spiritualism, and found in the soul of each man a portion of the Divine intelligence. All are allowed to preach, according as the spirit incites them.



1700


1744: The Methodist church was launched by John and Charles Wesley in England.



1774: The Unitarians were founded by Theophilus Lindley in London.



1784: Episcopalian denomination was begun by Samuel Seabury who was dissatisfied with Presbyterianism.



1787: The founder of The Salvation Army is William Booth, who quit the Anglicans, and then the Methodists, and set up his own version of Christianity.



1800


1822: Mormons founded by Joseph Smith, who made his appearance with supposed revelations in 1822.



1872: The Jehovah's Witness Church was developed by Charles Russell.



1879: Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy began the Christian Scientist religion basing it upon an outright denial of Original Sin and its effects.



1896: Ballinger Booth, the son of William Booth, quit The Salvation Army and started his own church.



The Seventh-Day Adventists, the Church of Christ, The Church of the Nazarene, or any of the various Pentecostal Churches, etc. are also among the hundreds of new churches founded by men within the past 150 years or so.

1900




2000


Over 33,000 Sects "Scattered" Outside The One Church Founded By Christ







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