Secular Sex Abuse

Great article in the New York Times about legislation which *finally* targets not only the Catholic Church, but any institution which has hidden abuse.

Should it be possible to sue the city of New York for sexual abuse by public school teachers that happened decades ago? How about doctors or hospital attendants? Police officers? Welfare workers? Playground attendants?

For nearly a year, the city has tiptoed around that question, but in the coming months, there may be no ducking it. Legislation in Albany would force public officials to answer for the crimes of earlier generations, just as Catholic bishops have.
What began as an effort by legislators to expand judicial accountability for sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has grown to cover people in every walk of life. One bill would temporarily suspend the statute of limitations, and allow people who say they were abused as children to file lawsuits up to age 58 — that is, 40 years after they turned 18.

In states which have debated changing the statue of limitations, is the object really to help the victims, or persecute the Catholic Church? If you are really concerned about victims, wouldn't you want to help all of them, and not just those who had abuse related to the Catholic Church?

Suddenly, lobbyists and advocates for school boards, counties and small towns spoke out.
“Statutes of limitation exist for a reason,” said Bob Lowry, the deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. “How can anyone go back 40 years and ascertain what happened? Witnesses, responsible authorities, even the perpetrator himself or herself, may have passed away.”

Suddenly, indeed.  So you say that you were abused by Father O'Malley back 40 years ago.  Well, he's been dead for 10 years, and the parish housekeeper died even longer ago.  Maybe Bob who was also an altar boy could be a witness, but no one has heard from him in years.  When the Catholic Church says that lifting the statute of limitations poses problems as to how to get a fair trail for both victim AND accused, are they just making excuses, or is this a valid point?  We need to remember that in our legal system you are innocent until proven guilty, and are entitled to a fair trial.

Currently in the state of New York, if you are a child who is abused by a teacher, you have only NINETY DAYS to file a report.  How fair is that?  Surely, we can come to a number which is fair for both public and religious institutions.  

And the New York State School Boards Association said the costs of old misdeeds would be borne by people who had nothing to do with them, and “provide no corresponding protection” to children. The bill ultimately was not voted on last year. It is back again, and no doubt will get fresh life from the continuing stream of revelations about high church officials who covered up abuse. 

No one denies that the victims deserve compensation.  But closing down schools and parishes hurts everyone, as well as denying the poor opportunities for aid which they might have otherwise received.

New York is certainly not the first state to consider such a bill.  Colorado debated this several years ago. 

But many opponents of the bill testified that because sovereign immunity protects public institutions, the bill unfairly targets Catholic and other nonpublic entities. L. Martin Nussbaum, an attorney with Rothberger, Johnson and Lyons Religious Institution Group, said many people believe "that Catholic institutions have a more severe [sexual abuse] problem than others. They do not."

Testifying on behalf of CCPAC, Mr. Nussbaum cited several well-documented cases involving public school teachers, juvenile detention facilities, foster care providers and correctional facilities employees.

"This data shows that there is a substantial, current problem of childhood sexual abuse in Connecticut governmental settings," he said. "It is a much larger, and much more current problem than the problem Catholic institutions largely resolved by 1992. The Catholic Conference can see no reason why the law of Connecticut should discriminate between childhood sexual abuse claimants based upon whether they were injured in a governmental setting or a Catholic setting," he said.

Catholic Sex Scandals, Part III

In part three of "Catholic Sex Scandals" I am addressing the "talk is cheap, when are they going to DO something about it" criticism.

Efforts To Combat Clergy Sexual Abuse Against Minors: A Chronology [USA]
U. S. Bishops Approve Charter to Protect Children and Young People
Restructured Committee on Sexual Abuse Announced
Sex Abuse Committee Releases Preliminary Survey Results
Mixed Commission Ends Work In Rome on Sexual Abuse Charter
Essential Norms for Diocesan/Eparchial Policies Dealing with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests or Deacons
Guidelines for Implementation of Safe Environment Programs
Training Held on 'Essential Norms'; Vatican Official Took Part
The John Jay Study results [comprehensive study commissioned by the USCCB]
Vatican Report on U.S. Seminaries
Pope blasts Irish bishops, orders Vatican probe
Vatican urges psychological tests on future priests
Guidelines for the use of psychology in the admission and formation of candidates for the priesthood
After an Accusation, Here is What Happens at the Vatican
A Papal Conversion [Article on changing procedures under Cardinal Benedict]
Vatican Publishes Procedures for Sex Abuse Cases
Vatican shows new transparency with online guide

Catholic Sex Scandals, Part II

My first entry on this topic concerned the common idea that the root cause of the Catholic sexual abuse problem is celibacy. This entry is to focus on "Why is it so hard for the church and church members to acknowledge the guilt of the priests and repudiate them?"

Pope apologizes to Irish abuse victims, orders Vatican investigation
Irish bishops apologize for 'depravity of abuse' described in Dublin
Catholic Order Apologizes to Abuse Victims
Catholic Bishops Apologize for Sex Abuse
German Bishops Apologize to Child Sex Abuse Victims
Chile's Catholic Church Apologizes for Child Abuse
Swiss bishops apologize, saying they underestimated abuse problem
Catholic bishops deliver full apology for child sex abuse [England and Wales]
U.S. Bishops Apologize for Scandal
Pope Meets Maltese Abuse Victims
Pope Meets With Victims of Sex Abuse By Clergy, Apologizes [USA]
Australia: Pope apologizes for church's sex crimes [bishops]
Pope says sorry to Australian victims of clerical sex abuse
Pope's brother apologizes to abuse victims at his former school
Paedophile priests must own up to their sins, says Vatican [Cardinal Bertone]
Papal preacher apologizes for anti-Semitic remarks

So, how much apologizing is enough? I know, the next remark is "Well, they aren't sincere. They're just apologizing because they got caught." Unfortunately, there is no way to prove sincerity. But to anyone asking the Catholic Church to acknowledge that there is a problem, you got it.

Catholic Sex Scandals

With the new deluge of news articles about the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, I thought it would be important for me to put forth some resources for putting this in perspective.

First, there are not new cases being reported every day. The news articles which are being written are about cases which happened several decades previously.

Second, it is easy to point the finger at the Catholic rule of celibacy for clergy. If this were the case, then there wouldn't be any cases in other churches. However, this is not true at all. Abusers often take positions of authority, and a clergy member has a lot of respect and trust.
You can find cases of abuse in almost all denominations.

Lutheran
Presbyterian
Baptist
Methodist
Pentecostal
Episcopalian

Some question when other churches are going to institute similar policies as the Catholic Church for handling abuse. How soon policies have been adopted vary by denomination.

Most of the abuse in the Catholic cases tended to be of teenage males, which is not actually pedophilia, although most people think of the abuse as being of small children. Most pedophiles are married, not single.

In fact, Catholic priests are no more likely to be abusers than those of other denominations. What about other professions? Several studies have found the rate of abuse by teachers are much higher than that of clergy.

This article from Psychology Today reaffirms the same points that I wanted to make.

The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent

Candy has at long last found a chronological history of the REAL Christian Church, which is written in accordance to her preferred version of history.

I've read of the Waldnses, the Vaudois, and a bit of the Anabaptists, but I want to read all the way back to Christ's time Himself, up until the present day. Thanks to many of the wonderful readers of this blog, and their suggesting some great books to me, I've settled on one that I think will be quite accurate.

Note: The Waldenses and Vaudois are the same group of people. Vaudois is the French version. Waldo/Vaudo to Waldensian/Vaudois.

Like any good revised history, this one is difficult to find, not because it is inaccurate, but because certain religions (i.e. the Catholic Church) want to keep it hidden:

Why was/is this book so hard to obtain? I did a bit of research on this, and have found that this book - which seems to teach the true history of Christ's church, has been squelched and pushed down by certain large religions that don't like what the book has to say.

Other people have similar accusations for the unpopularity of the book. For example:

How is that Broadbent’s account differs from many others then? He travelled extensively gathering what he could from various sources and directly from those who were descendants of ‘the pilgrim church’. He reads between the lines of the accounts given by ‘their enemies’, which of course would not paint them in any favourable light. There were some preserved, written records, which clearly expose the tyrannical behaviour of much of the ‘official’ Church. Interestingly, I recall reading somewhere that many of these have since ‘disappeared’ since Broadbent’s days. The recently (1999) reissued edition of The Pilgrim Church has an excellent foreword by Dave Hunt. He also makes mention there of records no longer being in circulation. What makes this account so valuable is that it drew upon sources that were available in the Author’s day (he lived from 1861 – 1945), much of which does not seem to be now in circulation.

I added the bold to highlight the vague nature of Broadbent's sources. His evidence is apparently drawn from creatively editing sources and non-existent manuscripts. At least, that is my "reading between the lines" of this review.

According to this review, the true faithful Christians include the following groups:

I’ve learnt through this that many of the ‘unknowns’ not included in ‘popular’ Church histories were actually the true and faithful ones in Christ. As I understand, these people such as, the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards and Bogomils (some of their names were given to them by their oppressors) and numerous others are often either overlooked in many Church history books or are painted in a bad light.

The Elusive Vaudois are not an early Christian group, as Candy believes, because by their own history, they only date back to the 1100's. I do not know if Broadbent shares her view or not.

The Albigensians are clearly a group which would appeal to Candy. I believe that Ellen White also asserted that they were true believers. From Raynaldus' On the Accusations Against the Albigensians:

They said that almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves; and that it was the harlot of which we read in the Apocalypse. They so far annulled the sacraments of the Church, as publicly to teach that the water of holy Baptism was just the same as river water, and that the Host of the most holy body of Christ did not differ from common bread; instilling into the ears of the simple this blasphemy, that the body of Christ, even though it had been as great as the Alps, would have been long ago consumed, and annihilated by those who had eaten of it. Confirmation and Confession, they considered as altogether vain and frivolous.

Well, if you believe that, then surely you must be part of Christ's true Church! Only, that wasn't all that they believed:

First it is to be known that the heretics held that there are two Creators; viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old; which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception. They charged the author of the Old Testament with falsehood, because the Creator said, "In the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall die;" nor (as they say) after eating did they die; when, in fact, after the eating the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death. They also call him a homicide, as well because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and destroyed the world by the waters of the deluge, as because he overwhelmed Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, in the sea. They affirmed also, that all the fathers of the Old Testament were damned; that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons. They said also, in their secret doctrine, (in secreto suo) that that Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was a bad man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was the woman taken in adultery, of whom we read in the gospel. For the good Christ, as they said, never ate, nor drank, nor took upon him true flesh, nor ever was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul....

This document dates from the 13th century. How would Broadbent have access to a more accurate version in the 1940's? How can he read through the lines to know that the first paragraph I quoted is all the truth, and everything in the second paragraph is a lie constructed by the Catholic Church in order to kill all of the Albigensians (also known as Cathars) as heretics? He couldn't. He can only guess, and edit to make things fit what he believed was history.

The Lollards are a group of people who were influenced by Wycliffe, and date from the late 1300's. Candy would agree with many of their doctrines, although some still held to the sacraments, and they felt that the virtue of the priest could effect the validity of the sacrament.

The Bogomils are also a later group, dating from the 10th century. While they did reject much of the Orthodox church, including the sacraments, they believed in a dualism similar to the Cathars. Everything created was evil, created by Satan. They rejected the Incarnation because God would never stoop to take part in the evil that was the material world.

So while I agree with Broadbent and Candy that there have always been groups of people who called themselves Christian but broke away from the established church, I do not feel that you can in any way make the argument that these groups were born again Christians, because they did not share the same theology. Broadbent asserts that groups of people have followed the pattern of the church as recorded in the Book of Acts, but these groups are all completely different, and some are not in keeping with the most generally held Christian beliefs (i.e. that God created the world).

In a comment posted on Candy's article, a reader asks Candy why she doesn't read some of the Early Church Fathers if she is interested in church history. Candy's reply, "because I am not interested in man's church, I'm interested in God's church. . . I'm not so much interested in mainstream historicy teachings of the beginnings of the Roman Catholic church, I'm looking for the history of the New Testament Christian church."

First, the translators of the King James Version had the utmost respect for the Fathers of the Church. Many of the early creeds of the Reformers mention the doctrines held by the Fathers of the Church. Calvin's Confession of Faith of 1559 states "And we confess that which has been established by the ancient councils, and we detest all sects and heresies which were rejected by the holy doctors, such as St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Cyril." Many respected non-Catholics do not see the writings of the Early Church Fathers as reflecting only the Roman Catholic church.

Secondly, where does she think that Broadbent found his information on the early Christians? I suppose from these secret sources which are now destroyed. But while Broadbent may hesitate to accept an account of beliefs of these groups from the Catholic Church, which persecuted them, it is still his source of information. By comparing the account of Raynaldus with what Broadbent writes, Candy can critically compare the two and draw her own conclusions.

Blessed James Duckett

Today is the feast day of Blessed James Duckett. Who was he?

James Duckett was an Englishman who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. As a young man he became an apprentice printer in London. This is how he came across a book called The Firm Foundation of the Catholic Religion. He studied it carefully and believed that the Catholic Church was the true Church. In those days, Catholics were persecuted in England. James decided that he wanted to be a Catholic anyway and would face the consequences. The clergyman at his former church came to look for him because James had been a steady church goer. He would not come back. Twice he served short prison terms for his stubbornness. Both times his employer interceded and got him freed. But then the employer asked James to find a job elsewhere.

James Duckett knew there was no turning back. He sought out a disguised Catholic priest in the Gatehouse prison. The old priest, "Mr. Weekes," instructed him. Duckett was received into the Catholic Church. He married a Catholic widow and their son became a Carthusian monk. He recorded much of what we know about his father.

Blessed Duckett never forgot that it was a book that had started him on the road to the Church. He considered it his responsibility to provide his neighbors with Catholic books. He knew these books encouraged and instructed them. So dangerous was this "occupation" that he was in prison for nine out of twelve years of his married life. He was finally brought to trial and condemned to death on the testimony of one man, Peter Bullock, a book binder. He testified that he had bound Catholic books for Blessed Duckett, a "grave offense." Bullock turned traitor because he was in prison for unrelated matters and hoped to be freed.

Both men were condemned to die on the same day. On the scaffold at Tyburn, Blessed Duckett assured Bullock of his forgiveness. He kept encouraging the man as they were dying to accept the Catholic faith. Then the ropes were placed around their necks. Blessed Duckett was martyred in 1602.

Martyrs such as James Duckett go against everything we've learned from the Candy version of history. Good model Christians such as Elizabeth persecuted Catholics? Even killed them?

The printing press was used for something besides printing Reformation literature? I would point out that there must have been literate Catholics, despite the Catholic Church's famous attempts to keep people illiterate, but one could make the argument that Bl. Duckett could read because he not Catholic, and used the books to try and convert other people who weren't Catholic.

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?

Catholic Columbus

Hey, at least she mentioned the Anglicans this time. Usually Catholics gets all the credit. I'm not sure how this fits in with wonderful Queen Elizabeth.

Years ago, the Separatist Puritans set off to find a land where they could escape Roman Catholic and Anglican persecution.

I'm not sure Columbus was really spreading the Gospel message to the unsaved. At least, I didn't think Candy thought Catholics did that.

(Christopher Columbus' driving force for getting to India was to spread the Gospel message to the unsaved. When Christopher Columbus instead discovered America, he said that he was led of God to find this new land - A Christian nation dedicated unto the Lord.

Christopher Columbus was a Catholic. Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door in 1517, making Columbus' voyage prior to the Reformation. Columbus started the Spanish colonization movement, spreading the Catholic faith to the islands on which he landed, such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and many lesser known islands.

Many years after Columbus, the Puritan Christian Pilgrims arrived, and created beautiful Christian settlements.

Even in mainland America, the oldest continuing settlement is the Catholic settlement of St. Augustine Florida. In California, the Catholic missions are preserved as the earliest European settlements. Thus, beautiful Christian settlements were already created by the Catholic Church.

The Elusive Vaudois

I see that Candy has given more information on the Vaudois:

The Vaudois lived in the Piedmont Valleys in the Alps of the northwest corner of Italy. Some of them got saved in around 120AD, and then went to Antioch, Syria, to make a copy of the Bible into Latin. By 157AD they had a full translation of the whole Bible, and were copying and spreading it all over the known world.

The Vaudois continued being missionaries, getting the Bible out to the common man, up through the dark ages. It was during this time that they hid the Bibles in the lining of their cloaks.

During this time, born again Christians were either killed by the RC church, or in hiding. Meahwhile, the Vaudois continued to secretly get Bibles out there, and spread the Gospel. They started in 120AD when some of the got saved, and continued on for YEARS, up to and through the Dark Ages.
Candy

She seems to have conceded the jacket/cloak issue.

First, Vaudois is the French form of Waldenses, the followers of Peter Waldo (Vaudo). If they existed in the apostolic age, I would guess that they had a different name, because Peter Waldo dates to the 1100s.

There is no historic evidence that this group of people existed prior to the 1100's, and most of the evidence which is still in existence dates to the 1400's. I think we are back to the Baptist Trail of Tears version of history, here. There was a secret faithful church, but all evidence of it was destroyed by Those Killer Catholics. Candy can not prove that they existed, nor can I disprove her belief. There is simply nothing there. Perhaps she is now considering oral tradition acceptable?

However, Candy did turn out to be correct about the small Bibles. I was able to track down Waldenses Bibles which are in the Cambridge University Library. I didn't find a picture, but this book gives accounts of small, partial Bibles which were around 3 by 4 inches.

However, it also says some of the books included were 2 Maccabees and Tobit, both of which Candy considers "false." Which brings me back to what I have written previously, which is that the Waldenses are really not a group of people which had a lot in common with born again Christians. They do share some similarities, but they have significant differences.

Phil Porvaznik has an article discussing the Waldenses and the idea that they were born again Christians. He say that this is found in A Woman Rides the Beast, as well, which is probably why Candy feels it is in keeping with her other "research."

The book by the Baptist historian McGoldrick that demolishes the above statements is titled Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History (The American Theological Library Association and The Scarecrow Press, 1994). McGoldrick examines many groups claimed as "early Baptists" (or early Evangelicals who are "baptistic") such as the Montanists, Novatians, Paulicians, Bogomils, Albigenses, Waldenses and other groups and individuals. None of these groups were in fact "early Evangelicals" but were either explicitly Catholic in doctrine or grossly heretical (such as the later Albigenses who denied the Incarnation). Baptists originate in the early 17th century in Holland and England.

"Although no reputable Church historians have ever affirmed the belief that Baptists can trace their lineage through medieval and ancient sects ultimately to the New Testament, that point of view enjoys a large following nevertheless. It appears that scholars aware of this claim have deemed it unworthy of their attention, which may account for the persistence and popularity of Baptist successionism as a doctrine as well as an interpretation of church history. Aside from occasional articles and booklets that reject this teaching, no one has published a refutation in a systematic, documented format. The present work is an effort to supply this need so that Baptists may have a thorough analysis of successionism, together with a reliable account of their origins as a Protestant religious body." (McGoldrick, preface page iv)

"It is the purpose of this book to show that, although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers." (ibid, page 2, emphasis mine)

Good News!

Well, I guess it's good news. In checking over our stats, we are getting some regular search engine traffic for the terms "catholic cult" and "catholic atrocities." These people are directed to the articles which I wrote by the same name.

Now, when you type these terms into a search engine, we are one of the few pro-Catholic sites that come up. Most of the pages are telling about why Catholicism is a cult, or the atrocities committed by Catholics. With that in mind, I just edited the two articles to add more links to some of our other articles. For example, each one now has links to our resources on why Jack Chick and Dave Hunt are NOT reliable sources of information.

I'm very glad to think that we might really make a difference to people who are directed here for those search terms. This really goes beyond Candy's audience!

Catholic Atrocities
The Catholic Cult

The Know-Nothings

And before you get all excited, no, this isn't a post where I call Candy names. While I think the discussion has moved on, I had one last topic to write about on the subject of religiously affiliated violence.

Here in America, with our recent history, we really do not have much of a history of wide-spread violence against a particular religious group. The early days of Mormonism are one instance. However, I believe the most widespread and longest lasting persecution was of Catholicism.

Most American Catholics are aware that the spirit of New England's North American settlements was hostile to Catholicism. But few are aware of the vigor and persistence with which that spirit was cultivated throughout the entire colonial period. Few Catholics realize that in all but three of the 13 original colonies, Catholics were the subject of penal measures of one kind or another during the colonial period. In most cases, the Catholic Church had been proscribed at an early date, as in Virginia where the act of 1642 proscribing Catholics and their priests set the tone for the remainder of the colonial period.

Even in the supposedly tolerant Maryland, the tables had turned against Catholics by the 1700s. By this time the penal code against Catholics included test oaths administered to keep Catholics out of office, legislation that barred Catholics from entering certain professions (such as Law), and measures had been enacted to make them incapable of inheriting or purchasing land. By 1718 the ballot had been denied to Catholics in Maryland, following the example of the other colonies, and parents could even be fined for sending children abroad to be educated as Catholics.

In the decade before the American Revolution, most inhabitants of the English colonies would have agreed with Samuel Adams when he said (in 1768): "I did verily believe, as I do still, that much more is to be dreaded from the growth of popery in America, than from the Stamp Act, or any other acts destructive of civil rights."

These early sentiments continued, and only worsened as large amount of Catholic emigrated from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. This grew into what is known as the Nativist Movement.

Immigration grew sharply in the 1830s-40s with the arrival of many Irish and Germans, who were largely Roman Catholic. Simultaneously, a Protestant revival flourished in a climate of economic change and insecurity. Evangelists demonized Catholics as immoral "Papists" who followed authoritarian leaders, imported crime and disease, and stole native jobs. Protestant workingmen burned the Ursuline Convent near Boston and rioted in several cities. Thirty people were killed and hundreds injured in Philadelphia in 1844. By the mid-1850s, the nativist American Party won six governorships and controlled legislatures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and California. They enacted numerous laws that penalized immigrants (as well as newly annexed Mexicans), including the first literacy tests for voting, which disfranchised the Irish in particular. Attacking the "un-American" foreigner served as a diversion for those unwilling to acknowledge America's irreconcilable difference of slavery versus abolition, an issue that split nativists. As sectional conflict sharpened, the American Party virtually collapsed by 1860.

The largest group which grew out of Nativism was called the Know-Nothings.

The Know-Nothings wanted to use government power to preserve their vision of a particular kind of Anglo-Saxon Protestant society. Their state and national platforms demanded that immigration be limited, that politics be "purified" by limiting officeholding to native-born Americans, and that a 21-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote. They also sought to limit the sale of liquor, to restrict public-school teaching to Protestants, and to have the Protestant version of the Bible read daily in classrooms.

Among the acts of violence which were stirred up by anti-Catholic sentiments was the burning of an Ursuline convent. The catalyst for this event, was the circulation of stories which were very similar to the Sister Charlotte story which Candy has posted previously, and which was on her sidebar for several months.

From the actual article in the Boston newspaper:

The subject of universal interest in the city today has been the work of destruction accomplished by a mob, last night and this morning, at and about the Ursuline Convent, on Mount Benedict, in Charlestown—resulting in the complete sacking of the principal building itself—a four-story handsome brick edifice, with wings, and front about eighty feet—together with the farm house, cottage, and every other building upon the premises, and also with the demolition or consumption by fire of all the furniture and chattels of every description, appurtant to the whole.

In 1844, there were a series of riots in Philadelphia which originated over the issue of religion in public schools. Catholics had asked to be able to read their own Bibles during the morning devotional reading, but this was not permitted.

In May, two Catholic churches were burned down, a convent was attacked, and a riot broke out which ended in 14 killed (between both sides) and many more injured.

In July, a riot broke out again. When a church was again attacked, the militia got involved and another 15-20 people were killed, with many more injured.

The incidents in Philadelphia are credited with ultimately creating the Catholic school system in America.

In 1853, Cincinnati saw a similar riot, but one with less tragic results. A mob of 600 men set out to burn the Cathedral to the ground, but after the police fired upon the mob and injured several, the mob disbursed. No one was killed.

In 1854, numerous churches were burned down, blown up, or simply vandalized.

The last year of violence was 1855, which saw the "Bloody Monday Massacre" in Louisville, Ky. You can read several articles from the Louisville paper here:

A remembrance on the 150th anniversary of one of the deadliest anti-immigrant riots in American history, the Bloody Monday Massacre of August 6, 1855 was held in Louisville Kentucky on Saturday, August 6th, 2005. The instigators of the massacre were the Know Nothings, a Nativist political party who were fearful of losing control of the Louisville City Council. They were driven by an anti-immigrant vitriolic press to attack and slaughter as many as 150 German and Irish immigrants who lived in the poorest sections of Louisville.

In the aftermath, more than 10,000 Catholics left Louisville for other cities, having a huge impact on the population of the city. The actual number of dead remains disputed. Most accounts leave it at "at least 22" but a letter written by the Bishop of Louisville says that 100 were killed. The Louisville paper also weighs in on the conflicting accounts:

Bloody Monday has also left a burden for Louisville historians, who continue to wrestle with the sketchy, partisan accounts of it that appeared in the city's newspapers and official records.

"We don't argue about what happened in the earthquakes of 1811-12," said historian and Metro Councilman Tom Owen. "We don't argue about what happened in the 1937 flood or the tornado of 1890. But professionals debate both the causation and the result of Bloody Monday."

Within ten years, the Know-Nothings and the Nativist movement had died down, and the violence had ceased. Clearly, the same sort of tales of murderous Catholics, and convents torturing young girls are still floating around out there, popular in some quarters.

Because this has been a persistent topic at Candy's blog, I created a "Those Killer Catholics" tag for such articles. If you click on it at the bottom of this article, you can find other entries I've written on similar lines, including the Inquisition(s) and the Sister Charlotte articles.

Non-Atrocious Catholics

Candy has pointed out that Catholics are not immune to getting caught up in racial or political prejudice, and have cooperated in genocide. This is not something I need to deny. It is sad, but true. However, you cannot say that this is the case with all Catholics, or that Catholicism as an institution encourages this, at least in modern times. I thought it worthwhile to profile a few Catholics who courageously stood up against regimes, and tried to stop genocide when it occurred.

In the comments, the treatment of the Indians was mentioned. Often in history books, the enslavement of the Indians of the Americas was stated as if there were no dissenting voices. However, Bartolome de las Casas was a priest who spent fifty years of his life fighting for the rights of the Indians. As bishop, he instructed his priests to deny absolution to men who profited from Indian slave labor. Although he did not win his fight for Indian freedom, he fought tirelessly on their behalf for most of his life.



The role of of the Church in World War II is one where many accusations such as Candy's are often made. However, there are many heroes here, too.

I've already mentioned the priest wing at Dachau, so let me introduce you to one of the 2500 inhabitants. Titus Brandsma was a Dutch priest. In 1935 he wrote against the anti-Jewish marriage laws. He wrote continually against the Nazi party, and tried to get Dutch newspapers not to print Nazi propaganda. In 1942, he was sent to Dachau, where he asked his fellow prisoners to pray for their guards while being beaten and starved. He was used for medical experiments, and eventually killed by lethal injection.


There was a German movie made in 2004 about one of the priests in Dachau, called The Ninth Day. You can read more about it in a review here.

In Auschwitz you could find Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, seen above. Fr. Kolbe sheltered 3,000 Polish refugees at his friary, 2000 of which were Jews. In 1941 he wrote in a publication ""No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?"

He was taken prisoner after this publication, and taken to a concentration camp. Fr. Kolbe volunteered to die in the place of a man who had a family. He and ten other prisoners were starved two two weeks, when those who hadn't died were killed by injection. During the entire time, Fr. Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer, and kept up their spirits.

The prisoner that Maximilian Kolbe died for, Franciszek Gajowniczek, survived the war and was reunited with his wife. He lived until 1995.


Irene Sendler was a Polish Catholic nurse who saved 2500 Jewish children from death. She even kept records, so that the children could be reunited with their parents after the war, though in many cases, their parents did not survive. Although she was taken prisoner, tortured, and sentenced to death but was rescued by the Polish resistance. She lived to be 98 years old.


Sara Salkahazi, an Hungarian nun, is credited with saving the lives of 100 Jews. Altogether her order saved 1000. She was shot on the banks of the Danube river, along with four Jewish women, and a co-worker who was not a member of the order.

While it is currently in fashion to blame Pope Pius XII for not doing enough to save the Jews, I would be remiss if I didn't mention him as someone who worked against the Nazi regime. Pope Pius authorized false baptismal certificates to save Jewish lives. He issued visas to allow Jews to move to other countries, and encouraged monasteries and convents to shelter Jews. He spoke out on several occasions against the Nazi party, and immediately after the war he was hailed by media around the world as a "lone voice" against the Nazi party. (How soon they forget!). Israel Zoller, the Chief Rabbi of Rome during World War II, actually converted to Catholicism after the war. He took the baptismal name Eugenio, the birth name of Pius XII, in gratitude for all he had done on behalf of Jews during the war.

"No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever
he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent."
The New York Times, December 25, 1942

"When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the
pope was raised for its victims."
Golda Meir, Israeli Foreign (October 1958)

". . . the Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Pope Pius XII was instrumental
in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000,
Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."
Pinchas E. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (1967)


For these Catholics, and the hundreds of others who worked against evil at risk to themselves, we should be deeply grateful.

Catholic Atrocities

Many people accuse the Catholic Church of countless atrocities. There were the inquisitions, the Crusades, we killed Jews, we killed protestants. Some claim that Catholics are only enjoying their newfound acceptance by other Christians, and will soon rise up again to kill more multitudes.

Many of these accusations come from Jack Chick and Dave Hunt. Click on their names to learn the false nature of their claims.

What you must remember, is that the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years. During much of that time, killing someone who disagreed with you theologically was perfectly acceptable. This was not contained to Catholicism. Let me provide some examples:

• The followers of John Hus, known as the Hussites, were quite a force in their day.As Zwingli spread protestantism in Switzerland, protestant forces declared war on the Catholic cantons.

• The factions of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all killed Anabaptists.

• Saintly Queen Elizabeth killed Catholics for not converting to Anglicanism.

• Witch trials encompassed all forms of Christianity, in Europe and America. Lutheran Germany had the highest execution rate.

• The Thirty Years War, one of the bloodiest in Europe, was primary one of religion. It began when Calvinists threw two Catholic members of the Bohemian royal council from a window.

• The Know-Nothings incited riots which were responsible for a number of church burnings, the burning of an Ursaline convent, and the death of dozens of Catholics.

At the same time, modern scholarship is uncovering how much of the Catholic "atrocities" in history were based on anti-Catholic bias. Read the truth about the Spanish Inquisition.

Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University (non-Catholic), writes in his book, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice:

"There never was such a thing as a Church-wide inquisition, a terrifying monolith comparable to the NKVD or the Gestapo. It is more accurate to think of inquisitions that operated extensively in some areas in a highly decentralized way, although they notionally acted under papal authority. Inquisitions were important at certain times and places but never existed in other areas."

"The main problem about speaking of 'the Inquisition' is that it suggests that religious repression of this sort was a Catholic prerogative. In fact, before the Enlightenment, virtually all religious traditions on occasion acted similarly when they had the power to do so..This indictment of religious savagery and intolerance applies to.all the Protestant nations, even relatively liberal ones such as England and the Netherlands..Equally blameworthy would be Muslims, Hindus, and even Buddhists. After all, in the seventeenth century, when Catholic inquisitions were at their height, the Buddhist/Shinto nation of Japan was engaged in a ferocious attempt to stamp out the deviant faith of Christianity through torture and massacre. In just forty years, these Japanese religious persecutions killed far more victims than the Spanish Inquisition would in all the centuries of its existence."

You can easily find similar information about the Crusades and Catholic involvement, or lack of it, in World War II.

While it turns my stomach to quote it, here is what Candy wrote in a recent comment:

This makes this quite an enigma, then doesn't it? Why would someone claiming to be Christian, defend a cult that has killed MILLIONS of Christians? A cult that still says in their cannon that anyone who believes they are saved by Christ alone are anethama?

Why would you stand up for a church that in the 1940s had it's priests in Serbia take off their preist garb, and TORTURE millions of those people to death, because they were protestant. They were sick! They ripped babies from their mother's wombs while making the fathers watch. They cut nursing women's breasts off. They made keepsake necklaces out of human eyeballs, they peeled people's skin OFF. They collected human heads that they had decaptiated. They smiled for photos while they were chopping off heads.

They waved the protestant's head in the air in victory and smiled for more pictures.

Look back through history - the REAL history, not the revised history... You'll see that each time the Roman Catholic church started being ecumenical and nice nice to Christians, it was up until the large number of Christians trusted Roman Catholics, and then the slaughter began. If you didn't convert, you were tortured to death. Why torture? Because their cannon teaches that the more pain a person suffers before dying, the less time they'll have to spend in "purgatory." :-( Those priests tortured people to death out of love??? :-(

Look back in Ireland and France. The Catholics made nice nice with the protestants, and then they went in for the KILL.

After a bit of research, I found that Candy is probably referring to a Croatian death camp called Jasenovac. You can read more about it here:

From August 1941 to April 1945, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of many nationalities, were murdered at the death camp known as Jasenovac. Estimates of the total numbers of men, women and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000. And yet, despite the scale of the crimes committed there, most of the world has never heard of Jasenovac.

Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the "Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustashe Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders.

I suppose one might as easily point a finger at the Nazis, which were based in Lutheran Germany, and killed many, many Catholics. Dachau had a special "priest block" which held over 2500 Catholic priests. Clearly, Jasenovac was not targeted at just protestants, as Jews and Gypsies (or Roma) were killed as well.

While Catholicism is mixed in with the atrocities in Croatia, it is not the cause. The constant struggles between Croatia and Serbia are ethnic in origin, and have been in existence for centuries. If they all became born-again fundamentalists tomorrow, I think that they would still try to kill each other, because their deep-rooted hated means more to them than their religion.

As I have written before, violence in the name of religion is not restrained to Catholicism. Even protestants have, on occasion, persecuted and killed Catholics in the name of religion.

I find this one of Candy's more disturbing posts. It is very sad that she feels that one day, all Catholics will rise up and torture all non-Catholics to death. No wonder she feels we are Satanic. Truly, the church which she describes IS a Satanic one. However, it is not the Catholic Church.

Read a follow-up to this post, Non-Atrocious Catholics.

If you are new to our website, you can find links to some of our other posts about Catholicism here.

Candy vs. Angie, Part II

So far, we have only looked at Angie's initial comment and Candy's response. Let's pick up with Angie's reply.

Candy

The quote you gave from St. Germanus isn't complete, so I can't understand the context, but I will tell you that I don't believe and don't know any other Catholic that says we receive our salvation through Mary. We receive that through Jesus Christ alone. I just can't help but believe that Jesus would be heartbroken by people thinking of his dear mother as only a "vessel." I think of her with great love and respect as I would my best friend's mother.

I wasn't trying to stir up an argument- I know we differ big-time on how we view the Catholic Church (which is not a cult by the way). I have been pretty offended by some of your claims, but I have continued to read your blog because I admire the way you joyfully live out your vocation of motherhood. I am a mother of five and am always looking for ways I can do my job better because I still have so much to learn. Surrounding myself with the right people and good information helps a lot.

Differences aside, I believe the Lord loves all of us, and I hope it's ok with you if I continue to visit your blog.

Angie

Good job, Angie, on catching that incomplete quote! A very gracious response.


Angie, if you believe that you receive salvation through faith in Christ alone, than by your own church writings (such as the council of Trent) you are anathema.

It sounds to me like you should try out a Christian church instead of a Roman Catholic one. You may find that you have more in common there.

Candy

I noticed that Angie didn't actually say she believed her salvation was through faith in Christ alone, but through Christ alone.

Candy brings up the idea of anathema, which always seems to get people riled up. An anathema is a form of what we would call today, excommunication. This is based on Scripture, specifically what St. Paul wrote in Galatians 1:8–9 and 1 Corinthians 16:22.

I would again, point you to This Rock, which has a very informative article on anathema, and explains why Angie would not be anathema for her views.

The anathemas of Trent and other councils were like most penalties of civil law, which only take effect through the judicial process. If the civil law prescribes imprisonment for a particular offense, those who commit it do not suddenly appear in jail. Likewise, when ecclesiastical law prescribed an anathema for a particular offense, those who committed it had to wait until the judicial process was complete before the anathema took effect.

6. Anathemas applied to all Protestants. The absurdity of this charge is obvious from the fact that anathemas did not take effect automatically. The limited number of hours in the day by itself would guarantee that only a handful of Protestants ever could have been anathematized. In practice the penalty tended to be applied only to notorious Catholic offenders who made a pretense of staying within the Catholic community.

7. Anathemas are still in place today. This is the single most common falsehood one encounters regarding anathemas in the writings of anti-Catholics. They aren’t in place today. The penalty was employed so infrequently over the course of history that it is doubtful that anyone under an anathema was alive when the new Code of Canon Law came out in 1983, when even the penalty itself was abolished.

8. The Church cannot retract its anathemas. Anti-Catholics love to repeat this falsehood for rhetorical flourish. But again, it isn’t true. The Church is free to abolish any penalty of ecclesiastical law it wants to, and it did abolish this one.

Angie replies to the news that she is anathema in the Catholic Church:

An anathema- I had to look that up in the dictionary, LOL. Spitting venom at me is really unbecoming of you. I was honestly not trying to taunt you Candy. After reviewing my statement, yes, I believe I am saved through Jesus. However, I do also believe that we are to do good works. (James 2:14-26, Romans 6:16-23) Faith and works really go hand in hand. I do also believe that the sacraments bring me closer to God. You don't believe that, but I'm not going to shove my beliefs down your throat. These are my beliefs. Yes, there are a lot of Catholics that are Catholic because they were raised Catholic and haven't learned what they believe. Many are easily swayed into leaving the Church by people such as yourself. But take note, you will NEVER walk into a Catholic Church and hear Protestant-bashing. I make it a point to be educated in what I believe, and I embrace it. If that makes me evil in your eyes, so be it.

Angie


Angie, don't get mad at me because I know more of your church teachings than you do. :-(

Umm, yeah . . . Not quite up to date on current canon law, though, is she?

"Spitting venom?" When and where did I do such things?

Notice that I only quoted what YOUR own church says in their holy writings, and compared it to the Bible. If that is spitting venom, then what is love? I didn't call you anathema, YOUR church's own writings refer to you as such, for your faith in Christ alone. They are the ones spitting venom in their writings, not me.

Candy has given only partial quotes, and they came from a rather obscure saint, and a well respected, but not recent, Church council. I have yet to see any quotes from the Catechism, which is generally the standard for theological debates regarding Catholic doctrine.

You would have been killed for your current beliefs by your very own church in England during the middle ages.

And, as I've written before, non-Catholic Christians never killed any Catholics? Killing heretics was a long standing practice on both sides for hundreds of years. I provided some examples in the Whore of Babylon post.

Henry Dunster, the first President of Harvard University, was fired from his position and banished from the colony because he came to believe that infant baptism was not Biblical. So Candy herself, would have been "anathema" to a group of Christians which she has mentioned previously as having similar spiritual principles to her own.

We are saved by faith through the spilt blood of Jesus, and not through Mary, sacraments, the un-biblical pope, the Catholic church, etc. There is no purgatory, either, BTW. That's not mentioned in the Bible once. Furthermore, there is no need for any purgatory.

You can find my post on purgatory, complete with Scripture citations, here. Notice how Candy is now piling on the issues, so that Angie cannot possibly make a reasoned defense of all these doctrines.

When Jesus died on the cross, He said "It is finished!" COMPLETE. No need for purgatory, no intercessions to the saints or Mary to appease an angry God, no sacraments, rites, and rituals - It Is Finished. Priase God! :-D

I'm not spewing hate to you, I am telling you the truth, and I'm pointing out to you that the beliefs you've stated you have are more Christian than Catholic, except the whole sacraments thing.

Angie really hasn't said very much about her beliefs, that I could see.

The works of the saved person are their sanctification in the Lord, it's good works that happen ~automatically~ when a person is truly saved, as they get God's Holy Spirit literally indwelling them, and they are to walk by the Spirit, not by the flesh. Romans 8 and Galatians chapter 5 explains this beautifully.

As Catholics, we believe that if we truly have faith, we will do good works. Works and faith are inseparable. This seems to be what Candy believes as well. Would Candy not agree that if someone said they were saved, but did not change their lifestyle, and start reading the Bible, then they probably are not really saved?

Therefore, a sanctified Christian wouldn't have any church doctrine to follow in order to do their good works. They are to listen to God and walk in the Spirit, not follow a rote list, or repeat "hail Mary full of grace" while holding a rosary. None of that is in the Bible sweety, you've been duped. :-(

Actually, I think "hail Mary full of grace" IS in the Bible.

No, I have't bashed you, or spewed any venom at you whatsoever. I have simply laid out the truth on the table.

You are offended, that is your fault, not mine.

If I disliked you, I would keep my mouth shut, and laugh at you that you have been tricked. However, I love you as a Christian ought, so I'm trying to save your eternal life. Take it or leave it. One day you'll know the correct answer. I pray you embrace the truth before it's too late.

PS - You don't hear Catholic bashing in protestant churches either. At least, none that I've ever attended.

What you will hear is someone "telling the Truth." She does not define this as Catholic bashing, as Candy has said before.

As for your statement, I don't know how you can say NO Catholic church bashes protestants, unless you have somehow attended all Catholic churches? It has been historically proven that the RC church used to continually bash protestants during reformation and inquisitions.

Candy

I would guess that if Candy is bringing in inquisitions, her definition of protestant bashing is different from her idea of Catholic bashing. Poor Angie now must not only answer for every Catholic Church in existence today, but every sermon ever preached in a Catholic Church, and apparently, inquisitorial trials, too.

Thomas Madden has a very informative article on the Inquisition, in case anyone has any lingering questions about it.


My father in law regularly attends a Roman Catholic church. When my mother in law was alive, she attended with him - in submission to him, but she was not Catholic.

Once or twice a week she attended a Christian church for evening services or Bible study.

She also was KJV only, and had Bible studies with friends over the phone.

She was a saved woman who walked in the Spirit mightily.

Candy

Candy's views on the salvation of Catholics seem to evolve continually. For a long while, she felt that Catholics absolutely could not be saved. More lately, she has said that some Catholics may be saved, but they must "come out of her" in order to attain salvation.

Now she offers an example of a person she feels stayed within the Catholic Church, but was saved. Probably because she technically wasn't Catholic, read the King James Bible, and snuck out to Bible studies on occasion. This is really only of minor interest, but I thought the comment worth preserving in case she comes back to this in the future.

Dave Hunt's A Woman Rides The Beast

Edit: As we've now had more of a Woman Rides The Beast post from Candy, I thought I'd bump this up the page.

I see that while Candy reports she has read a few more chapters of A Woman Rides The Beast, she hasn't posted specifically about it yet. Because there are many great Catholic resources available about this book, I thought I would include them all in a post, for future reference.

A Look At Dave Hunt, Leading Anti-Catholic Fundamentalist:

Rome is ever at the center of Hunt's thoughts. According to Hunt, the Catholic Church will play a crucially villainous role in uniting all the world's religions in the service of the anti-Jewish and totalitarian Antichrist. By that time, the true Christians will have been raptured into heaven; the Jews in Israel will then return to the center of the historical stage. The Antichrist will turn against the Whore of Babylon (the Catholic Church and her allies) and destroy her. Then the Jews will recognize Christ at last, and Christ will come on the clouds to establish His millennial Kingdom in Jerusalem. Such are the end times, according to Dave Hunt.

Strangely, Hunt is zealous in defending the Protestant Reformation but does not realize that his own emphasis on "deciding for Christ" inescapably implies the possibility of co-operating with the grace of justification — a possibility the Reformers constantly condemned but upon which the Catholic Church insists. Also, dispensationalism's radical distinction between Law and Grace, and its choice for the latter over the former, is implicitly an invitation to a lawless or antinomian spirit among Christians. Some dispensationalists even say that the Ten Commandments are not meant for gentile Christians in the present age. For this the dispensationalists are condemned as heretics by real Calvinists such as the late John Gerstner, who called dispensationalism "spurious Calvinism and dubious evangelicalism." Gerstner saw that the Church-Israel dichotomy caused dispensationalists to "retreat into a hyper-spiritual Gnosticism which spurns the structures of the visible church which God has graciously given His people."

A rebuttal of Mr. Hunt's statistics on the Spanish Inquisition:

James Hitchcock, a professor of history at St. Louis University, summarizes the conclusions of the best of modern Inquisition studies:

(1) The inquisitors tended to be professional legists and bureaucrats who adhered closely to rules and procedures rather than to whatever personal feelings they may have had on the subject.

(2) Those rules and procedures were not in themselves unjust. They required that evidence be presented, allowed the accused to defend themselves, and discarded dubious evidence.

(3) Thus in most cases the verdict was a "just" one in that it seemed to follow from the evidence.

(4) A number of cases were dismissed, or the proceedings terminated at some point, when the inquisitors became convinced that the evidence was not reliable.

(5) Torture was only used in a small minority of cases and was allowed only when there was strong evidence that the defendant was lying. In some instances there is no evidence of the use of torture.

(6) Only a small percentage of those convicted were executed -- at most one or two percent in a given region. Many more were sentenced to life in prison, but this was often commuted after a few years. The most common punishment was some form of public penance.

(7) The dreaded Spanish Inquisition in particular has been grossly exaggerated. It did not persecute millions of people, as is often claimed, but approximately 44,000 between 1540 and 1700, of whom less than two percent were executed.

Catholic Answer's Hunting The Whore of Babylon:

Some anti-Catholics claim the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17 and 18. Dave Hunt, in his 1994 book, A Woman Rides the Beast, presents nine arguments to try to prove this. His claims are a useful summary of those commonly used by Fundamentalists, and an examination of them shows why they don’t work.

Apparently, Candy's claim that Vicar of Christ = Anti-Christ originates from A Woman Rides The Beast. Biblical Truths For Baptists takes apart the origins:

Recall that in New Testament Greek, the principle meaning of the prefix 'anti-' is "against". Hence, the Greek 'antichristos' is translated as "opposed to the messiah". There is a secondary meaning of the Greek 'anti-', which connotes "substitution" or "correspondence". If you think that this is the meaning implied in Antichrist as used in the Bible (in the Iohannine epistles), then you are probably an antichrist yourself, as the text makes it clear that an antichrist is "opposed" to Christ, not His equivalent.

The Latin equivalent for the Greek prefix 'anti-' is, in fact, 'anti-'. That is because the Latin prefix 'anti-' is a direct loan-word from the Greek. Thus, the Latin translation of 'antichristos' is 'antichristus'.

In Latin, however, 'vicarius' is an adjective meaning "that which supplies the place of." Hence, the noun 'vicarius' means "substitute, proxy, place-holder, vicar," etc.,. The root of this word is 'vicis', "alternate".

The Greek equivalent of the Latin 'vicis' is 'eiko'. Hence, the Latin phrase 'vicarius Christi' might be literally translated into Greek as 'eikon Christou', or "icon of Christ," though I suppose a more apt translation might be found.

A book called Bearing False Witness?: An Introduction To The Christian Countercult by Douglas E. Cowan has some interesting sections on Dave Hunt and his writings. I don't think I'm permitted to excerpt from there, so I'll refrain. Look around page 165 for the Hunt section.

I couldn't resist including a link to the conversion story of Mark Connell, who credits Dave Hunt with leading him to the Catholic Church:

Every evening, my grudge against the Church was edged toward full-blown hatred as I reveled in the writings of professional anti-Catholics such as Dave Hunt and James G. McCarthy. Many a dark night slipped by as I continually "let the sun go down on my anger." Woe to the unprepared Catholic that crossed my path at this time! Woe to my Catholic family members! McCarthy and Hunt’s books allowed me to build an air tight case against the Church, but it seems that I never considered that if air could not get in or out, neither could the Light. And so, in the darkness of my prejudice, I grew as a misshapen plant. I bore bitter fruit on twisted branches. . .

I started reading "A Woman Rides the Beast" for a second time, but this time something was different. Whereas in the past this book made me feel smug about my escape from the "Whore of Babylon," it now caused my case to collapse in ruins. This book is so internally inconsistent and mean spirited, that I could only shake when I read it again. If Hunt had written in the same manner about the Jewish people, he would be termed an anti-Semite and be featured on Nightline. Consider the following quote from his book, "Those conditioned to believe that wine had become Christ’s blood were able to believe Hitler’s myth of blood as well." How could I be so blind to his prejudice?

As I studied this book, something else became apparent. In his rush to pummel Catholics, Hunt also wounded Luther. With his assault on Luther’s ‘heretical’ belief in the Real Presence, he shook my trust in sola scriptura. Why? Because Luther and Hunt both believe that Scripture alone should be used to determine doctrine. Yet, while using Scripture, both men were at opposite ends of the spectrum on what seemed to be a key doctrinal question: Is Christ physically present in the Eucharist? Hunt said this belief was "a fantasy" and "a foolish heresy" and cited many Scripture verses to support his belief. Luther disagreed . . .

Enjoy the reading!