Catholic Fundamentalism has been on facebook for a few months. Those associated with Catholic Fundamentalism are surprised to learn that millions of people feel a deep urge to criticize The Church.
And, something else has been made apparent: All those who enjoy criticizing The Church tend to believe that he or she is unusually intelligent, perceptive, and enlightening. Few Church critics recognize the signs of pseudo-intellectualism.
In the short time that Catholic Fundamentalism has been on facebook, criticisms of The Church have been many. Over time, it becomes obvious that the same criticisms are frequently repeated. The repetitions are consistent, and almost the demonic reverse of the way Catholics repeat Hail Marys. Boring, repetitive, and unoriginal as the complaints are, each critic feels himself to be saying something important, original, and intelligent. And, they think so even as they say the same things, over and over. Masterful delusion by the master deluder.
One explanation: The destroying demon in each continual critic’s mind has destroyed their ability to think. Instead of using their minds to consider and analyze, on this subject, they merely repeat platitudes. They have turned themselves into broken records. They give endless voice to the same, tired thoughts even as they believe themselves to be creative, clever, and inventive. Frankly, the process is amazing.
Pointing out the sad sameness, and the dead end to which it leads in this life and the next, provokes those committed to criticizing The Church to greater anger.
Boiling down the frequently repeated criticisms appearing on the facebook location of Catholic Fundamentalism:
1. The Church is very wealthy. It should sell all its property and give the money to to the poor.
2. The Church ignored the problem of child abuse. Critics never examine the complex, competing motivations, like lawsuits with big payoffs. Sometimes, the abuse happened. False accusations are ignored, as are monies that appear to have gone to those who pretended to be abused to share in the settlements. Critics pay no attention to the facts that attorneys made money, prosecutors advanced their careers, and judges sometimes sentenced the wrong people in the interests of political correctness. Still, The Church agrees that more should have been done more quickly.
3. The Church treats women as second class citizens and “baby factories”. The Church denies their right to kill children whose crime is being inconveniently conceived. Some are unbelievably angry because in the one-in-several-million-childbirths, The Church thinks the mother should sacrifice her life for that of her child. These same people ignore The Church’s pro-life position that has saved millions from death by abortion.
3. The Pope has too much money. So do all those bishops. Amazingly, some critics are outraged because they think Church higher-ups wear expensive red slippers made by Prada. These same fault-finders are also concerned because Cardinals’ robes cost a lot of money. Their solution: “The Cardinal’s robes, along with the Pope’s regalia, should be sold and the money given to the poor.
4. Some are “very concerned”about stories of nuns keeping order in elementary school classrooms with occasional knuckle-raps.
5. Complaints about celibacy, poverty, obedience, and the “unnaturalness of it all” abound among anti-Catholics.
Really. That’s about the sum total of criticism leveled at The Church by all manner of self-anointed “intellectuals”. It’s absolutely pathetic. One sees that the devil works by dumbing-down his followers. They are unable, for instance, to see the huge moral gap between a hundred million intentional abortions and one or two women who sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their children’s. To lost minds and souls, those two things are equal, and the matter of greater concern is the least likely.
That, in itself, tells us a great deal about how living errors, demons, populate and destroy the thinking abilities of those in whom they live.
Criticizing The Church. Not smart, but popular. Why do people do it? They’re possessed by errors and don’t want God standing in their way.
My criticism of the Catholic Church concerns their apparent temporal inconsistency in applying the sacred doctrine. The genius of Aquinas – who had the very good sense to distinguish between human (finite, changeable, relative) truth, and divine (eternal, absolute and immutable) truth – has been mislaid.
Where are the heretic burnings?
Where are the Holy wars?
Where are the Jewish and Pagan pogroms?
And you can’t purchase an indulgence for love nor money now-a-days. Okay, well maybe for ‘love’, but still, I long for the olden days before that heretic Luther ruined everything. And don’t get me started on Vatican II, the Council of Nicaea and its Creed were perfectly fine.
The heretics now burn themselves. It’s a frequently expressed Catholic Fundamentalism position that The Loving Programmer has written The Creation Program so that it is increasingly self-weeding. Now, those who refuse to believe strut about for awhile, telling all how wonderfully bright and brave they are, then go to Judgment. Same thing with the Holy Wars. There’s at least one more coming, but the heretics have done a pretty good job of getting rid of each other. Pogroms were NOT part of Catholic teaching, though they make good propaganda to keep souls from embracing The Church and being saved. (Remember, The Garden is self-weeding in more than one way.) The pogroms still go on wherever Ishmaelites can get them started and maintained.
Aspects of The Tridentine Mass can be construed as Pogroms, yes?
Query?
Do you read and write Latin and Greek?
Oh an The Loving Programmer wrote The Creation Programme, not ‘Program’.
No, to both questions. How could you construe any part of the Tridentine Mass as a pogrom? If linguistic consistency is a meaningful goal, which it may not be, shouldn’t it be pogromme”?
The ‘conversion’ of Jews – if you do so with a little too much enthusiasm.
Nyuck, nyuck!
You do have a sense of humour.
I knew it!
It is good that you do not read Latin. My name? “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo”? It is from Catullus: Carmina 16. Quite simply the rudest declarative ever written in Latin, or any other language for that matter.
Best you remain ignorant of its meaning. Think of it as ‘Forbidden Knowledge’.
THANK YOU for your reticence.
“reticence”?
Hey!
I do the sesquipedalia ’round here!
You must keep to your usual well written and easily understood prose, maximising as you do the number of people who might understand. I prefer my word salads to be opaque and a ‘bloody’ chore to read. I choose to minimise the number of punters who might understand me – keeps out the riff raff.
“…….All those who enjoy criticizing The Church tend to believe that he or she is unusually intelligent, perceptive, and enlightening……”
What about those who do not enjoy criticising The Church but feel they have to?
Very hard question. This site has not understood The Church, the Body of Christ on earth, on only one issue: When Mary, God’s Mother, the most perfect and powerful being in all Creation, told the Pope to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart and release the 3rd Secret, it’s hard to find a good reason for not doing so openly and publicly. If we find that we disagree with something The Church has done, we must look at it as an opportunity to demonstrate our humility. It is our way of taking a Vow of Obedience. So, despite lacking the ability to understand why the Fatima Instructions were not fully, openly, and publicly followed, we must still believe and obey. I hope that even explaining this reason for concern is not taken to be used as a reason to diminish The Church’s authority.
How is this “Vow of Obedience” of which you speak different from the “voluntary submission to God” that adherents of Islam profess?
What an interesting question. Thank you for asking. A possible answer: It comes down to the authority of what fatwa should be obeyed. If a current ruling is opposed to an earlier decision, which is valid? Which source should be followed if there is a conflict? In The Church, on the other hand, a Vow of Obedience is taken to The Church whose unbroken line of authority stretches back to the beginning. God planned for Christ to come, He had the prophets announce it centuries ahead of time, Christ came, and He said to the first Head of The Roman Catholic Church, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock, I build My Church.” The unbroken line, the Apostolic Succession, that proceeds from that allows a Vow of Obedience to be given to, well, the rock upon whom He built His Church. No opposing authorities with different opinions and conclusions.
“……If a current ruling is opposed to an earlier decision, which is valid? Which source should be followed if there is a conflict?……”
Agreed, without a central authority, ie: a ‘Caliph of Baghdad’ as it were, possibly competing declaratives of different ‘authorities’ separated in time and space can easily lead to confusion. This unbroken line, this Apostolic Succession to which you refer, is fine in theory, but has it been valid in practice?
Yes. There have been a few wrinkles, but nothing has kept The Church from standing, like a rock, from the time Christ put Peter in charge.
Ah, but the ‘wrinkles’ are the exceptions which make the rule, yes?