Phillip R. Johnson, executive director of John MacArthur’s Grace To You ministry, comments on his blog about reports that payouts in priestly sex-abuse cases have topped $1 billion dollars. His premise is that these payouts prove that the Catholic Church’s claim of infallibility is false. My thanks to him for offering me the opportunity to step into the world of fisking:
"Start with the pretense of papal infallibility [of which we will not define so that you do not know it has nothing to do with impeccability]; forbid everyone in the core hierarchy of the church to marry [except, oh, say, Eastern-rite priests, Protestant clerical converts who are already married, and permanent deacons]; embrace a notion of <scare quote>‘spirituality’</scare quote> with <overblown rhetoric>the most superstitious form of sacramental externalism at its core</overblown rhetoric>; and demand that all your members blindly and reverently accept the authority of the church’s earthly leaders no matter what [and even though those same leaders deny they have this kind of absolutist, tyrannical form of authority I’ve heavily implied, make non-members blindly and reverently think such a demand is made of Catholics] — and what kind of result would you expect?" [emphasis Johnson’s].
Certainly not truth-in-advertising from non-members who presume to attempt to explain to other non-members what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, that’s for sure.
With the kind of things he eats..
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/page2.htm
..it was bound to affect him sooner or later!
Zany hijinks? Oh wait… But it *does* sound like a recipe for a real lame sitcom.
It always brings a smile on my fact to see a decent fisk’ing. 🙂
Good post. One thing: “forbid everyone in the core hierarchy of the church to marry [except, oh, say, Eastern-rite priests, Protestant clerical converts who are already married, and permanent deacons]”
Careful here, all of these clerics ARE forbidden to marry (83 CIC 1087, CCEO 804). It’s just that they are not necessarily forbidden from being married at the time of their ordination.
Did anyone read the comments? Sheesh!There’s not much animosity over there!
And Phil forbids folks who don’t have a Blogger account from posting. That’s convenient! I’ll just have to pray for him that the Holy Spirit will change his heart.
All I know is that I used to be a protestant and lived in So. Cal for a time and learned a lot from John MacArthur’s ministry.
I am a Charasmatic and he is ANTI-charasmatic, but as a protestant, I could let that slide since his Bible teaching was pretty good otherwise (I mean, all churches had some aspect of theology that I didn’t agree with… all part of my journey home 🙂
BUT… as we were preparing to be part of the largest police arrest in Los Angeles history (Holy Saturday 1989), John MacArthur told us that he thought Operation Rescue was “not of God”.
One can agree or disagree with Operation Rescue and their operation, but he was outspoken about it and he based his very public and well respected refusal to endorse the group on obvious anti-catholic bias and his opinion that a believer should not be involved in non-violent protest leading to incarceration. Though he agreed Abortion is a bad thing.
It was then that he lost my respect 100% and I no longer listened to what he may have to say.
Funny how many protestants think that the Roman Catholic church is the same as what it was at Trent.
I imagine that people like Mr. Johnson would be shocked that J.P. Meier happily teaches at Notre Dame and has his books approved by the Roman Catholic Church even though he denies, among other things, the perpetual virginity of Mary.
Bring back the Inquisition, says this protestant.
“Funny how many protestants think that the Roman Catholic church is the same as what it was at Trent.”
Umm, I know what you meant, Steve, but…it IS the same Church as it was a Trent. And at Lateran II, and at Nicaea, and at….well, you see my point.
I’m Anglican and I believe the perpetual virginity of Mary, real presence in the mass, baptism of infants, baptism for remission of sins, and I find Macarthur’s comments just unspeakably nasty…