Reader Apologetics Invitation

A reader writes:

One thing I come across in the blogosphere are occasionaly bloopers about the faith.  Ironically when discussing the current brouhaha about the Muhammed cartoons and jihad DJ Drummond of Polipundit makes the following staement (after stating he is a Protestant):

"Take the Reformation of Christianity. Iā€™m not saying, at all, that Christianity is morally the same as Islam, yet I am all to well aware that the catholic Church in Europe was guilty of some very nasty excesses, what with prohibition against lay people reading the Bible on their own, and against personal ownership of Bibles. I recall reading of arrests and trials and tortures of innocent people, for the purpose of advancing the fortunes of favored individuals and punishing their enemies. I recall the histories of indulgences granted by the Church, manipulation of governments and heavy tax burdens levied on the people with no choice but to endure it. These injustices lasted for centuries with very few dissenters, and small wonder ā€“ the Church hired men to devise means of torture, to literally wrack confessions from malcontents and so suppress any thought of revolt. Few men indeed had the courage to speak up during those years."

I could probably debunk this but don’t have the time (I’m Mr. Mom this week as my wife is visiting her sister) or the writing skills that you have.  Could you craft a little rebuttal here?  Please!  For crying out loud, he is going after Islamist and he let his anti-Catholic skirts show.

There’s a lot in the quotation that you offer, and I’m afraid that I don’t have time to write a rebuttal at the moment.

BUT I have a lot of really smart readers, and I’m sure that they’re up to the task of addressing and correcting this.

Feel free to add your suggestions for how to respond in the combox or

GO OVER TO THE POST IN QUESTION AND ADD YOUR COMMENTS IN THE COMBOX THERE.

Be sure to observe the to cardinal rules of combox apologetics, though:

  1. Be polite. Be very polite. (Unfailingly, excruciatingly polite.)
  2. Be brief. Be very brief. (Unfailingly, excruciatingly brief–which is part of being polite.)

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

24 thoughts on “Reader Apologetics Invitation”

  3. That thread is completely out of control. There were a couple of reasonable pro-Catholic posts, interspersed through high-volume half-truths.

  4. Orthodox Catholic? What’s an Orthodox Catholic? Is that the same as Antiochian Catholic? Russian Catholic? Or just small “o” Catholic? So what are the rest of us? Just plain old Roman Catholic I guess. I thought we believed in ONE, holy, catholic and apostolic church…what’s with all these subdivisions? Was there a schism I didn’t hear of?

  5. The blogger who made the above-quoted anti-Catholic remarks, when called on it, said he didn’t want to get involved a religious debate. In other words, he wanted to make his remarks and run. No guts.

  6. Wow – these comments went so off-base (going into the sex slave trade and who knows what else).
    Kinda reminds me of the Yahoo! message boards for news articles.

  7. The bible charge is easy to answer. Throughout most of church history most people didn’t have bibles because they were hand copied and hard to come by, and most people coudn’t read them because most people… well, couldn’t read. If you could read, you read Latin, so there was no reason to translate it alot of different languages.

  8. For the record, when I wrote the article referenced, it was one segment of a 5-part article on the political ramifications and cultural confusion of imposing Islamic considerations in place of the Jihadist effort, which was (of course) the intent of the Jihadists, because Saddam Hussein’s regime (as a prime example) cannot be defended by a proper understanding of Islam, but can only be discussed by Jihadists as if the United States had launched a pre-emptive strike against the religion of Islam, rather than against the murdering thugs of Jihadism. My comments viz a viz the excesses of the RCC (which are well documented, particularly in the murders of Tyndale and Wycliffe) were in the context, as I made perfectly clear, that any large group which enjoys temporal power tends to a degree of offense and corruption, and so allowing the thread to become a Catholic v. Protestant dispute would constitute “hijacking” the thread.
    Jimmy Akin has every right to hold a religious discussion on his own board, but he is being dishonest to insult me for maintaining the continuity and focus of a political thread on a board which deals with U.S. and world politics, and for pretending that not allowing him to wrest control away from its design constitutes any sort of weakness or falsity.
    Lying is a sin, Jimmy. Keep that in mind at your next confession.

  9. Memo to polemicists: Invoking the alleged duties of one’s opponent regarding their future confessions is only a step or two above triggering the Godwin’s Law corollary by comparing them to Nazis and Hitler. You’re basically waving a flag that says “I’m not really trying here and please don’t take me seriously.”

  11. What “lying” did Jimmy do? Am I just extra thick today, or was Drummond’s comment incoherent?

  13. //My comments viz a viz the excesses of the RCC (which are well documented, particularly in the murders of Tyndale and Wycliffe) were in the context,//
    Huh? Wycliffe died of natural causes & Tyndale was killed by agents of Henry VIII of the Anglican Church.

  14. Bill912,
    Jimmy didn’t lie but the facts are obviously not important to DJ Drummond.
    If they are he will point out where Jimmy supposedly lied and give us his “documentation” of the Church’s “prohibition against lay people reading the Bible on their own and against personal ownership of Bibles” as well as the specific inquisition or inquisitionS he is referring to regarding how the “Church hired men to devise means of torture, to literally wrack confessions from malcontents and so suppress any thought of revolt.”
    Since this is a religious board we can discuss his “documentation” here at great length.
    Take care and God bless,
    Inocencio
    J+M+J

  15. Let’s help Drummond out and post all the statements Jimmy mad on this thread:
    1)”A reader writes:” (Did a reader not write?)
    2)”There’s a lot in the quotation that you offer.” (Looks like a lot to me).
    3)”I’m afraid that I don’t have time to write a rebuttal at the moment”. (Did Jimmy really have the time? And how would Drummond know?)
    4)”I have a lot of really smart readers.” (Maybe Drummond thinks we’re all stupid).
    5)”I’m sure they’re up to the task of addressing and correcting this” (John and Inocencio have proven Jimmy right on that one).
    Well, that’s it. Jimmy made no other statements on this thread. Maybe Drummond will return and tell us which of these statements are lies. Or else apologize for his calumny of Jimmy.

  16. DJ-
    I agree that overall, the thrust of your article did not really concern Catholicism, which is why I decided not to call you on your Catholic-bashing paragraph in the combox.
    But, having re-read it, as well as all the comments, I grow more puzzled as to why mentioning the Roman Catholic Chuirch was necessary at all.
    If you wanted to bolster the idea that power corrupts, yoy need have gone no further than post-Reformation Europe. Is it possible that you are unaware of the abuses of power that took place under Protestant governments (that were every bit as bad as anything you can dredge up against the Catholic Church), or did you just find it more convenient to leap back over 400 years of your own history in order to get in a dig at the Church?
    Or is it on account of your readers that you are afraid to broach the subject of the numerous Catholics that were arrested, stripped of their posessions, tortured and murdered?

  19. For brutal repression, try recusant England, where Catholic priests had their beating hearts cut out of their bodies, then were drawn and quartered; Viet Nam in the 1850s, when the emperor tried to wipe out Catholicism by beheading every priest he could find; France after the Revolution; Mexico in the 1920s, every single Communist country ever….I could go on, and every single thing is heavily documented.

  22. Just to answer the question left so long ago by Bill. Since I am not guilty of ‘calumny’, I have nothing for which to apologize.
    I have forgiven Jimmy his spite and derision, however subtly implied, and hope he has found it in his heart to confess his own sins to God (as I have) and redirect his efforts to better purpose.

  23. “I have forgiven Jimmy his spite and derision”
    Very big of you, I’m sure.
    And I’m sure he’s forgiven you your willful ignorance, which you no doubt confessed.

Comments are closed.