Request for Ideas

I take great offense at the assertion that Catholics do not read the Bible, especially when it is stated as a fact. If it is stated out of ignorance, that is one thing, but when so-and-so used to be Catholic and they "know" how things "really" are... That irks me...

May God bless your ministry,

Neal

Another is, "Most Catholics do not know what the Catholic Church teaches. If they did, the 'true Christians' in it would leave."

You do a great job, nyj. I'm glad you're here to share with us.

That Catholics don't have a personal relationship with Christ. That peeves me.

Michelle

I agree with isshinwhat, the most frustrating claims are that "If Catholics read their Bibles, they would stop being Catholics" and the idea that Catholics are discouraged from reading the Bible, or that the Catechism replaces the Bible for Catholics, etc.

Another one is the idea that Sacred Tradition is something that can just be made up or added to at any time.

-Chris

I appreciate you posting these 'misconceptions', nyj. Although most here know the real answers, we can gain from one another with different ways to present or state our beliefs. There are a lot of 'ignorant' people who just don't know. On the other hand, I never could 'get it' when some have to distort the facts to disagree.

Kotton

Catholic just means Universal Church. As far as I know it was the first Church.

Just because a group of Catholics may have done wrong it isn't right to stereotype the Catholic Faith.

Oh, let's see. What lurking prejudices can we think of?

Indulgences.

Various claims about infallibility. When I was a little kid, I wondered if it meant that they couldn't let the Pope on a game show, because he'd always win.

Various forms of "but the priest doesn't have the authority to forgive sins".

Anything having to do with sex scandals.

Snide remarks about "vain repititions".

I think the most consistently scary to me is just the underlying belief that somehow Catholicism is a weird cultish religion, unlike "real" Christianity. *sigh*. Can't really express my thoughts on this due to the not-saved censor filter. I mean, come on. I believe that a dead Jewish carpenter got up and walked around, and this makes it okay with God that I'm a bad person, and I'm supposed to believe that some *OTHER* group of people are "cultish"? Christianity sounds really weird from the outside, and I don't think it makes any sense for Protestants to attack Catholics for having weird beliefs; we *ALL* have weird beliefs, and in them is what little unity we have.

I think a good discussion on faith and works might help, but part of this is rooted in the big divide between Christianity and Paulinity; Christ constantly talks about the ways in which we should *act* to achieve salvation, and Paul talks about faith. If we are to assume that Paul was not Just Plain Wrong, we must nonetheless interpret his words *in light of Christ's*.

Oh, while we're at it, one more *big* myth about Catholics: "Catholics are not real people, they do not love their children, and it does not hurt their feelings when they're told that their personal relationship with Christ is rooted in the great Wh*re of Babylon". I mean, no one actually says this, but they sure *ACT* as though it's true.

Well, we can hardly deny that millions of people who lived in predominantly Catholic countries died during the medieval period!

Catholics pray to Saints comes up frequently.

Catholics recite prayers like Pharisees.

Actually, just check out www.chick.com

It's Jack Chick's website, complete with all those lovely tracts, and pages about how the Catholics are so wrong and evil. My perverse sense of humor finds the tracts hilarious in a perverse and depressing sort of way. And I read them in German to improve my language skills.

Good luck. God knows I don't have the patience to try to defend every point to those who attack the Church.

Today at 06:35 PM nyj said this in Post #11

I think I got my next one:

The Catholic Church killed millions of people during the Dark Ages.

This one is going to be fun.

Click to expand...

Please do that one.  Please please please do that one.

Michelle

Oh, I have some.

The anathemas pronounced at the Council of Trent give the Catholic Church the right to murder Protestants, and the Vatican could at any time use those anathemas as justification to start another bloody Inquisition.

Hitler's Final Solution was merely an extension of the Inquisitions and was done with the Vatican's support (this one is particularly repugnant but luckily seems to have little currency even among anti-Catholics. Jack Chick has an entire tract about this.)

You know, things like this sound so ludicrous that people often don't believe me when I tell them that these viewpoints exist. Some of the anti-Catholic rhetoric just defies reality -- if I made a parody anti-Catholic site I don't think I could make up more insane things than Jack Chick and the rest of them have already come up with.

-Chris

Heh. When I was a little kid, I thought the KKK was a joke someone had made up.

It fills me with joy to know that there is evil so repugnant that many people simply don't believe it exists. Not because I'm glad there's such awful stuff in the world - but because I'm glad people can be so pure despite it.