In researching how conspiracy theorists build entire plots of cosmic significance around events of minor importance (as I noted here and here), I located several anti-Catholic sites. I can’t say this was accidental, as I was specifically looking for something a Seventh-Day Adventist had shared with me 30 years ago, about Napoleon and a pope’s chair in 1798 and the letters of various papal titles adding up to 666. That stuff is still out there; someone still believes it, anyway.
I am familiar with a strong Baptist strain of anti-Catholicism, as my boys were exposed to it occasionally at Baptist schools, but the attitude there was more “well, their doctrine is so wrong that they’re not really Christian,” than obsessive proofs about how the Roman Church is the Antichrist. I knew that the latter attitude was probably still out there, but I haven’t run across it in person for many years now. Our congregation rents space from an SDA concregation, so I see their fliers and the covers of their pamphlets pretty regularly and don’t think that the Pope=Antichrist doctrine is as important as it once was. I don’t read it in any detail, however, and I know that this pernicious belief is strong in the Ellen G. White books so important to the founding of the denomination.
I don’t get any sense of how common this is, though. Any recent observations out there? Do you run across this extreme anti-Catholicism anymore, or has most of it watered down into the Baptist/fundamentalist version, as above? And actually, I don’t know as I run into even that all that often anymore.
Every once in a while I'll get some bizarre flyer in the mail ranting about Catholic Church and it's being The Woman Riding The Beast. IT never has a clearly attributable group listed on it.
ReplyDeleteJehovah's Witnesses are very anti-catholic in the same end-times vein
speaking as a current Seventh-Day Adventist, for better or worse, the feeling and/or belief is alive and strong in the church.
ReplyDeleteMy fiancee's parents can best be described as "Fundamentalist"--Baptists were apparently too "religion lite" for them.
ReplyDeleteA few years back her mom said my priest (I am Catholic) was "not a Christian"--even though she'd never met him. (Interestingly, their church was shouting distance from mine)
I've known for a long time that their dislike of me is due more to my Catholicism. Although we've lived together for several years, her brother got his wife pregnant about wo months before marriage and his sister lived with her boyfriend before marriage. Both those unions got blessed by Mom and Dad...
Ouch. Steer them to CS Lewis to mellow them. Of course, that sort often rejects Lewis because his use of magic strikes them as Satanic. He also drank ale and smoked - gasp. I'm not sure who I'd recommend then.
ReplyDeleteLewis just leads naturally to Tolkien and Chesterton.
Unfortnately the Seventh-day Adventists will always be extremly anti-Roman Catholicisim and also anti-Protestants who worship onSunday. Their "inspired" prophetess" wrote it in theri most distributed book, the Great Controversy, and it cannot be denied or withdrawn. Their teaching that the Pope's tiara had words on it which equal 666 in Latin has also been proven to be manufactured. Their eschatology demands that the Pope be the Antichrist. It is goofy theology.
ReplyDeleteFrom my observation, pretty much all of the (trendy and recognized) art that bashes Christianity is anti-Catholic at its base. Smearing elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary, ugly and menacing images of priests and cardinals, et cetra. Aparently these artists want to show their courage in standing up against the ongoing evils of the Inquisition....
ReplyDeleteOh, wait.....
As an unofficial, amateur Catholic apologist, anti-Catholicism is alive and well.
ReplyDeleteThis evening I answered a blog entry arguing the Catholic Church is a cult and a second arguing that the Catholic Church did not give the world the Bible ,but not offering any other explanation of the Bible's origins.
On any given night I can easily find several blog entries attacking the Catholic faith. Last night it was a Christian minister in the Phillipines who was attacking the "doctrine of Limbo". As Limbo is not and never was Catholic doctrine, that turned out to be much ado about nothing. A complete strawman. Anti-Catholics love their strawmen.
My vote for poster children of anti-Catholicsm would be James White and Ken Silva.
As Peter said; "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." 1 Peter 3:15-16
God bless one and all...
"Ouch. Steer them to CS Lewis to mellow them. Of course, that sort often rejects Lewis because his use of magic strikes them as Satanic."
ReplyDeleteDang, you pretty much pegged my fiancee's parents there--she and her siblings were not allowed to watch, for instance, "The Smurfs"--because Gargamel used magic. (and he was the villain!)
In many ways, this stuff is typical of our "enlightened" age. People can't (or don't want to) have differences without plummeting immediately to the human default position of virulent tribalism.
ReplyDeleteThere are many real areas deserving of civil discussion between any of the differing branches of Christianity (that would be why they are different). Lewis and Tolkien jovially did this for most of their teaching careers. Lewis' avowed goal was to convert Tolkien from Catholicism, to which Tolkien humorously deferred. This added to their friendship, not undermined it.
The level of intellectual maturity and emotional honesty and effort needed for that kind of friendship seems to be beyond the abilities or interests of many who claim to be Godly.
I would posit that this lack only reveals the shallowness of their convictions and paucity of their understanding.
Yes, jerub-baal, I think that is much of it. People think they are defending their faith, but they are really defending their culture. This confusion in their minds allows them justify clinging to the dry husks as if they were grain. They perceive any challenge to their culture as a challenge to their faith.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main reasons you don't run into those feelings anymore, AVI, is that now that your boys have left Baptist schools behind, you don't run into that many Baptists anymore.
ReplyDeleteI was raised Catholic, my wife Baptist, although she would really consider herself non denominational. Over the years we attended various churches, mostly Baptist, and yes, I did on occasion hear anti Catholic discussion from the pulpit, both direct and implied.
ReplyDeleteNever being Catholic the wife never really noticed it, it is just part of their underlying doctrine.
Anti Catholic protestants can never answer one simple question I pose to them. Why do they accept the Bible the Catholic church assembled and codified?
There is no historical doubt that the Bible in the form it is in today, less the editing of one man, Martin Luther, for the protestants was given to us by the Catholic church.
No cogent logical answer.
And why do you accept the editing of one sinful human being, Martin Luther?
No cogent logical answer.
The conversation usually devolves from there.
Rightly or wrongly, their answer would be that the Church before 1500 is not something that the Roman Catholics can claim entire ownership of. That would be an RCC assumption, that it is one coherent whole from 33AD to 1517, but that doesn't make it so. It was just The Church. The Eastern churches did not recognise the Roman claim as exclusive, and all reform movements claim they are getting back to the true roots, which the institutional church has strayed from. Luther hearkened back to Augustine very strongly, and thought his teaching a more natural descendant than the Vatican teaching of his day.
ReplyDeleteIf one assumes that institutional continuity is crucial, then the Roman Catholic claim carries more weight. If one believes that the institution is potentiallly quiet fallible and in need of periodic correction, the Reformers' claims make more sense.
I would caution you against thinking that it was all just Luther. He was merely the most prominent of many.