Dave Armstrong's Blog, page 41

Guess I Hit a Nerve: the Singular "Apologist" (???) Bob Sungenis Goes Nuclear Against Yours Truly in His "Reply" to My Two Rational Critiques / Responses

For background, see my two recent papers:

"2012: A Sungenis Odd-yssey": Robert Sungenis Pushes a "DVD of the Month" from an Anti-Christian Gnostic Space Case, Claiming that Famed Director Stanley Kubrick Filmed Fake Moon Landings
Robert Sungenis' Lousy "Comedic" Attempts to Rationalize His "Fake Moon Landings Filmed by Kubrick" Viewpoint, Complete with (Twice!) Imaginary Words of Yours Truly

The following sustained rant constitutes Bob's "answer" to the second paper (his pathetic attempt at reductio ad absurdum was his "answer" to the first); conveyed through his surrogate James Phillips in a combox on my blog for the second paper, in three installments (one / two / three). I have selected (for the convenience of readers) the more entertaining and revealing highlights. All of the words below are Bob's except for interjections of mine (blue and bracketed) and one quotation of my words from Bob (in green).

* * * * *
. . . Well, as I feared, Dave's ego got the better of him . . .

Dave, first of all, you don't engage in "public criticism." You engage in slander, name-calling and bullying. You haven't engaged in constructive criticism since you began your website. Your website is all about Dave Armstrong and how great you think you are. Anyone who challenges that puffed up notion gets your wrath. We all see it, Dave. It's about time you admitted it.

Perhaps we should call you a Washington Warmonger, just like the rest of the US Neo-Cons. You like US imperialism that spends trillions of our tax-payer dollars and kills innocent civilians all for purpose of spreading Masonic "democracy."

As for "not taking kindly to criticism," don't make me laugh. You're the king of that category. Go read your own website.

All of us who read the books and actually do the research into 9-11 and other such issues are just not good patriots, right?

Dave, your hypocrisy reeks. I advertise one secular DVD in the 19 years I've had a website, but you have a whole website droning on and on about your teenage years and showing your devotion to the scum bags like Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Doors, Cream, The Rolling Stones,

[this shows once again that Bob's goofy failed attempt at humor, in critiquing my articles about music (I've been a devoted musician and music collector for 45 years and play about ten instruments) had a dead-serious intent. He despises this; yet, as I argued in my second paper, he has no rationally consistent case against me, unless he listens to no music at all: rock or classical. It remains self-evident that art is not intrinsically a saintly exercise. But it could never do for Bob to actually offer us a rational reply to the solid counter-arguments I made. No, instead we get these sorts of insipid, vacuous insults. It's vastly different to say, on the one hand, that you advocate and promote (right on top of your website!) a film by an anti-Christian Gnostic wingnut, as offering profound truth, and on the other, to simply acknowledge that good music is good, wholly apart from the morals of the ones who created it. With art, the bottom line is not truth, but rather aesthetic beauty, which is almost purely subjective and a matter of taste. Long discussion, but there is no analogy whatever here, and Bob foolishly thought that there was . . .] 
. . . and yet you have the nerve to call me a "kooky conspiratorial theorist"!

[I searched the two papers and their comboxes and never found any such description of Bob (quotation marks normally suggest a direct citation). I have called the fake moon landing views and suchlike "kooky" -- along with various nutty views of Weidler (several times), but not Bob himself. It's a very important distinction that I always try very hard to observe: along the lines of "separate the sin from the sinner"; likewise, we shouldn't equate kooky ideas with the one who espouses them. I grant, though, that sometimes it is a very fine line . . .]
You are all emotion and prejudice.

And don't let Bob pretend that he doesn't severely criticize others in the apologetics world. He has savaged Karl Keating, Scott Hahn, Mark Shea, Jimmy Akin, myself, and others (not even to mention Blessed Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI). And it is far worse than anything I have ever done. 
No, Dave. The only one out of that group that I would consider "savaging" is you, because you are proving yourself to be such a putz. They neither bore us to tears with their past life, nor gossip like an old lady about inane issues, nor do they have a giant ego, like you do. I respect them, although we may disagree from time to time.

[This is simply untrue. Bob has gone after Karl Keating in particular, implying that Catholic answers was a fundamentally compromised, money-grubbing institution in a past paper. I can also remember very pointed attacks on Mark Shea. The problem is that Bob routinely deletes past outrageous statements, so as to eliminate a paper trail of his absurd and calumnious remarks about others. At one time I had documented what he wrote about Keating, but removed it as a charitable act (not to hide anything, as Bob does). I can find it if I have to, in Internet Archive. I have a very good memory, and I remember this distinctly. I don't make reference to imaginary meetings or quotations or posts, like Bob does. He has trashed Blessed Pope John Paul II (one / two) and Pope Benedict XVI (one / two) and both together. Fortunately, I documented all that in five papers (from his materials written in May 2011: a particularly vitriolic period, probably because of John Paul the Great's beatification on May 1), because I checked the links to Bob's hit-pieces and in every case they were removed. His opinion hasn't changed; he's simply covering his tracks. Hence he is currently hosting a guest article / hit-piece on the Holy Father (from 11 November 2011) that consistently calls him "Joseph Ratzinger" and opines: "Ratzinger, now pope, as a type of Manchurian Candidate, is a symbol of America's occupation of the Catholic Church."]

But you're such a company man, Dave, a real patriot. You'll find a way to excuse all of these doctrinal anomalies and make everyone believe that you're a good Catholic apologist in the process; and that people like me who point out these errors are just "kooky conspiratorialists." The reality is, you're the kook, and you're in a conspiracy of your own making.

[This is now the second time Bob used a fake quotation in these rants (the two slightly different), as if I used a description of him that I never used. I guess that is a companion to his two other bogus quotations of my alleged words, that I documented in my second paper above (both written by others). It ain't there, folks! In fact, I did a search on my blog and neither phrase ever appears, anywhere in my writing: not even once. But you see now, that he has just called me, straight out, a "kook" and even alludes (irony of ironies) that I am a conspiratorialist. Thus he falsely accuses me of the thing that he hypocritically proceeds to do himself.]
You pride yourself on being able to discern the most minute and esoteric theological subjects (God's omniscience); difficult political and engineering issues (9-11) and complex science issues (cosmology) . . .

You're not really in it for the truth. You just want to be one of the boys in the club. You won't allow anyone to burst that Catholic "everything is rosy" bubble you've created around your head. The truth will set you free, Dave. Try it sometime.


Stop your gossiping and start actually doing the research into the things that you think you already know.

[Like I said, obviously I "hit a nerve" -- this sort of drama queen histrionics and filthy, slimy mud thrown my way is strong proof of that . . . Unfortunately, it's all part of the game of apologetics. It doesn't bother me personally at all. Good heavens, no (yawn . . .zzzzz)! But what does bother me a great deal are error and tomfoolery and conspiracy theories passing themselves off as legitimate Catholic apologetics (or rational analysis). It gives the Church and Catholic theology and the apologetic enterprise a bad name, and I am duty-bound to speak out against it. You see what (predictably) happened when I did that. Please pray and do penance for Bob.]


***

Robert Sungenis' Lousy "Comedic" Attempts to Rationalize His "Fake Moon Landings Filmed by Kubrick" Viewpoint, Complete with (Twice!) Imaginary Words of Yours Truly

Catholic "apologist" (???) Robert Sungenis is desperately trying to evade responsibility for promoting a wacko video by Gnostic anti-Christian nutcase Jay Weidner (see the details in my paper, "2012: A Sungenis Odd-yssey": Robert Sungenis Pushes a "DVD of the Month" from an Anti-Christian Gnostic Space Case, Claiming that Famed Director Stanley Kubrick Filmed Fake Moon Landings).

In his "reply" to that heavily documented paper (R.I.P. to Dave "Stairway to Heaven" Armstrong), Bob pulls out all the stops with an attempted reductio ad absurdum treatment of my well-known love of classic rock music, as a supposed tongue-in-cheek, turn-the-tables equivalent of my critique of his conspiratorial space-case views. In so doing, he utilizes (not just once, but twice) words of someone else that are not even my own; but Bob presents them as my words. In the pitifully failed effort to be funny and at the same time to allegedly make a profound "gotcha" point, Bob does indeed provide plenty of comic relief.

But the funny thing is how bad his reductio is, and how ridiculous he makes himself in the details of it, that involve factual whoppers. It's like laughing oneself silly, watching a terrible 1950s science fiction B-movie. He simply doesn't know how to do it. People are usually either very good at satire or very bad. Bad satire is very funny, but not for the reasons that those who write it, think it is funny. It's hilarious because the bad attempt at satire is itself funny, in how lousy it is. It also has a pathetic aspect. Bob's attempt fits the bill in spades.

Bob first directs his reductio towards my stated admiration of the Led Zeppelin song Stairway to Heaven. The point was to show in a "funny" way how my liking music written and performed by drug- and sex-crazed degenerates, is no different from his advocacy of wacko nutcase conspiracy theories written by New Age loons. He is trying to "prove" that I tarred him by a guilt-by-association or "poisoning the well" or the genetic fallacy, and so he returns the favor with a reductio.

But apart from the obviously bad logic in the failed attempt at a humorous analogy, Bob stumbles in his wild interpretations. It's understood (I reiterate) that he is being humorous and not being literal; yet given the kind of people who regularly defend him on my site, it's quite possible that some of them will actually believe silliness such as the following (with my interjections in blue and brackets):

Wasn't that song about drugs, as were most of the songs coming out of that 1960s hippie "peace and love" "drop in and drop out" era? [actually most informed commentators think it was about Celtic or Norse mythology; and Plant was a lover of Tolkien also; Led Zeppelin did a few songs straight from Lord of the Rings; e.g., The Battle of Evermore, from the same album as Stairway to Heaven] The famous line in the song goes, "And she's buying a stairway to heaven…" Translation: at that time, you bought LSD (lysergic acid developed and promoted for the hippi [sic] generation by Dr. Timothy Leary) and it gave you a "trip" that almost seemed like you died and went to heaven. My guess [and that's all it is] is that Dave probably indulged in some acid from time to time [I've never done drugs at any time, and have not even ever been drunk, to my knowledge; never smoked, either], and had a wonderful "trip" to nirvana, and hearing "Stairway to Heaven" forty years later he just can't help reminiscing over those glory days [since there were no such "glory days" I can hardly fondly remember them]. We can see Dave now, riding in his 72' Pontiac Firebird [it was a '70 Ford Torino] high as a kite on acid [no ticket for DUI in my record] with his buddies [right], all of them screaming the lyrics of "Stairway to Heaven" out the car windows. [I was in high school from 1973-1976, and my friends -- most of them music majors -- were into classical music, not rock music; I played trombone in the orchestra and was an usher for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra]

If we want to find someone high on acid (?), driving around with a bunch of rabble-rousing teenage rebels, it might very well be Bob himself, as we learn from his conversion story in Surprised  by Truth :

But by the time I was a freshman in college and was away from the constraints of a nominally-Catholic home, I did what so many in my situation have done: I made friends with the wrong crowd and promptly fell away from the Church. I soon found myself floundering with no sense of direction . . . (pp. 104-105)

I converted to serious evangelical Christianity in April of 1977, five months before I ever went to college. I didn't live in dorms; I lived with my parents; worked at the medical library while in college, and I was hardly running around with crazies; in fact, it was a rather lonely, isolated time in my life. I did immoral things like hiking the Grand Canyon. In my fourth year of college I got involved with a wild, dope-infested fraternity, called Inter-Varsity. :-) As you can see, my experience was vastly different from Bob's. Apparently, he felt he could project his own college-era experience onto mine. Wrong.  I was the true rebel. I had rejected the whole youth culture routine and had devoted myself to our Lord Jesus and a serious, life-transforming Christianity. That was radical: not the usual sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll lifestyle of teens that (it sounds like) Bob followed, like millions upon millions of others.

Biblical Evidence for Catholicism: Dialogue on Romanticism and ...

Nov 20, 2006

Dave writes: "I think I was spared this, because, unlike you all, I had the sort of Christian upbringing which had me afraid of so much as listening to a Led Zeppelin record, lest I should become possessed by the Devil. Yes, it would tend to ...

Commentary: Oh, we're beginning to see the dynamics here. Poor Dave was conflicted. He just knew that Stairway to Heaven "had everything great lyrics, an unbelievable vocal, dramatic drumming, pretty guitar lines..." but his "Christian upbringing" made him feel guilty for liking it. Ask any psychologist and he'll tell you that this wrecks havoc on the human soul. Unfortunately, Dave decided to alleviate the conflict and take the plunge, but in the wrong direction. Somewhere along the line Dave began to believe that Zeppelin and his followers were no longer "possessed by the Devil," and thus Dave begins to speak rather admiringly of them. This is the same group whose Stairway to Heaven, if played backwards, was understood to reveal that the Led Zeppelin group chose to worship Satan. (See this and many other reports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbNqeDr5mlQ).

Perhaps this might have worked if my own positions were accurately described. The big problem, however, is that I never wrote what he cites me as writing. It might have been helpful for Bob to cite actual web pages, so people could see some context. But he provides no link. In this instance, the post in question is Dialogue on Romanticism and Christianity (with Keith Rickert, Jr.). See the other guy in the title? He's the one whom Bob quoted. His words are in blue (as I often do in dialogues; just like this present paper), and he wrote this, not me. My background was entirely different. There were no rules whatever about listening to music, and I was only nominally Methodist.

Consequently I have never had ridiculous notions about music as Bob has. I wasn't legalistic against it or fanatical in favor of it. I understood (once I was old enough to have the wits to analyze it) that music is not produced by canonized saints and that good or great art is not the same as sainthood; that lyrics can be (and often are) morally objectionable. I never went through a legalistic phase of throwing out all of my records after a conversion.

I was never influenced by rock songs to behave in an immoral way in the slightest: not one bit. I rarely listen to lyrics in the first place. I'm notorious for not retaining lyrics, because I don't care about them. I am almost solely interested in the music. Even with the musician I admire most for lyrics, Bob Dylan, I couldn't give anyone the entire lyric of a single one of his songs, and I listen to his lyrics probably more than anyone else's. Thus Bob's quack psychoanalysis misses the mark as far as east is from west, since he is analyzing another person's report, that was vastly different from my own mindset then or now.

Bob then goes back to one of my papers on music that expresses an admiration for the album Led Zeppelin IV and remarks:

Now, there's two icons of the world that you want your children to emulate: Robert Plant and Jimmy Page!

Right. Of course I have never taught my four children (ages 20, 18, 15, and 10) to emulate rock stars or to live in ways that many lyrics of songs suggest. If they emulate anyone, it is my wife and I and other Catholic and Christian models, which is why they are not into drinking, sex, drugs (just as my wife Judy and I weren't), rebellion, and vulgar music (infinitely worse than anything Led Zeppelin ever put out) that is so prevalent today. They spend their time with good Catholic youth groups, pro-life activities, charitable activities, teaching children catechism, music ministry, helping the youth minister, watching carefully controlled television shows (almost all rented), playing sports, riding bikes, etc. They are even more conservative (and far, far more religiously observant) than I was because I was a good liberal in my attitudes (if not my actions) up till age 18. It's all in how one is brought up.

Sungenis then engages in a lengthy lecture on various aspects of immoral conduct of rock stars, which is perfectly irrelevant, since I have never in my wildest dreams sought to deny any such thing. I simply like the music. The lives of many classical composers were every bit as immoral, if we want to really get into this. Does that mean that we don't listen to them anymore? Beethoven is out the window because he had many affairs and never married and was nominally Catholic at best? Tchaikovsky is out because he was a practicing homosexual (like Bernstein and Copland and others); Wagner and Liszt because they were notorious womanizers; Brahms (also never married) because he frequented the prostitutes in Vienna; Schubert because he appears to have likely died from venereal disease; Mendelssohn and Mahler because they were (gasp!!!) -- worst sin of all -- Jewish? Virtually no one would take such a view.

He makes himself even more silly by spelling names wrong and botching basic facts: "Jimmy" [Jimi] Hendrix, "Mitch" [Mick] Jagger; claiming that Hendrix and Jim Morrison "committed suicide" (Hendrix choked in his vomit after an overdose; Morrison had a heart attack in his bathtub: neither death a known suicide method, to put it mildly). Morris never "stripped naked" on stage; there was one famous incident (that I won't go into in mixed company) that is notoriously disputed as to even what actually happened. But in any event it wasn't total nudity, for sure. I'm not defending it; I'm merely making the point that Sungenis seems to have little or no regard for basic accuracy in reporting known incidents.

Having made a total fool of himself already (in the course of a failed comedic reductio), Sungenis steps in it again by quoting more imaginary words of mine that I never wrote:

Biblical Evidence for Catholicism: Michele Bachmann: Anti‐Catholic?Jul 14, 2011
Dave writes: "I was actually in the running for a ticket to the '07 Led Zeppelin reunion, but alas, that failed to go my way."
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/

Commentary: You zee the problem, now, Dr. Sigmund? Look at dis poor boy! He's pushing 50 years old and he's still waiting in line for a Zeppelin ticket vith teenagers of whom he iz old enough to be their grandfather! My guess is that Dave's tombstone will read: "Maybe I'll see Zeppelin as I travel the Stairway to Heaven. Wish me luck!"

Once again no link is provided and Bob makes another embarrassing mistake. It reminds me of his claim a year or so ago when we were wrangling over his geocentric views: that we supposedly met and had a meeting in California (complete with further descriptions of it): a thing that never happened. I have met Bob once and it was in Virginia in 1998. So we have imaginary meetings, fictional descriptions of what I believe, and "quotes" of mine that never occurred. Very impressive! Does this not indicate a problem in accuracy and citation, and a certain faultiness in care and thoughtfulness? It verifies rather spectacularly Bob's problems of ramshackle research that were evident in my critique.

In my actual post, Michele Bachmann: Anti-Catholic?, the words cited as my own come from commentator "williamthegreat": deep into the combox discussions. He was replying to my saying, "I'm goin' to see McCartney in nine days (first time)!" by writing:

Sadly, I have yet to see either Macca or Jimmy Page at a live venue, which would be my two greatest wishes. As a songwriter and a guitarist myself, they are my greatest idols. I was actually in the running for a ticket to the '07 Led Zeppelin reunion, but alas, that failed to go my way. 

I have never seen Led Zeppelin. Nor would I even wish to now. The last I heard from Plant and Page working together was the 1998 album Walking Into Clarksdale, which I thought was terrible, and got rid of after one listen. I like some of Plant's solo work, though.

Sungenis goes into even more ridiculous tongue-in-cheek analysis that is so stupid I won't even bother documenting it. Trust me on this . . . But now he becomes serious and leaves the reductio. I shall cite the entirety of this concluding "serious" section. It is as ludicrous as what preceded it:

Now for a moment of reality:

The foregoing was to show what I can do, from David Armstrong's own words and actions, to make him appear like a sick and dangerous man. Not a very pretty picture, is it? I did it merely to show that this is what David Armstrong consistently does to me on his website, constantly looking for any chink in my armor that he can exploit to make me look bad in the public eye. I felt Dave needed a taste of his own medicine. 

But it ain't my "medicine." I present facts about Bob's absurd, illogical, non-factual views on various matters; he comes back with this pathetic attempt at failed humor that misses the mark entirely: with fallacies everywhere, fake "quotes" and sheer silliness.

The latest attempt by Dave Armstrong to engage in his predictable character assassination is to make a fuss over the DVD of the Month that I put on our website: Jay Weidner's new documentary on Stanley Kubrick and how Kubrick was hired by NASA to fake the moon landings (http://www.catholicintl.com/index.php/latest‐news/620). 

Thanks for the verification, Bob. Now if you remove the material we have it documented and reiterated in your own words, complete with the URL (and we have screenshots, too).

Dave Armstrong's hypocrisy shines through when he admits to us that he still listens to the sex‐crazed, drugcrazed, anti‐establishment‐crazed lyrics of "Hendrix, Cream, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Doors, CCR, etc" 

Yes, I like good music. So what?! Who does Bob listen to: Pat Boone? Bob wrote in one paper that Beethoven and Mozart (as well as Lincoln and Roosevelt: dunno which one) had syphilis. Does that mean now that we can't listen to the music of Mozart and Beethoven because they weren't perfectly holy and saintly?

(so much so that he entered a contest to see if he could get a ticket to hear them again just five years ago), 

. . . which never happened, because this quote was from someone else, as shown. Note that now we are in the serious re-cap portion of his paper, and Bob repeats the myth. But so what if I did, anyway? It's just a music concert. Does Bob only go to Catholic supermarkets and banks, where everyone is a practicing Catholic? Is he careful to avoid buying anything whatever from China: where the country is officially Communist and atheist and where forced abortion and horrendous labor conditions abound? Does he avoid buying anything from Japan, because very few are Christians there? I highly doubt it. It's impossible to avoid non-Catholics and non-Christians. We can't live in a bubble. Our task is to be in the world but not of it.

Bob engages in Pharisaic legalism: the sort of mentality that recoiled when Jesus ate with the sinners that He came to save. Jesus said:

Matthew 15:10-11 . . . Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.

We can't avoid being with non-Catholics and non-Christians and items or art, as the case may be, produced by same. The intelligent Christian knows how to discern the good from the bad. If something is sinful, we are not to emulate or be influenced by it. If I start advocating drugs or free sex or drunkenness or any immoral thing, and do so by the direct influence of the lives of rock stars (and classical composers), then I am wrong, and acting immorally. But to simply listen to music that is not absolutely perfect morally, is not a sin.

I'll guarantee that if Bob would list the music he listens to (unless he listens to none at all, except for Vivaldi, who was a Catholic priest), that there will be immoral people involved, and he'll be in the same boat he puts me in. It's a certainty, since virtually all pop musicians have engaged in promiscuous sex. Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash has even noted more than once that the primary reason most (male) musicians pursued music was to "get the girls."

but when it comes to someone questioning the political establishment, Dave draws his arbitrary line in the sand and would rather demean a fellow Catholic than even consider the possibility that the establishment could be pulling the wool over our eyes. The most pitiful thing is, Dave Armstrong never watched Weidner's DVD. But this is typical of his style – shoot first and ask questions later. If he had watched the DVD he would have seen that Weidner doesn't dispute that NASA sent a man to the moon; rather, he has a third alternative: NASA sent someone to the moon, but in order to sell the program to the world, NASA staged the moon landings in a studio. 

Right, Bob.  In your thought-world, this is compelling, profound "evidence." I didn't have to watch this piece of trash to learn about it, because I read about it. I was aware that he actually thought there were moon landings, because I took note of it in my paper, citing a review by Andrew W. Griffin, who stated:

Weidner leans towards the idea that the U.S. did go to the Moon but that the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 shown to the public were all staged and Kubrick was the guy directing the whole thing. . . . 

Thus, we have the sweet irony of Bob blasting me for not watching a video by a Gnostic lunatic (pun intended), who believes that aliens called "Archons" visited the earth and gave us the Bible, to fool and hoodwink and oppress mankind:

. . . the early Christians were actually Gnostic followers of Jesus instead of what we, today, call Christians. The entire New Testament was completely rewritten by Constantine and all of the information on the Archons was removed . . . Anyone who is following this mad, insane god, Jehovah, will be lead to their death for certain.. . . The defining myth of Western mythology is that Jehovah told Adam and Eve that they could not eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Not only that but if they did eat of it, they would surely die. Yet they both ate of it and didn't die so he wasn't even telling them the truth.

Clearly, on the other hand, while he urges me to watch movies made by this anti-Christian wingnut, Bob didn't read all of my critique, or else he wouldn't make a dumb remark like this. But think of what this means. We did go to the moon (presumably with a man; or maybe it was a monkey?), so says Bob and nutcase / space case Weidner but it wasn't in the period of 1969-1972. So there had to have been a secret rocket launched sometime after 1972, and the whole mission took place with no one's knowledge about it except those who planned it. A rocket, with all that is entailed in that, could secretly launch and go to the moon. That is an amazing conspiratorial scenario indeed. But Weidner covers himself by only "leaning" toward the idea. Bob continues on with his profundities:

Weidner shows very persuasive evidence since he is a film expert who can clearly see the patchwork cinematography that NASA tried to pass off as authentic moon landings. He then tells the story of how Stanley Kubrick was hired by NASA in 1964 to make fake moon landings, but Kubrick wasn't allowed to tell anyone, of course. But Kubrick didn't want to die and have humanity at the mercy of the US government's lies. So he made a movie in the late 70s titled "The Shinning," [sic] and in it Kubrick tells the story of the government conspiracy in symbolic language. If you ever wondered what "The Shinning" (starring Jack Nicholson) was trying to say but never had a clue, Weidner will show you in graphic detail.

Yes; who could doubt it? I could see, though, that Weidner is as nutty as the character played by Jack Nicholson became in the movie . . . that's a clear connection that I can observe here. So all is not lost! There is a connection between The Shining and Weidner's goofy, tin foil hat hoax theories, which is nutsville and madness.

So, please forgive my attempts at comic relief with Dave Armstrong's prior and present life, but enough is enough.

You are forgiven, Bob, because of the laughs you have provided all of us (for reasons other than you think).

Perhaps Dave will think twice before he pulls the trigger again.

I pulled it today all of one day after his piece, so obviously I am trembling in abject fear . . . 

Robert Sungenis
January 24, 2012

Dave Armstrong
January 25, 2012 (alas, the last year we have on earth . . .)


***

"2012: A Sungenis Odd-yssey": Robert Sungenis Pushes a "DVD of the Month" from an Anti-Christian Gnostic Space Case, Claiming that Famed Director Stanley Kubrick Filmed Fake Moon Landings

On Sungenis' website, The Bellarmine Report , a page was put up on 1-16-12 under the category, "Latest News," entitled, "DVD of the Month: Stanley Kubrick Hired to Fake Apollo Moon Landings." I first saw this in a rotation ad at the top of his main website, when I visited shortly after midnight, eastern time, on 1-23-11. It's necessary to go into such detail because Bob has been known to remove controversial materials from his site, once someone critiques them. If he does, readers may trust that I saw this with my own eyes. I certainly didn't make up all this detail.


The film in question is called Kubrick's Odyssey (by Jay Weidner). Here is exactly what Bob posted on his page (from You Tube):



The lyric of the music heard in this ridiculous piece must be heard to be believed. I won't even attempt to describe how weird it is.

The film is offered at a bizarre site mentioned in the preview video, called Sacred Mysteries Marketplace , which offers all sorts of spiritually exotic materials that appear to be anything from theosophy to New Age to "alchemy." The page for the DVD here examined states:

In Kubrick's Odyssey, Part I, Kubrick and Apollo, author and filmmaker, Jay Weidner presents compelling evidence of how Stanley Kubrick directed the Apollo moon landings. He reveals that the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only a retelling of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's novel, but also a research and development project that assisted Kubrick in the creation of the Apollo moon footage. In light of this revelation, Weidner also explores Kubrick's film, The Shining and shows that this film is, in actuality, the story of Kubrick's personal travails as he secretly worked on the Apollo footage for NASA. . . .

"Weidner produces devastating proof that the landing was shot in a studio on Earth."
--David Icke

Even more bizarre is a linked review of the DVD by Andrew W. Griffin, from the Red Dirt Report website. Here are some profound, irrefutable tidbits from it:

And there are lots of secrets within Kubrick's films, as we soon discover. Kubrick, suggests Weidner, is not only a great filmmaker, he was "privy to the main secrets of an occult society that rules the Earth."
One of the biggest and most shocking is that Weidner speculates, through clues he found primarily in The Shining, that Kubrick faked the Apollo Moon landings, using his work on 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey as cover. Weidner, however, does believe the U.S. did get to the Moon, just not in the fashion we were told. . . .


Because the U.S. Government, through NASA, was hellbent to get a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960's, as President Kennedy had promised, and because they wanted to prove to the Soviet Union that the U.S. was going to win the space race, they had to have some insurance – a way to prove, at least to the public and the world – that the U.S. had the technology and wherewithal to get to the Moon.
That's where Kubrick comes in. Impressed with his work on Dr. Strangelove, Weidner speculates that Kubrick made a deal with the U.S. Government to fake the Apollo Moon landings – with Apollo 11 ultimately being the first one to land in July 1969.
Weidner leans towards the idea that the U.S. did go to the Moon but that the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 shown to the public were all staged and Kubrick was the guy directing the whole thing. . . . 
. . . things get even stranger further in Weidner's film when he uses Stephen King's novel, The Shining, as the basis for a film with the same name. Of course this interpretation would bother purists and confuse others. But Weidner explains that Kubrick needed a way to get it out there that he was the one behind the Apollo Moon landing hoax and that The Shining would be the way he could accomplish this.

Alright. Sure! I guess Bob was getting anxious to find some new exciting conspiratorial hogwash to foist upon his readership, and this fit the bill rather spectacularly! Of course, we must visit Jay Weidner's web page: cited in the review. This is the wise sage whom Sungenis chose to promote by making his DVD the featured one of the month on his site. What can we find out about him on his page? We learn very quickly that he is a Gnostic heretic of the first order. Here is just one example of his thinking: an article from an interview of Weidner, called "Rise of the Archons." It makes for rather surreal and exotic reading:

People don't realise that, 2,000 years ago, there was a religion on this planet called Gnosticism, which was the biggest religion on earth at the time, was vying with Hinduism. You could go take a university course on the history of religions now and wouldn't even find a mention of Gnosticism. The Nag Hammadi texts provide a description for what the Gnostics believed. Gnostic is a Greek word meaning knowledge – gnosis. The Gnostics believe that liberation can only be achieved by knowledge, by the consumption and evaluation of reality through knowledge. The library at Alexandria was run by Gnostics and they were the first people to collect scrolls and books and assemble this information. . . . Gnostics preached that there was an invasion that occurred about 3,600 BC and, about 1,600 years before the Nag Hammadi texts were buried, they wrote that this invasion was like a virus and, in fact, they were hard pressed to describe it. The beings that were invading were called Archons. These Archons had the ability to duplicate reality, to fool us. They were jealous of us because we have an essence of some kind, a soul, that they don't possess, and the Nag Hammadi texts describe the Archons. One looks like a reptile and the other looks like an unformed baby or a foetus. It is partially living and partially non-living and has grey skin and dark, unmoving eyes. The Archons are duplicating reality so that when we buy into it, when we come to believe that the duplicated, false state reality is the real reality - then they become the victors. . . . 

I believe many of the stories of Jesus are actually Gnostic myths about a possible rebellion against the Archons who came down very severely on the rebel.. . .
I really hate to say this but we have all been fooled. The whole idea that some kind of messiah is going to come to save us is an Archon trick to make you think you don't have to do anything about your present situation, no accountability. Maybe some supernatural force will come but I think you have to look at how this oppression occurred and why it was written out of history. When you begin to look back, you realize the early Christian, from the time of Jesus to the time of Constantine in 310 AD, they were preaching that they did not worship Jehovah; they worshiped the one true God. It could be argued that the early Christians were actually Gnostic followers of Jesus instead of what we, today, call Christians. The entire New Testament was completely rewritten by Constantine and all of the information on the Archons was removed and the ideas of Jehovah being a cruel god were lessened. This is a fact. The Nag Hammadi texts are older than the New Testament by 400 years. The New Testament that we have today wasn't concocted until about 350 AD. When you go back to the Nag Hammadi, it doesn't have the sin factor; they say what they really think. . . .

Rense [interviewer]: Many people look into the media – not the mainstream media – for information. So who are these Archons now? These are Talmudic Zionists, to a large degree. They are part of it, perhaps they are the central core of it. We need to start looking at the name values are and where their DNA says they came from, the Czarian Empire. They adopted Judaism and used it like a stick to beat people and hide behind at the same time which is a great tragedy for true, honest and Jews of good heart and there are millions of them. [my bolded emphasis] . . .
Weidner again: Anyone who is following this mad, insane god, Jehovah, will be lead to their death for certain.. . . The defining myth of Western mythology is that Jehovah told Adam and Eve that they could not eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Not only that but if they did eat of it, they would surely die. Yet they both ate of it and didn't die so he wasn't even telling them the truth. 

There you have it, folks. Robert Sungenis wants to host and promote a video made by an anti-Semitic Gnostic wingnut like this? I trust that further documentation of this sort of pathetic, ludicrous, anti-Christian, conspiratorial nonsense is unnecessary. I have provided the links, if anyone else wants to discover further wonders of revelation . . .

None of this is particularly new for Bob (aside from, perhaps, the incredible recourse to an anti-Christian Gnostic as a source). I knew that he was an "agnostic" (his description) about the moon landings over a year ago, and that he believed "9-11 was an inside job and that the Muslims had nothing to do with it". Here is a portion of one of my papers about Bob's odd beliefs (his words in blue):

Bob is disturbed that I am inclined to accept what NASA tells me about science. This makes perfect sense, I reckon, since in one exchange the following skepticism regarding the authenticity of the moon landings is documented:

Jordanes had stated earlier in the combox thread that he didn't think you asserted that the moon landings were faked. Someone ("Pete") produced "documentation" that you did believe this. I find this to be insufficiently documented, as it was based on "gossipy"-type hearsay from a former associate, and from a post on a hostile website. So if you think the lunar landings actually happened, I'd be happy to hear you clarify that, so that it can be stated as a matter of record on my blog that this is an unjust charge against you.

I do not know whether they were real or fake.

He expanded his "lunar skepticism" to 9-11 as well in his piece, "Response to Jared Olar":

As for my right to be an agnostic about the moon landings, I'm certainly not the first and won't be the last. Any intelligent person who has studied the issue is going to have doubts as to whether the United States had the capability to put a man on the moon in 1969 when, for example, the processing power of a 1969 computer was less than one-tenth of that in a typical cell phone of today, especially when the U.S. was at the height of the Cold War and was still stinging from the Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957, and especially when the ability to fake a moon landing in a hidden studio was well within the talents of Hollywood technicians. My suspicions are only heightened when I see Neil Armstrong holding an American flag on the moon and suddenly a gust of wind forces the lower part of the flag to move up to the upper part of the flag. Any fool knows there is no wind on the moon. You can see this video on the Internet and in the documentaries made of the moon landings. [see one lengthy critique of this theory] Yes, and I might as well tell you so I can beat Mr. Olar to the punch: I also believe 9-11 was an inside job and that the Muslims had nothing to do with it, and I maintain this belief along with several thousand other intelligent scientists, engineers, military personnel, airline pilots, firemen and the like who, from their expertise in this area, are thoroughly convinced that we have been sold a bill of goods by our government.

I'm obviously part of this nefarious conspiracy, myself, being named Armstrong . . .

In the same paper I documented from his site, Bob's belief in "an earth of approximately 10,000 to 15,000 years old" and that "the universe rotates around the earth once per day." He denies that the earth itself rotates. 




***

Clonelike Radtrads Go Bananas After Reading One of My Papers on the Topic and Engage in a Calumnious "Feeding Frenzy" Against Despised So-Called "Novus Ordo Catholics" / "Modernists" / "Neo-Catholics" Etc. Guess I Hit a Nerve, Huh?

A guy who goes by the nickname "SPB" read my paper,  Syllabus of 60 "Traditionalist" Errors, Fallacies, and False Principles (written in 2000) and wrote the following in a thread devoted to me:

Syllabus of Errors for Traditionalists - 60 errors! I must say, there are some things here, many things, I do agree with. Others seem to be laughable and outright fallacies. Others again I am on the fence about, and others I agree with one sentence and the next I disagree. Overall, this man has done a huge amount of work - not only in this whole document but also in other areas. I will post the page he has dedicated to trads. He basically has around 40 essays dedicated to the traditionalists.

One thing I do find... odd, I guess, is that he constantly berates traditionalists for using "rhetoric" by calling themselves traditionalists... and then he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic. Oh, and prepare yourself for a few straw-men and red-herrings along the way; the most prominent being the accusation that no traditionalists have ever pointed out any examples of the difficulties they have trouble with, and only moan about things [though, I take this to be half true, as I also tend to agree that most trads that aren't scholars/clergy moan a lot].

I found this interesting, and it has given me a lot to think about. Overall, I found myself to be more and more sure that I personally must disengage with these arguments. Some are called to the fight, as it were. I believe such people are the clergy and lay theologians. Not me. I found this and I thanked God after reading it. I am not at all qualified enough, or in any position, to start talking about most of these things. Which is not to say I don't hold some of the same positions that I have always held. 

First of all, most of my criticisms are directed towards what I would call "radtrads": not all self-described Catholic traditionalists. For clarification's sake, anyone wondering about my own general position should read the lengthy disclaimers and explanations at the top of my web page, Radical (Barely Catholic) "Traditionalism".

Secondly, SPB wrote:

. . . he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic.

This must be understood in context. I don't habitually call myself an "orthodox Catholic." I only do so in order to clarify, when I am being classified as a "conservative" or "Novus Ordo Catholic" or (far worse) a "neo-Catholic." When that happens, I make the point that we shouldn't need to have to use qualifiers like "traditionalist" or "conservative": that the only useful qualifier is "orthodox": in order to show that there is a "correct belief" in Catholicism and heretical, dissident ones. Thus, if I call myself an "orthodox Catholic" I am saying that I fully, wholeheartedly accept all that the Church teaches. I laid out my opinion on this in detail, in a 2005 paper:

I am content to simply call both you and myself "Catholic." If I must make distinctions due to liberal or far-right rot in the Church, then I use the qualifier "orthodox" as well, to indicate that I accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church. You and others want to call yourselves "traditionalists." 

Well, there is a right and wrong usage of that term. If one accepts notions that go contrary to orthodox Catholicism, and uses the term, I must object, because "Tradition" is a good Catholic word which must not be trifled with (and those who reject some of it ought not to be allowed to co-opt the term to themselves as if they actually exemplify a particular devotion to "tradition" as they themselves define it). Even if you are orthodox, but insist on using the term, then it must be because it is being used to distinguish yourself from the likes of me, who has supposedly somehow become simultaneously "liberal" and "orthodox" (by the application of the silly term "neo-Catholic").

So it is still attempting to create division in the Church and separate Catholic believers into a superior-subordinate relationship, with the "traditionalists" being the ones who "get it" and the "neo-Catholics" being dupes and fellow travelers of their liberal overlords in the lower hierarchies of the Church. Either way, it stinks to high heaven.

SPB's view was not the majority feeling in the thread (to put it mildly, and with a big smile on my face!). The first reaction (by "CollegeCatholic") was (I edited out the worst of it, as we are in "mixed company"):

Absolutely useless and a waste of my time. . . . let's just all pray alongside heretics like St. Pope John Paul the Great the Beloved and the Bestest Ever did.

SPB replied:

I apologize for wasting your time. I only post what I myself find interesting, I can't cover everybody else unfortunately. I also post what I hope will help people become better Catholics in some way or another. This has helped me. I am sorry it didn't do the same for you! . . . I know that he's got a soft spot for Blessed JP II, and this is evident in his writing, but look past your clear dislike for Bl. JPII and his supporters and pay attention to what he says. To brush him off because he liked Bl. JP II is just as fallacious as some of the arguments he gives. He brushes you off for hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre.. and you brush him off for hero worship of Bl. JPII! Stalemate. In any case, what I take from that paragraph I have always held to be true: that among trads there is a cult of personality, and hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre. This is only my observation, but I see it a lot, and it mirrors a lot of what trads accuse neocons of doing.

If the things he says do nothing for you, give you nothing to ponder over, that is perfectly fine. God bless you on your way.

Someone else ("CrusaderKing") wrote:

Armstrong . . . usually gives the same old worn out, tired canards that the neo Caths are noted for. I wish I'd have saved on my Notepad  the exchange between him and [Name], who used to blog under the name of [nickname], as [Name] schooled him big time, albeit politely.

I had a great discussion with the person above, whose name I removed, because he asked me to remove his name from our discussions, for important personal reasons. It was a five-part discussion (one / two / three / four / five). Make up your own mind who gave a better case. But we got along fine, as I do with most "traditionalists" who are not radtrads, and who are able to discuss issues calmly and rationally without name-calling and hyper-rhetoric. It is quite possible. But this is assuredly not the case with almost all radtrads.
"TrentCath" goes after one of my 60 points:

53. That ecumenism undermines, and is contrary to, evangelism and apologetics.

It does not at all - the two goals being distinct and complementary endeavors, not contradictory ones. I rejoice in the truths which I share with my Protestant or Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ; at the same time, I try my best to convince them that the Catholic Church is the fullness of the faith. John Paul II operates from the same presuppositions.  

Pope John Paul II also agrees with kissing the Koran, allowing altars to have budhhas on them, praying with false religions and allowing others to pray to false Gods in a city dedicated to the one true God and a whole host of other heterodox ideas, I suppose he would suggest that we agree and do all this too? Aside from 'Pope John Paul II does it so it must be right'  he doesn't even attempt to provide another argument, its almost a relief as it would most likely have been as absurd as what we see coming from Rome as regards the dialogue with the SSPX. 

This paper was written in 2000. It doesn't represent my final or most elaborated-upon opinion on everything. Brief points were obviously neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive in nature. I have an entire web page about ecumenism (that was present in 2000 on my website). On that page I have two papers about the Assisi conferences (one / two). I also have two lengthy treatments of the Koran-kissing incident (one / two).

TrentCath continues, caricaturing my expressed opinions, then giving his own:

I agree there's a crisis and its due to a modernism but everything's going to be alright... so I don't have to do anything . . . thanks be to God that we can actually see what is going on rather than obstinately denying it.

I guess that's why I have a web page about theological liberalism, too, and half of one of my books devoted to it. Odd, if in fact I am supposedly denying the modernist crisis. I am so far from denying it, that I wrote in my #13: the very one being commented on here:

I have "justified" no such thing. I have ignored nothing, either. My own opinion (directly influenced by Fr. John Hardon -- who has insanely been called a "modernist" by "traditionalist" friends of mine) is that the present crisis is the most serious the Church has ever faced, per Pope St. Pius X's summation of the evils of modernism.

But because I refuse to descend to despair, and remain optimistic that God is in control of His Church, and have a firm belief in its indefectibility because of God's supervision, I get accused of "obstinately denying" modernism. This is the pathetic radtrad mentality. Then this character who goes by "The Dying Flutchman" (heaven forbid anyone use a real name!) wrote:

I know many Novus Ordo Catholics that have made JPII the 4th member of the trinity despite the fact he was probably the worst pope of the last 200 years. . . . it was hard not to come to the conclusion that the Church after the late 60's professed a different religion than the one of the late 1950's.

What's wrong with this person's faith in God? It's just like the anti-Catholics. Instead of the Church dying with Constantine or Pope Gregory the Great or with the Inquisition or Trent (all equally arbitrary and historically and doctrinally absurd dividing-points), instead it was taken out by the devil in the late 60s. "Vincentius" then gives us his pearls of wisdom:

Like most new Evangelical converts to the Catholic faith, Armstrong is anti-traditionalist, and ranks along with the most prominent one, Mark Shea and a slew of others who have brought along their baggage of protestantism along with them as they crossed the Tiber. 

"Spooky" adds the profundity: ". . . it appeals to their Protestant leanings with a sheer veil of Catholicism."

Right. This is the tired old canard of "converts are still half-Protestant." I've directly dealt with this absurd charge at least twice (one / two). Isn't it interesting that this false accusation invariably comes from one of two sources: radtrads and anti-Catholic Protestants. It's completely ridiculous to assert this, seeing that I am utterly despised by anti-Catholic Protestants and am regularly insulted in public by them, with every conceivable calumny and lie. I get accused now and then of being "anti-Calvinist" and "anti-Lutheran" and "anti-Protestant."

I have extensive web pages (containing many hundreds of papers) critiquing and disagreeing with Calvin, Calvinism, Luther, Lutheranism, Anti-Catholic Protestantism, Contra-Catholicism, and Protestant historical intolerance and persecution. I have written books critiquing Luther and Calvin and Protestantism generally. I have written two books (one / two) against sola Scriptura: one of the two "pillars" of the so-called "Reformation," and another mostly devoted to refuting "faith alone": the other pillar.

All this, yet I am accused of being in bed with Protestantism and remaining half or more Protestant (as if my conversion story is a big pack of lies). I have critiqued Protestantism and helped bring more people out of it than, I highly suspect, all of these loudmouthed critics of mine put together. I receive letters all the time reporting conversions and reversions, largely or partially as a result of my writings.

[Later added note: I am now being unfairly blasted about the above paragraph in a second thread devoted to me, mentioned in the combox below. The gist of it is that I am supposedly full of myself, filled to the brim with spiritual pride, and so woefully ignorant that I don't understand that it is God Who gives the increase and brings about conversions and not the bearer of the message. Examples:

I find it interesting how he makes a point of boasting about how many people he's converted (exact wording, I don't remember).  Seems like a rather big ego to me.   
Last time I checked it's God who converts the sinner, not men. Men are just His instruments. Armstrong might want to re-check the gospel.
It's not a Catholic thing to take credit nor a tally of "wins" as Ned Flanders from the Simpsons would describe it.  Catholicism is not the standard, the testimony of untested Protestants and converts both for and against Dave's writings on the Church. You don't prove your Catholicism with yourself as the standard. 

 I converted from protestantism and was led by the Holy Spirit and nothing else.

This, of all the charges leveled against me in these threads, is perhaps 1) the most ridiculous of all, and 2) the one most easy to disprove from any rudimentary search of my writings. Here is just one example of what I am sure is many dozens that could be found:

For all these reasons I don't get weary, because I'm not trying to convert the world. Technically, I'm not trying to convert anyone personally, through my own efforts. I'm simply passing along the reasons I have come to believe, for why Catholicism is the fullness of Christian truth. If that helps someone else, great, but their (possible) conversion is not ultimately my responsibility at all. It is the Holy Spirit's and their own. I'm just trying to be a good steward of the gifts that God has given me; to play my role in the whole process, which is an extraordinary privilege: to be able to be used by God in any way whatsoever. I believe everyone has a vocation from God (including every occupation in the world); this is mine.

If someone compliments me for helping them become a Catholic, I'll accept it and say "thanks" but then I always try to remember to say "all glory to God" and "it's all by His grace." I absolutely believe those things. It all goes back to God. All of us are mere leaky vessels and greatly flawed messengers at best. But God uses us poor miserable sinners for His purposes, which is the amazing thing.

(Q & A on Catholic Apologetics:  Why I Do What I Do {As My Vocation}, 2-25-09)

The fact is that I am constantly; constantly giving all glory to God, for any conversions or success of my writings. Anyone who follows my writing at all (here or on Facebook or in my books) knows this. Here I happened to not mention the thing I have a million and a half times. But nothing here "proves" that I don't believe it. Note also that I did qualify my remarks. I wrote that I "helped bring more people out" of Protestantism. Nothing wrong with that at all. I did participate. It's a true statement. I didn't claim it was just me or some such ludicrous thing; as if I were the sole cause, but rather, that it was "largely or partially as a result of my writings".

So, for example, if someone writes to me (as many have), saying that my writings were the main reason they became persuaded of Catholicism (just as Cardinal Newman's writings were in my own case, and one particular friend of mine whom God used to help convert me), that is a true description of a factual occurrence. It doesn't follow at all that either they or I are denying that God was the primary cause. I was the instrument God used (as one critic pointed out: as if I don't know that already).

The Bible (that these people claim I am ignorant of in this regard) even says that we are God's "co-workers": "we are God's fellow workers" (1 Cor 3:9: RSV); "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me" (1 Cor 15:10; cf. Rom 15:17-18); "be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Cor 15:58); "Working together with him"(2 Cor 6:1; cf. Eph 2:10; Phil 2:12-13).

Moreover, the Bible (usually St. Paul) uses the language of people "making converts" with the implicit background understanding that it is working with God (per the above examples). It's not necessary to mention God every time: "I magnify my ministry in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them" (Rom 11:13-14); "Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife?" (1 Cor 7:16); "I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor 9:22); "by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers" (1 Tim 4:16); "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation" (2 Tim 2:10); "whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death" (Jas 5:20); "that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives" (1 Pet 3:1).

All this being the case, I have written nothing whatsoever that is improper or scandalous or denying any glory to God. The point in context (that I made very clear, above) was that I am being accused of being compromised with Protestantism. Thus I turned the tables and noted that I am helping to cause Protestants to become Catholics by the scores. Why would that be if I am supposedly so compromised with it? Is it even plausible? Of course it is not at all. This is a completely relevant point and refutation of the charge (among many). That was the context. And the point has not been overthrown by this ludicrous false accusation that I allegedly think I am bringing any of that about apart from God, on my own, in some idiotic spiritually prideful sense.

To close this note, here is an actual response I made exactly a week ago to someone who sent me a private message in Facebook. He was an Episcopalian who became a Catholic in 2004. He wrote to encourage my work, and said that during his conversion process, my "website was the first place I normally went for answers." My reply was altogether typical of how I answer letters like this: "Thank you very much for your warm, kind letter. Praise God that He chose to use this poor sinner to help you on your journey a bit. . . . I appreciate the encouragement and may God abundantly bless you!" That is my spirit. I try to give glory to God at every turn, even if someone compliments me.]

These quasi-schismatic radtrads and SSPX devotees, on the other hand, spend their time (many of them, but not all) bashing Holy Mother Church and popes (precisely as both anti-Catholic Protestants and liberal Catholics do: groups that radtrads highly resemble in many key ways), while I defend her and critique the errors and sins of her professed enemies. Radtrads and self-important "more-Catholic-and-reverent-than-thou" self-proclaimed pseudo-experts don't have time to defend the Church against calumnies, while I devote my life to it. The contrast couldn't be any more stark than it is.

Nor am I "anti-traditionalist." I am anti-radtrad. I attend an extremely traditional (and beautiful German Gothic revival) parish in downtown Detroit (St. Joseph's), where the liturgy is very reverent and the doctrine completely orthodox. Our cluster is one of the few in metro Detroit that offer the Tridentine Mass, and I have attended it on several occasions, though (gasp!!!) I dare to prefer the Novus Ordo Latin Mass.

"INPEFESS" chimed in with more ludicrosities in the "Bash Armstrong and Neo-Catholics" thread:

They act as though there was no Catholic Church before the council, or that the Catholic Church began in the 1960's. If you ever listen to EWTN or read any post-conciliar authors, they almost exclusively reference the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar popes: "as the Second Vatican Council taught . . .;" "as Blessed John Paul II once said . . .;" "as Mother Theresa [sic] used to say . . ."

It's as though the entire 2000-year history of the Catholic Church simply disappeared. 

I don't know who the intended target of this nonsense is (though the thread is about yours truly, after all). It's certainly not an accurate description of me, seeing as I have web pages about the Church fathers, G. K. Chesterton, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, and in the past hosted web pages (for several years) devoted to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and Medieval and Renaissance Culture. I have edited a book of Chesterton quotations (he died in 1936), and will soon have one published of Cardinal Newman quotations (he died in 1890). I wrote a book devoted to the Church fathers as well. Currently I am working on editing a book called Classic Catholic Biblical Apologetics: 1525-1925 : my fourth volume where I have collected materials of great Catholics: all of whom lived prior to 1936. It really sounds like I am exclusively stuck in the post-Vatican II era, doesn't it?


Some things never change. You can't successfully defend falsehood by lying about or severely distorting what others believe (nor by any other method). This thread provided lots of unsubstantiated rhetoric and polemics and calumnies. I respond with facts and true Catholic principles and activities and beliefs.

If these folks wanna throw more mud and raise a big ruckus, let them. I can't stop them. Back to your regularly scheduled program and back to my work. The harvest is ready; the laborers are few (we Christians -- even us Catholics, sadly -- are too busy name-calling and fighting each other to care about the souls on the way to hell). 



* * *

Radtrads at Fish Eaters Forum Go Bananas After Reading One of My Papers on the Topic and Engage in a Calumnious "Feeding Frenzy" Against Despised So-Called "Novus Ordo Catholics" / "Modernists" / "Neo-Catholics" Etc. Guess I Hit a Nerve, Huh?

A guy who goes by the nickname "SPB" read my paper,  Syllabus of 60 "Traditionalist" Errors, Fallacies, and False Principles (written in 2000) and wrote the following on the Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, in a thread devoted to me:

Syllabus of Errors for Traditionalists - 60 errors! I must say, there are some things here, many things, I do agree with. Others seem to be laughable and outright fallacies. Others again I am on the fence about, and others I agree with one sentence and the next I disagree. Overall, this man has done a huge amount of work - not only in this whole document but also in other areas. I will post the page he has dedicated to trads. He basically has around 40 essays dedicated to the traditionalists.

One thing I do find... odd, I guess, is that he constantly berates traditionalists for using "rhetoric" by calling themselves traditionalists... and then he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic. Oh, and prepare yourself for a few straw-men and red-herrings along the way; the most prominent being the accusation that no traditionalists have ever pointed out any examples of the difficulties they have trouble with, and only moan about things [though, I take this to be half true, as I also tend to agree that most trads that aren't scholars/clergy moan a lot].

I found this interesting, and it has given me a lot to think about. Overall, I found myself to be more and more sure that I personally must disengage with these arguments. Some are called to the fight, as it were. I believe such people are the clergy and lay theologians. Not me. I found this and I thanked God after reading it. I am not at all qualified enough, or in any position, to start talking about most of these things. Which is not to say I don't hold some of the same positions that I have always held. 

First of all, most of my criticisms are directed towards what I would call "radtrads": not all self-described Catholic traditionalists. For clarification's sake, anyone wondering about my own general position should read the lengthy disclaimers and explanations at the top of my web page, Radical (Barely Catholic) "Traditionalism".

Secondly, SPB wrote:

. . . he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic.

This must be understood in context. I don't habitually call myself an "orthodox Catholic." I only do so in order to clarify, when I am being classified as a "conservative" or "Novus Ordo Catholic" or (far worse) a "neo-Catholic." When that happens, I make the point that we shouldn't need to have to use qualifiers like "traditionalist" or "conservative": that the only useful qualifier is "orthodox": in order to show that there is a "correct belief" in Catholicism and heretical, dissident ones. Thus, if I call myself an "orthodox Catholic" I am saying that I fully, wholeheartedly accept all that the Church teaches. I laid out my opinion on this in detail, in a 2005 paper:

I am content to simply call both you and myself "Catholic." If I must make distinctions due to liberal or far-right rot in the Church, then I use the qualifier "orthodox" as well, to indicate that I accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church. You and others want to call yourselves "traditionalists." 

Well, there is a right and wrong usage of that term. If one accepts notions that go contrary to orthodox Catholicism, and uses the term, I must object, because "Tradition" is a good Catholic word which must not be trifled with (and those who reject some of it ought not to be allowed to co-opt the term to themselves as if they actually exemplify a particular devotion to "tradition" as they themselves define it). Even if you are orthodox, but insist on using the term, then it must be because it is being used to distinguish yourself from the likes of me, who has supposedly somehow become simultaneously "liberal" and "orthodox" (by the application of the silly term "neo-Catholic").

So it is still attempting to create division in the Church and separate Catholic believers into a superior-subordinate relationship, with the "traditionalists" being the ones who "get it" and the "neo-Catholics" being dupes and fellow travelers of their liberal overlords in the lower hierarchies of the Church. Either way, it stinks to high heaven.

SPB's view was not the majority feeling on the forum (to put it mildly, and with a big smile on my face!). The first reaction (by "CollegeCatholic") was (I edited out the worst of it, as we are in "mixed company"):

Absolutely useless and a waste of my time. . . . let's just all pray alongside heretics like St. Pope John Paul the Great the Beloved and the Bestest Ever did.

SPB replied:

I apologize for wasting your time. I only post what I myself find interesting, I can't cover everybody else unfortunately. I also post what I hope will help people become better Catholics in some way or another. This has helped me. I am sorry it didn't do the same for you! . . . I know that he's got a soft spot for Blessed JP II, and this is evident in his writing, but look past your clear dislike for Bl. JPII and his supporters and pay attention to what he says. To brush him off because he liked Bl. JP II is just as fallacious as some of the arguments he gives. He brushes you off for hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre.. and you brush him off for hero worship of Bl. JPII! Stalemate. In any case, what I take from that paragraph I have always held to be true: that among trads there is a cult of personality, and hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre. This is only my observation, but I see it a lot, and it mirrors a lot of what trads accuse neocons of doing.

If the things he says do nothing for you, give you nothing to ponder over, that is perfectly fine. God bless you on your way.

Someone else ("CrusaderKing") wrote:

Armstrong bashed this site a few years ago, and he usually gives the same old worn out, tired canards that the neo Caths are noted for. I wish I'd have saved on my Notepad  the exchange between him and [Name], who used to blog under the name of [nickname], as [Name] schooled him big time, albeit politely.

Armstrong also had a very constructive, enjoyable discussion with a woman who co-owns the forum (Tracy), a few years back, after she expressed a desire to do so (and would do so again if she wants to). Armstrong also removed some of the stuff he had written, as a result. The only paper about the forum I have up now is a 2009 post entitled, "Traditionalist" Catholic Webmaster (Fish Eaters Forum) Trashes Venerable Pope John Paul the Great. I submit that this isn't too far off the mark, seeing that in the same thread devoted to my paper, it's stated on page 3 of the thread by a "forum owner" who goes by "Vox Clamantis" (who may be Tracy): "Don't call Popes heretics on this forum. It's against the rules."

But never mind all that . . . I had a great discussion with the person above, whose name I removed, because he asked me to remove his name from our discussions, for important personal reasons. It was a five-part discussion (one / two / three / four / five). Make up your own mind who gave a better case. But we got along fine, as I do with most "traditionalists" who are not radtrads, and who are able to discuss issues calmly and rationally without name-calling and hyper-rhetoric. It is quite possible. But this is assuredly not the case with almost all radtrads.

"TrentCath" goes after one of my 60 points:

53. That ecumenism undermines, and is contrary to, evangelism and apologetics.

It does not at all - the two goals being distinct and complementary endeavors, not contradictory ones. I rejoice in the truths which I share with my Protestant or Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ; at the same time, I try my best to convince them that the Catholic Church is the fullness of the faith. John Paul II operates from the same presuppositions.  

Pope John Paul II also agrees with kissing the Koran, allowing altars to have budhhas on them, praying with false religions and allowing others to pray to false Gods in a city dedicated to the one true God and a whole host of other heterodox ideas, I suppose he would suggest that we agree and do all this too? Aside from 'Pope John Paul II does it so it must be right'  he doesn't even attempt to provide another argument, its almost a relief as it would most likely have been as absurd as what we see coming from Rome as regards the dialogue with the SSPX. 

This paper was written in 2000. It doesn't represent my final or most elaborated-upon opinion on everything. Brief points were obviously neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive in nature. I have an entire web page about ecumenism (that was present in 2000 on my website). On that page I have two papers about the Assisi conferences (one / two). I also have two lengthy treatments of the Koran-kissing incident (one / two).

TrentCath continues, caricaturing my expressed opinions, then giving his own:

I agree there's a crisis and its due to a modernism but everything's going to be alright... so I don't have to do anything . . . thanks be to God that we can actually see what is going on rather than obstinately denying it.

I guess that's why I have a web page about theological liberalism, too, and half of one of my books devoted to it. Odd, if in fact I am supposedly denying the modernist crisis. I am so far from denying it, that I wrote in my #13: the very one being commented on here:

I have "justified" no such thing. I have ignored nothing, either. My own opinion (directly influenced by Fr. John Hardon -- who has insanely been called a "modernist" by "traditionalist" friends of mine) is that the present crisis is the most serious the Church has ever faced, per Pope St. Pius X's summation of the evils of modernism.

But because I refuse to descend to despair, and remain optimistic that God is in control of His Church, and have a firm belief in its indefectibility because of God's supervision, I get accused of "obstinately denying" modernism. This is the pathetic radtrad mentality. Then this character who goes by "The Dying Flutchman" (heaven forbid anyone use a real name!) wrote:

I know many Novus Ordo Catholics that have made JPII the 4th member of the trinity despite the fact he was probably the worst pope of the last 200 years. . . . it was hard not to come to the conclusion that the Church after the late 60's professed a different religion than the one of the late 1950's.

What's wrong with this person's faith in God? It's just like the anti-Catholics. Instead of the Church dying with Constantine or Pope Gregory the Great or with the Inquisition or Trent (all equally arbitrary and historically and doctrinally absurd dividing-points), instead it was taken out by the devil in the late 60s. "Vincentius" then gives us his pearls of wisdom:

Like most new Evangelical converts to the Catholic faith, Armstrong is anti-traditionalist, and ranks along with the most prominent one, Mark Shea and a slew of others who have brought along their baggage of protestantism along with them as they crossed the Tiber. 

"Spooky" adds the profundity: ". . . it appeals to their Protestant leanings with a sheer veil of Catholicism."

Right. This is the tired old canard of "converts are still half-Protestant." I've directly dealt with this absurd charge at least twice (one / two). Isn't it interesting that this false accusation invariably comes from one of two sources: radtrads and anti-Catholic Protestants. It's completely ridiculous to assert this, seeing that I am utterly despised by anti-Catholic Protestants and am regularly insulted in public by them, with every conceivable calumny and lie. I get accused now and then of being "anti-Calvinist" and "anti-Lutheran" and "anti-Protestant."

I have extensive web pages (containing many hundreds of papers) critiquing and disagreeing with Calvin, Calvinism, Luther, Lutheranism, Anti-Catholic Protestantism, Contra-Catholicism, and Protestant historical intolerance and persecution. I have written books critiquing Luther and Calvin and Protestantism generally. I have written two books (one / two) against sola Scriptura: one of the two "pillars" of the so-called "Reformation," and another mostly devoted to refuting "faith alone": the other pillar.

All this, yet I am accused of being in bed with Protestantism and remaining half or more Protestant (as if my conversion story is a big pack of lies). I have critiqued Protestantism and helped bring more people out of it than, I highly suspect, all of the members of the Fish Eaters forum put together. I receive letters all the time reporting conversions and reversions, largely or partially as a result of my writings.

[Later added note: I am now being unfairly blasted about the above paragraph in a second thread devoted to me, mentioned in the combox below. The gist of it is that I am supposedly full of myself, filled to the brim with spiritual pride, and so woefully ignorant that I don't understand that it is God Who gives the increase and brings about conversions and not the bearer of the message. Examples:

I find it interesting how he makes a point of boasting about how many people he's converted (exact wording, I don't remember).  Seems like a rather big ego to me.   
Last time I checked it's God who converts the sinner, not men. Men are just His instruments. Armstrong might want to re-check the gospel.
It's not a Catholic thing to take credit nor a tally of "wins" as Ned Flanders from the Simpsons would describe it.  Catholicism is not the standard, the testimony of untested Protestants and converts both for and against Dave's writings on the Church. You don't prove your Catholicism with yourself as the standard. 

 I converted from protestantism and was led by the Holy Spirit and nothing else.

This, of all the charges leveled against me in these threads, is perhaps 1) the most ridiculous of all, and 2) the one most easy to disprove from any rudimentary search of my writings. Here is just one example of what I am sure is many dozens that could be found:

For all these reasons I don't get weary, because I'm not trying to convert the world. Technically, I'm not trying to convert anyone personally, through my own efforts. I'm simply passing along the reasons I have come to believe, for why Catholicism is the fullness of Christian truth. If that helps someone else, great, but their (possible) conversion is not ultimately my responsibility at all. It is the Holy Spirit's and their own. I'm just trying to be a good steward of the gifts that God has given me; to play my role in the whole process, which is an extraordinary privilege: to be able to be used by God in any way whatsoever. I believe everyone has a vocation from God (including every occupation in the world); this is mine.

If someone compliments me for helping them become a Catholic, I'll accept it and say "thanks" but then I always try to remember to say "all glory to God" and "it's all by His grace." I absolutely believe those things. It all goes back to God. All of us are mere leaky vessels and greatly flawed messengers at best. But God uses us poor miserable sinners for His purposes, which is the amazing thing.

(Q & A on Catholic Apologetics:  Why I Do What I Do {As My Vocation}, 2-25-09)

The fact is that I am constantly; constantly giving all glory to God, for any conversions or success of my writings. Anyone who follows my writing at all (here or on Facebook or in my books) knows this. Here I happened to not mention the thing I have a million and a half times. But nothing here "proves" that I don't believe it. Note also that I did qualify my remarks. I wrote that I "helped bring more people out" of Protestantism. Nothing wrong with that at all. I did participate. It's a true statement. I didn't claim it was just me or some such ludicrous thing; as if I were the sole cause, but rather, that it was "largely or partially as a result of my writings".

So, for example, if someone writes to me (as many have), saying that my writings were the main reason they became persuaded of Catholicism (just as Cardinal Newman's writings were in my own case, and one particular friend of mine whom God used to help convert me), that is a true description of a factual occurrence. It doesn't follow at all that either they or I are denying that God was the primary cause. I was the instrument God used (as one critic pointed out: as if I don't know that already).

The Bible (that these people claim I am ignorant of in this regard) even says that we are God's "co-workers": "we are God's fellow workers" (1 Cor 3:9: RSV); "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me" (1 Cor 15:10; cf. Rom 15:17-18); "be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Cor 15:58); "Working together with him"(2 Cor 6:1; cf. Eph 2:10; Phil 2:12-13).

Moreover, the Bible (usually St. Paul) uses the language of people "making converts" with the implicit background understanding that it is working with God (per the above examples). It's not necessary to mention God every time: "I magnify my ministry in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them" (Rom 11:13-14); "Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife?" (1 Cor 7:16); "I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor 9:22); "by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers" (1 Tim 4:16); "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation" (2 Tim 2:10); "whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death" (Jas 5:20); "that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives" (1 Pet 3:1).

All this being the case, I have written nothing whatsoever that is improper or scandalous or denying any glory to God. The point in context (that I made very clear, above) was that I am being accused of being compromised with Protestantism. Thus I turned the tables and noted that I am helping to cause Protestants to become Catholics by the scores. Why would that be if I am supposedly so compromised with it? Is it even plausible? Of course it is not at all. This is a completely relevant point and refutation of the charge (among many). That was the context. And the point has not been overthrown by this ludicrous false accusation that I allegedly think I am bringing any of that about apart from God, on my own, in some idiotic spiritually prideful sense.

To close this note, here is an actual response I made exactly a week ago to someone who sent me a private message in Facebook. He was an Episcopalian who became a Catholic in 2004. He wrote to encourage my work, and said that during his conversion process, my "website was the first place I normally went for answers." My reply was altogether typical of how I answer letters like this: "Thank you very much for your warm, kind letter. Praise God that He chose to use this poor sinner to help you on your journey a bit. . . . I appreciate the encouragement and may God abundantly bless you!" That is my spirit. I try to give glory to God at every turn, even if someone compliments me.]

These quasi-schismatic radtrads and SSPX devotees, on the other hand, spend their time (many of them, but not all) bashing Holy Mother Church and popes (precisely as both anti-Catholic Protestants and liberal Catholics do: groups that radtrads highly resemble in many key ways), while I defend her and critique the errors and sins of her professed enemies. Radtrads and self-important "more-Catholic-and-reverent-than-thou" self-proclaimed pseudo-experts don't have time to defend the Church against calumnies, while I devote my life to it. The contrast couldn't be any more stark than it is.

Nor am I "anti-traditionalist." I am anti-radtrad. I attend an extremely traditional (and beautiful German Gothic revival) parish in downtown Detroit (St. Joseph's), where the liturgy is very reverent and the doctrine completely orthodox. Our cluster is one of the few in metro Detroit that offer the Tridentine Mass, and I have attended it on several occasions, though (gasp!!!) I dare to prefer the Novus Ordo Latin Mass.

"INPEFESS" chimed in with more ludicrosities in the "Bash Armstrong and Neo-Catholics" thread:

They act as though there was no Catholic Church before the council, or that the Catholic Church began in the 1960's. If you ever listen to EWTN or read any post-conciliar authors, they almost exclusively reference the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar popes: "as the Second Vatican Council taught . . .;" "as Blessed John Paul II once said . . .;" "as Mother Theresa [sic] used to say . . ."

It's as though the entire 2000-year history of the Catholic Church simply disappeared. 

I don't know who the intended target of this nonsense is (though the thread is about yours truly, after all). It's certainly not an accurate description of me, seeing as I have web pages about the Church fathers, G. K. Chesterton, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, and in the past hosted web pages (for several years) devoted to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and Medieval and Renaissance Culture. I have edited a book of Chesterton quotations (he died in 1936), and will soon have one published of Cardinal Newman quotations (he died in 1890). I wrote a book devoted to the Church fathers as well. Currently I am working on editing a book called Classic Catholic Biblical Apologetics: 1525-1925 : my fourth volume where I have collected materials of great Catholics: all of whom lived prior to 1936. It really sounds like I am exclusively stuck in the post-Vatican II era, doesn't it?


Some things never change. You can't successfully defend falsehood by lying about or severely distorting what others believe (nor by any other method). This thread provided lots of unsubstantiated rhetoric and polemics and calumnies. I respond with facts and true Catholic principles and activities and beliefs.

If these folks wanna throw more mud and raise a big ruckus, let them. I can't stop them. No one can or will, it seems. Back to your regularly scheduled program and back to my work. The harvest is ready; the laborers are few (we Christians -- even us Catholics, sadly -- are too busy name-calling and fighting each other to care about the souls on the way to hell). 



* * *

Catholic "Traditionalist" Has Second Thoughts After Reading One of My Papers on the Topic but Radtrads at the Same Forum Engage in a Calumnious "Feeding Frenzy" Against Despised "Novus Ordo Catholics"

A guy who goes by the nickname "SPB" read my paper,  Syllabus of 60 "Traditionalist" Errors, Fallacies, and False Principles (written in 2000) and wrote the following on the Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, in a thread devoted to me:

Syllabus of Errors for Traditionalists - 60 errors! I must say, there are some things here, many things, I do agree with. Others seem to be laughable and outright fallacies. Others again I am on the fence about, and others I agree with one sentence and the next I disagree. Overall, this man has done a huge amount of work - not only in this whole document but also in other areas. I will post the page he has dedicated to trads. He basically has around 40 essays dedicated to the traditionalists.

One thing I do find... odd, I guess, is that he constantly berates traditionalists for using "rhetoric" by calling themselves traditionalists... and then he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic. Oh, and prepare yourself for a few straw-men and red-herrings along the way; the most prominent being the accusation that no traditionalists have ever pointed out any examples of the difficulties they have trouble with, and only moan about things [though, I take this to be half true, as I also tend to agree that most trads that aren't scholars/clergy moan a lot].

I found this interesting, and it has given me a lot to think about. Overall, I found myself to be more and more sure that I personally must disengage with these arguments. Some are called to the fight, as it were. I believe such people are the clergy and lay theologians. Not me. I found this and I thanked God after reading it. I am not at all qualified enough, or in any position, to start talking about most of these things. Which is not to say I don't hold some of the same positions that I have always held. 

First of all, most of my criticisms are directed towards what I would call "radtrads": not all self-described Catholic traditionalists. For clarification's sake, anyone wondering about my own general position should read the lengthy disclaimers and explanations at the top of my web page, Radical (Barely Catholic) "Traditionalism".

Secondly, SPB wrote:

. . . he goes on to constantly point out that he is a positively "orthodox" Catholic.

This must be understood in context. I don't habitually call myself an "orthodox Catholic." I only do so in order to clarify, when I am being classified as a "conservative" or "Novus Ordo Catholic" or (far worse) a "neo-Catholic." When that happens, I make the point that we shouldn't need to have to use qualifiers like "traditionalist" or "conservative": that the only useful qualifier is "orthodox": in order to show that there is a "correct belief" in Catholicism and heretical, dissident ones. Thus, if I call myself an "orthodox Catholic" I am saying that I fully, wholeheartedly accept all that the Church teaches. I laid out my opinion on this in detail, in a 2005 paper:

I am content to simply call both you and myself "Catholic." If I must make distinctions due to liberal or far-right rot in the Church, then I use the qualifier "orthodox" as well, to indicate that I accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church. You and others want to call yourselves "traditionalists." 

Well, there is a right and wrong usage of that term. If one accepts notions that go contrary to orthodox Catholicism, and uses the term, I must object, because "Tradition" is a good Catholic word which must not be trifled with (and those who reject some of it ought not to be allowed to co-opt the term to themselves as if they actually exemplify a particular devotion to "tradition" as they themselves define it). Even if you are orthodox, but insist on using the term, then it must be because it is being used to distinguish yourself from the likes of me, who has supposedly somehow become simultaneously "liberal" and "orthodox" (by the application of the silly term "neo-Catholic").

So it is still attempting to create division in the Church and separate Catholic believers into a superior-subordinate relationship, with the "traditionalists" being the ones who "get it" and the "neo-Catholics" being dupes and fellow travelers of their liberal overlords in the lower hierarchies of the Church. Either way, it stinks to high heaven.

SPB's view was not the majority feeling on the forum (to put it mildly, and with a big smile on my face!). The first reaction (by "CollegeCatholic") was (I edited out the worst of it, as we are in "mixed company"):

Absolutely useless and a waste of my time. . . . let's just all pray alongside heretics like St. Pope John Paul the Great the Beloved and the Bestest Ever did.

SPB replied:

I apologize for wasting your time. I only post what I myself find interesting, I can't cover everybody else unfortunately. I also post what I hope will help people become better Catholics in some way or another. This has helped me. I am sorry it didn't do the same for you! . . . I know that he's got a soft spot for Blessed JP II, and this is evident in his writing, but look past your clear dislike for Bl. JPII and his supporters and pay attention to what he says. To brush him off because he liked Bl. JP II is just as fallacious as some of the arguments he gives. He brushes you off for hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre.. and you brush him off for hero worship of Bl. JPII! Stalemate. In any case, what I take from that paragraph I have always held to be true: that among trads there is a cult of personality, and hero worship of Archbishop Lefebvre. This is only my observation, but I see it a lot, and it mirrors a lot of what trads accuse neocons of doing.

If the things he says do nothing for you, give you nothing to ponder over, that is perfectly fine. God bless you on your way.

Someone else ("CrusaderKing") wrote:

Armstrong bashed this site a few years ago, and he usually gives the same old worn out, tired canards that the neo Caths are noted for. I wish I'd have saved on my Notepad  the exchange between him and [Name], who used to blog under the name of [nickname], as [Name] schooled him big time, albeit politely.

Armstrong also had a very constructive, enjoyable discussion with a woman who co-owns the forum (Tracy), a few years back, after she expressed a desire to do so (and would do so again if she wants to). Armstrong also removed some of the stuff he had written, as a result. The only paper about the forum I have up now is a 2009 post entitled, "Traditionalist" Catholic Webmaster (Fish Eaters Forum) Trashes Venerable Pope John Paul the Great. I submit that this isn't too far off the mark, seeing that in the same thread devoted to my paper, it's stated on page 3 of the thread by a "forum owner" who goes by "Vox Clamantis" (who may be Tracy): "Don't call Popes heretics on this forum. It's against the rules."

But never mind all that . . . I had a great discussion with the person above, whose name I removed, because he asked me to remove his name from our discussions, for important personal reasons. It was a five-part discussion (one / two / three / four / five). Make up your own mind who gave a better case. But we got along fine, as I do with most "traditionalists" who are not radtrads, and who are able to discuss issues calmly and rationally without name-calling and hyper-rhetoric. it is quite possible. But this is assuredly not the case with almost all radtrads.

"TrentCath" goes after one of my 60 points:

53. That ecumenism undermines, and is contrary to, evangelism and apologetics.

It does not at all - the two goals being distinct and complementary endeavors, not contradictory ones. I rejoice in the truths which I share with my Protestant or Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ; at the same time, I try my best to convince them that the Catholic Church is the fullness of the faith. John Paul II operates from the same presuppositions.  

Pope John Paul II also agrees with kissing the Koran, allowing altars to have budhhas on them, praying with false religions and allowing others to pray to false Gods in a city dedicated to the one true God and a whole host of other heterodox ideas, I suppose he would suggest that we agree and do all this too? Aside from 'Pope John Paul II does it so it must be right'  he doesn't even attempt to provide another argument, its almost a relief as it would most likely have been as absurd as what we see coming from Rome as regards the dialogue with the SSPX. 

This paper was written in 2000. It doesn't represent my final or most elaborated-upon opinion on everything. Brief points were obviously neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive in nature. I have an entire web page about ecumenism (that was present in 2000 on my website). On that page I have two papers about the Assisi conferences (one / two). I also have two lengthy treatments of the Koran-kissing incident (one / two).

TrentCath continues, caricaturing my expressed opinions, then giving his own:

I agree there's a crisis and its due to a modernism but everything's going to be alright... so I don't have to do anything . . . thanks be to God that we can actually see what is going on rather than obstinately denying it.

I guess that's why I have a web page about theological liberalism, too, and half of one of my books devoted to it. Odd, if in fact I am supposedly denying the modernist crisis. I am so far from denying it, that I wrote in my #13: the very one being commented on here:

I have "justified" no such thing. I have ignored nothing, either. My own opinion (directly influenced by Fr. John Hardon -- who has insanely been called a "modernist" by "traditionalist" friends of mine) is that the present crisis is the most serious the Church has ever faced, per Pope St. Pius X's summation of the evils of modernism.

But because I refuse to descend to despair, and remain optimistic that God is in control of His Church, and have a firm belief in its indefectibility because of God's supervision, I get accused of "obstinately denying" modernism. This is the pathetic radtrad mentality. Then this character who goes by "The Dying Flutchman" (heaven forbid anyone use a real name!) wrote:

I know many Novus Ordo Catholics that have made JPII the 4th member of the trinity despite the fact he was probably the worst pope of the last 200 years. . . . it was hard not to come to the conclusion that the Church after the late 60's professed a different religion than the one of the late 1950's.

What's wrong with this person's faith in God? It's just like the anti-Catholics. Instead of the Church dying with Constantine or Pope Gregory the Great or with the Inquisition or Trent (all equally arbitrary and historically and doctrinally absurd dividing-points), instead it was taken out by the devil in the late 60s. "Vincentius" then gives us his pearls of wisdom:

Like most new Evangelical converts to the Catholic faith, Armstrong is anti-traditionalist, and ranks along with the most prominent one, Mark Shea and a slew of others who have brought along their baggage of protestantism along with them as they crossed the Tiber. 

"Spooky" adds the profundity: ". . . it appeals to their Protestant leanings with a sheer veil of Catholicism."

Right. This is the tired old canard of "converts are still half-Protestant." I've directly dealt with this absurd charge at least twice (one / two). Isn't it interesting that this false accusation invariably comes from one of two sources: radtrads and anti-Catholic Protestants. It's completely ridiculous to assert this, seeing that I am utterly despised by anti-Catholic Protestants and am regularly insulted in public by them, with every conceivable calumny and lie. I get accused now and then of being "anti-Calvinist" and "anti-Lutheran" and "anti-Protestant."

I have extensive web pages (containing many hundreds of papers) critiquing and disagreeing with Calvin, Calvinism, Luther, Lutheranism, Anti-Catholic Protestantism, Contra-Catholicism, and Protestant historical intolerance and persecution. I have written books critiquing Luther and Calvin and Protestantism generally. I have written two books (one / two) against sola Scriptura: one of the two "pillars" of the so-called "Reformation," and another mostly devoted to refuting "faith alone": the other pillar.

All this, yet I am accused of being in bed with Protestantism and remaining half or more Protestant (as if my conversion story is a big pack of lies). I have critiqued Protestantism and helped bring more people out of it than, I highly suspect, all of the members of the Fish Eaters forum put together. I receive letters all the time reporting conversions and reversions, largely or partially as a result of my writings.

These quasi-schismatic radtrads and SSPX devotees, on the other hand, spend their time (many of them, but not all) bashing Holy Mother Church and popes (precisely as both anti-Catholic Protestants and liberal Catholics do: groups that radtrads highly resemble in many key ways), while I defend her and critique the errors and sins of her professed enemies. Radtrads and self-important "more-Catholic-and-reverent-than-thou" self-proclaimed pseudo-experts don't have time to defend the Church against calumnies, while I devote my life to it. The contrast couldn't be any more stark than it is.

Nor am I "anti-traditionalist." I am anti-radtrad. I attend an extremely traditional (and beautiful German Gothic revival) parish in downtown Detroit (St. Joseph's), where the liturgy is very reverent and the doctrine completely orthodox. Our cluster is one of the few in metro Detroit that offer the Tridentine Mass, and I have attended it on several occasions, though (gasp!!!) I dare to prefer the Novus Ordo Latin Mass.

"INPEFESS" chimed in with more ludicrosities in the "Bash Armstrong and Neo-Catholics" thread:

They act as though there was no Catholic Church before the council, or that the Catholic Church began in the 1960's. If you ever listen to EWTN or read any post-conciliar authors, they almost exclusively reference the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar popes: "as the Second Vatican Council taught . . .;" "as Blessed John Paul II once said . . .;" "as Mother Theresa [sic] used to say . . ."

It's as though the entire 2000-year history of the Catholic Church simply disappeared. 

I don't know who the intended target of this nonsense is (though the thread is about yours truly, after all). It's certainly not an accurate description of me, seeing as I have web pages about the Church fathers, G. K. Chesterton, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, and in the past hosted web pages (for several years) devoted to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and Medieval and Renaissance Culture. I have edited a book of Chesterton quotations (he died in 1936), and will soon have one published of Cardinal Newman quotations (he died in 1890). I wrote a book devoted to the Church fathers as well. Currently I am working on editing a book called Classic Catholic Biblical Apologetics: 1525-1925 : my fourth volume where I have collected materials of great Catholics: all of whom lived prior to 1936. It really sounds like I am exclusively stuck in the post-Vatican II era, doesn't it?


Some things never change. You can't successfully defend falsehood by lying about or severely distorting what others believe (nor by any other method). This thread provided lots of unsubstantiated rhetoric and polemics and calumnies. I respond with facts and true Catholic principles and activities and beliefs.







* * *

Why Don't Protestants Call the Blessed Virgin Mary "Blessed" When the Bible Records Four Such Instances, States That "All Generations" Will Do So, and Describes Her Also Being Hailed by an Archangel?

Luke 1:26, 28 (RSV: non-Catholic version): . . . the angel Gabriel . . . [28] . . . came to her and said, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!"

Luke 1:41-42, 45 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit [42] and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" . . . [45] "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

[Elizabeth is described in 1:6 as "righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless"]

Luke 1:47-48 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, [48] for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;

Luke 11:27 As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!"


***

Biblical Arguments Against the Supposed "Proof " of Sola Scriptura in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 on the Basis of the Phrases, "Man of God," "Profitable for Teaching," Etc.

 Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman (1802-1865)
I came across the preliminary basis for this argument (quite new to me), by perusing the work, Lectures on the Doctrines and Practices of the Roman Catholic Church , by Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman (London: J. S. Hodson, 1836), in preparation for my upcoming book (a collection of excerpts), Classic Catholic Biblical Apologetics: 1525-1925 .

First, here is the Bible passage under consideration (RSV):

2 Timothy 3:14-17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it [15] and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. [16] All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

On pages 208-209 of his book, Cardinal Wiseman comments upon it:

. . . it is manifest that St. Paul is speaking of the Scriptures here used, not as it has to be read and used for the individual instruction and edification of all the faithful, but as it is to be observed by pastors—for observe what he says; he says, expressly, it is profitable for those purposes which are the exclusive function of the ministry, and not of others, for the learners, for the subjects of the Church of Christ; for he says, it is "profitable for doctrine," that is, as the word means in its proper native sense, "for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Therefore, he is to hold fast the doctrines which St. Paul taught, remembering upon whose authority he received them— that is, the authority of the Apostles. . . . he is to know besides, that this Scripture is profitable for the practice of his ministry, for correcting, for reproving, for instructing. These are points not for individual improvement, not for each one's edification; but they are essentially acts for the ministry of the priesthood, for those who have to teach others; and, consequently, if this text prove anything regarding Scripture, it only goes to prove that the pastors of the church should be familiar with it, and make use of it for the purpose of correcting, and edifying their flocks.

This (for me) was a new approach to the passage, and I was struck by how "individualistic" my take in the past had been: shot through with the casually non-institutional assumptions of my "low church evangelical" Protestant past. I had assumed without conscious analysis, that the "teaching," "reproof," "correction," and "training" referred to came straight from the Bible to the individual, whereas Cardinal Wiseman noted that it specifically referred to priests and pastors teaching their flocks. The Bible was, in other words, profitable as the essential aid for Christian teachers (essentially priests) to learn, in order to pass on Christian doctrine to laypeople. That is far different from the populist, anti-institutional, or anti-sacerdotal notion of sola Scriptura: the "me, my Bible, and the Holy Spirit" mentality.

It's very interesting also, how in the larger context (the two previous verses: 3:14-15) of the passage as usually cited in Protestant polemics in favor of sola Scriptura (3:16-17 only), we see clear reference to apostolic tradition ("continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it"). St. Paul is talking about himself and how he passed on the Christian tradition to Timothy (compare his language about receiving and delivering tradition -- including oral tradition -- in 1 Cor 11:2, 23; 15:1-3; Gal 1:9; 1 Thess 2:13; 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim 1:13-14; 2:2).

Now here comes my part in this "new" analysis of a very familiar passage (much-beloved by Protestants as a supposed "proof" of sola Scriptura). Having discovered a better way to analyze in a general way the root meaning of the verses here, it occurred to me that the phrase "man of God" may be a further clue or key as to what St. Paul's intention was. I thought that it could very well be a description of the clergyman or person otherwise very specially devoted to serving God. And then I was curious how it was used elsewhere in Scripture. This turned out to be a very fruitful avenue indeed. hence, the (Catholic) Navarre Bible (commentary) on 1 Timothy 6:11, the only other place in the New Testament where the phrase appears ("But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness"):

"Man of God": this expression was used in the Old Testament of men who performed some special God-given mission — for example, Moses (Deut 33:1; Ps 40:1), Samuel (1 Sam 9:6–7); Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:18; 2 Kings 4:7, 27, 42). In the Pastoral Epistles (cf. also 2 Tim 3:17) it is applied to Timothy insofar as ordination has conferred on him a ministry in the Church. 

Protestant reference works concur in the general sense of noting that the phrase was used in the Old Testament to refer to exceptionally prominent followers of God; not any believer at all. Accordingly,  The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary ("Man of God", p. 684) notes:

A designation for early prophets in Israel . . . The term is used of unnamed prophets (1 Sam. 2:27; 1 Kgs. 13; 2 Chr. 25:7, 9), Moses (Deut. 33:1; Josh. 14:6; 1 Chr. 23:14; 2 Chr. 30:1; Ezra 3:2), the angel of the Lord -- thought to be a prophet (Judg. 13:6, 8), Samuel (1 Sam. 9:6-10), . . . Elijah (1 Kgs. 17:18, 24), and Elisha (e.g., 2 Kgs. 1:9-13; 5:8-15). In later periods the term apparently came to be applied to some, other than prophets, who were thought of as bearing some special relationship to God, such as David (Neh. 12:24, 36; cf. Jer. 35:4).

Likewise, Keil and Delitzsch' Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 5: Psalms, Part III, p. 48 -- a renowned Lutheran work -- (on Psalms 90), observes:

To the name, which could not be allowed to remain so bald, because next to Abraham he is the greatest man known to the Old Testament history of redemption, is added the title of honour [Hebrew] (as in Deut. xxxiii. 1, Josh. xiv. 6), an ancient name of the prophets which expresses the close relationship of fellowship with God, just as "servant of Jahve" [Yahweh] expresses the relationship of service, in accordance with the special office and in relation to the history of redemption, into which Jahve has taken the man and into which he himself has entered.

Wikipedia ("Man of God") gives a nice and handy summary of the usage, noting that only Moses was given this title in the Torah (first five books). Clearly, it was not used of any Jewish believer. See the entirety of all of the passages with the phrase, from an online RSV search page.

The argument then becomes, of course, that Paul was referring specifically to Timothy (an apostle) and other "men of God" of like eminence (priests) in 1 Timothy 6:11 and 2 Timothy 3:14-17. If so, the authority of Scripture was specifically to be delegated through authoritative, ordained interpreters, in accordance with the larger apostolic tradition (2 Tim 3:14-15, etc.). This is quite different from sola Scriptura in its usual Protestant definitions, and it is precisely harmonious with (if not identical to) the Catholic "three-legged stool" of Church-Scripture-Tradition.

If we go even deeper into the passage and reflect on the terms used, the case is strengthened all the more. For example, "profitable for teaching" (2 Tim 3:16). Does this make more sense as describing the Bible, or rather, a teacher (the "man of God") who is teaching from the Bible with authority? If we search "teach" or "taught" or "instructed" or any similar terms in the Bible, we are hard pressed to find them ever applied to a mere book. In every instance I have found so far, it is always applied as a description of a man or God teaching (at times using the Bible as an aid). Examples:

God Teaching Moses


Exodus 4:12, 15 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. . . . [15] And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.

Deuteronomy 5:31 But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you all the commandment and the statutes and the ordinances which you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess.
 
Moses

Exodus 18:20 and you shall teach them the statutes and the decisions, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do.

Deuteronomy 4:1 And now, O Israel, give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do them; that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, gives you.

Deuteronomy 4:14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances, that you might do them in the land which you are going over to possess.

Deuteronomy 6:1  Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances which the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it;

Aaron
Leviticus 10:11 and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes which the LORD has spoken to them by Moses.

The Levites

Deuteronomy 33:10 They shall teach Jacob thy ordinances, and Israel thy law; . . .

Ezra
Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel.

Parents Teaching Children

Deuteronomy 6:7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (cf. 11:19)

Eleven Disciples

Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you . . .

Paul and Barnabas
Acts 15:35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.

Paul
Acts 20:20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house,

Timothy 
1 Timothy 4:13 Till I come, attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching.(cf. 4:11, 16)

Elders

1 Timothy 5:17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching;

I can't find a single example of "the Bible taught" or some sense of teaching directly from the Bible, in Scripture itself. If anyone finds this, please let me know. Here are all the instances of "teach" in the Bible, and "taught", and "instruct[ed]", and "learn[ed]".

When I search "word / teaches" to find some connection, I come up with nothing. When I search ""taught / word" I don't get passages referring to learning directly from the Bible; rather, I find passages (again) about people teaching the Word:

Galatians 6:6 Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches. 

Then when I found "word" and "taught" together in another instance, it turned out to be an astonishingly striking corroboration of the Catholic interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:16-17, in similar words, and reinforcing the concept of authoritative interpretation and teaching of the Bible, since it is about a bishop:

Titus 1:7-9 For a bishop, as God's steward, must be blameless; he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, [8] but hospitable, a lover of goodness, master of himself, upright, holy, and self-controlled; [9] he must hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it. 

I want to make it clear that I am not arguing that no one can learn directly from Scripture. Of course they can. I'm referring specifically to the meaning and exegesis of 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and the phrase "profitable for teaching" and contending that according to all (far as I can determine) other instances of the notion of teaching in connection with the Bible or the Law (or separate from same) in Scripture itself, it always comes through human teachers or God, not directly from the Bible or the Law (that eventually comprised most of the first five books of the Old Testament). Therefore, I conclude that the phrase in 2 Timothy means "Scripture is profitable for the purpose of priests and other authoritative teachers in the church to pass on Christian teaching / tradition to all other believers."

The same scenario applies to the other words used. The notion of "reproof" or "reprove" in Scripture is always used of God or persons, not the Bible or the Law. For example:

Titus 2:15 Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. 

Revelation 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent. 

It is the same for "correction" and for "training" (also never applied directly to the Bible apart from a teacher of it, and is applied to tradition):

1 Timothy 1:3-4 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, [4] nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith; 

Titus 2:11-12 For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, [12] training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, 

Everything we can find in the Bible itself along these lines leads inexorably to the same conclusion: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is no proof for sola Scriptura at all, and is, to the contrary, a strong proof for the Catholic belief regarding authority and the rule of faith: the "three-legged stool" of Bible-Church-Tradition.


***

Exchange on Biblical Indications of Papal Succession and the Development and Nature of the Papacy

 [from a Facebook discussion, initially about my paper, The Biblical, Primitive Papacy: St. Peter & the "Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven": Scholarly Opinion (Mostly Protestant). My opponent's words will be in blue ]
* * * * *
Yet it always hinges on "interpretation" - the keys to Peter is scripturally clear . . . the passing of those keys as an "office" in perpetuity is an interprtation based on human thought rather than scripture . . . perhaps not unreasonable thought, but neverthless not scriptural.
It is not explicitly scriptural (passing on of the office), but it doesn't have to be. I would argue that it is common sense and straightforward deduction from other passages in the Bible about offices and succession. Peter is constantly portrayed in the Bible as the leader of the apostles.

There is a succession of Church offices: they are said to be perpetual in the Church. Judas defects and they choose Matthias to continue his function. Paul appears to pass on his office to Timothy (2 Tim 4:1-6).

Now, if Peter is given these keys, and it has the meaning as suggested by all these commentators in my paper, then it is simply common sense to assume that this was intended to be a permanent office in the Church. You could argue that this lone office of all offices discussed in Scripture was strictly temporary: confined to Peter alone, but I don't think it makes any sense. Why would there be a leader of the Church for Peter's lifetime only, and then there is to be no leader for all of the rest of history? I made a more extensive argument for papal succession elsewhere.

The only problem with assuming "common sense' in application of revealed realities is that common sense doesn't always fit or apply: for example, the true presence in the Holy Eucharist - it defies and even seems in opposition to "common sense" yet is the reality . . . it required divine revelation to know this . . . so one can't rely on common sense as always having validity in things of Jesus. :)


I don't think that objection works because the Eucharist is an acknowledged mystery that goes beyond reason (without contradicting it). The papacy is an office, and not a mystery in terms of not being able to fully be rationally understood. It takes faith to believe in the office, just like anything else in the Bible, but common sense applies to how the office was to be "worked out" through history. People often reject the papacy not because it isn't understood, but because it is understood and they don't like the notion of being in submission to a final authority in matters of faith.

It's like the scenario in John 6: some disciples thought it was too difficult to accept Real, Substantial, Bodily Presence and so they split. They didn't simply misunderstand it; they rejected it. They lacked faith in Jesus; no longer totally trusted Him.

If you disagree with my rationale for common sense as an argument in favor of papal succession, then by all means try to overthrow my reasoning. Simply saying that the Eucharist is a mystery sidesteps the point and is not a sufficient analogy, I humbly submit. We see succession in several ways in Scripture. The only thing that remains is to determine if and how that also applies to the papal office.

How the Christians worked it out through history certainly suggests that they thought the papacy was a perpetual office.

Dave, I never said that your thoughts about the succession of the office was unreasonable . . . nor illogical . . .  just that it isn't scripture mandate, but a human application within the context of the "human aspect of the Church" rather than Divine directives. nothing wrong with that . . . just not an absolute based on Divine teaching.
Why do you require that it has to be explicitly scriptural in the first place? It does not. To require such a thing is pure Protestant sola Scriptura reasoning (itself massively unbiblical and unreasonable) What is it in my reasoning that is implausible as an interpretation of the scriptural data we do have?

It's not a merely human mandate if it is the perpetuation of an office divinely established (Matthew 16), by analogy to the perpetuation of all other offices in Scripture. I'm asking why anyone would make a special case for the papacy and assume it is to cease, while all other offices continue?

One either believes that God established the office of the papacy to lead the Church at all times or not. Many lack the faith to believe that; they disbelieve in that dogma of the Church: based on the biblical data. If someone disbelieves it, I think they run into many serious problems in the Bible itself: some of which I am briefly enumerating here.

This is, of course, also one of the Orthodox arguments that are made: the papacy was a mere human happenstance rather than a divinely mandated office: intended by God to be perpetual. I don't buy it. I think it fails to take into account many considerations such as the cross-referencing in my post above.

The Divine bestowal of the office says explicitly: you are Peter! . . . Jesus does not add, "and your successors as well" . . . my only point is that one must always distinguish between what is explicitly from Jesus and what is
not . . . always dangerous to confuse the two. 
It is implicit in Scripture by massive analogy. You have to take into account the analogy of Scripture with regard to other offices.

What do you personally believe? Was the papacy instituted by God or not? If not, you deny Matthew 16.

If you say it was established by God in Matthew 16 and Jesus' commissioning of Peter, but it was not perpetual (because you don't find that to be plausible based on lack of explicit Scripture: which is a Protestant methodology), you have to explain the seeming absurdity of God establishing a Church office, only to have it die an early death with the death of Peter. That makes no sense to me at all.

If it makes sense to anyone, I'd like to understand how they conceptualize such a thing in their heads, given what we see in the Bible. I have always found the anti-papal arguments based on the Bible rather weak and inexplicable and desperate.

I don't argue against the papacy . . . I simply observe that taking the office beyond Peter is a human reasoning within the institution . . . one that is not unreasonable . . . yet also one not able to show a direct teaching of it by Jesus . . . that's all I point out . . . it is more than open to evolution, change and even devolution as it has been such since the death of Peter . . . who knows where it will go in the future for the sake of ecumenical inter-communion . . . most relevant in these days where secular/social culture is anti-all-religion. 

As an example of analogical argument, it was argued in the paper above by many Protestant commentators, that Jesus was hearkening back to the earlier office of prime minister to the king. That office did indeed have succession.

In effect, then, it would be like saying, "I am establishing, with you as the first office-holder, an office that is akin to the monarchy of England."

In American culture, we know what the English monarchy is, and was, and that it is an office of succession. That is understood in the very notion of the thing. Likewise, the Jews understood His reference to the keys, because it was a thing in their own Scripture, that they were familiar with.

If the direct analogy understood in the commission refers to an office itself inherently possessing succession, as a matter of historical fact, then it follows straightforwardly that the analogical office presently being established is also one of succession. That's not even just common sense (there are two distinct arguments to be made here). It is purely logical and based on facts concerning the thing that is the basis of the analogy.

And in that sense it is even strictly explicit in Scripture. Only the analogy is not explicit, but it is very clear and strong, which is why all these commentators are all talking about it, as the "key" to understand the passage in the context of its ancient Hebrew / OT background (pun intended).

I have just shown, I think, that it indeed was a "direct teaching of Jesus" by a compelling inescapable analogy to what he was referring to in the OT office that was the keyholder. So I disagree with you about the fact of it.

You seem to not grasp how analogical, scriptural cross-reference / exegetical reasoning applies in this case, because you keep sidestepping my various biblical arguments.

All I'm doing (ironically) is following the reasoning of the Protestant scholars. Obviously they have no stake in the papacy. They are just calling it as they see it, as Bible commentators and exegetes. That's why the argument is so strong, because it's not based on Catholic dogma; it's based on Protestant biblical exegesis: sort of a "hostile witness" scenario.

Again, it is a human assumption/interpretation that Jesus was hearkening back to the earlier office of prime minister to king . . . again, a human understanding and possibly then a misunderstanding. my point again is to not confuse the human thinking with Divine.  Catholic human thinking / Protestant human thinking . . . still not divine mandate.
I leave my reasoning to other readers who will see what I'm arguing (and accept it), I think.

Dave . . . the reality is I am not arguing against the papacy at all. :)

Right. You simply redefine it. I know the game well . . .

Dave, the papacy has been re-defined often in its 2000 year history . . . and not by "me" . . . but even by Rome itself.


. . . in the sense of consistent development of dogma, not inconsistent evolution of dogmas (that you referred to), which has been condemned by the Church.

Clearly it is something very different from what it was at the time of Saint Peter. It definitely evolved . . .

It developed, with complete consistency; two completely different things. Evolution of dogma was condemned by the Church. Pope St. Pius X commended Newman's view of development at the same time he condemned evolution of dogma. I had a whole debate about it with an anti-Catholic Calvinist, who claimed that the two views are identical. Wrong!

Yeah; it's different: in the way an oak tree is different from an acorn, or you and I are different from what we were one minute after we were conceived.

David, what you say about its "development: is pure human rationalization . . . nothing divine about it . . . the world developed and the structure of the papacy and the church has more in common with the Roman Empire of the caesars than scriptural schematic . . . what you say is true: the papacy was redefined and changed from what it originally was with Peter.
Just a as a final "p.s." note; according to Vatican I - the authority of The Pope rests in himself and is not able to be delegated - yet it is delegated universally across the entire Catholic Church . . . so quite a change even from the Vatican Council which defined the papacy. anyway . . you are free to understand or misunderstand it as you see it to be . . . have a great night.

Nothing essential in the papacy is changed at all. Vatican II: Lumen Gentium, III, 22 states:

But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head. The pope's power of primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. For our Lord placed Simon alone as the rock and the bearer of the keys of the Church, and made him shepherd of the whole flock; . . .

And in III, 25:

And this infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded. And this is the infallibility which the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith, by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals. And therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable, since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to him in blessed Peter, and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment. For then the Roman Pontiff is not pronouncing judgment as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, in whom the charism of infallibility of the Church itself is individually present, he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith.

The pope works together with bishops and Councils; of course; but He is the supreme head in a way in which they are not. ". . . therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable . . ."

It's the same old conciliarist claptrap: to try to deny this and pretend that the Council or a vote of bishops is on a par with the pope. They are not. Vatican II is completely consistent with Vatican I: it merely developed the role of the Council and the layperson more. Both are consistent with Trent; and all three councils with the Bible.


Development of doctrine is a completely biblical concept, as I have demonstrated in many papers (one / two / three).


Just always remember to distinguish between his "infallibility" in dogmatic proclamations and his "authority" - two separate things altogether . . . dogmatic proclamations are so rare . . . yet the exercise of 'authority' which is in his person is applied daily . . . yet by delegation, which is in itself not true papal authority. 
So the pope delegates; so what? That is no disproof of his supreme authority at all, since God Himself delegates. Jesus delegated His apostles to represent Him directly. Does that mean He had less authority in so doing? Nope. "He who receives you receives me" (Matt 10:40; cf. Jn 13:20). "He that hears you hears me" (Lk 10:16). ". . . we are ambassadors for Christ . . ." (2 Cor 5:20).

But it does matter . . . for his authority to remain: "papal authority"; it cannot be delegated . . . it rests in his person . He must be present where he exercises it . . . can't be in Rome exercising authority in New York. That's not my version of it. That is Vatican I. But that might limit him so, Vatican I is ignored except for the part that states his infallibility and authority. I find that interesting in the 'evolution' of the papacy.

That's not true, Michael. Historically, papal legates were at most ecumenical councils. The pope need not be present to have authority. He has it by virtue of being pope. Period. This is neither inconsistent with Vatican I or II nor the historic Church all the way back to Nicaea.

Now you are not debating "me" but Vatican I's definition of papal authority. So take it up with those long deceased council fathers and pope.

Sheer nonsense. I have backed up everything I have said, with Scripture, reason, and Church documents. But you keep giving simply your own opinion backed up by nothing. Readers may decide where the truth lies.

Sheer nonsense is what you are proffering . . . I simply stated Vat. I teaching on Papal authority . . . you do not accept it . . . and I agree it is largely ignored by even the pope. It is not my opinion . . . it is simply the way it is. The institutional structure rests more on the old Roman Empire and emperor than on Jesus . . . I am not implying that the gospel does, but the ecclesial structure does . . . but as I said, you can see it as
you wish to.


I may indeed. And I see it as an orthodox, faithful Catholic, who accepts all that the Church teaches me, and who wishes to think with the Mind of the Church rather than cultural happenstance or the fashionable finger-in-the-wind zeitgeist.


I have no dispute with that. I am an Orthodox believer myself . . . I just comment on the human aspects and gravitate toward the Christ ones more . . .

You are Eastern Orthodox?

[no reply]




***

Martin Luther and His Lutheran Followers on the Duration of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the Elevation, and Adoration; Various Internal Absurdities of Arbitrariness

 From Bishop Bossuet, The History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches , Vol. 1 (New York: John Doyle, 1842), pp. 193-197; further primary source information can be found by following the link for the book. A few minor variations of proper names were added, in order to adopt more standard usage.
* * * * *
Although Luther permitted Melanchthon to say whatever he pleased against the Mass, yet he in nowise departed from his former notions, nor did he reduce the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist to the bare reception of it. It is even plain that Melanchthon shifted with him on this subject; and there are two of Luther's letters, in 1543, wherein he commends a saying of Melanchthon's, "that the presence was in the action of the Supper, but not in a precise and mathematical point." As for Luther, he determined the time to be from the Pater Noster which was said in the Lutheran Mass immediately after the Consecration, until all the people had communicated, and all the remaining particles were consumed.

But why stops he there? If, at that instant, the communion had been carried to the absent, as St. Justin tells us was done in his time, what reason would there have been to say, that Jesus Christ had immediately withdrawn his sacred presence? But why should he not continue it for some days after, when the Holy Sacrament should be reserved for the communion of the sick? It is nothing but mere caprice to take away the presence of Jesus Christ in this case; and Luther and the Lutherans had no longer any rule, when, out of the actual reception, they admitted the use of it but for never so short a time.

But what made still more against them is, that the Mass and Oblation always remained; and, had there been but one moment of presence before the communion, this presence of Jesus Christ could not be deprived of any of the advantages which attended it. For which reason Melanchthon always aimed, whatever he might say to Luther, at placing the presence in the precise time of the reception alone, and this only way could he find of destroying the Oblation and Mass.

Nor was there any other way for destroying the Elevation and Adoration. It has been shown that, at taking away the Elevation, Luther, so far from condemning it, approved the principle of it. I repeat once more his words:—"The Elevation," he says, "may be preserved, as a testimonial of the real and corporal presence; since the doing that is saying to the people, Behold, Christians, this is the body of Jesus Christ, which was given for you." This was what Luther wrote after abolishing the Elevation; but why, then, one may say, did he abolish it?

The reason is worthy of the man; and we learn from himself, "that if he attacked the Elevation, it was only out of spite to the Papacy; and, if he retained it so long, it was out of spite to Carlstadt. In a word," concludes he, "it should be retained when it was rejected as impious, and it should be rejected when commanded as necessary." But, upon the whole, he acknowledged what, indeed, is not to be doubted—that there could be no difficulty in showing to the people this divine body from the very time it began to be present.

As to the Adoration, after having one while held it as indifferent, and another laid it down as necessary, he at length adhered to his last conclusion; and in the positions which he published against the Doctors of Louvain in 1545, that is, a year before his death, he called the Eucharist "the adorable sacrament." The Sacramentarian party, who had so much triumphed when he set aside the Elevation, was in a consternation; and Calvin wrote, "that, by this decision, he had raised up the idol in God's temple."

Melanchthon was then more than ever convinced that it was impossible to destroy the Adoration, or the Mass, without reducing the whole Real Presence to the precise moment of the manducation. He saw, even, that it was necessary to go further, and that all the points of Catholic doctrine relating to the Eucharist returned upon them one alter another, if they did not find out a way to separate the body and blood from the bread and wine. He then pushed the principle already spoken of so far as that nothing was done for the bread and wine, but all for man: insomuch, that in man only was the body and blood to be really found.

[see Facebook post, "Melanchthon's Silly Argument for a Temporary Real Presence"]

Melanchthon has never explained in what manner he would have this to be done: but as to the foundation of this doctrine, he never left off insinuating it with great secrecy, and in the most artful manner he was able: for there were no hopes, as long as Luther lived, of making him relent on this point, nor of being able to speak freely what men thought: but Melanchthon so deeply rooted this doctrine in the minds of the Wittenberg and Leipzig divines, that, after Luther and he were dead, they plainly explained themselves in favor of it in an Assembly, which, by the Elector's orders, they held at Dresden, in 1561.

There they feared not to reject Luther's proper doctrine, and the Real Presence which he admitted in the bread; and finding no other means of defending themselves against Transubstantiation, the Adoration, and Sacrifice, they went over to the Real Presence taught them by Melanchthon; not in the bread and wine, but in the faithful who received them.

They declared, therefore, "That the true substantial body was truly and substantially given in the Supper, although there was no necessity of saying that the bread was the essential body or the proper body of Jesus Christ, or that it was corporally and carnally taken by die corporeal mouth; that ubiquity raised a horror in them; that it was a subject of astonishment that men should be so positive in affirming that the body was present in the bread, since it was of much more importance to consider what is done in man, for whom, and not for the bread, Jesus Christ rendered himself present."

After that they explained their sentiments concerning the Adoration, and maintained that it could not be denied, admitting the Real Presence in the bread, although it should even be explained that the body is not present in it except in the actual use: "That the Monks would always have the same reason for beseeching the eternal Father to hear them through his Son, whom they rendered present in this action; that the Supper having been instituted for the remembrance of Jesus Christ, as he could not be taken nor remembered without believing in, and calling on him, the addressing one's self to him in the Supper as present, and as placing himself in the hands of sacrificing priests after the words of Consecration, could by no means be hindered."

By the same reason they maintained that, admitting this Real Presence of the body in the bread, the sacrifice could not be rejected, and they proved it by this example: "It was," said they, " the ancient custom of all suppliants, to take in their arms the children of those whose assistance they implored, and present them to their fathers, in order to prevail with them by their interposition."

They said, in the same manner, that having Jesus Christ present in the bread and wine of the Supper, nothing could hinder us from presenting him to his Father, in order to render him propitious to us; and, lastly, they concluded "that it would be much more easy for the monks to establish their Transubstantiation, than for those to impugn it, who, rejecting it in word, affirmed, nevertheless, that the bread was the essential body, that is, the proper body of Jesus Christ."

Luther had said at Smalkald, and made the whole party subscribe to it, that the bread was the true body of our Lord equally received by saints and sinners: he himself had said, in his last "Confession of Faith," approved by the whole party, " that the bread of the Eucharist is the true natural body of our Lord." Melanchthon and all Saxony had received this doctrine with all the rest, for Luther would be obeyed: but, after his death, they fell off from it, and owned with us, that these words, "the bread is the true body," import necessarily the change of bread into the body; since, it being impossible for the bread to be the body by nature, it could not become so but by a change; thus they openly rejected their master's doctrine.

But they went much further in the above declaration, and confess that, admitting, as Lutherans had hitherto done, the Real Presence in the bread, there could be no objection to the sacrifice, which Catholics offer to God, nor to the adoration they pay to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

Their proofs are convincing. If Jesus Christ is believed to be in the bread, if faith lays hold of him in this state, can this faith subsist without adoration? Does not this faith itself necessarily imply the highest adoration, since it draws after it the invocation of Jesus Christ, as Son of God, and as there present? The proof of the sacrifice is not less conclusive: for, as these divines say, if, by the sacramental words, Jesus Christ is rendered present in the bread, is not this presence of Jesus Christ of itself agreeable to the Father, and can our prayers be sanctified by a more holy oblation than that of Jesus Christ present? 
What do Catholics say more, and what is their sacrifice else but Jesus Christ present in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and representing himself to his Father the victim by which he had been appeased? There is no way, then, of avoiding the sacrifice, no more than the adoration and transubstantiation, without denying this real presence of Jesus Christ in the bread. 
Thus the Church of Wittenberg, the Mother of the Reformation, and whence, according to Calvin, the light of the Gospel proceeded in our days as it proceeded formerly from Jerusalem, no longer can maintain the sentiments of Luther, her first founder. The whole doctrine of this head of the Reformation contradicts itself: he invincibly establishes the literal sense and Real Presence: he rejects the necessary consequences therefrom, as maintained by Catholics. If, with him, the Real Presence is admitted in the bread, the whole Mass, with the Catholic doctrine, must of course be admitted without reserve. 
This seems too grating to these new Reformers; for what good have they been doing, if they must be forced to approve these things, with the whole worship of the Church of Rome? but, on the other side, what more chimerical than a Real Presence separated from the bread and wine? Was it not, in showing the bread and wine, that Jesus Christ said, "This is my body"? Has he said, we should receive his body and blood divided from those things wherein it was his pleasure they should be contained; and if we are to receive the proper substance of them, must it not be after such a manner as he declared at the institution of this mystery?  
In these inextricable difficulties, the desire of abolishing the Mass prevailed; but the method which Melanchthon and the Saxons had taken to destroy it was so bad, that it could not subsist. Those of Wittenberg and Leipzig themselves soon after came back, and Luther's opinion, which placed the body in the bread, kept its ground.

***