Evangelical nutjobs should be aware that the Bible puts spaces after periods. Spaces after punctuation is not a later addition by death-cookie-munching Papists; it's right there in the inerrant text, just like the Table of Contents, which tells you which books are in Scripture.
Then again, I could have sworn that "run your emails through spell check" was in the Bible somewhere, too. Then I checked: it's in 2 Maccabees, which isn't the Real Bible. My bad.
Actually, it's funny pavo, but almost all of the great codices of Scripture really DON'T have any periods -- or commas, or spaces between the sentences either, believe it or not. They're called uncial codices because they're done completely in Greek capital letters (uncials) and all of the letters run together in one long continuous stream! To be honest, they read (to anyone but an expert) almost exactly like Mark's wacky correspondent! My point then, is to reinforce Mark's point: we all ought to talk more charitably to each other on the internet. I mean, I could easily have used your mistake about the uncials to make you look like a fool -- but you're not and Mark's whole point was to ask us not to do that sort of thing. You just shot off a response right away calling the guy a nutjob, despite the fact that Mark's original plea for mercy was...well, pretty accurately punctuated. I second Mark's appeal: more light, everyone, please. And less heat.
Capital letters would help, son. Along with understanding of God. Not fit into a block as we see in his ramblings all neatly packed in almost a sure sign of the truly Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs. Along with Since I Left Catholicism I'm Now Better Than The Pope. Entertaining and no more. Move on.
Rod:
So these "uncial codices" you speak of... you mean to say that they don't have a table of contents?
Pavo, I think they did, but that was when Luke wrote the 'red letter' version of his Gospel. (with footnotes!)
I think this was written by Jimmy Aiken just to tweak you.
Consequently, Shea's Corollary to Gresham's Law defines that "Bad conversation drives out good". That is, over time, cyberspace tends to give widest leeway to shrill buffoons who dominate the conversation that normal people simply don't have time or energy to argue with.
The "information superhighway" isn't really a highway at all. It's more like a garden, and if left unchecked gets choked with weeds. (I know some people use that analogy to argue for regulating the crap out of cyberspace, but that's not what I mean.)
Since I wrote some nice things about the "Latin Mass" and the Fraternity of St. Peter, I'm now on the mailing list for every sedevacantist crackpot publication various schismatic groups can send me.
Weeds are everywhere, and it takes time to pull them.
Where do you meet evangelicals who are not "like that"?? I have yet to meet one, sorry to say.
"no the truth"
Good gravy.
A^2CB,
I don't know how to advise you in finding Evangies who are not like the email writer.
I found several in the workforce (my cube is decorated with obviously Catholic stuff, and my Faith is no secret to anyone around here), a couple in law school with whom I still keep in touch, and several of my in-laws.
They are out there. I've rarely met any of them online, unless a prior introduction was established by a mutual friend.
Ha, you think that's bad, you should enter one of the evangelical chat rooms as I do about twice a year!
Ah, but the Greek manuscripts are in ALL capital letters.
How uncool of God to "shout" at us.
My late father was a Baptist minister and a very effective evangelist to Catholics. Nearly his entire church membership - from 20 initially to 800 a few year's later - was built through the evangelization of Catholics. But the fact is that his success hung on the fact that most Catholics know practically nothing about their faith, much less the fine points of Scripture, and so are sitting ducks for guys like ... well, like my dad. Still, Within six months, most of those who converted considered themselves experts on Catholicism, and often presented themselves as such in evangelizing their former fellow Catholics.
Here's an observation from an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church: The vast majority of those who move from Catholicism to Evangelicalism begin from a point of almost complete ignorance of their Catholic faith. By contrast, the vast majority of those who move from Evangelicalism to Catholicism begin from a point of deep immersion in their Evangelical faith. What does that say about the relative merits - scriptural, spiritual, historical and so on - of each side's competing claims? Objectively, it may tell us nothing, but subjectively it is powerful testimony to the fact that in the Catholic Church we find the fullness of the Christian faith.
There are definitely open minded Evangelicals, including several friends of mine and their families. Among a certain portion of educated Evangelicals there is a growing interest in church history of the first 1,500 years and an appreciation of certain aspects of that period. I remember taking a good Wheaton, IL Evangelical friend to the Easter Vigil at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago in 1993 (his first ever Catholic Mass)and observing how impressed he was. He mentioned later that he was struck by the inclusion of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity in the litany of the saints before baptism since they had recently studied about those saints in their Christian history class at his church(College Church in Wheaton).
The "information superhighway" isn't really a highway at all.
I prefer "information stuporhighway."
Where do you meet evangelicals who are not "like that"??
Workplaces, neighborhoods, bookstores, concerts, sporting events, county fairs, restaurants, classrooms....
Yeah, that's a little flip, but caricatures of evangelicals get my back up. My brother is one, as are our good friends and neighbors (one of whom who admittedly finds Catholicism flabbergasting, but still regards us as genuine Christians), and so forth. It's not all snake-handling, ululating and people with big hair pestering the Almighty on basic cable.
It's not all snake-handling, ululating and people with big hair pestering the Almighty on basic cable.
Dale, you have a dread and terrible gift for the turn of a phrase.
I've met a very few people who come within spitting distance of the caricature [can be counted on fingers].
On the other hand, that's with my whole family, much of my hometowns, and myself having been an Evangelical for the first couple decades of life.
Really, truly, it's a minority. Even in churches which think they're doing favors by putting up the rack of Chick tracks in the foyer.
peace,
The uncial alphabet was developed by the Greek Christian communities in Latin-speaking countries, and is basically a graecized version of the Latin alphabet. While technically all-majuscule (the distinction between majuscule and miniscule letters was developed by monks in the British isles a few canturies later), the uncial letterforms survive in modern usage in our lowercase letters, especially a,b,d,f,g,h,k and l. And no, the early manuscripts did not have periods - if there was any punctuation, it was a colon to separate words, a bar above certain letters to indicate an abbreviation, or a row of dots under certain letters to indicate a mistake.
Maybe that's what he's trying to invoke.
Oh, and the term "uncial" was coined by St. Jerome, to describe (derisively) "inch-high" letters that and the resulting waste of parchment.
That's like the Cliff Notes version of all of Lorraine Boettner and Jack Chick's works together.
Where to find evangelicals who are not "like that?"
In front of abortion clinics. I made several evangelical friends that way during college, and while none of them converted, they did at least change their minds about Catholics not being "real Christians" and not being allowed to read the Bible... 
Surely Luther could have told this correspondent that "Nouns begin with Capital Letters".
Re Mark's comment:
> "Here's an observation from an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church: The vast majority of those who move from Catholicism to Evangelicalism begin from a point of almost complete ignorance of their Catholic faith. By contrast, the vast majority of those who move from Evangelicalism to Catholicism begin from a point of deep immersion in their Evangelical faith..."
-- I think it is widely agreed that evangelical Christianity deliberately aims to be a simplified, trimmed-down religion, at least as regards its core doctrines (ie, five solas). The whole idea is that Tyndale's ploughboy in the field, if he gets it right, is closer to the truth than the learned cleric who doesn't. Catholicism, by contrast, I think it's fair to say, is a much more nuanced religion, and Catholics tend more often to say "Yes, X is true but you must hold it in balance with Y" whereas Prots would say "X is true, and if you hold Y as equally true then you are diluting X, halting between two stools, etc".
So to say that "ex-Evangelical Catholics know Protestantism well, but ex-Catholic Evangelicals don't really know Catholicism" is apples and oranges. Add to this that over 50% of the "Prot ignorance" seems to be either minor point-scoring ("James White mis-spelled 'Liguori'!" - yes, well so too do many Catholics) or arguments over stipulative definitions ("You claim Catholics 'worship' Mary. It's not only deeply insulting, but wrong, to use that word, which we ourselves reject. Oh, and also, 'Sola Scriptura' logically means that you think you're an infallible Pope yourself. No, don't bother telling me it doesn't, because there's no logical alternative.").
My response to "All the evangelicals/Christians I have ever met are Like That" is "HOW DO YOU KNOW? Do people where you live have their religious affilation tattooed on their foreheads?"
(It might be on their pocket handkerchiefs, but they usually don't wave pocket handkerchiefs at me.)
Even more exhasperating is the gambit "I know that They are all Like That, because I was Like That when I was one of Them."
Mark Gordon's ccomment comparing the relative sophistication of Protestant converts to Catholicism with Catholic converts to Protestantism reminds me of the gag - usually attributed to Will Rogers - about the migration of Okies during the depression: "When the
Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average
intelligence level in both states."
ICANTBELIEVEYOUPAPISTSARECALLINGEVANGELICALSIDIOTS
WEARENOTYOUARESOTHERE
JOHNATLEASTWEDONOTDRIVEREADERSNUTZWITHLARGECAPSSCR
UNCHEDTOGETHEREITHERSOWHOISREALLYCUCKOOFORCOCOAPUF
FS?
Gerard:
I think John is writing tongue in cheek.
"you confess your sins to god through jesus christ.not by going in a confession box.and asking a preist to forgive you."
And any Joe Blow who is literate can read and interpret the Bible for himself, right? So why do Evangelicals go to church? Do they really need the pastor to read the Bible to them? What's the point?
Here's an example of what "cleaning the baseboards Evangelical or Catholic who forgets to wash his or her whole wall inside first believes".
In other words here's their creed for politics and the internet.
"We believe in one God Almighty politics, the Republican pres who promises us things and doesn't deliver a total ban on abortion. We believe in every one who supports him, regardless or whether or not they are all corrupt enough and beautiful enough to deceive us and bug our phones. We believe in not questioning what we scrupulously believe is wrong or whether it is wrong to question whether these folks are manipulating people to vote a certain way in past elections and in the next election.
We believe everything they say, no matter what they say, because well happy is a yuppie word and they are well, they seem like a "nice man or woman". We believe in being scrupulously gullible, made by God, because well, He doesn't like us to disagree. It is not nice.
We believe in the Holy Spirit who is with us, the church universal who will not get off their duff and tell us how to vote. So, we will tell others ANYWAY IN CHURCH SO THEY WILL LOOSE THEIR NONPROFIT STATUS AND GET IN BIGGIE TROUBLE WITH THE IRS. We believe that anyone who is a conservative pro-life member of any other party but our own is going to hell, because we have worked with our Big Baaad Father God to design heaven anyway.
That's what they believe. I tell you this because the 08 election is coming up. Loonies they are -- look out.
Dale's right, at least if by "evangelical" we're talking about non-demoninationals and "mega-church" members.
To the extent I've gotten a negative reaction at all, it's been more of the bemused, "I find your religion too complicated" variety.
My sense is that most people who go by the moniker "evangelical" wouldn't dream of subscribing to the deliberate anti-Catholicism common to 80s-style fundamentalists.
"and i do no what im talking about"
There's a joke in there somewhere but I'm laughing too hard to bother.
All, I've been wondering this for a while: it seems that (with one exception) all the anti-Catholic evangelicals I've encountered claim to be former Catholics, but then say incongruous things that wouldn't make sense from even the most collapsed Catholic. Do you think that falsely claiming to be Catholic is a conversion gambit? I've had one evangelical claim that he attended CCD and Catholic school at the same time, for example (and of course wasn't taught about Jesus in either).
Steve: good point. Just about every raving anti-Catholic nut on the Internet that I've encountered claims to have been raised Catholic. In some cases, that may be true. But, even given the poor state of catchesis, they proceed to say things that no Catholic is ever taught (i.e., Catholics worship statues, think Mary is equal to Christ, and so on).
I know genuine ex-Catholics who are bitterly anti-Catholic, and they generally have problems with what the Church ACTUALLY teaches. I've heard kvetching about nasty priests and nuns, the Scandal, the church's positions on contraceptives and abortion, etc. but I've never heard a real ex-Catholic ever say, "I left because I had enough of that Real Presence stuff and that line they fed us about Mary."
Tom R. wrote: So to say that 'ex-Evangelical Catholics know Protestantism well, but ex-Catholic Evangelicals don't really know Catholicism' is apples and oranges."
Uh, no it's not "apples and oranges;" it's just in your best interest to claim that it is. Take this blog as example. Beginning with our host, these comboxes are filled with former Evangelicals who came to Catholicism later in life and after years of prayer, study, and in most cases, immersion in their Evangelical faith. Now, show me a similar blog full of formerly prayerful, studious, faithful Catholics who became Evangelicals. Most Catholic to Evangelical converts (or, at least, most of those I've met, who number in the hundreds) say things like "I was baptized Catholic," or "I come from a Catholic home" to establish their former Catholic credentials. Most often, these converts in fact have no idea what the Church actually teaches about almost anything, which only proves that they in fact never knew.
Now, I certainly believe that a real, personal encounter with the living Christ is more important than remaining a merely nominal, uncatechized Catholic. And I applaud the fact that many such folks have had that encounter through the ministry of Evangelicals. At the same time, I deplore the tendency of Catholics to downplay the central importance of that personal encounter, just as I deplore the disastrous collapse of Catholic catechesis in the past forty years. But the fact is that the vast majority of Evangelical-to-Catholic converts I know of, including myself, were already in relation with the Lord and fully immersed in our faith when we discovered that its fullness was to be found in the Catholic Church.
Mark Gordon: I think you also need to consider that, simply due to the way Roman Catholicism has been taught and practiced in America, and affected by the surrounding culture, there is a great pool of nominal RC's out there who, when they begin hungering for a real, personal encounter with the living Christ, are likely to find it in Evangelicalism simply because that is more prominent in America than truly devout Roman Catholicism is. Being Roman Catholic in America today is often much like being mainline Protestant, and there are plenty of formerly mainline Protestant converts to Evangelicalism too, you just don't hear about them because 1) they're coming from many different, smaller bodies rather than one vast body and thus don't have a common former religious experience to remark upon, and 2) the teachings of their former church don't stand in as sharp contrast to the teachings of their new church.
Conversely, being an Evangelical is usually an all-or-nothing propostion: you either become (or remain, if you were raised that way) extremely devout, or you leave the Faith altogether. There isn't really any such thing as a "nominal Evangelical." So you get knowledgeable former Evangelicals to whom Roman Catholicism became attractive because of its emphasis on tradition or whatever, but there isn't a vast pool of nominal Evangelicals ripe for conversion to Roman Catholicism the way there is in the reverse direction.
Jake wrote: "Conversely, being an Evangelical is usually an all-or-nothing propostion: you either become (or remain, if you were raised that way) extremely devout, or you leave the Faith altogether. There isn't really any such thing as a "nominal Evangelical."
Jake, you must not live in the deep South, where nominal Evangelicalism is, in fact, the rule; just as nominal Catholicism is the rule, sadly, in places like my state, the most Catholic of them all, Rhode Island. Here, everyone in a bar on Saturday night can tell you where they were baptized and took First Communion. In the deep South, everyone in a bar on Saturday night can tell you when they were saved and received their first gift Bible. In a country with only 62 million Catholics and many more professing Evangelicals, I think it's crazy to assert that there are more nominal Catholics than there are nominal Evangelicals.
All of which is beside the point. The point is that we're talking about those who convert in either direction: my contention is that a majority of those who convert from Evangelicalism to Catholicism do so out of a deep, well-informed, and longstanding Christian conviction, while the majority of those who convert from Catholicism to Evangelicalism have usually just discovered Christian conviction in the first place.
"In the deep South, everyone in a bar on Saturday night can tell you when they were saved and received their first gift Bible."
I'm a former Southern Baptist from Texas. These folks were said to have their "fire insurance" or were "backslid."
Once saved, always saved, don't you know.
no infant baptism in the bible
Except that the Bible repeated describes entire households being baptized.
One question:
Does surface or nominal Christianity have much to do with just going along with the status quo to make certain for others that they --- the politicians can manipulate what we think or believe == when they tell us lies so get us to vote their way?
You may be right that ex-Catholic Evangelicals, on the whole (we've probably met different samples because I know a few personally who could match any of you on theological knowledge -- maybe Australia is different), know less about Catholicism than ex-Evangelical Caths know about Prot'ism. I myself was especially zealous before I converted. In fact, it was "discovering what Catholicism really teaches" (and opening a Bible, and comparing the two) that led me to Evangelicalism.
OTOH, I would gladly match any random sample of cradle-Catholic Protestants against cradle-Catholic Catholics. Why is "poor knowledge of Catholicism" a strike against the individual who chooses to go, but not against the one who chooses to stay? Especially when a fair chunk of the argument for Catholicism is the appeal to numbers? Augustine never had a chance to read Luther's "Bondage of the Will" to see whether he agreed with it; he never consciously rejected Evangelicalism (IOW, the most Biblically-based version of Christianity on offer in his day). CS Lewis had every chance to read "Mater et Magistra" (he probably did), and yet he still consciously rejected Catholicism.
If you really want to argue that Hans Kung trumps Johnny Cash, go for it.
THANKYOUFORENLIGHTENINGGERARDMARKITWASINIRONYOFCOU
RSE.
That said, Gerard'd style is impenetrable for this foreigner.
A 'fair chunk' of the argument? I have never heard nor myself used this argument as a defence for Catholicism. Why didn't you make up a statistic like, say, 67 percent - fake credibility is better than none at all.
C S Lewis was an ulsterman, and several biographers suggest that this affected his decision.
someguy, (1) in my own experience, at some point in any Protestant/ Catholic theological debate, the Catholic basically (IMHO) gives up on exegeting the text of Scripture and falls back on "Yeah, well, you can twist the Bible to say anything you like, but at the end of the day, my denomination was around in 1050 and yours wasn't."
(2) Lewis was an atheist for years before he became a Christian again. Moving from medium-high Anglicanism to Catholicism would be a small further step compared to what he had already taken. His "Mere Christianity" view meant he did not regard Catholicism with horror as some sort of pagan Babylon, he just thought it was mistaken on certain points. His mother and father were long dead and he was no longer living in Ulster. Some of his closest friends were Catholics.
It would be just as plausible to say that Tolkien was only Catholic because for him to even consider Protestantism would have been a betrayal of his mother, whom he considered a martyr. (When you consider JRRT's most specific statements on theology -- "[God] will not let us be lost, in spite of ourselves" -- he sounds almost Reformed enough to balance all the "lembas bread must be the transubstantiated Host" parallels).
"they did at least change their minds about Catholics not being "real Christians"
If that was tongue in cheek, I'm sorry I missed it. If they really thought that, then well.. they are "that sort of Evangelical".
Commenting by HaloScan
