Bringing in dissidents who don't even believe in doctrines the reformed do. Wow. Why don't these guys get it over with and enlist the aid of satanists to help criticize the Church?
Also, it also seems this plays into the hundreds-of-Catholic-denominations canard.
I had a similar experience once, in a dialogue/debate with Anthony Buzzard, a proponent of unitarianism (well, mainly an anti-trinitarian, but also a denier of the divinity and pre-existence of Christ). He loved to quote (very selectively) Raymond Brown at me.
I added a few other examples of this methodology near the end, as of 1:30 PM EST Sunday afternoon.
What an amazing piece of work. If I didn't have a real life outside of the Internet, I might actually try to answer it. Not that you or any of your little followers really care.
This is a Catholic blog, and the biggest thing happening currently in the Roman Catholic Church is the 600 million dollars being paid out to victims of child molestation by the Roman Catholic priesthood, and you have nothing to say about it.
Probably because facing up to it would cause you to no longer give your soul to the 'Father'... And for some reason you just don't want to take that step.
This is a Catholic blog, and the biggest thing happening currently in the Roman Catholic Church is the 600 million dollars being paid out to victims of child molestation by the Roman Catholic priesthood, and you have nothing to say about it.
A. Dave's blog is primarily dedicated to biblical defenses of Catholic teaching. It's not a breaking-news commentary blog.
B. Dave has several dialogues about the priest-abuse scandal. Look on the right and click on "Inquisition, Crusades, & "Catholic Scandals".
Also, if one wants some commentary, The Curt Jester has one suggesting the media has been much more sympathetic to Cardinal Mahoney than Cardinal Law for the usual reasons here: http://www.splendoroftruth.com/c...ives/
008199.php
And Mark Shea has label dedicated to it: http://markshea.blogspot.com/sea...The%
20Situation
Hardly a Catholic conspiracy of blog-silence.
It always does amaze me when Protestants cite "Catholic scholars" who dont even believe what they Church teaches. If a "scholar" is going to be part of an institution and yet believe that institution teaches lies, yet the "scholar" refuses to leave, then what does that say of the "scholar" himself?
In my opinion that exposes the liberal "scholar" right there.
As a Catholic I try to hold out some hope for even the worst sinners, but I cant help but believe there is going to be serious hellfire to pay (ie Divine Punishment) regarding some of these liberal "Catholic scholars".
And the end of this article was key, it is amazing how these anti-Catholics go around quoting what they know full well isnt official Church teaching and rather those with liberal agendas who reject Christianity in its broadest form itself...yet Dave would never hear the end of it if he applied the same standard of Protestantism.
Thanks to Scott for the little defense there.
Thanks to Scott for the little defense there.
Your welcome. I didn't intend to jump in, but the one thing I've noticed for a long time is that this blog is not very "newsy" in a manner of speaking. When the Motu came out, you basically left it an entry with links to other commentary. Fine by me since you can't swing a dead cat without hitting MP commentary. Who needs more?
And it is perfectly understandable that the recent CDF doc got a little more play as it directly gets into ecumenical apologetics. The recent LA settlement really is just the dénouement on a story thouroughly addressed before. And since plenty of Catholics wanted to give Mahoney the boot long before this hit the fan, it makes no sense to suggest some kind of silence on this particular detail.
I've said many times that I do 90-95% apologetics here, and have observed that many Catholic apologists do quite a bit of social and political commentary (too much so, in my opinion).
I think they may do that in part simply because they feel they don't have enough topics in apologetics to write about (knowledgeably). I have no problem finding more apologetic topics to write about, which is (coming back to square one) itself a confirmation, I think, that it is what I am supposed to be writing about. This is my function in the Body of Christ: I do apologetics (and evangelism). Culture and politics are fine; I love them myself. I am not called to devote myself primarily to those things.
And the almost sole apologetics emphasis (ongoing for over ten years now, going back to my website) is what makes this blog fairly unique and distinctive, and I intend to keep it that way. It's not everyone's cup of tea, which is fine. Different strokes.
But more than 800 people a day, average, come here to see what I am writing about, so I think that is sufficient to show that I'm offering something that people need and want.
If I didn't have a real life outside of the Internet,
Yep, I got a life, too, with a full-time driving job in addition to the 30-40 hrs / week or more I write, four children, and time spent every night with my family doing something enjoyable, and on much of the weekend (such as sailing on Lake Erie yesterday with a "real" friend!).
I think you could manage to scrounge up some sort of reply, with your one small child. Are you working two full-time jobs too?
I might actually try to answer it. Not that you or any of your little followers really care.
I would certainly be highly interested (I always am in matters of folks defending their assertions). I can't speak for my so-called "little followers" though.
"...it is amazing how these anti-Catholics go around quoting what they know full well isnt official Church teaching and rather those with liberal agendas who reject Christianity in its broadest form itself...yet Dave would never hear the end of it if he applied the same standard of Protestantism."
Well, Dave obviously takes an exact same pleasure when he lists in his blogroll, under "Reformed, Calvinist" no less than five sites either directly Federal Vision or sympathetic to it.
How is Federal Vision antithetical to Calvinism? And two of those sites I just added a day or two ago, and was already considering removing them, considering the pathetic nature of many of the arguments they produce.
But I try to link to Calvinist sites that are not anti-Catholic (for obvious reasons).
Ah ha ha, you almost got me, Dave. Almost. After a long, tiring day messing with real life affairs, I came home and wasted some time after dinner writing some paragraphs explaining the silliness of your continued, already dealt with many times, complaints about my use of Tierney. After about an hour or so I realized I was just wasting my time, such a precious commodity. I've been trying to write entries about two journal articles, one on Reformation polemical warping of ancient hagiography and the other on two contrasting accounts of the Norman Conquest, but there I spent an hour dealing with...you and your bizarre understanding of what constitutes good scholarship.
Shame on me. Back to the real world of real Socratic dialogue for me!
On second thought, I may have wasted my time writing this, but I won't let it go to waste. Your sloppiness when it comes to scholarship and standards of real, constructive intellectual discourse needs to be seen for what it is. Enough is enough. You're just not cut out for anything other than populist demagoguery.
Dave complains about my use of the “liberal Catholic historian Brian Tierney for [my] polemical purposes (primarily bashing infallibility, in Tierney’s case.” I have explained Dave’s error on this point several times before in various forums. First, although it is true that at one time I used Tierney polemically (especially against the polemics of men like Dave Armstrong), I no longer do so. I have moved beyond apologetics per se and into the world of a scholarly concern for producing constructive and illuminating materials, not merely propagandistic ones which, in my opinion, unreasonably narrow people’s intellectual horizons. There you go, I admit it: I think Internet apologetics is largely a waste of time and that it contributes more heat than light and puffs up many people up into thinking that they are “giving an answer” (1 Pet. 3:15) when really they are simply assaulting the world with their ignorance, fear, and prejudice. Dave can rage all he likes at my profound dislike of Internet apologetics. I do not care, and am entirely unrepentant.
Second, in my historical work I make zero use of Tierney’s work Origins of Papal Infallibility. Indeed, I have not even read this book of Tierney’s, but have encountered it only in secondary citations and in a series of journal articles which Tierney exchanged with the then-head of the Vatican Library, Alfons Stickler, regarding certain of Tierney’s citations of Innocent III. In my opinion, Stickler came off very poorly in that exchange, continually substituting poorly nuanced dogmatic affirmations for careful scholarly engagement, and at the last, doing what so many so-called “orthodox Catholics” (Dave’s term) do when pressed into a corner: simply wave their hands while chanting magical incantations about the virtues of their “faith” and heaping emotion-driven calumnies upon the “heretics” who “dare” to challenge their so-called “conservative” Truths. This is not Dave’s much-hyped “Socratic dialogue,” much less is it even basic intellectually respectable behavior. It is its own refutation. And again, since I do not use Tierney’s Origins of Papal Infallibility in my own work, one wonders what Dave’s point in highlighting Tierney’s so-called “liberalism” actually is. It begins to look like a mere slander designed to take attention away from real substance by substituting what will appear to be substance to readers too ignorant, fearful, and / or lacking in the intellectual skills and patience necessary to work their way through complex issues of history and theology.
Third, it does not follow that if Tierney is utterly and ridiculously wrong in Origins o
[cont]
Third, it does not follow that if Tierney is utterly and ridiculously wrong in Origins of Papal Infallibility, he is also wrong in other works, such as Crisis of Church and State or Foundations of Conciliar Theory. Much less does it follow that the entire body of his work must be subjected to a priori skepticism and / or retrojected psychoanalysis that exonerates the so-called “conservative” Catholic from having to actually deal with what the so-called “liberal” says. If a stopped clock is right twice a day, so might be a so-called “liberal.” In point of fact, Tierney’s work in Foundations of Conciliar Theory is, even after 50 years, the standard work on the subject and has never been refuted by any professional Medieval scholar, regardless of his confessional standpoint.
You have to wonder: has Dave even read Foundations of Conciliar Theory? Can he contribute anything meaningful to the scholarly discussion generated by the work? Not likely, since as many people well know, Dave found the canon law sections of my original thesis on conciliarism, which were heavily indebted to Tierney’s discussion in Foundations, “too boring” to bother dealing with. The fact is, Dave is simply unacquainted with the material with which Tierney deals in that book. The fact is, not knowing it and not possessing the requisite skills with languages and concepts, he is quite incapable of “refuting” it on any level whatsoever. The best he has to offer are purely emotional diatribes against Tierney’s “liberalism,” and broad-brushed slurs that belie his self-promotion as a careful, intellectually respectable apologist for “orthodox Catholicism.” One can only wish that instead of wasting his and everyone else’s time writing slurs about “dissidents” he might actually pick up Foundations, or even Crisis of Church and State, and write something that will treat his readers to something that has real substance and real potential for “Socratic dialogue.”
Nothing about Fr. Pieris at all?
Michael Pahls, a regular at RefCath, gives yet more evidence of the tendencies here documented:
"I find the ressourcement and post-ressourcement theologians much more persuasive and I think we can let faithful readers decide for themselves following a fair reading of people we regularly reference: David Power, Louis Marie Chauvet, Kevin Irwin, Edward Kilmartin, Edward Schillebeeckx, Kenan Osborne, Kevin Seasoltz (and his band), and Nathan Mitchell, etc.
[someone else] "Your view seems to rest on notions of Roman authority and teaching which have no authoritative warrant in the Roman magisterium, coupled with a hope and belief that the RC magisterium is capable of contradiction and drastic change."
[back to Pahls] "Perhaps in the current Magisterium, but I’m not even sure about that.
"Actually a finer compliment could not be given to me. I’m on record and will be in print, God willing, as being no friend of Ultramontanism. J23 was a better pope and better man than B16."
http://www.reformedcatholicism.c...#comment-
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Even the Lutheran Josh Strodtbeck -- no friend of Catholicism -- couyld see through this folly:
"[D]o you believe that irreconcilable dogmatic differences can actually exist? Or are dogmas by nature just language games that lose their meaning and force as an exponential decay beginning immediately after their promulgation? . . . you don’t talk about Trent specifically, but rather extol the virtues of paradigm shifts and polemicize against static dogmas in general.
". . . I think you’re just ignoring an elephant in the room. Tridentine dogma is not just a system of ideas to be rephrased and reimagined according to new paradigms, but also a specific and targeted affirmation of a whole host of practices."
http://www.reformedcatholicism.c...#comment-
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Pahls responds, in the classic, death-by-a-thousand-qualifications rhetoric that typifies liberal arguments (and I'm not saying he necessarily is a liberal himself; just that he argues like one):
"You seem to think that dogmatic productions have a kind of flat, wooden, and “off the surface” meaning that remains static regardless of the historical and cultural context. I would argue that dogmatic productions are often composed by a historically situated committee and that, more importantly, they are received by subsequent, historically situated, collective bodies. Because of this, we cannot assume that meaning, force and function remains fixed."
http://www.reformedcatholicism.c...#comment-
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