The voice of him that crieth in the Bloggerness!
GREAT post! I had a conversation with a man who grew up Catholic and left the Church (now goes to a Baptist church) once. He told me that, growing up, he never heard the Bible at Mass. I asked him if he was serious, because if he was it meant that he paid NO attention at church! Thanks for breaking it down for us. Just fantastic!
I so appreciate the Catholic Carnival, because it brings me to blogs I haven't happened upon yet - great post! I am also a convert, and I nearly choked on my cereal with laughter over the conspiracy paragraph. My priest is a Jesuit too - the line about seizing global power and then forgetting where he put it is *bang on* - priceless.
I also very much appreciate your approach to the oft-tossed claim that we don't know the Bible. I think I'm starting to know the Bible, to actually love the Bible, more now than in any "Bible-Believing" church I ever attended. I think that understanding the Bible as the Word of God, and then understanding that the Word is Jesus, has to first come from the deep, rich understanding that Jesus is the True Presence in the Eucharist. From that everything else follows.
Glad I stumbled upon your site!
Great post, Joel. I'll be linking to it, and I must say you were more charitable than I sometimes am. That mutual acqaintance of ours whose only response to documented evidence of many Catholic bible translations before the Reformation was "love is blind" made a better impression on you than on me.
Of course, the plethora of early Catholic translations into multiple languages undercut his fondness for thinking of the bible as a "forbidden" book, and people do hate to have their hobby horses shot out from under them.
Now if you could just throw in one about The Pope not giving us all direct orders on how to run our lives. 
Great post.
Just made good on my promise to link to this. Keep up the good work!
I enjoyed this post a lot. When I first read the documents of Trent as a Protestant, I was actually pretty amazed. I remembering thinking, "wow, this is a great encapsulation of the *entire* Bible's view on salvation!" Even as an Protestant, I remember thinking that the Catholics at Trent didn't have to throw out James or add words to Scripture to make their beliefs work. Now that I am Catholic, I am proud of what was declared at Trent.
And as for the Jesuits, the blame they get for all sorts of things is ridiculous. Some anti-Catholic folks, Jack Chick for instance, blame them for JFK's assasination. I am sure some are already figuring out how the Jesuits manipulated the weather to cause Hurrican Katrina.
In regard #1 - Christ, in one of his last acts of a rather longish, dark day, made Mary, via the Beloved Disciples, our Mother too, and made us her sons.
Mary, the New Eve. Mary, Ark of the Covenant, the first Tabernacle of our Lord. Mary, who made the first Eucharistic procession to Elizabeth. Mary, Stabat Mater at the foot of the Cross. Mary, the greatest Witness of Jesus' Resurrection, who just days after her Son's death prayed with the apostles ("All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers"). Mary, crowned Queen of Heaven, clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. Mary, who crushed the Serpent with her heels.
Are we to be blamed for being 'Momma's boys' in response for so overwhelming and spectacular an inheritence as part of our adoption?
Or, rather, does the ingratitude of prodigal children still dissipating their inheritence not show itself in those who have turned - only partly in many cases, but turned nontheless - away from the Church Christ built?
How could one claim to love the Son and not the mother that bore him and gave him suck? And if not the mother - easy to love, given the circumstances - how the Father?
Regarding Mary, it was difficult for me to understand as part of my reconciliation. With the help of Jimmy Akin and some other folks, it became clearer. And someone (I've forgotten who) really helped me understand an aspect of Protestant thot that some of the folks I talk to don't understand that they really believe. By pushing Calvin's concept of Total Depravity, one commentator notes that it's as if some of these Protestants believe that God wiped His image from every human being. My sister has great difficulty, for example, understanding how grace and righteousness can be 'infused' into the human soul. In part, I think she has bought into Calvin's understanding of depravity without fully realizing the implications...??
jrp,
I love how you describe our Mother! After reading Scott Hahn's "Hail, Holy Queen" I was so pumped up with pride and happiness! Pride because my Church venerates and gives due respect to the Mother of God. Happiness because I was born into that Church and didn't need to search for it!
I was talking to a friend last night (he's a convert), and he said that when someone gave him the "worship Mary" line, he did research into it. Because a lot of Protestant talk of heresies tend to have some grain of truth (no matter how small or long ago), he really wanted to know if worshipping Mary had ever been done. He said that, yes, there was a group, though small, who did worship Mary. When it was found out, the Church first tried to explain why it was wrong. When that didn't work, the entire group was excommunicated. So our Church does NOT tolerate worship of Mary and never has. What some see as worship is merely honoring the Mother of our Lord (as St. Elizabeth put it). Just as having pictures of our dead relatives around the house isn't wrong, nor is talking to that person as though they were still alive (you know, like visiting a gravesite?), neither is talking to the saints or our Blessed Mother. And this is all we do with both of these. We honor them (because we ought to honor the holy men and women who have come before us, they are the Church Triumphant!), and because they are not dead but alive in Heaven (or the Beatific Vision), we also ask them to pray for us, just as we might ask someone here on earth whom we see as close to God to pray for us.
Some might see it as splitting hairs, but I see a clear difference. I didn't know the Latin words, but I do know that prayer does not equal worship (or adoration). Only God may be worshipped and adored. But we must honor those who have acheived a holy life.
Sorry for the long comment, Joel. And, by the way, I linked to your site from my own after I blogged on this post.
You know what? I understand the whole distinction about Mary with regard to Latria and dulia. And I do believe that it's still worship to her.
I know you disagree, and if I discuss it with anybody-no matter what religion they profess, I am careful to point out that according to official RC teaching they do not worship Mary.
However the question is this-Does that make it so?
Here's an extreme example to illustrate my point and no smear is intended on RCism by this example, just wanting to make a point-Remember how Bill Clinton tried to explain away his activities with Monica Lewinsky?
He may even have believed them, but that didn't mean it was true-he was still lying.
I may believe I am a King, it doesn't make it so.
So the issue I would address is not, "Do RC's worship Mary?" But rather-"RC's say they do not worship Mary, but is that really so?"
I know you will still disagree that it isn't worship, and I believe it is. Not because I don't understand the teaching. I do, but I disagree with it. And as you have mentioned elsewhere Joel--that is often what it comes down to.
I am not a devotee of Jack Chick (who is an embarrasment to any who call themselves Christian) spouting their rhetoric, but a former RC who was taught these things.
And I agree it's not the biggest issue--those are justification & authority. And I try to stick to those for the most part. THe RCC's teachings on Mary do fall under both categories--so they can come up sometimes.
Well I'll wrap this up--I hope it wasn't too long.
Not too long at all, Pilgrim. Actually, I appreciate that you got my point, that Mary is far from the biggest issue separating Catholic and Protestant; she's just one of the most visible.
You may have seen the link I posted today to a good article on the subject. I'm sorry it's a little condescending; I DID tell you that that's a failing of Catholic apologists.
I saw the posts, and I've commented on it as well.
It should be said though, for some RC's Mary is very big, for some she isn't.
The Church my parents attend is bigger on her than you are. I've been there, I know. (This is not the church we attended in my youth, but a different one.) It wasn't for mass, but for weddings, Christmas concerts, that sort of thing connected to family. (What I set foot in a Catholic Church as a Protestant! There are those who may anathematize me for that.
Any way they also have a shrine to Mary and one of her "appearances"--one of the official ones. I think I remember which one, but I'd have to check.
Still Justification & Authority are the biggest issues.
I HAVE read Trent, both the entire dogmatics section and the 125 anathemas. I really can't understand how anyone can say they do anything but hurl papal damnations in the name of the Church at protestants.
I have seen all kinds of interesting gyrations and attempts to explain these away, from (falsely) claiming that 1983 did away with anathemas altogether (James Akin), to saying that we don't understand the anathemas, to claiming that Protestants are not affected because we are not in the church(!!!!)
The fact is that the issue is not that Protestants make charges that the reformers dared not make (that all Catholics are unsaved or other such foolishness). The issue is that if you guys really accept the magisterium, you must pronounce that Protestants are damned.
And yes, I have read the catechism and the Ut Unum and the Dominus. There is nothing in those documents that reverses the clear pronouncement of protestant doctrines as damnable, despite the rather desperate attempts by modern day evangelical Catholics to find in them a basis for ecclesiastical unity.
In short. We love you guys. We think we will see you in heaven. We are glad that you are ignoring or reinterpreting Trent. However, we think your leaders understand Trent and have deliberately obfuscated it in the same way as they muddied up the waters between forensic justification and holy living (see Calvin's commentary on Trent) 500 years ago. Again, we love you, but we think you have an emotional bond to both us and the historically and biblically unfounded idea of an unbroken line of truth. If you wanna attack stupid fundamentalism, we will laugh at Jack Chick tracts with you. However, when you read what the reformers actually said, and what the council actually said (not just apologists for it), you really have to put your brain in park to stay where you are.
I hope that didn't sound too hateful. I did not mean it to be.
Re: "We don't worship Mary. Period... the Catholic Church today does not place a whole lot of emphasis on Marian devotion... Yet we are often approached as if we were the Church of Mary, with Jesus as just a footnote." - I'm glad your congregation does not emphasize Mary, and I know some Catholic congregations and members who do not. But I have in fact visited other Catholic congregations and members who did treat "Jesus as just a footnote" in their devotion to Mary. (Of course, I've also visited some churches of several denominations who treated "Jesus as a footnote" in order to get to the cafeteria or the football game on time.)
re: "Trent is every Protestant's nightmare." - now who's making false stereotypes here? 
re: ""Christian" bookstores, "Christian" magazines, "Christian" music..." - I'm as offended at that label as you are, but more in the "christian = consumer" than the "christian = protestant" sense.
One point I didn't see mentioned is Catholic iconography - statues, shrines, rosary, etc. - which some Protestants condemn as idolatry. From my experience, I am concerned that those objects *may become* idolatrous to some Catholics, just as I am concerned that chrome fish and wwjd bracelets may become idolatrous to all Christians.
re: "Doctrine is not what saves us; Christ does." - precisely.
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