Category: Anti Catholicism

You can fall down laugh­ing at such words, and I often do. But the point of them is to stir an audi­ence to an irra­tional pitch of wild fear of the Catholic Church. The Church has no power—none—to “over­throw the cross of Christ,” not even if she meant to do so. God is not so weak. But sup­pose you believed that some church could “over­throw the cross of Christ”? Would that not cause you grave con­cern? I know it would me. And that is what Calvin wants his read­ers to believe. That is why his words over­state his mean­ing. It is delib­er­ate; it is of ill intent.

No doubt, dear read­er, you have been read­ing seri­ous things about the wicked hor­ror and evil that does its Satan­ic deeds under the name ISIS. Mean­while, in Pitts­burgh, the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay — a man whose rea­son turned vagabond long before — has once more become pos­sessed by the mad desire to out-do Jack Chick for clown­ish buf­foon­ery. Lis­ten to his newest dumb out­rage upon good sense. (But pray do not have food or drink in your mouth, make sure you are secure in your chair, and say a few Aves first.

Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle admits that he was bored. Liv­ing in Okla­homa, which will have that effect on a per­son, he “had some time to kill” and could think of noth­ing bet­ter to do than search about for some new Catholic out­rage. Catholi­cism is less plen­teous in Mr. Rho’s stamp­ing ground than it is in Rome, and so he has to look hard across the land­scape for it, pos­si­bly with binoc­u­lars. In this frame of mind, he made a pil­grim­age to Prague, Okla­homa, and the Nation­al Shrine of the Infant Jesus.

In a cat­e­go­ry of dis­cov­ery that might be called “found blogs,” I ran across this gem on a site called Ref­or­ma­tion 21, cour­tesy of the ever-help­ful assis­tance of the polem­i­cal rogue John Bugay. The title of the arti­cle, by Leonar­do De Chiri­co, is “Vat­i­can Files No. 19”; and based on both its con­tents and the allu­sion (as I pre­sume) to that bizarre TV show from the 1990s, I am rather afraid that to peer into Vat­i­can Files 1 – 18 might take me deep­er into the realm of sci­ence fic­tion than I want to go, the polem­i­cal rogue’s rec­om­men­da­tion of it as “blunt and hon­est” notwith­stand­ing.

It start­ed out bad­ly enough over at Beg­gars All. On that estimable resource of anti-Catholic snipe, Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle, who fools no one by his alias, wrote a post so shock­ing­ly dumb that real snipes hid their bills. Pro-life activ­i­ty at an abor­tion mill was now to be used, not to defend the sanc­ti­ty of life, but instead to bash unof­fend­ing Catholics for their “blas­phe­mous” prayers. In response, I wrote a strong­ly-word­ed but still char­i­ta­ble post, in which I said, among oth­er things, that Mr. Rho may have object­ed any oth­er time.

Maybe Catholics are a curios­i­ty in Nor­man, Okla­homa. But I con­fess I am sur­prised by Rhol­o­gy’s seem­ing inno­cence whether they were pray­ing the Rosary. The man is active­ly involved in apolo­get­ics con­tra the Catholic Church, so his being unable to pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the Rosary seems strange. It’s eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied by the quo­ta­tions from Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42 – 43. Usu­al­ly, Catholics are hold­ing those fun­ny lit­tle beads when they say it, mak­ing it the more rec­og­niz­able. But Rhol­o­gy is all inno­cent about such things.