Geneva’s defenders show true colors.

t start­ed out bad­ly enough over at Bug­gers All, as it tends to do. On that estimable resource of anti-Catholic snipe, court jester Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle, who fools no one by his weird 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 to Rhol­o­gy, I wrote a strong­ly-word­ed but still char­i­ta­ble post, in which I said, among oth­er things:

I pray the Rosary out­side these facil­i­ties, and I reg­u­larly see large num­bers of Catholics of every age group—men, women, chil­dren. To my knowl­edge, we’ve nev­er been joined by a Protes­tant; though every Catholic I know would wel­come their presence—and the pres­ence of any­one else, for that mat­ter, who’d like to join us. I’d be hap­py to have Rhol­o­gy stand next to me; he could pray any prayer he liked—the Our Father, a spon­ta­neous utter­ance, one of the Psalms; I wouldn’t look at him fun­ny.

Thus I sug­gest­ed that, what­ev­er his dif­fer­ences with the Church might be, Catholics pray­ing out­side an abor­tion clin­ic (to achieve the same objec­tive he him­self fights for) are not the right tar­get for his snip­ing big­otry.

Love Letters from Geneva.

Now, rather than con­cede the point or—John forbid!—show con­tri­tion, Rhol­o­gy and Luther’s Inter­preter Mr. James Swan chose to use their com­box to dou­ble down on the juve­na­lia, the arro­gance, and the vit­ri­ol. Any­thing in ser­vice of Moth­er Gene­va. It’s a sad thing to watch.

(Mr. Swan, I should say, spends a large por­tion of his day refut­ing quo­ta­tions attrib­uted to Luther, as though his life’s work is to demon­strate that Luther nev­er said any­thing at all. But I digress.)

Rhol­o­gy asked, in the com­box of his post, whether the word “stu­pe­fy­ing” was “like stu­pid­i­fy­ing.” Now, such a puerile remark as that may get chuck­les from Mr. Swan and the rest of the sopho­mores at the frat house. But if Rhol­o­gy real­ly were not clear what “stu­pe­fy­ing” means, he might have thought to con­sult a use­ful ref­er­ence tool like—oh I don’t know—Merriam-Webster’s. Since, how­ev­er, I used the word in ref­er­ence to his own dumb and doltish post, I am hap­py to con­cede that it is very like “stu­pid­i­fy­ing.”

Then one of the oth­ers in the thread—a woman who goes by the name “Brigitte,” and who I believe is a Lutheran—said that the Catholic Church does “have the gospel” since they “preach Christ.” The histri­on­ic Rhol­o­gy said in reply, “I seri­ous­ly fear for your soul.”

In still more exam­ples of Rhol­o­gy’s large capac­i­ty to act as the grown man he is, he:

• bewailed Catholic “hatred” for the Gospel;
• said, with his cus­tom­ary grav­i­ty, that Acts 5:38, as cit­ed by one Catholic, was “ripped scream­ing out of con­text” [much like an abort­ed child!];
• accused Catholics of mere­ly “mock­ing” him “on their key­board” while he was out on the streets doing real soul-win­ning. [Wait, did­n’t this whole dis­cus­sion start because he had run into Catholics out on the street at the abor­tion mill?]; and
• replied to an offer on my blog to pray for him with the word “HAHAHAHAHAHA” and a dis­mis­sive ref­er­ence to God’s moth­er as “a dead woman.”

Here and there, now and then, Rhol­o­gy resort­ed to mature and con­sid­ered, sub­tle and astute expres­sions, such as “whoop­ie,” “that’s rich,” and “may the Lord judge between you and us.” (Take care now with that wish, good sir.)

Last, and not to be out­done in the Bug­gers All com­box, Mr. Swan took breezy offense at the “won­der­ful lov­ing Roman­ists” who were dis­cussing Rhol­o­gy’s bane post on Face­book. He asked, with his plen­ti­ful and boor­ish lack of mind or wit, whether “Mary is appear­ing to them and approv­ing their com­ments before they post them.” In anoth­er com­ment, he expressed his cer­tain opin­ion that Catholics are “their own worst ene­mies” and should “keep it com­ing.” (The lat­ter sug­ges­tion being one I am will­ing to heed here.) Mary, he sug­gest­ed, must be “very sad.” Mr. Swan also took it upon him­self, free of any sense of irony, to describe the com­ments on Face­book as “down­right nasty” and to spec­u­late, with the kind of para­noia and per­se­cu­tion com­plex that wor­ries me, that we engage in such nas­ti­ness under the direct orders of our priests. (As though priests have noth­ing more to do with their days than mar­shal armies of Catholics onto the Net to assault and blud­geon poor St. Rho and St. Swan.)

Oh! such won­der­ful, lov­ing Calvin­ists!

geneva’s sleight-of-hand with “the gospel.”

Not that they did not buck up with brave efforts to speak to the point. The key ques­tion I had asked was this one: “Does­n’t the mon­strous evil of abor­tion trump our the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences?”

I should point out, if only for the sake of clar­i­ty, that I was not try­ing to sug­gest that the mur­der of unborn babies means that our the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences do not mat­ter. What I mean is that they are of small impor­tance when we’re mutu­al­ly engaged in try­ing to stop that mur­der. In the con­text of that fight, my dif­fer­ences with a Reformed Protes­tant don’t mat­ter, nor mine with a Mor­mon or Bud­dhist or athe­ist. I think one of the most trag­ic rea­sons why there is still abor­tion in Amer­i­ca today is because Catholics and Protes­tants have been fight­ing the bat­tle apart from each oth­er. My point in ask­ing the ques­tion was that Rhol­o­gy should not allow his objec­tions to Catholi­cism to keep him from view­ing Catholics as co-labor­ers in the strug­gle against the evil of abor­tion.

With that clar­i­fi­ca­tion in mind, this is how Rhol­o­gy respond­ed to my ques­tion: “Not if the Gospel is the solu­tion to that evil and RCC does­n’t preach it.”

Mr. Swan like­wise respond­ed by say­ing, “I con­sid­er the Roman per­spec­tive on Mary to be bla­tant idol­a­try. … Rome anath­e­ma­tized the gospel at Trent.”

Well, let us look at this claim with some care; for at the root of it is rhetor­i­cal trick­ery. When the Reformed make men­tion of “the Gospel” that the Catholic Church “does­n’t have,” they are refer­ring only to the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. That—and noth­ing more, in their view—is “the Gospel.”

Now, this habit among the Reformed—of using the expres­sion “the Gospel” to mean “jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone”—is com­mon enough that it works its way into the books they write against the Catholic Church. Just now I am in the painful process of read­ing Robert M. Zzzins’ hor­rid tome Roman­ism; and it would require the descrip­tive pow­er of a Charles Dick­ens to express just how bad it is, how much a throw­back to the wild histri­on­ics of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry anti-Catholic polemi­cists like Charles Spur­geon. The absurd and over-the-top sub­ti­tle of Mr. Zzzins’ book is “The Relent­less Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!” (That’s Mr. Zzzins’ excla­ma­tion point.) What Mr. Zzzins real­ly means by that is, “The relent­less Roman Catholic assault on the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone.” To which I say, “Of course. Amen. Praise Jesus.” But: That’s not the Gospel. For not only is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone not to be found in any of the four gospels, it’s not even in the text from Romans where Reformed apol­o­gists claim to find it. Romans 3:28 says that a man is jus­ti­fied by faith, but it does not use the word “alone.” The only place in the Bible that does—James 2:24—uses it for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of deny­ing that we are jus­ti­fied by faith alone. Calvin­ists do not deal straight with this.

And so when Mr. Swan says that the Coun­cil of Trent “anath­e­ma­tized the Gospel,” all he means is that Trent anath­e­ma­tized jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. Here are the rel­e­vant words from Canon 9:

If any one saith that by faith alone the impi­ous is jus­ti­fied; in such wise as to mean, that noth­ing else is required in order to the obtain­ing [of] the grace of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and that it is not in any way nec­es­sary, that he be pre­pared and dis­posed by the move­ment of his own will; let him be anath­e­ma.

By sleight-of-hand, Mr. Swan recasts a heresy as “the Gospel,” and attempts to deceive oth­ers into the belief that “Rome” is opposed to the Gospel itself, when in fact all that “Rome” is opposed to is a hereti­cal under­stand­ing of the Gospel.

can right soteriology defeat abortion?

Thus hav­ing clar­i­fied that part of the issue, I should also men­tion how odd is Rhol­o­gy’s assump­tion that “the Gospel” (under­stood as the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone) will solve the scourge of abor­tion. I’m per­plexed by it; would­n’t some­thing like a sense of the sanc­ti­ty of all human life as cre­at­ed in the image of God, or John Paul II’s The­ol­o­gy of the Body, or the com­mand­ment “Thou shalt not kill” (which, after all, is a ques­tion of the law, not of faith) be more rel­e­vant to the spe­cif­ic issues that are raised by abor­tion? Abor­tion comes of the self­ish de-valu­ing of life; it does not come of a faulty view of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. A Catholic’s rejec­tion of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone does not stop him from being pro-life.

Dave Arm­strong believes he under­stands Rhol­o­gy’s rea­son­ing (such as it is). On his Face­book page, he replied on the very point, after I had raised it there:

I was think­ing much the same thing today. There is no direct cor­re­la­tion, but I think how he is look­ing at it, is as an indi­rect route to stop­ping abor­tion:

1. A pro-abor­tion per­son gets saved (i.e., accord­ing to his ver­sion of how it occurs).

2. Because of this con­ver­sion or born again expe­ri­ence and the trans­for­ma­tion of soul and life that fol­lows they, become pro-life (I went through this process myself).

3. There­fore, the gospel defeats abor­tion.

This much is true (apart from def­i­n­i­tion­al quib­bles). But it’s not the whole truth. There are athe­ist pro-lif­ers and Mus­lim pro-lif­ers and Bud­dhist pro-lif­ers. They don’t become less so because they don’t accept the Chris­t­ian gospel. Bernard Nathanson stopped killing babies before he was a Chris­t­ian (lat­er becom­ing a Catholic).

Clear­ly, there is a great fal­la­cy here.

I can under­stand the log­ic in one sense. For six years, from about the age of 18 to the age of 24, I was an athe­ist, and I was pro-choice. I was one of those peo­ple who had “per­son­al objec­tions” to abor­tion but did­n’t feel that the gov­ern­ment had any busi­ness stop­ping a woman from doing what­ev­er she chose. After I accept­ed again the faith of my child­hood (I was raised Unit­ed Methodist), and with time, I became con­vict­ed about the great evil of abor­tion. Thus I first got saved, then became pro-life. It does work that way. But as Mr. Arm­strong also points out, Chris­tian­i­ty is not the only grounds upon which abor­tion can be opposed. One can argue, if he likes, whether non-Chris­t­ian ratio­nales are the best from which to oppose it; and I would hap­pen to agree that the Chris­t­ian teach­ing (which is real­ly the Catholic teach­ing) about the sanc­ti­ty of all life from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al death, since it is made in the image of God, is supe­ri­or to any oth­er argu­ment.

How­ev­er. When you’re at an abor­tion mill, and you’re try­ing to save as many babies as you pos­si­bly can, would­n’t it be bet­ter to first save the baby (since the baby’s in immi­nent dan­ger), and only then wor­ry about lead­ing the woman to accept the Gospel (what­ev­er you under­stand the Gospel to be)?

And. The ins-and-outs of this dis­cus­sion aside, isn’t abor­tion a great enough evil that defeat­ing it can use the assis­tance of as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, regard­less of what their rea­sons are to oppose it? Should those dif­fer­ences not be dis­cussed in a dif­fer­ent set­ting than the are­na of activism itself? My ques­tion remains, and Rhol­o­gy nev­er real­ly answered it. Rather, as if by reflex, he returned to the cliché about how the Catholic Church “does­n’t have the gospel.” The con­sis­tent return to that cliché, that anti-Catholic talk­ing point, makes me won­der to what extent Rhol­o­gy is capa­ble of inter­act­ing in any mean­ing­ful way when dia­logu­ing with Catholics. He just reads from the script and, when chal­lenged, chor­tles.

the sadducism of Rhology exposed!!!!!

A sec­ond point was made in the Bug­gers All thread; this one was all about the direct address to Mary in Catholic prayers. Rhol­o­gy assert­ed that it was “pathet­ic and use­less” to pray to “a dead human being.” In still anoth­er com­ment, he said, “I don’t think I need any­thing from a dead woman.” And yet one more: “Peo­ple liv­ing here on Earth are not sup­posed to talk to dead peo­ple.” These kind of com­ments make Rhol­o­gy sound very like a Sad­ducee. Lis­ten to St. Mark:

Then come unto him the Sad­ducees, which say there is no res­ur­rec­tion; and they asked him, say­ing, Mas­ter, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s broth­er die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no chil­dren, that his broth­er should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his broth­er. Now there were sev­en brethren; and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. And the sec­ond took her, and died, nei­ther left he any seed: and the third like­wise. And the sev­en had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. In the res­ur­rec­tion there­fore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the sev­en had her to wife. And Jesus answer­ing said unto them, Do ye not there­fore err, because ye know not the scrip­tures, nei­ther the pow­er of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they nei­ther mar­ry, nor are giv­en in mar­riage; but are as the angels which are in heav­en. And as touch­ing the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, say­ing, I am the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the liv­ing: ye there­fore do great­ly err. (Mark 12:18–27)

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the liv­ing. If he is the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is he not also the God of Mary? For he was the God who chose Mary. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the liv­ing; Rhol­o­gy does great­ly err.