Anti-Catholic spectacle “Rhology” strains at the Ave and swallows abortion.

ver at Bug­gers All—it is my job as an apol­o­gist to read these dumb anti-Catholic sites so you won’t have to—there is a stu­pe­fy­ing post by one Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle. No one knows why he choos­es to self-iden­ti­fy as the sev­en­teenth let­ter of the Greek alpha­bet, but I’m hap­py to affirm his crotch­ets and call him by his cho­sen nom de guerre. The point of his post yes­ter­day seems to be that he went out to protest at an abor­tion mill and, while there, got him­self in a lath­er about the “blas­phe­mous” con­tent of the prayers Catholics were recit­ing. (Catholics have this strange cus­tom of being against abor­tion too.) Rhol­o­gy does­n’t blog about how wicked abor­tion is, but about how wicked the Ave is. Behold how this sad per­for­mance begins:

While out at the abor­tion clin­ic, I’ve noticed that a few old­er Roman Catholic gen­tle­men come out as well for ~30 min­utes, set out some pro-life signs, and pray what I was pret­ty sure was the Rosary.

Rhology Shocked by Luke.

Of course, Catholics have been pray­ing the Rosary in front of abor­tion mills (and Planned Par­ent­hood facil­i­ties) for some time now. But to lis­ten to Rhol­o­gy tell it, you’d think that the Catholic Church (or per­haps just its “old­er gen­tle­men”) has only now dis­cov­ered pro-life. 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, no Protes­tant has yet joined us; 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.

Now, maybe Catholics are a curios­i­ty in Nor­man, Okla­homa. That’s pos­si­ble. But I con­fess I am sur­prised by his 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. He steps out of his tent and is shocked and undone.

Rhology Spits Up His Sandwich.

In his sec­ond para­graph, Rhol­o­gy spec­u­lates that the Rosary has no effect at all on abor­tion, but that it does “mak[e] demons laugh uproar­i­ous­ly.” He makes no men­tion of whether demons laugh at abor­tion itself, or the con­tin­u­al re-elec­tion of Nan­cy Pelosi. But he is dead cer­tain that they are in stitch­es when they hear Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42–43.

Before Rhol­o­gy left the abor­tion mill, one of the “old­er” Catholic gen­tle­men hand­ed him a pam­phlet. “These are prayers we pray,” he said, “when we’re out there.” It’s hard to tell whether the Catholic was pros­e­ly­tiz­ing or Rhol­o­gy asked. Either way, he was able to take back home this very smok­ing gun of the cultish ways of the Roman­ists, who dare to be pro-life too. There may be a future for him as a ρI. Maybe he is one, by night. What do I know? Any­way, Rhol­o­gy “flipped through” the pam­phlet and dis­cov­ered, to his hor­ror, “vers­es of sheer awe­some­ness.” We papists can deny it no more: our prayers are “sheer awe­some­ness.” (That’s sup­posed to make me feel rebuked.)

But Rhol­o­gy’s pre­tense that he was shocked and cha­grined wor­ries me. How is it that some­one such as him­self, so active­ly engaged in apolo­get­ics, would be so inno­cent of The Prayer to St. Michael and the Salve Regi­na? By his telling, he has just dis­cov­ered them for the first time, there in Nor­man, and is aghast.

“If you can pray these,” quoth Rhol­o­gy in a severe decla­ma­tion, “with­out want­i­ng to throw up, you need to repent, and quick­ly.” He is prone to lose his lunch over prayer, but his stom­ach is quite calm at the death he was there to protest in the first place. He says noth­ing about abor­tion­ists need­ing to repent quick­ly. He man­ages not to vom­it at pic­tures of abor­tion. But he spits up his sand­wich over the con­tent of Catholic prayer.

Rhology Lacks Proportion.

I am sad to report that this atti­tude is very com­mon among a cer­tain class of anti-Catholic. Not all Protes­tants are thus. But I do very well remember—I was still a Protes­tant then—learning about 40 Days for Life and want­i­ng to get involved. But when I found out that there would be an almost-exclu­sive­ly Catholic pres­ence at the abor­tion mills, I decid­ed not to go. There was no way I was going to stand next to some­one pray­ing the Rosary.

I regret ever hav­ing felt that way. More than that, I regret that some­one like Rhol­o­gy feels that pro-life work is an appro­pri­ate con­text in which to dis­pute the con­tent of Catholic prayer. Does­n’t the mon­strous evil of abor­tion trump those the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences? If you don’t think it does, then I have no words to describe my shock at the lack of pro­por­tion. Let it go; the Dev­il loves our divi­sion at such moments espe­cial­ly well.

I have pro­found dif­fer­ences with Mor­mons. They are wrong about the Trin­i­ty and the per­son of Christ, and that’s just to start with. It may be all well and good to have a dis­cus­sion about all that, or the con­tent of their prayers, but in a dif­fer­ent con­text . If I encounter Mor­mons pray­ing at an abor­tion clin­ic, my only thought at the moment would be: Good for them for tak­ing a stand against this hideous scourge. I’m cer­tain­ly not going to go rush­ing home to my blog to cry, “Shame, shame! Mor­mons deny the divin­i­ty of Christ! I could just throw up! Remind me nev­er to eat lunch right before I go out to the abor­tion mill. I might run into Mor­mons and get sick!” If I stand next to them where I can agree with them, that does not mean that I agree with them on all things, or that we ought not dis­cuss our dif­fer­ences. But it does mean that, for the moment, they are moot. If he had been equal­ly will­ing (and for the record, I don’t know what his opin­ion about abor­tion was), I would have stood next to Christo­pher Hitchens in front of an abor­tion mill and wel­comed him as a broth­er in the fight against that hideous evil. And he and I would have had fierce bat­tles, I am sure, about the exis­tence of God—in a dif­fer­ent set­ting.

Catholics and Reformed Protes­tants have seri­ous dif­fer­ences, and they mer­it dis­cus­sion and debate. But in the con­text of our shared out­rage at the mur­der of the unborn: Let it go, Rho.