Replies

Black Elk: Thank you for your kind words. If Catholics have Evangelicals' backs that's good news. Unfortunately, many Catholic FReepers choose to respond to Fundamentalist theological disagreement not with theological argument but with the liberal charge of "bigotry" and with ethno-cultural slurs about "Cletus," "snake-handlers," "Bobble-toters," and "Billy Bob's Glory Barn." At least one of your co-religionists has also insisted that Fundamentalists aren't smart enough to be Catholics, and as someone who tried at one time I am quite prepared to believe him, though I wish Catholics would make up their minds as to whether the Catholic religion is for literally everyone or else for a tiny Mensa-class elite of intellectuals. Unfortunately, converts to Catholicism are not given the opportunity to be illiterate Honduran peasants but are required to be philosophers on the level of Aquinas, Newman, and Chesterton.

I have been toying with the idea of asking you something for a while now, and now since I have your attention I suppose I should take advantage of the situation and do so. I am aware that you are quite hostile to "traditionalist" Catholic groups such as SSPX (and I'm certainly no fan of their vicious anti-Semitism), but there's something I don't understand: you seem to be more like them in your own beliefs than you are to mainstream Catholics, especially in America. How do you deal with the cognitive dissonance of opposing people who believe more like you do and championing a pope who is an evolutionist and a Teilhardian? (See this article critiquing the current Pope's modernism.) I myself could not stomach being in communion with liberals or modernists, and (as I have said so often) even if I had remained in the Catholic Church the behavior of most Catholic FReepers would have long ago shamed and embarrassed me out of it.

However, I'm not totally a big anti-Catholic meanie. Plsease see this post of mine in which I defend traditional Catholics and criticize liberal (or at least hypocritical) Jewish "dialogue partners.

EternalVigilance, thank you for your post as well.