People Are Leaving the Church Because of YOU, Bishop Barron [Catholic Caucus]

It is emblematic of the topsy-turvy world of contemporary Catholicism that Bishop Robert Barron is now considered one of the faith's top apologists.

I cannot imagine how any apologist could be less effective at evangelizing or converting anyone, or less effective at persuading potential apostates to reconsider leaving the faith.

1. While there may be a hell, there's a good chance that it is empty. Whatever you do, you'll probably be saved anyway.

3. Many of the most famous stories in the Bible are not literally true. But that doesn't mean they're false. The Bible should be evaluated in the same way that we evaluate the novel Moby Dick.

4. Some people put Catholicism down, but thats not completely fair. If you look at its history, it often comes close to emulating the ideals set out by Gandhi.

Any one of the above arguments or claims appears almost designed to keep you out of Church (or at least out of a Catholic Church) and back at your usual seat in the saloon.

But the problem with Barron goes deeper than that. I'm talking about his personality. Evangelization isn't just about what you say or even how you say it. It's also about you. I've known Christians (including at least one of the priests at my Church) who were so likable or compelling that they could stand on the sidewalk telling jokes or reading the telephone book or playing a fiddle, and by the end of the day, they'd have five new converts.

To me, Barron has anti-Charisma. He's so smarmy, so pretentious, so superciliously "don't you see, the Bible is true, but not true in the vulgar sense that you think," that if he were trying to convince me that A = A, I'd drop everything and become a socialist.

I know some might disagree. It is said that many Catholics love Bishop Barron. On the other hand, few traditionalist Catholics seem to like him much.

And I admit that my dislike is almost visceral. As you might now be expecting, more of that dislike will come out below. Whether that says more about me or Bishop Barron is another question. You can be the judge of it.

In this post I want to look at one specific Barron piece - something he wrote just a few days ago for National Catholic Register, characteristically titled, Apologists, Catechists, Theologians: Wake Up!

Barron laments the fact that according to a recent study, for every one person who joins the Catholic Church, six will leave. This annoys him partly because he believes that the people leaving (or their teachers) are just not thinking.

After perusing the latest Pew Study on why young people are leaving the active practice of Christianity, I confess that I just sighed in exasperation. I don't doubt for a moment the sincerity of those who responded to the survey, but the reasons they offer for abandoning Christianity are just so uncompelling. That is to say, any theologian, apologist, or evangelist worth his salt should be able easily to answer them. And this led me (hence the sigh) to the conclusion that "we have met the enemy and it is us."

What's notable about this passage is that Barron seems to be claiming that turning things around should be easy. Those who are leaving have merely bought into dumb arguments. And any Catholic "worth his salt" should be able to effortlessly knock down those dumb arguments. Hence the sigh.

Now, I think Barron is wrong about this, or, rather, it's an extremely misleading way of presenting the problem. But for the moment let's accept it - people are leaving the Church because they are stupid, or at least because they believe really stupid things - and then pause to ask the obvious question: why is this occurring?

It's telling that Barron never answers or even asks this, though he claims that the thing has been going on for fifty years. At some point in the mid-1960's, most Catholics simply stopped being intellectual. Darn.

But all is not lost. The way to combat this now is for the few surviving Catholic intellectuals (such as Barron) to exhort the slackers to (as Barron puts it) "pick up their game."

For the past fifty years or so, Christian thinkers have largely abandoned the art of apologetics and have failed (here I offer a j'accuse to many in the Catholic universities) to resource the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition in order to hold off critics of the faith. I don't blame the avatars of secularism for actively attempting to debunk Christianity; that's their job, after all. But I do blame teachers, catechists, evangelists, and academics within the Christian churches for not doing enough to keep our young people engaged. These studies consistently demonstrate that unless we believers seriously pick up our game intellectually, we're going to keep losing our kids . . .

This most recent survey indicates that intellectual objections figure prominently when these drifters are asked why they abandoned their faith. My cri de coeur is that teachers, catechists, theologians, apologists, and evangelists might wake up to this crisis and do something about it. That's three uses of the word "intellectual" in less than two paragraphs. And to underline the method, he even brings in two phrases from a foreign language - j'accuse and cri de coeur.

He's a muddle-headed suck-up who can almost always be counted on to take his claims from the current Zeitgeist and twist them (in an insult to the Zeitgeist) into propositions that wouldn't convince a twelve-year old.

Mind you, this is by no means to imply that there are no rational warrants for belief in God. Philosophers over the centuries, in fact, have articulated dozens of such demonstrations, which have, especially when considered together, enormous probative force. I have found, in my own evangelical work, that the argument from contingency gets quite a bit of traction with those who are wrestling with the issue of God's existence. What these arguments have lacked, sad to say, are convinced and articulate defenders within the academy and in the ranks of teachers, catechists, and apologists. You see street preachers warning passerby that they will go to hell. Little did you know that in some hidden classroom, a media bishop was getting quite a bit of traction.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Barron thinks Catholics are exiting the Church in droves because they haven't been exposed to the argument from contingency. To call that moronic is an insult to socialists.

Let's now look at the arguments that Barron claims people cite for leaving the faith - arguments that Barron thinks are "uncompelling" - as well as considering Barron's "answers" to them. Here are the arguments in Barron's words:

Now, as it happens, I actually think #1 is a very compelling argument. Indeed, it's probably the best argument the atheists have. Modern science does seem to undermine Christian faith. Among other things, modern science appears to contradict the claims of that centerpiece of our faith, the Bible. The Old Testament tells us that God created two human beings out of dust. One of their descendants built a huge boat and put a set of each kind of animal in it in order to save them from a world-wide flood. A few thousand years later, someone walked around the area we now call Israel performing miracles - including, among other things, raising people from the dead. In turn, He was raised from the dead and He and His mother later levitated into Heaven, etc.

But modern science tells us that human beings evolved gradually from one-celled organisms over the course of over a billion years. At the time of the flood, there probably were 60,000 species of beetle (or whatever). It would be weird to think that those beetles scuttled into the ark on their own, and Noah would almost certainly not have had time to gather them up. If a body is truly dead, it cannot revivify itself. People's living bodies don't disappear forever into the sky. And so on.

Barron elsewhere has denied some of these "literal" Biblical claims, while reaffirming that the Bible contains deeper moral or theological truths. So, in the current piece his answer to the argument is that science and faith are completely separate entities:

(T)he sciences, ordered by their nature and method to an analysis of empirically verifiable objects and states of affairs within the universe, cannot even in principle address questions regarding God, who is not a being in the world, but rather the reason why the finite realm exists at all. There simply cannot be "scientific" evidence or argument that tells one way or the other in regard to God. Let me make four points about the above.

First of all, this response is completely unconvincing to an atheist. Indeed, in my experience, atheists just laugh at it, as it has an almost desperate ad-hoc air about it.

Atheist: No there isn't. Photographs, audio recording and chemical testing have conclusively shown that there is no gorilla in your living room. Plus he wouldn't have been able to fit through the door.

I know some of you have been exposed to that supposedly brilliant stratagem and may even think it's effective. It's not. Trust me. At most it's a postponement - a way for people who are so inclined to temporarily cling to something. In my experience, that something won't be the traditional Catholic faith, or it won't be so for long. And it's precisely one of the main responses that has been strongly put forward (contra Bishop Barron) by the Church for the last fifty years. We all know the results.

Second, it has the effect of making the Catholic faith superfluous and unattractive. I don't know about you but I want to worship and interact with a being in the world not a reason. If all the wonderful stories in the Bible are simply fictions created for the purpose of, say, relating moral truths, it's not clear why I need anything more than those moral truths. And I do not think the argument from contingency is a sufficient replacement for Adam and Eve. Or the Moby Dick version of Adam and Eve. Or whatever.

Third, Jesus was a flesh and blood being in the world (or so the Church teaches). Indeed, that's the central Christian claim - 2,000 years ago, a time recent enough to be well-encompassed by the science of archeology, among other things, God walked on Earth as a man. I became a Christian and then a Catholic largely because I became convinced that what we might call the story of Jesus, including His resurrection, was true - not true in some goopy "spiritual" way, but true in, yes, an empirically verifiable sense, at least (contra Barron) in principle. And in turn, I can imagine evidence being discovered - they find Jesus' body along with documentary evidence indicating the whole thing was a hoax - that would, so to speak, un-convince me. I think Paul is with me on this:

The authors of the Gospels explicitly assert that they were eyewitnesses to incredible events - empirically observable things that actually happened in the world - and the reason they wish to relate these events is because they want to convince you that they really happened.

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may believe.

The logical implication of Barron's view is that this design is pointless - "an analysis of empirically verifiable objects and states of affairs within the universe, cannot even in principle address questions regarding God." This is of course a rejection of the strategy of the very founders of evangelization - an odd way for a Christian apologist to proceed.

Lastly, Barron's claim that science and faith are completely separate entities was in fact condemned by the Church as a heresy. And this wasn't in, say, the fourth-century or the middle-ages or whatever, but only three or four generations ago in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (see paragraphs 6 - 16), authored by Pope Pius X. For all of Barron's harping on the "richness" of Catholic intellectual tradition, he seems oblivious to papal encyclicals, even those penned in the 20th century by saints. Obviously, the fact that Barron's view is heretical shouldn't mean anything to an atheist (although it should mean something to Barron). But a curious atheist just might ask this question: if the Church said X a hundred years ago, but now it says (you claim) Not X, on what grounds should it command my assent now?

Moving on the second argument - "Religion just seems to be the opiate of the people" - Barron responds that you could say the same thing about Atheism.

Marx's adage, of course, is an adaptation of Ludwig Feuerbach's observation that religion amounts to a projection of our idealized self-image. Sigmund Freud, in the early twentieth century, further adapted Feuerbach, arguing that religion is like a waking dream, a wish-fulfilling fantasy. This line of thinking has been massively adopted by the so-called "new atheists" of our time. I find it regularly on my internet forums. What all of this comes down to, ultimately, is a dismissive and patronizing psychologization of religious belief. But it is altogether vulnerable to a tu quoque (you do the same thing) counter-attack. I think it is eminently credible to say that atheism amounts to a wish-fulfilling fantasy . . .

That's fine as far as it goes, but it's sort of concedes a crucial point - that Catholicism acts like an opiate (whether it is or not). Ask a traditional Catholic mother of eight kids whether she thinks of her faith as an opiate. Or ask a nun or a priest or anyone who has made great sacrifices for their faith. To paraphrase the only baptized Catholic American president (who was speaking on a different issue), "we choose to become Catholics not because it is easy but because it is hard." But we do it of course because it is worth doing. That may not convince your atheist friend over the course of one beer, but it's much more compelling than "so's your Momma" (tu quoque).

By the way, Barron gets his intellectual history wrong. Marx wasn't "of course" adapting Feuerbach. Yeah, I've read a bit of Marx in between comic books. Barron is really not much of a scholar (though he wants you to think that he is). Not that that's here nor there but still.

To the last argument - "Christians seem to behave so badly" - Barron basically just says, "so what?"

God knows that the clergy sex abuse scandals of the last 25 years have lent considerable support to this argument, already bolstered by the usual suspects of the Inquisition, the Crusades, the persecution of Galileo, witch-hunts, etc., etc. We could, of course, enter into an examination of each of these cases, but for our purposes I am willing to concede the whole argument: yes indeed, over the centuries, lots and lots of Christians have behaved wickedly. But why, one wonders, should this tell against the integrity and rectitude of Christian belief? Many, many Americans have done horrific things, often in the name of America. One thinks of slave owners, the enforcers of Jim Crow laws, the carpet bombers of Dresden and Tokyo, the perpetrators of the My-Lai Massacre, the guards at Abu-Graib Prison, etc. Do these outrages ipso facto prove that American ideals are less than praiseworthy, or that the American system as such is corrupt? The question answers itself.

Relatedly, a number of young people said that they left the Christian churches because "religion is the greatest source of conflict in the world." . . . this view has seeped into the general consciousness, but it simply does not stand up to serious scrutiny. In their exhaustive survey of the wars of human history (The Encyclopedia of Wars), Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod demonstrate that less than 7% of wars could be credibly blamed on religion . . .

This is a popular sort of line (which is why Barron takes it) but it's not satisfactory. If Catholicism is true, one would expect it to make better people (in general or on average). Not perfect people, but better people. None of the Christian fathers or medieval theologians would have denied this. And one would also expect the great Catholic causes (or what were perceived to be great causes at the time by Catholics) to be meritorious.

On the subject of the Crusades, they were one of the central events of the Catholic experience for hundreds of years, approved and participated in by a long line of popes, saints and other prominent Catholics during the height of the Church's power. To condemn the Crusades - as Barron does elsewhere (and not merely for the sake of argument) - gives powerful ammunition to the anti-Catholic side. Even worse, it once again takes away one of the more powerful arguments for being a Catholic. For hundreds of years, we defended European civilization, at great sacrifice of blood, from a barbaric civilization worshipping a cruel and false god. What was your side doing, nailing narcissistic manifestos to doors and bitching in the salons?

Or so most Catholic apologists would have argued . . . previous to about fifty years ago.

G.K. Chesterton, who Barron loves to quote, was an enthusiastic booster of the Crusades. Worse for Barron, he was in a sense an enthusiastic booster of religious wars. Or more accurately, Chesterton made the quite logical claim that if one's Catholic faith is the most important thing in the world (which of course it should be for any Catholic), then if anything is worth fighting for, shouldn't that be at the top of the list?

Christ and His Church are worth fighting for. Or rather, if you don't see me proclaiming that, how good an advertisement is that for my faith? If I said my wife wasn't worth fighting for, what would that say about my wife? And what would that say about me?

Barron has recently come out as a seeming pacifist - a stance in clear opposition to historical Christian and Catholic teaching - arguing that "the non-violent stance" is the best response to ISIS aggression. For our purposes, that's another mark against his "apologetics." Most people will be repelled by this irrational sounding claim. As for the minority of Gandhi devotees who might sympathize, we might ask what reason they have to become Catholics as opposed to Hindus? After all, Hindus can still use the argument from contingency.

How does all this cash out, so to speak, on the ground? I wager that my Church - a non-SSPX traditionalist Church in downtown Chicago - is one of the only Catholic churches in the Chicago area where the majority of the parishioners believe both in the literal existence of Adam and Eve and the justice of the Crusades. Or in other words, we're one of the only churches where most of its members believe what the Church itself went out of its way to explicitly profess for the first 98% of its existence. It's not a coincidence that my Church leads Chicago in promoting vocations, or that parish membership as well as non-parishioner attendance is thriving.

Traditional Catholic teachings are attractive, much more attractive than the post-Vatican II liberal-conservative synthesis popularized by Bishop Barron. You don't get Christians excited by claiming to be as good as Gandhi. You get them excited by claiming that the poorest soul at Catholic Mass has something infinitely greater than Gandhi ever had.

Conversely, people are leaving the Church because of "apologists" like Barron. The people ask for bread and are given stones (though the Bishop would no doubt excitedly claim that Catholic stones are no worse than other stones). Barron shouldn't be giving lessons in apologetics; he should be taking them.

I asked for examples of Barron and the Early Church Fathers disagreeing. Of course, I’ll get no such examples.

From Post #12

Bishop Robert Barron:

In the twentieth century, the Protestant theologian Karl Barth moved back in Origen’s direction and articulated a more or less universalist position on salvation. He maintained that the cross of Jesus had saved the world and that the church’s task was to announce this joyful truth to everyone. The Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was a friend of Barth’s and a fellow Swiss, and he presented a somewhat Barthian teaching on this score, though he pulled back from complete universalism. Balthasar argued that, given what God has accomplished in Christ, we may reasonably hope that all people will be saved. The condemnation of apokatastasis compelled him to draw back from saying that we know all will be saved, but his keen sensitivity to the dramatic power of the cross convinced him that we may entertain the lively and realistic hope that all people will eventually be drawn into the divine love.

My own conviction is that Balthasar has this more or less right. Catholic doctrine is that Hell exists, but yet the Church has never claimed to know if any human being is actually in Hell.

The Fathers of the Church on Hell:

In his 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II that too often "preachers, catechists, teachers . . . no longer have the courage to preach the threat of hell" (p. 183).

Concerning the reality of hell, the pope says, "In point of fact, the ancient councils rejected the theory . . . according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction, and every creature would be saved; a theory which abolished hell. . . . [T]he words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matt. 25:46). [But] who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard" (pp. 185–6).

Thus the issue that some will go to hell is decided, but the issue of who in particular will go to hell is undecided.

The early Church Fathers were also absolutely firm on the reality of an eternal hell, as the following quotes show.

Ignatius of Antioch

"Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil teaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him" (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1–2 [A.D. 110]).

Second Clement

"If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment" (Second Clement 5:5 [A.D. 150]).

"But when they see how those who have sinned and who have denied Jesus by their words or by their deeds are punished with terrible torture in unquenchable fire, the righteous, who have done good, and who have endured tortures and have hated the luxuries of life, will give glory to their God saying, ‘There shall be hope for him that has served God with all his heart!’" (ibid., 17:7).

Justin Martyr

"No more is it possible for the evildoer, the avaricious, and the treacherous to hide from God than it is for the virtuous. Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognized this, no one would choose evil even for a short time, knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire. On the contrary, he would take every means to control himself and to adorn himself in virtue, so that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape the punishments" (First Apology 12 [A.D. 151]).

"We have been taught that only they may aim at immortality who have lived a holy and virtuous life near to God. We believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire" (ibid., 21).

"[Jesus] shall come from the heavens in glory with his angelic host, when he shall raise the bodies of all the men who ever lived. Then he will clothe the worthy in immortality; but the wicked, clothed in eternal sensibility, he will commit to the eternal fire, along with the evil demons" (ibid., 52).

The Martyrdom of Polykarp

"Fixing their minds on the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly tortures and purchased eternal life with but a single hour. To them, the fire of their cruel torturers was cold. They kept before their eyes their escape from the eternal and unquenchable fire" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:3 [A.D. 155]).

Mathetes

"When you know what is the true life, that of heaven; when you despise the merely apparent death, which is temporal; when you fear the death which is real, and which is reserved for those who will be condemned to the everlasting fire, the fire which will punish even to the end those who are delivered to it, then you will condemn the deceit and error of the world" (Letter to Diognetus 10:7 [A.D. 160]).

Athenagoras

"[W]e [Christians] are persuaded that when we are removed from this present life we shall live another life, better than the present one. . . . Then we shall abide near God and with God, changeless and free from suffering in the soul . . . or if we fall with the rest [of mankind], a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere incidental work, that we should perish and be annihilated" (Plea for the Christians 31 [A.D. 177]).

Theophilus of Antioch

"Give studious attention to the prophetic writings [the Bible] and they will lead you on a clearer path to escape the eternal punishments and to obtain the eternal good things of God. . . . [God] will examine everything and will judge justly, granting recompense to each according to merit. To those who seek immortality by the patient exercise of good works, he will give everlasting life, joy, peace, rest, and all good things. . . . For the unbelievers and for the contemptuous, and for those who do not submit to the truth but assent to iniquity, when they have been involved in adulteries, and fornications, and homosexualities, and avarice, and in lawless idolatries, there will be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish; and in the end, such men as these will be detained in everlasting fire" (To Autolycus 1:14 [A.D. 181]).

Irenaeus

"[God will] send the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the impious, unjust, lawless, and b.asphemous among men into everlasting fire" (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).

"The penalty increases for those who do not believe the Word of God and despise his coming. . . . [I]t is not merely temporal, but eternal. To whomsoever the Lord shall say, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire,’ they will be damned forever" (ibid., 4:28:2).

Tertullian

"After the present age is ended he will judge his worshipers for a reward of eternal life and the godless for a fire equally perpetual and unending" (Apology 18:3 [A.D. 197]).

"Then will the entire race of men be restored to receive its just deserts according to what it has merited in this period of good and evil, and thereafter to have these paid out in an immeasurable and unending eternity. Then there will be neither death again nor resurrection again, but we shall be always the same as we are now, without changing. The worshipers of God shall always be with God, clothed in the proper substance of eternity. But the godless and those who have not turned wholly to God will be punished in fire equally unending, and they shall have from the very nature of this fire, divine as it were, a supply of incorruptibility" (ibid., 44:12–13).

Hippolytus

"Standing before [Christ’s] judgment, all of them, men, angels, and demons, crying out in one voice, shall say: ‘Just is your judgment!’ And the righteousness of that cry will be apparent in the recompense made to each. To those who have done well, everlasting enjoyment shall be given; while to the lovers of evil shall be given eternal punishment. The unquenchable and unending fire awaits these latter, and a certain fiery worm which does not die and which does not waste the body but continually bursts forth from the body with unceasing pain. No sleep will give them rest; no night will soothe them; no death will deliver them from punishment; no appeal of interceding friends will profit them" (Against the Greeks 3 [A.D. 212]).

Minucius Felix

"I am not ignorant of the fact that many, in the consciousness of what they deserve, would rather hope than actually believe that there is nothing for them after death. They would prefer to be annihilated rather than be restored for punishment. . . . Nor is there either measure nor end to these torments. That clever fire burns the limbs and restores them, wears them away and yet sustains them, just as fiery thunderbolts strike bodies but do not consume them" (Octavius 34:12–5:3 [A.D. 226]).

Cyprian of Carthage

"An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or be at an end. Souls along with their bodies will be preserved for suffering in unlimited agonies. . . . The grief at punishment will then be without the fruit of repentance; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late will they believe in eternal punishment, who would not believe in eternal life" (To Demetrian 24 [A.D. 252]).

Lactantius

"[T]he sacred writings inform us in what manner the wicked are to undergo punishment. For because they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh, that they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible, and abiding forever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting fire, the nature of which is different from this fire of ours, which we use for the necessary purposes of life, and which is extinguished unless it be sustained by the fuel of some material. But that divine fire always lives by itself, and flourishes without any nourishment. . . . The same divine fire, therefore, with one and the same force and power, will both burn the wicked and will form them again, and will replace as much as it shall consume of their bodies, and will supply itself with eternal nourishment. . . . Thus, without any wasting of bodies, which regain their substance, it will only burn and affect them with a sense of pain. But when [God] shall have judged the righteous, he will also try them with fire" (Divine Institutes 7:21 [A.D. 307]).

Cyril of Jerusalem

"We shall be raised therefore, all with our bodies eternal, but not all with bodies alike: for if a man is righteous, he will receive a heavenly body, that he may be able worthily to hold converse with angels; but if a man is a sinner, he shall receive an eternal body, fitted to endure the penalties of sins, that he may burn eternally in fire, nor ever be consumed. And righteously will God assign this portion to either company; for we do nothing without the body. We b.aspheme with the mouth, and with the mouth we pray. With the body we commit fornication, and with the body we keep chastity. With the hand we rob, and by the hand we bestow alms; and the rest in like manner. Since then the body has been our minister in all things, it shall also share with us in the future the fruits of the past" (Catechetical Lectures 18:19 [A.D. 350]).

Bishop Barron preaches heresy.

“Pearls and piggies comes to mind.”

Well, you could just take your snout away from the pearls, right?

“I wouldn’t have passed this out to him for all the tea in China.”

You couldn’t have passed this out to me for all tea in China.

“I hate it when someone asks a question or makes an inquiry that challenges me to do all the work on providing them an answer too obvious for words, while they sit back and stroke their beard.”

“...all the work...an answer too obvious for words...”

Well, that makes no sense. I guess that’s one way you can avoid doing the minimum you probably can’t do.

“while they sit back and stroke their beard.”

Clean shaven actually. Maybe you’re projecting?

“Vladie is enamored with barren Barron of the modern era, so let him do his own dang discovery.”

Already have. It was obvious to me that you would fail because your statement made it clear that you apparently knew little or nothing about Barron - who, no matter what you think of him - is clearly better read, and better educated, and better catechized than his critics in this thread. He also seems to be a better Christian. The point is was obvious you would fail from the beginning. I addressed the situation the same way I do anti-Catholics because your claims were as laughable. And, as expected, you fared as well as anti-Catholics do - complete failure.

“Incidentally, my volumes of Jurgens were laid wide open when Vlad challenged me to go find the goods. Still, I declined to lift a finger.”

Ooooooohhhh, Jurgens. Seriously, am I supposed to be impressed? I bought my first copy - that’s “first copy” - of Jurgens when I was in graduate school. I don’t even think I have a copy these days since they are now thoroughly superseded by online sources. I think I sold both copies last year. Once I saw Bercot back in 2005 I knew - no matter how imperfect it was since he’s a Protestant - that the days of Jurgens being indispensable were drawing to a close. I’m willing to bet you have no idea who Bercot is. Look it up. Now, if you said, “Incidentally, my volumes of Migne (Pat. Lat. or Pat. Grec.) were laid wide open...” I would have been impressed. But those too are a closed book to you aren’t they? Pun intended.

“Frankly, I don’t entertain much of anything, either said or written, by the modern rock stars and personalities running amok in the Church today, since the successful V2 blitz on the faith. These flame throwers are simply too dangerous and only the pointy head modernists can appreciate their prose anyway.”

So you regularly read St. Thomas Aquinas instead, correct? Or is that the purview of only “pointy head modernists” as well?

“These people are starving the flock, while giving them a fine show of fireworks, celebration and noise.”

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3036.htm

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