From the excellent blog of Jimmy Akin. Reading dishonest and disingenous things like what is written below by Phillip Johnson, helps explain some of the reason why so many are against the Catholic Church. They have been lied to by their leaders and people they trust. Thanks to Jimmy Akin for exposing the dishonesty. Red words are the sardonic words of Jimmy Akin.
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Grace To You (Except If You're Catholic)
(Michelle Arnold)
Phillip R. Johnson, executive director of John MacArthur's Grace To You ministry, comments on his blog about reports that payouts in priestly sex-abuse cases have topped $1 billion dollars. His premise is that these payouts prove that the Catholic Church's claim of infallibility is false. My thanks to him for offering me the opportunity to step into the world of fisking:
"Start with the pretense of papal infallibility [of which we will not define so that you do not know it has nothing to do with impeccability]; forbid everyone in the core hierarchy of the church to marry [except, oh, say, Eastern-rite priests, Protestant clerical converts who are already married, and permanent deacons]; embrace a notion of 'spirituality' with the most superstitious form of sacramental externalism at its core; and demand that all your members blindly and reverently accept the authority of the church's earthly leaders no matter what [and even though those same leaders deny they have this kind of absolutist, tyrannical form of authority I've heavily implied, make non-members blindly and reverently think such a demand is made of Catholics] — and what kind of result would you expect?" [emphasis Johnson's].
Certainly not truth-in-advertising from non-members who presume to attempt to explain to other non-members what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, that's for sure.
Steve comments: It is this kind of writing that demonstrates why many are “anti-Catholic.” They are not against the real Church; rather, they are against the caricatures of the Church presented like this bigot. It is easy for these guys to use a broad brush, to build a straw man and then bravely knock it down. But it is dishonest and bears false witness against those who call on the Name of the Lord. Like Fulten Sheen said, “There are millions who hate what they think is the Catholic Church; there are problably only a hundred who hate the real thing.”