They Protest Too Much!
©Lucio Mascarenhas.
(In reply to the fictional story of Eccentric Ferns)
The Protestants, like the lady of the tale, protest too much. They are vehement in their claims that Catholicism is un-Biblical while they are Biblical. Yet, when one sits with the Bible, one soon enough finds that if anybody is un-Biblical, it is the Protestants.
The Bible is not a book. It is a collection of books. That collection has not been put together by itself, by its own internal authority. Therefore, if one were to sit down and search the Bible, one would not find anywhere a statement telling us which independent books are to be considered as part of the Bible.
Therefore, one is compelled to look for an external authority which put together the books into the Bible and which keeps them there, and which also kept out and keeps out other books.
That fact is in itself enough to destroy the very basis of the Protestant heresies - which, despite their diversity, are united in certain common errors - most notable of which is that of "Sola Scriptura".
Protestants are famous for going around piously quoting Apocalypse (Revelations) to the effect that one should not add to or subtract from "this book".
"This book" refers not to the Bible as a whole, but merely to the Book of the Apocalypse (Revelations), which was written as an independent book. It does not even include the Gospel of St. John, despite having the same human author.
And yet, it is precisely the Prots who are guilty of violating their own rule. Protestantism has famously, on the authority of Luther, added a word to the Bible.
The Bible tells us: "Salvation is by faith." Yet the Bible also tells us: "Faith without works is dead." Yet the Prots hate "Works" and insist on Faith Alone - The Heresy of Sola Fide - so much so that Luther insisted on adding, upon his own authority, the word "alone" to the first quote, so that it now read: "Salvation is by faith alone"!
As for "Subtracting" the Protestants have, upon their own spurious authority, and following the authority of the post-Christian Jews, who had not only rejected Christ but who also followed up their malice by excising many books from the Alexandrian Canon to create the so-called "Jerusalem Canon", cut out many books from the Bible.
Things were so bad that Luther excised some seven books out of the New Testament - including Hebrews and James - as "Apocryphal"! It is only after his death that the Protestants have restored these seven books, so that the Catholic and Protestant New Testaments have the same books.
Even so, the Protestants have taken a mere gloss added by a Catholic monk-scribe of many centuries after Christ, and added it to the main text of the Bible, to the Pater Noster: "For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory; Now and forever."
However, the greatest problem with the Prots is that they falsify the word of Christ in a very crucial text. Our Lord clearly tells Peter: "Blessed are thou, Simon Bar-Jonah� I tell you, you are a rock, and on this rock I shall build my Church, and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. And I shall give unto you the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loosen on earth shall be loosened in heaven."
This text is the very heart of the Petrine Claim; of the Institution of the Papacy. For more than fifteen hundred years of Church history, despite innumerable heresies and schisms, there were no real rejection of this text. Yet the Prots innovated in order to change and to falsify the meaning of this text in order to exclude and deny the ancient and clear meaning of these words.
When one examines the history of Christianity, one is struck by the fact that Catholicism has been the most adamant and implacable foe of what constitutes "Modernity" - the present social and cultural beliefs. Everywhere that the Catholics dominated and ruled, they fought hard and long to withstand. In all these countries, revolutionaries had to stage long and bloody pogroms after pogroms in order to bludgeon the people into decadence and immorality.
Yet, one is astonished that the same did not happen in the Prot dominated countries. There there were no vicious civil wars, no bitter strivings. On the contrary, in those countries one finds a gradual and orderly passage into daily more immorality and decadence - into bestiality and godlessness. There were revolutions and civil wars in Czech, in France, in Austria and in Catholic Germany, in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and in Latin America. The French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican and now the Cuban Revolutions have been bloody and vicious. Yet, there have been no similar revolutions in Prot lands.
Protestantism invented Secularism and is very proud of it. Prots insist and demand the separation of Church and State. Yet, Secularism is not only un-Biblical, it is anti-Biblical.
Despite some, now forgotten heresies, such as Montanism, Manichaeanism, Bogomilism, Catharism and Albigensianism, which postulated that the God of the Old Testament is an Evil God opposed to the God of the New Testament, Christians are agreed in recognizing that the God of both the Testaments is one and the same.
Yet, in the Old Testament, God is insistent on the duty of the Kings of Israel, and latter of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, to uphold the True Faith and to prohibit false cults and false �gods�. In both, the Books of the Kings, and in the Books of the Paralipomenon, or "Chronicles", God judges each individual king on the basis of the extent to which he applied this principle - those who were judged good were the ones who strictly imposed the True Faith and who vigorously rooted out the Baals and other false gods.
[A digression: The Antichurch is big on promoting the heresy of Ecumenism - where one accepts the legitimacy of Rama, Krishna, Ganpati, Sai Baba and all the other Hindu demons. But I pointedly ask: If the Bible is insistent, to the point of obsession, on rejecting the Baals, how can we accept the "devas," "boothas," "naths," "surs,", etc? If we are obliged to reject the Baals, we are obliged to reject these, the Indian Baals. But if we accept the legitimacy of these Indian Baals, then we must necessarily reject the legitimacy of the Bible and of the God of the Bible�]
Jesus Christ never reversed this principle. On the contrary, he himself reaffirmed them quite sharply, and St. Peter, inspired by God, also reaffirms it sharply in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Holy Inquisition of the Church, and of the Catholic States, follows immediately from this principle. It is true that the Inquisition, as is the Church, is made up of corruptible men, who can misuse their position to do wrong. However, on the whole, both in principle and in practice, the Holy Inquisitions were always a force for good, and acted as a barrier and disincentive towards evil. Which is the reason why the licentious and the fornicators always hated and schemed against the Holy Inquisitions.
The Prots have always railed against Catholics for their numerous and sumptuous churches and have alleged that the monies could have been better used to aid the poor and the needy. Those are echoes of the words of the hypocrites of our Lord�s own time on earth, the words of Judas.
When the repentant prostitute brought a jar of expensive balm, came in to our Lord, broke it to anoint His feet, etc., then too the hypocrites complained. One of their complaints was that the money could have been better used to aid the poor. "The poor will always be with you," retorted our Lord.
We need our churches in order to centre ourselves as a community and in order to honour and worship God. God deserves our best. That is why Catholics had scrimped and saved only in order to build themselves magnificent churches.
And yet, ironically, no other people have done as much in charity for men indiscriminate of their origins and beliefs as have the Catholics. Indeed, it seems that the Charity of the Catholics - funded by the unquestioning generosity of poor Catholics who scrimped and saved in order to donate lavishly to the Church for its missions of Charity - far outstrips the charity of all other groups combined.
No other people have spent so much of their energies to universalise the benefits of civilization and progress among all mankind. No other people have spent so much of their energies tending to the sick, ill and abandoned victims of disease and ill health, as have the Catholics.
Yet another reproach that the heretics make against us is that of "idolatry." They insist that Christians are forbidden the use of Statues and of pictures to aid them in their worship.
In this, they are eminently anti-Biblical, even more than merely being un-Biblical.
God, in the Bible, certainly forbids men from making themselves images and pictures. However, God himself orders the Jews shortly after to make images and pictures of angels, etc., for the Tabernacle and for the furniture of the Holy Ark.
God did not contradict himself. What he means is to forbid the use of images and statues as if they were God, or "gods", in the sense of the pagans. However, their uses purely as aids in praying, in representing to ourselves in a tangible manner the intangible wonders of God, his saints and angels, is not idolatry.
During the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, we see that when they thought Moses lost, they lost their nerves and surrendered to their base passions and superstitions, and made themselves a Golden Calf to worship as their God, for which God punished them. And yet, very shortly, when they were once again punished for their sins, Moses was commanded to create a bronze serpent and set it upon a pole, so that whoever looked upon it would be saved. What is one to make of this later episode from the Prot, Iconoclastic viewpoint: That God commanded "idolatry" by means of the bronze serpent?
The Bible exhibits a deep ambivalence about the Jews. In many places, the word Jew means an Israelite who is faithful to God. However, in many other places, the word means an Israelite who is unfaithful to God.
It is a matter of fact that the vast majority of the Jews rejected Christ. Up until that time, the ambivalence was justifiable. However, from that time onwards, the Israelites who accepted and obeyed the Messias became to be known as Christians, and were merged indiscriminately with the Gentiles who also converted to Christ.
Christ was born a Jew, but died a Christian. He came in fulfilment of the prophecies and rituals of the Mosaic Law that prefigured him and his coming, and he thereby promulgated the New Law and the New Dispensation, which is the perfection of the Old Law, the Mosaic Covenant.
From that time onwards, the name Jew came to be reserved to those Jews who had chosen to be PERFIDIOUS - in that they rejected, scorned, and even murdered the Messias.
The Murder of the Messias lies upon all men, for he was ordained to be a sacrifice for the sins of all men. Therefore, every man who has sinned, and who sins, has crucified Christ or crucifies Christ.
Yet, in a special and unique way, the Jews are especially responsible for the Murder of Christ. It is they who agitated for it, who schemed and plotted it. This is in sharp contrast to their responsibilities and the special favours shown to them by God, which made it their special responsibility to welcome and aid the Messias in his mission to save mankind.
But not only did the Jews plot, scheme and achieve the Murder of the Messias, but they also have formally called down upon themselves the curse for this Murder, the greatest blasphemy reinforced by their insolence.
By this single act, the Jews bound themselves, and have been bound, just as the Sin of Adam has stained and bound all mankind, as his descendants.
©Lucio Mascarenhas.