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Saturday, September 21, 2002

Cool...Mel Gibson movie on the Passion to be in Latin and Aramaic.

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Even though the Catholic Church in the United States has significantly grown in the last few years, I'd be curious to know what percentage of new members in other growing religious faiths (e.g., Mormons, Evangelical Protestants, etc.) are fall-away Catholics. I once heard on EWTN that behind the Catholic Church, the second largest Christian "denomination" in the United States are people who were once Catholic.
Students from across the country today will be holding a "See You At The Pole" event at their schools to offer prayers for classmates, parents, friends, and their country. Although it is held out as being "interdenominational" (i.e., Catholics can participate too!) See You At The Pole tends to primarily attract good-hearted folks from the various quarters of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestantism. Myself, I see this event as an annual test for school principals and school districts on their understanding of the meaning of free speech.

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Another Chinese bishop, loyal to the Holy See, is arrested.

"Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake:"

-- Matthew 5:11 (DR)

Monday, September 16, 2002

Unlike their cohorts in academia, liberal pro-abortion activists set sights at destroying another great nominee for the federal judiciary.

Sunday, September 15, 2002

So how bad was anti-Catholicism within America's Protestant subculture? Here's a resolution that the National Association of Evangelicals, a multi-denominational group that many prominent Fundamentalists like Bob Jones think is too "liberal", adopted prior to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy in 1960:

Roman Catholicism And The President Of The United States

Whereas, separation of Church and State is the historic American principle, BE IT RESOLVED that the NAE state its belief:

1. That discussion of the church-state separation principle along with all of its implications is legitimate and inevitable whenever public office is under consideration, and

2. That commitments to the principle of church-state separation are necessary from all political candidates for the Presidency regardless of their religious affiliation, and

3. That the commitment of a Roman Catholic candidate to the separation principle is particularly necessary because the Roman Catholic Church, both as a political and religious organization, has for many centuries fostered the policy of church establishment in various degrees, according to its own political and religious interests within a situation, and has exerted pressures on public officials to that end, and

4. That the real source of unrest in respect to church-state separation is the total lack of any convincing commitment of the Roman Catholic Church to the principle of church-state separation, which could only come from the highest authority of that organization and could only be evidenced by the realignment of Catholic policy in those countries where Catholicism is now the established religion, and

5. That due to political-religious nature of the Roman Catholic Church, we doubt that a Roman Catholic president could or would resist fully the pressures of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.


Prior to the NAE redesigining their website, I pulled some other old resolutions they had regarding, I believe, the "danger" of allowing Bishop Samuel Stritch to be elevated to the College of Cardinals. I've only glanced through the NAE's resdesigned site, and while they actually admit to adopting anti-Catholic resolutions like the one above, I didn't see anything about a subsequent rescinding of them. Very curious.


Outside of the loony fringes of the Bob Jones' and Jack Chicks' of this world, is anti-Catholicism among most of our separated Protestant brothers and sisters really a thing of the past? In taking a look at some of the courses offered by a few of the more popular "born again" Protestant colleges in this country, one has to wonder. For example, here is a course offered at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) University:

TTTH707 Roman Catholic Theology
Units:2.0
School:Talbot School of Theology
Course Description:
A detailed study of the tenets of Roman Catholicism; reading from representative Roman Catholic literature; particular attention given to the distinctions between Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines. Especially helpful for those contemplating missionary service in countries dominated by Roman Catholicism. Elective .


Here is course offered at Trinity International University, whose law school I am a graduate of (Yes, I did lodge a formal complaint after I discovered it. As expected, they denied the course was designed to train Evangelical missionaries on how to convert Catholics):

ST 737 ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
An examination of the claims and practices of traditional Roman Catholicism, of the "revolution" introduced by the Second Vatican Council, and of current modernist and traditionalist trends, together with an evangelical critique and an evaluation of the possibilities of collaboration with and evangelism among Catholics today.


So yeah, while secular humanism is the greatest cause of anti-Catholicism in America today, one can clearly see that some of the hostility toward the Church is still flowing out from this country's Protestant subculture.