Catholic Conference of Illinois Says Leave Behind Left Behind

Speaking of shrill fundamentalism, I recently got into a theological debate with a co-worker who subscribes to a number of anti-Catholic beliefs. In order to better clarify many of the points I incoherently made to him, I loaned him Karl Keating's "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" and Paul Thigpen's "The Rapture Trap". Although the latter book is more critical in tone than apologetic, it doesn't go down the path of singling out any one particular Christian faith and characterizing it as apostate or unchristian. In return, my co-worker tried to get me to read a blatantly anti-Catholic screed called The Gospel According to Rome by James McCarthy. Needless to say, I politely turned his offer down.

In case you don't know who Mr. McCarthy is, he is a Protestant fundamentalist author/apologist who claims he used to be Catholic (for some stange reason, a lot of fundamentalists and evangelicals will regard this as a qualifying factor for making someone an expert on Catholicism). Various Catholic apologists and writers like Karl Keating in The Usual Suspects and Mario Derksen at Catholic Insight have pretty much exposed McCarthy to be an unintelligible dolt. I, myself, prefer to characterize him as a lying bigot. Anyway, I'm just glad this fundamentalist co-worker is only here for another month. Time can't go by faster for me.