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Where I take Far Too Much Delight In Responding To The Anti-Catholic Group, Abolish Human Abortion…

Where I take Far Too Much Delight In Responding To The Anti-Catholic Group, Abolish Human Abortion…

Last updated on: January 25, 2017 at 5:32 pm by Katrina Fernandez

Where I take Far Too Much Delight In Responding To The Anti-Catholic Group, Abolish Human Abortion… 2017-01-25T17:32:25-05:00 Katrina Fernandez

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

… Did you know I’m the embodiment of evil? Perhaps I get that from the “satanic religious system” in which I belong. But I find myself a bit too excited to respond to the discombobulated ramblings recently addressed at me by the loathsome anti-Catholic group, Abolish Human Abortion. I know. I’m a terrible terrible person for enjoying this, especially when they’ve made my rebuttal so effortless. But yes, yes I immensely enjoy any opportunity to defend my faith. Defending myself against claims of being diabolical… harder to refute.

I don’t know where to start. There’s so much juicy to pick from. I’ll just have to start with the title and work my way through the thread. Get comfortable.

“To our friends throwing rocks from across the Tiber”

My dear, AHA. I’m sorry you felt attacked. Perhaps if you had kept your nonsensical attacks about the Church being the Whore of Babylon to yourself my rocks would have gladly stayed on my side of the Tiber. You can’t make sweeping accusations against the largest religious organization in the world without expecting someone to denounce your flagrant stupidity. Take your feigned sense of hurt feelings elsewhere.

You don’t know where we’ve been.

We were lost. We were blind. We were dead.

We were hopeless. We didn’t care that we were hopeless, yet in some twisted and horrible way, we did care.

And then a man with pierced hands and feet offered His help. He said we were blind and dead, and that He could save us. He told us to repent of our hopelessness, our lack of trust in our Creator, our evil and wicked deeds. He told us He had accomplished what needed to be done to bring us to our Creator, Whom we had denied so many times.

This man saved us. This man, God Himself, clothed in human flesh, did it all. He alone bore the punishment, weight, and guilt of our sin. He alone provided the sacrifice to perfect us for all time. He told us we receive the benefits He offers, a slate wiped clean, perfect righteousness accounted to us as an entire gift, on the basis of repentance and faith alone, by His sufficient grace alone and the grace of no other.

And He gave us the grace and strength to turn away from our former deeds and to do what is right, and we discovered more joy, peace, purpose, and wonder in doing what He told us to do than in anything we had thought we could find before, on our own path. So we started doing those things. And we fell more and more in love with this wonderful man, this wonderful God, that we wanted to do even more of them, and to share them with others, and to make sure that as many people as possible knew about this wondrous Creator, this amazing, loving, merciful, and powerful King.

I don’t know where whose been? Or you don’t know where I’ve been? Someone’s lost, and blind…. and dead? And they care. But don’t. [???]

The rest seems to be just the author rambling on in an attempt to set the tone of religious superiority. It’s about Jesus, man. His love. His perfect righteousness. His grace. See. Abolish Human Abortion loves Jesus… not like those filthy papists and their idolatry.

Then we discovered that there would be opposition.
The opposition takes many forms, but let me focus on only one example as a representative sample. Apparently, we who desire to obey the Lord Jesus Christ in all areas of life are “scary” and worthy of denigration and contempt.

As I read this article by Katrina Fernandez/The Crescat and was reflecting on the recent flurry of criticism directed our way by Roman Catholics, one saying of our great King came to my mind.

Matthew 5:11-12 – “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

“Worthy of contempt”. Yes. Any organization that promotes vehement anti-Catholicism deserves my full disdain and unbridled mockery. Don’t play daft, AHA, you know why I called you “scary”. It’s not “your desire to obey the Lord Jesus Christ in all areas of life”. To even make the grandiose claim you unreservedly obey Christ in all things is utterly laughable. If you did you wouldn’t persecute your fellow Christians. And yes, poor confused AHA, Catholics are Christians. In fact we are the first Christians. That is what makes you scary. You’re malformed blatant bigotry. You’re so wrapped up in your own martyr complex of false persecution that you fail to recognize the glaring irony in the scripture you provided. Thank you for proving my own point.

Based on this passage, I’d like to comment on The Crescat’s statements and on the larger context.

Blessed are you…

First and foremost, we’d like to say to all of you who have been criticising us: Thank you!

You have given us many opportunities to proclaim the Gospel and obey our Lord and repeat the proclamation that saved us from Hell. This is an enormous blessing and this whole thing, including blogposts like this one, has given us the chance to do so.

You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help you feel morally and spiritually superior, despite your grievous error. What can I say? I’m a people person.

Oh, wait. No I’m not.

…when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say…

Why do I apply the word “falsely” here?
The title of the article includes the word “scary”, but the author never explains what was scary about Toby’s comment. Further, what is scary about saying “…that does not mean we hate Catholic people; we love them. Everyone at AHA loves them. We also believe that in large part Western Protesantism is dead, very dead as well”?
Does The Crescat believe love is scary?
Does she believe that self-directed criticism is scary?
Do scary bigots typically exhibit a powerful bent toward reformation within their own circles, as we have consistently called for?

I already explained that your bigotry was what was “scary”. The whole “Catholics are members of a satanic religious system” is scary stupidity. It’s pretty darn obvious to the rest of us what I meant. And really, if you need me to point out that religious hatred and intolerance is a bad thing than you’re scary indeed. Very scary.

The rest of what you wrote is just the ridiculous nonsense. Yours is the desperate attempt of a person caught being an ass online trying to deflect criticism from the fact that AHA is, very much so, an openly anti-Catholic organization that promotes anti-Catholicism [see link] by it’s members in their public facebook page activity.

The Crescat compares us to Jack Chick. But:

-We don’t make gratuitous dubious connections between mystery pagan religions and various parts of the Roman liturgy like Jack Chick frequently does.
-We are not King-James-Only. (We think the KJV is somewhere in the Top 5 or so.)
-We don’t think demons are cute or stupid.
–We would never picture God the Father in an image.
-Our tone is very different. We are focused on the Gospel. (Not that Jack Chick never preaches the Gospel, but he often chooses to go a different direction in many of his tracts targeting Roman Catholicism.)

Yet Chick tracts frequently appear on your administrators and members facebook pages. This is just getting awkward now.

And because I’m the art buff around here… please enjoy this image of God the Father. Might I suggest you avoid museums and fine art. And illustrated bibles. And the Sistine Chapel. Especially the Sistine Chapel. That place literally oozes the Papistry from the walls.

Hendrick van Balen, The Trinity c. 1620

Let me share with you, dear reader, some more about this situation. Recently we have been sharing status updates on our very busy Facebook page of a very general nature. Here are two examples:

So many prolifers love our posters yet reject our ideology…

What they don’t understand is that our ideology creates our posters and causes us to share them in the first place.

Poster like this, to use your own example…

Ah, the rooster. The protestant symbol used in arguments refuting that St. Peter was the rock that Christ used to found His church. He denied Christ three times, you know. Jesus would never pick a hater to run His church. Never mind that whole forgiveness and redemption thing. Jesus holds a grudge against that “sell out” Peter.

We are frequently rebuked for acknowledging theological divisions between us and other anti-abortion groups and advised to stop talking about those divisions for the sake of focusing on what we all have in common: saving babies. The primary problem with that presupposition is that AHA’s primary goal is actually revival through the preaching of the gospel, which, we believe, will change the mindset of a culture that approves of abortion in the first place. We will work alongside those with a different gospel or with no gospel to engage in various actions against abortion, but we will not stop evangelizing those who proclaim a false gospel that cannot save or who proclaim no gospel at all. If that is seen as divisive, so be it. The gospel of Jesus Christ always has been.

Oh. I see. It’s about being right. The saved babies are just a plus. Religious purity is more important to AHA than uniting together to end abortion. I see.

…all kinds of evil against you…

To quote a recent Roman Catholic Facebook critic, we have victimised people with “vicious religious intolerance”. This is entirely unfair and we reject it outright.
The Crescat calls our reasons for criticising the Roman Catholic Church “stupid” (without evidence or supporting argumentation).
How’s this for evil from The Crescat?

Aw. Is someone picking on you for calling a religious organization the whore of Babylon, a satanic religious system, and it’s members idolaters and not real Christians? They decided to call you on it and defend themselves. So unfair! I can see where calling you stupid is so much worse. Are your feelings hurt?

What follows next is the author going on at length ad nauseum about how they aren’t anti-Catholic …

Those who call us “anti-Catholic” are entirely misled

and then goes on to say things like this…

This hypocritical Roman Catholic attitude has been around a long time.

The pro-life movement has been focusing not on the Gospel but on other things – scientific facts about fetal development, voting blocs, pragmatic political considerations, even things like Mary’s rosary.

… and then rants on about the Council of Trent and who has the better version of the New Testament – never mind the fact that the Gospel was spread throughout the known world for three whole centuries before the books of the New Testament were even established. Established by the Catholic Church, might I add. But again, it’s just a long winded pathetic attempt to detract from being called out on their anti-Catholicism.

But it’s ok. I don’t like you either. The pro-life movement does not need the AHA and frankly it’s better off without it. We don’t need the in-fighting, religious intolerance, and bigotry. So kindly, or not, sod off.

The Catholic Church has been fighting abortion since the sixties. In fact, the Catholic Church and Her bishops are the leaders in the fight to end abortion. I think I can safely say the AHA has contributed nothing to the pro-life cause but strife and a few internet memes.

While the AHA is busy making & selling shiny graphics we Catholics are marching on DC every year. While you are spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric at every turn we are busy praying for an end to abortion and helping woman cope with crisis pregnancies through Catholic Social Services. And fighting the HHS mandate. And healing women who’ve had abortions. And a hundred other good and noble things instead of fighting on facebook.

And Catholics are the bad guys? I see self awareness is not the author’s strong suit so let me be the first to suggest that the AHA reevaluate it’s priorities and reconsider who it wants to make enemies with. The Catholic Church is not the enemy nor are Her followers. If Abolish Human Abortion truly wants to see an end to abortion, above all else, they must first recognize that they need the Catholic Church’s voice and numbers, then promptly get over itself.

Bat Shit Crazy

Abolish Human Abortion

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