Family Resemblance [1.5]

Let me say something before we go any further. What's the difference between saying that a documented Roman Catholic doctrine is actually contrary to what the Bible says on the same subject, and saying something like John Edwards' official campaign blogger is documented as saying?

That is: are both of these things anti-catholicism? It's an important question to answer because I promise you: when we get through parts 2 and 3 here, somebody is going to try to tar me with that epithet because it's a glib way of not dealing with what I am about to say.

Here's the litmus test, as far as I'm concerned: in the set of people consisting of "me" and "Amanda Marcotte", one of us is trying to demonstrate the error of another for the sake of reforming or saving them and the other is venting screed and vulgarity for the sake of villainizing someone they see as socially dangerous. Ironically, I'm not the latter. I'm not trying to villainize anyone.

And my track record points that out. Consider my review of Prayers for the Assassin. In it, I said this:

you read it here first: his portrayal of Catholics is shameful. Whether you're a hard-reformed advocate or not, to read Ferrigno's description of Catholics as the cause of moral decay in the sense he presents it is simply far-fetched and somewhat insulting to what they represent sociologically.

And when John Paul II died, I said this about him:

Let's make sure that I say this as clearly as possible: Wojtyla was a player in world politics. He had the ear (and in some cases, the consciences) of major world leaders, and the hearts of hundreds of millions -- and perhaps billions -- of people of all faiths. He campaigned against materialistic excesses, denouncing both the totalitarian effacement of human rights under communism and the libertarian effacement of human dignity under capitalism. He was instrumental (even before he was Pope) in political dissent against Soviet Russia, and was an ally of Ronald Reagan in the end of the Cold War.

Wojtyla was also a voice of moral reasoning who commanded the most-bully pulpit of them all. He split no hairs, and gave no quarter. There was no one who didn't know where he stood on the matters of the sanctity of life, marriage and human sexuality, the morality of war, and the authority of his church. Wojtyla never shied away from controversy when he believed a critical moral principle was at stake.

That's hardly calling for the formation of Catholic ghettos or the fear-mongering screed of someone who thinks a moral objection to contraception leads to a Margaret Atwood novel.

And in that, I reject the idea that active Protestant apologetics which focus on the factual comparison of Scripture to Doctrine is "anti-catholic". You have to do more than break out the ink pad and stamp people on the forehead when they tell you that you have made a mistake -- otherwise, you are simply doing what you say they are doing: acting in a bigotted and biased manner without regard to the facts.

If you need more about that, you can read this.