Greetings < cough > from Toronto

   Since I will be addressing current issues in hermeneutics by 6am my time in the morning (I feel for these folks, I really do), I will be brief. Uneventful flight, but this cold/sinus thing is holding on longer than I at first expected it to. I’m sure many of you are in the same boat (kids go back to school, share every disease known to man, bring it home, and being the loving children they are, share with their parents). I only have a few more of these seasons to survive (youngest is a senior in high school), but who knows when I’ll start the series all over again with…the next generation?
   When I got here I was informed of yet another example of the utter bankruptcy of the RC “on line apologetics” people. Some fellow with the last name of Lilac (or so his e-mail seems to indicate) was running about attacking my character once again. Why? Was it because he was able to refute one of the many points I’ve made in the past week on this blog? Was it because he was the first to actually step outside the incredibly shallow anachronistic reading of ancient sources by modern Roman Catholics and actually provide a meaningful contextual case for Rome’s claims on the disputed points? No, of course not. Instead, when I had added some quick quotes from my IRC popup files at the end of a single blog article the reference to one of the quotes from Augustine got deleted–the quote was perfectly accurate, it just didn’t have the proper citation on it (similar to RyanL putting the wrong source for one of his allegations of ad-hominem on my part). The citation was correct, the meaning the same, just a single citation was missing. Well, that’s enough to refute everything I’ve ever said according to this fellow! Yes indeed! Perfection in citation, typing, cutting and pasting is necessary or everything you’ve ever said is in error! There you go! A system that has used grossly fraudulent sources like the Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidoran Decretals to build the central elements of its very own authority structure, that has falsely claimed the “unanimous consent” of the fathers when there was no such unanimous consent, that has been led at times (during the Pornocracy) by murderers and adulterers, or by the most ungodly of men (the corrupt popes of the 14th and 15th centuries), or even by condemned heretics (Honorius)—all of this can be dismissed with the wave of the hand and the glib claim that infallibility does not mean impeccability, BUT, if I lose a line in copying from a popup text file while rushing to post a blog article so I can try to get things wrapped up before doing the DL and packing and heading out of town, well, THAT is enough to disprove everything I’ve ever said!
   I honestly do not know what has caused this recent upsurge in activity in the Roman Catholic area, but one thing is for certain: the quality of those participating in that area has fallen tremendously over the years. In years past on line folks would actually try to be civil and would try to make a serious attempt at doing something other than just repeating mantras, but today those folks seem to have vanished only to be replaced by triumphalists who read a few paragraphs in secondary sources, fill them with their modern dogmas, and proclaim the case closed. I, for one, am unimpressed, and as events have shown time and again in the past, if these brave souls were to attempt to prove their point face to face, well, we know what happens.