Here’s a response to my recent blog post, Reminding Patrick Madrid of Rome’s Blueprints
“I am shocked that someone with the reputation as Swan prints something so idiotic. Its obvious his writing is geared to the sheep of protestantism unwilling to give any coherent thought to any subject. I just can’t believe you people buy it. Its not different than when I watch all those people fawn over Obama as a savior without grasping the garbage coming out of his mouth. Here what you want, see what you want. Just so long as its anti catholic, your good.”
I’m continually shocked as well. I really should submit to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is infallible, and that she produces true unity among God’s people. Sure Catholics disagree, but that’s because Catholics have been told they have the right to disagree by a higher infallible authority. That makes disagreeing acceptable. Protestants don’t have the right to disagree, because the Magisterium does not allow them to.
Seriously though, the amount of denial that some Roman Catholics will put forth rather than admit the obvious is amazing. Recall in my article I cited Patrick Madrid stating, “There is confusion reigning among Protestantism, all of them claiming to go by the Bible alone and none of them being able to meet entirely on what the Bible means.” Yet, what do we find in Roman Catholicism? Maybe a small handful of verses with an infallible interpretation, if even that? Some Catholic theologians even deny the Church has defined the literal sense of any single passage.
And do those infallibly defined verses even matter? A few months back I documented Tim Staples saying:
“For 1500 years, the Church always understood that nobody has the authority… just as Saint Peter tells us…of private interpretation…. to think that you or I can run around and interpret the Bible however we want and start our own church and that sorta thing that we see in Protestantism… that is completely alien to the Christian Church for the first 1500 years of the Christian era…”
And then also stating, “There is a lot of freedom with regard to the interpretation of Scripture,” and also affirming that even the verses infallibly defined by the Roman Catholic Church “are left open to other interpretations as long as you don’t deny that which has been infallibly interpreted.”
Tim’s comment shows Catholic claims to infallible interpretation are chimerical. For all the claims to interpretive certainty, they typically can’t point to an established authoritative interpretation of any verse. They themselves then provide their own interpretations of Scripture.
Madrid’s “blueprint for anarchy” argument is false. When applied to Romanism, one does not find the goods claimed. The argument is put forth as a diversion to Rome’s authority claims. If a Catholic apologist can keep you busy putting out fires elsewhere, the claim of infallibility and certainty are never challenged. That is, they can’t cogently defend a positive presentation of their own position.
