A few days ago Steve Ray moderated the comments on his blog. Which is fine. I don’t even have them because, as I have explained before, I call most comboxes “IIA’s.” Internet Ignorance Aggregators. And surely, Ray’s web-board is more than sufficient to allow anyone who wants to comment on his statements to do so–of course, I’d likewise say that board has a long-standing reputation as the very definition of being an “IIA,” but that’s a seperate issue. But Ray can do what he wishes with his own comboxes. And in reference to my own blog’s lack of combox IIAs, if making myself available for at least two hours a week live and toll-free on the DL isn’t enough to allow folks to comment, I don’t know what would be.
   In any case, it was what Ray said in announcing his moderation of the combox that I found educational. Here is the graphic he posted with his announcement. Isn’t it…pretty? One thing is for sure: my graphics guys are pros. I pwn my opponents in that field, no question. (If that doesn’t make sense to you, ask someone who is under 25 and who plays video games and understands what “All your base are belong to us” means). Do you get the idea that Ray might be…less than charitable toward “fundamentalism” (however he defines that?). It would seem so, in light of the accompanying text:

Too much spam and too many long-winded posts from anti-Catholic trollers who think they are so important everyone should drop what they’re doing, study their private interpretation of Scripture and spend days accommodating them with long responses to their innumberable questions — and they want it right now! These people are bores. They tend to have no joy, no humor, no patience. They are a waste of time for me and my guests.

   Well, that’s straight forward enough, right? And, of course, it is all personal–nothing about issues, just personal ad-hominem vitriol. Let’s make sure we keep that clear.
   But the contrast of Ray’s prejudice with the issues-oriented presentations you will find here aside, what caught my attention was Ray’s reference to “their private interpretation of Scripture.” I could not help but chuckle at this statement in light of the BAM interview with Jimmy Akin I have been playing on the DL. Those who have been listening will recall that Akin made a clear statement that he knows of only eight texts that Rome has infallibly interpreted. Eight. There are a few more verses than that in the Bible, so…if Ray discusses anything in the Bible other than those eight verses, isn’t he reduced to nothing other than his own “private interpretation of Scripture”? The entire Roman Catholic claim about infallible interpretation of Scripture is rendered rather moot, is it not, by Rome’s failure to produce any kind of meaningful body of infallible interpretation? So what is Ray’s problem with someone posting their “private interpretation” when that is all he can offer as well? If he replies, “Well, there is a magisterial interpretation outside of the infallible interpretation” isn’t it true that such an interpretation can be fallible? And if his objection to these “private interpretations” is that they are fallible and hence a waste of time? But evidently, while biblically-based interpretations are dismissed as a “waste of time,” Roman Catholic interpretations, evidently, are worthwhile. Sorry, but the whole idea seems quite odd, doesn’t it?
   Well, I’m sure it will all be explained when the Ray/Michuta defense of the “logic of the Bodily Assumption” is posted on Thursday…I mean, last Thursday, but maybe by this Thursday. Maybe. We will see.

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