I had almost forgotten the joy that is internet Catholic apologists.  Then, I asked one simple question and get the full wrath of them brought upon me.

And it wasn’t even a doctrinal issue.

Dave Armstrong has this interesting habit of labelling everyone who disagrees with his view of Catholicism as an “anti-Catholic.”  So I asked: “Since everyone who disagrees with you is automatically an ‘anti-Catholic’ can I just call you an ‘anti-Calvinist’ from now on?”

Dave decided to first ignore that, leaving it to Jason Cebalo to charge me with not reading anything Dave writes (yeah, that must be why I see how many people he calls anti-Catholic; because I’m not reading anything he writes).  He claimed that Dave calls Steve Hays an anti-Catholic because Hays supposedly says Catholics aren’t Christian.

This despite Steve’s direct statements to the opposite that he does, indeed, view salvation as possible within Roman Catholicism.

Jason did later appologize for his “intemperate” tone, and finally concluded by stating:

Its just that the aproach of certain Calvinists to the whole “anti” thing really annoys me.

 

To this final quote, Dave Armstrong finally responded to what I said by saying:

 

I didn’t have the patience to answer the post, so I appreciate your doing so.

 

Gee, thanks, Dave.

Armstrong continues:

 

I made a clear distinction between anti-Catholic and Protestant in a recent post on Triablogue (as I’ve done probably 300 times by now in many many papers). These anti-Catholic clowns half the time don’t even read what we write, let alone comprehend it.

 

Yet Dave’s “distinction” is this:

This distorts what I wrote, which was that Steve might reason himself out of anti-Catholicism, not Protestantism. The two are not identical. The vast majority of Protestants are not anti-Catholics.

But this doesn’t show us how Dave is distinguishing between the two.  He is only mentioning that he does do so.

But we don’t know the inner workings of Dave Armstrong’s mind.  How are we to know how he distinguishes between anti-Catholics and Protestants in general?  The only thing we have are his words.

Based on other things he has written, it seems to boil down to this: if you object to anything Dave Armstrong says about Catholicism, you are an anti-Catholic; if you don’t say anything, you can still be a Protestant.  True Prots will just shut up and stay on the sidelines and not meddle wtih important folks, such as Dave Armstrong.

What Armstrong and his followers don’t realize is that the term “anti-Catholic” is a very specifically designed term.  It is their attempt to impute irrational bias onto the Protestant such that the Protestant is just a hate-filled, bitter person who is incapable of seeing the truth of Catholicism.  Thus, he is forced to rage in his anti-Catholic pride, unable to see the light of reason.

Armstrong never considers that maybe there are people who just disagree with him.  No, if you disagree you must be disagreeing out of hateful spite.  It must be because you’re an anti-Catholic, not because you’re confident of your own position.

Calling someone an anti-Catholic is like calling someone an anti-semite.  The connotations are the same, and Armstrong fully knows that.

Nor is Armstrong alone.  He has much company in the internet realm of Catholic apologists.  For instance, listen to the rantings of Roman Catholic Miki in her “discussion” with James White.  Compare that to what you read from her and others here. Check out the ad hominem used in criticizing James White here. Suddenly, the claims of folks like Dave Armstrong seem to ring dreadfully thin.

Given recent history, the first Catholic response to this will be to say that I’m just a James White sychophant.  This despite the fact that White and I disagree on some very important issues (I, after all, am a Presbyterian, not a Reformed Baptist).  No, I must be one of his mindless #pros drones (after all, I once was a constant feature in #prosapologian!).  Thus, I am obviously just another one of those anti-Catholic, hate-mongerers…dismissed out of hand by the application of a stereotype that exists only in the minds of rabid anti-Calvinists, such as Dave Armstrong and his sychophants.

I find it sad on both sides, actually.  I would love to live in the idealistic dream-world where everyone listened to the strengths of the arguments instead of focusing on the personality of the proponent of the argument.  Sometimes I think James White goes a little too far; but he’s downright restrained compared to the folks that write about him.  And White, at least, doesn’t say something without the ability to back it up with examples (thus, even when he engages in ad hominem (which is nowhere near as often as folks like Armstrong claim), his statements are still factually true).  This is not the case in reverse.

Frankly, the state of internet Roman Catholic apologists is one of the best arguments against their position that I can think of.