Hatred Towards the Catholic Church by Some Who Have Left Her

Jeff Miller also picked up on Mark Shea's observation that I mentioned the other day:

Yesterday Mark Shea blogged One weird phenomenon I've noticed on Catholic boards... is the strange compulsion so many ex-Catholics (especially Fundamentalists) have to linger around the Catholic Church saying "I'm so glad I'm not Catholic anymore."

This indeed is interesting since there are many things that the Church has in common with individual Protestant denominations and there is not a equal vigor to attack them. For example infant baptism is done by some Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Orthodox churches; Orthodox and High-Church Anglicans have Iconography and statues of saints. Almost every Catholic practice is practiced in one form or another in Protestant and Orthodox churches. The only exception of course is the papacy and I don't understand how this could bring about such anger. I couldn't find a anti-Orthodox site that met the same hatred as the multiple anti-Catholic sites available. In fact the only anti-Orthodox hatred I found was for Orthodox Jews, just more of the same idiotic anti-Semitism. It is a great sadness that these people were so ineptly catechized that they now hate something that truly exists only in their imaginations. Why do Chick Tracks present Alberto Rivera as an ex-priest when they know he was never a priest? Why do these groups publish sensational stories that any amount of investigation would prove false? No answer here, I don't understand the motivation. I would be curious to see Gregory Popcak, St. Blog's resident shrink and sociologist, tackle this phenomenon.

For many it is, yes, the papacy. AFAIK, both Martin Luther and John Calvin blamed the papacy for all the evils — or what they perceived to be evils — in the known universe Christianity. Luther's propaganda, in particular, spawned almost five centuries of unreasoning hatred. I have sometimes tried to get anti-Catholic bigots on message boards to direct their attention towards the Orthodox, whose beliefs apart from the papacy are nearly identical to those of the Catholic Church. No dice. They couldn't care less that there are Christians who reject the papacy as much as they themselves do, yet believe in apostolic succession, sacrificing priesthood, baptismal regeneration, confession of sins to priests, etc. Actually, I should not say they couldn't care less: they really don't want to deal with such knowledge, since it undermines their fundamental belief, that the papacy is the cause of all evils in Christianity.

Why do so many — not all — ex-Catholic Protestants hate the Catholic Church with mindless vitriolic hatred? (I do not know any ex-Protestant Catholics, nor have I even heard of any, who feel that way towards their former church.) I have pondered this question for years. And I do mean years.

I think it is Divine Retribution.

Their mindless vitriolic hatred is a punishment from God for leaving His Catholic Church.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 09/25/02 09:55:30 PM
Categorized as Classic.