A response to ‘To Catholics with Love’

Fri, Jun 8. 2012

Editor: Permit me to use your publication as a forum for catechetics and adult education. In the Catholic Church, admonishing sinners and counselling the ignorant are spiritual works of mercy, and so, I proceed. In the aforementioned letter, Mr Ballantyne presented several quotes as proof that the Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is God.{{more}} I found that almost all these quotes appear on an anti-Catholic website called “Let There Be Light ministries”; the link follows: http://www.lightministries.com/id523.htm. To have quoted from this site and not credit it constitutes plagiarism. Since he got the quote from the site and not directly from the document quoted, the site must be credited. This is one of the first things university students learn, and surely someone in broadcasting should know this.

In my response to Anesia Baptiste, I specifically requested that anyone presenting quotes on teachings of the Catholic Church should take said quotes from sources written in the late 20th century onward, so that the documents themselves would be easily available for reference. Mr Ballantyne chose to ignore this request, choosing instead to quote one obscure website, which itself quotes obscure sources, one of which is almost 400 years old. By quoting the above website, Mr Ballantyne is repeating what others are saying about the documents, and that is all he can do. Those documents are not available in St Vincent. I, however, in my investigation, came across a website that responded quite well to the allegations made by the Let There Be Light author: http://klaravonassisi.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/the-truth-about-the-anti-catholic-charge-of-lord-god-the-pope/.

Having never seen the documents himself and being unable to verify they even exist Mr Ballantyne is quite dishonest in presenting them as proof. If he wants documents he can access himself, Mr Ballantyne can go to Cathedral of the Assumption, Kingstown, or to the Catholic Pastoral Centre, Edinboro, or to the Religiously Yours bookshop and see what they have on hand. For example, I highly recommend the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It succinctly lays out all the articles of faith and morals that concern the Catholic Church; there is no more authoritative text. The Catechism presents the whole Faith in a form that is easily referenced.

I appeal to Mr Ballantyne to stop relying on what he reads on anti-Catholic websites as proof of what the Church teaches, when excellent primary sources are available to him. He presents himself as an authority on the Catholic faith, yet he seems never to have heard of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is available right here in SVG. Has he ever been Catholic? Has he ever chatted with local Catholic priests or religious about their faith? Has he ever studied the Catholic faith at a Catholic institution? If his answer to these questions is no (and I strongly suspect it is), then why does he presume to tell Catholics about Catholic Church? He is as much an expert on Catholicism as the average Vincentian is on Russian spacecraft. His continued delusional state is like that of a man, trained only as a mechanic, trying pass himself off as a cardiologist; he has only enough tools and knowledge to fool himself.

If the Church has been teaching that the Pope is God for all 2000 years of its existence, then why can’t Mr Ballantyne find any legally sane, adult Catholic alive today who believes that the Pope is GOD? The answer is he can’t, because the Church never taught this, and no Catholic ever believed this. Other egregious errors in Mr Ballantyne’s letter betray his ignorance of the Catholic faith, but we will address these at another time, so as not to overwhelm readers.

Salt