Stand Alone Pages on 'Musings of an Old Curmudgeon'

31 October 2021

A Comment on 'You Can Argue With a Marxist, but Not With a Catholic Progressive.'

This was posted on FishEaters Forum as a comment on Fr Zed's post You Can Argue With a Marxist, but Not With a Catholic Progressive. A good read!

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I've tried to talk to progressive (read: modernist) Catholics before. It usually goes something like this:

Prog: The Catholic Church needs to change her teaching on [a social issue]!
Me: Why?
Prog: People are leaving the Church because of her teaching on [a social issue].
Me: And? Truth isn't determined by majority vote.
Prog: Well, anyway, it's [homophobic, bigoted, or some other snarl word modernists use].
Me: That doesn't mean it isn't Truth. Since when do Catholics base what we believe off what other people think about our beliefs?
Prog: Well, uh... the Church needs to move with the times. Are you a trad or something?
Me: Yes, I'm a traditionalist Catholic. Why do you ask?
Prog: Oh, so you're one of those crazy fundies that hate Pope Francis and Vatican II.
Me: We aren't here to talk about Vatican II, we're here to talk about [a social issue]. Can I show you what the Church Fathers had to say about [a social issue]?
Prog: The Church Fathers were old white men and had patriarchal interpretations of Christianity. You need to decolonise your religion.
Me: Wait, what? St Cyril of Alexandria and St Augustine, who I'm quoting here, were both Africans. Besides, hating white people is still racism.
Prog: If you're so obsessed with "tradition" and "Church Fathers", anyway, why don't you look at what [a random heretical sect] thought about [a social issue]?
Me: Because Catholics from that era, like St Epiphanius of Salamis, said that [a random heretical sect] were heretics.
Prog: You need to stop using terms like "heretics", they promote Christian supremacy.
Me: What? Extra Ecclesiam nulli salus is dogma in any case.
Prog: You need to have more love for other spiritualities and to stop being such a bigot. Remember that Jesus said not to judge.
Me: Yes, but He said that when he was criticising the Pharisees' hypocrisy. If you want to look at what the Bible says about [a social issue], look at these verses.
Prog: Those verses were mistranslated.
Me: No, they weren't.
Prog: Well, things have changed in society since the time of the Bible.
Me: If you don't accept the Bible's teachings and if you don't accept the Church Fathers' teachings, what teachings do you accept?
Prog: My conscience, of course! My conscience tells me that every Catholic before 1960 was wrong about [a social issue] and only Fr James Martin knows what she should really teach. Besides, I'm going to block you. I don't talk to bigots.

These are all arguments I've heard from self-described "liberal", "reformist" or "progressive" Catholics throughout the years. More often than not, you can't argue with them because they are so set in their belief that everyone who disagrees with them is wrong and only their fellow modernists are right.

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