Reflections While Walking in a Protestant Library

or Protestant Intellectual Dishonesty

This Sunday morning I found myself wandering alone through the Library at my families Evangelical Church. I first entered there as it was the one place I could go to pray the Rosary undisturbed (as the rest of the people in the church would probably frown on me doing that there). After finishing my rosary I began to look through the books on the shelves and two caught my eye.

The first was entitled "Heroes of Christianity," listing a variety of famous Christians from St. Paul to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What I found interesting was that St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, and others of that time were mixed with the so-called proto-reformers. The entry on St. Thomas (not that this book ever referred to them as saints except when calling Justin Martyr just that -- Martyr) went so far as to say that he was a genius but much of what he wrote clashed with later beliefs, essentially saying the reformes picked through the Summa and took what they liked. And, like with most Protestants, their entry suggested Bonhoeffer was the only Christian to suffer in the Nazi's Camp, conveniently ignoring people such as St. Maximiliun Kolbe.

The second book was far more interesting. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was written by a man rather unhappy with the Catholic Church. He went to great lengths to prove the Church spent a thousand years persecuting all the real Christians until Martin Luther nailed his wonderful 95 thesis on the Cathedral door and was miraculously saved (by a bunch of rebellios princes who didn't want to be obsequious to the Holy Roman Emporer).

One entry was particularly sad and revealed a lot about the Intellectual Dishonesty that has characterized a lot of Protestantism. The work was chronological, with seventy plus percent dealing with post refromation. Prior to then, he listed the general persecutions but also had a couple of really weird entries. The most absurd was his listing as the Albigenisians as 'reformed Christians' who just wanted to live the pure life Rome was denying to everyone. He spends half a sentence on the Dominicans and Franciscans, then jumps into the Albigenisian
Crusade.

The largest problem? The Albigenisians were Dualist, believing in a good and bad god. Thus they held all matter as evil and believed the primary goal of life was to end it. Thus the enforced suicide, turning it into murder. Men and woman would take the cult's one sacrament, the consolamentum, then their friends would make sure they commited suicide so as not to fall back into sin. This usually involved them keeping the person away from food, even if they wanted it. Of course, they sometimes smothered them with a pillow, just to be quick.

If they were the proto-reformers, that would be a great reason to flee the reformed Church. As it is, they were nothing alike and simply serve those who are intelectually dishonest and offer another example of evil papist persecution. Sadly, this book is still in print and has, in fact, gone under recent revisions adding to it, but not changing any anti-Catholic tripe.