Date: 19 Jan 1992 21:39:00 -0700 Sender: (CHRISTIA) Reply-To: Practical Christian Life (CHRISTIA) From: The Nuzz (V063KC44) To: Multiple recipients of list CHRISTIA (CHRISTIA) Subject: wrt/Boettner's accuracy Reynolds writes... r> Mark Fuller posted a series of quotes purporting to show how intolerant r> the Roman Catholic Church is of non-Catholics. Please remember that the r> source of those quotes is not Catholic publications but Boettner's _Roman r> Catholicism_, which as Marty & I have both pointed out is of questionable r> accuracy. As far as I have seen, the sources of the quotes were attributed to RCC publications. Although the material was quoted in Boettner's _Roman Catholicism_; the sources that Boettner attributes are the original RCC documents. He didn't, for example, make an item up and insert it. The question that has been raised is not whether the source is from the RCC or from Boettner, the question is whether Boettner has been honest in the way that he has reported his sources. Reynolds quotes Catholic Answers' review of the book in question: :... ...: r> It is on a thorough reading that one's attitude changes. r> Then it becomes clear that the author's antagonism to the Church has r> seriously compromised his intellectual objectivity. What his book r> suffers from is a real lack of scholarly rigor. He accepts at face value r> virtually any claim made by an opponent of the Church. Even when r> verification of a charge is easy, he does not bother to check up. If he r> finds something unflattering, he prints it." r> r> "In the whole book there are only two dozen footnotes, all of them r> added to recent reprintings to reflect minor changes in the Catholic r> Church since the Second Vatican Council. Within the text biblical r> passages are properly cited, but references to Catholic works are so r> vague as to discourage checking. A certain pope might be alleged to have r> said something - but there is no citation. A Catholic author of the r> seventeenth century might have claimed such-and-so - but again no r> reference...." Notice that Catholic Answers does not say that Boettner has questionable accuracy. They state that Boettner is not intellectually objective, that his book lacks scholarly rigor, that he prints unflattering charges, that he doesn't have enough footnotes and that his citations are vague. Aside from the fact that Catholic Answers argues that Boettner's book suffers in certain areas, they do not say that his book is inaccurate. Lack of footnotes and rigor does not translate into inaccuracy. Marty Helgesen writes... mh> You give your source as Loraine Boettner's ROMAN CATHOLI- mh> CISM, which you think is a reliable book. It is not. It is a mh> notoriously inaccurate anti-Catholic book written by a man who mh> has no real understanding of Catholicism. I have not read the mh> book. My knowledge of its contents is drawn from a chapter of mh> Karl Keating's CATHOLICISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM: THE ATTACK ON mh> "ROMANISM" BY "BIBLE CHRISTIANS" and the page references to mh> Boettner's book are from Keating. First, I'm impressed with Marty's candor. I don't know how to take the statement that a book is notoriously inaccurate anti-Catholic and that the author has no real understanding of Catholicism and then state he hasn't bothered to read the book. Next, before Marty introduces the notoriously inaccurate anti-Catholic book, he mentions two other books: _AMERICAN FREEDOM AND CATHOLIC POWER_ by Paul Blanshard and _AWFUL DISCLOSURES_ by Maria Monk. Both have been rather discredited. But neither has anything to do with Boettner's book. It would appear that Marty is try to imply guilt by association... mention two discredited books, and then imply that they are the sample of which... mh> B is an example. For example, he cites a book as saying mh> that Eusebius's ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, (ca. 325 A.D.) contains mh> no mention of St. Peter being bishop of Rome (p.118) Keating mh> replies that in the Loeb Classical Library edition there are such mh> references in v.1, p.144,190 and v.2, p.48. (I have not checked mh> Loeb myself.) I have to wonder what Keating was reading. In Boettner's _Roman Catholicism_, p.118, the passage in question reads... ``Legend was busy in the life of Peter. The one which tells of his 25 years' episcopate in Rome has its roots in the apocryphal stories originating with a heretical group, the Ebionites, who rejected much of the supernatural content of the New Testament, and the account is discredited both by its origin and its internal inconsistencies. The first reference that might be given any credence at all is found in the writings of Eusebius, and that reference is doubted even by some Roman Catholic writers. Eusebius wrote in Greek about the year 310, and his work was translated by Jerome. A seventeenth century historian, William Cave (1637-1713), chaplain to King Charles II, of England, in his most important work, _The Lives of the Apostles_, says: `It cannot be denied that in St. Jerome's translation it is expressly said that he (Peter) continued twenty-five years as bishop in that city; but then it is evident that this was his own addition, who probably set things down as the report went in his time, *no such thing being found in the Greek copy of Eusebius.*' '' Boettner cites a source that states that Peter was mentioned as bishop of Rome in the Jerome translation, but that this was not in the Greek version. That is not what Marty has portrayed Boettner as saying in his notoriously inaccurate anti-Catholic book. Just for background: Eusebius does mention Peter at Rome. But he does not mention him as bishop of Rome for 25 years. In Book 2, chapter 15 and 16 of the _Ecclesiastical History_, Peter descends on Rome to establish there the `divine word' and rid the city of Simon Magus. In Chapter 16 he `commissions' Mark to write his gospel. In Book 3, chapter 2, it reads, ``After the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome. Paul makes mention of him in his epistle from Rome to Timothy, in the address at the close of the epistle, saying, `Eubulus and Prudens, and Linus, and Claudia, salute thee.' '' mh> B quotes the Catholic Encyclopedia, but only when it suits mh> him. He says that at the First Vatican Council Bishop Strossmay- mh> er gave a speech attacking papal infallibility, which concluded, "I mh> conclude victoriously, with history, with reason, with logic, with mh> good sense, and with a Christian conscience, that Jesus Christ did mh> not confer any supremacy on St. Peter, and that the bishops of Rome mh> did not become sovereigns of the church, but only by confiscating mh> one by one all the rights of the episcopate." (p.34) However, the mh> Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Strossmayer says that this is mh> a forgery by an ex-priest named Jose Augustin de Escudero. (v.14, mh> p. 316) I have checked this reference. It is there. This isn't too clear to me. Was there a speech made in the first place? Did Strossmayer or Jose Augustin de Escudero give the speech? Or was the record of the speech by Strossmayer changed to what Jose Augustin de Escudero said? Or, was there not a speech made but Jose Augustin de Escudero reported something that wasn't said? mh> You quote from B: "'The true Church can tolerate no strange mh> churches besides herself', (Catholic Encyclopedia, vol xiv, p766.)" mh> Let's look at that statement in context: "If Christian truth like mh> every other truth is incapable of double dealing, it must be as mh> intolerant as the multiplication table or geometry. The Church, mh> therefore, demands in virtue of her Divine commission to teach the mh> unconditional acceptance of all the truths of salvation which she mh> preaches and proposes for belief, proclaiming to the world with her mh> Divine Founder the stern warning: 'He that believeth and is mh> baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be mh> condemned.' (Mark, xvi, 16). If by conceding a convenient right of mh> option or a falsely understood freedom of faith, she were to leave mh> everyone at liberty to accept or reject her dogmas, her mh> constitution, and her sacraments as the existing differences of mh> religions compel the modern state to do, she would not only fail in mh> her Divine mission, but would end her own life by voluntary mh> suicide. As the true God can tolerate no strange gods, the true mh> Church of Christ can tolerate no strange Churches beside herself." Looking at it in context did not change the meaning of the quote. The full context only amplifies the portion that was quoted. It also shows that what was reported was an accurate quote. :... ...: mh> If B himself put the quotations marks around the words he was mh> dishonest. Quotation marks are supposed to indicate that the words mh> within them are the actual words of the person quoted. If you put mh> the quotation marks around the words you were very careless at mh> best. At the introduction of this, Boettner writes that, ``...here are its :the Syllabus of Errors: claims in plain language. Some of the most distinctive articles in their affirmative form are:'' And then lists a few of the articles, with quotes around them. Should he have put quotes around them? Probably not. Although the reader was informed that what followed was in plain language and in the affirmative form, which indicates that it would not be a word for word portrayal. However, since quotation marks are to be used only when the actual words are being quoted, the only `proper' time that quotation marks should appear around an article from the Syllabus of Errors is when it appears in the original Latin. mh> I also wrote, "For example the 77th proposition reads, 'It is mh> no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be mh> established to the exclusion of all others.' (Compare that to the mh> version you quoted: "It is necessary even in the present day that mh> the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the mh> state, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.") The words mh> I put in quotation marks are the actual words of the Syllabus, in mh> English translation. The words you had in quotation marks states mh> what the author thought the Syllabus means. He was mistaken, but mh> even if he were correct his words should not be in quotation marks. I don't see the difference between the two portrayals. If one holds that ``It is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be established to the exclusion of all others,'' that is considered to be an error. The Syllabus of Errors is a list of errors that a member of the RCC cannot hold. If we were to phrase this in the affirmative, what would the meaning be? ~~That it is expedient that the Catholic religion should be established to the exclusion of all others~~. This is not too far from the portrayal that Boettner gives as, "It is necessary even in the present day that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship." Although the phrase `only religion of the state' does not carry complete equivalence of `established to the exclusion of all others,' the meaning is there.