Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Catholic Opponent of Jack Chick Sinks to Levels of Comparable Incoherence ....


I'm obviously not in the least endorsing the theory that Jack Chick believed the fraud Alberto Rivera on. But some ways of opposing it are less coherent than others, and this Novus Ordo* guy who thinks he's better at Catholic Apologetics than I am just did it, showed a low record:

The Catholic Church did not start Islam (Sad Anti-Catholics!)
Catholic Truth | 5 Dec. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT8-Hdo6klc


He starts out by portraying Kent Hovind in a very major glitch and incoherence, I can obviously only agree that is ridiculous of Kent Hovind.

0:27 "find a promising Muslim" It's like the French agent sent to the 13 Colonies in 1760 to find a promising US Citizen to raise a rebellion against England, what was her name again? Oh, wait, she didn't exist .... nor could she have found promosing US Citizens, had she existed ...

1:02 It would be more interesting to investigate how much Catholics, via Crusaders, were responsible for Protestantism.

I mean, more than one prominent Protestant power either was a country having made a participation in Crusades, or came from a Crusader state.

1) England (Richard Coeur de Lion was in the III Crusade)
2) Sweden (King St. Eric and Yarl Birger Crusaded in Finland, thereby helping to unify most of the territory by the latter)
3) Livonia and Curonia (Sword Bearers had grand masters who secularised during the Reformation, their territory didn't remain independent but came to Sweden, in Catholic times basically all of Livonia was Crusader ground, except the Arch Episcopal enclave Riga)
4) Prussia (a Grand Master of the Teutonic order secularised the territories of that order that were enclaves in Poland, and did so by accepting in 1525 the Polish King as liege lord)
5) Orange-Nassau has some history of Protestantising both Netherlands and British Isles, and there was a count of Orange in one of the early Crusades -- however, it seems he was not direct patrilinear ancestor of for instance William of Orange).

You may know there are Orthodox who taunt us with "being the first Protestantism" and when I was away among those guys, this was a thing I pondered.

But this could never come to a wholesale accusation against the Church, realistically, because other Crusaders betrayed the Church too and were opposed in time : Templars, and actually the Teutonic Order had tried to invade Poland in a pseudo-crusade, pretending the tolerance of Samogitians remaining pagans proved the head of state were never real Catholics. And then they were soundly beaten, mostly by Catholics (some of the Czechs may have been Hussites, though).

1:37 "Jack Chick is mentally delusional"

While Protestantism has a huge responsibility for the rise of the evils of Psychiatry, I'd prefer to have fewer Catholics among their accomplices. So, "delusion" being about belief, and madness being about a mismatch between passions and reasons, I think the word, concept of a symptom etc "delusional" and the noun "delusion" should be dropped.

Other point: are you pointing to every spirit angelic or soul in Hell being an ex-person or did you simply not know that Jack Chick had met his maker, even if that could have been somewhat briefly and on not so friendly terms?

Born Jack Thomas Chick
April 13, 1924 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died October 23, 2016 (aged 92)
Alhambra, California, U.S.


He died a few months after Sister Clare Crockett, whom I am not praying for, but to.

Catholic Truth
@CatholicTruthOfficial
Thank you for the comment. Yes, we know that he died. We have prayed for him.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
OK, @CatholicTruthOfficial ... was your "he is etc" a glitch, then?


2:10 You might be missing two more points.
1) Catholic Palestinians actually living there all year round;
2) The story is arguably about the time when the Persian King Chosroes II briefly helped Jews persecute Christians.

Toward the beginning of his reign, Khosrow II had good relations with the Byzantines. However, when in 602 Emperor Maurice was murdered by his General Phocas (602–610), who usurped the Roman (Byzantine) throne, Khosrow launched an offensive against Constantinople: ostensibly to avenge Maurice's death, but his aim clearly included the annexation of as much Byzantine territory as was feasible.[1] Khosrow II, along with Shahrbaraz and his other best generals, quickly captured Dara and Edessa in 604, and recaptured lost territory in the north, which made the Sasanian–Byzantine borders go back to the pre-591 frontier before Khosrow gave Maurice territory in return for military aid against Bahram Chobin. After having reclaimed lost territory, Khosrow withdrew from the battlefield and handed military operations to Shahrbaraz and Shahin Vahmanzadegan. The Sasanian armies then invaded and plundered Syria and Asia Minor, and in 608 advanced into Chalcedon.

In 610, Heraclius revolted against Phocas and killed him, crowning himself as Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. He then tried to negotiate peace with Khosrow II by sending diplomats to his court. Khosrow, however, rejected their offer and said: "That kingdom belongs to me, and I shall enthrone Maurice's son, Theodosius, as emperor. [As for Heraclius], he went and took the rule without our order and now offers us our own treasure as gifts. But I shall not stop until I have him in my hands." Khosrow then had the diplomats executed.[31]

In 613 and 614, General Shahrbaraz besieged and captured Damascus and Jerusalem, and the True Cross was carried away in triumph. Soon afterwards, Shahin marched through Anatolia, defeating the Byzantines numerous times; he conquered Egypt in 618. The Byzantines could offer but little resistance, as they were torn apart by internal dissensions, and pressed by the Avars and Slavs, who were invading the Empire from across the Danube River.[32] In 622/3, Rhodes and several other islands in the eastern Aegean fell to the Sasanians, threatening a naval assault on Constantinople.[33][34][35][36] Such was the despair in Constantinople that Heraclius considered moving the government to Carthage in Africa.[37]


A little later:

"Following the Third Perso-Turkic War in 627, Heraclius defeated the Iranian army at the Battle of Nineveh and advanced towards Ctesiphon. Khosrow II fled from his favorite residence, Dastagird (near Ctesiphon), without offering resistance.[32] Heraclius then captured Dastagird and plundered it."


So, Jerusalem having been captured by this crook well before the Hegira, and Catholics being allied to a people who later became Muslims, and Mohammed actually appreciating the Catholic Emperor Heraclius (that's a fact, not a Jack Chick theory), could be the kind of things that Alberto Rivera (whoever he really was, his past as a Jesuit seems to have been invented) or the guys he was frontman for were spinning on.

2:21 Thank you for mentioning the Seldjuk Turks, but the question of the origins of Islam obviously predates the time when they, in the name of Islam, had already become our allies. You comment on a story set in early 600's by mentioning very different circumstances in the decades or years or months leading up to 1099 ... obviously, just a little glitch on your part, right?

Catholic Truth
I'm not sure what this comment means. The Seljuk Turks came long after Islam was started, but was one of the reasons the Crusades were called. They were also one of the reasons the Byzantine Empire called for the Pope to help them, and the church getting involved in the Crusades in the first place. This was the first and main reason of the 3 reasons.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Sure, @CatholicTruthOfficial . I dispute nothing of that.

But it's totally irrelevant to the situation back in early 600's when Mohammed was actually if not an active ally, at least a sympathiser with the Proto-Crusader Heraclius, who was fighting another type of infidel, namely Chosroes II.

And THAT is the time period Alberto Rivera's and Jack Chick's and Kent Hovind's misinformation of the matter is relevant to.

A bit like you cannot explain the beginning of Protestantism by appealing to a situation in which a Catholic Young Earth Creationist is suspected of being a "dupe of Kent Hovind" and hence a Protestant.


* Correcting myself, he actually goes to Latin Mass, but he's against Rad Trads:

Latin Mass Catholics vs. Rad Trads
Catholic Truth | 14 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK5b2d6j984


The phrase "Novus Ordo" still appears in the URL, but I removed it from the title.

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