Good Conversion Story

From Evangelical to CATHOLIC! (Anti-Catholic joins Catholic Church!)
Catholic Truth | 1 July 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SmiSmP6u-o

9:35 I paused the video for a moment while looking up Dave Hunt.

Now, his book came in 1994, when there was already an Antipope Wojtyla in place, but his arguments are atrocious.

I found no detailed preview on Amazon, but on Chick dot com I found one.

Now, let's take the last charge.

Pope Nicholas I (858-67) declared: "We [popes] alone have the power to bind and to loose, to absolve Nero and to condemn him; and Christians cannot, under penalty of excommunication, execute other judgment than ours, which alone is infallible." In commanding one king to destroy another, Nicholas wrote:

We order you, in the name of religion, to invade his states, burn his cities, and massacre his people....27

Now I look up footnote 27.

Cormenin, History of the Popes, p. 243, as cited in R.W. Thompson, op. cit., p. 368.

I look up Cormenin. While I do, I also look up Nicholas I. He's a saint. If the charge is true, this looks bad. I find Cormenin on wiki.

Louis Marie de la Haye, Vicomte de Cormenin (January 6, 1788 in Paris – May 6, 1868 in Paris) was a French jurist and political pamphleteer.

What does his political carreere tell us of his reliability?

In 1828 Cormenin entered the Chamber of Deputies as member for Orléans, took his seat in the Left Center, and began a vigorous opposition to the government of Charles X. As he was not gifted with the qualifications of the orator, he seldom appeared at the tribune; but in the various committees he defended all forms of popular liberties, and at the same time delivered, in a series of powerful pamphlets, under the pseudonym of Timon, the most formidable blows against tyranny and all political and administrative abuses. After the revolution of July 1830, Cormenin was one of the 221 who signed the protest against the elevation of the Orléans dynasty to the throne; and he resigned both his office in the council of state and his seat in the chamber. He was, however, soon re-elected deputy, and now voted with the extreme Left.

Yes, that's the kind of guy Dave Hunt was relying on ...

10:15 Dave Hunt, James Milton Carroll, Ruckman ... I think Alexander Hislop takes the cake, though.

1) He pretended to be well informed about Old Babylonian paganism, but this claim he made while cuneiform was not yet completely deciphered yet (perhaps ideas are still being corrected, I think I have seen one and the same guy described as Aram-Sin, Naram-Sin and Naram-Lin in a few years on wikipedia);
2) His parallels between Catholicism and Paganism are just so like Zeitgeist the Movie! Probably he boosted Atheism a lot by people generalising the approach.

12:51 Just in case anyone has spread the story of me on St. John's Feast 2001, I burned a lot of (maybe ten) booklets of the Litany to the Sacred Heart.

It was not and will never be I'm against that devotion, but when I fondly had opened one, I found how the man I considered my bishop had translated "God Holy Ghost" and I don't fancy feminist theology.

In correct Swedish it's Gud, Helige Ande.

He had translated "Heliga" ... an adjectival form used for non-masculines (feminines, mascu-feminine inanimates, neutres).

I never sent him the letter explaining my gesture, but the same evening I prayed the Litany in Latin or German or both, in reparation for his bad translation.

(and for any kind of sin I could have incurred in the burning)

14:25 That's a probable way in which I'm NOT getting a wife.

14:48 I'm noting the fine shade in JHN.

He didn't say "is to become Catholic". Some become Modernist "Protestants" ... I'm sure Gretta Vosper is not what he meant by Protestants. Lots of those in the Church of Sweden.

Some become Atheists, maybe Jews or Muslims.

Ceasing to be Protestant is not exactly the same as becoming Catholic, but to me it was. Modernism and Apostasy were not on my Smorgasbord.

At 14 I was basically Evangelical, also still unbaptised. Between Christmas and New Year after I was 16, when reading Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, I was decided to be Catholic.

Between that, I had read lots of other history, but it was Eco who convinced me, the Inquisition was not targetting mainly Evangelicals (the Waldensians have kind of an affinity, but they were never the main target).

20:14 Gavin Ortlund is pretty close to very conservative Church of Sweden.

I could feel the bad faith in anti-Catholic comments from such people, well read, but always finding some little reason to "Re-nay" against Catholicism (like unfortunately René Goscinny did).

21:23 Hope she uses a good Catechism.

St. Pius X. Baltimore. If she knows German Konvertitenkatechismus Paderborn 1950 (I think it has some eugenics when it comes to prudence about marriage, though, so less totally recommending of that one).

22:21 If he's in Church History, will he remain content where he is at?

I am since about a decade the online friend of one Stephan Borgehammar I just heard of when studying in Lund. He's retired from a position of Professor in Church History and in Pastoral Theology, and all the time we knew each other, he had already converted to Catholicism.

He's the son of a now deceased Lutheran clergyman.

22:38 St. Augustine actually was part time in his life Pagan.

I've heard a Baptist pretend that St. Augustine's "theology of the body" (or lack of it) came from remaining somewhat of a Pagan Dualist (somewhere between Platonic and Manichaean) ...

That charge actually really exists. One reason why I give Kent Hovind lots worse grades in Church History than in Creation Science (where he's a decent amateur) is, well, he believed Alberto Rivera, but apart from that, he also made that charge in his dissertation.

25:41 I'm reminded of how Militant Thomist on Scholastic Answers twists St. Thomas Aquinas these days to avoid the conclusion that the Angelic Doctor did teach that a marriage both ratum AND consummatum is OK from the 14 / 12 limit.

Or how some 40 years ago, it was fashionable to claim St. Augustine would have been OK with Old Earth and Theistic Evolutionism, based (very loosely) on:

• One Moment Creationism being other than Six Day Creationism
• and he was open to God creating basically embrya of most species and then allowing them to grow up over basically gestation time or accelerated such.

That kind of thing attributed to Church Fathers was probably why my own conversion owes more to the Middle Ages than to the Church Fathers.

33:13 Various reasons not to be satisfied with Lutherans. As theologians.

Often delightful people, but theologians ... the most satisfying ones rely least on Luther.

35:30 I wish I could say the same for Jimmy Akin proposing other scenarios than Adam created as an individual 6000 to 7500 years ago, and no men before him.

I wish I could say the same for Militant Thomist pushing against teen marriages, not just in modern times (bad enough, leads to more abortions, more homosexuality, more trasngenderism when teens are forbidden to marry) but even restrospectively to St. Thomas' time.

36:20 As said, hope she has a good Catechism.

Like not the CCC.

37:30 "we never ever, ever even bring up a Protestant"

Do you celebrate Sts Fidelis of Sigmaringen and Thomas More?

I can find them on 24 April and 6 July in Martyrologium Romanum, trad version, but perhaps they are missing from your calendar?

It would be somewhat difficult to speak of the one without Henry VIII and the other without fanatical Calvinists ...

39:18 Not even the first few years of the Deformation.

Luther wasn't there in 1517, but he was by 1525.

On the other hand, in 1517, Luther was closer to Jansenism than to Lutheranism.

Reading Luther was part of why I would not be exactly strict Lutheran, even before I decided to be Catholic.

39:30 The spiritual ancestor of Dave Hunt was something like everyone or every second one on the Mayflower.

They had gone that way back in England, were protesting Anglicanism because it was too close to Catholicism, and on setting foot in the New World, some recovered, some didn't.

40:16 In fact, Bucer tried to bridge between Luther and Zwingli.

He's ancestor to both Anglicanism and Calvinism.

Obviously, trying to bridge between Luther (who believed the Real Presence) and Zwingli (who very much didn't) involved downplaying either the clarity or the importance or both of Eucharistic doctrine.

41:22 I have a problem with Karl Keating.

That book convinced a former Dominican in Paris that Young Earth Creationism comes from a particular kind of Anti-Catholic Protestantism.

At the time when there was this schism between Calvinists he alludes to, it was still very common for Roman Catholics to be Young Earth Creationist, and those who weren't were typically Day Age or Gap Theory.

42:07 Recommendation.

Ditch Karl Keating and reread Brant James Pitre instead!

If somehow you don't ditch Karl Keating, bring a dish of salt along to it ....

Catholic Truth

@CatholicTruthOfficial

Brant Pitre is amazing. As is Scott Hahn. John Bergsma. Steve Ray.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@CatholicTruthOfficial John Bergsma was interviewed by ... Matt Fradd (Pints with Aquinas being obviously the channel's name, not his own).

I find Bergsma decent, but doesn't go far enough in ditching Evolution.

Brant Pitre and Patrick Madrid are obviously "da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos" people.

Scott, I know the conversion story, but not all that much more. Steve Ray ... where can I find his material? Have missed him so far.

44:17 If anyone was "my Pope" while I was Lutheran, it was C. S. Lewis.

Explains why I needed an update on what the Inquisition actually was (I think he's typical for the kind of Mid to High Church Anglican or Lutheran whose main argument for remaining Protestant was the Inquisition), and also why I came late to being strict about Young Earth Creationism (reading St. Augustine's City of God after thirty), since he wasn't one.

But also explains why I have trouble taking some things from John MacArthur and his likes even seriously. Sure, on some level it is serious. It's lies and destroying at least part of the souls believing it, but still ...

49:42 I just had someone pretend nowhere in the Bible is anyone expected to go (in any way, shape or form) through anyone except Jesus, and obviously St. Paul actually did so in both Thessalonians and in Hebrews.

Having grown up in Austria, well, up to age 11, I never had a big problem with either Mariology or Hagiology.

50:35 Unfortunately, he objected to the translation "full of grace" and opted for "highly graced" ...

He did accuse "Papists" (as he called us in 1530, Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen) of pushing supersttition or idolatry.

Probably one of the first warning signals not to stay his admirer.

53:53 It was New England that was very anti-Church and anti-God?

Well, what was I saying about Hislop a few hours ago? He paved the road for Zeitgeist the Movie.

Some hate Catholicism more than they love Christ. Some love Catholicism more than they hate (if at all) Catholicism. Protestantism has two outputs, Catholicism and Apostasy.

Sorry, love Christ more than they hate (if at all) Catholicism ...