Katholic Kiwi Kathedral (Catholocism General) - Byzantine? Ethnic? Roman? It doesn't matter. It's a place for Catholic Kiwis to discuss Catholicism and inquirers to inquire

Who is the best Catholic apologist alive today?

  • Bishop Robert Barron

    Votes: 43 48.3%
  • Fr. Mike Schmitz

    Votes: 39 43.8%
  • Trent Horn

    Votes: 23 25.8%
  • Jimmy Akin

    Votes: 14 15.7%
  • Joe Heschmeyer

    Votes: 2 2.2%
  • Matt Fradd

    Votes: 6 6.7%
  • Scott Hahn

    Votes: 13 14.6%
  • Brayden Cook - TheCatechumen

    Votes: 1 1.1%
  • Taylor Marshall

    Votes: 3 3.4%
  • Christian Fagner

    Votes: 3 3.4%
  • James White

    Votes: 7 7.9%

  • Total voters
    89
Friend sent this when I got confirmed.
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Something you have to understand about Catholicism is we don't tend to get too wrapped up in Vatican politics, or let it affect our devotion to the faith. There are two main reasons for this.
Yeah if you had to square up your belief and the truth, and put that into action, you couldn't call yourself a Christian. We know, that's why you post catholic apologetics online.
The second reason is the historical evidence that reinforces the first reason. If you look through the 2000+ year history of the Catholic Church you will find all sorts of reprehensible things that the administers have gotten up to, but none of it has resulted in the destruction of the Church. When you look at it in the big picture like that the day to day political posturing or all of the sensationalist media reporting feels very irrelevant.
I wonder if Jesus had anything to say about trees and what fruit they make. If you can only find rot and evil in your 2000 year old history, maybe you should stop picking evil rotten fruit for sustenance. I'm glad you admit you ignore all of it to feel comfortable with yourself though, it's very catholic of you.
This is only partially true.

The Jesuit order has had conspiracy theorists since their inception due to it being the largest male religious order and their focus on missionary work.
No it's because they were all Jewish conversos. Having all your jews totally convert and form their own boys club isn't suspicious at all. Neither is the actions of the church from that period on. It's just jews skin walking Christians to keep doing jew things. Unfortunately your marriage to the pope keeps you from being honest with yourself.
Since the 16th century many if not most of the new countries that Catholicism has been introduced to experienced it first from the Jesuits.
Now why would your front line be a bunch of converts who are both secretive and overzealous?
On top of that because of the size of the order, and the influence that comes from it, the leader of the Jesuits, the Superior General, has long been dubbed the "Black Pope" based on their black garments in contrast to the white ones the actual Pope wears.
So they do everything they can to be under the umbrella and set themselves apart? Not suspicious at all.
Protestants have a bad habit of hyperfocusing on the Bible as a source for everything when that was never intended.
Yeah why would you focus on unchanging written word that anyone can just for themselves when you can have layers of clergy interpret it themselves. You can't even charge for forgiveness then!
So perhaps you might appreciate how it can be frustrating to have a group come along, take your stuff, and then try to use your stuff as a basis to denounce and insult you.
Yeah it sucks when someone reads the rules and shows exactly where you are cheating. Accountability sucks when you don't want to be held accountable.
do not have to admit any such thing since it is not true. The Church has divine authority bestowed by Christ. That is what the powers to bind and loose refer to. That boils down to what the Church says goes.
You just keep admitting that you don't care about Jesus or Christianity at all, only the Catholic church. What a good little peon you are.
There have not been any "changes" that go against the teachings of Christ, let alone enough to be called "so many".
Jesus called the Pharacees the synagogue of Satan himself, he ran the money changers out of the temple himself. Yet the Catholic church bends over backwards for them now.
While the notion that Jews killed Jesus makes for a spicy meme, theologically its completely missing the point. Christ didn't die because the Jews wanted him to die, Christ died for our sins; Christ died to redeem us all. To reduce that act down to the work and responsibility of the Jews is a gross devaluation of the truth.
See the Catholic church says jews are cool now, so here's my apologetics for them now. Sure Jesus said otherwise but that's different now.
And there's the rub. It's a de facto admission that at best, the Church wasn't properly in line with God to begin with.
Catholics think the church is god, just look at how they put it over the word of God. Just likes jews put the Talmud over god. There really is no difference these days.
To think that your personal perspective on what is correct matters is prideful, and pride is a sin.
Taking the lord's name in vain is a much bigger sin, yet here you are.
So lets apply this principle to the Church. In a hypothetical scenario where the Church was genuinely corrupt and the Pope was maliciously misleading the masses by doing something like allowing gay marriage, God would judge those responsible harshly and forgive all those who were mislead.
How can you be misled when he gave you the guidelines himself? It's just more church apologetics.
Your entire perspective on this is so deeply flawed that I am not sure where to begin when it comes to correcting you, and I do not believe you're asking in good faith or open to being corrected anyway.
Sounds like you shouldn't be posting then, it's not complicated. You just don't want to have to answer for the parts that make you uncomfortable. Funny how jews and Catholics are so alike.
 
I have better things to do than waste my time on another poster with hostile intentions and bad faith arguments, I gave the last guy too much benefit of the doubt, but I've already seen your true colors.

If you just want to spew hatred about Catholicism we have a thread for that. This thread is for Catholics to discuss our faith and for people with genuine interest to inquire about it. You are neither, so go cast your line somewhere else.
 
I have better things to do than waste my time on another poster with hostile intentions and bad faith arguments, I gave the last guy too much benefit of the doubt, but I've already seen your true colors.

If you just want to spew hatred about Catholicism we have a thread for that. This thread is for Catholics to discuss our faith and for people with genuine interest to inquire about it. You are neither, so go cast your line somewhere else.
Funny how it's all bad faith to you, I guess that's what a spiritual mirror looks like. Sorry for using your own words against you to prove your actual faithlessness. It must suck to face accountability, which is what Jesus taught. Hide behind your Cathedral all you want.

For calling yourself the Catholic Cowboy, and to spread the word, you sure fall apart under the smallest of scrutiny.
 
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For calling yourself the Catholic Cowboy, and to spread the word, you sure fall apart under the smallest of scrutiny.
Well for one thing, the title is because Preacher, Clint Eastwood's Character from Pale Rider that my account is theme'd on, was an anglican; I like the movie and the character, but I am not an anglican, so I felt it was necessary to make the distinction clear. Simple as.

Second, you are not bringing scrutiny, you are baiting because you enjoy wasting time like the energy vampire from What We Do in the Shadows. Once one is aware of your game its rather pathetic. Our Lord Himself could tell you you're wrong about His church and you'd still manage to call it some kind of kike trick. Worse still you're not even good at it, the bait is so cheap and stale that Martin Luther would scoff at it, and you have to resort to insults and inflammatory language to try spark the argument you want.

What happened to bring you the point where this is what you choose to spend your time and energy doing? Who hurt you?
 
Second, you are not bringing scrutiny
He said about a part of catholic history he lies about through omission because the truth hurts. So why do you ignore that the Jesuits are all Jewish converts?
you are baiting because you enjoy wasting time like the energy vampire from What We Do in the Shadows.
It's not bait, I'm asking serious questions and enjoy watching you dodge them like a jew. If you find my questions sucking the energy from you, maybe it's because you are the issue.
Once one is aware of your game its rather pathetic.
What game? You just don't like answering them because it forces you to face parts of yourself you don't like.
Our Lord Himself could tell you you're wrong about His church and you'd still manage to call it some kind of kike trick.
He doesn't have to tell me I'm wrong, since he's shown me the truth and I'm just here expressing it. Again, you deflect from your own self.
Worse still you're not even good at it, the bait is so cheap and stale that Martin Luther would scoff at it, and you have to resort to insults and inflammatory language to try spark the argument you want.
I'm very good at exposing those who do not like to be exposed, just look at you. Can't help but post about how above it all you are and how little this all matters but fail to post anything of substance. The questions you refuse to answer, the history you gloss over, it all shows the true portrait of you. You don't believe in God, you believe in the Catholic church above God.
What happened to bring you the point where this is what you choose to spend your time and energy doing? Who hurt you?
Jews, Catholics, and other agents of satan obviously? Again, you say the Catholic church is the one true church but yet it fails to basic scrutiny. Faithless Behavior.
 
It's not bait
I'm somewhat experienced at seeing through bait, and like I said this isn't even good bait.

If you were serious and genuine in your inquest you would drop the hostility, but for you the hostility is the point. When your idea of basic scrutiny is uninformed and incendiary how can you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Take your claims about the Jesuits for example. If as you say all Jesuits are converts, then it would stand to reason that the order was founded by a convert. The founder of the Jesuits was Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and he was not a convert. Furthermore your assertions ignore the "Decree de generee" which proclaimed that either Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, was an insurmountable impediment for admission to the Jesuit Order. That decree was issued in 1593 and was only repealed in 1946. How can an order consist of nothing but converts when converts were insurmountably banned from admission for hundreds of years?

These are well documented historical facts, and rather basic ones at that.
 
Peter and Paul said Jesus was our archbishop
And Saint Paul gave instructions on what a bishop should be in his 1st Letter to Timothy.

"A faithful saying: if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher, Not given to wine, no striker, but modest, not quarrelsome, not covetous, but One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity. But if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a neophyte: lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the judgment of the devil. Moreover he must have a good testimony of them who are without: lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil." 1 Timothy 3:1-7 DRA
 
If you look through the 2000+ year history of the Catholic Church you will find all sorts of reprehensible things that the administers have gotten up to, but none of it has resulted in the destruction of the Church. When you look at it in the big picture like that the day to day political posturing or all of the sensationalist media reporting feels very irrelevant.
This is the very reason why so many dislike the Catholic Church.

Have you ever read Orwell? If so, you will be familiar with the concept of "doublethink". In a nutshell, so much of Catholic "apologetics" is doublethink applied to the church, i.e. hypocritical logic used to dismiss failings of Catholic leadership, that the Catholics themselves would never apply to other groups under the same circumstances.

When a pope does something reprehensible, the Catholics will say that it was merely a personal failing of that one pope and his decisions did not impact the Catholic church as a whole. When Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Joseph Smith, had any personal failing, the Catholics will immediately dismiss any ideological or theological critique of Catholicism and focus solely on the personal failing, using the very same arguments that Anti-Catholics use against popes.

Catholic apologetics is the art of using rhetoric to ignore/dismiss all the flaws of Catholicism while projecting the same arguments onto the detractors of Catholicism. They basically borrowed a page from Judaism in that regard.

Don't even get me started on the "antipopes", i.e. popes who were at the time validly chosen by the Catholics' own standards, but were retconned after the fact for historical or political reasons.

And in classic Catholic doublethink, they will reconcile the Antipopes being chosen by the Catholic Church, with the Church being infallible in its choosing of popes, and with the decisions of the handful of antipopes being invalid, as decided by the popes who succeeded them. It all makes sense if you stop asking questions.
 
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In a nutshell, so much of Catholic "apologetics" is doublethink applied to the church, i.e. hypocritical logic used to dismiss failings of Catholic leadership, that the Catholics themselves would never apply to other groups under the same circumstances.
That's not what apologetics is about but I can understand why you might get that impression if your knowledge of apologetics comes exclusively from online slapfights between laity with various degrees of education on the matter. Go listen to a professional like Bishop Barron.
When a pope does something reprehensible, the Catholics will say that it was merely a personal failing of that one pope and his decisions did not impact the Catholic church as a whole. When Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Joseph Smith, had any personal failing, the Catholics will immediately dismiss any ideological or theological critique of Catholicism and focus solely on the personal failing, using the very same arguments that Anti-Catholics use against popes.
When the protestant or other anti-Catholic arguments all center around the misdeeds of the clergy throughout history it is very tempting for Catholic proponents to return the favor. In fact it is somewhat rare to find a good discussion based on theology that doesn't devolve into duelling judgements of leadership figures.
Catholic apologetics is the art of using rhetoric to ignore/dismiss all the flaws of Catholicism while projecting the same arguments onto the detractors of Catholicism. They basically borrowed a page from Judaism in that regard.
A lot of people have trouble with the concept that the Church and the Clergy are two separate entities. The Catholic Church is the sinless bride of Christ, the clergy who administer the Church are just men, no less fallen or prone to sin that the rest of us. That's why they think the flaws of the Clergy can be applied against the Church.

Theologically there are no flaws in Catholicism, but the clergy has no shortage of flaws throughout history. I always try to be straightforward about the sins of the administers because there is no benefit to denying, dismissing, or defending them. It is much easier to argue against the theology of detractors because that's where the important flaws are anyway. For example, no one who opposes Catholicism has ever been able to provide a satisfying answer to Matthew 16:18-19. Every one I've seen either weasels around it with semantics, ignores the full context of scripture, or both.
Don't even get me started on the "antipopes", i.e. popes who were at the time validly chosen by the Catholics' own standards, but were retconned after the fact for historical or political reasons.

And in classic Catholic doublethink, they will reconcile the Antipopes being chosen by the Catholic Church, with the Church being infallible in its choosing of popes, and with the decisions of the handful of antipopes being invalid, as decided by the popes who succeeded them. It all makes sense if you stop asking questions.
That's not what antipopes are at all. An antipope is a person who falsely claims to be the Pope in opposition to the legitimately elected Pope. Historically, they have shown up during periods of conflict within the Church, often supported by antagonistic factions or external secular rulers. Furthermore the last recognized antipope was Felix V and that was in the mid 1400s. The reason antipopes even had a chance back then was the logistical realities of global communication. A lie spreads faster than the truth, etc.

All of that said, if your heart is hardened against the Catholic Church and your mind is set on the notion that all apologetics is Orweillian jewish doublethink kikery then you will be inclined to jump to that conclusion regardless of whether or not you're presented with good apologetics or bad apologetics.
 
What do all of you think of the modern online trend of people becoming "trad"? To someone who was raised deeply religious, I feel it is somewhat disingenuous on the part of many of these people, especially since they typically seem to merely be seeking a form of rebellion against modern liberalism. In my experience, truly "traditional" people don't spend all their time online grifting their religions for attention.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that some of this could be the general thirst people have for meaning and an escape from materialism, and undoubtedly there will always be people who latch onto a movement (especially a religious one) for their own personal gain.

I'm genuinely interested in what your views on this are.
 
What do all of you think of the modern online trend of people becoming "trad"? To someone who was raised deeply religious, I feel it is somewhat disingenuous on the part of many of these people, especially since they typically seem to merely be seeking a form of rebellion against modern liberalism. In my experience, truly "traditional" people don't spend all their time online grifting their religions for attention.
It is somewhat disingenuous to embrace the faith for its aesthetics and connotations without genuinely engaging with the theology. However I am always hesitant to level judgement on the sincerity of another's faith as I cannot know their heart. That's why I tend to focus on the practice of trad larping in general and refrain from calling out people individually.

One of the exceptions I make for this is Nick Fuentes because he has elevated himself to a public figure and is not only monetizing his larp but spreading it to others. To me this warrants a specific call out as I am thoroughly unconvinced his faith is genuine.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that some of this could be the general thirst people have for meaning and an escape from materialism, and undoubtedly there will always be people who latch onto a movement (especially a religious one) for their own personal gain.

I'm genuinely interested in what your views on this are.
SomethingSacredComic.jpg
 
What do all of you think of the modern online trend of people becoming "trad"? To someone who was raised deeply religious, I feel it is somewhat disingenuous on the part of many of these people, especially since they typically seem to merely be seeking a form of rebellion against modern liberalism. In my experience, truly "traditional" people don't spend all their time online grifting their religions for attention.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that some of this could be the general thirst people have for meaning and an escape from materialism, and undoubtedly there will always be people who latch onto a movement (especially a religious one) for their own personal gain.

I'm genuinely interested in what your views on this are.
Basically the same as your thoughts. They're latter-day Pharisees doing it to be seen and feel superior.

Plus, their notion of "traditional" is often some self-invented system of being reactionary just for the sake of being reactionary, having little to nothing to do with continuing the practices and folkways of their forebears.

Tradition is not the idolatry of ashes, but the preservation of a fire.
 
The Anti-Catholic responses all read like:
You think the Vatican doesn’t know about "It"? HA. "It" is buried in the catacombs, right next to the bones they don’t want you to see. Ever heard of the 14th Station of the Cross that was REMOVED from history? Oh, you haven’t? THAT’S BECAUSE THEY TOOK IT FROM YOU. Because "It" was depicted there, clear as day, before the great obfuscation began.

is somewhat
That’s exactly what they want you to say. “Is somewhat.” Keep it vague. Keep it soft. Keep it digestible. Because the second you start defining “It,” the second you try to pin it down, that’s when the cracks show. That’s when you see the seams in reality, the places where they stitched over the truth with doctrine and bureaucracy.
disingenuous
Oh, DISINGENUOUS, is it? That’s rich. That’s exactly the kind of sanitized, committee-approved word they programmed you to use when confronted with It.

Oh, TO? That’s where you want to go with this? Typical. That’s the oldest trick in the book—redirect, deflect, obscure. "To" what? "To" where? "To" whom? You think you can just dangle "To" out there like bait and I won’t notice the trap?
 
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