Many Catholics have had the experience of coming out of Mass and finding a Fundamentalist tract on their car. At each World Youth Day, many Fundamentalist groups have passed out tracts that are designed to look Catholic but are full of anti-Catholic bigotry.
As a priest, I have experienced this many times. I was dining in a restaurant recently when a man walked by and threw a Fundamentalist tract on my table as he left. He didn’t even stop to speak to me. At that moment I resolved to fight fire with fire. I wrote my own tract entitled, “The Bible Alone: Is It All You Need?” I had it printed at a local print shop to look exactly like the ones that Fundamentalists often use. To find out that the tract is Catholic, they would have to actually read most of it!
It didn’t take long for an opportunity to pass them out came up. Most readers of This Rock know of Dave Hunt, the notorious anti-Catholic author and speaker. Several years ago he spoke at a conference in the Fargo, North Dakota, area, where I live. Back then, on the evening I attended, he gave the usual misinterpretation of Catholic beliefs. A local church recently sponsored him for a return visit for a Bible conference. When I found out, I decided that this would be a perfect chance to distribute my new tracts.
A friend and I went to the last scheduled talk on Sunday evening. Hunt seemed off his game. Most of his talk centered on a dispute he was having with a fellow anti-Catholic, James McCarthy. He had accused McCarthy of not teaching that “God is love” and, in turn, had been accused of lying.
This was instructive. Sometimes Catholics think our opposition is united and monolithic, but there is a great deal of infighting among Fundamentalists. Often the only thing that they really agree on is that Catholicism is wrong. On other issues, such as end-times doctrines, they fight bitterly. Hate is not a good base upon which to build unity. (Do not underestimate this weakness among anti-Catholics. It can be used to present them with the truth of Catholicism.)
The issue Hunt spent most of his time on was election and predestination. Turning to the Bible, he commented that Scripture interprets Scripture, and he would use the Bible to refute predestination. Now, in a sense, Scripture does help interpret Scripture, but I wondered if anyone present caught the real irony: Hunt was quoting Scripture, but his opponent also quoted Scripture to support his views. Both were using the Bible to interpret the Bible, but neither of them agreed on what the Bible said. Each used the Bible to support his own view. This is called prooftexting.
It was clear that what was important to them were their own ideas, not what the Bible actually taught. The Bible was a prop to be trotted out to support an idea that they themselves had already decided was true. How can the Bible alone be sufficient when there is no agreement even on such a major doctrine as election? Hunt picked some verses that seemed to support his claims and ignored opposing verses that were inconvenient. What we received was the Gospel according to Dave Hunt.
This is common among Fundamentalists. Each has his own take and defends it with fervor. Anyone who doesn’t agree is branded a heretic. (They may not believe in papal infallibility, but they sometimes seem certain of their own.) Hunt—and by extension every Protestant—was acting as his own magisterium and insisting on his own interpretation based on his own authority. Where does the Bible say that Hunt is infallible? Where does it give him and him alone this kind of authority? Why is he right and the Calvinists wrong?
This problem was illustrated in some of his other arguments. For example, he spoke about the Lutheran and Calvinist persecutions of other believers. He mentioned Calvin’s burning of Servetus and others. All of this is true. But he went on to compare them to the Crusaders. Basically, his argument went, how can the Calvinists be right when Calvin and his police state in Geneva committed acts of torture and murder as bad as those of Catholics, who are clearly doomed?
For the sake of argument, suppose for a moment that the Catholic Church is false because of the sins of some of her members, and, as Hunt implies, this is also true of the Reformers. Then what about Hunt? The same Reformers he blasted were the very ones who gave him his doctrines of “the Bible alone” and “faith alone.” If the well is poisoned, why does he accept their teachings on a variety of subjects? He himself is an heir of Calvin and Luther. They are his forefathers; their history is his history. How can he accept the teachings of men whom he claims were murderers?
More fundamentally (no pun intended), his comparison to the Crusaders was unfair. One of his gambits since 9/11 is to connect Catholicism with Islam. But the Crusades were a reaction to militant Islamic invasions of Europe. We still celebrate the battle of Lepanto, where Catholics, without Protestant help, defeated the Turkish fleet. Does Hunt suggest that we should not have fought back? Is he embracing pacifism? If we had not fought the Crusades, Hunt himself likely would have been born a Muslim. He should be grateful that Catholics held back the Islamic invasions. He owes his Christianity to the Catholic Church.
Certainly some Crusaders committed sinful acts. Every war has its dark side. But Hunt and those of his ilk oversimplify the Crusades. The times were brutal, and, despite what Hunt says, historical context is important. How would he answer for Baptists in the past who practiced slavery or racial discrimination? Perhaps he is unaware of the atrocities of the Anabaptists in Munster. They used the same Bible as Hunt to justify their actions. Does that mean that all Baptist doctrines are to be dismissed solely on those grounds?
I don’t think Hunt says that. He doesn’t need to search for the past sins of Catholics or Calvinists. He can find plenty in his own tradition. The question, then, is: Would he apply the same logic to himself that he applies to Catholics and Calvinists?
Hunt spent a lot of time telling us that God is loving. But at the same time he claimed that there were no Christians (or “very few”) among the Crusaders. Why? Because the Crusaders were Catholic. His belief is that most, if not all, Catholics are destined for hell. We are deceived and lost. According to Hunt, our loving God is going to cast us into hell for being Catholic. Indeed, everyone else had gotten it wrong for 2,000 years. Only Hunt can help us.
We Catholics don’t claim that kind of authority even for the pope. We believe in hell too, but we don’t make claims about who is saved and who isn’t. All who are saved are saved by Jesus Christ, but we leave the final judgments up to God. Hunt doesn’t seem to understand that Catholics firmly believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. And yet all he has to do is pick up the Catechism and read the first few pages. (Then I suggest he look up the section on the sin of pride.)
According to plan, we left the talk early. Once outside we divided up the parking lot. On each car’s windshield we placed one of our “Bible Alone” tracts. It was a public parking lot, so we didn’t go onto their church property to pass out the tracts. It would be nice if they would show us the same courtesy.
I am sure that being “tracted” by Catholics was a novel experience for those Fundamentalists. We felt a certain sense of satisfaction. I expect that every Catholic who has gotten a Fundamentalist tract on his windshield has wished that we could give them a taste of their own medicine. I admit to feeling that way myself.
And by our efforts, who knows how many Fundamentalists will connect the dots and begin to wonder whether the Bible alone is all they need? Perhaps the attacks on the Catholic Church will inspire them to do their own research. Let us pray that they may then discover the truth of Newman’s statement, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”
Our actions were not sponsored by anyone other than ourselves. Catholics don’t need permission to defend and spread the faith. It’s part of our baptismal vocation. If Dave Hunt or any anti-Catholic comes to your city, you have the chance to do some apologetic work—and maybe even some evangelism. Most likely, all the anti-Catholics in your area will be concentrated in one place. That makes it all the easier.
So prepare yourself. Know your faith and how to refute the usual anti-Catholic canards. Get some tracts, either from Catholic Answers or write and print your own. Pass them out. If possible, be ready to witness to your faith or to ask the speaker questions that expose his misinformation. We can use Fundamentalists’ own events to proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church. After all, turnabout is fair play.