Where is the wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater in this world? (1 Cor. 1:20)
As any one knows who is familiar with Catholic and Protestant relations, things have really been heating up for the past ten years or so. On the one hand, there is a conciliatory movement underway. In the recent Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT), a joint statement regarding common beliefs, proponents from both sides have turned their spears into pruning hooks. The purpose is to generate a united front among Catholics and Protestants to fight moral evils in our secular society. Why quibble about fine points of doctrine when babies by the millions are being murdered in the womb?
On the other hand, some diehard Evangelicals still refuse to relinquish the labels given in the Reformation: the Catholic Church as the “whore of Babylon” and the pope as “the antichrist.” Most current Catholic bashing literature has come from the Reformed camps, and thus the old war between Rome and Geneva is alive and well. If you subscribe to the Internet, you can witness endless electronic debates on Catholic and Protestant issues. Anyone with just a sentence or two of opinion can be found engaging a worthy opponent.
But finding a worthy opponent from among those Evangelicals who write books and articles or produce videos condemning the Catholic Church is far more difficult. Their works are widely distributed by major Christian publishing houses and are gobbled up by an adoring Protestant public. These “heavyweights” hold major conferences, travel worldwide, and appear frequently on radio and television. Though they have put themselves in the limelight, many making a living off anti-Catholic theology, they are curiously absent from formal debates with Catholics.
Excuse after excuse-or an outright cold shoulder-meets Catholic apologists who try to schedule a friendly debate on important doctrinal questions. Although our experience at Catholic Apologetics International is limited, we have received enough refusals to debate that I began to wonder if there exists an underlying back-room agreement among these prominent Evangelicals not to engage in debates with Catholic apologists.
CASE 1: In September, 1995, Scott Hahn and I discussed debating some of the more prominent Evangelical voices on issues like justification, Scripture, the papacy, etc. I agreed to write R. C. Sproul, probably the most articulate and well-known Reformed voice today, to invite him to debate on sola fide (the Protestant doctrine that one is saved by faith alone). Sproul had just completed a manuscript which was eventually published as Faith Alone. Since the 262-page book is filled with accusations of heresy against Catholicism, Scott and I were confident that Sproul would be the best candidate for an interesting debate.
Upon receiving the letter, Sproul had his secretary call me. She said he was simply too busy to engage in a formal debate, citing his many activities: books, radio, tapes, and so on. I asked her to tell Sproul that if he is going to travel the country accusing Catholics of heresy, he should stop hiding behind his schedule and engage with some respectable opponents who can answer his claims. After all, I said, 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “give an answer of the hope that is in you to everyone that asks.”
Not receiving a return call, I wrote Sproul another letter asking him to reconsider. I also asked that if he maintained his option not to debate, to let us know in writing rather than have his secretary call us. That he did.
In reading the letter I was immediately struck by the two-sided answer he gave. First, he attributed his incapacity to debate to the board of Ligonier Ministries, which apparently does not let him out but twice a year. I’m sure, however, that if Sproul really wanted to debate us he could. The second answer probably gives the real reason for his reluctance. He says that the “speaking committee doesn’t see the value of my being involved in a debate on sola fide, and I am in agreement with the committee’s decision.” Here is a man who has spent virtually half his life attacking the Catholic view of justification and now has the audacity to say he doesn’t see any “value” in being involved in such a debate.
CASE 2: Before we received the refusal from Sproul, Scott and I decided, in the interest of fairness, to ask a second prominent Evangelical to debate. Perhaps, we thought, the second person could join forces with Sproul and we could have a tag team debate on justification.
We attempted to enlist the services of John MacArthur, a well-known radio teacher, author, and president of the Master’s College and Seminary in California. He has since co-authored a book with Sproul, along with John Gerstner, John Armstrong and Joel Beeke, entitled Justification by Faith ALONE, with the word “alone” taking up about 75 percent of the title size. We waited for a response to our letter . . . and we waited and waited. No response ever came.
Karl Keating told me he has been trying to engage MacArthur in a debate for some time, but MacArthur has never answered his letters. Apparently, these men are happy to make a fortune from anti-Catholic books and tapes but don’t have the guts to face us in person.
MacArthur knows we’re out here; he just chooses to ignore us. He writes in the above book: “A new generation of Roman Catholic apologists have taken up arms against sola fide. According to them, Scripture doesn’t teach the doctrine-it is an invention of Luther and the Reformers.” Almost in the same breath he then says: “Too few are able or willing to defend evangelical truths against contradictory views. It is easier-and, it seems, so much more polite-simply not to argue. Therefore attacks on crucial evangelical doctrines often go unanswered” (4-5).
In psychology they call it “projection,” accusing someone else of the very thing one is doing. In apologetic circles we call it, “not putting your money where your mouth is.” If MacArthur is so up in arms about those in his own camp who don’t stand up to “defend evangelical truths,” then why has he consistently denied Catholic apologists a formal debate?
CASE 3: If you think I am being too hard on anti-Catholic Protestants, read on. In May 1995, I attempted to schedule a debate with another anti-Catholic Evangelical, James G. McCarthy. In 1995 he published The Gospel According to Rome, a 400-page book in which he purports to list all the Catholic abuses of Scripture. I know Jim well. We attended the same Fundamentalist church before I became Catholic in 1992. Jim spent two hours in my living room trying to convince me not to convert. The issue we discussed was sola scriptura. Frustrated that he couldn’t find one clear verse in the Bible to support his contention, he left in a huff. We corresponded for a few months until he told me that such discussions were, to use his own words, “a waste of time.”
Perhaps a little background may help to understand Jim’s negative reaction. In the course of our exchange of letters, I and a few of my friends had exposed a blatant misrepresentation in his best-selling video, Catholicism: Crisis of Faith, produced in 1992. In the video, McCarthy displays a picture of a woman nailed to a cross. The commentator claims that this picture proves that the Catholic Church considers Mary a savior just like Jesus.
We wrote to the bishop of the South American diocese where this image is found. The bishop told us that it was merely a memorial to a woman who was martyred for her faith. The image is located in an obscure alcove of the church. The woman had converted to Catholicism against her husband’s wishes, and he decided to repay her for such defiance by nailing her to a cross.
We sent the bishop’s letter to McCarthy, and, to his credit, he promptly removed that portion from his original video, I’m sure at considerable expense. But he replaced it with another cross that supposedly has Mary on it. I am told that there are only one or two such crosses in the whole world. Leave it to a virulent ex-Catholic like Jim McCarthy to find it and make a silly case that Catholics worship Mary as a Savior.
Be that as it may, I figured that, since McCarthy was doing the radio circuit, promoting his new book and engaging callers in short debates, perhaps he would reconsider his previous refusal to debate. I wrote to him. A month or so later I received the letter back from the postman-unopened. As soon as he saw the return address McCarthy refused to open the envelope! I guess he figured it had some Catholic cooties in it.
CASE 4: Back in July 1993 I debated one of the people included in McCarthy’s video, former Jesuit priest Bob Bush, for an hour on KFAX radio in San Francisco. At the conclusion of the program I challenged Bush to a future debate on sola scriptura, since he seemed so intent on promoting that belief on the program.
He accepted-at least at the time. In the following months, I wrote him three letters asking to arrange the debate. Like his partner in crime, James McCarthy, Bush refused to write back to me. His wife kept taking phone messages, but he never returned calls. Mind you, this is a man who boasts that he has been to almost every country in the world spreading the news of anti-Catholicism-but he can’t find the nerve nor the time to have someone examine the veracity of what he is preaching.
CASE 5: In September 1995 I was invited to the Cult Awareness Network’s panel discussion in Atlanta, along with Father Mitchell Pacwa and Father Stephen Barham, to engage in discussion with three prominent Evangelicals, William Webster, Phil Roberts, and Rob Bowman. We were told by the moderator to speak in regard to the ECT document mentioned above and that we should try to reach some conciliatory stance. The Catholics came there seeking common ground. The Protestants came with an agenda. Right away we were put on the defensive, and the whole time was spent in a scriptural and theological tennis match.
After the panel discussion I had a two-hour chat with Webster. Little did I know that in the very same room we spoke he would soon be teaching a class on the “Heresies of Roman Catholicism.” The other man, Phil Roberts, wouldn’t even stop to shake my hand and introduce himself after the panel discussion. Rob Bowman was the exception. This man truly had the love of God in his heart. He also understood the Catholic arguments.
Later at the conference, Jim Toungate of the anti-Catholic organization Christian Answers (an obvious takeoff from “Catholic Answers”) invited me to a debate on the subject of sola fide on its radio program in Austin, Texas. Considering the experiences I had had with other Protestant “debaters,” I slowly picked my jaw up off the floor and gratefully accepted. A few weeks went by, but I didn’t hear from him. I sent him a letter reminding him about our plans for a debate. That was six months ago, and I haven’t heard from him since.
CASE 6: In December 1995 I received a letter from former priest, now rabid Fundamentalist and director of Mission to Catholics International, Bart Brewer. Bart also appears in the video mentioned above, Catholicism: Crisis of Faith, telling his sordid tales of priestly life.
In the letter Brewer gave me a laundry list of all the errors to which I have subscribed since I decided to join the Catholic Church. He very politely told me I was not a Christian and could never be if I stayed with Rome. He included about a dozen tracts against Catholicism. I answered Brewer that instead of responding to all his accusations on paper, I would debate him in his hometown of San Diego. He wrote back : “I am not a debater. Nor do I have the time to prepare for such an event.” (See sidebar.)
I just don’t get it. Here’s a man who sets up an organization to take people out of the Catholic Church, who has the theological wherewithal to point out all the Catholic Church’s supposed theological errors, who accuses me of being a pagan, and who then has the audacity to tell me he can’t debate. What’s a Catholic apologist to do?
CASE 7: How could I end this piece without talking about the hottest Protestant debater in town, James R. White? As he was portrayed in “The White Man’s Burden” (This Rock, October 1993), White is always hankering for a debate. I debated him in Boston in April 1995, on the biblical and historical validity of the papacy. Some weeks after the debate, White and I discussed the idea of debating on purgatory the following January. In the interim I asked him to follow up on a challenge our team had posed at the papacy debate.
We asked the Protestant side to name one Church Father prior to the year 400 who said Christ and not Peter was the Rock referred to in Matthew 16:18. The Protestants didn’t come up with an answer at the debate, so one of the audience challenged White to post an answer a few days later on the Internet.
White dug up four Fathers who supposedly made such an assertion, but did not include references. I scoured their short writings and found no such evidence. So I went back to White and asked him for the references. He said we should have them. I told them we didn’t. He said we did. This went on for about five rounds. I finally told White that if he didn’t give me the references I would have no choice but to rescind my offer to debate him that following January. I said I didn’t want to debate with people who manufacture quotations from the Fathers. I have not heard from him since.
CASE 8: In March 1995 the mainly anti-Catholic organization Christians United for Reformation (CURE) sponsored a debate on sola fide and sola scriptura. Three Catholics-I was one of them-debated Michael Horton, president of CURE, Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary, and Rod Rosenbladt, professor at Concordia Lutheran Seminary.
The Catholic side put up a spirited fight. As I walked over to shake Horton’s hand after the debate, he said, “You guys really gave us a challenge.” We learned later that there were several on-the-spot conversions to Catholicism that day; one of the converts Robert Godfrey tried to dissuade in his Westminster office some weeks later.
Though CURE was at least willing to engage us in debate, the Protestants informed us later that they would not debate us again. I don’t know the reasons, and when I wrote to Horton asking him to clarify something he said in the debate, I never received a complete response. Meanwhile, Horton participated in several national conferences that same year aimed specifically at condemning Catholic doctrines, and he continues to dish out anti-Catholic remarks on his weekly radio program.
When CURE aired the debate on its radio program, it conveniently left out the entire Catholic side. When it made video copies of the debate, it cut out two crucial hours, the cross examination-a section where we really tore into the Protestant views.
CASE 9: There is one bright spot in this sad picture, albeit a faint one. Three ex-Catholic housewives in Ohio run a vicious anti-Catholic organization called Former Catholics for Christ. Unsolicited, they sent me one of their monthly newsletters. In it I found a scathing attack a book to which I contributed a chapter. I immediately wrote back and challenged these women to a public debate. Rather than a public debate, the women suggested a written debate, which would be featured in their newsletter. I accepted, with one proviso: “Don’t edit any of my material before you publish it.”
Now take a guess. Do you think they abided by my request? You’re right-they didn’t. In my first installment four sentences were missing. I wouldn’t have minded, except that the excisions were made at the most crucial points in my argument. I have subsequently warned them that if it happens again I’ll have no choice but to pull out of the debate.
Where have all the debaters gone? Why do Catholic apologetic organizations set up to engage Evangelicals in formal doctrinal debate have to resort to debating three housewives? Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against debating housewives. I admire these women for at least coming forward.
But let this article serve as a public invitation to any Evangelicals in the limelight-Brewer, Gerstner, Godfrey, Horton, MacArthur, McCarthy, and Sproul—that Catholics are ready and willing to debate the issues. Any takers?
(P. S. Sorry, but that doesn’t include you, James White, until you finally produce the citations of the four Fathers prior to 400 who identified Jesus, to the exclusion of Peter, as the Rock of Matthew 16:18.)