Roman Catholic Intellectuals Always Did, and Still Do, Spread “Urban Legend” as Truth

Howard Kainz is “emeritus professor of philosophy at Marquette University” and contributor to “The Catholic Thing”, the same conservative Roman Catholic website that flashes the name of Roman Catholic Convert Francis Beckwith on its masthead. The site is run by the “Faith & Reason Institute”, and it advertises itself as “a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary”. But that doesn’t stop Kainz from spreading urban legends – outright falsehoods – in the effort to make a polemical point.

Kainz’s recent article, “How Can Protestants Be Saved?”, part of his effort to help poor Protestants be saved is to ruminate:

The quotation, “it is easier to live as a Protestant but better to die as a Catholic,” is ascribed variously to Martin Luther or one of Luther’s wavering followers...

Even though that statement has been “variously ascribed”, it has been falsely “variously ascribed”. Neither Luther nor Calving nor Melancthon ever said such a thing, as James Swan points out in this recent analysis of the history of the phrase. “Whomever first said it, I can't think of any plausible reason why either Luther or Melanchthon would say it.”

This is the kind of urban legend and even the kind of falsehood that Roman Catholics don’t mind to perpetuate in their efforts to make a polemical point. Roman Catholicism is a religious system that’s built on falsehoods and urban legends, given legitimacy merely because someone in “authority” says so. It has been so at least since the time of “Pope Damasus”, who hired a mob of gravediggers, essentially thugs with pick-axes, to enforce his "election" as pope.

Who consciously and determinedly re-wrote Roman history to include the Roman Church.

Who has also been officially canonized as a saint.

“How can Protestants be saved?” Here is Kainz’s answer:

… those who are not completely sure of being “saved” might avail themselves of some assistance from the Blessed Virgin, who promised to St. Dominic that those who say the rosary frequently, meditating on the life, passion, and resurrection of the Savior, will receive the graces necessary for salvation at the time of their death.

Who can say “amen and amen” to that recommendation?