The Genteel Duplicity of Roman Catholic Apologists at the Highest Levels

A Roman Catholic Cardinal, Professor,
lazy scholar and spreader of lies.
Typical even today.

Roman Catholicism, which claims to be “infallible”, is, on the contrary, probably the greatest disseminator of “urban legends” in history. For centuries, following the Reformation, absolute lies and untruths were told by Roman polemicists, and repeated, and repeated, and continue to be repeated down to this century. Here, for example, is one for which the source was “from an ‘ex-Calvinist’ turned Roman Catholic” – (I wonder where that came from?) – no doubt a person seeking to do “due diligence”, but who is most likely to pick up and pass on more of these lies and untruths, which were started and disseminated by the “princes” of “the Infallible Church”.

James Swan has made a career out of untangling these falsehoods. (There is no other way to describe them.)

In this his most recent blog post, James sorts out a quote from the work “The Bible and the Rule of Faith” (1875), by the French Theology Professor and later Cardinal and Archbishop of Quebec.

From this “Doctor of Theology, Theological Professor in the University of Laval”, Louis Nazaire Bégin, James provides this quote:

As to the heads of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, I do not wish to judge them myself, for fear of being accused of partiality. I prefer only quoting some short passages of their writings, and repeating the polite speeches they make about one another; the reader can then pronounce for himself as to the sanctity of the origin of Protestantism. The sincerity of Luther is well described in this confidential letter to his friend Melanchthon, August 30th, 1530: 'When once we have nothing more to fear, when we shall be left in peace, then will be the time to rectify our deceits, lies, and errors. 'Peter,' he says elsewhere, 'the greatest of the Apostles, lived and taught contrarily to the Word of God.[58] 'Moses, he says, had a tongue, but a hesitating tongue, which stammered—a tongue of death, of anger, and of sin. Collect all the words of wisdom of Moses, of the gentile philosophers, and you will find that they only express idolatry or hypocrisy. [pg 216]

Here is James’s commentary on that:

Upon checking the source I discovered that it wasn't simply one quote, but three strewn together in the typical Roman Catholic polemical style that has so characterized their treatment of Luther throughout the centuries. While the Cardinal claims an attempt to avoid "partiality," any writer that simply throws a bunch of quotes together without a context or historical background is indeed being "partial." Notice in the first quote (the letter), Luther is presented as a behind-the-scenes liar. In the second quote, Luther characterizes the life and teachings of the apostle Peter as contrary to the Word of God. In the third quote, Luther says all of the words of Moses amount to idolatry. In one short paragraph, the impartial Cardinal has presented the lying, apostle-slandering, law despising Martin Luther.  Elsewhere in the book Bégin says Luther was "a real chameleon" in doctrine and modified his opinions day to day (pp. 49-50). Given Bégin's overall treatment of Luther, I would posit he hadn't actually read much Luther but relied on the opinions and citations of secondary sources.

For more details and actual sources, read the rest of this post here.

It is a very lazy thing indeed to do what this Roman Catholic Cardinal and Professor has done – to re-hash old polemics. That has been the method of Roman Catholics apologetics since the time of the Reformation.