Sunday, November 23, 2014

An odd sense of "facts"

Once again Catholic Online firmly demonstrates why no one should look to a Catholic run media outlet for anything resembling accurate information. Either they are incredibly willfully ignorant, mind bogglingly delusional, blatantly deceitful, plain stupid, or a combination of all of these. A recent piece, "Here are 10 Very Interesting Facts About the Catholic Church You Probably Didn't Know!", contains a handful of false claims as well as a number of rather dubious ones. Two of the ten immediately jumped out because they were so clearly wrong.

"2. The ONLY Christian church in existence for the first 1,000 years of Christian history was the Roman Catholic Church. All other Christian churches which exist today can trace their linage back to the Roman Catholic Church. Most non-Catholic churches which exist today are less than a century or two old by comparison."
Wow! To claim pride in your faith and not have a fucking clue about it's history takes some serious balls. This is, of course, complete bullshit. The Roman Catholic church isn't even the oldest identifiable Christian group. The Copts (Egypt) do not trace their linage to Roman Catholicism. They emerged as a church by the end of the 1st century/beginning of the second century. Even the most basic math skills should help these dumb asses figure out they are wrong by at least 800 years. That's just one example of how truly bogus the above statement is. Any one interested in Christian history should at least have a vague familiarity with the various Synods that shaped the early Christian communities. The Council of Chalcedon, for instance, took place in 451. Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church were not the only participants. There were also individuals from the various Eastern Orthodox churches as well as the Assyrian/Syriac Church. Some of, though not all, the Eastern churches did break off of the Roman Catholic Church. The Assyrians developed independent.
So #2 is completely false.

"5. The Catholic Church is entirely responsible for the composition of the Bible, which books are included, as well as the breakup of the chapters and verses."
What the fuck!? Who in their right mind would believe this statement? How can any one be that fucking stupid? The "Bible" as it is generally known contains the Old Testament which is not Christian in origin. Yes, the Catholic church has produced it's own versions of the what we call the Old Testament but they are far from "responsible for the composition." Unless the Vatican has a time machine stashed away somewhere there isn't even the slightest possibility of this statement being true. The Old Testament was produced by the Jews. In Judaism it is actually known as the Tanakh. Later in this section CO seems to denigrate Protestants for making alterations to the Bible but that's rather hypocritical since the Catholic Church did the same thing to the Tanakh (ex. the order of the books is different).
#5 also completely false and even hypocritical and bigoted.

Most of the other points do not contain such blatantly false statement but there isn't a single one that could be said to be completely factual either. Many rely on assumptions and very specific interpretations of terms. All are quite dubious and serve no purpose beyond trying to make the Catholic Church look good while implying that others look bad in some way.

Congratulations Catholic Online for denigrating your own history while making yourself look like petty whiny self-centered assholes.

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