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 Out of date, but should be read. June 21, 2010
GangstaLawya (TimBuckToo)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Keating's arguments rehash old, worn out arguments that weren't even good when they were first raised. Better arguments could be made.
Certainly, tradition plays a role in our faith and Protestants are erroneous to hold the contrary. After all, the canon of Scripture is based on tradition. And Protestants purport to be bible centered. Not only is the canon of Scripture based on tradition, the theology which Protestants defend was preserved by the tradition of the Apostles Creed. Most importantly, Protestants ignore the tradition our Lord Himself gave us of the bread and wine.
Although they claim to be bible centered, the most conservative branches of Protestantism has imported a smorgasbord of heresies. To name a few, is the Gnostic dogma of E. W. Kenyon's Positive Confessionalism, the Judaizer dogma of Scofieldism, the Kingdom Now theologies, and so on. Although there have been heretics, the Roman Catholic Church has never departed from the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the Apostles Creed. Whereas, due to its eschewing of the Creed, Protestants are generally unable to articulate these doctrines with any sophistication if at all. And that is a statistical fact. Catholics unite the Trinitarian theology with the atoning work of Christ on the cross with the brilliant tradition of blessing themselves with the three-pronged sign of the cross.
Sure, there have been bad Popes, but, unlike evangelicalism, there have never been woman ministers in the Roman Catholic Church, something which, contrary to their purported favorite the Apostle Paul, Paul himself condemned. Moreover, the most conservative branch of Protestantism is the Southern Baptist Convention, which is also affiliated per member with the Masonic Lodge. Although there have been and are Masons in the Catholic Church, it has never had official endorsement in the Catholic Church. It has and still is officially condemned by Papal encyclicals.
Jerry Falwell's moral majority united with Mormons and Muslims but avoided Catholics like the plague. Why? Evangelicals call the Juwes the chosen people, people who blaspheme our Lord in every form of media; but damn the Catholics who recite the Trinitarian theology of the Apostles Creed every Sunday. Contrary to Protestant belief, the Talmud does not represent Old Testament Judaism.
We're told by testimonies "I never heard the Gospel in the Catholic church," but we're not told how many haven't heard the Gospel in the Protestant church. The universal condemnation of Roman Catholics testifies to the presence of the Holy Spirit for Catholicism to convict a sinful world.
Protestants say, test everything by Scripture. I agree. Scripture is my authority too. Jesus said, you will know them by their fruits. Why is the fruit of the reformation a secular Europe? Why is the fruit of evangelicalism in America, not only a smorgasbord of heresies (mentioned above), but separation of church and state, abortion, elimination prayer in schools, the teaching of evolution, and so on. Montgomery's sly thesis on American thinking in his "The Shaping of America" fails to conceal this fact.
Some will argue, look at the more prominent of Protestant scholars. But, what will you find? B. B. Warfield denies miracles occur today, contrary to Scriptural teaching. John Warwick Montgomery recognizes Teilhard De Chardin as a viable Christian according to his tapes on evolution in the tape set Sensible Christianity, naming Chardin as an example of a Christian who believes in evolution. The Roman Catholics have regarded Chardin as a heretic. Montgomery will sue Greece in International Criminal Courts for its anti-proselytizing laws but is silent about the harsher anti-proselytizing laws in Israel. Indeed, Montgomery borrows his whole apologetic from Jean Guitton, a renowned Catholic scholar whose writings have never been translated into English. Montgomery rather snobbishly eschews anybody's credentials if they graduated from "Podunk" university. It is the Ivy League universities, which Montgomery invests so much respect for, that are sabotaging our morals, politics and theology in this country (see Sensible Christianity). Montgomery scoffs at conspiracy theories by traditional Roman Catholics regarding juwes and freemasons in his book Principalities and Powers even though juwes and masons produce a vast amount of literature testifying to such a conspiracy. If you hide the name of our chief enemy, then whose side are you on? The Cabala and Masonry are historically behind every major cult we have today: Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, Christian Science, Children of God, Jim Jones, and so on. Even Masons admit, via Fire in the Minds of Men, that Juwes and Masons fathered the communist revolutions in the 20th century.
But, Protestants will rightfully counter that Pope John Paul's teachings regarding the world religions, Nostra Aetate, the new order mass, and so on testifies to the same weaknesses existing respectively in the Catholic Church. Roman Catholics, who are devout, will defer to the Pius X and sedevacantist as examples of internal criticism by Catholics regarding these issues, an internal affair committee which is virtually non-existent amongst Protestants.
However, Protestants will rightfully show the flaw in Pius X for its treatment of Bishop Richard Williamson. Nonetheless, the sedevacantist position stands as a deeper critique holding even this in check.
The weakness in Protestantism is its lack of a monolithic structure, which they confuse with being its strength. The lack of a hierarchy of departments of criticism lends itself to a smorgasbord of heresy that cannot withstand the winds of cultural change. The strength of Protestantism is its emphasis on Jesus Christ as our One and Only Savior. However, Christian education stops at that in the Protestant world. As its best exponent has said, John Warwick Montgomery: "evangelicals seem to suffer from endemic adolescence (teenage decisions for Christ but few grownup churches, etc.)" (Principalities and Powers, page 167). Dr. Montgomery notes further that evangelicals are subject to kookishness, as seen in tent revivals. There is also an emphasis on cults of personality, far worse than any Catholic's reliance on a bad Pope. Montgomery criticizes miracles in the Catholic church as being suspect as to their origin, yet, in regard to so-called Protestant supernatural experiences, as Alfred Metraux noted in his scholarly study of voodoo, "A Pentecostal preacher describing his feelings when `the spirit was upon him,' listed to me exactly the same symptoms as those which I had heard from the mouths of people who have been possessed by loa.'" ("Voodoo in Haiti," page 357). Ironically, Montgomery quotes this same passage.
John Calvin criticized Thomas Aquinas for his appropriation of Aristotelianism, yet he hypocritically used Seneca's Stoicism to dictate his entire understanding of Predestination to the point of arriving at a deterministic heresy that predetermines the damned and which, as Sir Robert Filmer pointed out, gives "saved" Christians a license to sin (in modern parlance, "once saved, always saved").
John Warwick Montgomery notes that Luther and other reformers tolerated and even practiced astrology because it hadn't yet been distinguished from the genuine science of astronomy and so were victims of cultural blindness. Is that so? The relative contemporary of Luther, the Roman Catholic Pedro Calderón de la Barca, clearly regarded astrology as an intolerable heresy in his "Life is a Dream." With all do respect to Dr. Montgomery, his two volume apologetic "The World-View of Johann Valentin Andreae," doesn't successfully extricate the reformers from Rosicrucianism. Indeed, Dr. Montgomery's endorsement of the freemason Charles Williams and A. E. Waite's secret society of the Golden Dawn belies his purposes (Principalities and Powers, page 107).
Not to harp too much on Dr. Montgomery, but when he quotes Jesus as saying, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold" and says this probably refers to leprechauns, elves, dwarfs, goblins, faeries, his Th.D. goes by the wayside (Principalities and Powers, page 135). Jesus was referring to the "other covenant" mentioned in Isaiah, which is for nonjuwes who were to be engrafted into the body of Christ. That is why, in the book of Acts, Peter was told by God in a dream to eat unclean animals, meaning, preach the Gospel to the Gentiles as well as the Juwes.
We are saved from hell upon faith in Christ, we are being saved from the affects of sin as we grow in holiness, and we will be saved from the presence of sin upon the final resurrection of the dead. Of the second, Catholics interpolate the doctrine of Purgatory. Of the third, Protestants interpolate a heresy of a second resurrection under the appellation of "the rapture."
Protestants don't commemorate the tradition of the bread and wine our Lord left us with (except by poor imitation of Catholicism in only some of the churches). Not only does this contravene the Protestant thesis against the role of tradition in the Christian life, but it shows a dangerous negligence on the part of Protestants who fail to recommit themselves to Christ every Sunday. Christ our Lord inserted this tradition in the Christian life to aid in our perseverance. The most devout Protestants have one alter call in their whole life, whereas Catholics, who are devout, make that alter call every Sunday when they receive Christ in the bread and wine. On Easter, Catholics have Stations of the Cross, and Protestants match this with just another Sunday church service indistinguishable from the rest of the church services on the most sacred day on the Christian calendar.
I could go on and on for a several hundred pages for further potent criticisms of the best representations of Protestantism, criticisms which Karl Keating passes over, overlooks, or is simply too caught up in outdated apologetics in this area to see the forest from the trees.
But, I will end this review on a deeper note; namely, the fundamental tension between Protestants and Catholics, which precludes ecumenism. The most vitriolic critiques of Roman Catholicism come from juwes Dave Hunt, Robert Morey, Keith Green, and others. Why? The most vitriolic critiques of Protestantism come from one place, the Jesuits, most of whom are juwish. Why? There is a common thread here. There is a common source that is dividing the body of Christ. While Christians of any stripe can fall into all kinds of error (something I'm sure God acknowledges if anyone takes a brief perusal of church history), it is the teachers, James counsels us, who will be judged worse.
 Takes the time to honestly and logically address important Catholic doctrine - doctrine that is clearly based on Scripture May 27, 2010
DeepSouthReader (Louisiana)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
After Keating is done addressing the objections to key Catholic doctrines, one is left asking "How can a truly honest objection remain?" The answer is that smart people can always come up with something to argue and they have. Distancing oneself from Truth for the sake of argument must be uncomfortable.
as an fyi, the following is from Martin Luther. Since he said these words Protestants have strained to reject so much in the interest of being "correct":
In his sermon of August 15, 1522, the last time Martin Luther preached on the Feast of the Assumption, he stated:
"There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith . . . It is enough to know that she lives in Christ."
"The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart." (Sermon, September 1, 1522).
"[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ . . . She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough. Still honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures." (Sermon, Christmas, 1531).
"No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity." (Sermon, Feast of the Visitation, 1537).
"One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Magnificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God's grace . . . Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ . . . Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God." (Explanation of the Magnificat, 1521).
Back to Basics May 18, 2010
Amaranth (Northern California)
"Catholicism and Fundamentalism" is a helpful introduction to the basic differences between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism, but the big drawback is that Karl Keating, who's usually accessible, goes for the obscure sources and writes more densely than Immanuel Kant. Unfortunately, the Critique of Pure Reason is a bit more user-friendly. Apologetics books OUGHT to be helpful for the non-theologian. This book reads like a dry treatise. Keating deals with the usual anti-Catholic arguments on infant baptism, papal infallibility, and Marian doctrine... but it's pretty dry reading. He goes for obscure evangelicals, instead of the popular ones like Dr. James Dobson or Pat Robertson. This book could also use some updating, with folks like Joel Osteen It's Your Time: Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God's Favor and Rick Warren Rick Warren's Bible Study Methods: Twelve Ways You Can Unlock God's Word Evangelical Christianity has changed. The term "fundamentalism" has fallen out of favor. "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" is a useful book, it is well-written... but it's also boring. Perfect for Lenten reading.
A Book for both Catholics and Protestants May 7, 2010
Sir Herbert (New Jersey, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Interesting, concise, readable intelligent and informative. This is a book that should be read not only by Catholics to better understand and defend against unjustified attacks on their beliefs but also by " Bible" Protestants who may wish to examine the falsity of some traditional"Bible" attacks on their fellow Christians
 Defense of Catholicism visa vi Protestantism April 26, 2010
RBrannan (Southern Calif.)
The book is a bit borish in some aspects and may not appeal or be the ideal choice for someone who is converting to Catholicism from a Protestant faith in
that this treatment deals with some archaic psuedo-history and related publications that most are not familar with. Otherwise a strong
presentation of the truth and defense of the Catholic faith against the false attacks of Protestantism. A recommended book for a Catholic audience to be sure.
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