One of the former priests featured in Catholicism: Crisis of Faith is Bob Bush. McCarthy's newsletter introduced Bush to its readers this way: "Late on the night of March 17, St. Patrick's Day, 1981, a small press produced our first publication, a booklet entitled Good News for Catholics. The next day 800 of the 3,000 Catholics departing from a ceremony at a local civic auditorium received a free copy."
"Jesuit priest Bob Bush was in that crowd. He was searching for God, but he didn't receive a booklet. There simply were not enough. Five years later, Bob, having learned the gospel through his own Scripture studies, left the priesthood and the Roman Catholic Church. When he learned of the opportunity that had almost been his in 1981, he remarked, 'That booklet could have saved me a couple of years!'"
Bob Bush appears eight times in the video, each instance only a sound bite. After another former priest and a former nun speak against the Immaculate Conception and its chief consequence, Mary's sinlessness, Bush sums up for the viewer: " 'All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' [Rom. 3:23]. All have fallen. Yet the Catholic Church defined that Mary was conceived without sin."
Bush demonstrates Fundamentalists' strength and weakness: simplicity and oversimplification. The "proof" is simple, a single verse. It is quoted as though it can be interpreted only univocally. The viewer is led to a single conclusion: If everyone has sinned, Mary must have sinned; if the Catholic Church teaches she was sinless, it must be teaching erroneously. This is the simplicity of the argument, and it is an argument that appeals immediately to minds uncluttered with questions.
The simplicity that appeals to some people looks like oversimplification to others. They think to themselves along these lines:
What does it mean to say "All have sinned"? It must mean, and certainly Fundamentalists mean by it, that all people have committed actual sins, sins which are their own acts--as distinguished from original sin, the stain of which is inherited by us from our first parents, who sinned at the origin of the race. (The absence of actual sins is what Catholics mean when they say one consequence of the Immaculate Conception was Mary's sinlessness.)
Is the sentence "All have sinned" to be taken broadly or with implied exceptions? Apparently the latter, since everyone knows that neither children below the age or reason nor people born severely retarded are capable of sin. Thus Paul could not have been referring to either young children or the severely retarded in Romans 3:23 because they have not sinned. To whom was he referring? No doubt to the adults recipients of his letter. If his words allow for these obvious exceptions, could it not be that he allowed for another, unmentioned exception --Mary?
That is the kind of thinking someone not given to oversimplification would engage in. It is not the kind of thinking anti-Catholics appearing in this video engage in. The sound bites in which their thoughts are presented are arguments which they themselves find convincing, and those sound bites contain no nuances.
Link (here) to the full article by Karl Keating at Catholic Answers
"Jesuit priest Bob Bush was in that crowd. He was searching for God, but he didn't receive a booklet. There simply were not enough. Five years later, Bob, having learned the gospel through his own Scripture studies, left the priesthood and the Roman Catholic Church. When he learned of the opportunity that had almost been his in 1981, he remarked, 'That booklet could have saved me a couple of years!'"
Bush's is the first voice heard in the video after the narrator's. The scene is the church at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco. Bush looks into the camera and says, "This is St. Ignatius Church. It is adjacent to the University of San Francisco. I studied here during my years of seminary training. My name is Bob Bush. I was ordained here in 1966. Twenty-one years later I submitted my letter of resignation."This wording is so imprecise that viewers might conclude that Bush's entire theological training took place at USF.
According to the registrar's office, he indeed studied at USF, but only during the summers of 1964, 1965, and 1966, and each summer he took only two courses, Spanish and theology.To the extent he learned Catholic theology, he learned most of it elsewhere.[Bob Bush's brother, Bernard Bush, remains a Jesuit in good standing. He runs a residential facility for priests who have emotional problems.]
Bob Bush appears eight times in the video, each instance only a sound bite. After another former priest and a former nun speak against the Immaculate Conception and its chief consequence, Mary's sinlessness, Bush sums up for the viewer: " 'All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' [Rom. 3:23]. All have fallen. Yet the Catholic Church defined that Mary was conceived without sin."
Bush demonstrates Fundamentalists' strength and weakness: simplicity and oversimplification. The "proof" is simple, a single verse. It is quoted as though it can be interpreted only univocally. The viewer is led to a single conclusion: If everyone has sinned, Mary must have sinned; if the Catholic Church teaches she was sinless, it must be teaching erroneously. This is the simplicity of the argument, and it is an argument that appeals immediately to minds uncluttered with questions.
The simplicity that appeals to some people looks like oversimplification to others. They think to themselves along these lines:
What does it mean to say "All have sinned"? It must mean, and certainly Fundamentalists mean by it, that all people have committed actual sins, sins which are their own acts--as distinguished from original sin, the stain of which is inherited by us from our first parents, who sinned at the origin of the race. (The absence of actual sins is what Catholics mean when they say one consequence of the Immaculate Conception was Mary's sinlessness.)
Is the sentence "All have sinned" to be taken broadly or with implied exceptions? Apparently the latter, since everyone knows that neither children below the age or reason nor people born severely retarded are capable of sin. Thus Paul could not have been referring to either young children or the severely retarded in Romans 3:23 because they have not sinned. To whom was he referring? No doubt to the adults recipients of his letter. If his words allow for these obvious exceptions, could it not be that he allowed for another, unmentioned exception --Mary?
That is the kind of thinking someone not given to oversimplification would engage in. It is not the kind of thinking anti-Catholics appearing in this video engage in. The sound bites in which their thoughts are presented are arguments which they themselves find convincing, and those sound bites contain no nuances.
Link (here) to the full article by Karl Keating at Catholic Answers
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