With the Bible under my arm, and doing my best Protestant impersonation, I walked through the doors of a humble suburban Baptist church. A young man handed me the twenty-three-page outline of that night’s seminar, which was to be given by Bartholomew Brewer and Richard Bennett (both ex-priests). The topic: the biblical truth about Roman Catholicism. They would strip the sacraments, the Mass, and the Virgin Mary of their superstitious glory in light of the court of final appeals, the King James Version.
At least, that was the plan.
The evening began as a curious field trip for three undercover Catholic Answers interns, Peter Hofmann, Joseph Nixon, and me, as we dispersed throughout the church and took our seats.
After some song and Scripture, Richard Bennett arose and guided the congregation through forty-five minutes of biblical proof-texting, showing that the Catholic sacraments are “traditions of men nullifying the word of God.” Bart Brewer followed and did the same with the “truth about the Mass.”
When Bennett returned, the victim of the last straw-man attack was none other than the Blessed Mother. Quoting from apparitions as if they were Catholic Marian dogma, he drew parallels to the pagan queen of heaven seen in the Old Testament. Had he done his homework, he would have known that the apparitions he cited were formally disapproved by the Church and that the queen of heaven in the Old Testament was Ishtar, the Assyro-Babylonian goddess of fertility. Bothering his audience with such facts might have put a halt to the crowd’s intermittent “Amen!”, “Preach on!”, and sighs of pity for poor, delusional Catholics. To my amusement several Baptists shouted “Amen!” while a quote was read from Vatican II, without realizing where the passage was coming from.
After a fifteen-minute break, during which we jotted down questions—and disseminated tracts and Pillars on car windshields—we returned to the question-and-answer portion of the night.
Pastor Art Maricle read the questions selected from a basket, starting with the simple “Do Catholics really believe so and so?” The response given was a somber “Yes, they do, and they also do this and that.” Chuckles and sighs could be heard throughout the room as the night drew on. We waited fifteen minutes before even one of our twenty questions was picked. At last, I heard Pastor Art pick one of mine: “Richard, this one’s for you about sacraments. If no matter can be used as a means for conferring grace, as you repeatedly stated, how did St. Paul’s handkerchief heal the sick and expel demons in Acts 19:12?”
Bennett approached the microphone and corrected my ignorance by answering: “Obviously miracles accompanied the New Testament church. I don’t see why there should be a problem with that.”
The next question to be danced around was Peter Hofmann’s, “Why did Jesus let many disciples walk away without correcting them if his words in John 6 were only symbolic?”
No question of ours was addressed in a serious and scholarly manner. After the battery of Mary was complete, I knew that justice had not been done, and I remembered that Thomas Aquinas said that the most charitable thing one can do is to instruct others in the truth. With this in mind, I decided that I needed to work my way onto the stage somehow, and there was one way to do it.
I submitted an offer to prove in less than two minutes from the Bible alone that Mary is the Queen of Heaven. They would have to take the bait, because this would be a marvelous opportunity to display Catholic ignorance of Scripture in front of more than a hundred gloating anti-Catholics.
Sure enough, Pastor Art asked, “Do we have a Jason Evert here? Come on up, Jason. Jason here says that he can prove to us, using only the Bible, in under two minutes, that Mary is the queen of heaven [snickers]. Here’s the mike, Jason.”
I looked out over a crowd of amused listeners and announced: “I love Jesus. He is my best friend and my Savior—and I’m Catholic.” Without further ado, I jumped right into the Old Testament tradition of the Gebirah.
The Gebirah was the mother of the Davidic King throughout the Israelite monarchy. Whenever there was a king, the throne at his side and a magnificent crown were reserved for his mother, who served in a position of authority and great intercessory power for the people (1 Kings2:12–21, Jer. 13:18).
The prophets had ample opportunity to denounce this tradition, but they did nothing of the sort, because the role of the queen in no way diminished the majesty of the king. They prophesied of an expected Messiah who was to restore the Davidic Kingdom and reestablish his throne.
Christ the King’s reign is not an earthly one, but a heavenly one. Thus, the new queen mother intercedes not in political matters, but in spiritual ones. I wrapped this up with examples of Mary’s intercession, citing her orders to “do whatever he tells you.”
Finally, I recommended that they check the truth about Mary for themselves, so that if and when they get to heaven, they will not have a silent sorrow when they see the Mother whom they rejected sitting at our Lord’s side.
As I left the stage, an elderly woman in the front row said, “You’d be a good preacher!” I thanked her and awaited the rebuttal or lack thereof that would follow this, my first public shot as an wannabe apologist.
Bennett took the mike and, stammering, said that the parallel is not applicable because it is from the Old Testament, and Jesus is the new King of Kings! The audience became excited, threw out a few “Amens,” and seemed content that none of my scriptural references was acknowledged or answered.
Bennett added that I would go to hell if I didn’t change my beliefs. Pastor Art wrapped up the night by suggesting that if I wanted an Old Testament parallel with Mary, I should look up Jezebel. The audience again laughed.
Following the prayer, we had the opportunity to converse with both of the speakers and several members of the audience. I returned home with nausea and a migraine after four hours on the front lines.
The pastor’s statement that Jezebel is Mary’s parallel in the Old Testament had me charitably furious. However, I did as he asked, studied what Scripture has to say on the matter, and left a phone message for him early the next week; I invited him to get together and hear my conclusions about “the biblical Mary.” But it was Bart Brewer who returned my message. (He has since formed a habit of calling me first thing in the morning to discuss the harlotry of Rome and the idiocy of infant baptismal regeneration.
Needless to say, my two roommates do not consider such morning conversations stimulating, and are considering some form of restraining order.)
After speaking at length with Brewer, I concur with G. K. Chesterton that, when you argue with a fellow like him, “it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.”
A week after my first call, I found myself sitting at Pastor Art Maricle’s desk for three-and-one-half hours as we went toe-to-toe on Mary, sola scriptura, the papacy, the Eucharist. Pastor Art was a friendly and strong-winded family man who seemed to be heavily influenced by ex-Father Brewer.
Through speaking with him, I realized that, while Baptists may not drink, they sure do dance when needing to prove sola scriptura (the belief that the Bible is materially sufficient and the sole rule of faith). This issue is the one upon which all their other arguments are built, and it is held onto for dear life.
To reach our separated brethren within Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, we must display, gently yet relentlessly, the shortcomings of sola scriptura. No single verse will bring a non-Catholic home to the Church, but having a few dozen under your belt and knowing the big picture never hurts.
My saga with Brewer has continued: He now is requesting that I come and engage in a presentation/debate over baptismal regeneration “in front of 2,000 Baptists.” (Keep in mind that this would take place in the same small church that would be hard-pressed to accommodate 250.)
He seemed delighted at the prospect of making a spectacle of me and said I could bring a priest along if I wished. I was intrigued by the offer, and I agreed that such a presentation could be beneficial for the audience. For this reason, I asked if I could bring a friend (having Karl Keating or James Akin in mind), but he anticipated my suggestion and refused to give either an opportunity to speak. “Well, Bart, if someone could explain the Catholic position more effectively and clearly than I, wouldn’t it be even better for your congregates to see him blown out of the water?”
“No, we want you.” I acquiesced to Brewer’s conditions, and it appears that I will speak in August (to a capacity crowd of a few dozen, I predict). I ask that you keep me in your prayers as I prepare for the next chapter in my mission to Mission to Catholics.
—Jason Evert
Infiltrators
If you think you know what anti-Catholicism is all about, think again. As a former Protestant I thought I understood anti-Catholicism.
I used to believe what I heard in Protestant circles: The Catholic Church is a man-made religion based on good works and a lot of guilt. Since my conversion I hadn’t really looked into anti-Catholicism. One night last month, however, I attended an anti-Catholic seminar. I learned a thing or two.
Every morning here at Catholic Answers we try to have Mass. On the days Fr. Ray Ryland is out of town and when we don’t have a visiting priest, we read from the Bible (imagine that!), pray, and meditate. After prayer the staff shares any interesting information that seems worthy of our attention. James Akin often tests out one of his new jokes. The rest of the staff, including Karl Keating, is more interested in poking fun at a democratically-elected “martyr” of the morning. Most mornings Naji Mouawad unconsciously elects himself, though on more than one occasion I’ve witnessed Karl as the victim of the morning’s humor.
One day, just after prayer, Karl informed us that there was going to be an anti-Catholic seminar that evening at the Light House Baptist Church. Bart Brewer was to be a featured speaker, and he would be joined by Richard Bennett, another ex-priest and the editor of Far from Rome, Near to God, a collection of stories by apostate priests.
Karl thought this seminar would be a good experience for the interns. Throughout the day we joked about being on an undercover assignment: “We’d better come with Bibles so we can look more like Protestants.”
By evening we had a plan of action, including arriving at different times so we wouldn’t be suspected. We took with us some tracts to hand out, during intermission, to all interested windshields and wipers.
My fellow interns were Jason Evert, a theology graduate from Steubenville, and Joseph Nixon, a soon-to be seminarian. In comparison, I felt the least able to defend the Catholic faith. I secretly decided to keep my mouth shut and take notes.
I strolled into Light House Baptist a few minutes before 7:00 P.M. Karl mentioned there might be refreshments, and I didn’t want to miss out. I sized up the audience and surroundings: your basic Protestant hall, including your standard coffee machine and homemade cookies. I saw my two companions already sitting across the room from each other, trying their best to not look Catholic.
With my Bible in one hand and a chocolate cookie in the other, I walked over to a back table stacked with anti-Catholic tapes, tracts, videos, and books. One corner of the table was dedicated to showing the “hocus pocus” of the Catholic Church: rosaries, a chalice filled with (unconsecrated) hosts, a monstrance, and even a couple of relics.
Then the pastor of Light House Baptist, Art Maricle, took center stage. He looked like a cross between a retired football player and John Candy. He explained the upcoming program in a Southern drawl, said a nice prayer, and gave the floor to Bart Brewer and Richard Bennett.
Throughout the night these former priests did not hesitate to condemn Catholics to hell. I could go into the whats, hows and whys we Catholics are destined to hell if we don’t change our ways, but I’ll save you the annoyance.
I realized something that night: Fundamentalists, or “Bible Christians,” as they like to call themselves, operate in a strikingly different way from us Catholics. We seem to practice tolerance, leaving another man’s sin to his own awareness and to God.
The sins we Catholics think of most are our own. Anti-Catholics are so caught up in wanting to rescue us, to bring us “back to Christ,” that they fail to understand us (nor do they want to). They focus on the mote and not the beam.
The thing that bothered me the most was seeing all these good people being deceived. They are learning to discount almost every teaching of the Catholic faith, including sacraments, sacred Tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church, and are replacing them with a narrower Christianity based on the sinner’s prayer and sola scriptura.
If I weren’t a Catholic, I might have concluded from this seminar that the Mass, Eucharist, and Marian devotion were of the devil.
It is important to show our faces at these anti-Catholic seminars. Let’s show our opponents that we can defend ourselves and that we are Christians, too—Christians full of kindness, compassion, and knowledge. We are not the dupes that Bart Brewer and Richard Bennett paint us to be. In time, if we apply ourselves, the Fundamentalists they spoke to may come to recognize that Catholics are Christians.
—Peter Hofmann