Hi Mark:
I thought your article on Mary phobia was very interesting.
A group of us former Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) who are now Catholic were recently kicked off a threaded discussion board populated by former JWs. The former JWs on this board were mostly of the “me and Jesus”-type where they boiled Christianity down to its lowest common denominators. Some on the board still reject the Trinity and hold to what I would call a “free Jehovah's Witness”-position that is a JW free of the authority of the Watchtower Society. There were a few evangelicals but not many.
In any case, we Catholics were commonly accused of worshipping Mary and no matter what we said the same people insisted over and over again that we worshiped Mary. In fact, one of my friends even posted the order of the Mass one week and asked where in the Mass was Mary being worshipped. The people on the board were silent and did not point out even one example of where Mary was worshipped in the Mass — since Catholics do not worship Mary even in the Mass.
The response to this however was the posting of links to a hodge podge of anti-Catholic websites of the Jack Chick variety. It seemed that whenever we had reached a point where the people on this site could not respond the anti-catholic websites and comments would show up. It got to the point that the owner of the board kicked the Catholics off for “proselytizing” and the anti-Catholics off for being obnoxious I guess.
In any case, it did amaze me that no matter how we explained it nor how many times we explained it. There was no convincing any of them that we do not worship Mary.
Jeff S.
Jeff:
Many people dislike being confused with facts. They prefer to listen to the voices in their heads. They also like to think that this is called “speaking the truth in love.” It's amazing the arsenal of little tricks pious people have for convincing themselves they are not willfully ignorant bigots.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
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