Predictably, the watcher makes the sweeping claim that I am deceiving you all, without offering a shred of evidence in support of his claim. Indeed, he goes so far as to specifically state that he won't actually be responding to anything I said.

He then throws out a rather large citation from a biased, anti-Catholic, pro-KJV-only Fundamentalist Baptist source, and apparently feels that this sufficiently refutes anything I've said so as to ensure that his readers will not be deceived by my insidious Papist lies.

What's amusing here is that it is the watcher who is ultimately trying to deceive. I take no particular umbrage with the fact that he is a self-described Independent Baptist, but his entire argument against me is prefaced by the fact of my Catholicism. This is emotional manipulation on his part, and it is highly dishonest (it also communicates a fundamental weakness in his position and arguments, but that is another matter entirely).

When pressed, I debate on the history of events, and then from objective sources (rather than propagandists). The watcher is welcome to dispute the facts of history, of course...but that is on his conscience, and not mine. It is quite possible to find sources on the Internet that say all manner of evil things about Catholics, and then from both sides: for every person who claims that the early Church sought to deny the Bible to the common people, there is someone else who will make the claim that the Church has promulgated many false common-language versions of the Bible that it forces its subjugated faithful to read. The truth, of course, is somewhere between the extremes...but why let that get in the way of a good polemic?

It wouldn't be as grating if the watcher could be trusted to use similarly objective sources, but as he seems intent only on parroting the words of propagandists, it seems that we must all suffer his outpourings time and again, and medicate ourselves by immersion in detailed research of the actual facts of the matter, which will (of course) fail to line up with the watcher's wild assertions.

Or, rather, with the wild assertions of the watcher's sources, since the watcher himself rarely thinks for himself, preferring to spew out masses of text written by other hands, or excerpted from Scripture with no attention paid to context.

Which I suppose could be evidence for a charge of intellectual laziness, in addition to the charge of intellectual and moral dishonesty that could be leveled at one who so readily quotes propagandists like Jack Chick.

I particularly enjoy the charge of being a twister of Church history, which I suppose in a sense is true...in the sense that all I really did, in my previous post, was untwist the twisted lie concerning Tyndale et. al. that the watcher had previously put forth. But to untwist something, one must still reply a twisting motion (albeit in reverse), so I suppose that if one takes the perspective that the twisted lie is actually the straight truth, the corrective measure would naturally be seen as the twisting action.

But don't take my word for it, O Reader. I'm a heathen, pseudo-pagan Catholic deceiver, after all.

Update: Subject, having hit bottom of intellectual barrel, has reached for a drill.

Update 2: Subject has drilled through wooden bottom of intellectual barrel, and has encountered granite foundation. Subject last seen reaching for jackhammer.

(or, more seriously: the watcher is still, two posts later, quoting his latest propagandist, and still spreading twisted history to suit his own ends. His source, David Cloud, has a bit of a reputation as well...apparently, he had some association with O Timothy magazine, which notably ran a story lambasting Mother Theresa (hey, didn't Christopher Hitchens do that too?). Cloud evidently isn't picky about who his calumny is directed against, and has in the past put forth scathing articles about such notable figures as Billy Graham, James Dobson, and the Promise Keepers.

I suppose, then, that I should feel kind of honoured that my Church is considered to be in the company of noted heathes such as the aforementioned men and group.)