I see that the watcher still watches me. Funny thing is, though, he was so adamant about calling me out over what he felt was a theological error on my part, and yet he has yet to take me up on any of the three offers I made to give him an opportunity to do just that. No doubt it would be beneath him to actually exchange debate with a "Romanist" -- O God, I thank thee that thou has made me a true Christian, not like this wretched Papist before me!

Anyhow, let's see what he has got to say.

Well, I see the Romanist is complaining on his blog again about Scripture.

I seem to recall registering my disgust at some anti-Catholic bigotry, but I don't recall taking any issue with Scripture, and certainly I was not complaining about it. The False Witness Union's top poster certainly lives up to my expectations of him in his opening statement.

It seems that it upsets him when Scripture is used without the person writing an exegesis on that Scripture.

Scripture does not self-interpret. I don't dispute that Scripture is good for teaching, of course, but I do remark that simply quoting Scripture isn't quite the extent of what "teaching" -- in the Biblical sense -- involves. These people do little else besides quote Scripture in support of their bigotry -- to read their websites is to read one quote from Scripture after another.

Exegesis -- interpretation -- is a necessary aspect of quoting Scripture. The Bible does not interpret itself, and each of us that reads the Bible interprets it for him or herself. The Bible itself is a rock-solid foundation, and has been since the Catholic Church canonized Scripture in 390 AD presided over by bishops validly ordained into the Holy Orders in keeping with the apostolic succession from Peter that has been the bedrock of the Church's authority in the world since its inception. But the Bible does not interpret itself to us -- we interpret it.

The watcher has his own interpretation of the verses he cites, and my objection to the absence of exegesis in his posts is that he is either not honest enough to admit that he has it, or is not honest enough to let it be seen. Either way, my objection is to his dishonesty.

He comes by that naturally since the Roman Catholic Church has long taught that only the Church can tell the common man what Scripture means.

What's the alternative? Again, the Bible does not self-interpret; we interpret its meaning when we read it. Which reality is better: each Christian interpreting for him or herself what the Bible is saying, or a centralized teaching office people by skilled academics and faithful officers of the Church who work long hours to form a cohesive, near-universal interpretation of Scripture that can be applied to different Christians in a variety of circumstances and still adequately communicate the truth of Christ?

Moreover, what makes the individual, self-styIed interpretations of Scripture that the watcher uses any more valid than the interpretations of Scripture that emerge from the CDF? In the end, the basis is the same; what metrics exist to declare one interpretation to be more valid than another?

Well, as it turns out, quite a few such metrics exist, not the least of which is consistency. In particular, there should be consistency between our interpretation of any given passage of Scripture and the wider picture that the entirety of the Bible paints; our interpretation of e.g. Romans should not be contradicted by e.g. the Epistle of James.

To achieve that kind of consistency, one requires context -- verses of the Bible cannot always be considered atomically, and must often be taken into our thoughts along with the verses that surround them. An easy example is the watcher's citation, from yesterday, of 1 Thes 4:6. This is a verse that must be considered in its proper context (e.g. 1 Thes 4:3-8). Taking the verse alone, the watcher attempted to twist the verse's meaning into suggesting that one Christian ought not to aggrieve another over any issue (which contradicts 1 John 5). In truth, the meaning of the teaching in 1 Thes 4 concerns marriage, and respect for the marital bond.

In fact, this is one of the main reasons why people were burned to death at the stake, disemboweled, and tortured by the Roman Catholic Church in the Dark ages and during the Protestant reformation.

This is little more than another petty attempt at emotional manipulation on the part of the watcher, which is a form of false witness. That's not to say that there were not many crimes perpetrated by Catholics, as the watcher describes. That much is true. But the lie is in how the truth is articulated, for the way it is articulated makes it seem as though, of all Christians, only Catholics have ever perpetrated bloodshed against other Christians.

This is, of course, not the case.

"Anti-Catholics of Chick's ilk often wish to portray the Catholic Church as bent on bloodshed and their own religious forebears as opposed to religious violence. But this is erroneous. Both sides have things to apologize for. Religious violence tainted every stream within the Protestant Reformation. To cite a few cases: Henry VIII executed St. Thomas More, Elizabeth I executed St. Edmund Campion, John Calvin executed the heretic Michael Servetus, Martin Luther advocated the killing of Anabaptist leaders and the burning of Jewish synagogues, and Anabaptists seized the town of Münster in 1534 and killed many people before their attempt to establish a "New Jerusalem" in the town fell apart the next year. Protestants have the same fallen human nature as Catholics and are just as prone to violence."

People have been killed by a variety of other Christian denominations for the simple crime of being Catholic. I can't deny that some terrible stuff has been perpetrated, throughout history, by Catholics, but neither will I deny that Protestants and others gave as good as they got (so to speak). The Westminster Confession, Elizabeth 1's persecution and execution of Jesuits at Tyburn, the torture and execution of Catholics in Calvinist Scotland, the intense animosity of American anti-Catholicisim that even led, for a time, to anti-Catholic mob violence (and found a welcome home in, amother other places, the KKK), and various other persecutions of Catholics all across Europe during and after the Reformation cry out to heaven for justice as loudly as any Catholic action.

They were attempting to bring the Scriptures to the common man in his native language and the Roman Catholic Church would not allow this. Possessing a Bible in the common language or reading Scripture was prohibited. People like Tyndale, gave their lives to bring the Scripture to the common man.

The watcher's memory is rather short -- I have already demonstrated that these statements are a demonic lie.

This was how the Roman Catholic Church maintained their power and control over the masses. They use their traditions and philosophies to keep them in bondage to the Church today.

This is an interesting statement coming from the man who has excommunicated other Christians from his high, holy presence for the simple crime of saying "Hey, we didn't exactly treat that WtFDragon fellow that well on our union." In truth, those kept in bondage today are the ones who cower before the borderline-autistic attitude and the wall of context-less quotes from Scripture that are the hallmarks of the watcher's discourse, and those who have been taken in by the numerous malicious lies of his anti-Catholic ilk.

God's Word is plain and clear and truth.

I could not agree more with this statement -- indeed, God's word is plain and clear truth. I affirm this as readily as any other Christian. What is funny is how quickly those other Christians will race to deny the plain and clear truth of Scripture the moment you point out just how very clearly the Eucharist is justified, as a doctrine, from the text of the Bible.

Truth, for the watcher, seems to be rather subjective. Or, rather, it would seem to be the case that he is claiming sole authority to dictate what the meaning of Scripture is. Precisely who granted him the gift of infallibility in this regard, I am not sure.

With the Holy Spirit as our guide and interpreter, the truth of God's Word is revealed to the true believer.

And the Spirit is the guide of the Church's interpretations of Scripture, and of her formation of doctrine. As Jesus promised, so Christ delivers; the Catholic Church has always understood that it is guided by the Spirit, and that its teachings do not originate from the men and women who make it up.

Only the prideful would think that we could add anything to what God has said with our finite minds and understanding.

Very true.

And only the ignorant would think that God has finished speaking to man simply because the last page of the Bible has been recorded. Christ promised that He would send for us the Spirit, to guide us -- how can the Spirit guide us if it does not, at times, teach us things? And how can we truly be guided if we do not take those teachings and proclaim them?

In a sense, there is nothing new in what the Church calls Sacred Tradition that is not already spoken in Scripture. In another sense, that same Tradition is the means by which the Spirit continues to reveal Christ's truths to the Church. The message of Christ is fixed and complete, yes, but the world in which we live is not static; at each new turn, the Church must expand her teaching to encompass a new discovery, or to reject a new atrocity. Out of those responses emerge the revelation of Sacred Tradition, which at once is in harmony with the revelation of Scripture and is, in its own right, a revelation of the Spirit.