Friday, January 16, 2009

Hitting the Credibility Wall - What a Mess

In a recent comment which I reviewed here, Carrie thought it would be clever to rip two quotes out of their respective contexts, juxtapose them, and pretend that they contradicted each other. Presumably the purpose of these antics was to make one of the two authors look like he didn't know what he was talking about, although it's possible she meant to pretend that the "contradiction" somehow demonstrated a problem with official Catholic teaching. Well, we examined her efforts and found them wanting; it's pretty clear (and unsurprisingly so) that both authors were actually in accord with CCC §95, so that not only were the two authors she quoted not contradicting each other, they were also in sync with the Church.

Now Carrie has tossed discretion to the wind, it seems. In a recent comment she actually quoted CCC §95 by way of demonstrating a difference with Reformed views on authority. But this means that she is aware of what the Church officially teaches; hence, the quote abuse described above is made all the more heinous. Either she didn't bother to carefully read the two quotations in context (which would have shown that they were in harmony with the Church's teaching), or she ignored it for the sake of rhetorical points.

Either way, it's the end of the line, in my judgment, for any credibility she had as a critic of the Catholic Church and Catholics.

[Update: I've come across this little remark from her. Well golly. Why on earth should anyone spend any time replying to her remarks, when she blithely dismisses the responses she receives?]

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