Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Episode 3, Part 1

Now that we find ourselves back in Ordinary Time, I return to the business of defending Holy Mother Church. In this multi-part series, we will take a look at John MacArthur, a Protestant preacher who is not only an anti-Catholic but, a very ignorant one as well. In particular, we will be examining one of his sermons on Catholicism and I will demonstrate as just how wrong he is.

Of all of the Protestant pastors that I’ve come across who bash Catholicism and the Catholic Church’s teachings, none can hold a candle to John MacArthur. Mr. MacArthur fancies himself a learned Anti-Catholic Calvinist who heads the 58 year old Grace Community Church in California. Since there are so many misconceptions that MacArthur spews out, this post will solely cover the following topics that MacArthur states are reasons for why the Catholic Church is apostate as well as why all Roman Catholics are destined for hell. Specifically I will cover the typical Protestant view towards Scriptural canon, priestly pedophilia and, priestly celibacy. As stated, this will be the first of a series, so go grab a cola and some chips and prepare to become more learned than the pastor of a man-made church.

0:19-0:30 - “I want to talk to you about the Pope and what is going on in the display of Roman Catholicism in front of us, from the perspective of the Word of God, the Scripture.”

Right off the bat, MacArthur wants to use the Bible to demonstrate how his personally invented and man-made beliefs go against the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church. The irony here is that the Catholic Church PREXISTED the written Scriptures and that, the Scriptures themselves, came from the Catholic Church! While many of the Early Church Fathers differed on what should or shouldn’t be in Scripture, it wasn’t until the papacy of Pope St. Damasus I who, in 382 A.D., called a synod in Rome and explicitly laid out what books were deemed as inspired for liturgical use and practical for the Christian faithful. Later on at an African synod at Hippo in the year 393 A.D., the bishops of northern Africa came together and agreed that the list of Scripture for the church would be the same list put forth by Damasus I in 382. Four years after that, at the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D., the local bishops there stated that the canon which was pronounced by Rome in  382 A.D. - under the supervision of Pope St. Damsus I - was to be used by all the churches in and around Carthage.

In the year 405 A.D., Pope Innocent I wrote to the bishop of Toulouse to answer a question that he had about the books of Scripture that the church is using. In this letter, Innocent I enumerates the same list that his predecessor Damasus I had listed a little over two decades prior. The most surprising thing about this list? IT CONTAINED 73 BOOKS*, the same number of books that the Catholic Church uses to this day AND NOT, the abridged collection of 66 books used by Protestants! Additionally, in that same year, St. Jerome completed the Latin Vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the Bible and THE OFFICIAL Bible of the Catholic Church to this day.

Before Craigslist and Angie's list, there was Pope St. Damsus I's Damasine List!

The reason why Protestants are lacking in their Scriptures is because 1 disgruntled monk, by the name of Martin Luther, unilaterally threw out 7 books that he – a man – deemed unworthy, uninspired and, unbecoming of his personal belief system. Therefore, for Mr. MacArthur to say he’s going to use the Scriptures to show how un-Christian the Catholic Church is, is in fact, a joke. Like I stated before, the Church came BEFORE the codification, compilation and canonization of the Bible! We need only look at Acts 5:1-11 and Acts 8:1,3 to prove this. In Acts 5:1-11, we see that a husband and a wife, Ananias and Sapphira, lied to the Holy Spirit via St. Peter about some money that they had promised to the church. As a result for their lies, they both keel over dead and, what happens thereafter is most interesting: in verse 11 we read (with my emphasis):

“And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.”

In other words, those in the church where humbled at the thought of lying to the leaders of the church for the Holy Spirit, God Himself, dwelt with the head of the church, and in Acts 8:1,3, we read in part (my emphasis):

“And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem…As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.”

Here we see that St. Paul, before his conversion, was persecuting the church. Why are these 2 passages so important? Well, if we know that the Book of Acts was written in the early-to-mid 60’s A.D. and the last book of the New Testament was written around 100 A.D., these two readings prove – beyond any doubt - that there was a Church before there was a bible, for that reason, it is totally impossible for any Christian to ever state that the bible is the sole foundation of a Christian church! This is something that all sola scriptura Protestants must accept and, even more difficult for them to acknowledge is the fact that the Christian Church of history, i.e., the Catholic Church, was well into the late 4th to early 5th century before it fixed the canon of Scripture. 

This same canon of Scripture is mentioned 1,000 years later at the 17th ecumenical Council of Basel-Farrara-Florence which ran from 1431-1445. The 11th Session of this council took place on February 4th of 1442, in this session, Pope Eugene IV declared a papal bull allowing the Copts to be in communion with Rome and, one of the main reasons for their incorporation, was that they held the same list of Scriptures (all 73 books) which was again listed and mentioned in the Council's documents. And, lastly, the same 73 books are again affirmed at the Council of Trent's 4th Session in 1545; many Protestants like to state that the Catholic Church "added" to the Bible the 7 deuterocanonical books at Trent, additionally, some Protestants will naively state that it was at Trent that the Catholic Church first made their list of Scripture. Both of these illogical and fictional claims carry no hint of truth whatsoever due to the fact that the Council of Trent WAS SPECIFICALLY CALLED in order to address the various heresies of the Protestant "Reformation!" When we look at and study the historical documents that have come from the oldest surviving institution in Western civilization, it is clear to anyone who has some degree of intellectual honesty, that the canon of Scripture - the collection of books used in the Bible - was established by the Roman Catholic Church circa 400 A.D. 

And it was only the Catholic Church being guided by the Holy Spirit through the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition that was able to stay afloat for close to 400 years WITHOUT the Bible. Gee, I wonder how long the average Protestant denomination would last today without their abridged Bible? 

Who Wants To Baffle A Protestant?

1:49-4:06 – “And there is no group of people in the Roman Catholic system more tragic and more desperate than priests…because it has been imposed upon them that they should live their lives in unnatural restraint. They should live their lives in a forced celibacy, which leads to horrible sexual perversion and deviation… the massive homosexuality…the pedophilia…the blackmail…while this happens in the world, it happens more under the horrors of this forced kind of celibacy that came in the 1100’s when, the Bishop of Rome, wanted to stop the accumulating wealth of priestly families. So, he came up with the celibacy of the priesthood, confiscated all their properties, all their possessions…he broke the back of those wealthy families, it certainly had no biblical purpose.”

Quite a lot to digest here so, let’s go through these hackneyed accusations and see just how wrong Mr. MacArthur is on each count. First, let’s deal with the myth that priestly celibacy leads to homosexuality and pedophilia…a favorite of the anti-Catholic Protestant.

Saying that the discipline of celibacy in the Roman Catholic priesthood yields men that commit pedophilia is not only asinine but, ignorant. The fact of the matter is that RCC priests and men in the general population HAVE THE SAME PERCENTAGE of pedophilia, which averages anywhere from 3% to 5%. The 1996 book, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis, was written by Non-Catholic author and scholar, Phillip Jenkins and, it is largely held as one of the best factual books on the subject. In his book, Jenkins went through 40 years of documented abuse cases within the Roman Catholic clergy in the Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the largest in the country. He found that from 1951 to 1991, 2,252 priest served the Archdiocese and of these, 59 sexual abuse allegations had been made or, better stated: for a 40 year period, only 2.6% of all priests that worked in a Chicago parish MAY HAVE had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor.

I emphasis the “MAY HAVE” because of those 59 cases, we don’t know how many may be false and how many may have been truthful. So, it can be at least stated that between 1951 to 1991, in one of the largest Archdiocese in the country, less than 2.6% of all Roman Catholic priests could be labeled as bona fide pedophiles. This small percentage is also seen in the Boston Archdiocese scandal that first brought this issue to the forefront in the late 1990’s. At its hysterical height, up to 80 RCC priests in the Archdiocese of Boston had been accused of sexual misconduct but, after all of the investigative work and prosecutions, only 4 priests, John Geoghan, Rev. Joseph Birmingham,  Rev. Paul R. Shanley and,  Rev. Ronald H. Paquin were found guilty of molesting young children. These men had all been priests for 30 years, the calculus therefore yields that, 4 out of 80 equates to 5% of the accused priests being actual sexual molestors.

In 2002 the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) enlisted the Jon Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct an independent study on sexual abuse and sexual allegations within the Catholic Church. The study looked at all available information of 14 different Archdiocese from 1950 to 2002 and it found that 10,667 people made sexual abuse allegations against 4,392 Catholic priests and deacons during that 52 year time span. According to the study, that’s approximately 4% of ALL the priests and deacons during the 52 time span that the report looked at!

Just this year, in March of 2014, the USCCB released the findings of an independent audit that was conducted in order to address how to keep children safe from sexual molestation. Its findings were remarkable:

- Of the 38,700 active priests** in all of 2013, only 10 contemporaneous abuse allegations made against priests were deemed “credible.” That’s .03% of ALL priest in 2013

- 2013 saw the “fewest allegations and victims” since annual reports were first started in 2004.

- Of the 40 claims made against the RCC during the report’s auditing period (2011-2013), only 7 claims were substantiated in that 2 year period nationwide. That’s 7 claims for the 38,700 ordained priests** in 2013, or, .02% of all priest.

- Of the 370 allegations leveled against priest in 2013, only 1% of those involved child pornography.

- 40% of all priests who were accused in 2013 were already deceased

- 78% of all priests who were accused in 2013 were either already deceased, removed from ministry, laicized or, missing

- 90% of all abuse accusations from 2013 allege incidents from at least 25 years ago

- 80% of all 2013 investigated cases were either unable to be proven or unsubstantiated, where as 14.6% were substantiated.

As we can see, Mr. MacArthur’s notion that pedophilia is wide spread within the cloisters of the Catholic Church don’t hold much water when dutifully scrutinized. MacArthur is simply buying into his personal hatred for the Catholic Church and coupling it with the one-sided reporting of the media. But, what MacArthur is failing to realize is that pedophilia is also an issue WITHIN PROTESTANT CHURCHES!

While MacArthur is pointing to the Roman Catholic Church, he conveniently forgets (or refuses to acknowledge) what Boz Tchividjian, a Protestant law professor at Liberty University recently said while comparing Evangelicals to Catholics on responding to sexual abuse claims:

“I think we are worse…Protestants can be very arrogant when pointing to Catholics…”

And just who is Boz Tchividjian? He’s none other than the grandson of famed evangelical Billy Graham. That’s right, the grandson of one of the greatest evangelical Protestants that ever lived, has come out and explicitly stated that there is in fact a sexual abuse problem within Protestantism. This is verified by the fact that there are, on average, over 260 documented sexual abuse allegations yearly that come from Protestant churches. This number comes from Church Mutual Insurance Co., GuideOne Insurance Co. and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co., which are the top 3 companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America. Additionally, since there is no centralized authority that requires all Protestant churches to report allegations of sexual abuse, it is clear that - among the Protestants - sexual molestation goes vastly unreported; and there is no better example of this under reporting than that of the Southern Baptists.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the second biggest Christian group in the U.S. right behind Roman Catholics, which makes them the largest Protestant body in the U.S., you would think that such a large body of Christians would deem it appropriate to catalogue and record sexual abuse allegations and cases within their denomination in order to bring any wrong-doing to light, right? Well, guess what? The SBC has done exactly the opposite!

In 2008, the SBC rejected establishing a database of clergy and staff who may have been convicted or indicted of molesting minors. You read that right, the SBC opted NOT TO index or record any instances of pedophilia within its ranks and, just one year later in 2009, Baylor University released a study that definitively concluded that sexual abuse in Christian and Jewish churches was more common than previously held and, more importantly, it occurred across ALL religious denominations.

So MacArthur really has no room here in which to correlate celibacy with pedophilia, to the typical Protestant the idea of priestly celibacy is a peculiar one at best but, it does not equate to pedophilia, for if it did, why would the general population of men – who aren’t celibate – commit pedophilia at the same, if not higher, rate then Catholic priests? Likewise with the charge of homosexuality, if in fact celibacy makes priests homosexuals, why is it that the general heterosexual population of men who commit pedophilia is similar to priests? To say that celibacy is associated with pedophilia and homosexuality is to say that men, who are not priests, and who perpetrate sexual abuse of minors, must also be celibate – which is an idiotic statement not rooted in reality.

Whew, that was a lot! I hope that I was able to elucidate some of the truths about what has occurred in the RCC with regards to the sexual abuse scandals and children, I’m certainly not making any apologies for any Catholic priests or staff that have molested children but, what I am trying to demonstrate is that “the sword swings both ways;” in the same manner that some Catholic clergy have committed grave sexual sins with minors, so too have some Protestant religious members. Now that we’ve dealt with that, let’s look at Mr. MacArthur’s comment about celibacy being a medieval era concoction that stripped money from priestly families.

To begin with, celibacy does not mean “can’t get married,” celibacy means that one abstains from sex, regardless of whether one is married or not, additionally, priestly celibacy was not invented in the 1100’s but, 700 years before that! Celibacy became universally practiced in the 4^th century when a local synod of 19 bishops and 24 priests convened in Spain in 305 A.D. At the Synod of Elvira, the early church Fathers produced over 80 different canons on discipline, conduct and, order for the Christian community. Canon 33 is the most pertinent to my point, it states:

Bishops, presbyters, deacons, and others with a position in the ministry are to abstain completely from sexual intercourse with their wives and from the procreation of children. If anyone disobeys, he shall be removed from the clerical office.

So, here we see that any ordained man, if he be married, must be celibate – refrain from sexual intercourse - in order to have a legitimate office within the Catholic Church. A decade later at the Council of Neocaesarea in 315 A.D., the first Canon of that meeting decreed the following regarding priestly marriage:

If a presbyter marry, let him be removed from his order; but if he commit fornication or adultery, let him be altogether cast out [i.e. of communion] and put to penance.

I don’t know about you Mr. MacArthur, but that sounds succinctly like priestly celibacy and, 10 years later at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the 318 Church Fathers declared the following in Canon 3 of that council:

The great Synod has stringently forbidden any bishop, presbyter, deacon, or any one of the clergy whatever, to have a subintroducta dwelling with him, except only a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons only as are beyond all suspicion.

In other words, the men of the Church were not to have any women, save family, living with them in order not to cause scandal. Here we see, much to the chagrin of Mr. MacArthur,  that, by the first quarter of the 4th century, celibacy was already introduced into the Church! But don’t think for a moment that priestly celibacy ends there are, if we continue through the 4th and 5th century we see the following (my emphasis):

For it became Him who is pure, and a teacher of purity to have come forth from a pure bride-chamber. For if he who well fulfils the office of a priest of Jesus abstains from a wife, how should Jesus Himself be born of man and woman?

- St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures Book 2, Chapter 12, paragraph 25, circa 350 A.D.

The Lord Jesus formally stipulated in the Gospel that he had not come to abolish the law, but to bring it to perfection; this is also why he wanted the beauty of the Church whose Bridegroom he is to shine with the splendor of chastity so that when he returns, on the Day of Judgment, he will find her without stain or wrinkle, as his Apostle taught. It is through the indissoluble law of these decisions that all of us, priests and deacons, are bound together from the day of our ordination, and [held to] put our hearts and our bodies to the service of sobriety and purity;may we be pleasing to our God in all things, in the sacrifice we offer daily
- Pope Siricius, Directa Decretal, 385 A.D.

In accordance to with this rule Peter and the other Apostles (I must give Jovinianus something now and then out of my abundance) had indeed wives, but those which they had taken before they knew the Gospel. But once they were received into the Apostolate, they forsook the offices of marriage.
- St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book I, paragraph 26, 393 A.D.

If then “he who is married cares for the things of the world” (1 Cor. 7:33), and a Bishop ought not to care for the things of the world, why does he say the husband of one wife? Some indeed think that he says this with reference to one who remains free from a wife. But if otherwise, he that hath a wife may be as though he had none (1 Cor. 7:29). For that liberty was then properly granted, as suited to the nature of the circumstances then existing. And it is very possible, if a man will, so to regulate his conduct. For as riches make it difficult to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, yet reich men have often entered in, so it is with marriage.
- St. John Chrystosom, Homily 10 on 1 Timothy 3:1-4, 397 A.D.

Aurelius the bishop said: When at the past council the matter on continency and chastity was considered, those three grades, which by a sort of bond are joined to chastity by their consecration, to wit bishops, presbyters, and deacons…should be continent altogether, by which they would be able with singleness of heart to ask what they sought from the Lord; so that what the apostles taught and antiquity kept, that we might also keep.
- Canon 3 of the Council of Carthage 419 A.D.

Celibacy was invented in the 1100's! Trust me, my 60 year old church knows more than the 2,000 year old Catholic Church that my Lord established! 

So, as we can see, Mr. MacArthur has told a bold-face lie in stating that celibacy started in the 12th century when clearly there is historical and documented proof for the discipline of celibacy from the early 4th century but, why would MacArthur lie to his congregation about this? Simply stated, the only reason as to why MacArthur would spit-out such falsehoods is because he is attempting to do what most anti-Catholic Protestants do: they like to demonstrate that important aspects of Catholicism were invented at a later time and therefore have no semblance of the "real" Christian Church of history. Unfortunately, MacArthur is wrong and that old Protestant trick won't work here; honestly, could anyone really look at MacArthur and state that his preaching is inspired if he is teaching error? How could anyone even remotely listen to MacArthur and fully believe him if he's willing to lie about something as trivial, to the common Protestant, as celibacy within the Catholic priesthood? How could anyone trust him to tell the truth? Either John F. MacArthur is a categorical liar or he's selectively choosing that information which would better help out his personal belief system...even if said information is a half truth or no truth at all.

Where, Protestantism > Historical proof

Lastly, let's look at the real reason as to why the Catholic Church decided for a celibate priesthood.

If one were to simply hear the dishonesty that MacArthur is expelling, it would seem as if the Catholic Church forced celibacy upon dutiful priests because they were getting to powerful and rich and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church didn't want that. So, they forced all priests to stop being married so that their children wouldn't live a good life and, forced the priest to be celibates in order to better control them. If that is all that we knew, our level of ignorance would match that of MacArthur.

As I have already demonstrated, the celibate priesthood was already being formed in the Catholic Church by the early 300's A.D. By the time we get to the 11th century, Pope Benedict VIII and Emperor St. Harry II, have convened a synod at Pavia in the year 1022. In this synod, it was decreed that all ordained deacons, subdeacons, priests and, bishops be celibates and marriage was now officially forbidden within the priesthood. But, why did the Church take this extreme step? To sum it up in one word: simony.

You see up until that time priest were allowed to be married and, just like any married man, these pries had sons. And, just like the the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, these sons of priestly fathers became priests and often times, these priestly sons married the daughters of other priestly families and these families would not only become bigger but, wealthier. And, with wealth, crept in sin. By the 11th century, many priest would offer their services for a fee, some would use their money to buy political power and influence, others would use it to buy ecclesiatical offices or favors and, some of those within the hereditary priesthood, would buy up church land for their own use. In other words, some priests saw themselves as kings who had free reign over their sheep and, with enough money, they had the ability to abuse their standing as they saw fit.

This was the reason as to why Pope Benedict VIII declared an all celibate priesthood, it wasn't that he invented it, as MacArthur would have us believe but, in order to stem the corruption that was starting to flourish, Pope Benedict VIII looked at Church history and saw that the notion of celibacy - which had already been around for over 700 years - was the most novel approach. And, considering that the medieval Church was full of so many scoundrels, imagine how many more Catholic priests, bishops or Popes would've had untold wealth and power during the medieval-renaissance era! The Catholic church would've been awashed in priestly families vying for control a la the mafiosi crime syndicates. 

Therefore the Church, being guided by the Holy Spirit, decided that the only way to maintain the integrity of God's priestly caste was to eliminate marriage from the practice. We see Pope St. Leo IX also championing the case for a celibate priesthood during the Easter synod of 1049 in which he renewed and reaffirmed the discipline of celibacy for ordained men all the way from subdeacon to bishop in order to fight against the corrupt clerical politicos of the time who treated their offices as something that could be sold to the highest bidder. Close to 30 years later, Pope Gregory VII held the first Lenten Synod in 1074 in which he renewed the decrees against simony and the importance of incontinence (celibacy) within the clergy. At the Second Lateran Council, which met in 1139, the Church Fathers decreed the following in Canon 6 (my emphasis added):

We also decree that those in the orders of subdeacon and above who have taken wives or concubines are to be deprived of their position and ecclesiastical benefice. For since they ought to be in fact and in name temples of God, vessels of the Lord and sanctuaries of the holy Spirit, it is unbecoming that they give themselves up to marriage and impurity.

The fact was that the Church organically introduced celibacy for her priests because married ordained men were more interested in taking care of their wives/mistresses as well as taking great pains to secure an inheritance for their children at the expense of the Christian faithful. This is why we have a celibate priesthood; for a priest to not marry and devote himself to the needs of his community and not to those of family life, is indeed, a selfless act that beckons a call to a higher state of morality. As St. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 3:32-33:

"...He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife."

This is the biblical evidence for having celibacy within religious orders. St. Paul himself declared in 1 Corinthians 3 what the Catholic Church would eventually have to pronounced: married priest tend to care more about worldly and temporal things whereas unmarried priests - by not having the extra avarice - focus more on the Lord and the needs of the Church. 

Here too we see that MacArthur has lied yet again when he stated that celibacy "had no biblical purpose." If St. Paul, who was a celibate man himself and wrote half of the New Testament, stated that remaining unmarried carried a special, grace filled dignity for servicing the Lord, how can Mr. MacArthur - a sola scriptura adherent - proclaim that there is no scriptural purpose or basis for a celibate priesthood? 

The only reason as to why MacArthur would state such a blatant lie is primarily due to the fact that his man-made theology is lacking; so, to give his personal interpretation of the Gospel of Christ more substance and meaning, Mr. MacArthur has to twist history and scripture in order to arrive at his preconceived theological terminus. 

*When counted, we see that the Damasine List contains 44 O.T. books and 27 N.T. books, the additional 2 books of the O.T. are the latter chapters of the Book of Daniel. Daniel 13 = Susanna and, Daniel 14 = Bel and the Dragon. We know that these 2 books were part of original canon because it came from the Septuagint (LXX) which contained these 2 extra chapters of Daniel. Hence 44 O.T. books + 2 extra books from Daniel + 27 N.T. books = 73.

**In order to substantiate the 38,700 ordained priests, we can look at the fact that, as of 2014, there are 38,275 active priests with 497 having been ordained in April of 2013. Considering the fact that the USCCB audit ended in June 2013, the real number of ordained men is actually closer to 38,700.