Above photo: Autumn sunrise along the Erie Canal in Pittsford, NY
Anti-Semitism was already on the upswing in America prior to the Israel-Gaza conflict, but has worsened since. What’s ironic is provocateurs from both the political far-right and the far-left are fueling the hatred. It’s also ironic that the Catholic author of the article above is calling upon Catholics to battle anti-Semitism. No institution did more to establish and foment anti-Semitism in the West than the RCC. Adolf Hitler once remarked, “As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic church has adopted for fifteen hundred years, when it has regarded the Jews as dangerous and pushed them into ghettos, etc., because it knew what the Jews were like.”
Take note that the RCC taught it was a soul-damning mortal sin to arrange for cremation up until 1963 when pope Paul VI reversed course and allowed it. What happened to the Catholics who were cremated prior to 1963? Also, unbaptized deceased newborns/children of Catholic parents were not allowed burial in Catholic cemeteries until a 1983 change in Canon Law lifted the ban. However, grieving parents must still obtain permission from the local bishop to bury their unbaptized deceased child.
Dr. Leonardo De Chirico and his associates at the Reformanda Initiative previously discussed this topic in one of their podcasts (see here). Dr. De Chirico expounds further in this recent article.
Fictional purgatory was fabricated by the RCC as a works-righteousness safety-net.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops instituted a three-year (2022-24) nationwide eucharistic revival in response to surveys that revealed 70% of American Catholics don’t believe in transubstantiation. The Catholic writer of this article states the “revival” is a sham because the sacrament of reconciliation aka confession isn’t being co-emphasized. Catholics are required to confess all of their mortal sins to a priest prior to receiving the Jesus wafer under threat of incurring an additional mortal sin, but few comply.
Pope Francis announced he will be attending the United Nations COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai for three days, December 1-3. Francis continues to consolidate his position as the world’s most prominent religious leader.
Gavin Ortlund is getting so many clicks on his “Truth Unites” YouTube channel that he’s decided to resign as senior pastor of a 100-member Baptist church in Ojai, California to devote all of his time to podcasting. I stumbled across Ortlund’s videos several months ago. While he quibbles with several of Catholicism’s aberrant doctrines, the “evangelical Protestant” pastor fully accepts the RCC with its false gospel as a Christian entity, à la Norman Geisler.
This is tragic on many levels. God’s Word instructs us that we need to be single-minded. Our private thoughts and behaviors need to match our “Amen!”s at church on Sunday. God sees and knows all. Your secret sin will “find you out” (Numbers 32:23) sooner or later.
excatholic4christ 
Answering your question: My Saturday was good! Preached here at a local church! Rest afterwards; Sunday onwards is going to get crazy with preaching marathon in the heat of a rural area
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I’ll be praying for your preaching marathon!
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Wow thank you
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1. Crazy how anti-SEmitism is one the rise again…especially in college campuses.
2. Also good point about RC’s anti-semitism history.
3. Catholic lite water-down American version describes so many so called Catholics…they need the Gospel still.
4. I get all the Ortlund preacher confused…
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Thanks for all the good comments!
1&2: Yeah, anti-Semitism is always just below the surface and the Israel-Gaza conflict brought it out once again.
3. Yup, 70% of Catholics are nominal.
4. RE: Gavin Ortlund
I was initially excited to see this guy on YouTube critically examining RC-ism, but then discovered he’s like Geisler and Wm. L. Craig, critical of some facets of RC-ism but embracing it overall.
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Sad to hear that also about Gavin Ortlund…so much compromises
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So irrational = “The RCC’s doctrines on justification and soteriology are wrong (as well as its teaching that all religions are legitimate pathways to God), but we overlook all that and accept Catholics as brothers in Christ.” A betrayal of the Gospel.
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One issue of many is most don’t even know what the Gospel is in addition to an abundance of evangelical watering down everything so as to not “offend” those whom they “attempt” to reach.
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Agreed. The “gospel” for many these days is any type of religious philosophy that names Jesus. So we have denominations teaching works-righteousness and salvation-by-merit (all very bad news) falling under the umbrella of the “good news.”
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Indeed the Gospel betrayal is exactly what it is
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So sad there’s additional pain on parents who have to request to bury their child, but it fits the legalistic mindset.
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Yup, I imagine many Catholic parents suffered great sorrow because of this over the centuries. A rule like this is still in effect while the RCC now dichotomously grants that all religionists and even atheist may also merit heaven.
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Tom, I have been very upset with Gavin for a while now. He claims to be a reformed baptist but his indifference to the RCC’s potential dangers and harms spiritually is horribly naive. I can’t stand it and have been tempted to aggressively rebuke him, but I don’t want to say anything inappropriate. I feel he is a traitor. Yes, there are some things I like about him as a person and some of his information is accurate, yet he still maintains that the RCC is ‘a legitimate church with an impoverished view of salvation’. I don’t like the carebear ecumenist dialogues he does with anybody in the Roman or Orthodox camps. This is the same reason I decided to shun Matt Whitman of the Ten Minute Bible Hour because of his saccharine indifference to the heresies of these very same churches. I began to wonder if that is really the fruit of the spirit. Rather, it’s like being on drugs and overlooking the harm a person is doing to others while on some kind of opiate in affirming false churches. I guess I should move on and find something else to nit pick about. Gavin is just one man among many. God still has things under control, even if I don’t have the emotional stability to undertake the task of properly ‘correcting’ other ministers. I feel like I’m better off focusing on something else because seeing this stuff makes me depressed and I just don’t have the temperance to deal with it in a Godly manner. 😦
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It’s surely frustrating. All of the pop evangelical apologists are either Rome-friendly (Wm. Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Frank Turek, etc.) or keep quiet about the differences (J. Warner Wallace). Norman Geisler blazed the trail for Ortlund and others of criticizing various RCC doctrines yet embracing it as a Christian entity.
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Ortlund has interviewed Mike Licona and W.L. Craig positively on his channel. Both men deny biblical inerrancy and yet Ortlund gives the idea that he believes in orthodox doctrine. From my past experience, it’s mostly people under demonic deception who glowingly embrace both of these men. The people I knew who spoke of them as champions were heretics and hypocrites of the worst kind, all claiming to believe in orthodoxy but making light of these heresies as if they were nothing, particularly in claiming that people who believe in the bible without thinking it’s inerrant have more faith and piety than people who do believe in inerrancy. They were also spiritually abusive. I went to their online ‘apologetics’ forum where they went on about how important the virgin birth and the trinity were but boasted of holding to an errant scripture, also exagerrated arguments on how strong the evidence of the resurrection is whether or not the rest of the bible could be proven (which is unrealistic), and claiming Jesus actually wanted us to insult others with the same authority he did to the pharisees, and that we should demean and humiliate others into conversion. One of their ‘heroes’ was heavily involved in fostering this cult mentality until some defamation lawsuits eventually landed him in hot water and led to him revamping his site, removing the insulting writings and cleaning them up to be more presentable. This is interesting, as they held to a sort of ‘we’ll stick to our convictions even if we’re persecuted’ oath which was proven to be a lie just by this drastic change. However, this move is for the better and was an answer to my prayers to cut them down for their horrible false teachings and lead those who would listen to repentance. Most of the archives of that community where they gathered were lost in a major crash, and the majority of the cult scattered into obscurity. There is still a slight remnant, but they don’t have any influence and they have toned down.
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In this ecumenical era, anyone who says the RCC teaches a false gospel is dismissed as a backwater fundamentalist.
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Hi Tom.
I read the article entitled: “Does Purgatory really exist? ‘I hope so,’ said the priest.”
When the author asked a priest about purgatory, He compared it to something out of the Wizard of Oz:
“Remember the ‘Wizard of Oz’?” he continued. “Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and face numerous temptations and threats along the way. Once they arrive, they discover that they must overcome even more obstacles. Finally, they are granted an audience with the wizard, but before that they are taken to a beauty shop, where everything is made clean and new: tin is polished, hair is styled, and old straw is replaced. That’s like purgatory.”
Suddenly, the church’s teaching made sense. Purgatory was not a place of fiery punishment, or the torture required by an exacting God who wanted to squeeze the last drop of penance out of his imperfect children. Instead, it was the final and most beautiful gift of God’s saving grace — the fulfillment of his promise to make us holy. As author Susan Tassone, aka “The Purgatory Lady,” likes to say, “Purgatory is the masterpiece of God’s mercy.” And even though the “Wizard of Oz” can’t convey the depth of the church’s teaching, it was an effective lesson for me at the time.
After reading this, I think your assessment is spot on:
“Fictional purgatory was fabricated by the RCC as a works-righteousness safety-net.”
Thanks for another Roundup! As usual, you shared some very interesting articles this week.
God’s blessings…
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Thank you, Chris! Reading your comments from the article, I couldn’t help but think of the Wizard of Oz’s admonition to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” in relation to the RCC’s doctrine of purgatory. Yes, the RCC leaders were aware of their failings and hypocrisy in regards to their works-justification and salvation by merit system and had to create purgatory as a necessary safety net. The Law shows us we are sinful and guilty beyond measure, but the RCC categorizes sins as major and minor and Catholics think they obey the Ten Commandments fairly well and can beat the system with perhaps a little purgation in purgatory.
Blessings to you!
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Thanks Tom!
As it says in Romans 3:
“23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;…”
We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The idea of some safety net created by some fictitious place is directly opposed to the true gospel.
I will pray, once again, that Catholics will see the errors taught to them by their leaders.
I appreciate your response, Tom, and thank you for your kind words.
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Thank you, Chris. I truly appreciate the good feedback including the relevant Scripture passage. Most evangelicals don’t understand that purgatory is one of the essential corollaries of RC-ism’s works-righteousness salvation system. Many Catholics innately know that meriting Heaven outright is too wide of a leap. I’ve read articles written by conservative Catholic clergymen who admonish priests officiating at funerals and those who present eulogies to stop inferring/stating the person is in Heaven. The presumption is that the vast majority of “good,” practicing Catholics (including prelates and priests) will have to spend time in purgatory.
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You’re welcome, Tom, and thank you for your feedback as well. Your last sentence tells me all I need to know:
“The presumption is that the vast majority of ‘good,’ practicing Catholics (including prelates and priests) will have to spend time in purgatory.”
This fits “well” with the RCC’s works-righteousness salvations system that you have noted.
I put Catholics, particularly the ones who come to your site, on my prayer list today hoping that some might see the problem with purgatory and come to saving faith in Christ by grace alone through faith alone.
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