Bishop Patrick John Ryan - Anti-Catholic Myths Debunked

Archbishop Patrick John Ryan

Anti-Catholic Myths
Debunked

Five Common Misconceptions
Answered and Explained

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS

Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2016 by John L. Barger

Anti-Catholic Myths Debunked was formerly published in 1878 by P. Fox, St. Louis, Missouri, under the title What Catholics Do Not Believe: A Lecture. This 2016 edition by Sophia Institute Press includes minor editorial revisions.

Printed in the United States of America.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio.

On the cover: Statue (390935653) Germano Poli / Shutterstock.com.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture passages are taken from the Douay-Rheims edition of the Old and New Testaments.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ryan, P. J. (Patrick John), 1831-1911, author.

Title: Anti-Catholic myths debunked : five common misconceptions answered and

explained / Right Reverend Patrick John Ryan.

Other titles: What Catholics do not believe

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2016. |

Originally published under title: What Catholics do not believe : St.

Louis : P. Fox, 1878. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039471 | ISBN 9781622823567 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 978-1-622823-574

Subjects: LCSH: Catholic Church Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BX1755 .R9 2016 | DDC 282 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039471

Contents

Editors Note

The following pages are drawn from a lecture that Archbishop Ryan gave in St. Louis on December 16, 1877. They have been edited slightly to eliminate anachronisms and other anomalies. Where possible, we have identified persons mentioned by the archbishop and sources of the quotations he cites.

Introduction

The primary object of this book is to remove certain prejudices against the Church prejudices rooted not in what Catholics believe, but in what we do not believe.

The positive side of the question what we do really believe on these points will be found stated in nearly every instance and implied in all. I did not think it essential to state all the reasons for the positive side, because the statement of the fact that we do not believe certain doctrines is the chief point in view.

As to the reason for this topic, I had promised to deliver a discourse in aid of a pressing parochial object the payment of the indebtedness on our new school building and I had determined on the subject I should select, when I was somewhat surprised by an invitation from the Reverend Doctor Snyder, pastor of the Unitarian church in this city, to deliver in his church on a Sunday evening a lecture on The Claims of the Catholic Church.

This confirmed my resolution as to the subject but somewhat changed my mode of treating it. The Reverend Doctor assured me of the presence of a large audience of Protestants, many of whom, he stated, were ignorant of Catholicism, except as defined by its enemies and slanderers.

I could not resist the impulse to address such an audience and defend what is as dear to me as my very existence the Catholic Church. Although I could not accept the pastors invitation to lecture in his church, I hoped that non-Catholics would not object to meet me on neutral ground Mercantile Library Hall. I was not mistaken. The pastor and many of his people attended, and a morning paper states that half of the large audience was Protestant.

I hope I said nothing that could pain them. It is not, and never was, in my heart to do so, in discussing religious questions with outsiders. Without compromising a single iota of truth, we can, like Jesus, be at once kind and true.

As to the lecture itself, although I had delivered the substance of it before, I had never written it all out as the topics were as familiar to me as they are to every Catholic clergyman. Even now I must depend, in parts of it, on a corrected stenographic report, as it is expedient not to delay publication. Hence the haste and redundancy of extempore speaking will occasionally be detected.

I send it forth, however, with the hope that God may bless it on its way and that, for some soul in darkness, it may at least help to remove the impediments to light lending a hand, as it were, in rolling back the stone that closes the sepulcher, so that, hearing the omnipotent voice of grace, the soul may, like the brother of Mary and Martha, come out into the life and light and liberty of the Truth that alone can make her free.

St. Louis
Feast of St. John the Evangelist
December 27, 1877

Five Charges against the Church

I propose to expound on the subject of what Catholics do not believe. That is, as no doubt you already anticipate, I propose to correct some erroneous impressions with regard to important points of Catholic doctrine. After long discussion with non-Catholics of various religious denominations and many of no denomination at all, I am profoundly impressed with the conviction that most of the opposition to the Catholic Church and the gravest obstacle to that mutual good feeling that ought to exist among members of all religious organizations, and, indeed, among all men, arise chiefly from a misunderstanding of what Catholic doctrines on important points really are.

Explanations of these doctrines seem almost as necessary these days as in the days of the apologies of the Early Fathers, some of them written seventeen hundred years ago.

My relations with non-Catholics have taught me also, strange as you may think it, a great respect for what are called bigoted people. They are generally people deeply in earnest, people who hate injustice and deceit, and because they imagine falsely that the Catholic Church is a marvelous combination of the powers of both, they detest it. They also form very often the most fervent and the most persevering converts to the Church.

We can scarcely be angry with them, because they are angry with an institution of impossible existence. Their idea of the Catholic Church would be a combination of contradictions. They are opposed not to the Catholic Church but to something that they think is the Church.

To disabuse them of these errors, to teach these honest, upright, devoted, and religious people, in their way, what we believe, to remove these misapprehensions, is one of the duties before me.

It is a subject that ought to be interesting to a great number of people. First, it should be interesting as a matter, indeed, of justice, to those who protest against the Church. No man has a right to protest against the opinions of another man until he shall have known these opinions from the man who holds them or from the organization that professes them.