Interesting Response to Martin Marty

[Thought MOJ readers would be interested in this response to my earlier post today.]

Dear Dr. Perry,

I respect Martin Marty and agree with him that "attention-grabbing Catholic
defense leagues" (doubtless a thinly-veiled reference to the organization
headed by William Donohue) sometimes cry wolf.

But if Marty did not find "a single inch of print showing Protestants
attacking the pope or Catholicism" over the last two weeks, then he's missed
commentary by high-profile Calvinists like Dr. James White, and high-profile
Baptists like Dr. Al Mohler, neither of whom can be lumped with "creepy,
crawly commentators at the outer edge of cyberspatial blogs."

White saw the death of the pope as an opportunity for other Christians to
convict Catholics of our alleged doctrinal errors. Mohler complained that
Protestants have been too cozy with Catholics of late, and that the pope
paid too little attention to issues of concern to other Christians. Both
were outspoken critics of Catholicism even before the pope's death, and both
(along with pastor Mark D. Roberts, a frequent guest on Hugh Hewitt's
popular radio show) take a dim view of the renewed Protestant interest in
Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In other words, while Marty is right that Catholicism's harshest critics
come from within her ranks, his optimistic assessment of a thaw in
relationships between Catholics and Protestants, while not unreasonable, may
nevertheless be premature.

Along similar lines, this may be of interest:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7989

Best,

Patrick O'Hannigan
"The Paragraph Farmer"

http://paragraphfarmer.blogspot.com/