(August 19, 2015 at 2:53 pm)Kaninchen Wrote:(August 19, 2015 at 10:56 am)Randy Carson Wrote: and many others. Are all of these men "car salesmen", also? Or is this a designation you reserve for me alone?
If the latter, then what is the difference? Because I'm pretty steeped in the Catholic Answers school, my arguments were learned primarily (though not exclusively) from them, and my methodologies are not really any different than those found in articles and books that are quite common.
We’ve just come back from the first of our Italian holidays this year and, last week, we were sitting outside a typical Roman bar, drinking coffee, watching the world go by. At an adjacent table a group were talking about their visit to the Vatican and its museums and one woman was talking about the emotional effect it had on her, as a lapsed Catholic. The others hadn’t had that kind of experience but she was very clear, when she got back home, she was off to church. All rather touching really, her crossing of the Tevere (Tiber to you) had been personally shattering. Rather tangentially, that example of the Christian argument that conversion is a product of God’s drawing of the individual to him, made me wonder about my experience of religious people online over the years.
As an outside observer, I think something has happened to some Catholic online apologists as the Internet years have gone by, a product of interaction with Protestant Fundamentalism - battling away with acres of proof texts and supposed ‘evidence’- and, quite possibly, the conversion of some of its adherents. The Church may not have changed but, cutting a long story short, Josh McDowell is a long, long way from ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ and since when has Liberty University been seen as a key centre of Catholic faith development?
Randy, all this charging around waving Protestant sales materials about doesn’t speak of any kind of intellectual or spiritual discipline, neither does the ready copy and pasting of yet another ‘here’s one I baked earlier’ answer speak of engaging with the person you’re failing to talk to.
So, the only car salesman? Perhaps not but probably the most deaf one.
Interesting.
When you reflected on the woman's desire to return to the practice of her faith, Kaninchen, were you moved in any way to reflect upon the practice of your own?