Yes, I get emotional about this. Common sense must prevail in the gun control issue.

People have been flipping out at me on Facebook for what I believe to be a pretty unassailable position.

Guns like this one have no business being in the hands of citizens and no amount of blather from the NRA is going to change that. There simply is, nor ever has been, an enumerated Constitutional right for average people to own and use weapons of mass murder.

In 1980, a man named Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States and, though I was only a teenager, I found myself in agreement with nearly everything the man stood for and have been a staunch Conservative ever since.

Becoming a Catholic Conservative has put me at sharp odds with even members of my own family on issues such as the unborn, homosexual marriage, the military and the death penalty. However strong my Conservative leanings, they cannot violate what I believe and practice as a Catholic Christian and I abhor (and feel morally obligated to protest) the incestuous relationship between mainstream Christianity and the extreme National Rifle Association.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) are simply not what they claim to be. They do not represent, as they assert, a line of defense of basic second amendment rights. The second amendment states the following;

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Though I do reject the interpretation that a well regulated militia can only refer to The National Guard or some specifically government-sanctioned entity, I do recognize that the concept of well-regulated is firmly ensconced in the precept of the right to bear arms. It is madness to suggest otherwise.

Certainly, any reasonable person can see and understand the rights of citizens to defend themselves from burglars, rapists and wild animals. Without question, they also understand the rights of hunters to have guns for this purpose. Any one who does not understand these basic freedoms is an extremist and is, rightfully opposed by law abiding voters.

However, we Catholics must oppose all extremes of law and not exclude those that go in the opposite direction. There have been many that continue to shock me by openly positing that there should be no restrictions whatsoever on the type of weapon one should be allowed to own, nor in the size of the ammunition clip. To me, these people have allowed the gun lobby to hijack their sense of reason.

Even more alarming to me is the insistence by some that the very purpose of the second amendment is that citizens be armed against their own government! That argument is very frightening indeed. We, as Catholics and other Conservative Christians, ought not be advocating armed insurrection. I am very sure that is not something Jesus would do.

I am as terrified of Barack Obama and his cast of left-wing nuts as anybody but there is a statistical fact that there is just no getting over. That fact, simply stated, is that myself, my wife, my kids are far more likely to be slaughtered by some sociopath with an AR-15 than we are by some agent of the federal government. Adam Lanza, James Holmes and the duo of Klebold and Harris were not congressmen.

That assault weapons, sawed-off shot guns and the like, have no place in a civilized society, in the hands of John Q Public, is a matter quite beyond dispute and the thought that there may be such weapons in my apartment complex scares the living daylights out of me.

The two principal arguments that the gun nuts use, to defend this maddening proliferation of weapons of mass murder, are both illogical on their face;

1. We need these weapons because the criminals have these weapons.
2. If we let the government take any weapons, they will take all the weapons.

Anybody with common sense knows that there is no way to completely stop all gun violence but that argument misses the point. The reason that these arguments are invalid is because they both fail to answer the chief objection of where does it end? If a terrorist has a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, does that entitle me to one to counter it? If I have a Tank in my yard can I reasonably protest it's confiscation because the government might later return to take my .22 as well?

To me, the picture to the right says, with chilling clarity, what the NRA's position is on assault rifles. They are for the purpose of killing people with whom we disagree or feel we have a score to settle. When these guns are legally purchased, and we start with that mindset, all you need is to add a sprinkle of paranoia or rage and Newtown, Connecticut is the result.

The NRA protests that psychotropic drugs, violent movies and videos are the cause of this gun violence and that they, themselves, are not culpable. That dog just don't hunt. To some degree, it can very well be argued that all of those factors should be examined as causes of these deaths. However, the most immediate and proximate cause of these deaths is slugs flying from the barrel of a weapon that the NRA helped put into the hands of the killer. Any first degree law student knows that intent follows the bullet. If your intent is to make money off a weapon whose only intent is mass murder, the blood of Newtown is on your hands.

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The importance of a true perspective

Yes, I will admit that it truly hurt to sit there with my family and watch Notre Dame get throttled by Alabama in the BCS title game.

This was to be the season of destiny, the year that a bunch of FBS also-rans, shocked the world and went 13-0 and won the National Championship.

Somebody forgot to tell Alabama. Now, I will have to say wait until next year for a 25th consecutive time. This season, I got to fulfill a dream of going to the University of Notre Dame and sitting in the house that Rockne built in a magical and almost perfect season.

Yes, my pride is hurt and yes I am disappointed but I will get over it. However, last night my wife informed me that a former classmate of her's lost her daughter to cancer. She will not get over that nearly so easily.

I don't think God minds us rooting for a College football team. I think he is even willing to overlook me dreaming that the players on this team are still the good guys in gold that they once were (even though it should be obvious to us all that they are not).

I do, however, think that the Savior gets a bit miffed when we make sports figures into idols and sporting events services of worship. I do believe Our Savior knows that life is hard and the longing to lose ourselves in our favorite sport, from time to time, is a harmless act of stress relieving entertainment. If it is more than that, it isn't healthy.

Notre Dame's football team got their butts kicked by Alabama's football team last night. As much as I had hoped for a different outcome, it was a football game. Had it gone the other way, it would have provided me the opportunity to engage in some good-natured ribbing and I might have had a bit more of a spring in my step today. When the memories faded, it really would not have amounted to much more than that.

College athletics were designed to teach the values of teamwork, loyalty, perseverance and dedication. With tickets to last night's match-up fetching as much as $3,800 per, even the most ardent Notre Dame or Alabama fan has to question if college football has become too little about tradition and Americana and too much about the love of money- the root of all evil. Don't get me wrong, I love College football and I love Notre Dame but children will go hungry tonight. Knowing this, who could, with clear conscience, put down $3,800 to watch a football game, even one of this magnitude?

Would God smile on such a thing? Would Notre Dame, Our Mother? Many who attend this university, and play on this team, don't even know or care that Notre Dame means Our Lady.

What gold is the dome now made of? Is it the gold of Our Lady's heavenly glory or the gold that the world treasures? Let us not forget that this is the university that honored Obama. That is a stain this university will bear forever.

So, while I sulk over the Fighting Irish's 4 touchdown shellacking, at the hands of the Crimson Tide, I must regain focus and perspective. It is, alas, just a game.

The game of life goes on and I must, to paraphrase John Denver, seek Grace, in every step I take. In the joys, in the sorrows, in the victories and in the defeats. Never should I be so blinded by either the former or the latter, that I cannot see my way to seek God's true path and purpose to my life. Never should I plunge myself so deeply into an activity of entertainment that I cannot pray for someone who is suffering.

I do not know this person who lost a child but I can promise you one thing. Last night's game means nothing to her, one way or the other.

Perspective sure has a way of cooling our jets, doesn't it?

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*BEST OF DTB #250* Les Miserables

One of the promises I was required to keep, during this Christmas season, was to see Les Miserables in the theater with my wife and daughter. I completed that mission, on this feast of Saint John Neumann (the patron saint of our parish), and on the eve of the last day of Christmas- the Epiphany.

As many of you know, January 6th, 2006 was the worst day of my life and seven year's passing has not reduced the pain enough that I don't still dread it's dawning. A day of joy, a day of celebration....not for us. At least, not yet. Recently, a friend (who shall remain anonymous) posted on his blog, that he got through Les Miserables by watching the LSU game on his smart phone. As much as I enjoyed the word that LSU lost to Clemson, knocking the mighty SEC from it's perch, this was not a movie to 'get through'. There are movies to watch and there are movies to 'get through' and then there are movies to drown in and and be washed by.

Les Miserables is a movie in which you sink all the way to the bottom and remain there for the duration as wave after wave of emotion of grace sweep over you.

I could make a list of movies that affected me this way- Titanic, The Passion of the Christ, The Lord of the Rings; return of the King and United 93 come to mind. The list would not be many more titles in length. I do not get into movies that rest alone on special effects or mindless violence or overly superficial depictions of love and life. A movie has to really speak to me. I walk away asking what does this film say to me? How is my life affected or changed in having seen it?

If You've Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally are the kind of trite, sugar coated mush that make people like me want to throw up, Les Miserables is a baptism of blood- an relenting and seemingly merciless way of the cross. It drags you down out of the warm confines of your comfortable life and into the darkly lit abodes of the lost and forsaken, the despairing and the hopeless who seek death as a respite from the misery that oppresses them and hangs over them like a menacing darkness.

How many of the actors and actresses in this movie really know of this despair, this blackness?

In the event you are not familiar with the story, it starts and ends with the struggle between a man, Jean Valjean who spent 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for a starving child, and his merciless tormentor Javert, whose Pharisaical zeal for the letter of the law, could not grasp the concepts of love and mercy and redemption. On his road to redemption, Jean first finds mercy from a Bishop and that starts his journey to this hopeless man both finding hope and giving hope, saving others and saving himself.

Javert finds himself in need, from Jean's hands, the very mercy he, himself refused to ever give. Where mercy saved Jean Valjean, mercy crushed Javert. Unable to give it, he was unable to receive it. Unable to comprehend what it means to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven, Javert's whole world view explodes. Unable to change, he kills himself instead.

Judgement vs Mercy, Mercy vs Judgement, these are the themes that ring through the whole film. The story is unmistakably Catholic, through and through. Not merely superficially Catholic but Sacrament-ally Catholic, so much so that one bristles at the suggestion that Hollywood was capable of making such a film.

One marvels at the ability of God to speak so boldly through a film created in a town with such a rabid hatred for Him. Then it dawns on you that maybe their derision and disdain for us is not entirely without merit.

One of the central themes of Les Miserables, one that fires at you over and over, is that you cannot reach a soul by condemning and judging that soul. Label him a thief and he'll just become more of a thief. Label her a whore and you give her no reason to believe she is, or can be anything more. How many Jean Valjeans or Fantines have you made? How many have I? Yes, it is true that Hollywood and America are drenched in a sex craving, money worshiping worldview that can not work.

I just wonder, though, do you reach a wounded animal by barking at it? Love is the message of Les Miserables is the same as the movies I mentioned above- Love costs. One must be willing to lay down his very life for love, carry other's burdens, heal other's wounds. Only then, do we give the sinner the space to change- the way Jean valjean changed.

How many people perish and are damned simply because there is no one who cared for them or prayed for them or even noticed them stirring in the shadows? God forbid you were ever such a one, just needing one hand of compassion and never finding it.

Matthew 25
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand,
Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which
 is prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat;
 I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink;
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked,
 and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye
 visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer, saying,
 Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst,
or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison,
 and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily
 I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto
 one of these least, ye did it not unto me.
46 And these shall go away into eternal
 punishment: but the righteous into eternal life. 

The worst mistake one could make watching Les Miserables, would be to focus too heavily on the characters themselves, and not enough on the message. The characters are you and me- our good sides and our bad. The times we were low and lost and just needed to be seen as more than a whore on the street or the number 24601, the times when we were haughty and called down God to be merciless judge to anyone not meeting with our approval.

The story of Les Miserables is one of crosses, endless painful crosses and of how the outcasts of the world are the very precious souls that lead us to heaven.

January 6th, 2006 was the day I entered my darkness. It was a darkness I could not have hoped to extricate myself from. The prayers and compassion of others, over time, pulled me out of it, as it did my wife, my son and my daughters. Les Miserables uses the French Revolution merely as a backdrop. Hunger and desperation and loneliness and despair are themes as raw and real and fresh in 2013 as they were in France in the 1800s or even Israel in the first century.

The desire is too strong to stone the transgressors we know but who among us is really worthy to cast that stone? If measured by the same standard, how many stones do we deserve cast at us?

In the end, what we take from Les Miserables might be shaped by what we really value and how we really view life and salvation. How do we really view the least of us. Are they really just Les Miserables (the miserable), the hopeless dregs of society? Or are they children of God, our brothers and sisters, called to be cared for by us?

I give Les Miserables an enthusiastic 5 stars and urge you to see it.

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*BEST OF DTB #235* Keeping Christ in Christmas Carnival

In participation with the Catholic Bloggers network, here is our article for the Keep Christ in Christmas Carnival.

Over the past couple of years, Deepertruthblog has endeavored to study on what date Jesus Christ was actually born, given that there is so much contradictory conjecture on the matter.

Engaging in this, we decided to keep an open mind and truly follow where the evidence led us. What resulted was a video that we believe makes an almost airtight case that Jesus Christ was, in fact, born on December 25th, 2 BC. Here is the video, should you wish to view it. At first, I basically agreed with those who said that it really doesn't matter what day He was born on but now I am finding it more and more and more important.

The reason why is because it is becoming more and more fashionable to either claim that the day was chosen to cover a pagan feast or to claim that the whole thing is a complete invention of fantasy.

The birth of Christ is not merely an event commemorated, once a year, by a subjectively chosen date, it is an event around which all of history is centered. Jesus circumcision, and initiation into the Jewish faith happened on the eighth day of His life- January, 1st, 1 BC. All of time is measured by those 8 days, those events that happened before it, during and after.

If Jesus is a figment of our imagination, then Christmas should not be celebrated at all. When members of my own family have reduced this day to a day of presents that will break and trees that will die, it becomes an empty, soulless day of vanity and futility. On the other hand, if Christmas day is a real birthday of a real God-Man who was born to save me from the emptiness and despair of this valley of tears, then the star on my tree reckons a real sight beheld by the Magi and the angel recalls the very same who shattered the darkness of the night sky, electrifying the stunned and lowly shepherds.

Christmas is a day for the latter, not the former and I cannot comprehend the gall of those who would steal our day of light and forge it into their own barren and selfish image.


The kind and benevolent Saint Nicholas, a Catholic Bishop and a model of the love and kindness born this day, has been reduced to a peddler of high end luxury cars in a world where self-indulgence trumps self-sacrifice and the entire message of Christmas has been turned on it's head.

Joy is not found in a Mercedes. Joy is found in the breaking news that thundered through the chilled air over Bethlehem. As the shepherds stared up, mouths open aghast with their breath visible in cloud like puffs, the bleating of sheep drown out with the roaring of Gabriel's voice and a celestial choir soaring in song.

Fear not! For behold I bring you good tidings of great joy! For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior who is Messiah and Lord.

It gives me chills to imagine the ecstasy experienced by these men of lowly estate. I have a very hard time believing that even one of them would trade those moments for the prestige of owning a new Benz.

Why should we keep Christ in Christmas? Because how can you have a season that fulfilled the festival of lights without the light itself? How can you have a birthday party without the birthday boy? How can you have a season of hope, joy, truth and redemption without He who is the very fountain of all these things. How can you gaze in wonder at a emblazoned tree and not stand in awe at the author of life who animated it, but for a season.

How true were John's immortal words that the true light came unto the world but the world did not know Him. He came to His own people but they rejected Him.

To those of you who do not accept Him and, out of stubbornness, will not, I shed a tear of sorrow. Yet, I still ask of you one thing. Create your own day. Call it whatever you wish and give whatever honor to whoever you will. If it be your desire, create a day of nothing where you can heartily and joyously celebrate the day on which nothing happened by anybody, to anybody, or for anybody, for no particular reason. You could commemorate it by walking around blindly in the dark, eating nothing, drinking nothing, feeling nothing and owing nothing. Do all this and more (or less, for that matter). All I ask is that you do it on any day other that December 25th.

Surely, out of the 365 days of the year, you can spare one where those who are filled with sorrow can feel hope, those who filled with guilt can find reconciliation, those who love and believe in Jesus Christ can worship and adore Him as real. As you preach to us of tolerance, how tolerant are you to demand we remove all our creches and stay silent with our hymns and well wishes?

You, who constantly push your secular views on us all of the 365 days, cannot tolerate driving past a park where cold spectators kneel before a small model of a stable marking our sacred day. Will you melt if you overhear someone say 'Merry Christmas'?

Christmas is OUR day. Get your own and leave us be. We would will that you share in our joy but that is your call. What we will not do, is share in your misery. We the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. We pray that you will one day see it. If you chose not to, know this- we will not let you douse that light. If you try, expect a fight.

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Where do we go from here?

It wasn't supposed to end like this. It just doesn't make any sense. How can we even hope to go on from here? He was supposed to be our savior yet, there He is, defeated and dead, hanging on a cross. I guess it's time to give up, isn't it?

A few days ago, someone asked me the question 'Where do we go from here'? I responded that I have been trying to figure that out since election day and I am getting nothing. I have been soul searching and heart searching and mind searching and strength searching, trying to find one reason why it even makes sense to keep hoping and dreaming and believing and fighting. Then it hit me. The reason to keep hoping and dreaming and believing and fighting is a person and His name is Jesus Christ. I spent the last week trying to make sense of this all, then the Holy Spirit showed me that it doesn't have to make sense. In fact, faith is strongest in reverse proportion to how much sense it makes.

I have spent the last week processing the very real possibility that the United States of America, as a nation, is finished. Like ill-fated United 93, that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11th, 2001, the country has been hijacked by people who are determined to destroy it. These people who abetted by those who are too selfish, too cowardly or too apathetic to oppose them.

America, as a nation, is probably doomed.

Would that be the worst thing that could happen? No.

As Jesus walked the way of sorrows, carrying the Cross, he ran into the women of Jerusalem and had this to say;

"Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 "For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' 30 "Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us.' 31 "For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry?"

Catholics call this the 8th station, in a devotional known as The Way of the Cross. I am meditating on this station even now as I contemplate what occurred last Tuesday. For even as He walked His own condemnation, Jesus was letting the city of Jerusalem know that it's own destruction was nigh.

Is this the message we should be hearing now about America?

 Sons and Daughters of America, weep not for me but for yourselves and your children.

That America has reelected the most wicked President in it's history is a matter quite beyond dispute. That so many are to blame is just as unarguable. Was there voter fraud? Yes. Did too many voters stay home? Yes. Dirty money? Terrible candidate? Complicate media? Cowards on our side? Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.

However, I want to focus on what, for me, are the most shocking exit poll results of all.

Among regular church goers, Mitt Romney won by 20 percentage points. Romney won a similar margin among Married voters. 59% of White Catholics supported Romney while only 48% of all Catholics supported him overall. Hispanic Catholics supported Obama to the tune of almost 80%.

There are a number of sobering conclusions to draw here.

1. Those who go are married and go to church are no longer the backbone of our nation.
2. Far too many Catholics are on the wrong side of issues like abortion and marriage and far too few are going to church.

 The issue is excruciatingly bad in the Hispanic Catholic community. Hispanic Catholics supported gay marriage by a 20 point margin (52-32), that leaves another 16% undecided. When less than 1/3 of Hispanic Catholics are willing to support traditional marriage, that is a very serious problem. As millions of Hispanic Catholics continue to flood into the United States, through both legal and illegal immigration, a paradox is at work. While the overall Catholic population appears to be rising as a result, the Catholic population is actually becoming far more nominal with each day.

Gay marriage passed in 4 states and the largely Catholic Hispanic vote was a big part of that. This is in addition to their obvious role in helping to reelect the worst President in American history based almost solely on his open and unapologetic support of illegal immigration.

Of course, just because the problem is so egregiously bad among Hispanic Catholics does not exactly give white Catholics a pass. When more than 4 in 10 white Catholics are voting for a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-religious liberty candidate, it cannot be cased as religious, racial or ethnic tolerance. It is simply Catholics being unfaithful and irresponsible. Being willing to vote for a candidate of color is laudable, so long as said candidate is worthy of your vote. Barack Obama isn't. Racial tolerance cannot be a substitute for ethical stewardship. We have reached a point where people are afraid of being discerning for fear of being accused of being discriminating. Barack Obama and his ilk are undeserving of the vote of any Christian, because of his radical and perverse views and positions. The color of his skin has nothing to do with it. We must be unafraid to live out the dream of MLK jr and judge a man by the content of his character.

America cannot survive because it has become what Jesus Christ spoke of and Abraham Lincoln echoed- a house divided against itself.

Alexi De Tocqueville observed two things that now apply to America. The first is that any Democracy is doomed once the people realize that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. Once the majority of the country figures this out, they will always vote for whoever gives them the most.

Democracies, or anything made by men, are doomed to fail. The only institution that will never die is the Catholic Church. It wasn't created by men but by God, Himself.

The second thing he noted is that America was great because America was good. When America ceased to be good, he observed, she shall ceased to be great.

America has ceased to be good and has, thus, ceased to be great. Soon, Now, She has ceased to be altogether. The America of Barack Obama bears no resemblance to the America you and I inherited and wanted to pass on. That America is not coming back.

It is time to accept the fact that you reach a point where you have did all you can do but you have struck the iceberg, nonetheless.

So, where do we go from here?

It's rescue time. The ship is going down and it will sink. There is no saving it. Save as many as you can.

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Halloween- the high, holy day of Satanism and birthdate of protestantism.

In his recent article, the Catholic Defender gave a great historical presentation of the historical origins of Halloween. Drawing on pagan influences, Halloween has come to be the high, holy day of Satan worship, which always draws a contrast to Catholicism. Whatever Catholics do, Satanists do the opposite.

This is very instructive. You see, the demons know who Jesus really is and where He really is. (Mark 1:21-28, James 2:19)

That is why Satan choose October 31st- the eve of all hallows- as the pinnacle day of Satan worship. It is also why he chose that same day to create the counterfeit religion of Protestantism with it's purpose to first divide and weaken the Christian flock, then unite the entire world under the Jewish Antichrist. Martin Lucifer founded the protestant cult by nailing his 95 thesis on a church door on October 31st.

It is very frustrating for informed Catholics who see this and want desperately to warn others and save them from this diabolical plan that is moving forward and into place, right before our eyes.

The Book of Revelation shows, with frightening clarity, the imminence of John's warning of Judgement on the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish religion.

Revelation 1:7BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.

Those words were an urgent warning that Jerusalem was about to fall and soon. John wrote those words during the reign of the 6th king (Galba) (Revelation 17:10-11). This was in 68 AD. About 2 years later, on the 9th of AV in 70 AD, Babylon the Great, the city that crucified Our Lord (Rev 11:8), the city that killed the prophets (Rev 18:24, Matthew 23:37, Luke 13:33) fell. The Jewish nation and the Jewish religion fell, never to be heard from again.

Today, a counterfeit Jewish nation that is really a synagogue of Satan (Revelation 2:9, 3:9) stands in it's place. The Religion of anti-christ, heralded by the false prophet who looks like a lamb and speaks like a dragon (Revelation 13:11). This is Luther and his religion of Protestantism, created by sinful men, on the devil's day, to herald worship of the beast and his number (Revelation 13:18).

Today, millions of dispensationalists, who call themselves Christians, proudly fly the mark of the beast, on their own websites.

There is nothing holy about the hexagram. It is a symbol of the occult and it is actually condemned in Scripture. It is the mark of the beast and sure proof that protestants who embrace it are, by no means, Christians.

That fact is spookier than Dracula or Frankenstein ever could be.

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Wrap-up of last night's debate

There is no question that Deeper Truth Blog won last night's debate, improving our overall record to 18-0. How close the debate was, however, depends very much on the view of the premise(s) which we were debating.  In this sense, one could take the micro view or the macro view.

If we are taking the micro view, that is, examining each piece of Catholic Marian devotion and theology and measuring it's value, I think anyone listening would argue that it was a very spirited and competitive debate. There were more than a few overreaches by Ketterer but also a few arguments that I failed to capitalize on as sharply as I might have in the past. (The fact that I was exhausted from all the overtime was surely a factor in that).

Overall, I successfully countered most-but not all- of his points and out-pointed him on both style and substance, in the range of about a 55-45 victory. Honestly, I thought Brian made very effective use of the rules and the clock to get as many arguments into a tight space as possible. He failed to respond to a large number of my points but, as I have already conceded, so did I. If we view this debate in this focus "Catholics are incorrect on a number of Marian doctrines", Ketterer held his own, losing a narrow 55-45 victory or perhaps even a few points tighter than that. This would make this, without question, the closest debate we have had yet. He lost it because he failed to counter my Biblical arguments and prove any of his own by anything more than innuendo and empty juxtaposition of Catholicism on pagan religions of the past.

If, however, the debate premise was a macro one, in keeping with the bravado he posted on his own facebook, he lost this debate in a rout of titanic proportions. Never once did Ketterer approach demonstrating that the Catholic Mary is a goddess nor that any Catholic engages in any idolatrous or pagan practice, whatsoever. This is the type of wild-eyed conspiratorial over reach that we have come to know and expect from cultists like George Lujack and Debra JM Smith. In fact, during this very debate, Brian actually denounced the cult of Calvinism that the loopy Debra Smith adheres to.

There is little doubt that Brian sincerely believes that Catholic doctrine about Mary- the Assumption, the Immaculate conception, Intercessory prayer etc- constitutes material worship, as illogical as this position is. However, debates are about winning on the merits of the arguments. When pressed repeatedly, Brian could not scriptural support the bulwark argument of his entire case of worship, the argument that a simple, intercessory prayer constitutes worship. Again, he is free to believe that but, if a debate is built on proof, he whiffed and he whiffed badly.

Even more damaging to his case (in fact, fatally so) is the unsupported and unsupportable position that Mary, who we call "blessed among women" and merely ask to pray for us, is a goddess in our theology.

My guess is that Brian uses unnecessary rhetoric and hyperbole such as this because of some personal animus towards Catholics. Of course, I would never claim I could prove that. Over-reach is not my style.

Brian caught me at the weakest point he likely ever will in this debate and still lost clearly, if closely. He would be well served to brush up on how to construct cogent, well-formed, logically sound and Biblical arguments going forward, and check the inflammatory hyperbole at the door. I suspect the audience would rather hear sound, reasoned, scholarly debates going forward rather than venomous polemics.

In Brian's case, he does not want to play into my hands too much and find himself on the losing end of a rout. Jes' sayin'. He can heed or not at his own peril.

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