My name, John Bugay, has some notoriety in the world of Catholic apologetics, and as a result, the word “anti-Catholic” has appeared in connection with my name in some search engines. This blog post is in response to several items that appear in conjunction with searches for my name.
I am “anti-Catholic” in the sense that I am a former (devout) Catholic, and through an investigation of the Bible and church history, I have decided to leave that institution. In another world, that’s not being “anti-Catholic”. That’s simply “becoming a Protestant”.
The last 200 years have placed the Bible and Christianity itself under an intensive “historical-critical” microscope, and it is clear that both of these have resoundingly passed that test. A hundred years ago, a skeptic like Bertrand Russell questioned whether Jesus was even a real historical person. Now there is no question he was. Even the most strident skeptics today must admit that’s the case.
On the other hand, historical research into the origins of “Roman Catholicism” have not turned up so kindly, to the point that a Roman Catholic Biblical Scholar like John Meier is even quoted as having said that the papacy “cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins”. It is simply false to suggest that Matthew 16:18 constituted the origin of the papacy.
I have written extensively on very many facets of the Roman Catholic Church. Here are a few older items that give a good overview of what I have learned.
My favorite posts at Beggars All:
The See of Peter
The Birth of the Inquisition
The Roman Catholic Hermeneutic
The Integrity of the New Testament Canon
Christianity is Growing but Rome is Sinking
From Reformation500.com
A Few Words About My Method
Thumbs up or thumbs down on Rome
The Unity of the Church
How Roman Catholics Mis-use Scripture:
Ratzinger’s Dishonesty about Exegesis
1 Tim 3:15: The pillar and ground of the truth
John 16:13: On being guided into all truth
The Real Body of Christ
The Catholic Historical Method
This blog post is also posted at http://reformation500.blogspot.com, which is an older blog that I had, which I’ve decided to pull out of the mothballs, in order to talk at a personal level about the Reformation, Roman Catholicism, and perhaps family and personal issues.
This blog post is also posted at Triablogue as well.
