Why Be Catholic?
SORRY, CATHOLICS; JESUS NEVER SAID, “THOU ART PETER . . .” OR PROMISED HIM THE KEYS.
Jerome D. Gilmartin – February 26, 2024
Well, yes he did. But not according to the theory taught to Catholic seminarians as the best explanation of Gospel origin.
Ask any Catholic priest or bishop, “Who wrote the first Gospel?” Most will answer, “Mark.”
Then say, “Well, I guess there’s no reason for either of us to remain Catholic.”
The response will be something like, “What are you talking about!”
“Soon after Vatican II most Catholic seminaries and Catholic universities in the U.S. adapted the Reformation-rooted ‘Markan Priority Two Source theory.’ It’s now been taught to virtually every priest and bishop in active ministry today as the best explanation of Gospel origin.”
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Holding fast to Christ as Schism threatens the Church.
Jerome D. Gilmartin – September 8, 2023
In his foreword to a new book about the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Raymond Burke wrote: “a revolution is at work to change radically the Church’s self-understanding.” To change “radically” requires “uprooting.”
Firmly rooted in Christ through the Gospels — two of them eyewitness reports from apostles Matthew and John — the Church reached its pre-Vatican II “Golden Age.”
The authenticity of the Gospels is affirmed by Early Church Fathers, in particular St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, who wrote:
“Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”
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The key to restoring Catholic orthodoxy.
Jerome D. Gilmartin – July 16, 2021
Published in Christian Order magazine, February, 2022.
Revised July 5, 2023 to include Irenaeus, Adv. Haer, and the Protestant origin of Markan Priority.
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It is well known that the “Spirit of Vatican II” changed the Catholic landscape, undermining the orthodoxy that resulted in the pre-Vatican II golden age of Catholicism. What is not well known among Catholics is this:
For the past five decades “Markan Priority” instruction in most if not all of our Catholic seminaries and universities has been undermining the faith, in particular that of our seminarians. It casts doubt on eyewitness-apostles Matthew and John, as well as Mark, as writers of the Gospels, asserting or implying that these Gospels were instead written by unknown individuals writing a generation later. Superior biblical scholarship, which soundly refutes this errant instruction, is ignored or suppressed, even by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Markan Priority instruction facilitates ecumenism, but reduces the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church to just another of the tens of thousands of Christian faith traditions. Historical-critical instruction of this kind was seen by Pope Benedict XVI as risking reducing Jesus to “thin air.”
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The Poison Pill taken by Catholic Colleges, Universities and Seminaries — and the Antidote.
Jerome D. Gilmartin – April 11, 2020
It began with a mutiny. Not the upheaval that struck the Church following the July 29, 1968 announcement of Humanae Vitae. Not the many liturgical and other changes that — though not mandated by the Second Vatican Council — nonetheless were soon implemented.
A far more consequential mutiny followed a conference that took place in July, 1967 in Land O’ Lakes Wisconsin. There, led by Holy Cross Father Theodore (Ted) Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame University, leaders of ten major Catholic universities and of two religious orders issued a declaration of independence; most importantly from the Pope:
“[T]he Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic
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Defending the Gospels when even the USCCB doubts that the evangelists wrote them
Jerome D. Gilmartin
Dear defender of the Catholic faith:
For the past five decades, instruction in all but a few U.S. Catholic universities and colleges (and seminaries) has placed the seeking of friendship with Jesus “in danger of clutching at thin air,” as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Jesus of Nazareth, 2007, xii.
These Catholic universities, colleges and seminaries instruct students that the best explanation for the origin of the four Gospels is the Markan Priority Two Source Hypothesis (TSH). In Catholic academia, this hypothesis holds that all four Gospels were probably NOT written by the evangelists, but written anonymously a generation later. The eyewitness reports of apostles Matthew and John in particular are reduced to mere hearsay evidence of the ministry of Jesus by the Markan Priority
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Replacing “thin air” Jesus with the true Jesus in Catholic seminaries, universities and colleges
Jerome D. Gilmartin – September 11, 2019
Pope Benedict XVI: “Intimate friendship with Jesus . . . is in danger of clutching at thin air.” Jesus of Nazareth, 2007, p. xii.
Catholic universities, and seminaries as well, now have reason to bring an end to five decades of instruction that, as Pope Benedict XVI wrote, has reduced Jesus to “thin air,” surely jeopardizing the eternal salvation of countless students and others.
The Catholic bishops of the USCCB now have reason to discontinue their support for this instruction, e.g.: “The ancient tradition that the author [of the Gospel according to Matthew] was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable . . .
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Jesus Emerges from the Historical-Critical Fog
As published in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly • Fall/Winter 2017 (Introduction added)
Jerome D. Gilmartin – Author of The 7-Step Reason to Be Catholic, 2nd Edition: Science, the Bible and History Point to Catholicism
Introduction
From the time the Gospels were written in the decades after Christ’s death on the cross and Resurrection, few Christians doubted that eyewitness-apostles Matthew and John, and “apostolic men” Mark (Peter) and Luke (Paul), wrote them. In the late 1800s, however, soon after the First Vatican Council declared the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, biblical scholars using the historical-critical method developed the Markan Priority Two-Source Hypothesis (TSH), which — virtually ignoring the early historical record — casts doubt on evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke as writers of those Gospels and generally attributes them to later unknown writers who never heard Jesus.
The TSH — with doubt also cast on the apostle John as writer of the last Gospel — has been the dominant hypothesis taught
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