are Proddies selfish & depraved?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/08/bigotry-on-the-.html
Bigotry on the Bayou? [by Jake Tapper]
August 23, 2007 12:20 PM
Ugly religious charges and counter-charges have emerged in the
Louisiana gubernatorial race, with the Louisiana Democratic Party
running a TV ad accusing the frontrunner, GOP gubernatorial candidate
Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La., of having once called Protestants
“scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical.” The Jindal campaign
says the ad is unfair, pulling and twisting out-of-context quotes
from an essay Jindal, a Rhodes Scholar, wrote for the New Oxford
Review in 1996, and is instructing television stations to pull the ad.
The 30-second TV spot - said to be running in central and north
Louisiana, heavily Protestant areas — features an actress saying
“Most Americans believe we should respect one another’s religion, but
not Bobby Jindal. He wrote articles that insulted thousands of
Louisiana Protestants.” The actress says Jindal “questions the
beliefs of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopaleans, Pentacostals and
other Protestant religions.”
You can view the ad HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEAsUtvDEaw
Louisiana’s open primary is October 20; Democratic Gov. Kathleen
Blanco is not running for reelection. The major Democratic candidates
are Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell and state sen. Walter
Boasso, neither of whom has called for the ad to be pulled.
The full essay is far more complex than the Democratic Party ad would
have it, and a couple of the words they use in the attack ad are
being twisted. The word “depraved,” for instance, is actually Jindal
quoting French Protestant theologian John Calvin, and “selfish” is a
reference to the desires of all Christians.
But Jindal uses the words “scandalous” and “heresy” in his essay “How
Catholicism Is Different” against Protestants, to argue that
Catholicism is preferable to other Christian faiths, if only because
the Catholic Church is the one source to be trusted when interpreting
Scripture.
“The meaning of Scripture is not self-evident,” Jindal writes.
“Sincerely motivated Christians studying the same texts have
disagreed on the fundamentals of the faith, thereby dividing not only
Protestants from Catholics, but also particular Protestant
denominations from each other. Post-Reformation history does not
reflect the unity and harmony of the ‘one flock’ instituted by Christ
but rather a scandalous series of divisions and new denominations,
including some that can hardly be called Christian.”
Jesus, Jindal writes, would believe in Christian leadership to
maintain unity. “The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined
the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork;
the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as
Calvin termed it, their ‘utterly depraved’ minds, to overcome their
tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of
original sin. The choice is between Catholicism’s authoritative
Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and
heresy.”
Jindal concluded the essay by writing “I am thrilled by the recent
ecumenical discussions that have resulted in Catholics and
Evangelicals discovering what they have in common, in terms of both
theology and morality, and as exemplified by joining to oppose
abortion and other fruits of an increasingly secular society, but I
do not want our Evangelical friends to overlook those beliefs that
make Catholicism unique. The challenge is for all Christians to
follow Jesus wherever He leads; one significant part of that
challenge is to consider seriously the claims of the Catholic Church.”
Jindal was raised Hindu but converted to Catholicism after a Southern
Baptist friend told him that “you and your parents are going to hell.”
– jt