Have I Claimed that Taylor Marshall is Literally an Anglican?

Have I Claimed that Taylor Marshall is Literally an Anglican? June 5, 2019

This exchange occurred on a public Facebook page. The words of David M Williams will be in blue; those of my longtime Facebook friend Susan Loniewski in green.

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An unhinged and absolutely uncharitable hit piece disguised as a book review.  Sharing this kind of slander around is low. [referring to my Amazon review of Infiltration]

Dave never does an uncharitable hit piece. Or slander. Perhaps you should take a moment and actually address what he says.

The title of one of his articles claims that Taylor Marshall has “returned to anglicanism”. That’s a flat out lie. He’s slandering Dr. Marshall.

David, he clarified that. He wasn’t saying that Taylor Marshall had literally reverted back to Anglicanism but had done it in spirit. No flat out lie. No slander. Why not take it up with Dave Armstrong?

And if you had actually read that article [Taylor Marshall Reverts Back to Anglicanism with Infiltration] (what a novelty!), you would have seen the following:

[H]e has reverted and digressed back to the ecclesiological pablum of his former Anglicanism. . . .

Dr. Marshall is still a Catholic. That’s why it is such a disgrace and scandal. One could handle such bilge if it wasn’t coming from a professed, canonical Catholic. But he’s not thinking as a Catholic should think. This is my point.

So when I say that Taylor has become an Anglican, I mean in spirit, in how he thinks about authority; in important presuppositions that are hostile to Catholicism rightly understood. But he is canonically a Catholic. That’s exactly why I refer to these folks as radical Catholic reactionaries. [italicization and bolding in the original]

Likewise, my review on Amazon [which was observed in a link to it in tis very Facebook thread] has the title, “Taylor Marshall Reverts Back to Anglican Ecclesiology with “Infiltration” “ I explain the same thing in the review, because it was drawn from existing articles of mine.

How is an erroneous opinion still not a lie? Proffering that he is “anglican in spirit” is still slander.

You’ve also got at least SEVEN articles talking about Taylor Marshall on the front page of your blog. You seem to have a strange obsession here and an axe to grind. I’m not going to take the time to slog through all that text. Everyone gets that you have some sort of personal animous [sic] and you feel the need to insult everyone who isn’t in agreement with you. Trust me, we get it.

Right. That’s your excuse to ignore my actual arguments: simply attack me. This is the game currently being played by Taylor’s fans: anything but actually address any criticisms. Anyone who criticizes must hate the man.

And that is your rationalization to ignore any opposing viewpoint.

You don’t get to play the projection game. You started with the attacks, ad hominems and slander.

Is this slander?: This is what Taylor Marshall wrote about me on one of his pages (and this constitutes his entire “reply” to me thus far, besides blocking me from his Twitter page):

He’s exaggerating things and creating a controversy so he can create click bate [sic]. He’s paid by the click. [6-2-19, 2:07 PM]

[elsewhere in the same thread] Many of the articles being passed around as “reviews” are just thinly veiled hit pieces full of slander written by people who have not even read the book. 

For those people discouraged by the “us vs them” supposed “fight”, there is a concerted effort by some people to dismiss and destroy Dr. Taylor Marshall and his book. 

The uncharitable attacks and slander of a guy that is just reporting things that are all verifiable and in the historical record is a new low for some of these “fellow Catholics”. [Taylor Marshall “liked” this comment; gave it a Facebook “like”]

I have read the book.

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Jesus had to clarify many things, Does that mean He was unacceptably unclear, and that it was scandalous or otherwise objectionable that He had to explain, for example, His parables, to His disciples? St. Peter stated about St. Paul:

1 Peter 3:15-16 (RSV) . . . So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, [16] speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Does that mean that Paul had the same supposed objectionable deficiency? Or does it mean (as it says) that “the ignorant and unstable twist” his writings?

I plainly stated what I meant. I gave the “authoritative” interpretation (i.e., my own take on what was in my own head: as the world’s greatest authority on what is in my head). There is no doubt about it at all. For anyone who is conscious and has the slightest ability to interpret the English language and understand simple logic, this should be a non-issue. But not in the current anti-rational, hyper-polemical climate . . .

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Photo credit: Andrew Walker (walker44) (10-2-06): ruins of Coventry Cathedral [Wikimedia CommonsCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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