This Just In: One Catholic in Forty Is a Criminal

Okay. I stretched the truth a little. First off, the study from which these figures come wasn’t done by The Barna Group, so we might as well throw them out just because. After all, what Christian doesn’t base everything they do on what George Barna says. Second, the report is from 1873 – in England and Wales. Other than that, it should be accurate, since it comes from a Parliamentary report (unless you factor in that it’s taken out of a Jehovah’s Witness book, and they have a history of problems with factual reporting, both didactic and prophetic).

The report is taken from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society’s book Studies in the Scriptures, Series III: Thy Kingdom Come, p. 163, copyright 1908. The Watchtower, which is the official name of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, takes a rather dim view of any religion other than their own, collectively calling all other religions “Babylon the Great.” They take an especial dislike for what they call “Christendom,” which the rest of us call Christ’s Church, and have a real antipathy for the Catholic Church, not because of any doctrinal differentiation from other denominations, but because they’re a more recognizable target.

Click on the graphic to enlarge

The three paragraphs immediately preceding the report read:

    How strong the expression, “She is become the habitation of demons, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” How true it is, that the most execrable of society seek and wear the garb of Christian profession and ceremonialism, in some of the various quarters (sects) of Babylon. Every impure principle and doctrine, somehow and somewhere, finds representation in her. And she is a “cage” which holds securely not only the Lord’s meek and gentle doves, but also many unclean and hateful birds. Of all the defaulters, and deceivers of men and of women, how many are professedly members of Christ’s Church! and how many even use their profession as a cloak under which to forward evil schemes! It is well known that a majority of even the most brutal criminals executed die in the Roman Catholic communion.
    Babylon has contained both the best and the worst, both the cream and the dregs, of the population of the civilized world. The cream is the small class of truly consecrated ones, sadly mixed up with the great mass of mere professors and the filthy, criminal dregs; but under favorable conditions the cream class will be separated in the present harvest, preparatory to being glorified.
    As an illustration of the proportion of the unclean and hateful birds, in and out of Babylon, note the following official report of the condition of society in a quarter of the wheat field where “Orthodoxy” has for centuries boasted of the fine quality and purity of its wheat and the fewness of its tares, and where “The Church,” so called, has been associated with the government in making the laws and in ruling the people.”

What can we glean from this study? Well, for one thing, only 1 in 20,000 “infidels” are criminals, whereas 1 in 40 Catholics is a criminal. I guess it’s a tough group over in England and Wales. Perhaps Barna can do a follow-up study to see if the Watchtower has managed to clean things up since 1908. The other thing that can be seen is the lengths to which the Watchtower will go to stuff straw men that can then be easily knocked down, all at the expense of the truth, a principle which they follow to this day.