A Challenge to Catholic-Haters

There seem to be a lot of right-wing fundamentalist nuts these days who like to bash the Catholic Church. One example is Pastor John Hagee, who often refers to the Catholic Church as the “Great Whore.” However, at the same, these guys will tout the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the entire Bible, including the New Testament. However, they can’t have it both ways.

Circa 400 A.D., the same Catholic Church that these fundamentalists like to disparage determined by a vote which books would be included in the New Testament. Its 27 books were selected from more than a hundred possible choices, including those books that make up the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yes, it was the Catholic Church that judged which writings were divinely inspired (and therefore included in the New Testament) and those which were not (and therefore left out).

Here are some questions that Catholic-Haters need to answer: If the Catholic Church is such an apostate, then who or what gave it the authority to piece together the New Testament? If the Catholic Church is indeed the Great Whore, then why should we trust its decisions about which books to include in and exclude from the New Testament? If we as Protestants have the truth on our side, should we not re-look at all the prospective divine writings from the first century and determine for ourselves which are divinely inspired and which are not?