Steve Ray, Patty Bonds, RC Apologetics

I was going to type out a blog response on this particular subject, but I decided to go with the video response because it's a rather distasteful discussion and so I'd like to get it over with faster than typing everything out would.

And it also I think has some usefulness to those who once again want to examine the methodology used by some of the leading Roman Catholic apologists. As most people know, a number of years ago, almost a decade ago now, my sister Patricia Bonds converted the Roman Catholic Church.

I have, of course when that first happened, I did not say anything about it. I did not go on the internet and start making big noise about things. Though I was strongly encouraged to do that, I insisted that if she didn't say anything, then I wasn't going to drag it out there either.

I appreciate that some Roman Catholics, who I will not drag into the midst of this, but I know who they are, tried to give her wise counsel in not becoming the celebrity convert. And I appreciate that there are some Roman Catholic apologists, they are in the small minority.

But some Roman Catholic apologists have not attempted to use her conversion as some kind of apologetic weapon. Most people recognize that both sides have their converts, and sound thinking people recognize that, especially if a person had no particular standing in their religious community beforehand, that hyping them up as a convert really only destroys your own credibility.

It makes people wonder, why are you putting someone like this forward who had no standing? What's the relevance there? Be that as it may, I have posted a letter that I wrote to my sister when I did not know that it was even her.

And I've gone through the whole story, I've talked about this a number of times, you can find the information on the website. Basically, a couple weeks ago, Mrs. Bonds posted an article about what is a Reformed Baptist and what does it matter anyway.

Steve Ray’s Promotion of Patricia Bonds’ Article

And I looked over the article, and there was a brief temptation for a moment to respond to it, but I chose not to, because it was, again, just another demonstration of the fact that Mrs. Bonds is not an apologist.

She's not a theologian, she's not trained in those areas, and is mightily confused about the things she talks about. And I think a lot of people on the Roman Catholic side of the fence have come to understand that over the past number of years.

Then what happens, of course, is there is a Catholic apologist, self-proclaimed, by the name of Steve Ray. Mr. Ray basically makes his money out of dragging little old ladies around Israel and telling them fables about Roman Catholicism, and wearing his Jerusalem Jones hat and putting out videos.

He ransacks other people's works and cobbles stuff together and puts it out as if it's some kind of meaningful apologetic. He won't debate because he knows, in his heart of hearts, that he cannot do so, that he would be crushed if he debated anyone who knew anything about the Bible, exegesis, church history, the early church fathers that he claims to know so much about.

We have documented so many errors on this man's part that it's amazing to me that Catholic apologists are not trying to rein the man in, but they won't. Anything in service of Mother Rome is fine. And so Steve Ray ends up on Catholic Answers Live peddling his stuff all the time.

And Mr. Ray has a particular dislike for me, the feeling is mutual, and so what he does is he wants to promote anything my sister has to say, no matter how silly or ridiculous it might be. And so, since my sister's blog gets very few readers and he gets more, then he tries to palm this stuff off as well, and that's why I'm taking the time to respond to what she has said, because Steve Ray, the same man who lies about 33 ,000 Protestant dominations due to solo scriptura, when caught misquoting early church fathers and using false sources and just being his basic dishonest self, can only respond by going, oh, those anti-Catholics, oh, they just, I just, I'm not even going to deal with them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It is a pathetic thing to observe the incapacity of almost anyone on the Roman Catholic side to just point out this kind of behavior and try to rein the man in, or at least bring some kind of opprobrium upon him so that he might back off, but, you know, like I said, anything in service of Mother Rome.

And so, given that Steve Ray has promoted this article, then I felt it was necessary to point out the rather obvious errors of fact and thought and research and understanding on the part of Mrs. Bonds yet once again.

What Patricia Bonds Claims a Reformed Baptist Is

She begins by saying, in one of his caustic letters to me a while back, my brother taunted me by asking me what I thought a Reformed Baptist was. I was a Reformed Baptist before my conversion to the Catholic Church, and as he does with converts to the Catholic faith, he accused me of not being what he is in the first place.

That's the first paragraph. Of course, I keep all of our correspondence, and if it would be necessary to document everything that has been said to Mrs. Bonds, how many times I have provided her with lengthy argumentation and documentation that she's never responded to.

She just sends those letters off to Steve Ray or to Mark Shea or somebody else, and she has no capacity to respond to these things. She doesn't know those areas. I could demonstrate that what I have said and what I will say now is simply true.

To my knowledge, Patricia Ann Bonds never walked into a Reformed Baptist church in her life. She was certainly never a member of a Reformed Baptist church, which generally is what someone means when they say they're a Reformed Baptist.

She never attended my church, never walked into my church, to my knowledge, and I've said this before and she's never corrected me, so I think that it's a given that she was never a member of a Reformed Baptist church.

The church that she was a member of, Northwest Community Church, was not a Reformed Baptist church and is not a Reformed Baptist church to this day. That is a fact. If you are not a member of a Reformed Baptist church, then what do you mean by saying you're a Reformed Baptist?

Well, I believe what Reformed Baptists believe. Well, actually, the whole point of her article is going to be that no one can know what a Reformed Baptist church is anyways. What I had said was that Mrs. Bonds had only a marginal even familiarity with my work.

She herself has admitted that she could only read a small amount of the material that I had produced, hadn't watched any debates, couldn't stand watching the debates. This of course is the convert speaking at a later point.

As with so many other things, her story changes over time, but in this particular instance, what I had said was to say that she was what I am or what I was even nine years ago is simply dishonest. It is, again, changing history and making things up as you go along.

Northwest Community Church had some great people at it, but two things are very obvious. If it's a Reformed Baptist church, it's pretty easy to define it. It uses the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

Northwest Community Church does not use the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. Secondly, if Northwest Community Church was a Reformed Baptist church, when Mrs. Bonds became Roman Catholic, there would have been a very obvious response to that.

She would have been excommunicated. She would have been put under discipline of the church for apostasy. To my knowledge, she never was, which demonstrates again that Northwest Community Church is not a Reformed Baptist church and does not claim to be a Reformed Baptist church.

Then Mrs. Bonds begins to discuss what she thinks a Reformed Baptist church is by looking at a single article on my church's website, a single article. Not by examining the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which she's probably never read, at least in its entirety.

She says, she talks about some controversy, the controversy about those who would say you can't be Reformed and Baptistic. But listen to her description, the reason is that the word Reformed usually indicates a position closer to that of the Reformers who practiced infant baptism and a more quote covenant end quote approach to salvation.

It is painfully obvious that Mrs. Bonds doesn't understand what covenantalism is, and like many people does not understand that the London Baptist Confession of Faith is thoroughly covenantal, that it speaks of the covenant of grace.

It is highly improbable that Mrs. Bonds has done any reading on the subject of baptism from a Reformed Baptist perspective, probably hasn't watched the debate that I did with Pastor Bill Shishko on the subject, or any of those types of things, and hence doesn't understand that a Reformed Baptist is covenantal in their quote unquote approach to the entirety of the Bible, let alone to salvation.

So once again, this is from a woman who claims to have been a Reformed Baptist, but so painfully obviously was not. Later on, she says, so what's in a name? I can interpret a label like Reformed Baptist one way, and some other person can interpret that label another way.

Who's to say? So there, I explain what a Reformed Baptist is, but I'm sure it is meaningless to most and confusing to many, and a very good example of the fractured nature of Protestantism. So her confusion is a demonstration of the fractured nature of Protestantism.

Reformed Baptist Unity Versus Roman Catholic Diversity

So if I went through and I started talking about the myriads of viewpoints expressed in Roman Catholicism today, if I went up to Boston College and began listening to the people teaching there, teaching things that my sister would never even begin to recognize as having anything to do with Roman Catholicism, and yet they are Roman Catholics in good standing, would that be the same thing?

Well, I don't know. I'd like to point something out to Mrs. Bonds and to Mr. Ray and anybody else. Simple fact, go to a church that teaches the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith and listen to the preaching, listen to the teaching.

Then go to another church that does the same thing, and you'll discover that Reformed Baptists will be 10 ,000 times more unified in their theology, preaching, exegesis, and teaching than the Roman Catholic Church is, by miles.

See, I get to speak in a lot of Reformed Baptist churches across the United States and outside the United States, and I know that's true. I know the communion and the fellowship that we have with one another, and I know that the Roman Catholic communion represents a massive spectrum of belief in comparison to what we as Reformed Baptists believe.

In fact, Sola Scriptura works real well for us. We believe that the Scripture is the sole and fallible rule of faith. We have a fallible rule of faith, notice the difference between the two, and that certainly does provide a way of identification, and I'm sorry if Mrs. Bonds and Mr. Ray are ignorant of these things, but they're the ones that decided to publicize their ignorance of these things.

We would be 1 ,000 times, 10 ,000 times more unified in our preaching, the consistency of our teaching, than you would find if you went from Roman Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church. I mean, here in the Valley, the Valley of the Sun where I live and where Mrs. Bonds lives, you could go from Roman Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church and you'll run into Universalists who are priests.

You'll run into people preaching all sorts of things, all sorts of different views on marriage, and all sorts of different views on sexuality, even abortion. Need I remind anyone, maybe Mrs. Bonds and Roman Catholics in general, that a large number of the Catholic senators, just I believe yesterday, voted so that the protection for conscience would be taken away from medical workers?

How many of these Catholics support abortion rights, homosexual rights? And your senators say, but they're not Catholics. Well, when you disfellowship them, I'll have time to listen to you. But as long as they remain Roman Catholics, as long as they're not removed from the church, don't talk to me about your unity.

You got none of it and you know it. You know it. So when Mrs. Bonds says, well, I can identify Reformed Baptists any way I want to, well, that just gives you an idea of the kind of thinking that goes into becoming a convert to the Roman Catholic faith.

It's not pretty to observe. So the real reason that I wanted to respond to this, though, is to ask you to think about someone like a Steve Ray. Puts out books where he quotes this snippet from there and that snippet from there, but the argumentation is shallow and fallacious.

It's cobbled together. He knows it would never be defensible. The only way he tries to defend it is by writing more cobbled together stuff and hopefully just throwing enough stuff out there as to, you know, it's the old sand in the air type of defense.

That's why he won't do public debates, because he knows in that cross-examination period you can't throw dust. You can't throw sand. And so I really wonder, why is it that Roman Catholic apologists, the ones who take their work seriously, why do they say nothing about these people?

The depths to which they will stoop on their websites in defense of Rome, does that not drag all of you down? You see, on my side, I have been very open in criticizing people who violate Christian standards of truth and doing apologetics.

Why don't Roman Catholics do the same thing? Why is it that, well, as long as it's in service of Rome, then it's okay? It is an amazing thing. We live in a day when truth doesn't matter to a whole lot of folks.

It's appearance and things like that, and so, you know, people convert for all sorts of different reasons, obviously. Very rarely is that conversion actually related to a sound examination of the truth.

I am so thankful. I think of one person, he'll know who it is when I describe him, I think of one person I was just talking to yesterday on our chat channel, who has come out of Roman Catholicism and is now involved in a solid church.

And it was a process. And he and others that I have walked through that process with will tell you that over and over again, I said to them, you need to be grounded, you need to examine these things, you don't need to rush.

If you're going to leave Rome, you need to leave Rome for the right reason. You need to check out what I'm saying. You need to look to the Word of God alone. Here is the answer to that, here is the answer to that, but check it out.

We didn't use the kinds of outrageous behavior that Steve Ray and his ilk used to create converts, because from our perspective, the only one that can create a true convert to Christ is the Holy Spirit of God, and therefore you have to abide by His standards.

There's all sorts of ways to get people to make decisions you want them to make. And I've always been open in criticizing the kind of manipulation used in many evangelical churches that creates false conversions, gives people a religious veneer with no repentance and no faith.

The same thing is true even more so of Rome, except their conversion is to a church rather than to Christ. And so, once again, the vast difference between carefully examining the documents of the Roman Catholic Church, accurately representing what it teaches, and the kind of stuff found in popular Roman Catholic apologetics is demonstrated.

It certainly causes anyone who is serious about this subject to think about why there is such disorder and such disarray and such disregard for truth on the Roman Catholic side of the Tiber River. Thanks for watching.