Anti-Catholic Myths

"The comedy is over"

After Paul VI's death in 1978, Bob Jones called him "archpriest of Satan" and claimed, citing Bernard Berenson's Rumor and Reflection, that a dying pope told the priests, "Get out of here. The comedy is over." Berenson's actual entry relays a third-hand story that Benedict XV sent away the priests saying, "la commedia è finita," which Berenson rightly translated "the play is over." "Comedy" then meant a play with a happy ending, as in Dante's Divine Comedy. The pope meant the drama of his life was over, hardly a confession of duplicity.

"10 Reasons Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic"

• "The papacy is a hoax; Peter was never in Rome." The title "pope" came later, as "Bible" did, but the office is the issue. 1 Peter 5:13 implies Peter was in Rome, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Lactantius unanimously say he presided there and was martyred under Nero, no other city claimed his death or remains, and excavations from 1939 to 1968 identified his bones under St. Peter's (see John E. Walsh, The Bones of St. Peter).
• "Mariolatry is a hoax." True: Catholics do not worship Mary. The Church forbids idolatry, honoring a creature in place of God (CCC 2113; cf. 2110-2112, 2114). Honoring Mary is not adoration, any more than honoring parents (Exodus 20:12) is "parent-olatry."
• "Purgatory is a money-making scheme." A small Mass stipend is customary but not required, and a priest may accept only one a day, a very inefficient scheme. Paying ministers is biblical (1 Timothy 5:17-18; cf. Matthew 10:10; Luke 10:7).

On the fringe

Maria Monk, who claimed to have escaped a Montreal convent, was exposed as a fraud before her death in 1849. Alberto Rivera, featured in Chick comic books, claimed to be a Jesuit infiltrator and secret bishop; Protestant sources, the Christian Research Institute and Christianity Today, showed he was never a priest. His tale of babies buried in tunnels between monasteries and convents cites no place or source, and fails on its own terms: why dig tunnels, and where did the dirt go? Such charges are a mix of prejudice, ignorance and faulty scholarship.