Todd Bullis doesn’t understand January 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, contraception, Dallas Diocese, error, foolishness, General Catholic, North Deanery, sadness, scandals, self-serving, Society.trackback
I’ve blogged about a man named Todd Bullis a couple of times. He is a protestant guy who, starting in California and now here in Plano, protests outside pro-abort protestant churches. He displays graphic images of abortion and challenges the members of these pro-abort sects to defend either their beliefs, their membership, or both. It’s very confrontational and controversial, but I was generally supportive of his effort.
I’m less so now. Because Todd was there at the March for Life Saturday, lecturing and hectoring the crowd about how they are fools, how abortion will never end until their churches stand up and fight against it.
Uh……Todd. Mr. Bullis. My man…….you don’t seem to understand a very fundamental fact. It kind of made your actions Saturday not only pointless, but counterproductive. Let me make your error clear: every single church, group, or sect that participated in the March for Life is pro-life. Not just in their little local enclave, not just in a few members, but in their official, overarching teachings. The Southern Baptist Convention – pro-life. They’re screwed up on contraception, which fatally undermines their pro-life stance, but, they are pro-life. Christ for the Nations, the other evangelical groups – pro-life. And the Catholic Church is the only Church that maintains a totally consistent, 100% unwavering life ethic from conception to natural death. The vast majority of the crowd was Catholic.
You didn’t shock me, or I would think the large majority of marchers, with your graphic signs. First of all, they’re getting a bit torn and tattered, and the signs weren’t that graphic. I’ve seen much more intense photos. Heck, I have signs that are more intense.
If there were some people there who, bizaarely, go to a unitarian church or they belong to a liberal episcopal church which is pro-abort or whatever, I doubt they made up even 5% of the marchers. Probably there were very few if any such people.
I’m not sure what the point was. We can never truly know a person’s motivations, but it seemed a bit like a publicity stunt, an attempt to glom your fringe effort onto a larger movement. To be clear, I wasn’t offended you were there, I just thought it was silly and pointless. When I passed by your……protest?…..area, I didn’t see people getting offended or upset. Maybe it did happen, but what I observed was your being ignored. I don’t think people had any clue what you were yammering about. Maybe commenters can share their thoughts.
All in all, I think it was a bad play. It showed a lack of judgment that casts a pall over your other efforts, which may have some merit, but which I don’t think I can support anymore.
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Yeah. I saw them as well. I and other marchers there thought the same thing in that they were preaching to choir, attempting to evangelize the already evangelized. He has a few youtube videos up already of the March and of his rants including the statement that Protestants and the Catholic Church has done nothing with respect to changing abortion laws in the Union. He even ripped off Father Pavone’s statement concerning America’s rejection of abortion and the use of these images. Either he did not realize this and was simply ignorant or is aware of it and has just chosen to ignore this fact related to the assertion I referred to above and is being disingenuous. Texas has had just about enough of these West and East coasters if this is all we can expect from them.
Free Texas and end abortion…
[…] UPDATE 01/13: I no longer support this. See post on March for Life 2013. […]
I’m a 71 yr.old “Cradle Catholic”….Had 14 yrs. of Latin… Studied ALL of the Church Fathers & Doctors..(2 of them, before they were given the title “Dr.). . I continued to study on my own, even reading the very Ambiguous Vat.II Documents. & revised Code of Canon Law. For the past 40 yrs, my sister & I did everything we could to Wake Up the Laity & Priests to the dangers. in the Church. When we were laughed at, or, told to “Bake some cookies” for our kids, that was a “Charitable” response! (con’t)
We all need to bake ’em up some good old fashioned truth!
(con’t 2) Most of the time, the priests we approached, showed us the door. This happened, consistently, as soon as we mentioned the need for a Strong RC participation praying outside of Abortion clinics, AND, the need for our Priests to encourage participation from the pulpit! Maybe even show up themselves!! My sister’s Parish Priest agreed with us! A True “Alter Christi”, he was a modern Fr. John Vianney. BUT, the majority upper class laity in his Parish were Scandalized by his Homilies!!! How dare he frighten their kids by talking about Evil!!!! So they swamped the Bishop’s office with complaints & threats of NO financial support. Soon, this Holy Priest was transferred to a very small parish, in “Nowhere” TX. Lucky them!! My sister’s
Parish got the type of Feel Good, “Jesus is our BFF”, “Let’s. put some Zip in our Liturgy, Dancing in the aisles, Et al.” The RC. Laity got the Priests they wanted!! What are now called. “Cafeteria Catholics” were rightly called heretics!!! My point this long post is simply, Don’t point out “defects” in a man who has probably been driven to extremes
(con’t 3) by 40 yrs. of half -baked Christianity too busy being PC to notice. the Cliff in front of them! We have Hundreds of now older Priests, who were Expelled from up scale parishes because they dared to preach the Complete Gospel. There were Priests with us at Operation Rescue, but they were retired, & there were never more than 1 or 2…..God Bless those 1 or 2, they ALWAYS got about 6 mos. in jail!
Todd Bullis isn’t Catholic.
I don’t buy Bullis’ argument that the silence of Christian churches is responsible for abortion. The leadership of many Christian churches have spoken out against abortion and the powers that be are not listening. By and large, the people in the pews aren’t even listening. We don’t live in a theocracy. The churches just don’t have the kind of power he assumes they have. Maybe 60 or 70 years ago, but we live in a completely different world today. When it chooses to speak with whatever moral authority it has left in the public square, the Catholic Church is chastised, ridiculed, ignored, and nowadays steamrolled. You might as well have blamed the Russian clergy for allowing the country to be overrun by the Communists. No one group in this country has the power to simply flip a switch and end abortion, and that includes whole branches of government. Are you shocking consciences or just looking for somebody (else) to blame?
This weekend changed my mind a bit. I got a sense of “look at me” from their presence. But even more, I also got the sense that Bullis and his handful of confederates tend to think they are sole possessors of moral authority – and I don’t like competition for that role! That’s my job, dangit! Seriously, looking back on his effort of the past few years and especially this weekend, I think he’s got a sense that only his little evangelical church is “really” pro-life, whatever that means. We could be doing lots more – the Church could do way more – but it does do a lot at present. Far more than any other group.
The Church’s job is to save souls. The Church’s job is to form consciences. The Church is not responsible for setting government policy or correcting the mistakes of lawmakers and judges. The Church couldn’t do that if it wanted to (and it does). Similarly, my understanding is that many Protestant churches basically function autonomously in terms of what they “stand for”, if anything at all — even those in denominations with published corporate stances on abortion. I’ve seen some of his videos and many of the people he confronts coming out of those churches don’t seem to understand what he’s getting at, I think because they don’t connect the denomination’s published statements with what they themselves believe or what they feel their local church believes. So the accusations of hypocrisy fail to register in the way that they should. Strictly my uninformed opinion, though, just from watching a little of the videos.