Sorry Dave, you have proved exactly what you are and it is time you were called out. This has been coming for a while. Too bad you can't take it. Your minions like Ross and others are welcome to come here and tell me where I am wrong about what you spew against your fellow-Catholics.
You say that Father John Hardon, "loved your work?" Well, if he were alive today, I doubt very much he would "love" your name-calling and online abuse of your fellow Catholics. It is time you stopped riding on his words that nobody can verify how they came about. You shame his memory.
It is time that you were held accountable, publicly.
The name-calling of Catholics who hold fast to the truth and tradition is appalling. It is satanic. It is typical of these people who think the church only began at Vatican II. Armstrong puts himself forward as an apologist. Instead, he issues screeds at his fellow Catholics that is not going to go unchecked here. He has attacked me personally in the past and I have generally ignored his pretentious writing, but the latest bile on pathetic.com is enough. His slanderous name-calling must be called out. Odd how he denies he does it anymore and then proceeds to call me a "radical catholic reactionary" whatever that might be.
Show some courage and comment here Dave. As for my "bombastic" comments, they are reserved for those who undermine the faith, not the simple "Novus Ordo Catholic" which you will never find on this blog. You are quite petulant and puerile to say the least and I know of one person who has suffered from your writing by following your pathetic example.
Ask yourself if your name-calling is something that is from the Holy Spirit?
Shame on you.
Vox
Below follows his response, the italicised show my original remarks.
Nota Bene: every click you give Armstrong, Shea and others on pathetic.com puts money in their pockets. If you go to his blog, it links directly to pathetic.com as does his FB, It is a racket, don't feed them.
Reply to Latest Attacks from a Radical Catholic Reactionary
This guy refused to link to my piece that sent him into the stratosphere (heaven forbid someone actually read my side of this nonsense), so I won't name him or give a link to his post (from 12-30-15), either. But I will respond (in brackets) to some of the sillier stuff.
"There is an American self-appointed lay "apologist" now writing beyond his own blog, at Patheos. His name is Dave Armstrong. It seems Patheos picks up all of these sorts." ["self-appointed" huh? This is one of the favorite lines of "usual suspect" slanderers. Let's see, for starters, I have twenty officially published books with six different publishers, including most of the largest Catholic ones (including four bestsellers in the field). My first book has a Foreword by Servant of God, Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, who was Blessed Mother Teresa's catechist and a close adviser to Blessed Pope Paul VI. My second book has a Foreword by Dr. Scott Hahn. I've been endorsed by virtually all of the leading apologists, have been interviewed on Catholic radio over 20 times, including twice on "Catholic Answers Live". I have Imprimaturs, including from my own bishop, a column every other week for "The Michigan Catholic," worked for The Coming Home Network for three years, but I am merely self-appointed and not even entitled to use the title "apologist" to describe myself. What the heck am I, then? I've made my living by writing apologetics these past 14 years. Oh, I forgot: I'm just one "of these sorts." That's what I'll put on my tax form, for occupation]
[Note: this guy favorably cites Fr. Hardon in articles dated 9-20-14, 1-17-14 (in the title), 1-4-13, Fr. Hardon loved my work and called it "very Catholic." I studied with him for many months in 1990-1992. He received me into the Church and baptized my first two sons]
"His [sic] claims to be an "apologist," yet he takes relish in bashing other Catholics."
[I am an apologist; see the above. I take no relish in critiquing Catholics who have gone astray. I criticize the ones who want to bash the pope almost daily, and the Novus Ordo Mass, and Catholics who prefer it, who are slanderously characterized as modernists and neo-Catholics.]
"He can go on about how he has no "objection" to the traditional Mass," [yes I can, since I have attended a traditional Latin Mass since 1991, attended the Tridentine Mass at midnight on Christmas (obviously because I hate it so much) and was in favor of widespread access to it 16 years before Pope Benedict XVI decreed it. I've also written many articles favoring liturgical positions taken by mainstream traditionalists: one of whom -- a person with a major traditionalist website: Unam Sanctam Catholicam -- I invited to my house a few weeks ago to give a talk on the TLM. This guy prominently links to that website on his own sidebar. Sounds very hostile, doesn't it?]
"He is typical of this neo-catholicism that is as destructive to the faith as modernism and the heresies that stem from it." [that's me! Worse than a modernist. All my readers know that: how much I love theological liberalism, folks like Hans Kung, and heresies like Jehovah's Witnesses, that I was refuting over thirty years ago before I was even a Catholic.]
"He is pathetic dot coms latest poster-boy for neo-catholicism. Mad-trads. Trads behaving badly. Rad Trads." [as is well-known, I stopped using the term, "radtrad" a couple of years ago, because it was falsely being perceived as implicating mainstream traditionalists (which it never did). I even went to the trouble of changing the language in dozens of old papers and in a few of my books, which required revisions. I make a stark contrast between mainstream, legitimate traditionalists (with whom I usually agree), and radical Catholic reactionaries, which is what this guy clearly is. But one would never know that about me, reading his babbling ravings.]
"His bombastic, arrogant, uncharitable attacks on Catholics has gone on for years . . ."
[Right; in great contrast, of course, to the measured, charitable, nuanced, soft-spoken, humble, unassuming pontifications of folks like him . . . ]