"He has his reasons". What do you think they are?Sudsy wrote:Boot, when was the last time Max answered a question you asked of him ? My guess is that it goes way back in time. Max does respond to others but to a point and he has his reason(s) for why he ends public conversations when he does and sometimes offers to continue through pms.
I can tell you precisely when he stopped responding to me. When I first realized that the images on his website were faked, showed people how to use Google image search to see where the images on his web site came from, and identified the original source of most of them. Before that, I had assumed he was telling the truth. When he first came to us on MennoDiscuss, there was a Wikipedia article on Plain Catholics. It got deleted because they could not identify this group as a real movement. There was once discussion of Plain Catholics on Catholic Forums. People expressed a lot of doubts about them, threads got heated, and discussion stopped (did their moderators step in and stop it?)
I suspect that Max is here largely to promote this fantasy of Plain Catholics who:
- Are very good friends with their Amish and Mennonite neighbors (but despite the Mennonite game, none of us seems to be able to find Amish or Mennonites who know them)
- Raise barns together with their Amish neighbors - but the photo showing this is clearly a copyrighted photo from Ian Adams, whose site identifies it as "an Amish barn raising in Holmes County, Ohio".
- Often wears Amish-style or German Baptist style clothing - but he never explains why they would identify with Amish or German Baptists, and a simple image search reveals that the photos on his web site are of Amish and German Baptists. And he never explains why a Catholic would choose Amish or German Baptist clothing to be modest, when Catholics have their own traditions of modesty.
- Has an unbroken history going back to the Catholic Land Movement - but other websites and books tell us this movement died out without leaving a Plain Catholic movement behind it, and the Catholic Land Movement did not look like what they are telling us Plain Catholics look like.
- Is in general, an awful lot like plain Mennonites theologically, right down to identifying with Schleitheim and the Dordrecht Confession - but he does not want to discuss how you could be a lot like plain Mennonites and still follow the Catechism and Canon Law.
For instance, in the thread you were responding on, he is telling us that Catholics have a very different teaching on infant baptism than the Catechism and Canon Law seem to teach. If the things he is saying are true, he could provide quotes from official Catholic teaching that say infant baptism is a choice left up to the parents, as he claims, rather than obligatory, as they seem to say.
Truth doesn't need special protection. It stands up to questioning. It answers the questions. It only looks like he is lying because he does not answer the questions.Sudsy wrote:Boot, I do appreciate your posts and your insight in many areas. However, I don't think you realize just how much of what Max posts, you challenge to be true. It seems obvious to me that his methods of responding or not responding to questions, really irritates you. It often reads to me, 'Beware everyone, Max tells lies'. Just saying what it looks like to me from the side lines. Why not just stay out of any threads Max creates and let him do his thing?
I think the reason I question him so often is that he often says questionable things. I suspect one of his main purposes on MN is to try to get people to believe the things in the list above and other impressions he would like to convey about himself and "Plain Catholics". There are other things he says about himself that I question. If I am wrong, I would like to know that, and straightforward answers would establish that.
But years into this, I still haven't heard straightforward answers to these questions. Instead, he accuses people who ask these questions of being emotionally unstable, spiritually questionable, or abusive. Or makes a big show of shunning them. Most people back off then he starts attacking their character. When things quiet down, he repeats his claims, over and over again, without providing evidence that they are true. And if nobody questions him, at least the newcomers assume that it's all true. We have already seen many threads where he simply repeats a claim, over and over again, after it has been shown false.
I don't think we need to provide special protection for that tactic.