On Good Friday, I defended the Lord Jesus Christ against a blasphemous claim, in a Patheos article, that he was raped and sexually tortured during His Passion and Crucifixion. The suggestion was even made that some of these extreme sexual acts were done to Him on the Cross. When I took to Twitter to refute these claims, the author, Mary Pezzulo, and a group of her supporters began a series of personal attacks on me. There were very few tweets from them trying to provide support for the article. It was mainly an exchange where I argued from theology, and they made personal attacks, engaged in ridicule and name calling, and made false accusations. My previous article replies to Pezzulo’s article on the alleged abuse of Christ. This article replies to some of the claims on Twitter.

Ordinarily, I would not reply to ridicule and name-calling. However, they also included specific false accusations about my work in theology. So I would like to make certain that their lies are exposed and refuted.

I’m not going to quote too many of the malicious remarks made against me by supporters of Pezzulo. There were more than a few. But it shows a terrible disorder among the faithful of the Church — for this happens in many different arguments about Catholicism online — that people commit grave sins of malice, derision, and hateful remarks toward their fellow Catholics for any reason. How many Catholics will end up in Hell for misuse of the internet by sins of harming the Faith, harming the Church, expressing blasphemies, heresies, and malice toward others? What would the parable of the returning King be like, the one that commended those who fed the hungry and visited those in prison, etc., if the deeds on both sides, good and evil, were all related to the internet? The internet is NOT a place where you can sin without God seeing.

[Psalm 1]
{1:1} Blessed is the man who has not followed the counsel of the impious, and has not remained in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence.
{1:2} But his will is with the law of the Lord, and he will meditate on his law, day and night.

[Psalm 2]
{2:1} Why have the Gentiles been seething, and why have the people been pondering nonsense?

[Romans]
{1:28} And since they did not prove to have God by knowledge, God handed them over to a morally depraved way of thinking, so that they might do those things which are not fitting:
{1:29} having been completely filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness; full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, spite, gossiping;
{1:30} slanderous, hateful toward God, abusive, arrogant, self-exalting, devisers of evil, disobedient to parents,
{1:31} foolish, disorderly; without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.

I wrote some tweets defending the Lord Jesus Christ against the claim that He was sexually-abused during his Passion and Crucifixion. These claims are blasphemous, baseless, wicked, foolish, hateful toward God, disorderly, and without affection for the Lord, without love, faith, or hope and without mercy. Despite the complete lack of evidence or support that any such things occurred to Jesus, this woman and her supporters on her blog and on social media asserted these claims repeatedly and vehemently.

What is most disturbing is that, when Catholics read a claim about the Lord Jesus Christ which is not found in any source in Tradition, Scripture, Magisterium or the Saints, and which is blasphemy — or in other cases heresy or schism or idolatry — they immediately accept it, defend it, and make malicious attacks on anyone who disagrees. How can this happen? Do the members of the Church not know the faith? Can they not distinguish truth from falsehoods, doctrine from heresy, love of God from blasphemy? Many Catholics bitterly complain about the Bishops. But the Bishops and priests come from the laity. And there is greater disorder among the laity. It is alarming and sorrowing to see how many Catholics seem to have absolutely no love, faith, or hope. And when a wicked person proposes a grave error, they embrace that person and utter all kinds of calumny against whoever disagrees.

So of course, when I defended the Lord Jesus Christ, on Good Friday, against a blasphemous claim about His Passion and Crucifixion, they also turned their malice toward me. And here are some examples of those ad hominem attacks.

If you think I am mistaken, why not present your case? But they clearly had no case to present, as there is no evidence this claim occurred. So they began to look around on the internet and find things about me to ridicule.

Here is the Twitter handle used by Mary Pezzulo:

“Mary Pezzulo Does Not Have A Valid Occupation @mary_pezzulo”
Quotes from her Twitter account hereafter will simply say “Pezzulo:”

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

Throughout the Twitter debate, Mary Pezzulo misrepresented my use of Emmerich’s visions in my explanation. She discredited those visions, and then spoke as if that proved her case. In fact, Emmerich’s visions are not necessary to my argument, and were only used for two points (which have much support even without Emmerich).

Her visions AND THOSE OF SAINT BRIDGET both say that Jesus wore a loin cloth on the Cross. And both are absent of any claims of sexual abuse of Jesus. Those are the only uses of Emmerich’s visions, and Saint Bridget’s visions agree on both points. Then there are other evidences for both points as well: the absence of any claims of abuse of Jesus in Tradition, Scripture, the Magisterium, the early Church fathers, the Saints, and the Doctors, and other Christian sources. And for the loin cloth, there is the witness of nearly every crucifix in the history of Christendom. So all of my points stand without Emmerich’s visions. St. Bridget supports Emmerich on the same two points. And then the article I have published gives many reasons by which we can be certain that Jesus was not sexually abused, raped, or sexually tortured, as Pezzulo claims.

Pezzulo: “Fun fact: I just found out that the Vatican declared the visions of Blessed Anne Emmerich are fakes. They were written by a friend of hers and a work of fiction. So if you happen to be a staking your claim that someone is a blasphemer on them….”

Pezzulo: “And it’s not known at all whether those visions were from God or due to her illness or side effects from meds.”

As for the tweet above, the Vatican did not officially declare the visions of Emmerich to be fake. Someone involved in Emmerich’s cause for beatification said that they did not use the visions as part of their decision making, as they were written down by a man named Clemens Brentano, and he might have erred or embellished the writings. It is always true of private revelation that the writing down may contain errors; also, the recipient of the visions might have misunderstood. That does not justify calling the visions fake or claiming they might be the result of her illness or side effects from medication. She had a vast number of visions from God covering many events from the Bible, even the Old Testament, as well as innumerable visions about the lives of Jesus and Mary. It is not possible for such things to result from illness or side effects.

The Vatican website biography of Blessed Emmerich: “Her words, which have reached innumerable people in many languages from her modest room in Dülmen through the writings of Clemens Brentano, are an outstanding proclamation of the gospel in service to salvation right up to the present day.”

And from the Vatican announcement of her beatification by Pope Saint John Paul II: Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerick told of “the sorrowful passion of our Lord Jesus Christ” and lived it in her body. The fact that the daughter of poor peasants who sought tenaciously to be close to God became the well-known “Mystic of the Land of Münster” was a work of divine grace.

Let’s review again what Pezzulo wrote:

Pezzulo: “Fun fact: I just found out that the Vatican declared the visions of Blessed Anne Emmerich are fakes [lie]. They were written by a friend of hers and a work of fiction [lie]. So if you happen to be a staking your claim that someone is a blasphemer on them….[lie]”

All of the above assertions by Mary Pezzulo are blatant lies. First, the Vatican never declared the visions of Blessed Emmerich to be fake. Then these books were never presented or claimed to be a work of fiction. They are mainly about the lives of Jesus and Mary; how is that fiction? [Note that Pezzulo’s claim that Jesus was raped and sexually tortured is fiction.]

And it is not at all true that the accusation of blasphemy, for saying Jesus was raped and sexually tortured, is based on Emmerich’s visions. Pezzulo states that every year for the last 3 years, when she published and then repeatedly republished this same article, she was accused of blasphemy. She knows that other persons aside from me have made the accusation. And I’ve seen some of these accusations in the comments on her blog posts. They do not mention Emmerich. Neither is Emmerich’s visions necessary to any part of my argument. Pezzulo does not tell anyone that the same points supported in part by Emmerich’s visions are also supported by Saint Bridget and other sources.

Pezzulo: “And it’s not known at all whether those visions were from God or due to her illness or side effects from meds. [lie]”

As for Blessed Emmerich, her visions were from God, not from her illness or medication side effects. She bore the wounds of the Crown of Thorns, and for many years she had the full stigmata; she also had a cross over her heart and the wound from the lance. All of these signs appeared miraculously. The writings of Brentano, containing her visions, have been published in many languages, and in each language often in multiple new editions as time passed. And all of those editions have received the imprimatur. Thus, a large number of Bishops have approved of these books as being without errors on faith or morals. Such books would not receive the imprimatur, especially so many times for so many years if the visions were fake. And she would not have been beatified if her visions were considered fake by the Vatican, as she had these visions almost daily for many years.

The Lies

What surprises me most about Pezzulo’s response to my accusation is the lies. I’ve written many articles pointing out grave errors, even to the point of heresy and other cases of blasphemy. The accused sometimes give a defense that is weak theologically. Often they make personal attacks. But Pezzulo’s response was lie after lie after lie. She pretended to think that one of my websites was the same as the Vatican website. She told the above lies about Emmerich. She made false claims about my positions in Catholic sexual ethics. Her lies about Emmerich and about the Vatican website are particularly egregious.

Vatican Website

A few persons complained that one of my websites (Catechism.cc) was pretending to be the Vatican website (Vatican.va). The sole basis for this claim is the background pattern on the site, which is not the same as the Vatican website, but similar. That pattern is called “parchment” and it is similar to many other website background patterns. It has a yellowish mottled look. Many websites use such a pattern. It is absurd to claim that using a similar background pattern is meant to trick people into thinking it is the Vatican website. The domain name and URL do not have the word “Vatican” and only the Vatican can have websites using “.va”. Then nothing on the page claims it is a Vatican site. Then this is at the top of that page:

“Catechism.cc is the website of Ronald L. Conte Jr., a Roman Catholic theologian and Bible translator. Read a summary of my work as a lay theologian and an explanation of my credentials. You can also read my blog, the Reproach of Christ, or follow me on Twitter.”

It clearly says it is my website. The Vatican website looks completely different. See this image below. A screen capture of my website is on the left, and a screen capture of the Vatican website is on the right. No one would confuse the two.

But to understand their complaint, you need one more piece of information. Many years ago, some persons in a discussion forum, similarly looking for something to complain about, found my website Catechism.cc. They, too, were in the midst of a theological argument against me, and were seeking a way to discredit me. They saw that the background pattern was, they thought, similar to that of the Vatican website. In fact, the image I use is lighter and has a different pattern. But they made the complaint anyway. They pretended to be fooled into thinking it was a Vatican website. It’s always been just a list of links to my articles, all with my name on them. And catechisms are not only published by the Church. Many catechisms are privately written and published. So they made a deliberate false accusation, based on a passing similarity in the background image on the website. This type of background pattern is called “parchment”. These are commonly used on many websites.

So when Pezzulo was looking for some way to discredit me, she searched the internet. She then repeated complaints that other persons have made against me online, even going back many years. These are not her complaints. She took them from other sites by searching the net. When she found the complaint about Catechism.cc looking like the Vatican website, what she did not realize is that it is an old complaint. My website has since then, and for a long time, had the clear statement added to the top (specifically to forestall this type of past complaint) — Catechism.cc is the website of Ronald L. Conte Jr., a Roman Catholic theologian and Bible translator. In addition, as the years passed, the Vatican website has also change quite a lot. So the complaint from many years ago no longer carries any weight at all.

But Pezzulo pretended to be angry at this alleged deception. And some of her supporters also falsely claimed to have been harmed by being deceived into thinking Catechism.cc was the Vatican website. That’s a complaint from many years ago, based on the old version of my site and the old version of the Vatican website. The way things stand now, there is not even a passing similarity. So it is clearly a deliberate lie for someone to say that they were deceived and actually thought it was the Vatican website. And here are the lies:

This claim was expressed mainly by Pezzulo and two other commentators, Kate and Megan.

“Kate | head empty no thoughts @Katerintree
“The trick of making his website look so similar to the Vatican one was intentional & deceptive af”
…
“Clever little man, imitating the style of the Vatican website for his … whatever this is. Countdown to his patreon launch?”

My comment: Catechism.cc looks literally nothing like the Vatican website. There is no similarity in style at all. Mine is a page with all the text in one column down the middle, with nothing on the sides. The Vatican.va website has all kinds of different areas for text and images. It has the image of the Pope. Mine has no images. The Vatican site has pictures of different Popes, the Vatican shield, a scrolling text box for the latest news. Mine has nothing of the kind. It is just text and links.

My website says this at the bottom:
“These books, articles, and websites are copyright by Ronald L. Conte Jr. All Rights Reserved.”
The Vatican website says this at the bottom:
“Navigazione per lo Stato della Città del Vaticano
VATICAN CITY STATE
PREFECTURE OF THE PAPAL HOUSEHOLD
PETER’S PENCE
OFFICE OF PAPAL CHARITIES
SYNOD OF BISHOPS
THE PAPAL ARCHIVES
VATICAN LIBRARY
VATICAN MUSEUMS
WORLD YOUTH DAY
VATICAN WEBSITES
WEB ARCHIVE
APP
BASILICAS AND PAPAL CHAPELS
VIRTUAL TOURS
ABUSE OF MINORS THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE
FAQ”
The two websites are literally nothing alike, not even remotely. This is an old accusation that they found on the internet, and pretended to believe. Kate is blatantly lying.

“Megan is Probably Watching a Superhero Movie @medbarth”
“He’s had this site for a while. Like I was looking for something YEARS ago and thought this was the actual Vatican site.”

My comments: No, Megan, you did not see Catechism.cc years ago and think it was the actual Vatican site. It’s always been just a column of text with links to articles clearly attributed to me, as in “by Ronald L. Conte Jr.” There are prominent links to my books. My name is all over the site. So you are lying when you claim that you actually thought this was the actual Vatican site. Why don’t you quit your job and become one of those Instagram influencers who photoshops pictures of themselves pretending to be in other countries.

Pezzulo: “I’m furious on behalf of the people who commented saying they were duped into thinking he was a real authority on Catholicism and got traumatized by it. Other than that, it’s no skin off my nose either.”

My comments: But previous to the above quote, Pezzulo contradicts her supporters and herself by clearly indicating that she realized the site in question is my catechism website:
Pezzulo: “You should see his “catechism” I’m reading in a tab. It’s… it’s out there.”

So she knew the site was my catechism.cc website. She was not fooled. And since she clearly did look at the website, she also realizes that it looks nothing like the Vatican website. Also, the website says this at the top:

Roman Catholic theology on faith and morals

Catechism.cc is the website of Ronald L. Conte Jr., a Roman Catholic theologian and Bible translator. Read a summary of my work as a lay theologian and an explanation of my credentials. You can also read my blog, the Reproach of Christ, or follow me on Twitter.

Please note that each of my theological arguments on any topic stands on its own merits. Sometimes I express a theological opinion on a matter of pious disagreement among faithful Catholics. Other times I express, in my own way, the true teachings of Tradition, Scripture, Magisterium. The faithful are free to disagree with my theological opinions, but they are not free to disagree with the teachings of the Magisterium.”

So no one was fooled into thinking that the website was anything other than my website with articles of theology. Therefore, these three Catholics — Kate, Megan, and Mary Pezzulo — lied deliberately and knowingly. They pretended to be tricked into thinking that Catechism.cc was the official Vatican website, when the two look nothing alike. And then Pezzulo takes the lie further, pretending to be “furious” for all the poor souls who were tricked by the website. This type of lying is gravely immoral. It is lying, publicly with deliberate malice, in an attempt to cause harm to another Catholic. Why? because I defended the Lord Jesus Christ against a claim that is nowhere to be found in any Christian source. They had no good reason for their lie. They each lied out of malice. Then pretending to be furious at something that you know is an entirely fictional lie is even more gravely immoral.

This happens online quite often in the Catholic internet. A theological argument falls apart into supporters of one person making personal malicious attacks on the other side of the argument. They commit grave sins for the sake of supporting someone they follow, or someone who writings they like. And they do not care if they are sinning by lying, malice, derision, ridicule, gossiping, etc. How Catholics can behave this way is hard to understand.

Catholic Sexual Ethics

Criticism and misrepresentations of my work in Catholic marital sexual ethics was used in the Twitter debate by Pezzulo and her supporters to try to discredit me. This topic is not so closely related to the original Twitter discussion on the Crucifixion. They were simply looking for ways to discredit me, as in: He’s wrong on this other subject, so don’t listen to him on any subject. That is not a valid point.

Pezzulo: “He thinks it’s a sin to use your hands during intercourse even if you climax inside your wife.”

Pezzulo: “Go ahead and write a post for your three hundred followers. I hope it’s less squicktastic than the one about foreplay being a sin.”

Pezzulo: “Are you the same Ronald Conte Jr. who wrote that married couples are in sin if they use their hands or a marital aid for foreplay?”

No, I do not think foreplay is necessarily a sin, though of course it can be. Use of hands by the married couple in foreplay is not necessarily a sin. My book on this topic reviews Scripture, the Saints, and the Magisterium as well as several different priests and theologians on the subject and presents the traditional view. On some of the finer points, there are open questions, and I give my theological opinion.

I don’t see how referencing my work on this subject justifies the article we started out discussing on Twitter. The discussion there quickly turned into Pezzulo and supporters making personal attacks and reviewing my work in other subject areas. Even then, they had no real theological arguments to the contrary.

Lies that Hurt Survivors

One commenter on her article attacking me personally suggested silence as a response to me. She then replied:

Pezzulo: “Not when he’s spreading lies that hurt survivors.”

What she is saying is itself a lie. She invented a number of false accusations to try to discredit me. And more than a few of her supporters piled on with repeating or expanding on this approach. But she is the one who is lying. As this article explains, the accusations she makes against my work in theology is false. Also, it is not a valid theological argument, to point to other things a persons has written and a way to nullify criticism of you without any defense of your own position.

Pezzulo has no theological argument to defend her position on the sufferings of Jesus. So she wraps herself in the flag of the protection of survivors of abuse. That of course makes no sense. She has no proof that Jesus was sexually abused, so she can only turn to lying ad hominem attacks.

There is nothing that I wrote which hurts survivors of abuse. Denying that Christ was abused does not hurt anyone. It protects the faithful worldwide from lies about the Savior of the world. She pretends to be defending abuse victims because she can’t support her own position with any type of theological argument.

Bible Translation

There was a few remarks about my Bible translation. When I translated the entire Latin Vulgate Bible into English, and placed it in the public domain for everyone to use without royalties or restrictions, I did so for the Lord Jesus, for His followers, and for all persons of goodwill. I never imagined that my fellow Catholics would use this good work as a way to attack me. “Don’t listen to him when he defends Jesus against blasphemies, when he defends the Popes and Councils, the Church and the Magisterium, because he also translated the Bible.” How is that even an accusation?

Pezzulo: “I’m just putting this out here. Ron Conte Jr. who is STILL accusing me of blasphemy and threatening to write to his couple hundred followers about me on the blog as if that would bother me… has written HIS OWN PERSONAL VERSION OF THE BIBLE.”

Yes, I am making that accusation of blasphemy, as others have also done over the past three years. And writing a blog post about the subject is not a threat, nor do I write in order to bother anyone.

Pezzulo: “I repeat, HE HAS HIS OWN BIBLE. Hubris beyond all bound.”

The Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) is not a personal version of the Bible. It is a fairly literal translation of the Latin Vulgate. Using my work with the Bible as an attack is difficult to understand. How is that a bad thing? How is it hubris? This attempt at a personal attack fails as I am accused of a good work for the Church and the faithful. When Jesus, the returning King (Mt 25), separates the sheep from the goats, will the Bible translators be with the goats? (Don’t answer that! I withdraw the question.)

After criticizing my Bible translation, Pezzulo remarked about my book “Healthy Eating versus Mortality”, which is a book based on over 600 peer-reviewed medical studies about nutritional components and foods that studies show reduce risk of disease and death.

Pezzulo: “And also a book of dietary advice?”

She’s really grasping at straws. She spent quite a lot of time looking through the internet to try to find things to accuse me of. — He translated the Bible and he wrote about healthy eating. — So? I should also point out that the original topic was an article that I and others have found to be blasphemous. And her reply is basically, Well, you translated the Bible and wrote about healthy eating. Not a very convincing reply.

Pezzulo: “A bachelor’s. Not to knock a bachelor’s degree, but that means I with my three-quarters of an MA in Philosophy and two semesters in Catholic bioethics am the Angelic Doctor by comparison.”

I have a BA in philosophy and theology; one degree, a double major. I don’t think her description of her educational background is that much more than my own background. And it only proves that she should know better than to make such remarks about our Lord. Also, comparing herself to the Angelic Doctor is…I don’t even know what to say about that.

[John]
{9:40} And certain Pharisees, who were with him, heard this, and they said to him, “Are we also blind?”
{9:41} Jesus said to them: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. Yet now you say, ‘We see.’ So your sin persists.”

In addition, this is the third year that she posted the same article and the third year that various persons accused her of blasphemy. She should have thought better of it, and removed the article. However, let me be very clear about one thing. I am not trying to cause her to remove her article. I defend her right to freedom of speech and the press and religion. But I will defend our Lord against blasphemy. Then those who support Pezzulo by making malicious attacks on me, I think that they are sinning with her.

More From Twitter

I will present some additional quotes from Mary Pezzulo below. These will be simply text quotes as I don’t want to spend the time to make screen caps of Twitter remarks. Note that my replies below are found only in this article and are not from my Twitter account.

First, her self-description on Twitter (4/3/2021)

“Mary Pezzulo Does Not Have A Valid Occupation
“@mary_pezzulo
“Hysterical woman blogger at Patheos Catholic. Contributor at the Catholic Herald. Author at Apocryphile and Ave Maria Press. A nasty vicious temper.”

Pezzulo: “I’m still angry that he hurts people by presenting his heterodoxy as Church teaching.”

This is the same mistake that Catholics on the far right make, assuming that their own ideas are orthodox and calling anything to the contrary heterodox. If you think you are right and someone else is wrong, present your theological argument. My blog is full of such arguments against persons whom I think have erred.

But she has no theological argument to support her position, nor to establish that my position is heterodox. I have written dozens of books of theology, supporting my theological positions, which in many cases are of course opinion. People can disagree.

Pezzulo: “This dude does NOT give up. And he sincerely thinks that he’s going to show me by writing about me on his made-up theology blog of personal opinions.”

She writes “his made-up theology blog of personal opinions”. Okay, it is a theology blog of personal opinions. Of course it is “made-up”. I didn’t find it in a cave by the Dead Sea on parchments sealed inside clay pottery [like the Dead Sea Scrolls].

I replied to many different tweets on this topic. Then I decided to stop replying, as I had made my case. Pezzulo and her supporters continued for many hours and into the next day with the topic, mostly just making personal attacks on me. There are many more tweets, which I will not present here, nor give a reply to. They were mostly just more personal attacks. Some name calling. Attempts to discredit my by siting my work in theology; that would seem to have the opposite effect, I think.

Well, I will post these two articles on my website, RonConte.com, also called “The Reproach of Christ” on Easter Monday. I’m sure there will be some kind of reply on Twitter and on her blog. I don’t know that I would continue the process of replying to various false accusations and poor theology.

I will close with this thought. We will all stand alone some day before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. We will all be judged by the words and deeds of our lives. I hope to be exonerated by my work in human services for many years, by my work in theology for the Church, by my prayers and suffering, and my other good works. But I know I am a fallen sinner, so I have a salutary fear of the Lord.

It surprises me that so many Catholics, discussing the Faith online, seem to have no fear of God, no humility, and no faith. They behave no differently from secular persons, except that they wear the mask of Catholicism. We know not the hour or the day that we will be judged by God. Be vigilant and pray much.

Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian
and Bible Translator