Hello All,
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I would like to add my two cents on the Dimond brothers.
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Lastly, as I am new here, I would like to kindly ask any of you who read this to pray a Hail Mary for me. I would greatly appreciate that. Thank you.
This is an incredibly well balanced post, and it's a breath of fresh air to read. I feel precisely the same way about the Dimond Brothers, that they have done a tremendous amount of good and are right about almost every position they've taken (even if every once in a while their logic is a bit off IMO), but that they have succuмbed to bitter zeal. I have been praying for them. At the same time, most of those who despise the Dimonds (and I don't use the term "despise" lightly or loosely here) have a similarly-bitter and contemptuous attitude toward THEM, and this has in fact contributed to the bitter zeal that they themselves have slid into. One might say it's a bit hypocritical. Bishop Dolan started in on a rather uncharitable attack against them, and yet he's not criticized for that, only the Dimond Brothers after they responded in kind. It's OK to bash the Dimond Brothers, and "open season" has been declared against them by a lot of Trads. So it's OK for people to slander and deride the Dimond Brothers, but then when they respond in kind, oh the horror, look at the lack of charity. When people attack them as bitterly and ruthlessly as they do, anyone would be tempted to become bitter. They are not wrong to a point when they hold that many of their opponents are of bad will. You can see that in particular on the EENS issue, where it often becomes obvious that most people who have a "loose" interpretation of EENS simply don't WANT to believe the dogma as-is. But there's this kind of "bad will" and there's a more malicious bad will, and I think it's important to distinguish. They also often accuse people of "mortal" sin, and that's a matter of the internal forum, so they need to start referring to grave sin instead of mortal. They do too much judging of the internal forum.
But I pray for them, and I found their video about Taylor Marshall to be very well balanced and extremely charitable ... and I hope and pray that it's a trend that continues. Even their video about Bishop Dolan was a lot more measured than it used to be. In the past, one could almost detect a tone of delight when a certain "heretic" passed away and were, in their judgment, now in hell.
In any case, with Taylor Marshall, they used a lot of more balanced terms, that he's confused, in contradiction with himself, etc. And they adequately demonstrated that in their video. But they never hurled around the terms declaring him to be of "bad will" or even the word "heretic". I think it's clear that Taylor Marshall is not of bad will, but that he is confused, and who isn't confused by this diabolical confusion these days? Perhaps they could at least come to the realization that they could be a lot more persuasive if they were to put aside the harsh and bitter rhetoric.
I think that part of the reason they go into the internal forum is due to their emphasis on MANIFEST heresy as excluding from the Church. But the quote they held up their from St. Robert Bellarmine in his video reinforces the fact that we cannot know or judge the internal forum, and that's why we stick to manifest heresy. But I think that one element of MANIFEST heresy is that the pertinacity also needs to be manifest. You can't just say, "he just made a heretical statement. He's outside the Church." Someone could have simply misspoken or tripped up. From there, the Dimonds then argue that if one has them been shown all the evidence and the arguments and they persist in their heresy, and yet persist in their error, then they are to be presumed pertinacious heretics. Problem there is that the Dimonds don't have any authority, and even the best syllogism contains elements of human reasoning. OK, the argument looks solid, but did they miss a distinction here or there? And every once in a while, I do feel as if they've missed a distinction.
As you point out, some of the criticisms of them are extremely petty, the claim that theirs is a money-making operation. I experienced the same thing you describe where after I placed an order, they threw in a bunch of extra stuff which left me thinking they had lost money on the transaction. They're definitely not about money. They have a true zeal for the truth and for spreading it. And then there's the nonsense about how they're "fake" religious. What does that mean these days? All Traditional religious are technically fake religious. No one is canonically approved where they would be considered official religious in normal times of the Church. I give them the same respect as I do to other Traditional religious. I do tend to call them the Dimond Brothers (rather than by their religious names), but that's only because I'm terrible with names and don't really get who is who of the two Brothers. But I capitalize Brothers, and I respect them for what they have done. They make great videos and do a lot of good, and I continue to pray for them that they soften their bitterness, because I strongly believe that they could do 10x more good if they were to do so, and could be much more persuasive.
Topic: Dimond Brothers on Taylor Marshall (Read 9024 times)