Burn The Ships:
"Villa: Not to imply that growth is proof of exclusive truth, but currently, the "senescent", "defanged" Catholic Church is going through one of the greatest periods of growth in its long history."
Apply "senescent" to its world wide hierarchy. Especially in places like the US where they cannot find enough priests. "Defanged" refers to its evil power as of 400 years ago. Its growth can only be understood in the context of what is happening world wide with MANY religions during these times of distress. When the USSR collapsed there was a major growth in many religions particularly charismatics and apocalyptics. Of course, the JWs were referring to their own growth even lieing about the weakened state of other religions. It is well known by Sociologists that religions grow among the poor, disenfranchised and during periods of social upheavals.
So the issue is not Growth = Truth but why are you growing? And the reason is that they have (false) hope to offer those people.
Whether you know it or not, you may have internalized a great deal of antiCatholic JW propaganda."
Wrong. I was born and baptized and did First Communion as a Catholic. By the time I became a JW, I had no particular animosity against Catholicism. When I left the JWs I threw away very quickly the JW mindset. It is not anti-Catholicism that you detect in my writings but, if you carefully look at all of them on different subjects, it is anti-authoritarianism in general. Examples, All Government, All Businesses/Corporations, All hierarchical Religions. It is the outlook not of someone who has internalized anti-Catholicism from any source but that of an Anarchist who believes in egalitarian social structures.
villabolo