Robert Sungenis

Robert A. Sungenis (born 1955), is an American Catholic apologist. He is the founder of The Bellarmine Report, renamed from the Bellarmine Theological Forum in 2011, renamed from Catholic Apologetics International in August 2007. Sungenis is known for his apologetic works critiquing the Protestant doctrines of sola fide and sola scriptura. More recently, he has become known for his advocacy of geocentrism and also for his beliefs about Jews and Judaism that have created controversy.

Contents

Biography

Robert Sungenis was raised in a Catholic family, but became a Protestant Christian at age nineteen.[1] He held various posts (e.g., elder, preacher, adult Sunday school director) in several Protestant churches including a two-year employment under prophecy teacher Harold Camping of Family Radio.[2] He obtained his B.A. in Religion from George Washington University in 1979, and an M.A. in theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1982. Sungenis obtained a Ph.D. in 2006 from the Calamus International University, an unaccredited distance learning institution which is noted, according to Sungenis, "for its academic freedom and alternative science and religious curriculum".[1][3][4] His 700-page dissertation was on the subject of geocentrism.[5] He is currently enrolled for a Ph.D. at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, UK and Liverpool Hope University.[1]

Sungenis returned to Catholicism in 1992 at the age of thirty-seven. In 1994 he was the principal author of a book critiquing the eschatological views of Harold Camping and a number of prominent fundamentalist Protestant preachers.[6] The story of his conversion to Catholicism is chronicled in the first of the Surprised By Truth books[7] edited by Catholic apologist and author Patrick Madrid. He has debated many Protestant apologists, including James R. White, Dave Hunt, Michael Horton, Robert Godfrey and Robert Zins on doctrinal, theological, and historical issues such as sola scriptura, the papacy and papal infallibility, transubstantiation and the Mass, salvation and justification. He is the author of over a dozen books on theology and the Bible.

He has also begun his own non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation and publishing company, Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc.[8], of which Bellarmine Theological Forum is a "subsidiary".

Views on Jews and Judaism

Sungenis has become known for controversial views of the Jewish people and Judaism that have been sharply criticized by some of his fellow Catholics as being anti-semitic.[3][9] Facing such criticism in 2002, Sungenis stated that he is against Zionism, but that he is not anti-semitic. "Anti-semitism is a hatred for the Jewish race. There isn't a bone in my body that feels that way about Jewish people," he wrote.[10] In 2008, Sungenis' bishop, Kevin C. Rhoades, denounced his views of the Jewish people and Judaism as "hostile, uncharitable, and un-Christian" and required Sungenis to stop writing about them. He also directed him to stop using the word "Catholic" in his organization's name.[3] Sungenis has stated that he will only comply with Bishop Rhoades' directive to stop writing about Jews and Judaism if he is forced to do so "under the aegis of a canonical trial".[11]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Sungenis as "one of the most rabid and open anti-Semites in the entire radical traditionalist movement."[12] The organization included him in its "Dirty Dozen" list after he published an article which repeated "a series of ancient antisemitic canards" on the subject of Jewish conversion.[13] In a file on his website, he states that "the Jews control much of the politics, wealth, academia, media, sciences, arts, and culture today."[14] In a review of 'The Israel Test' by award-winning author George Gilder, he lambastes the Jews for their role in what he believes is the moral downfall of society. Sungenis speaks of how, "The humanist Jew has poisoned every area of our culture", and how "Gilder’s logic is the same reason that our Jewish-dominated culture had no tinge of conscience in removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube or in continuing to litter our garbage cans with aborted fetuses."[15] He goes on to claim that the Jews have an inherent sin due to their rejection of Jesus: "The place to begin is for the Jews to admit their own sins, both past and present, which will then allow them to see why God rejected their nation in the first place." He at least downplays, if not outright denies, the Nazi Holocaust - "it is becoming increasing difficult to believe that six million Jews were killed in Nazi internment camps."[15] And, "The statistics show us that there was no large difference between the number of Jews living in 1939 as there were living in 1948, so how could six million Jews have died between those two periods?" [16]

In 2008, Sungenis took credit for the fact that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to remove a sentence from the next printing of the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults that involves the Jewish people and the Mosaic covenant ("Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them",[17] see also dual-covenant theology). The bishops proposed to replace it with a sentence from the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church.[3][18] Sungenis expressed concerns about the original sentence at his website and said he wrote to the Vatican about it.[19] The executive director of evangelization and catechesis for the USCCB's committee on the catechism denied that the change occurred because of Sungenis' intervention.[3]

Geocentrism

Sungenis has become known for his advocacy of geocentrism. He believes that physics and the Bible prove that the sun and all the planets orbit the Earth and that the Earth does not rotate. In support of his beliefs, Sungenis published the book Galileo Was Wrong in the hope that people will "give Scripture its due place and show that science is not all it's cracked up to be." Mainstream scientists reject this cosmological view as demonstrably false and untenable.[20]

Publications

References

  1. ^ a b c Biography. Catholic Apologetics International. http://www.catholicintl.com/aboutus/b-robert.htm. Retrieved 2010-12-13 
  2. ^ Sungenis, R.. Rebuttal ... Concerning the Doctrine of Purgatory (page3). Catholic Apologetics International. http://www.catholicintl.com/epologetics/dialogs/lastthings/rebutal-white-purgatory3.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-17 
  3. ^ a b c d e Burke, Daniel (September 13, 2008). "Catechism Edit 'Troubling,' Jewish Leaders Say Deletion of Passage on Moses in Catholic Handbook Questioned". Washington Post. pp. B09. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203077_pf.html. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 
  4. ^ "Robert Sungenis Responds to his Biography on Wikipedia". catholicintl.com. http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/articlereviews/Wikipedia-01.pdf. Retrieved December 13, 2010. 
  5. ^ Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D.. "Galileo Was Wrong: Q and A". galileowaswrong.blogspot.com. http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/Answers_to_QA_for_website.doc. Retrieved 13 December 2010. 
  6. ^ Sungenis, R.; Temple, S.; Lewis, D.A. (1994). Shockwave Two Thousand! The Harold Camping 1994 Debacle. New Leaf Press. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shockwave-Two-Thousand-Camping-Debacle/dp/0892212691 
  7. ^ Madrid, P. (1994). Surprised by Truth: 11 Converts Give the Biblical and Historical Reasons for Becoming Catholic. Basilica Press. ISBN 978-0964261082. http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Truth-Converts-Biblical-Historical/dp/0964261081 
  8. ^ National Center for Charitable Statistics CAI Publishing, Inc. overview page at nccsdataweb.urban.org. Accessed 2011-04-15.
  9. ^ "The Dirty Dozen". Intelligence Report (Southern Poverty Law Center). Winter 2006. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1297. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 
  10. ^ Sungenis, Robert (October 15, 2002). "Uncorking the Erroneous Teachings, False Allegations and Liberal Agenda of William Cork". Archived from the original on 2002-11-17. http://web.archive.org/web/20021117112639/http://www.catholicintl.com/epologetics/uncorking.asp. Retrieved 2009-04-14. 
  11. ^ Sungenis, R. (February 9, 2008). "The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked (p. 11)". Bellarmine Theological Forum. http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/The%20Old%20Covenant%20Revoked%20or%20Not%20Revoked%20for%20Culture%20Wars.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-24. 
  12. ^ "The Dirty Dozen". Southern Poverty Law Center. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2006/winter/the-dirty-dozen. Retrieved 29 August 2011. 
  13. ^ Lipman, Jennifer. "Speaker row cancels Catholic conference". The Jewish Chronicle Online. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/50332/speaker-row-cancels-catholic-conference. Retrieved 11 July 2011. 
  14. ^ Sungenis, Robert (October 15, 2002). "Ask Your Question about the Jews, Judaism, Zionism, etc.". Archived from [www.catholicintl.com/qa/Ask_Your_Question_about_the_Jews.pdf the original] on 2002-11-17. http://www.catholicintl.com/qa/Ask_Your_Question_about_the_Jews.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-14. 
  15. ^ a b Sungenis, Robert (October 15, 2002). "Book Review of: The Israel Test". Archived from the original on 2002-11-17. http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/Book_Review_of_The_Israel_Test_2.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-14. 
  16. ^ Lipman, Jennifer. "Speaker row cancels Catholic conference". The Jewish Chronicle Online. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/50332/speaker-row-cancels-catholic-conference. Retrieved 11 July 2011. 
  17. ^ United States Catholic Catechism for Adults USCCB (2006), third printing January 2007, p.131
  18. ^ "To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, 'belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ'." see CCC section 839.
  19. ^ Sungenis, Robert (September 5, 2007). "Letter to Cardinal Levada". CAI. http://www.catholicintl.com/catholicissues/Letter%20to%20Levada%20re%20US%20Catechism%202.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-16. 
  20. ^ Sefton, Dru (6 May 2006). "Bible Proves Earth is at Center of Universe, Writer Claims". Times-News,. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_1kaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XCYEAAAAIBAJ&dq=robert-sungenis&pg=6714%2C4991566. Retrieved 13 December 2010. 

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