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The Center Will Not Hold: One Convert's View

Fr. Benson wrote a popular novel about the end of time. In the course of it, a character mentions Protestantism, and says, "It is perfectly true that Protestantism is dead. Men do recognize at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration. And it is also true that since the Catholic Church is the only institution that even claims supernatural authority, with all its merciless logic, she has again the allegiance of practically all Christians who have any supernatural belief left." (Lord of the World, p. 8)

Now, one of the features of the aforementioned Noltie Conundrum is that piety eliminates one possibility out of hand: the Holy Spirit cannot speak mutually exclusive truths about the same matter which is not adiaphora. This is so because the Holy Spirit is God, and God cannot lie.

So the alternatives remaining are: God protects me infallibly at all times when interpreting the Scriptures, (which one's opponents may also claim) or my opponent does not possess the gift of the Holy Spirit. The other option is to conclude that this methodology is itself wrong.
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