PecanSandie

What about all the make up, short skirts and tight shirts Jessa wears now, especially on a supposed mission trip to a third world country! Gotta wonder if that's Ben's influence or just her natural vanity surfacing? She looks typical for a girl her age who is trying to get attention from her man, but it is way out of the ordinary for the Gothard cult and the Duggar family!

Excellent post! One thing that has helped me in understanding just how the Duggar's and other seemingly normal people could get sucked into Gothardism is the website at Recovering Grace. They use Gothard's own materials to show where he will take a part of a verse out of context to make it appear to agree with his thought on a matter. It's probably no accident at all that Gothard spends so much time and effort on taking these people OUT of the Bible and into the books that he wrote and sells, rather than encouraging them to look to the whole of Scripture as their foundation. Once you get sucked into the cult and the people in the cult become your peers, (because you are taught that to fellowship with other believers who don't share your standards is dangerous), it becomes extremely hard to see clearly. You are always striving to follow Gothards rules the best and get the praise and be bragged on among others in the cult. And then when you start to mentally question things, you become very afraid of 1. being judged by your peers and 2. worried that Gothard is right and if you step out from under his umbrella of authority Satan is free to attack you. Within the group, the murmuring and gossip is horrible, and people who do struggle in some fashion are held up as example of what happens to people who don't "do right." The pressure on the Duggars is immense because not only do they have to do everything right according to Gothard within the group, they also have to do everything right outside the group because of their national audience. They can't afford failure. Hence the high parental controls on their kids as far as being allowed in public without a partner and being allowed to find their own mates.

I really don't like to argue with fellow posters so I hope you'll take my reply in the spirit it's given, true respect. Personally, I don't try and twist anyone's traditions. When I posted Ben's post here, I went straight to the Catechism and linked to it for clarity. I felt like if Ben was going to quote the Holy Bible to support the beliefs in his Facebook post, I should also link to the Catholic source for the beliefs Ben didn't agree with. I think Ben should have done that to. I don't think anyone is lying when they say they have not seen Mary on the Cross. By the same token, I'm not lying when I say I've seen a photo of that and my friend saw it in person when he went to Rome. It was simply used as an example of how biblical Christians who worship Jesus Christ are shocked when they see the veneration of Mary. It is not a belief they share and it is heresy to them. Fox News? Huh? I don't watch it. But I do watch the Duggars!

Margins, Mary as co redemptrix and mediatrix is quite common. Pope JP II used the term frequently. And rather than consecrate his papacy with a declared devotion to Jesus Christ. He instead chose Mary. I'm just a normal joe blow out here who hears and remembers this obvious Mary worship, which of course anyone is entitled to do. Many religions worship dead people or even things that were not human. More power to them. But it seems disingenuous for people to say they have "never heard of" what Ben was saying about Mary and feign outrage when in fact the worship, veneration and prayers to the dead lady (may she rest in peace) is an ongoing practice in Catholicism. Can we with all seriousness and complete honesty, hate and attack Ben for speaking truth where the bible is different from catholic tradition? I wish a staunch catholic who knows the cc would come on here with the paragraph numbers and say, "look, we don't care if it's in the bible our not. We're going to believe paragraph 969 and that's final.

All of the fundie heroes, fallen, fallen. Gotta wonder who they'll hitch their wagons to now.

Don't the women in Ben's family wear pants? I could be wrong but I don't think Ben grew up ATI. ATI is a whole 'nother level of fundie crazy for sure.

Hi Cakeleigh, I enjoyed your post and hearing your point of view. Just to clarify and forgive me if I am being redundant, but Ben didn't post the photo of Mary on the cross. He posted the photo of children kneeling before a statue of Mary. The photo of Mary on the cross was seen by me but a friend of mine saw it in person at the Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. I can completely understand why parts of Catholicism feel like an affront to Christian's like Ben. He's been raised to believe that the Word of God is the ultimate and final truth and going to another country and seeing parts of Catholicism that to him, disagree with the Bible, it is going to be a shock. But it looks like the mighty Duggarnaut brought him to heel and he won't be speaking out on his belief system and how it differs from others if he is going to stay in the fold. Peace to you.

Just for the sake of clarification, here is Ben's post, which he posted after he was bashed on Facebook for the post about the church in Honduras. "I have nothing against individuals who are Catholic. I know a lot of Catholics who are great people. What I DO have a problem with is the teaching that man can merit God's favor through his own works or the works of other fallen men. Ephesians 2:8-9 is very clear "For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." I DO have a problem with the teaching that man can come to God through Mary or any other person besides Jesus. John 14:6: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." I DO have a problem with the deification of Mary as a sinless being. Mary herself admitted her need for a Savior. (Luke 1:47). If she had no sin, she would need no Savior. My conscience is captive to the word of God. Where my Catholic friends adhere to God's Word, I adhere. Where they depart from Scripture, I will in no way support, but will call them out because I love them and desire that they be turned from their deadly errors." As I mentioned before, I don't have a problem when religions disagree with each other. That's just a part of life and all religions are not going to follow the same path. Ben is way more interesting now, to me as a viewer, because he (for a day or so anyway) didn't toe the party line. But I wonder if the Duggars will now force Jessa to break up with him? It seems sort of weird that they are together anyway since he is a Calvinist and Jessa is not. Also, Calvinist do a lot of studying and deep theological reading and I don't see Jessa as the type to do that. It's also surprising that Ben went on a missions trip because Calvinist are not big on missions (that often) as they pretty much believe that only the people God has chosen will be saved. Well, thanks to everyone for discussing this. It's been so interesting!

I think the Oprah thing is just a rumor. I can't see her giving someone who is already rich a college scholarship x19. But speaking of scholarships, kudos to Oprah for all the scholarships she DOES give!

I can't force myself to watch this show, but reading the posts about the show from you guys is just great!

Does anyone remember if the episode where Jennifer was frightened of Jim Bob with the beard was the passion play episode? If so, they have edited it to take out the part where Jennifer was screaming for Dilll and refused to be comforted by Michelle. It's down the memory hole.

To be fair, Ben posted what he disagreed about regarding well known catholic traditions and posted Scripture as the basis for his opinion.

I could be wrong but I believe he saw the statue in person.

I often wondered if Gil and Kelly's standards were also Zach's standards. In his wedding photos he is looking at that girl with a look on his face that doesn't seem very "holy," if you know what I mean!

When the photo of Mary on the cross was brought up it, was to illustrate how a Christian feels violated when anyone beside Jesus Christ is worshiped, prayed to or venerated. Someone then mentioned it in regards to Ben and I wanted to clarify that Ben's photos was not the picture of Mary being portrayed as co-redemptrix, but his picture was a statue of children in a kneeling position before Mary. If you'd like to see the photo of Mary on the cross with Jesus I believe a Google search will turn up several. The one my friend saw was in Rome. All that having been said to present the viewpoint of how a Christian like Ben would feel upon seeing things like this.

Just to clarify Ben didn't say he saw a cross with Mary on it, what he posted was a statue of Mary with children kneeling before her. As a Christian, any human being bring worshipped or prayed to would feel like a violation and heresy to Ben. My friend is the one who told me about seeing Mary on the cross in Rome. He sent me the photo so I've actually seen a photo of that whereas he saw it in person.

It's been weird watching all the older episodes and hearing her talk normal.

I think Ben truly cares about what he considers to be souls in danger of eternal damnation. If you weigh it all out, Ben is of higher character than Jim Bob because Ben spoke the truth to what he believes the Bible says. Jim Bob however, while he believes the same as Ben, the people they both consider lost souls aren't worth speaking up for in Jim Bob's world. He'd rather have the dollar than present the Gospel.

"We know gory details about Kim Kardashian's kid but where is Dirt for Duggars? What hold do they have on the media? Surely TLC isn't that big of a corporation, is it?" As the president of Discovery/TLC (Eileen O'Neil) once famously remarked, "it's hard to walk away from the big numbers?" The Duggars make a lot of money for TLC.

If I may argue from what I believe to be Ben's point of view as a Biblical christian, he and others of the Biblical persuasions would consider the disciples and believers at Antioch to be the original Christians based on what the Holy Scripture says in Acts 11:19-28. From what I can gather from reading Ben's Facebook and Twitter he would consider the Bible to be the authority rather than Catholic traditions. (Acts 17:11, Mark 7:8, Col. 2:8.) Regarding Mary as coredemptrix (sorry I spelled that I wrong earlier) but it's my understanding that it's quite common for her to be elevated to this position in Catholocism. If memory serves Pope John Paul ll was very firm on this tradition. My friend saw the Mary on the cross with Jesus at Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. I believe that is more common in foreign countries than in the US. Personally I think everyone has the right to believe what they want and disagree with what they want. It is part of what makes the world beautiful to me. I think it took courage for Ben to voice his convictions but I bet it made Jim Bob's blood pressure go up. He's worked hard to cultivate a brand that doesn't talk about what it doesn't agree with because there is a lot more money and public adulation in pretending. So Ben really left the Duggar reservation on this one.

Zack really went off the mommy and daddy written script to pick a normal girl for a wife instead of a girl with what the Bateses like to call "high standards."

Jim Bob knew for sure about Gothard's molesting because a reporter asked him about it on the girls book tour. Jim Bob told the reporter that they didn't follow men, only Jesus. Then within just a few weeks of him trying to lead people to believe the Duggars DON"T follow Gothard, he and Michelle were the keynote speakers at Bill Gothard's ATI homeschool convention in Big Sandy. Gil Bates is on Gothard's board of directors so Gil for sure has known for quite sometime about Gothard's actions toward the underage young girls. The goog people at Recovering Grace have been reaching out to the board for quite sometime now. The great thing about Recovering Grace is that it isn't just some lone disgruntled ex-employee, it's about 30 different people who have been involved/eyewitnesses to the Gothard scam over the course of almost 35 years at least. Some of the individuals tried to sound the warning in the early years (pre internet) and of course some are from these later years.

I think Jennifer Hutoro (I may be spelling that wrong) is in DC with Jana.

One thing Michelle does do well is talk to her babies when they are babies. But after that little six month babymoon, she's so over them. I watched the episode today when she came home from Little Rock- not one hug or kiss to any of the children she had been away from for so long. But it looked like they didn't expect her to hug them either, they just stood and looked at her before looking at Josie. I need to stop watching the older shows because her lack of affection towards her kids makes me sad.

If we are going by the biblical and historic definition of Christianity I believe it's fair and correct to say that there is not a co-redemptress. Ben, who does confess biblical Christianity, would see any attempts to elevate any other human being to the level of Jesus as a heresy.