The Hater From Dundalk
"Pastor" Stacey Shiflett of Dundalk's Cavalry Baptist Church has been going on an anti-Catholic rampage on social media. Perhaps he could stand to learn a thing or two.
A “Pastor” from Dundalk’s Calvary Baptist Church has been going on a hateful, bigoted rant against Catholics on his social media presence for over two weeks.
“Pastor” Stacey Shiflett1 has been going off about Catholicism and doing quite the job of insulting and misunderstanding the words of Christ himself.
It all started on the morning of April 21st, when the world learned of the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis overnight. He suggests that Pope Francis, a Holy and just man, is in hell.
Shiflett proceeds to decide that he, and he alone, is the judge and jury of what constitutes appropriate workshop, exusing his own questioning and deameaning another’s person’s worship and quotes scripture and verse that other religions are invalid, unbiblical, and illegitimate while himself questioning and invalidating the one, Holy, Catholics, and Apostolic Church.
He calls Catholicism a “man-made religion” even though Christ himself instituted the Roman Catholic Church.
I’m not entirely sure how Shiflett thinks his Baptist faith isn’t man-made since modern Baptists come from a 17th-centruy movement, but Shiflett also seems to be confused about *that*.
Last week, he moved on to call Roman Catholicism a “Dead Religion” even though there are 1.4 BILLION practicing Catholics around the world.
I’m sure Shifflett would be interested to know that there are only 100 million Baptists in the world, so if Catholicism is a “Dead Religion,” I’d love to know what he thinks about his denomination.
But what strikes me is that Shiflett miscontrues and misunderstands Catholic teaching. It’s hard for me to understand how Shiflett doesn’t know, fails to understand, or is intentionally obscuring the fact that Jesus died for our sins and paid the price for our salvation. This is not fundamentally different from Shiflett’s own faith, so what exactly is Shiflett complaining about here? It’s hard to say because Shiflett is arguing from a position of pure, unadulterated hate.
Shiflett is arguing that Baptists existed 300 years before the birth of Christ. The entire statement shows that Shiflett has a woeful lack of education about both history and religion. Which is probably why he calls St. Peter “not a pope” though he was, quite literally, the first Pope and His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, is the 267th Vicar of Christ in an unbroken line stretching all the way back to St. Peter himself.
I mean, who is the real judge here, Stacey Shiflett or Jesus Christ?
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood* has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,* and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Shiflett also gives himself the authority to judge other religions, their beliefs, and leadership practices. Though I’m guessing he would never suggest that he allow his own decisions, like the decision to be such a bigot online, to be judged in a similar way.
But I think I understand part of the problem here. The problem is that Shiflett prioritizes politics over Christ. After all, he did take time to post this:
And this.
Nor will you be surprised to learn that Shiflett also was a big fan of the blasphemous image of Donald Trump as Pope:
Shiflett is a Trumper. That in and of itself does not make a man bad, but he mixes his warped views of religion with his politics. Trumpers have for years complained about Catholicism and how it is a “woke religion,” even though the Catholic Church uses the Holy Bible and actually believes in it. Those who criticize Catholicism are the least likely to understand it. And Shiflett most certainly falls in that latter camp. But he also falls within the camp that criticizes Catholicism because it is politically chic among a certain subset of “religious” conservatives who think that only evangelicalism is true Christianity. After all, evangelicalism has evolved to the point where it is moving whichever way the wind blows within the Republican Party.
Catholicism, as I wrote earlier this week, is older than the left-right spectrum and exists outside of whatever your political compass is.
I point this out now to bury Shiflett, though there are a lot of questions about his church, his “faith,” and his relationship with State Senator Johnny Ray Salling. And I come not to silence him; after all, Maryland is the birthplace of both Catholicism and Religious Liberty in America, and Shiflett has a right to believe what he believes and say what he says, no matter how uneducated, uncharitable, and disgusting it is.
I invite him to learn. I invite Shiflett to attend a Catholic Mass to see what it is all about. To see the beauty, the ritual, and the true presence of Christ himself. Becuase at every Catholic Mass, Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist. And no Baptist church is going to allow you to experience that.
I hope Shiflett repents and one day believes the Gospel. Because he would be far from the first non-believer to repent and come home to the Catholic Church. And I would know…..
I refuse to call this guy a real pastor. Real Pastors preach love and the Word, not whatever this is.