I have tentatively called it Romish Receptive Aphasia. In medical parlance, a receptive aphasia is a neurologic condition caused by a cerebrovascular accident leaving the victim incapable of understanding speech via the auditory pathways. Interestingly enough, a person with receptive aphasia can sometimes perceive written language via the visual tracts without difficulty but has marked difficulty in receiving the correct auditory message through the aural pathway(ears).
What makes Romish Receptive Aphasia, (which I shall heretofore refer to as RRA) so interesting and frustrating is that it is an intermittent disorder which presents when the sufferer is confronted with auditory stimuli with Catholic content or terminology. (It may be a more physiologic disturbance rather than anatomic abnormality as the diagram suggests.) Symptoms also have been known to manifest to a lesser degree in the presence of icons, prayer books, rosary beads and other Catholic paraphernalia.
On Easter's eve, I was having a light after-dinner conversation with a non-Catholic relative when he asked me about "salvation." I fingered my scapular under my shirt as I drew a deep breath. As I calmly attempted to answer his questions, I realized he was experiencing an acute attack of what I now believe is RRA Syndrome. It went like this:
Victim said:
Catholics worship idols!
I said: Catholics worship God alone.
This is what the victim heard me say (RRA kicked in): Catholics don't worship God alone. We worship idols!
Victim said: But don't you Catholics believe that you need idols like Peter and Mary to get into Heaven?
I said: Catholics don't worship idols and we believe in Christ's sacrifice on the cross as the only way to heaven. We honor Mary, Jesus' Mum and respect the Popes, but don't believe they get us to heaven.
This is what the victim heard me say(with RRA) : We worship Mary and the Popes and don't believe Christ's sacrifice is enough to get us to heaven.
Victim said: You pray to dead people so you believe there is more than one mediator between God and man.
I said: Regarding Salvation, Catholics believe there is only one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. The saints we pray to make intercession for us before the throne of God. They are not dead, but are alive and interceding for us as the early Church believed and declared in the Creed of Nicea and as Revelations speaks of.
This is what the victim heard: Regarding salvation, we have a whole host of other dead people we believe and trust in before we would even start to pray to Jesus! Besides we believe in non-scriptural sources such as The Creed which isn't in the Bible to make up our own doctrines!
Victim Said: Besides, I don't agree with any of these doctrines and your interpretation of those scriptures from Revelation. Because after all, Catholics worship idols.....
So there you have it. An actual case study documented, a neuro-religious phenomenon known as Romish Receptive Aphasia. If any of my readers have experienced what they feel may be a similar case, please share it with me.
In retrospect, I too had the RRA Syndrome 5 years ago when my wife first started to share Romish thoughts with me. (I am making a self-diagnosis here)
When she said "I have been thinking about returning to the Catholic Church,"
I heard: I want to join that church of infidels and man-made religion.
But alas, Jesus cured me of the RRA syndrome.
And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
