HENRY MATTHEW ALT

TO GIVE A DEFENSE

Month: April 2013

In defense of Bishop Campbell’s firing of a lesbian teacher.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 26, 2013 • Church Scandals; In the News; LGBT Issues

There is no way to win an argu­ment with a bul­ly: A bul­ly is not inter­est­ed in being per­suad­ed, and a bul­ly is not inter­est­ed in being right; a bul­ly is inter­est­ed in one thing — being a bul­ly. In the present case, I am speak­ing about moral­is­tic bul­lies for the patent­ly wicked, abom­inable, Satan­ic evil of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. They are not inter­est­ed in being just or right­eous; they are inter­est­ed in impos­ing their evil on soci­ety by rhetor­i­cal manip­u­la­tion and legal threat, even if it means attempt­ing to remove from oth­ers the free­dom to say, “No, I will not sup­port you in your evil.”

Leonardo di Chirico has fun with semantics.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 25, 2013 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

In a cat­e­go­ry of dis­cov­ery that might be called “found blogs,” I ran across this gem on a site called Ref­or­ma­tion 21, cour­tesy of the ever-help­ful assis­tance of the polem­i­cal rogue John Bugay. The title of the arti­cle, by Leonar­do De Chiri­co, is “Vat­i­can Files No. 19”; and based on both its con­tents and the allu­sion (as I pre­sume) to that bizarre TV show from the 1990s, I am rather afraid that to peer into Vat­i­can Files 1 – 18 might take me deep­er into the realm of sci­ence fic­tion than I want to go, the polem­i­cal rogue’s rec­om­men­da­tion of it as “blunt and hon­est” notwith­stand­ing.

Why Jason Stellman has Protestantism nailed.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • • Apologetics

Here­in is the Protes­tant par­a­digm: They are very good at scrip­tur­al exe­ge­sis (albeit with­in their own hereti­cal frame­work), and they are very good at ana­lyt­i­cal homilet­ics. But they have lit­tle sense, in their the­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, of won­der or mir­a­cle or the super­nat­ur­al. To the super­nat­ur­al, such as they accept it, they bring mere cold rea­son and emp­ty white rooms. They do not know what Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins meant when he wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And that is why they — and espe­cial­ly the Calvin­ists in their midst — are mad.

Regarding the first Protestant critique of Pope Francis’s words on finding Jesus in the Church.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 24, 2013 • Apologetics

It did not take long. Nor did I sus­pect it might. Yes­ter­day I pre­dict­ed that it would not only be dis­senters with­in the Church, but also dis­senters out­side the Church, who would be stirred to ver­bal hand-wring­ing over this homi­ly by Pope Fran­cis. The key sen­tence in the homi­ly — the source of said hand-wring­ing — is this one: “[I]t is not pos­si­ble to find Jesus out­side the Church.” And lo! but a few hours after I made my pre­dic­tion came this post from the famil­iar and pro­lif­ic Tur­ret­inFan — known on this blog as Mr. X. He has four main points of cri­tique for us to sort through.

Pope Francis: Extra ecclesiam nulla Iesu.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 23, 2013 • Apologetics

All the nuance aside, the key thing for those out­side the Church to under­stand is this: You are liv­ing a life that is less than what Christ intend­ed. Christ intend­ed for grace to be poured out through the sacra­ments; you don’t have them. Christ intend­ed for us to encounter Him — body, blood, soul, and divin­i­ty — in the Eucharist; you haven’t received it. Christ intend­ed for us to be led into “all truth” — those were his words: all truth—within the Church. But you are being led, and you admit it, by fal­li­ble teach­ers. Talk about Christ until you’re blue in the face, you don’t know him.

Mr. X riddles us more on papal infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 21, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

I am wor­ried about Tur­ret­inFan. Nor­mal­ly, he is one of the abler crit­ics of the Catholic Church. His ear­li­er cri­tiques of two of my arti­cles on sola scrip­tura, though wrong­head­ed, were at least cogent. They at least made argu­ments that were seri­ous and schol­ar­ly and worth address­ing. But I am afraid some incon­sis­ten­cy has crept in to the works, start­ing with this arti­cle of his on Pope John XX, and now just yes­ter­day with this very strange addi­tion to his lat­est exam­i­na­tion of papal suc­ces­sion and infal­li­bil­i­ty. I frankly know not what to make of it. Is Mr. X mere­ly tired?

A clarification on the salvation of infants who die without baptism.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2013 • Apologetics; Sacraments

God made the sacra­ments for man, not man for the sacra­ments. They are the ordi­nary means of sal­va­tion, and no one should believe that the sacra­ment of bap­tism can be put off because God is mer­ci­ful. But some peo­ple — still­born infants, or infants who die by abor­tion — sim­ply have no oppor­tu­ni­ty, through no fault of their own, to receive them. God is not going to send infants to some hypo­thet­i­cal Lim­bo because of a tech­ni­cal­i­ty. God insti­tut­ed the sacra­ments, but the sacra­ments do not bind his hands. And that is hard­ly “warped Catholi­cism.”

Mr. X plays riddle me this, riddle me that.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

Rather than do the right and brave thing and address my rebut­tals to every last one of his six objec­tions to the unbro­ken suc­ces­sion of popes, Tur­ret­inFan decides to plow on as if noth­ing had hap­pened and invent a sev­enth. “Well, okay,” he says. “And what about John XX?” Now, this kind of thing, when you get right down to it, is no more than an attempt to turn anti-Catholic claims into a game of Rid­dle Me This. Can you throw your oppo­nent for a loop? Well, what about this pope? Well, what about that pope? So it goes with the Undaunt­ed Mr. X of Calvin­ism.

United to the suffering of Mary.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 18, 2013 • Personal Narrative

This is a mem­oir about loss and grief, but please under­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to write. It is not mere­ly that the sub­ject is so dif­fi­cult. But it is that by tem­pera­ment I am a per­son who buries emo­tion under a sto­ic exte­ri­or. That’s my dad in me. I think of myself as an intel­lec­tu­al, rea­soned and calm in his analy­sis of things. I often joke with friends: “I don’t do emo­tion.” Being, there­fore, the very ratio­nal per­son I am, I did the ratio­nal thing and mar­ried some­one com­plete­ly the oppo­site. Once she said to me, “You think with your head and I think with my heart.”

Leftist hysteria continues over Pope Francis & LCWR.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 17, 2013 • Church Scandals; Pope Francis

This one is too good to pass up. Over at the Dai­ly Screech, some­one named Bar­bie Latza Nadeau has post­ed this scrib­bled pan­ic attack with the price­less title “New Pope, but No Nicer to Nuns.” The only good thing that can be said about it is that Ms. Nadeau is skilled at allit­er­a­tion. In school, Rhetoric 101 may have been more her strong suit than Log­ic 101. Ms. Nadeau begins her arti­cle by set­ting the con­text for the out­rage to come. (As she sees it.) For Pope Fran­cis has “cast a pos­i­tive light on a trou­bled Church.” (For lib­er­als, the Church is always “trou­bled.”)

No hope and change for LCWR under Pope Francis.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 16, 2013 • Church Scandals

It seems to me self-evi­dent that the very point of a reli­gion is to advance claims about the Truth. Doc­trine mat­ters. With­out that, you may be any num­ber of things, but you’re not Catholic. And it is not good to have the laity in the pews con­fused about these points. That is why John Paul II was so at pains to point out the need for “alle­giance of mind and heart” to what the Church has taught. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly so for those in reli­gious life. They are the face of the Church to the world. So I am not sure why the LCWR is “shocked” by the Doc­tri­nal Assess­ment of the CDF.

Associated Press weeps for Gosnell’s staff.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 15, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

Eileen O’Neill, the sec­ond char­ac­ter in our Dick­en­sian Tragedy, was forced to “relin­quish” her med­ical license due to “post-trau­mat­ic stress.” The PTSD like­ly also con­tributed to the false billing and rack­e­teer­ing that she is charged with, but cer­tain­ly you can sym­pa­thize with the Root Caus­es that brought her to this Awful Tragedy In Her Life. She even had to deal with “line[s] of peo­ple” at Gosnell’s clin­ic who want­ed painkillers. Will such hor­rors ever end? It’s Just A Shame. Noth­ing left to do with your­self but slit a few spinal cords and necks.

On Kermit Gosnell and facing human evil.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 14, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

There seems to be a sug­ges­tion that author­i­ties did not want to look into Mr. Gosnell’s prac­tice when com­plaints were made, because of pres­sures being brought to bear to keep things relat­ed to abor­tion hush-hush. There is also the sug­ges­tion that, as long as cer­tain stan­dards are fol­lowed — of pro­ce­dure, of clean­li­ness, of the train­ing of staff — then abor­tion is all well and good if its pur­pose is to help com­mu­ni­ties and give women choice over their bod­ies. Mr. Gos­nell was just this wild excep­tion, because he was in it for mon­ey. What? Who’s not in it for mon­ey?

The papacy, necessity, and unbroken succession: A reply to Mr. X.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 13, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

We should not, by false the­o­ry and syl­lo­gism, think that God would insti­tute only those offices in the Church that are “nec­es­sary” in our own sight. Such an idea makes Christ pow­er­less before Neces­si­ty the same way Zeus is pow­er­less before Fate. I doubt Mr. X believes that Neces­si­ty is a high­er order of divin­i­ty than Christ. But that is the log­i­cal con­se­quence — is it not? — when you judge some office in the Church upon the stan­dard of its “neces­si­ty,” rather than the only prop­er stan­dard: name­ly, did Christ intend this?

St. Francis & Pope Francis: To teach by gesture.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 12, 2013 • Pope Francis; Saints

Ever since the elec­tion of Pope Fran­cis, it has been bemus­ing to watch the reac­tion to the unusu­al style of his papa­cy, young though it is. Left-lean­ing com­men­ta­tors in the sec­u­lar press, many of whom pos­sess no clear, ratio­nal, or even sen­sate com­pre­hen­sion of the Catholic Church, seem fond­ly to imag­ine that Francis’s non-Ratzin­ger­ian style, and his advo­ca­cy for the poor, will lead to a New Lib­er­al Utopia. In the Dai­ly Screech, A.N. Wil­son even imag­ines the new pope will renounce infal­li­bil­i­ty, as though that were pos­si­ble. Even Mr. Wil­son describes the thought as “cheeky.”

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