April 2013 - Page 2 of 2 - To Give a Defense

TurretinFan & the necessity argument against the papacy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 11, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

Every now and then, an anti-Catholic apologist — he need not be Protestant; he could be an atheist, or a Hindu, or an agnostic endocrinologist — will try to discredit the papacy, or the priesthood, or tradition, or Mary gardens, or some other element of the Church, by waving his hand and saying, “We don’t need it.” Thus the false god of Necessity is invoked against what very God of very God wants us to have as a pure and unmerited gift. TurretinFan (known on this blog as Mr. X) is the latest to make this odd claim about the papacy. I’m happy to put him to rights.

Is Mr. John Bugay’s rejection of infallibility infallible?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 9, 2013 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

John Bugay, the polemical rogue, has not met the dissident Catholic priest who hasn’t warmed the very tell-tale cockleshells of his red and beating heart. In his phantastical efforts to discredit the Church he rejected of old, he turns to the credible pens of those who also have rejected her. If these dissident priests continue, somehow, to claim they’re still Catholic, all the better as far as Mr. Bugay is concerned. In the latest episode of this long, twilight struggle, Mr. Bugay unearths a 1981 book by August Bernhard Hasler. The title of the book is How the Pope Became Infallible.

Dr.* James White, apologist for the Romanism of Steve Green.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2013 • Apologetics; Humor

What surprised me most was the pains Dr.* White took to praise a Steve Green song from several decades back, entitled “Find Us Faithful.” He even took the trouble to put up a separate blog post embedded with two—two!—YouTube videos of the song. What’s surprising about this is that I would have suspected Mr. Green’s song to have raised the ire of Dr.* White far more than “Jesus Friend of Sinners.” What do I mean? Well, take a listen to the song, and you’ll discover that “Find Us Faithful” is not much better than a sell-out to Romanism.

Welcome Home, New Converts. May Truth Sustain You Always.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 1, 2013 • Liturgical Year

I extend a very happy “Welcome Home” to all those who will be received into full communion with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Saturday evening. As an RCIA team member, I have listened to the emotions of new Catholics, after the Vigil, as they recalled making their first Eucharist. In them there is one feeling, unmistakable and common to them all: joy, often to the point of tears that would not be refused. I have not met, in my years working with RCIA and after, the Catholic convert who does not experience that same joy or call it up again when telling their own conversion story.