HENRY MATTHEW ALT

TO GIVE A DEFENSE

Month: October 2013

The Church is a community of disciples in mission.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 29, 2013 • Church History

The New Evan­ge­liza­tion is, I believe, the most impor­tant teach­ing to come out of Vat­i­can II. Vat­i­can II was not about com­pro­mis­ing with mod­ernism, as some rad­i­cal tra­di­tion­al­ists in the Church like to pre­tend. It was about engag­ing mod­ernism. One can­not engage this wicked cul­ture from afar; the cul­ture is not going to come to us. We must go to it. We must meet peo­ple where they are. That is what the Church is telling Catholics that they must do now. We all have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to the faith we pro­fess. If we believe it, we must know it and live it.

The best writing advice I ever got & other quick takes: 7QT III, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 26, 2013 • Blogging & Writing; Literature; Seven Quick Takes

The only thing I know about writ­ing is this: that you have to work hard at writ­ing the kind of stuff you want to write. It does no good, if you want to write 700 page nov­els, to lis­ten to oth­ers tell you that peo­ple only read short sto­ries any­more. Don’t lis­ten to them; if you’re not com­ing up with short sto­ries, you’re not a short sto­ry writer, and the quick­est way to stop writ­ing is to spend years try­ing to learn how to write some­thing you don’t have it in you to write in the first place. Write the 700 page nov­el. Learn how to do that. Read 700-page nov­els and learn how they work.

Lies and the lying liars who accuse others of them: A defense of Ergun Caner.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 22, 2013 • Apologetics

Calvin­ists with some time to kill, and a base­ment, can wreak strange hav­oc on ordered soci­ety. Oft it is hard to know whether they do this by design or by tic; whether they need to be arrest­ed for delin­quen­cy, or put on L‑DOPA. A cou­ple of caveats will be in order from the out­set. The rea­son they will be in order is because they will be ignored, or denied, even after I’ve giv­en them. These next few para­graphs may even be skipped over alto­geth­er, as though they were writ­ten in a strange and antique lan­guage not yet deci­phered by even the best cryp­tog­ra­phers.

The apologist’s anathema against Twitter, and other quick takes: 7QT II, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 19, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

Twit­ter has its uses, I guess. And note that by “I guess” I mean some­thing along the lines of: A wild and blind shot into an emp­ty field hop­ing that maybe a deer will show up at the last minute to be felled. I have found, in my ten months or so on Twit­ter, that I have used it main­ly for shar­ing arti­cles (includ­ing my own) or quo­ta­tions with a sting in the pith. But who ever learned any­thing from those bane­ful descrip­tions of movies in the TV sec­tion, of one sen­tence or a frag­ment? The descrip­tion of “For­rest Gump” might be “A retard­ed man from the fifties til today.”

Dear world, let this dead baby in a bag be a lesson to you.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 18, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

Here’s the solu­tion: Stop lis­ten­ing to what the politi­cians tell you about who you are. Stop lis­ten­ing to what the adver­tis­ers tell you about who you are. Stop lis­ten­ing to what the media tells you about who you are. Stop hav­ing your val­ue sys­tem formed by the noise around you. Your val­ue, and the val­ue of your chil­dren, comes from the fact that you are here and you are made in the image of God and you are his beloved child. If you don’t believe that, maybe you ought to pray. If you do believe that, maybe you ought to start shout­ing from the rooftops.

Forgive me Father, for I smashed a brick against my face.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 15, 2013 • Apologetics; Personal Narrative; Sacraments

I have the Con­fes­sion times mem­o­rized for the entire Arch­dio­cese of Cincin­nati, and I have a devel­oped sense of which priest to go to on which occa­sion. No, Fr. Cnin is too hard on com­mand­ment x; best to go to Fr. Dnin at St. Enin for that one. Fr. Dnin has sym­pa­thy for peo­ple who have failed at com­mand­ment x. But he tends to be harsh on com­mand­ment y, so if I com­mit that one I’ll go to Fr. Fnin at St. Gnin. This strat­e­gy has worked for me, and I can feel rou­tine and com­pla­cent every time I enter and leave the con­fes­sion­al, as though it’s an errand to the gro­cery store. Which is how I pre­fer it.

The dark night of the soul, and other quick takes. 7QT I, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 12, 2013 • Seven Quick Takes

I won­der whether it has ever struck any­one else that Job is so well-placed in the Old Tes­ta­ment. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been placed any­where, but in the prov­i­dence of God it was placed imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms. In the Psalms, to be sure, there are laments and cries to a God who seems absent or slow. But ulti­mate­ly they are songs of praise and thanks­giv­ing. So imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms we read the ulti­mate nar­ra­tive of spir­i­tu­al dark­ness in Job. Job is the night; the Psalms are the day. Job is lament; the Psalms are praise. The books com­ple­ment each oth­er.

Is the Infant of Prague idolatrous?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 11, 2013 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle admits that he was bored. Liv­ing in Okla­homa, which will have that effect on a per­son, he “had some time to kill” and could think of noth­ing bet­ter to do than search about for some new Catholic out­rage. Catholi­cism is less plen­teous in Mr. Rho’s stamp­ing ground than it is in Rome, and so he has to look hard across the land­scape for it, pos­si­bly with binoc­u­lars. In this frame of mind, he made a pil­grim­age to Prague, Okla­homa, and the Nation­al Shrine of the Infant Jesus.

Killing Jesus: Could Christ have spoken from the cross?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 6, 2013 • Apologetics; Blind Guides & False Prophets; Book Review; Exegesis; Media Personalities

The best that can be said is that “slow suf­fo­ca­tion” is a debat­ed and unset­tled ques­tion even among med­ical experts. So why is Mr. O’Reilly cer­tain enough on this point that he can deny Christ’s very words from the Cross? Does he have this rev­e­la­tion from the Holy Ghost? And why would the Holy Ghost inspire Mr. O’Reilly to con­tra­dict St. Luke? Did the Holy Ghost mis­lead Luke? Did Luke mis­hear the Holy Ghost? Has the Church been mis­tak­en about the infal­li­bil­i­ty of Luke’s gospel for 2000 years? Should Mar­tin Luther have tak­en that book out of the canon too?

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome I: John Bugay falls down a hole into Wonderland.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 5, 2013 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

It is worse than irony, to pon­der. The very same lyser­gic, Fran­cis-bash­ing acid, which one can buy from Mr. John Bugay is also being sold by some Catholic blog­gers them­selves. Now, obvi­ous­ly, one expects all this from Mr. Bugay. I will dis­patch with him. But I don’t intend to con­clude my review of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome in Pitts­burgh. PFDS is a men­tal fog — a hookah-inhaled hal­lu­cino­gen — that has put a lot of already stoned minds, and some sharp ones that should know bet­ter, into a tripped-out pur­ple haze.

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