January 2015 - To Give a Defense

Aborted ethics and wrongful liabilities: What hath the Court wrought?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 30, 2015 • In the News; Politics; Pro-Life Issues

You will have heard, I take it, of a recent “wrongful birth” lawsuit. The Daily Screech reported on it in August: After an amniocentesis, parents were told they had a healthy baby. Turned out, baby has Syndrome Z. Turned out, the medical office had misread the results. So parents sued on the premise that they would have aborted the baby if only they had known about the Syndrome Z. This was not a unique case; half of all U.S. states recognize “wrongful birth” as a cause of action, and one couple was awarded a full $50 million in such a suit.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome X: Anti-papal malarkey and damnable schism.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 28, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

Where the pope most challenges you, perturbs you, drives you up the wall: That is the very thing you need to hear. The problem is not Peter. Rachel Lu is right: If you continue this mad campaign against Francis, your words will end up being used by secular leftists to promote their own agenda for the culture and the Church. And when that happens, you will have no room to whine about it. If you are a Catholic, you don’t ever, ever, shut your ears to Peter. Unity is in Peter. And schism , whether in fact or only by obstinacy, is damnable.

A frustrated Steve Hays resorts to ad hominem, more haze.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 27, 2015 • Pope Francis

When a post begins in this wild and frothing way: “Papal lackey Scott Eric Alt is once again trying to save the pope’s rancid bacon” — you know you are reading one frustrated guy. Poor soul. That’s okay. I’m patient here. I get it. The lights are slow to go on at Failablogue. Frustration leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering! So let us, with patience, help poor Purple Haze out of his, well, purple haze. Mr. Haze first goes amiss in his reply to a point I made about the argument from authority.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome IX: Glenn Beck needs a team to teach him about Catholicism.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 26, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

Glenn Beck, with the selfless charity of one who thinks well of himself, has offered to put together a “team” that will teach Pope Francis what capitalism really is. Oh boy. Here we go again. Whenever I see stuff like this, I always wonder whether those saying it have read the pope’s words first-hand. Have they read Church social teaching, in the Church’s own words? Do they think they need to? Or do they get all their information about the Church and the pope from the secular press? Veritas? Quid est veritas? Even Rush Limbaugh’s storied pursuit of the truth stopped.

’Scuse me while I refute this guy: A reply to Steve “Purple” Hays on the pope, NFP, and C‑sections.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 26, 2015 • Pope Francis

Steve “Purple” Hays has replied to my post from Friday. If your general practitioner has affirmed that you are safely free from stomach acid and there’s no danger that it will blow up on you from exposure to bilge, you can read his response. But since the man is in a deep muddle, I’m going to fisk his post with some length and patience. I’m always here to help him. It’s a service I offer Calvinists at my blog. Mr. Hays begins his post by referring to me as “one of this pope’s many self-appointed handlers” and “a lay blogger.” Now, I know why he does this: It is to poison the well.

In attack on pope, polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay makes crude joke about multiple orgasms.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 23, 2015 • Anti Catholicism; Pope Francis

There is no cesspool so foul that John Bugay will not jump into it with full-throated glee if it serves his hatred of the Church. The man lost his shame years ago. Consider that it was this very same polemical rogue who once photoshopped a Hitler moustache onto St. Therese of Lisieux, removed it only under the strong persuasion of his pastor, and all the while whimpered that he had been much maligned and abused by the Catholics who called him out. Well, dear reader, the dog has returned to his vomit, this time with a foul and smelly joke about orgasms.

Rick Santorum should read the transcript of Pope Francis’s “rabbits” remark. So should everyone else.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 21, 2015 • Pope Francis

The pope does not say that Catholics “should not breed like rabbits.” What he says is that Catholics should not feel that they must “be like rabbits” with no sense of “responsible parenthood.” The pope gives the full Catholic teaching. He does not just say that life is good and that couples should bring life into the world, and life more abundantly; he also says that couples have an obligation to be responsible with their parenthood. The Church says both. In fairness, Mr. Santorum is not the only one getting the pope’s words wrong. Everyone else is too.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome VIII: More liberal denial and despair.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 20, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

Liberalism, as it exists today, is a fairy tale that occasionally bumps up against truth, gets perplexed and angry for a spell, then returns to Neverland. In few places is this more true than in the liberal media’s coverage of Pope Francis. I have written oft about this sad phenomenon. Their delusions about Francis, and their ignorance of the Church they write about, never ends. And they seem to be woefully incurious about getting it right. In the latest episode of this saga, someone writes an article titled “Pope Francis Might Not Be As Awesome As We Thought He Was.”

Josh Alcorn bans The Vagina Monologues.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 16, 2015 • In the News; LGBT Issues

Well, the Vagina Monologues is no more. Its sexual politics no longer are inclusive enough. So after a run of nineteeen straight years, Mt. Holyoke College has canceled the play on the grounds that it excludes women without vaginas. The peculiar phrase “women without vaginas” is meant to include both women without vaginas and men who think they’re women. Ms. Brown explains all this for us. “A trans woman is a woman, full stop, but she may have a penis.” Oh. So what are we to conclude from all this? Why, that the Vagina Monologues is “transphobic”!

We must offend, and other quick takes: 7QT XIX, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 8, 2015 • Seven Quick Takes

If, in this age, our words do not bite and slap and kick, then we are doing it wrong. Flannery O’Connor said it: “You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you.” A world that wants to be lulled to sleep needs to be shouted awake. And it’s okay to be outraged by error and write with passion. I’d rather read a writer who’s angry than a writer who’s in a coma. I like curmudgeons. Jerome has his place. There is also a place for shouting from the rooftops and saying, “Damn it, this is madness, and I will not take it, and I will do everything I can to call it out.” Even if you’re killed for it.

Do priests rob Christ of his high priesthood? Part 2 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 1, 2015 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics; priesthood

“Satan,” John Calvin says at the beginning of Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.18, “has attempted to adulterate and envelop the sacred Supper of Christ as with thick darkness.” Those are high words. How has Satan done this? you may ask. Oh, it was “with most pestilential error,” Calvin tells us. For lo! “he blinded almost the whole world into the belief that the Mass was a sacrifice and oblation for obtaining the remission of sins.” Calvin has no patience for anyone who holds to any such idea as that; he describes it as “the common opinion of the vulgar.”