September 2015 - To Give a Defense

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XV. Wherein a disappointed Judge Napolitano calls Pope Francis a “false prophet.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 29, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

So I go to Fox News and I find Judge Napolitano raving on about the pope again. He has raved before. In his latest column, he tells us that the pope is a “false prophet” and has disappointed many Roman Catholics.” (That’s the title.) So here we go again: It’s Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome. It never ends. Mr. Napolitano starts by noting his self-identity as a “traditionalist Roman Catholic.” Within the breast of such an one is “fear and trembling over what [the pope] might say.” For reasons of their own, traditionalists always quaver in a state of near-panic.

How Pope Francis shocks us on life.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 26, 2015 • Pope Francis; Pro-Life Issues

Pope Francis came to Washington, and some of us appointed ourselves experts on what he ought to say. Once you do that, you also become certain what the pope ought not say. Don’t talk about climate change, sir. Don’t mention capitalism. Stay out of politics when you talk to Congress. And once you say that, you stop listening, with open ears, to what the pope does say. You hear him only so that you may find something to pick apart and criticize and deconstruct. You become his critic, not his sheep. You become the pope of the pope.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XIV. Wherein the American right erupts in a collective nutty over papal visit.

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

There is a pattern to this kind of Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome: The pope should speak of that part of the moral law I agree with, not that part I would rather avoid. So Mr. Gosar is deeply offended that the pope might speak about our duty to care for the creation. The pope, he says, wants “to guilt people into leftist policies” through “false science.” Never mind that in Laudato Si, the pope said, “the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics.” Conveniently, Mr. Gosar does not mention any of this.

Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part quatre.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 15, 2015 • Pope Francis

Ahead of the papal visit later this month, Mark Binelli is back with another effusive column in Rolling Stoned. I have picked apart his errors thrice before, but the poor man keeps on rolling. Like a stone! Give him credit for it; now he has sought answers from such an one as Austin Ruse! Mr. Binelli will insist on his portrayal of Pope Francis as a “disruptor” of some sort. I don’t mind that; I even agree with it; but it is the kind of disruption that he sees lurking in the pope that worries me: not about Mr. Binelli’s sanity, for that can’t be helped, but his perspicuity.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XIII. In which the Year of Mercy confounds New York Times columnist Jill Filipovic.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 14, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome; Pro-Life Issues; Sacraments

You cannot conceive, nor can I,” Graham Greene writes in Brighton Rock, “of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Now, if I can’t conceive it, and you can’t conceive it, and Graham Greene can’t conceive it, imagine how much trouble they must be having at the New York Times. And so they are. Jill Filipovic, the author of this latest excursion into Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, goes as far as to call forgiveness “unforgiving.” It must have been pretzel day at Coney Island when she turned in that copy. And her piece has a plenitude of them.

Does John Zmirak even understand Church teaching?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 7, 2015 • Church Social Teaching

Here is where Mr. Zmirak’s real concern becomes plain: It is not to find out what Catholic moral teaching might have to tell us about such things as the environment, immigration, or inequality. No. That kind of thing might advantage the left. That kind of thing might cause Republicans to squirm. We can’t have that. Not with a big election coming up. Mr. Zmirak’s real loyalty, in other words, is not to Catholicism but to the Republican party. Anything that causes Republicans to squirm is false Catholicism, you see.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XII. In which Greg Toppo of USA Today says the pope’s beliefs are just like those of dissenting Catholics.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 3, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

Mr. Toppo strikes out in the lead: “Pope Francis’ evolving views on a host of fraught social issues have surprised observers” — . Wait. Wait. Wait. “Evolving views”? What “evolving views”? Do I take it, from this, that Pope Francis was once, at some point in the distant past, a doctrinal hardliner, but has since softened and “evolved,” to the great surprise of these unnamed “observers”? How now? Would you care to chart this “evolution,” Mr. Toppo? I don’t really find any such charting in your article. Call me a skeptic.