Month: September 2015

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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