Month: November 2015

No, Virginia, blogs are not the magisterium. 7QT XXI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 27, 2015 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

 

This is real­ly a post about the New Evan­ge­liza­tion and how blogs fit in (and how they do not), but I must go through some set-up first. I had already cho­sen the new title for this blog, secured the new URL, and was fast at work mak­ing it pret­ty, when lo! over on Face­book some­one — let us call him A. — shared a pre­sump­tu­ous post to my time­line. The post in ques­tion was a pod­cast pro­mot­ing some obscure Mar­i­an appari­tion, reject­ed by the local bish­op. I won’t give it fur­ther atten­tion by nam­ing it here; it is that bad.

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What infallibility does not mean.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 24, 2015 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

 

In my years of engag­ing apolo­get­ics top­ics with Protes­tants, and even some­times fel­low Catholics, I have found that the Church teach­ing on infal­li­bil­i­ty is one of the most dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to grasp. It is more often nec­es­sary to explain what infal­li­bil­i­ty does not mean than what it does, and so root out the errors in people’s under­stand­ing. For exam­ple, infal­li­bil­i­ty does not mean that the pope is with­out sin, nor does it mean that every utter­ance of a pope is infal­li­ble. A Wednes­day audi­ence and a papal inter­view are not infal­li­ble. The pope’s opin­ion of the Red Sox is not infal­li­ble.

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