December 2015 - To Give a Defense

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XVII. In which the pope speaks on a plane, and the Church crashes into the Tiber.

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

The Catholic Church came to an end earlier today, dear reader, after a brief 2000-year run. It has crashed smack into the Tiber River, there are almost no survivors — only a remnant of 11 — and we must sit and gaze on the ruins and wail. Or at least that is what one would think, to judge by the apocalyptic screams coming from the right-wing blogs over the last day or two. So what happened this time? I will tell you, but you must brace yourself. Are you ready? The pope gave an interview. (I pause so you may recover your wits.)

Calvinist blogger reads James; discovers that we must do good works.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 1, 2015 • Apologetics; Good Works

I was making my periodic round of the blogs in order to find out what the anti-Catholics were up to, when I stumbled across this curious post by the dauntless Mr. X. (He calls himself TurretinFan, for weird reasons of his own. I can’t speak for the poor man’s crotchets.) It seems, at first glance, to be a real snoozer of a post, even by Mr. X’s strict standard for somnolence: It is a very cursory summary of the content of James. That’s it. But in the middle of all this, Mr. X trips smack over the fact that James sure talks about works a lot. And still Mr. X thinks that James’s true subject is faith alone.