March 2017 - To Give a Defense

The horrible, dangerous things the Catechism and Vatican II say about Islam.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 31, 2017 • Islam; Vatican II

You may have read that cafeteria Catholic Steve Skojec has pronounced the anathema of One Luther Five upon the Catechism and Vatican II. (Or, at least, upon what those texts have to say about Islam.) “Dangerous wishful thinking!” Mr. Skojec cried on Twitter. “The Catechism isn’t infallible on this topic,” he continued in his bull. So always being willing to follow up a claim, even one uttered in a cafeteria, I decided to go and see for myself what dangerous errors the pillar and ground of truth is promoting in such key texts. And I find that Skojec is right to be alarmed.

Did Pope Honorius I teach the Monothelite heresy?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 30, 2017 • Apologetics; Church History

Pope Honorius I (625–638) is a favorite example among anti-Catholic Protestants (among them our old friend Dr.* James White) who wish to dispute the doctrine of papal infallibility. Of late, some Catholics have picked up on this, seemingly in an effort to lay groundwork for the claim that Pope Francis teaches heresy. “Why, popes have taught heresy before!” they will say. “The Third Council of Constantinople condemned Pope Honorius I. Thus do Catholics, in a zeal of Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, begin to sound like Protestants who reject the papacy.

Steve Skojec, Cafeteria Catholic

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • • Blind Guides & False Prophets

Mary Pezzulo asks, “Who is Steve Skojec, anyway?” Apart from being a RadTrad blogger and pope basher at One Luther Five (he calls it One Peter Five, which is his right, I guess), he is a cafeteria Catholic. I have, from a distance, been observing the Twitter war, of several days’ duration, between Mr. Skojec and my Facebook friend Mary Hammond; and I say, I was not going to get in the middle of it, because he was making enough of an ass of himself on his own. But part of it touched upon one of my blog topics this month.

Supremacy of conscience, but only if formed by the Church.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 29, 2017 • Apologetics

According to Donum Veritatis, conscience gives us no rationale to dissent from the Church. Conscience is “supreme,” but not subjective, and not independent from the Church. “Argumentation appealing to the obligation to follow one’s own conscience,” the CDF says, “cannot legitimate dissent.” Although every believer “must follow his conscience, he is also obliged to form it. … Setting up a supreme magisterium of conscience in opposition to the magisterium of the Church” is “incompatible with the economy of Revelation.”

Stop it already with “But Paul corrected Peter”!

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 28, 2017 • Apologetics; Exegesis

But Paul corrected Peter!” is a standard objection raised in one of two contexts. Either it is raised by Protestants in order to deny papal infallibility and papal primacy; or it is raised by Catholics in order to defend their rebellion against Pope Francis, or the notion that people like Cardinal Burke should issue a “formal correction” of the Holy Father. The problem is that this biblical example does not at all prove what those who use it think it does. Peter, as pope, made a judgment binding on the whole Church. His judgment was correct. But what happened was, he was a hypocrite.

Cardinal Burke can’t “correct” the pope, but the pope can correct Burke.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • • Amoris Laetitia; Church Scandals

Fake Site News is blaring trumpets again about the so-called “correction” of the pope by Burke, et al. If Pope Francis won’t answer the dubia, “we simply will have to correct the situation.” Ahem. Sometimes people will ask me: “Alt! Do you still stand by that article you wrote, you know, the one where you said you changed your mind about Pope Francis? Mr. Skojec declared that you had seen the light.” I do stand by my article. Recall I said the pope should answer the dubia. But any talk of Burke or anyone else “formally correcting” the Holy Father is just impertinence.

Dissenting from the Magisterium causes great spiritual harm.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 23, 2017 • Apologetics

In Donum Veritatis, the CDF lists several forms dissent against the Magisterium might take. (This is the fourth post in a series that I link to in the text.) Dissent,” the CDF clarifies, is different from “personal difficulties.” One must distinguish. You can work through a personal difficulty; but to dissent is to rebel. “Spiritual harm” comes of dissent. There are five kinds: philosophical liberalism, manipulation of public opinion, acceptance only of infallible teachings (sound familiar?), argumentum ad populum, and false appeals to conscience. Dissent is a “leaven of infidelity.”

Don’t believe this fake Pius IX quotation on a pope teaching heresy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 22, 2017 • False Report

If a future pope teaches something contrary to the Catholic faith, don’t follow him.” Trads who promote dissent from Pope Francis claim Pius IX said this in a letter to “Bishop Brizen.” One glaring problem: There has never been a bishop by that name, still less during the reign of Pius IX. Oops. Now, there is a Roman Catholic diocese of Brixen. Perhaps this is where the confusion is. Perhaps Pius IX wrote the letter to the “bishop of Brixen.” Well, the bishop of Brixen during the reign of Pius IX was Vincent Ferrer Gasser. He wrote a Relatio for Vatican I on papal infallibility.

But Alt! The Church says the Ordinary Magisterium may have defects!

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 21, 2017 • Apologetics

“But Alt! The very same text you cite to claim that Catholics must submit to the Magisterium on all points also says that some teachings may have ‘deficiences.’ The CDF says some things might be reformable. Do you really mean to say Catholics must not object to such things?” Yes. This is not the green light for dissent some claim it to be. Let’s take a look at the actual extent of these words. The discussion begins at §24, where Donum Veritatis reads: “[T]he Magisterium can intervene in questions under discussion which involve … conjectural elements.”

Luke 10:16: Whoever rejects the pope rejects God.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 20, 2017 • Apologetics; Exegesis

Edward Pentin tweets that the threatened “correction” of Pope Francis over Amoris Laetitia is still a threat. “Informed sources” tell him this. Oh goody. Cardinal Burke was the first to threaten this queer thing, and Lysergic Acid News could barely wait. How very inconvenient, then, when Cardinal Müller, the prefect of the CDF, rejected any such thought as Burke’s. It “harms the Church,” said Muller, to speak thus. Well, yeah, and there’s no such thing in Catholic tradition as a “formal correction” of a pope. The pope is the Church’s supreme teacher.

Yes, there is such a thing as social sin in Catholic teaching. Here’s what it means. (And what it does not.)

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 17, 2017 • Church Social Teaching

Last month, Michael Hichborn made the lunatic claim that Judas Iscariot is “the patron saint of social justice.” In truth, it would be St. Martin de Porres. But in addition to the weirdness about Judas, Mr. Hichborn also denied the existence of social sin. In the awkward and inept fragments that are his hallmark, he wrote: “True social justice? Rejects the idea of social sin. There is no such thing.” Really? No such thing, huh? How very odd, then, to find that Pope St. John Paul II defines social sin at some length in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia. Has Mr. Hichborn not read it?

Theft from the poor: Quotations from the saints on social justice.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 16, 2017 • Church Social Teaching

There are plenty of them, including from St. Thomas Aquinas, who said that the rich owe their superfluous goods to the poor by natural law. And then there is this one from Pope St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule: “For, when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy.” “The earth belongs to everyone,” says St. Ambrose, “not to the rich.” St. John Chrysostom says our wealth belongs to the rich. Tradition is fascinating, don’t you think?

Does this Ratzinger quote refute Catholic social justice advocates?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 13, 2017 • Church Social Teaching

“But Alt! Is social justice really a duty of the State? Come now. Doesn’t Ratzinger say that this is for the private sector and personal action instead? It’s not a political thing, you know. He says this in Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures. Well. I wish that when people come across quotations like this one, they would try to put them in context. Is that very much to ask? Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures is not a critique of social justice or the welfare state or leftist bloggers. Instead it is a critique of Enlightenment rationalism. I know you will have to, gasp, think.

What does it mean to give “religious assent”?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 7, 2017 • Apologetics

Glad you asked. The Church develops the concept in Donum Veritatis, as well as the Doctrinal Commentary on the Profession of Faith. The Profession refers to it as a “religious submission of will and intellect”; which implies that Catholics must obey (will) as well as believe (intellect) the teachings of the authentic Magisterium. They must do so whether those teachings are “infallible” or not. This means that a Catholic must think with the mind of the Church; he must conform his intellect with what the Church proposes as true.

Oh, that story about Pope Francis advocating population control …

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • • False Report; Pope Francis

It was based on a misquotation of Vatican panelist Peter Raven. See, I told you so. The pope was advocating “sustainability,” but “responsible parenthood,” which the last three popes—Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Paul VI—also advocated. Many were outraged when the pope said that Catholics should not feel they must “breed like rabbits” in order to be good Catholics. Some misquoted the pope as having commanded: “Don’t breed like rabbits.” You need to be careful about these misquotations. The pope tells us what the Church has already told us.