Month: September 2017

Does Pope Francis deny mortal sin? Part 3 of a response to The Correctors.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 27, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Moral Theology

 

Once again, the actu­al text of Amor­is Laeti­tia does not say what The Cor­rec­tors claim it does. Nowhere does the pope say that those who have “full knowl­edge” and “vol­un­tar­i­ly choose” to com­mit adul­tery with­in an irreg­u­lar mar­riage are not in mor­tal sin. At best, this notion is read into the text. At worst, it is sim­ply made up. The Cor­rec­tors do not say where, they find this heresy. They quote a num­ber of pas­sages, but they don’t say which sup­ports their claims. I go in search of such a text and fail to find it, because The Cor­rec­tors do very unim­pres­sive work.

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Does Pope Francis think sinners qualify for sanctifying grace? Part 2 of a response to The Correctors.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 27, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Moral Theology

 

The “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” of Pope Francis—the work, of “a few dozen Catholics”; a “mar­gin­al fringe” of “main­ly obscure fig­ures” claims to find sev­en here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia. This time they charge the pope with the belief that peo­ple who sin grave­ly with full knowl­edge and con­sent of the will are not mor­tal­ly cul­pa­ble. But they leave out a great deal of §301 when they quote from it, but the miss­ing part is very impor­tant, since it talks about “mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors and sit­u­a­tions.” Oops. The Cor­rec­tors just don’t read very well, do they? Or per­haps they’re inten­tion­al­ly dis­hon­est. I can’t say.

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Does Pope Francis say that grace is insufficient? Part 1 of a response to The Correctors.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 24, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Moral Theology

 

Edward Pentin breath­less­ly says that this is the first “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” since 1333! I mean, wow. Let us cry over Jerusalem. But what canon­i­cal stand­ing do any of them have to be cor­rect­ing Peter? Can any­one cor­rect Peter, oth­er than Christ? The high­est-rank­ing soul among them is Bp. Fel­lay. But the SSPX is out­side the Catholic Church. The rest are a bunch of “lay schol­ars” and a few cler­gy. Main­ly, it reads like a who’s who of Who? Any­way, the Cor­rec­tors claim to find sev­en here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia. The unbi­ased may find an infi­nite num­ber of them, who knows?

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Fake Site News accuses New Pro Life Movement of “liberal boilerplate.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 16, 2017 • Church Social Teaching; False Report; Pro-Life Issues

 

In a shame­less piece of char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion against Rebec­ca Brat­ten Weiss, Fake Site News made the aston­ish­ing claim that the goals of the New Pro Life Move­ment are no more than “lib­er­al boil­er­plate.” In fact, every one of them comes from the Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing of the Church. Has Fake Site not read the Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church? Evan­geli­um Vitae? Lauda­to Si? The Church’s teach­ing on just war? The very Cat­e­chism? Maybe they should get on that, rather than writ­ing sin­ful hit pieces against good and decent Catholics like Rebec­ca Brat­ten Weiss.

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Reports of the death of Humanae Vitae are greatly exaggerated.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 13, 2017 • False Report

 

Can we please take a look at what Pope Fran­cis has actu­al­ly said about Humanae Vitae? For in Amor­is Laeti­tia we find him say­ing that mar­riage is ordered, “by its very nature,” toward pro­cre­ation. “Open­ness to life is the con­di­tion of the sacra­ment of mat­ri­mo­ny,” the pope says else­where. And yet I am sup­posed to believe the pope is on the verge of over­throw­ing Paul VI’s encycli­cal But it turns out Edward Pentin at the Reg­is­ter is bent on reviv­ing these rumors, always with the melo­dra­ma, anony­mous sources, pained expres­sions, and stage whis­pers.

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About that Nashville Statement? Let me nitpick.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 1, 2017 • Moral Theology

 

So some Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers gath­ered in Nashville and ham­mered out a state­ment on Chris­tian­i­ty and human sex­u­al­i­ty, and not even con­ser­v­a­tive Evan­gel­i­cals are alto­geth­er hap­py with it. Part of the prob­lem, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, was the feel­ing that Evan­gel­i­cals who vot­ed for Don­ald Trump lost their stand­ing to speak on sex­u­al moral­i­ty. Well, that’s a fair point. But I want to pick apart a few of the the­o­log­i­cal errors I find. For exam­ple, the NS has it wrong when it says that grace helps us to put away sin­ful desires. No. Grace enables us to resist.

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