The crack apologist and fivepoint Calvinist who calls himself “TurretinFan,” and who is known to us as Mr. X, first got upset about this manuscript in 2008. Then, he got upset again in 2009. Now in 2021, after a blogging sabbatical of six weeks, he has decided to let us know that he is upset again. Maybe that explains his absence; he couldn’t bring himself to log onto his blog and has spent the days in severe prayer. I don’t know. It’s not hard to imagine why Mr. X is so upset; the mansucript in question is the “Homily of the Papyrus of Turin” [HPT]. The (lost) original dates to around the 4th century — the one extant manuscript is from the 6th — and Catholic apologists like to cite it as an early example of Marian veneration.
Mr. X (TurretinFan) is upset, again, about a Coptic MS. misattributed to Athanasius.
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 9, 2021 • Apologetics; Church Fathers; Marian Dogmas
I won’t deny, if you insist, that secularism is a problem for the Church; I won’t deny, for it would be foolhardy, that elitism exists, even among prelates. But it’s a feverish, undisciplined mind that would try to attribute these things, without evidence or example, to a global conspiracy of bogeymen who are out to get Christians. Archbishop Gomez desperately wants to be persecuted. His recent — hideous — address, delivered in Madrid on November 4, is titled “Reflections on the Church and America’s New Religions”; and you may read it if you insist, but keep in mind, dear reader, that part of my duty as a blogger is to read such painful things so you won’t have to.
At the National Catholic Reporter, Msgr. Irwin is exercised by the bishops’ draft document The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church. His main concern is that the language of the document is too outmoded; “it reflects 400-year-old theology,” he says, rather than developments since Vatican II. It uses musty words like “transubstantiation”; it insists on obscure distinctions between “venial” and “mortal” sin; it uses the term “Real Presence,” for Jesus’ sake! “Are these terms,” Msgr. wonders, “aimed at people who no longer attend Mass,” or are they aimed instead at the bishops themselves?
I am astounded that I have to set out to prove this, but there we are; the Church’s biggest mission field is the Church. Let’s start with the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a very good place to start). There, in §1989, we read: “The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus’ proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high.” Conversion (whether initial conversion or continuing conversion) is all gift and all grace
There is a bizarre current of thought, among Catholics antagonistic to social justice, that says that such concerns detract from the call to holiness. The “SJWs,” they will declaim, “never talk about holiness. It’s all about social evil, never their own need for Christ.” Apart from the fact that this is so absurdly and demonstrably untrue, the saints — both declared and undeclared — never once speak of justice and holiness as though they are in conflict with each other. The very notion is uncatholic. You can not be holy unless you pursue justice: That idea runs through the entire Old Testament, and the entire New.