Even my book reviews worry Protestants, and other quick takes: 7QT XVIII, seriatim.

ome peo­ple think that com­box­es are their blog. You know, like this guy. (I’m guess­ing it’s a guy; who knows; I could be wrong.) He was so out of sorts at my review of Devin Rose’s The Protes­tant’s Dilem­ma that he could­n’t wait long enough to start his own blog to respond, so he wrote a blog arti­cle in the com­box at Free Repub­lic. (He post­ed a link to it in my com­ments, which is the only rea­son I know of it.)

Have you ever seen any­one attempt to refute a review, rather than the actu­al book? I’m not sure whether to write a review of the review of the review. What do you think? Mind you, it’s full of sen­tences like this one:

In addi­tion, adher­ents of SS can­not claim to be lit­tle pope, hav­ing assured infal­li­bil­i­ty, which is the height of “sola indi­vid­u­ala,” but mak­ing the church to be the supreme author­i­ty over Scrip­ture sim­ply takes the prob­lem of indi­vid­ual inter­pre­ta­tions being supreme to a insti­tu­tion­al lev­el. For rather than one per­son lead­ing oth­ers astray based on elit­ist claim of assured verac­i­ty, an entire church over­all can be led into error based upon such. And thus Rome has become as the gates of Hell for mul­ti­tudes.

Before I could refute the argu­ment here, I would need to refute the poor man’s syn­tax.

II.

Fred Phelps has gone to his reward, what­ev­er that might be. The man’s heart was a cesspool of hatred of Catholics, homo­sex­u­als, and sol­diers. I hope he repent­ed. I hope he found mer­cy. I hope no idiot pick­ets his funer­al, or wants to.

I have no more to say about it than that, because I need mer­cy too. And if Fred Phelps did find the mer­cy he so need­ed, I hope that he will pray for me.

III.

Dale Ahlquist asks what the actu­al Chester­ton quo­ta­tion was that Fran­cis was think­ing of when he said, “A heresy is a truth gone mad.”

Mr. Ahlquist pro­pos­es some pos­si­bil­i­ties, but I would sug­gest this one from Ortho­doxy: “The mod­ern world is full of the old Chris­t­ian virtues gone mad.”

What Chester­ton meant by that was that sin is noth­ing more than virtue gone wrong. Only God is orig­i­nal: Satan can­not cre­ate evil; he can only per­vert the good that God has already cre­at­ed.

I think this helps us to under­stand Fred Phelps. He took hatred of war and hatred of sin and per­vert­ed it into hatred of peo­ple.

Which is why, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his death, we must not hate Fred Phelps.

IV.

Recent­ly it was report­ed that the real rea­son pho­tos of bin Laden’s body have not been released is because Navy Seals pum­melled him with over one hun­dred bul­lets.

At some point, well before that, the man was dead.

What­ev­er the argu­ment in favor of killing bin Laden—I agree we need­ed to kill him—the need was only to kill him, not to engage in exces­sive sav­agery upon his body. Revenge is not jus­tice and it is not nation­al secu­ri­ty. Rev­el­ling in bin Laden’s death is evil.

The same Christ who died for me and for you died for Osama bin Laden.

V.

I do not under­stand the gnash­ing of teeth some engage in over the prospect of can­on­iza­tion for John Paul II, or John XXIII, or Paul VI.

What can­on­iza­tion means is that these popes are in heav­en. To be so adamant that it is wrong to say they are saints, is to say that you are certain—against the judg­ment of the Church—that they are in Hell.

Real­ly? Has it come to that among the über tra­di­tion­al­ists? They per­mit them­selves to stand in judg­ment, not only against the liv­ing pope, but against dead popes?

If John Paul II is not in heav­en, God help all the rest of us.

VI.

I am going to dare and make a pre­dic­tion on what is going to hap­pen with the ques­tion of com­mu­nion for divorced and remar­ried Catholics. I am not a prophet, so take this for what it is worth.

My guess is there may be some adjust­ments made to the cri­te­ria by which an annul­ment can be grant­ed. That is where it will begin and end.

The pope is not going to change the Church’s teach­ing on divorce and remar­riage, because the pope can not do any such thing, and the Holy Spir­it pro­tects the Church from error. To be divorced and remar­ried with­out an annul­ment is to be in a state of mor­tal sin. To receive com­mu­nion in the state of mor­tal sin is anoth­er mor­tal sin.

There­fore, the only changes, if any, will be to the annul­ment process itself.

VII.

Here is how I approach these kinds of ques­tions when they come up: If Pope Fran­cis were to wake up tomor­row morn­ing and say to him­self, “Today I am going to undo all of Church teach­ing,” it would­n’t hap­pen.

 

Read more of this week’s quick takes at Con­ver­sion Diary. H/T to Nicole DeMille for remind­ing me of the Styx song.