Apologetics Archives - Page 7 of 10

Why I am never leaving the Catholic Church.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 4, 2015 • Apologetics

I wish I could say otherwise, but I must tell the truth about this. The Catholic Church does not promise that everything will be easy. It promises, instead, a Cross. Fr. George Schommer, who preached the closing homily for my RCIA class the year I became Catholic, said it: “You will be tested.” And yet, I have never once been tempted to go and leave. I have never once said, “You know what, I was happier when I was a Presbyterian, let me go back there.” As though I was happy then because I was a Presbyterian, or as though the Christian life is about our happiness, or our feelings.

Two highly illogical arguments for sola scriptura.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 23, 2015 • Apologetics; sola scriptura

Both of these come from Stephen Wolfe, writing at Reformation 500—a site frequented by our old friend, the polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay The title of Mr. Wolfe’s small little post is “A Short Defense of Sola Scriptura”; and it is so short — even cursory — that he fails to avoid several large and breezy gaps in logic. In the first of them, Mr. Wolfe tries to reply to a commonplace observation: that you can’t have sola scriptura unless the Bible itself gives us an infallible list of what’s canonical, and the Bible does not come with an inspired table of contents.

Misquoting St. Cyprian; or, how “John Bugay” abuses the Church Fathers.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2015 • Apologetics; Church History

Perhaps you have heard, dear reader, that Pope Francis will visit Philadelphia in September for the World Meeting of Families. Occasions like these always give the anti-Catholics a chance to crawl out of the woodwork and make a buggy spectacle of themselves. If you go, be prepared to swat. To this wery day, Dr.* James White of Alpha & Omega Sophistries crows that, during the visit of Pope St. John Paul II to Denver, in 1993, he and several of his Elect compeers showed up to harass multitudes, hand out Jack Chick tracts, and otherwise disturb the peace.

Frank Bruni, of New York Times, hectors Christians: “Bow to the enlightenments of modernity!”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 9, 2015 • Apologetics; Exegesis; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology; Politics

Mr. Bruni starts off, as do most leftists who will have their own way, with a pompous and condescending sneer: I’m here to free you, you poor benighted silly little thing, from that needless little bitty blue blanket you cling to. There now, isn’t it better now that you don’t have to carry that foolish heavy burden around? No, you don’t have to thank me. Then, after that haughty and oily display, the leftist comes out of the closet and screams his brownshirt demands: “Bow to the enlightenments of modernity!” Kneel before Zod!

The woman of the Apocalypse according to popes.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 4, 2015 • Apologetics; Marian Dogmas

In a recent post, Steve “Purple” Hays of Failablogue (he calls it Triablogue) tries to pit those wicked “lay Catholic pop apologists” against “their religious superiors” in the USCCB. The USCCB says the woman clothed with the sun is the Church, and Hays will side wth the bishops. That’s progress. Perhaps, then, he’ll also side with the bishop of Rome. Pius X, Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II have said the woman clothed with the sun is also Mary. And before you cry, “Contradiction!” Haydock’s Commentary of 1859 says the woman clothed with the sun is Israel, the Church, and Mary.

Did Theodoret of Cyrus teach sola scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997), part 2.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 3, 2015 • Apologetics; Debates; sola scriptura

Not satisfied with his effort to co-opt St. Cyril of Jerusalem into a defense of sola scriptura, Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries, goes on to abuse the text of Theodoret’s Dialogues by quoting him out of context too. This comes at about the 23:00 mark in his 1997 debate with Gerry Matatics. The quotation Dr.* White provides us is this one: “The doctrine of the Church should be proven, not announced. Therefore show that the Scriptures teach these things.” I will get there presently. First some background.

Giordano Bruno and the truth about the Inquisition.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 12, 2015 • Apologetics; Church History

Context is important in these discussions. “The medieval world was not the modern world”; it seems trite and condescending to say that. But it is very important, if we are going to talk about the Inquisition, to understand the world of thought that actually existed at the time. At a time when Europe was universally Christian, religion was the one real stabilizing factor against civil unrest. For that reason, heresy was commonly accepted to be a threat to the security of the state. It was not mere religious error, or difference of opinion but treason.

Obama’s remarks on the Crusades and ISIS: some addenda.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 8, 2015 • Apologetics; Church History

Some, on blogs and in social media, have been urging that the outrage has somehow been made up by the right wing. It’s nothing but “noise.” Obama, they say, did not compare the Crusades and ISIS, and violence has been done in the name of Christ. Why, John Paul II even apologized for evil acts done during the Crusades! Which he did. And yet all this misses the mark. For one, the pope never apologized for the Crusades themselves, whereas the whole purpose of ISIS is nothing but barbarous murder and unprovoked aggression. Nor do we deny evil has been done by Christians.

No, Mr. Obama, the Crusades and ISIS are not the same thing.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 5, 2015 • Apologetics; Church History

Now, in the most kind and narrow construction you can assign those words, Mr. Obama is not altogether wrong. People have “committed terrible deeds” in the name of Christ. That is true. But. To say that that is no different than cutting the heads off of babies? To say that that is no different than torching prisoners alive in a caged inferno? No. That is wrong, ignorant, false, and vile. What Mr. Obama is saying is that we have no moral right to call what ISIS does evil. What he is saying is that we cannot fight against them and be entirely just.

Notre Dame professor Dr. Candida Moss says Jesus “wasn’t down with marriage.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 2, 2015 • Apologetics; Exegesis

Dr. Candida Moss is all wrought up over the LDS “half-hearted shuffle toward LGBT equality.” Dr. Moss prefers the mad dash over the cliff: When she says “LGBT equality,” what she means is “marriage equality,” in spite of the fact that no one, not even Dr. Moss, believes in any such thing. Would she advocate marrying your dog? a three-year-old child? the exhumed body of King Tut? So let us get this myth of “marriage equality” out of our heads from the start. To define marriage is to limit it, and the real goal is not marriage “equality” but marriage plasticity.

Do priests rob Christ of his high priesthood? Part 2 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 1, 2015 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics; priesthood

“Satan,” John Calvin says at the beginning of Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.18, “has attempted to adulterate and envelop the sacred Supper of Christ as with thick darkness.” Those are high words. How has Satan done this? you may ask. Oh, it was “with most pestilential error,” Calvin tells us. For lo! “he blinded almost the whole world into the belief that the Mass was a sacrifice and oblation for obtaining the remission of sins.” Calvin has no patience for anyone who holds to any such idea as that; he describes it as “the common opinion of the vulgar.”

Does the Mass “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Part 1 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 26, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

You can fall down laughing at such words, and I often do. But the point of them is to stir an audience to an irrational pitch of wild fear of the Catholic Church. The Church has no power—none—to “overthrow the cross of Christ,” not even if she meant to do so. God is not so weak. But suppose you believed that some church could “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Would that not cause you grave concern? I know it would me. And that is what Calvin wants his readers to believe. That is why his words overstate his meaning. It is deliberate; it is of ill intent.

Which came first? The Bible or the Church?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 20, 2014 • Apologetics; Church History

God gives us the nation of Israel first, and only through it the Old Testament; God gives us the Church first, and only through it the New Testament. The Word of God operated, prior to Scripture, through the nation of Israel and through the Church. The canon does not get finished for two generations after Pentecost. After that, someone had to decide what went into the canon; the Holy Spirit had to inspire someone to get the list right. Why Romans and not the Protoevangelium of James? Why Galatians and not the Epistle to the Laodiceans?

First from Failoni: The really bad argument against infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 18, 2014 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

If this were just the apostrophe-free ignorance of someone who trolls around blogs, it would hardly be worth bothering with. But Mr. F does not just make this stuff up; he actually steals it from people like Dr. John MacArthur, who says the Church teaches that the laity can sin, but that somehow the clergy can not. This idea — that infallibility means that the pope cannot sin — is a howler that is not limited just to the kind of people who rant at the bottom of blogs. It can grip the brain even of someone who should know better but doesn’t, or refuses to, or pretends not to.

Once more, regarding the Monophysites and the Crusades.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 13, 2014 • Apologetics; Church History

Now, lest it be forgotten against the gale force of his incessant wind, Mr. Bugay did not “point to” the “historical record.” He pointed to himself, on his own Facebook page. He’s that sure of his own wise wisdom and right rightness. His post contained no history whatever, but only a claim, no more — a mere assertion, supported by not one fact, nor footnote, nor reference to one soul who says what Mr. Bugay does. Am I to think that Mr. Bugay’s Facebook page, and his wild leaps into space, now count as the “historical record”?