Category: Apologetics

Polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay blames Catholic Church for ISIS.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 9, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

 

No doubt, dear read­er, you have been read­ing seri­ous things about the wicked hor­ror and evil that does its Satan­ic deeds under the name ISIS. Mean­while, in Pitts­burgh, the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay — a man whose rea­son turned vagabond long before — has once more become pos­sessed by the mad desire to out-do Jack Chick for clown­ish buf­foon­ery. Lis­ten to his newest dumb out­rage upon good sense. (But pray do not have food or drink in your mouth, make sure you are secure in your chair, and say a few Aves first.

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Three reasons to take John 6 literally.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 30, 2014 • Apologetics; Transubstantiation

 

Who shall dare to doubt? Who shall hes­i­tate? It is not enough to sim­ply show that metaphor exists else­where in the Bible, or even else­where in the same pas­sage, if you can not show that metaphor exists here. Y is metaphor­i­cal because x is is no argu­ment. It is sopho­moric rea­son­ing — a cop-out, an attempt to avoid the real hard work of hon­est exe­ge­sis and his­tor­i­cal inquiry. And exe­ge­sis and his­tor­i­cal inquiry do run counter to the notion that the body and blood of Christ are mere­ly sym­bol­ic in the Eucharist.

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Mr. X struggles with metaphor, transubstantiation, and John 6.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 29, 2014 • Apologetics; Exegesis; Transubstantiation

 

Of late, the anony­mous blog­ger, five-point­er, and crack the­olo­gian Tur­ret­inFan — known on this blog as Mr. X—has been strug­gling with the con­cept of metaphor as it applies to John 6. And a very hard strug­gle it has been, too. He argues that the expres­sion “this cup is my blood” should be a clear sign that the text is not meant to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. For not even Roman Catholics will say that the cup itself is Christ’s blood. The poor man appar­ent­ly needs the help of an Eng­lish teacher.

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Did Cyril of Jerusalem teach sola scriptura? White vs. Matatics (1997), part 1.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 23, 2014 • Apologetics; Debates; sola scriptura

 

It is an old and tried (and tired) tac­tic of the anti-Catholic apol­o­gist to take a Church Father (by the Mass, even a saint and doc­tor of the Church!) and make believe that he is a Protes­tant. The games peo­ple play now. I have writ­ten of such things before. Sooth, there is not a false doc­trine known to man since 1517, that has not been read into the Bible and the Fathers by Reformed folks who hath eat the drug of anachro­nism and washed it down with the ton­ic of des­per­a­tion. Only the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay is bold enough to quit and claim vic­to­ry in the same breath.

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Oops! Calvinist pastor Ken Temple appears to say Bible contains mistakes.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 28, 2014 • Apologetics; Exegesis

 

Do Reformed folks no longer believe in the ple­nary inspi­ra­tion of Scrip­ture? Can Pr. inform me? I mean, as grey an anti-Catholic emi­nence as Loraine Boet­tner him­self was very clear on this point — that to deny the ple­nary inspi­ra­tion of Scrip­ture is a Mod­ernist heresy. Once deny ple­nary inspi­ra­tion, Boet­tner says, and there is “no con­sis­tent stop­ping place.” The very words of Scrip­ture them­selves are God-breathed! So what does Pr. mean when he says that the “lan­guage” of the New Tes­ta­ment on the sac­ri­fi­cial priest­hood was a “big mis­take”?

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

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 21, 2014 • Apologetics; Book Review; Seven Quick Takes

 

Some 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.

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The Protestant’s Dilemma by Devin Rose: A review.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 18, 2014 • Apologetics; Book Review

 

If a Protes­tant look­ing into the claims of Catholi­cism were to ask me, “What one book should I read, where I can find a quick answer to any ques­tion I have?” I would tell him to read Devin Rose’s new book The Protestant’s Dilem­ma. I would also rec­om­mend this book to Protes­tant apol­o­gists, even those of many years, well-skilled in polemics. It will remind them of the heavy bur­den of proof they face, and the weak­ness of their posi­tion on point after point. The truth may set them free and bring them home too. (It has hap­pened.) All this may seem like oblig­a­tory praise, but no.

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The pope, an Anglican, and a Pentecostal walk into a bar; or, the state of ecumenism at the present time.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 25, 2014 • Apologetics; Pope Francis

 

So the pope record­ed a video for a meet­ing of Pen­te­costals led by TV evan­ge­list Ken­neth Copeland. His theme was ecu­menism and the broth­er­hood of all Chris­tians. It was an infor­mal, hon­est, and deeply-felt plea for uni­ty; and it was indeed mov­ing to see a Protes­tant audi­ence pray­ing for the pope as a fel­low Chris­t­ian. Who writes that script? Catholic blogs and social media talked about it all week­end. Some (like Eliz­a­beth Scalia) were moved to tears of joy. Oth­ers (like Fr. Dwight Lon­ge­neck­er) urged cau­tion. Oth­ers, pre­dictably, tore their gar­ments.

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TurretinFan interprets the lightning.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 24, 2014 • Apologetics

 

If light­ning strikes a tree, how do we know that it is ran­dom; where­as, if light­ning strikes an image of Christ, that is God’s judg­ment against idol­a­try? Per­haps Tur­ret­inFan, who is the lat­est to inter­pret the light­ning, will say that even the tree was not struck ran­dom­ly, and that its destruc­tion was ordained by God before all eter­ni­ty. Mr. X is a Calvin­ist, and Calvin­ists do not blow their nose unless it had been decreed by the God­head. But sure­ly God is not blast­ing with right­eous judg­ment every tree that gets struck.

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Steve Hays and the parable of the Biltmore.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 21, 2014 • Apologetics; sola scriptura

 

Nei­ther Mr. X (who calls him­self Tur­ret­inFan) nor the polem­i­cal rogue (who calls him­self John Bugay) have dared to respond yet to my last arti­cle on sola scrip­tura. Mr. X runs a mad dash through Sacred Scrip­ture, cit­ing any verse that he can bend out of sense, and says, “See! Here! Sola Scrip­tura! Refute that, Roman­ists!” Mean­while Mr. Bugay, who hath no peer for pre­var­i­ca­tion, denies he has to find it at all, and claims that the ques­tion is “dis­hon­est.” Catholic apol­o­gists real­ly ought to shut up if they know what is good for them.

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Desperate John Bugay to Catholics: Shut up about sola scriptura.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 17, 2014 • Apologetics; sola scriptura

 

Protes­tant apol­o­gists are cre­ative and tire­less in their efforts to find sola scrip­tura in the Bible. They are undaunt­ed by refu­ta­tion. When told that Acts 17:11, or 2 Tim. 3:16, do not sup­port the doc­trine, they do not attempt fur­ther defense; they sim­ply move on to the next verse. In this way, per­haps Catholics could, in time, get them to run the cir­cuit through every last one. That would be one way to have fun with our sep­a­rat­ed broth­ers. Not only is sola scrip­tura in the Bible; the Bible talks about noth­ing else. Thus has Tur­ret­inFan invent­ed four new proof texts

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Seven epiphanies that made me Catholic: 7QT VII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 23, 2013 • Apologetics; Personal Narrative; Seven Quick Takes

 

My con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church entailed a series of epipha­nies, where­by a man who once under­stood the world look­ing west turned around and faced east. If you’ve stood on your head your whole life, things look very dif­fer­ent when you final­ly stand upright. That can be a dis­con­cert­ing expe­ri­ence; it can also car­ry a great deal of won­der and joy. I am Catholic today because I once under­stood real­i­ty that way, and now I under­stand it this way. I come at life from a very dif­fer­ent set of assump­tions about the way things are.

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Peter Leithart founds new Protestant sect: “Reformational Catholicism.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 11, 2013 • Apologetics

 

Should you be struck by a sud­den impulse to run your fin­ger­nails ’cross your pate, won­der­ing what this odd hybrid “Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism” could be, bear with me through this. Mr. Lei­thart is not talk­ing about the Counter Ref­or­ma­tion. Nor is he talk­ing about Catholi­cism at all — not in any sense that would be under­stood by one who knew that words mean things and the mean­ing of them is fixed. What he is rather talk­ing about (so he tells us at First Things) is “the end of Protes­tantism,” only with­out repa­tri­a­tion to the Church. In oth­er words, Protes­tant Sect No. 50,001.

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Lies and the lying liars who accuse others of them: A defense of Ergun Caner.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 22, 2013 • Apologetics

 

Calvin­ists with some time to kill, and a base­ment, can wreak strange hav­oc on ordered soci­ety. Oft it is hard to know whether they do this by design or by tic; whether they need to be arrest­ed for delin­quen­cy, or put on L‑DOPA. A cou­ple of caveats will be in order from the out­set. The rea­son they will be in order is because they will be ignored, or denied, even after I’ve giv­en them. These next few para­graphs may even be skipped over alto­geth­er, as though they were writ­ten in a strange and antique lan­guage not yet deci­phered by even the best cryp­tog­ra­phers.

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Forgive me Father, for I smashed a brick against my face.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 15, 2013 • Apologetics; Personal Narrative; Sacraments

 

I have the Con­fes­sion times mem­o­rized for the entire Arch­dio­cese of Cincin­nati, and I have a devel­oped sense of which priest to go to on which occa­sion. No, Fr. Cnin is too hard on com­mand­ment x; best to go to Fr. Dnin at St. Enin for that one. Fr. Dnin has sym­pa­thy for peo­ple who have failed at com­mand­ment x. But he tends to be harsh on com­mand­ment y, so if I com­mit that one I’ll go to Fr. Fnin at St. Gnin. This strat­e­gy has worked for me, and I can feel rou­tine and com­pla­cent every time I enter and leave the con­fes­sion­al, as though it’s an errand to the gro­cery store. Which is how I pre­fer it.

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