In the News Archives - To Give a Defense

Exploitation of the dead is not pro-life. It is contempt for life.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 4, 2022 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

By now you’ve all heard the horrific details about Lauren Handy, the so-called pro-life activist who was keeping five frozen fetuses in her home. There are still unanswered questions about how these dead bodies were obtained, and whether they were all (or if any of them were) actually aborted; for example, one was still intact and attached to the placenta, and another was en caul. There is some speculation that Handy, with or without the group she belongs to (Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, or PAAU), intended to use the corpses in a publicity stunt of some sort. I don’t know. My friend Mary Pezzulo at Steel Magnificat writes about all of it here, and you should read her article. It’s the only really good thing I’ve read about the whole ugly story.

Abby Johnson: George Floyd’s murder might be incompetence, not racism.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 29, 2020 • Blind Guides & False Prophets; In the News

Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood director who became a “pro-life” superstar, has quite a history of racist rants on Twitter, as my friend Mary Pezzulo documents on her blog. Back in September, she used the words “thug” and “stain” to describe Bishop Talbert Swan, who happens to be black, and then proceeded to lecture him about how he was a disgrace to his own community. (AJ, in case you did not know, is white. A white woman telling a black man he’s a disgrace to the black community. “Let me tell you about real racism,” white woman tells black man. You are “an enemy to your own people.” Very lovely.) [Read more.]

No, Austrian bishops, the Church may not “bless” same-sex unions.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 27, 2020 • Church Scandals; In the News; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology

Catholic News Agency reports that the Austrian bishops are agitating for the Church to give a “formal, liturgical blessing” to “homosexual couples.” (It never ends. The answer is no, but it never ends.) Their committee on the liturgy asked for a book to be written explaining how such a thing may be done. The title of the book is The Benediction of Same-Sex Partnerships. CNA does not say whether the book limits blessings to “partners” who are celibate. It does not matter, in any case, because the Church has ruled it out and there’s no room to wiggle.

Bishop DiLorenzo responds to Tim Kaine on same-sex marriage.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 14, 2016 • In the News; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology; Politics

Clear, brief, and no-nonsense. Though some, undoubtedly, will want to kvetch that DiLorenzo does not mention Kaine by name, he does indicate that his words were prompted by “recent statements from the campaign trail.” Kaine’s words had prompted myself, as well as others, to call upon the bishop to correct the senator. If Kaine wishes to continue his support of same-sex marriage, let him do so, but let him do so as a dissident Catholic — not under the guise of a “devout” one. A devout Catholic does not publicly defy the teaching of the Church. End stop.

It is time for “devout Catholic” Tim Kaine to be publicly corrected.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 11, 2016 • In the News; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology; Politics

Sen. Kaine, in remarks at the annual gala of the Human Rights campaign—McClatchy reports on it—said he believes the Church may eventually change its position on same-sex marriage. “I think it’s going to change,” Kaine says, “because my church also teaches me about a creator who, in the first chapter of Genesis, surveyed the entire world, including mankind, and said, ‘It is very good.’ ” So? What does that mean? I’m sorry, Sen. Kaine, but you are causing confusion and scandal. God said “it is good,” but he also created them male and female for complementarity.

Still say the Orlando shooting was about radical Islam?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 13, 2016 • In the News

The murders in Orlando were born of hate; it does not matter what religion the hater belonged to. If a Christian shot up the night club, I would not want Christianity blamed. Despite Pastor Anderson’s rant, I don’t want Christianity blamed. And if a Muslim shoots up the night club, I don’t want Islam blamed. What I want blamed is hate. It doesn’t matter if the people who were killed were miserable sinners. I am a miserable sinner; you are a miserable sinner; Stephen L. Anderson is a miserable sinner. Christ died for miserable sinners because he loves miserable sinners.

We are the barbarians: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 31, 2016 • In the News; Moral Theology; Pro-Life Issues

An article at Rare yesterday points out that some of the earliest and most vociferous critics of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conservatives writing for National Review. Imagine that. No less a person than Russell Kirk wrote in 1945: “We are the barbarians within our own Empire.” That’s much stronger than anything President Obama said, and yet Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart called for Congress to censure him for it. Now, if Mr. Pollak were a consistent man, he would also condemn Russell Kirk and National Review.

Let’s please all take a breath about “women deacons.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 12, 2016 • Church History; In the News; Pope Francis

Let’s get one thing straight here before people rush through the streets throwing confetti in the air; or plunging daggers into their chests and pitching themselves over the nearest cliff. What Pope Francis is talking about is the possibility of reviving the ancient order of deaconess; which no one, ever, thought of as female “clergy.” So when you hear words like “ordain women,” or when you read breathless articles that “women deacons” will soon be serving in one and the same capacity as male deacons, your cow detector should be mooing at a loud pitch.

Remember Lot’s Wife.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 29, 2015 • Exegesis; In the News; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology

It is not marriage, what five people forced upon us all on Friday, and can not be marriage any more than a square can be round or a hexagon rectangular. What five people — a majority by one — forced upon us all on Friday was a game of make-believe, a lie. Words mean things, and marriage is not just a social arrangement entered into by any two people who may choose. Marriage is ontological, rooted in God’s design of the human person for unity and procreation. Man was not designed to fit with man, nor woman with woman; and we may not design our own reality.

Aborted ethics and wrongful liabilities: What hath the Court wrought?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 30, 2015 • In the News; Politics; Pro-Life Issues

You will have heard, I take it, of a recent “wrongful birth” lawsuit. The Daily Screech reported on it in August: After an amniocentesis, parents were told they had a healthy baby. Turned out, baby has Syndrome Z. Turned out, the medical office had misread the results. So parents sued on the premise that they would have aborted the baby if only they had known about the Syndrome Z. This was not a unique case; half of all U.S. states recognize “wrongful birth” as a cause of action, and one couple was awarded a full $50 million in such a suit.

Josh Alcorn bans The Vagina Monologues.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 16, 2015 • In the News; LGBT Issues

Well, the Vagina Monologues is no more. Its sexual politics no longer are inclusive enough. So after a run of nineteeen straight years, Mt. Holyoke College has canceled the play on the grounds that it excludes women without vaginas. The peculiar phrase “women without vaginas” is meant to include both women without vaginas and men who think they’re women. Ms. Brown explains all this for us. “A trans woman is a woman, full stop, but she may have a penis.” Oh. So what are we to conclude from all this? Why, that the Vagina Monologues is “transphobic”!

Anti-Catholic agitator Ian Paisley dies.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 12, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; In the News

But the Ulster Protestant who refused any political compromise with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, later … compromised. Both politics and religious feeling were at play here. Rev. Paisley preferred Northern Ireland to remain under the control of England, while the Catholic minority felt their interests would better be protected by independence and union with the Catholic southern Ireland. Later in life, Dr. Paisley softened toward them. And tellingly, the UK Guardian reports on what kind of anti-Catholic Rev. Paisley was not.

That life exists and identity: Thoughts on Robin Williams and depression.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 18, 2014 • Catholicism & Culture; In the News; Literature

The powerful witness in all of this, in depression, in suicide, in loss, in unbearable confusion and grief and pain, is the witness of life. That life exists. That you are here, and that it matters. The great horror and pain of depression is that it robs you of any sense of self and identity. And that may be why, in a cruel irony, some seek relief from it in self-annihilation. But they value their life, and they do not want it to end. They only want the pain to end. But one of the great joys of recovery from depression is the joy of discovering identity again, and who you are.

In defense of Ben Seewald and his freedom to say dumb stuff.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 26, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; In the News

It is a reflection of how badly addicted we have become to outrage porn that anyone at all was outraged over what the nineteen-year-old boyfriend of Jessa Duggar had to say on Facebook about Catholicism. I read the excerpts; later, I read the full post. I wasn’t outraged. I was bored. They certainly were no great reflection on the originality of Mr. Seewald, but they shouldn’t have been. He’s nineteen. He’s repeating what he has heard elsewhere: likely, from his pastor, his parents, and his friends; and what he’s repeating are ignorant clichés that have been repeated to the point of slumber.

Dear world, let this dead baby in a bag be a lesson to you.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 18, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

Here’s the solution: Stop listening to what the politicians tell you about who you are. Stop listening to what the advertisers tell you about who you are. Stop listening to what the media tells you about who you are. Stop having your value system formed by the noise around you. Your value, and the value of your children, comes from the fact that you are here and you are made in the image of God and you are his beloved child. If you don’t believe that, maybe you ought to pray. If you do believe that, maybe you ought to start shouting from the rooftops.