Justification Archives - To Give a Defense

Catholics, please stop promoting justification by works. It’s a condemned heresy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 8, 2020 • Apologetics; Justification

Two Catholics—a writer for Catholic Answers as well as an actual archbishop–are claiming that it is obedience to the law that merits heaven and allows us to avoid Hell. This is painful, because I spent a lot of time during my conversion working past a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching I was conditioned to believe: that the Church teaches justification by work. It doesn’t, and it’s actually a heresy to which the Council of Trent attaches the penalty of excommunication.

Close reading the pope on Martin Luther.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Justification; Pope Francis

Let us do that thing that the blogging Catholic must sometimes do, which is to parse a difficult passage from one of the pope’s interviews. This, again, was his interview last June as he winged his way back to Rome from Armenia. A reporter said, “Hey! That Martin Luther guy. You can rehabilitate him, right? Perhaps lift his excommunication? What say you?” It was an insane question. Martin Luther’s excommunication ended in 1546 when he died. Now, I have been told: “Well, you know, the pope only meant to say Luther was not altogether wrong.

Pope Francis is wrong about Luther and justification.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2017 • Apologetics; Justification; Pope Francis

Things the pope says in an interview are not Magisterial. Here is part of what the pope said: “And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err.” Now see, this infuriates me as an apologist (and former Protestant). I defend the poor man, but at times he exasperates me. I pointed this out in 2014, and I point it out again now: The CDF hath said that Catholics and Lutherans do not in fact “agree” on justification. We must look at this text.