Category: papacy

Mr. X riddles us more on papal infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 21, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

 

I am wor­ried about Tur­ret­inFan. Nor­mal­ly, he is one of the abler crit­ics of the Catholic Church. His ear­li­er cri­tiques of two of my arti­cles on sola scrip­tura, though wrong­head­ed, were at least cogent. They at least made argu­ments that were seri­ous and schol­ar­ly and worth address­ing. But I am afraid some incon­sis­ten­cy has crept in to the works, start­ing with this arti­cle of his on Pope John XX, and now just yes­ter­day with this very strange addi­tion to his lat­est exam­i­na­tion of papal suc­ces­sion and infal­li­bil­i­ty. I frankly know not what to make of it. Is Mr. X mere­ly tired?

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Mr. X plays riddle me this, riddle me that.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

 

Rather than do the right and brave thing and address my rebut­tals to every last one of his six objec­tions to the unbro­ken suc­ces­sion of popes, Tur­ret­inFan decides to plow on as if noth­ing had hap­pened and invent a sev­enth. “Well, okay,” he says. “And what about John XX?” Now, this kind of thing, when you get right down to it, is no more than an attempt to turn anti-Catholic claims into a game of Rid­dle Me This. Can you throw your oppo­nent for a loop? Well, what about this pope? Well, what about that pope? So it goes with the Undaunt­ed Mr. X of Calvin­ism.

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The papacy, necessity, and unbroken succession: A reply to Mr. X.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 13, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

 

We should not, by false the­o­ry and syl­lo­gism, think that God would insti­tute only those offices in the Church that are “nec­es­sary” in our own sight. Such an idea makes Christ pow­er­less before Neces­si­ty the same way Zeus is pow­er­less before Fate. I doubt Mr. X believes that Neces­si­ty is a high­er order of divin­i­ty than Christ. But that is the log­i­cal con­se­quence — is it not? — when you judge some office in the Church upon the stan­dard of its “neces­si­ty,” rather than the only prop­er stan­dard: name­ly, did Christ intend this?

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TurretinFan & the necessity argument against the papacy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 11, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

 

Every now and then, an anti-Catholic apol­o­gist — he need not be Protes­tant; he could be an athe­ist, or a Hin­du, or an agnos­tic endocri­nol­o­gist — will try to dis­cred­it the papa­cy, or the priest­hood, or tra­di­tion, or Mary gar­dens, or some oth­er ele­ment of the Church, by wav­ing his hand and say­ing, “We don’t need it.” Thus the false god of Neces­si­ty is invoked against what very God of very God wants us to have as a pure and unmer­it­ed gift. Tur­ret­inFan (known on this blog as Mr. X) is the lat­est to make this odd claim about the papa­cy. I’m hap­py to put him to rights.

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