On David Griffey’s inability to read a simple argument.

ver on the apt­ly-named Daf­fey Thoughts, David Grif­fey attempts, inept­ly, to decon­struct my blog post expos­ing some Catholics’ idol­a­trous atti­tude about Scott Hahn. “Most con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics I know,” Grif­fey blares in his head­line, “do not believe Scott Hahn is the fourth mem­ber of the Holy Trin­i­ty.”

Only “most”? Does Grif­fey mean to sug­gest that some con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics do think that Hahn is the fourth mem­ber of the Trin­i­ty?

Fact is, I don’t know any­body who thinks that a trin­i­ty has four per­sons (that would be impos­si­ble), still less that Scott Hahn is one of those per­sons.

Nor did I sug­gest any such thing in my post. Mr. Grif­fey seems to be unaware of the extent of what idol­a­try is. It’s not mere­ly think­ing that some­one is God. I can idol­ize a rock star with­out think­ing that Jon Bon Jovi is God.

Specif­i­cal­ly, I was dis­cussing the notion that Scott Hahn is above criticism—the notion that, if you crit­i­cize him, you “serve a dif­fer­ent Mas­ter.” You are of your father the dev­il and of his works you will do.

That’s idol­a­try.

“This blog post by Scott Eric Alt,” Grif­fey intones in his text,

defends a fel­low [Sean Swain Mar­tin] who makes the claim that, for con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Catholics, the line between Scott Hahn and the real pope is a fine one.

Dear read­er, I was defend­ing Mr. Mar­tin only inso­far as I was defend­ing his right to make such an argu­ment with­out being accused of “serv­ing a dif­fer­ent Mas­ter.”

I haven’t read Mr. Mar­t­in’s dis­ser­ta­tion. I can’t eval­u­ate it. I don’t know whether his argu­ment is good or bad. I haven’t spent five sec­onds of my time think­ing about it. But what I do know is this: It may be the worst argu­ment in the world, but mak­ing it does­n’t mean that Mr. Mar­tin is of his father the dev­il. Scott Hahn is not above crit­i­cism by faith­ful Catholics. To sug­gest oth­er­wise is idol­a­try. That is the only argu­ment I was mak­ing.

And in fact, I began my arti­cle with these words:

I have no per­son­al crit­i­cism of Scott Hahn. (I get why some peo­ple do.) Rome Sweet Home and sev­er­al of his oth­er books were touch­stones for me dur­ing my con­ver­sion. I met him once, in Colum­bus, and he was very pleas­ant to me. I have no rea­son to dis­like him.

I can’t com­ment on the sub­stance of Mr. Mar­t­in’s claims, because I don’t know what they are.

Mr. Grif­fey inserts a word sal­ad at this point:

For the record, that sort of thing, a title pro­claim­ing that ‘Con­ser­v­a­tives think it’s good to rape ted­dy bears’ fol­lowed by a book on why con­ser­v­a­tives are wrong about the envi­ron­ment and school vouch­ers, has nev­er impressed me.

Don’t ask me. I don’t know what he’s on about in all that, either.

“Alt,” Mr. Grif­fey con­tin­ues, “who con­sid­ers him­self a con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic”—

Stop. Cor­rec­tion again. I con­sid­er myself a Catholic who is a con­ser­v­a­tive. But my con­ser­vatism is not an adjec­tive mod­i­fy­ing my Catholi­cism. I am an ortho­dox Catholic. I believe every­thing the Church teach­es. My con­ser­vatism is a polit­i­cal view that I strive to keep sub­or­di­nate to my faith.

Back to Grif­fey:

—defends [his] inflam­ma­to­ry title with ‘gee, isn’t any­one allowed to dis­agree with Scott Hahn?’ Sure, but when a book begins with a calum­nious accu­sa­tion, one can react and prob­a­by should react.

Sure one can react, but not by sug­gest­ing that Mr. Mar­tin “serves a dif­fer­ent Mas­ter.” If Leila Miller, who wrote the Face­book post I was react­ing to, had said, “This is an absurd claim to make, no one treats Hahn like he’s the pope, where does this guy get off?” I’d have had no blog post to write. It would be pos­si­ble that Miller was wrong, but such a reac­tion would not be idol­a­try.

But as soon as she says that Mar­tin “serves a dif­fer­ent Mas­ter,” mere­ly for hav­ing harsh words to say about Scott Hahn, who has made so many con­verts, then she cross­es the line into idol­a­try.

And last I checked, it’s the Holy Spir­it who makes con­verts. So maybe Leila Miller does think Scott Hahn belongs to the Trin­i­ty.

(That’s a joke, for the read­ing impaired.)

•••

Update: In an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post, I incor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied David Grif­fey as a “pop apol­o­gist.” Pos­si­bly due to the sim­i­lar­i­ty in names, I was con­fus­ing him with David Gray.