No, the pope is not “bossing around” the U.S. on border wall.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 22, 2016 • Politics; Pope Francis

 

As for Ann Coul­ter, she has this sense that it is all well and good to be Catholic, as long as your first loy­al­ty is to Amer­i­ca (by which she means a par­tic­u­lar­ly crude form of nation­al­ism). If your loy­al­ty is to Church teach­ing and the Vic­ar of Christ, then you are a “ROMAN Catholic” as opposed to an “AMERICAN” one. You may even be a trai­tor! She mix­es this with good old-fash­ioned Know Nothingism, a form of Amer­i­can anti-Catholi­cism that fears the pope will reach his arm across the Atlantic and med­dle in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Remem­ber 1960?

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Dear James White: Thanks for the applause. You left a few things out.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 22, 2016 • Apologetics

 

I tried to get the word to Dr.* White before he took to his Divid­ing Line web­cast to applaud me with a lit­er­al clap­ping of hands. I did: I sent a tweet to him and his pro­duc­er Rich Pierce on Feb­ru­ary 15. I includ­ed Mr. Pierce because the good Reformed apol­o­gist blocked me all the way back in Octo­ber of 2013 after I con­front­ed him on his utter refusal and inabil­i­ty to exegete the text of Eph­esians 4 in any mean­ing­ful way. Though Dr.* White has con­clud­ed that I am one of the rare breed of Catholic apol­o­gists who deserves to be thanked for my hon­esty, I remain blocked.

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Your Bible probably has a mistranslation in it at James 2:14.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 20, 2016 • Apologetics; Exegesis; Good Works

 

In James 2:14. (Unless you read the Douay-Rheims, or the King James.) Here is James 2:14 in the NAB trans­la­tion that is read at Mass: “What good is it, my broth­ers, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? I empha­size the word “that” because it is wrong. It should not be there. Here is the same verse in the 1899 Douay-Rheims: “What shall it prof­it, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? Notice that “that” does not appear here. But most mod­ern Bible trans­la­tions include it, or some vari­a­tion.

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Seven reasons to vote for Donald Trump. 7QT XXII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 14, 2016 • Politics; Seven Quick Takes

 

It’s time we admit­ted, dear read­er, that there are in fact sev­en rea­sons why Don­ald Trump should be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Let us con­sid­er not only that he alone can beat Hillary Clin­ton, but all the ways in which Mr. Trump is moral­ly supe­ri­or to Hillary Clin­ton. Don­ald Trump is …  

 

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Does the pope really think Jesus sinned?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 8, 2016 • Exegesis; Pope Francis

 

At the end of that pil­grim­age,” the pope says, “Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obe­di­ent to his par­ents. … A pil­grim­age does not end when we arrive at our des­ti­na­tion, but when we return home and resume our every­day lives. … We know what Jesus did on that occa­sion. Instead of return­ing home with his fam­i­ly, he stayed in Jerusalem, in the Tem­ple, caus­ing great dis­tress to Mary and Joseph who were unable to find him. For this lit­tle ‘escapade,’ Jesus prob­a­bly had to beg for­give­ness of his par­ents.” Does this mean the pope thinks Jesus sinned?

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XVII. In which the pope speaks on a plane, and the Church crashes into the Tiber.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 3, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

The Catholic Church came to an end ear­li­er today, dear read­er, after a brief 2000-year run. It has crashed smack into the Tiber Riv­er, there are almost no sur­vivors — only a rem­nant of 11 — and we must sit and gaze on the ruins and wail. Or at least that is what one would think, to judge by the apoc­a­lyp­tic screams com­ing from the right-wing blogs over the last day or two. So what hap­pened this time? I will tell you, but you must brace your­self. Are you ready? The pope gave an inter­view. (I pause so you may recov­er your wits.)

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Calvinist blogger reads James; discovers that we must do good works.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 1, 2015 • Apologetics; Good Works

 

I was mak­ing my peri­od­ic round of the blogs in order to find out what the anti-Catholics were up to, when I stum­bled across this curi­ous post by the daunt­less Mr. X. (He calls him­self Tur­ret­inFan, for weird rea­sons of his own. I can’t speak for the poor man’s crotch­ets.) It seems, at first glance, to be a real snooz­er of a post, even by Mr. X’s strict stan­dard for som­no­lence: It is a very cur­so­ry sum­ma­ry of the con­tent of James. That’s it. But in the mid­dle of all this, Mr. X trips smack over the fact that James sure talks about works a lot. And still Mr. X thinks that James’s true sub­ject is faith alone.

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No, Virginia, blogs are not the magisterium. 7QT XXI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 27, 2015 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

 

This is real­ly a post about the New Evan­ge­liza­tion and how blogs fit in (and how they do not), but I must go through some set-up first. I had already cho­sen the new title for this blog, secured the new URL, and was fast at work mak­ing it pret­ty, when lo! over on Face­book some­one — let us call him A. — shared a pre­sump­tu­ous post to my time­line. The post in ques­tion was a pod­cast pro­mot­ing some obscure Mar­i­an appari­tion, reject­ed by the local bish­op. I won’t give it fur­ther atten­tion by nam­ing it here; it is that bad.

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What infallibility does not mean.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 24, 2015 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

 

In my years of engag­ing apolo­get­ics top­ics with Protes­tants, and even some­times fel­low Catholics, I have found that the Church teach­ing on infal­li­bil­i­ty is one of the most dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to grasp. It is more often nec­es­sary to explain what infal­li­bil­i­ty does not mean than what it does, and so root out the errors in people’s under­stand­ing. For exam­ple, infal­li­bil­i­ty does not mean that the pope is with­out sin, nor does it mean that every utter­ance of a pope is infal­li­ble. A Wednes­day audi­ence and a papal inter­view are not infal­li­ble. The pope’s opin­ion of the Red Sox is not infal­li­ble.

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Why doesn’t the Church infallibly interpret every verse of Scripture?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 24, 2015 • Apologetics

 

Protes­tant apol­o­gists will often pose this ques­tion to Catholics: If your Church is real­ly infal­li­ble, why does it not just inter­pret every last verse of Scrip­ture for us? It has had two thou­sand years to do so. If it can­not do so, what good is infal­li­bil­i­ty to me? Most often they will raise this ques­tion in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion of author­i­ty. The Catholic will say, “With­out the infal­li­ble Mag­is­teri­um as a guide, all you have is your pri­vate inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture. That is why there are so many count­less denom­i­na­tions out there.” The Protes­tant will counter …

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But how does the Holy Spirit protect the Church?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 16, 2015 • Apologetics

 

As Catholics, we believe in the inde­fectibil­i­ty of the Church — that the Holy Spir­it will pro­tect the pope, and the bish­ops under him, from teach­ing error. The bib­li­cal basis for this is Matt. 16:18, where Christ tells His dis­ci­ples that “the gates of Hell will not pre­vail” against the Church; and John 16:13, where he says that He will send the Holy Spir­it to “guide you into all truth.” But how does that hap­pen? you ask. We can begin an answer by strik­ing off some of the ways the Holy Spir­it could do it but prob­a­bly does not. The Holy Spir­it prob­a­bly does not strike heretics down.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XVI; or, Maureen Mullarkey’s latest rant: Notes on a dumb show.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 1, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Mau­reen Mullarkey has giv­en vent to anoth­er in a long, sple­net­ic string of anti-Fran­cis blog­gage. In this one, she accus­es the pope of col­lud­ing with Oba­ma in order to destroy free­dom across the globe. The short of it is, it was post­ed at First Things, R.R. Reno took it down, wrote a post to the effect that Ms. Mullarkey will no longer write for his site; after which, the post appeared at 1 Peter 5, and Ben Domenech at the Fed­er­al­ist declared that, what­ev­er Mr. Reno does, Ms. Mullarkey is wel­come to pub­lish her filth with him.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XV. Wherein a disappointed Judge Napolitano calls Pope Francis a “false prophet.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 29, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

So I go to Fox News and I find Judge Napoli­tano rav­ing on about the pope again. He has raved before. In his lat­est col­umn, he tells us that the pope is a “false prophet” and has dis­ap­point­ed many Roman Catholics.” (That’s the title.) So here we go again: It’s Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome. It nev­er ends. Mr. Napoli­tano starts by not­ing his self-iden­ti­ty as a “tra­di­tion­al­ist Roman Catholic.” With­in the breast of such an one is “fear and trem­bling over what [the pope] might say.” For rea­sons of their own, tra­di­tion­al­ists always qua­ver in a state of near-pan­ic.

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How Pope Francis shocks us on life.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 26, 2015 • Pope Francis; Pro-Life Issues

 

Pope Fran­cis came to Wash­ing­ton, and some of us appoint­ed our­selves experts on what he ought to say. Once you do that, you also become cer­tain what the pope ought not say. Don’t talk about cli­mate change, sir. Don’t men­tion cap­i­tal­ism. Stay out of pol­i­tics when you talk to Con­gress. And once you say that, you stop lis­ten­ing, with open ears, to what the pope does say. You hear him only so that you may find some­thing to pick apart and crit­i­cize and decon­struct. You become his crit­ic, not his sheep. You become the pope of the pope.

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