To Give a Defense

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XIV. Wherein the American right erupts in a collective nutty over papal visit.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 20, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

There is a pattern to this kind of Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome: The pope should speak of that part of the moral law I agree with, not that part I would rather avoid. So Mr. Gosar is deeply offended that the pope might speak about our duty to care for the creation. The pope, he says, wants “to guilt people into leftist policies” through “false science.” Never mind that in Laudato Si, the pope said, “the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics.” Conveniently, Mr. Gosar does not mention any of this.

Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part quatre.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 15, 2015 • Pope Francis

Ahead of the papal visit later this month, Mark Binelli is back with another effusive column in Rolling Stoned. I have picked apart his errors thrice before, but the poor man keeps on rolling. Like a stone! Give him credit for it; now he has sought answers from such an one as Austin Ruse! Mr. Binelli will insist on his portrayal of Pope Francis as a “disruptor” of some sort. I don’t mind that; I even agree with it; but it is the kind of disruption that he sees lurking in the pope that worries me: not about Mr. Binelli’s sanity, for that can’t be helped, but his perspicuity.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XIII. In which the Year of Mercy confounds New York Times columnist Jill Filipovic.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 14, 2015 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome; Pro-Life Issues; Sacraments

You cannot conceive, nor can I,” Graham Greene writes in Brighton Rock, “of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Now, if I can’t conceive it, and you can’t conceive it, and Graham Greene can’t conceive it, imagine how much trouble they must be having at the New York Times. And so they are. Jill Filipovic, the author of this latest excursion into Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, goes as far as to call forgiveness “unforgiving.” It must have been pretzel day at Coney Island when she turned in that copy. And her piece has a plenitude of them.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XII. In which Greg Toppo of USA Today says the pope’s beliefs are just like those of dissenting Catholics.

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

Mr. Toppo strikes out in the lead: “Pope Francis’ evolving views on a host of fraught social issues have surprised observers” — . Wait. Wait. Wait. “Evolving views”? What “evolving views”? Do I take it, from this, that Pope Francis was once, at some point in the distant past, a doctrinal hardliner, but has since softened and “evolved,” to the great surprise of these unnamed “observers”? How now? Would you care to chart this “evolution,” Mr. Toppo? I don’t really find any such charting in your article. Call me a skeptic.

St Augustine: What has been injured shall be renewed.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 29, 2015 • Pro-Life Issues; Saints

I had made a point of not watching the recent videos exposing the barbaric evils of Planned Parenthood and Stem Express, put out by the Center for Medical Progress. You find out what is in them without that. Why expose myself to seeing images I would not be able to erase from my mind? Why watch babies be severed and cut apart and sliced open so their insides could be boxed and shipped and sold for profit? Who wants to look upon any of that horror? But then, earlier this week, perhaps because I had an article to write, I watched the sixth of them. I knew what I was going to see.

Answers for same-sex marriage apologist Matthew Vines.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 7, 2015 • Apologetics; Exegesis; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology

Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian—in which Mr. Vines claims to give the “biblical case in support of same-sex relationships” — recently posted “40 Questions for Christians Who Oppose Marriage Equality.” “Too often,” Mr. Vines laments, “LGBT-affirming Christians are the only ones asked to explain and defend their views. But there are many pressing questions that non-affirming Christians frequently do not address.” Oh, well, then! These questions have never been answered before! Let me correct this oversight.

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.

Why I am never leaving the Catholic Church.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 4, 2015 • Apologetics

I wish I could say otherwise, but I must tell the truth about this. The Catholic Church does not promise that everything will be easy. It promises, instead, a Cross. Fr. George Schommer, who preached the closing homily for my RCIA class the year I became Catholic, said it: “You will be tested.” And yet, I have never once been tempted to go and leave. I have never once said, “You know what, I was happier when I was a Presbyterian, let me go back there.” As though I was happy then because I was a Presbyterian, or as though the Christian life is about our happiness, or our feelings.

Before you get outraged and share that post on your social media profile.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 19, 2015 • False Report

Only two things matter: the salvation of the soul, and truth. That is why it is an offense to see so many posts running the rounds of social media that are full of blatant untruths that could be discovered by a small amount of fact-checking. The headline, or the meme, screams at us. “Pope Francis says yada yada yada!” we are told; when, in fact, the pope has said nothing like yada yada yada. “Obama’s outrageous words!” another post screams; when, in fact, Obama didn’t say it and what he did say was a big yawning bore of a cliché. But you hit share and cry: “Horrible! Egregious!”

Two highly illogical arguments for sola scriptura.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 23, 2015 • Apologetics; sola scriptura

Both of these come from Stephen Wolfe, writing at Reformation 500—a site frequented by our old friend, the polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay The title of Mr. Wolfe’s small little post is “A Short Defense of Sola Scriptura”; and it is so short — even cursory — that he fails to avoid several large and breezy gaps in logic. In the first of them, Mr. Wolfe tries to reply to a commonplace observation: that you can’t have sola scriptura unless the Bible itself gives us an infallible list of what’s canonical, and the Bible does not come with an inspired table of contents.

Misquoting St. Cyprian; or, how “John Bugay” abuses the Church Fathers.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2015 • Apologetics; Church History

Perhaps you have heard, dear reader, that Pope Francis will visit Philadelphia in September for the World Meeting of Families. Occasions like these always give the anti-Catholics a chance to crawl out of the woodwork and make a buggy spectacle of themselves. If you go, be prepared to swat. To this wery day, Dr.* James White of Alpha & Omega Sophistries crows that, during the visit of Pope St. John Paul II to Denver, in 1993, he and several of his Elect compeers showed up to harass multitudes, hand out Jack Chick tracts, and otherwise disturb the peace.

Frank Bruni, of New York Times, hectors Christians: “Bow to the enlightenments of modernity!”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 9, 2015 • Apologetics; Exegesis; LGBT Issues; Moral Theology; Politics

Mr. Bruni starts off, as do most leftists who will have their own way, with a pompous and condescending sneer: I’m here to free you, you poor benighted silly little thing, from that needless little bitty blue blanket you cling to. There now, isn’t it better now that you don’t have to carry that foolish heavy burden around? No, you don’t have to thank me. Then, after that haughty and oily display, the leftist comes out of the closet and screams his brownshirt demands: “Bow to the enlightenments of modernity!” Kneel before Zod!

How I write. 7QT XX, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 20, 2015 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

When I was in graduate school (this was in the 1990s), I wrote everything longhand, keyed my rough drafts into an Apple IIGS using Appleworks Word Processing (I know; I’m 45), and revised, by hand, on the hard copy. Then I would repeat over a series of maybe 8 – 10 more drafts. Then, along about 2001, with the sudden ability to do a great amount of research directly from the Internet, I began to write entirely on the computer, in Microsoft Word. That was not a good idea: Inevitably, my computer crashed. And so I returned to longhand.