To Give a Defense

Rick Santorum should read the transcript of Pope Francis’s “rabbits” remark. So should everyone else.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 21, 2015 • Pope Francis

The pope does not say that Catholics “should not breed like rabbits.” What he says is that Catholics should not feel that they must “be like rabbits” with no sense of “responsible parenthood.” The pope gives the full Catholic teaching. He does not just say that life is good and that couples should bring life into the world, and life more abundantly; he also says that couples have an obligation to be responsible with their parenthood. The Church says both. In fairness, Mr. Santorum is not the only one getting the pope’s words wrong. Everyone else is too.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome VIII: More liberal denial and despair.

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

Liberalism, as it exists today, is a fairy tale that occasionally bumps up against truth, gets perplexed and angry for a spell, then returns to Neverland. In few places is this more true than in the liberal media’s coverage of Pope Francis. I have written oft about this sad phenomenon. Their delusions about Francis, and their ignorance of the Church they write about, never ends. And they seem to be woefully incurious about getting it right. In the latest episode of this saga, someone writes an article titled “Pope Francis Might Not Be As Awesome As We Thought He Was.”

Josh Alcorn bans The Vagina Monologues.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 16, 2015 • In the News; LGBT Issues

Well, the Vagina Monologues is no more. Its sexual politics no longer are inclusive enough. So after a run of nineteeen straight years, Mt. Holyoke College has canceled the play on the grounds that it excludes women without vaginas. The peculiar phrase “women without vaginas” is meant to include both women without vaginas and men who think they’re women. Ms. Brown explains all this for us. “A trans woman is a woman, full stop, but she may have a penis.” Oh. So what are we to conclude from all this? Why, that the Vagina Monologues is “transphobic”!

We must offend, and other quick takes: 7QT XIX, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 8, 2015 • Seven Quick Takes

If, in this age, our words do not bite and slap and kick, then we are doing it wrong. Flannery O’Connor said it: “You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you.” A world that wants to be lulled to sleep needs to be shouted awake. And it’s okay to be outraged by error and write with passion. I’d rather read a writer who’s angry than a writer who’s in a coma. I like curmudgeons. Jerome has his place. There is also a place for shouting from the rooftops and saying, “Damn it, this is madness, and I will not take it, and I will do everything I can to call it out.” Even if you’re killed for it.

Do priests rob Christ of his high priesthood? Part 2 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 1, 2015 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics; priesthood

“Satan,” John Calvin says at the beginning of Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.18, “has attempted to adulterate and envelop the sacred Supper of Christ as with thick darkness.” Those are high words. How has Satan done this? you may ask. Oh, it was “with most pestilential error,” Calvin tells us. For lo! “he blinded almost the whole world into the belief that the Mass was a sacrifice and oblation for obtaining the remission of sins.” Calvin has no patience for anyone who holds to any such idea as that; he describes it as “the common opinion of the vulgar.”

Does the Mass “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Part 1 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 26, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

You can fall down laughing at such words, and I often do. But the point of them is to stir an audience to an irrational pitch of wild fear of the Catholic Church. The Church has no power—none—to “overthrow the cross of Christ,” not even if she meant to do so. God is not so weak. But suppose you believed that some church could “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Would that not cause you grave concern? I know it would me. And that is what Calvin wants his readers to believe. That is why his words overstate his meaning. It is deliberate; it is of ill intent.

Which came first? The Bible or the Church?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 20, 2014 • Apologetics; Church History

God gives us the nation of Israel first, and only through it the Old Testament; God gives us the Church first, and only through it the New Testament. The Word of God operated, prior to Scripture, through the nation of Israel and through the Church. The canon does not get finished for two generations after Pentecost. After that, someone had to decide what went into the canon; the Holy Spirit had to inspire someone to get the list right. Why Romans and not the Protoevangelium of James? Why Galatians and not the Epistle to the Laodiceans?

First from Failoni: The really bad argument against infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 18, 2014 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

If this were just the apostrophe-free ignorance of someone who trolls around blogs, it would hardly be worth bothering with. But Mr. F does not just make this stuff up; he actually steals it from people like Dr. John MacArthur, who says the Church teaches that the laity can sin, but that somehow the clergy can not. This idea — that infallibility means that the pope cannot sin — is a howler that is not limited just to the kind of people who rant at the bottom of blogs. It can grip the brain even of someone who should know better but doesn’t, or refuses to, or pretends not to.

Anti-Catholic agitator Ian Paisley dies.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 12, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; In the News

But the Ulster Protestant who refused any political compromise with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, later … compromised. Both politics and religious feeling were at play here. Rev. Paisley preferred Northern Ireland to remain under the control of England, while the Catholic minority felt their interests would better be protected by independence and union with the Catholic southern Ireland. Later in life, Dr. Paisley softened toward them. And tellingly, the UK Guardian reports on what kind of anti-Catholic Rev. Paisley was not.

That life exists and identity: Thoughts on Robin Williams and depression.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 18, 2014 • Catholicism & Culture; In the News; Literature

The powerful witness in all of this, in depression, in suicide, in loss, in unbearable confusion and grief and pain, is the witness of life. That life exists. That you are here, and that it matters. The great horror and pain of depression is that it robs you of any sense of self and identity. And that may be why, in a cruel irony, some seek relief from it in self-annihilation. But they value their life, and they do not want it to end. They only want the pain to end. But one of the great joys of recovery from depression is the joy of discovering identity again, and who you are.

Once more, regarding the Monophysites and the Crusades.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 13, 2014 • Apologetics; Church History

Now, lest it be forgotten against the gale force of his incessant wind, Mr. Bugay did not “point to” the “historical record.” He pointed to himself, on his own Facebook page. He’s that sure of his own wise wisdom and right rightness. His post contained no history whatever, but only a claim, no more — a mere assertion, supported by not one fact, nor footnote, nor reference to one soul who says what Mr. Bugay does. Am I to think that Mr. Bugay’s Facebook page, and his wild leaps into space, now count as the “historical record”?

Polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay blames Catholic Church for ISIS.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 9, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

No doubt, dear reader, you have been reading serious things about the wicked horror and evil that does its Satanic deeds under the name ISIS. Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, the polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay — a man whose reason turned vagabond long before — has once more become possessed by the mad desire to out-do Jack Chick for clownish buffoonery. Listen to his newest dumb outrage upon good sense. (But pray do not have food or drink in your mouth, make sure you are secure in your chair, and say a few Aves first.

The New Evangelization, sans puns: Scott Hahn’s “mission manual.”

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 1, 2014 • Book Review

Readers who expect with each new book to find Scott Hahn’s trademark puns in the subtitles won’t find them here. I admit that was the first thing I noticed about Evangelizing Catholics. It was a bit disappointing — but only bit; it’s a good book. The life of the mind is not in the pun. (Someone once told me, with a grave shake of his head, that Dr. Hahn’s puns will only get him more time in Purgatory.) The title of his new book—Evangelizing Catholics — might make one think that it is all about whipping pick-and-choose Catholics into shape.

Three reasons to take John 6 literally.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 30, 2014 • Apologetics; Transubstantiation

Who shall dare to doubt? Who shall hesitate? It is not enough to simply show that metaphor exists elsewhere in the Bible, or even elsewhere in the same passage, if you can not show that metaphor exists here. Y is metaphorical because x is is no argument. It is sophomoric reasoning — a cop-out, an attempt to avoid the real hard work of honest exegesis and historical inquiry. And exegesis and historical inquiry do run counter to the notion that the body and blood of Christ are merely symbolic in the Eucharist.