To Give a Defense

Writing negative reviews: A defense.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 27, 2014 • Book Review; Literature

Criticism would be poorer without this gem from Dorothy Parker: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.” Or this one from Mark Twain: “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone.” One admires the passion in those sentences, the evidence of a reader who loves good books so much that bad books are an intolerable offense. If I hate a book, Francine Prose says, “life is too short not to say so.” A critic who is willing to write a negative review is a critic readers will trust when he writes a positive one.

The order of these forty days: 7QT XVI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 27, 2014 • Liturgical Year; Seven Quick Takes

Guilt is underestimated. The reason is because the world is delusion. Life and breath and things and joys are seductive. Some people tell jokes all the time because it keeps them above the pain. But that doesn’t heal the pain, it just shuts it behind a door so that you can pretend it’s not there. Open that closet overstuffed with wrong and guilt and it will likely crash on your head and knock you insensible. But the continued reality is our own sin. And to face reality, in weight and sorrow and ash, is to have the opportunity to finally turn joy real. Avoidance is not joy.

The pope, an Anglican, and a Pentecostal walk into a bar; or, the state of ecumenism at the present time.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 25, 2014 • Apologetics; Pope Francis

So the pope recorded a video for a meeting of Pentecostals led by TV evangelist Kenneth Copeland. His theme was ecumenism and the brotherhood of all Christians. It was an informal, honest, and deeply-felt plea for unity; and it was indeed moving to see a Protestant audience praying for the pope as a fellow Christian. Who writes that script? Catholic blogs and social media talked about it all weekend. Some (like Elizabeth Scalia) were moved to tears of joy. Others (like Fr. Dwight Longenecker) urged caution. Others, predictably, tore their garments.

Seven reflections at the end of a novitiate: 7QT XV, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 21, 2014 • Seven Quick Takes

A Third Order Benedictine makes a promise to live the charism of the Benedictines in his daily life. He reads from the rule of St. Benedict every day. He prays the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily prayer of the Church, every day. He practices lectio divina—the contemplative and prayerful reading of Scripture — every day. He promises to serve his parish as he is called. His prayer and his contemplation, and his service to his church, sanctify his daily work, and draw him deeper into relationship with God and into the universal call to holiness.

On the rippers of Isabel Allende; or, how the culture of offense ruins literary discussion.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 17, 2014 • Literature

What Allende describes is the kind of thing that has gone on in literature for a very long time. Don Quixote, arguably the first novel, was a send-up of medieval romance. Jane Austen had good fun with Gothic horror in Northanger Abbey. And the examples could be multiplied, from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (a mock heroic) to John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor (a parody of the 18th century bildungsroman). But when Allende does this common thing, the lovers of the crime genre are OUTRAGED and want us all to know.

Seven reasons to read Simcha Fisher’s book on Natural Family Planning. 7QT XIV, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 14, 2014 • Book Review; Seven Quick Takes

If you talk to Simcha Fisher, she will tell you that she did not write The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning to do what other discussions of the subject already do well. So you will not find moral or theological argument in this book; nor will you find a how-to manual for using this method of postponing pregnancy. “Priests are so thrilled,” she says, “to discover that here finally is a couple who wants to use NFP instead of contraception, and there is seldom any discussion of: Now what?” Simcha Fisher picks up where the priest leaves off, and not with theory but practical wisdom.

Z‑ophobia, FEMEN, and other quick takes: 7QT XIII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 7, 2014 • Seven Quick Takes

I am quick to understand, but insanity outpaces all sense & defies all reason. Where is the reason in thinking of oneself as a species of starfish or sponge? And why leave out the Q’s? Do they have no place? Shouldn’t it now be “LGBTQA?” I’m not sure the Q’s should be sent to the back of the bus or told to drink from a different fountain. Or what about the other letters? Why is the magazine anti‑S? What is wrong with H? It is time to stamp out inequality in alphabetical personhood. I have had enough of the Z‑ophobes. We should welcome all the sexual perversion that can be embraced by 26 letters.

United Nations to Pope Francis: Change your doctrine.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 6, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Pope Francis

If you have not figured it out by now, the United Nations report is not about justice. It is about taking down the Catholic Church and attacking the priesthood itself. For if a priest merely has to be accused, and the United Nations demands that he be defrocked “immediately,” then nothing is to stop the enemies of priests and the enemies of Catholicism from just going around pointing fingers. No one is demanding that the charges be proven. It’s merely “off with their habits and turn them in to us; we’ll handle everything from here.” That will go well, I am sure.

Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part trois.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 5, 2014 • Pope Francis

Of Mr. Binelli’s claim— that the pope’s critique of “unchecked free-market capitalism” in Evangelii Gaudium is the “most astonishing” aspect of his papacy thus far — not much need be said in this post. I had at first thought to write a review of the bulk of Catholic social teaching to help out Mr. Binelli. I blithely thought I could do that in two thousand words or less, but it soon began to grow like the blog (I mean blob). So I leave all that for a different day and a different series. It is enough, for now, to make just these few notes.

A modest proposal for increasing the relevance of Holy Mass.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 3, 2014 • Humor

Just as the priest schedules sacristans and Extraordinary Ministers before each Mass, so he will schedule team captains. The team captains will station themselves at their assigned row of pews 30 minutes before the start of each Mass. Those who arrive early will have their choice of captain. Those who arrive late will have to accept whichever captain has remaining seats. That will ensure that people will have the necessary zeal to arrive at Mass early; possibly smashing into each other’s cars in the parking lot and racing each other down and tailgating.

Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part deux.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 2, 2014 • Pope Francis

Of Pope Francis, Mr. Binelli says: “His recognizable humanity comes off as positively revolutionary.” Though it may be a disputable point, that is quite possibly the dumbest sentence writ by man. No pope before Francis was recognizably human? What about that dour old crab Benedict? Is dourness the exclusive property of owls? Or what about the gregarious John Paul II? Has Mr. Binelli forgotten him? What does he mean, Francis is revolutionary because he is human? What were all those 265 popes before Francis? Frogs? Reptiles? Monsters of the deep?

Seven anathemas on Super Bowl Sunday: 7QT XII, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 1, 2014 • Humor; Seven Quick Takes

Why so much madness and hysteria over what is, in the end, nothing more than a game? Is there a rational reason why this game, of all games in the long calendar of the year, should create such zeal and rage? Why is it an excuse for advertisers to go nuts to compete for spots so that they can prick our lust for things? (Didn’t the pope warn of this?) But they do so because our nation’s unholy delerium over a game lets them know they have the whole nation bound and captive and possibly drugged on — beer, if we’re lucky.

Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part un

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 31, 2014 • Pope Francis

By now, dear reader, you have probably heard that Pope Francis made the cover of still another pop culture magazine. The article, which is long and boorish and blind, is bent to advance a standard theme: that the new pope is a fuzzy and progressive-leaning maverick and will stand Church teaching on its head; whereas, the old pope, the evil Benedict, was a sour old man who beat us all over the pate with the hammer of dogma. That is a caricature, and it belies the facts. But Mr. Binelli will insist upon this bluebird land over the liberal rainbow.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome V: In which Fox News “editor” Adam Shaw has temper tantrum against the pope.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 27, 2014 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

Adam Pshaw of Fox News—he spells it “Shaw”—claims to be a “news editor” who “writes about Anglo-American and Catholic issues.” Or maybe it is just Fox News that makes the claim. Oh! thought I, if that is the case, let me take a look into what “Catholic issues” the twenty-something newlywed and father has tackled for Fox News. Here is what I found: Of the thirty-one articles on his archive page, twenty-four of them boast such titles as “Forget Xbox One: 2014 Could Be Nintendo’s Year” and “Duck Dynasty Video Game Offers More Gun Fun.”

Seven reasons to reject Catholic fundamentalism about the arts: 7QT XI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 25, 2014 • Catholicism & Culture; Seven Quick Takes

The Church’s traditional attitude toward pagan culture was not to destroy it but to preserve it. It was the barbarians who destroyed Greek and Roman culture; it was monks who helped preserve it. And it was good that they did: The Renaissance would not have happened unless Catholic artists and scholars had those Greek and Roman models. In a similar way, if a Catholic revival in the arts is to happen again, it may very well rely on what the modern world has given us. Tertullian’s famous “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” was, at heart, a false dichotomy.