Pope Francis: Extra ecclesiam nulla Iesu.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 23, 2013 • Apologetics

 

All the nuance aside, the key thing for those out­side the Church to under­stand is this: You are liv­ing a life that is less than what Christ intend­ed. Christ intend­ed for grace to be poured out through the sacra­ments; you don’t have them. Christ intend­ed for us to encounter Him — body, blood, soul, and divin­i­ty — in the Eucharist; you haven’t received it. Christ intend­ed for us to be led into “all truth” — those were his words: all truth—within the Church. But you are being led, and you admit it, by fal­li­ble teach­ers. Talk about Christ until you’re blue in the face, you don’t know him.

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Mr. X riddles us more on papal infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 21, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

 

I am wor­ried about Tur­ret­inFan. Nor­mal­ly, he is one of the abler crit­ics of the Catholic Church. His ear­li­er cri­tiques of two of my arti­cles on sola scrip­tura, though wrong­head­ed, were at least cogent. They at least made argu­ments that were seri­ous and schol­ar­ly and worth address­ing. But I am afraid some incon­sis­ten­cy has crept in to the works, start­ing with this arti­cle of his on Pope John XX, and now just yes­ter­day with this very strange addi­tion to his lat­est exam­i­na­tion of papal suc­ces­sion and infal­li­bil­i­ty. I frankly know not what to make of it. Is Mr. X mere­ly tired?

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A clarification on the salvation of infants who die without baptism.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2013 • Apologetics; Sacraments

 

God made the sacra­ments for man, not man for the sacra­ments. They are the ordi­nary means of sal­va­tion, and no one should believe that the sacra­ment of bap­tism can be put off because God is mer­ci­ful. But some peo­ple — still­born infants, or infants who die by abor­tion — sim­ply have no oppor­tu­ni­ty, through no fault of their own, to receive them. God is not going to send infants to some hypo­thet­i­cal Lim­bo because of a tech­ni­cal­i­ty. God insti­tut­ed the sacra­ments, but the sacra­ments do not bind his hands. And that is hard­ly “warped Catholi­cism.”

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Mr. X plays riddle me this, riddle me that.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 20, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy; Papal Infallibility

 

Rather than do the right and brave thing and address my rebut­tals to every last one of his six objec­tions to the unbro­ken suc­ces­sion of popes, Tur­ret­inFan decides to plow on as if noth­ing had hap­pened and invent a sev­enth. “Well, okay,” he says. “And what about John XX?” Now, this kind of thing, when you get right down to it, is no more than an attempt to turn anti-Catholic claims into a game of Rid­dle Me This. Can you throw your oppo­nent for a loop? Well, what about this pope? Well, what about that pope? So it goes with the Undaunt­ed Mr. X of Calvin­ism.

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United to the suffering of Mary.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 18, 2013 • Personal Narrative

 

This is a mem­oir about loss and grief, but please under­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to write. It is not mere­ly that the sub­ject is so dif­fi­cult. But it is that by tem­pera­ment I am a per­son who buries emo­tion under a sto­ic exte­ri­or. That’s my dad in me. I think of myself as an intel­lec­tu­al, rea­soned and calm in his analy­sis of things. I often joke with friends: “I don’t do emo­tion.” Being, there­fore, the very ratio­nal per­son I am, I did the ratio­nal thing and mar­ried some­one com­plete­ly the oppo­site. Once she said to me, “You think with your head and I think with my heart.”

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Leftist hysteria continues over Pope Francis & LCWR.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 17, 2013 • Church Scandals; Pope Francis

 

This one is too good to pass up. Over at the Dai­ly Screech, some­one named Bar­bie Latza Nadeau has post­ed this scrib­bled pan­ic attack with the price­less title “New Pope, but No Nicer to Nuns.” The only good thing that can be said about it is that Ms. Nadeau is skilled at allit­er­a­tion. In school, Rhetoric 101 may have been more her strong suit than Log­ic 101. Ms. Nadeau begins her arti­cle by set­ting the con­text for the out­rage to come. (As she sees it.) For Pope Fran­cis has “cast a pos­i­tive light on a trou­bled Church.” (For lib­er­als, the Church is always “trou­bled.”)

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No hope and change for LCWR under Pope Francis.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 16, 2013 • Church Scandals

 

It seems to me self-evi­dent that the very point of a reli­gion is to advance claims about the Truth. Doc­trine mat­ters. With­out that, you may be any num­ber of things, but you’re not Catholic. And it is not good to have the laity in the pews con­fused about these points. That is why John Paul II was so at pains to point out the need for “alle­giance of mind and heart” to what the Church has taught. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly so for those in reli­gious life. They are the face of the Church to the world. So I am not sure why the LCWR is “shocked” by the Doc­tri­nal Assess­ment of the CDF.

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Associated Press weeps for Gosnell’s staff.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 15, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

 

Eileen O’Neill, the sec­ond char­ac­ter in our Dick­en­sian Tragedy, was forced to “relin­quish” her med­ical license due to “post-trau­mat­ic stress.” The PTSD like­ly also con­tributed to the false billing and rack­e­teer­ing that she is charged with, but cer­tain­ly you can sym­pa­thize with the Root Caus­es that brought her to this Awful Tragedy In Her Life. She even had to deal with “line[s] of peo­ple” at Gosnell’s clin­ic who want­ed painkillers. Will such hor­rors ever end? It’s Just A Shame. Noth­ing left to do with your­self but slit a few spinal cords and necks.

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On Kermit Gosnell and facing human evil.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 14, 2013 • In the News; Pro-Life Issues

 

There seems to be a sug­ges­tion that author­i­ties did not want to look into Mr. Gosnell’s prac­tice when com­plaints were made, because of pres­sures being brought to bear to keep things relat­ed to abor­tion hush-hush. There is also the sug­ges­tion that, as long as cer­tain stan­dards are fol­lowed — of pro­ce­dure, of clean­li­ness, of the train­ing of staff — then abor­tion is all well and good if its pur­pose is to help com­mu­ni­ties and give women choice over their bod­ies. Mr. Gos­nell was just this wild excep­tion, because he was in it for mon­ey. What? Who’s not in it for mon­ey?

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The papacy, necessity, and unbroken succession: A reply to Mr. X.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 13, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

 

We should not, by false the­o­ry and syl­lo­gism, think that God would insti­tute only those offices in the Church that are “nec­es­sary” in our own sight. Such an idea makes Christ pow­er­less before Neces­si­ty the same way Zeus is pow­er­less before Fate. I doubt Mr. X believes that Neces­si­ty is a high­er order of divin­i­ty than Christ. But that is the log­i­cal con­se­quence — is it not? — when you judge some office in the Church upon the stan­dard of its “neces­si­ty,” rather than the only prop­er stan­dard: name­ly, did Christ intend this?

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St. Francis & Pope Francis: To teach by gesture.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 12, 2013 • Pope Francis; Saints

 

Ever since the elec­tion of Pope Fran­cis, it has been bemus­ing to watch the reac­tion to the unusu­al style of his papa­cy, young though it is. Left-lean­ing com­men­ta­tors in the sec­u­lar press, many of whom pos­sess no clear, ratio­nal, or even sen­sate com­pre­hen­sion of the Catholic Church, seem fond­ly to imag­ine that Francis’s non-Ratzin­ger­ian style, and his advo­ca­cy for the poor, will lead to a New Lib­er­al Utopia. In the Dai­ly Screech, A.N. Wil­son even imag­ines the new pope will renounce infal­li­bil­i­ty, as though that were pos­si­ble. Even Mr. Wil­son describes the thought as “cheeky.”

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TurretinFan & the necessity argument against the papacy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 11, 2013 • Apologetics; papacy

 

Every now and then, an anti-Catholic apol­o­gist — he need not be Protes­tant; he could be an athe­ist, or a Hin­du, or an agnos­tic endocri­nol­o­gist — will try to dis­cred­it the papa­cy, or the priest­hood, or tra­di­tion, or Mary gar­dens, or some oth­er ele­ment of the Church, by wav­ing his hand and say­ing, “We don’t need it.” Thus the false god of Neces­si­ty is invoked against what very God of very God wants us to have as a pure and unmer­it­ed gift. Tur­ret­inFan (known on this blog as Mr. X) is the lat­est to make this odd claim about the papa­cy. I’m hap­py to put him to rights.

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Is Mr. John Bugay’s rejection of infallibility infallible?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 9, 2013 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

 

John Bugay, the polem­i­cal rogue, has not met the dis­si­dent Catholic priest who hasn’t warmed the very tell-tale cock­leshells of his red and beat­ing heart. In his phan­tas­ti­cal efforts to dis­cred­it the Church he reject­ed of old, he turns to the cred­i­ble pens of those who also have reject­ed her. If these dis­si­dent priests con­tin­ue, some­how, to claim they’re still Catholic, all the bet­ter as far as Mr. Bugay is con­cerned. In the lat­est episode of this long, twi­light strug­gle, Mr. Bugay unearths a 1981 book by August Bern­hard Hasler. The title of the book is How the Pope Became Infal­li­ble.

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Dr.* James White, apologist for the Romanism of Steve Green.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2013 • Apologetics; Humor

 

What sur­prised me most was the pains Dr.* White took to praise a Steve Green song from sev­er­al decades back, enti­tled “Find Us Faith­ful.” He even took the trou­ble to put up a sep­a­rate blog post embed­ded with two—two!—YouTube videos of the song. What’s sur­pris­ing about this is that I would have sus­pect­ed Mr. Green’s song to have raised the ire of Dr.* White far more than “Jesus Friend of Sin­ners.” What do I mean? Well, take a lis­ten to the song, and you’ll dis­cov­er that “Find Us Faith­ful” is not much bet­ter than a sell-out to Roman­ism.

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Welcome Home, New Converts. May Truth Sustain You Always.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 1, 2013 • Liturgical Year

 

I extend a very hap­py “Wel­come Home” to all those who will be received into full com­mu­nion with the Catholic Church at the East­er Vig­il Sat­ur­day evening. As an RCIA team mem­ber, I have lis­tened to the emo­tions of new Catholics, after the Vig­il, as they recalled mak­ing their first Eucharist. In them there is one feel­ing, unmis­tak­able and com­mon to them all: joy, often to the point of tears that would not be refused. I have not met, in my years work­ing with RCIA and after, the Catholic con­vert who does not expe­ri­ence that same joy or call it up again when telling their own con­ver­sion sto­ry.

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