Vote Republican to Stop Abortion! And Other Myths

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 4:22 pm By Scott Eric Alt

Trump supporters overnumerous for mention promise, with prognostication and crystal-ball certainty, that a vote for Trump will help the pro-life cause of stopping abortion, and this matters above all. He will promote the right legislation, he will appoint the right justices. Right. Now it so happens that facts matter in this discussion, and because facts matter, I went and checked how the individual justices voted in Roe v. Wade, and then checked out who appointed them. The Court ruled 7-2... Read more

David Wanat Calls the Pope’s Critics to Task

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 4:33 pm By Scott Eric Alt

At his blog If I Might Interject. Highlights: When people talk about the Catholic Church becoming more faithful, they generally think of a Church that expels the liberals and leaves us with a more conservative Church that was doctrinally pure—according to the preferences of the individual imagining it. … But what makes this troublesome is I’m not talking about radical traditionalists here. I’m talking about people who spent years or even decades defending the Church suddenly treating Pope Francis as... Read more

An Article by Steve Skojec I Admire

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 4:48 pm By Scott Eric Alt

Darth Vader used to be Anakin Skywalker; and in Crisis Magazine, the Steve Skojec of 2010 critiqued the Steve Skojec of 2016. Years ago, when I first became enamored of the traditional Catholic liturgy, a friend of mine who enjoyed going to the Extraordinary Form (but wasn’t committed to it) asked me a pointed question: “If traditional Catholics have this great treasure, as they say they do, shouldn’t it make them the happiest people you know? Shouldn’t their joy... Read more

Newman, St. Catherine, and Pius X: Three Papalolators

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 5:13 pm By Scott Eric Alt

I am just going to leave these here. The clarity of faithful Catholics like Cardinal Newman, St. Catherine of Siena, and Pope St. Pius X speaks for itself. (I do, however, include some emphases and comments of my own.) Blessed John Cardinal Newman. [W]hat need I say more to measure our own duty to it and to him who sits in it, than to say that in his administration of Christ’s kingdom, in his religious acts, we must never oppose... Read more

My Love is a Garden Enclosed

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 5:33 pm By Scott Eric Alt

You have ravished my heart, my love, with one glance of your eyes, with one hair of your neck. … My love is a garden enclosed: a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed—Song of Songs 4:9, 12 I met her on Facebook; I saw her on Mark Shea’s page. (Isn’t that how all love stories begin? Our eyes met across Mark Shea’s crowded Facebook wall.) I said to myself: She has some smart, interesting things to say. So I sent... Read more

Pope Francis Corrects Pope Francis; Will Media Correct Media? [Updated]

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 5:42 pm By Scott Eric Alt

Update: An earlier version of what is below stated, incorrectly, that Adam Shaw’s article neglected to mention a change in the official transcript of Pope Francis’s remarks. In fact, Mr. Shaw did make note of the change. Here is a good rule of thumb. When someone says, “I misspoke, here is what I meant to say”: Believe him. Misspeaking is a known phenomenon. If you haven’t known about this phenomenon for some time, I don’t know what you know.... Read more

If Thy Lips Cause Thee to Sin

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 5:55 pm By Scott Eric Alt

On Facebook, Joanne McPortland quips that premarital kissing “is only a mortal sin if you like it.” Guess it’s off to Confession for me, then. But what stands at the back of this sudden frenzy of scrupulosity about kissing before marriage is the idea that what constitutes a particular occasion of sin for you somehow binds all Catholics. And yet, if someone is addicted to pornography, the mere possession of a computer might be an occasion of sin. But for... Read more

Is Premarital Kissing a Sin? and Other Quick Takes: 7QT XXII Seriatim

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 6:04 pm By Scott Eric Alt

I Apparently there’s a crisis of premarital kissing afoot, and Traddy bloggers must call it out, or legions will end up in the Second Circle. Or something. I actually guffawed, and loudly, when I saw this post over at ProLife365. “There Kukla goes again,” I said. “Stopping abortions by stopping kissing first.” Then, on the Facebook discussion, Micah Murphy (who admits to scrupulosity even about the potential sexual temptations of hand-holding, one of the most dangerous sins of this present... Read more

Still Say The Orlando Shooting Was About Radical Islam?

Last updated on: March 11, 2018 at 7:33 pm By Scott Eric Alt

Then you need read these words from Fundamentalist Baptist and King James Onlyist Pastor Steven L. Anderson, of Faithful Word Baptist Church, in Tempe, Arizona. Anderson was speaking in a YouTube video, since removed. Highlights: There’s fifty Sodomites—homosexuals—[who] have been killed. … The good news is that there’s fifty less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals... Read more

“We are the Barbarians”: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Last updated on: March 13, 2018 at 6:32 pm By Scott Eric Alt

An article at Rare yesterday points out that some of the earliest and most vociferous critics of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conservatives writing for National Review. Imagine that. No less a person than Russell Kirk wrote in 1945: “We are the barbarians within our own Empire.” That’s much stronger than anything President Obama said, and yet Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart called for Congress to censure him for it. Now, if Mr. Pollak care were a... Read more