Leftist Hysteria Continues Over Pope Francis and LCWR

April 16, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

Over at the Daily Screech, someone named Barbie Latza Nadeau has posted a 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 was probably more her strong suit than Logic 101. Ms. Nadeau begins her article by setting the context for the outrage to follow. “Pope Francis,” she tells us, “has done wonders to renew the faith of many lost Catholics around the world and cast a positive light on the troubled Church.” You see, to liberals, the Church is always “troubled.” Liberals have a strange need to project their own psychoses onto the Church. [Read more] Read more

No Hope and Change for LCWR Under Pope Francis

April 15, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

It seems to me self-evident that the very point of a religion is to advance claims about Truth. Doctrine matters. Without that, you may be any number of things, but you’re not Catholic. So I am not sure why it is that the LCWR is said to have been "shocked" by the Doctrinal Assessment of the CDF. The Church has kept no secret about its teaching on, to name just two key points, abortion and contraception. Perhaps the shock can be explained by saying that there have (without question) been disciplinary problems within the Church for some time, and it could be that the LCWR thought they could just go on in heresy without ever being called on it. Let them be “uncertain” no longer. [Read more] Read more

Associated Press Weeps for Gosnell’s Staff

April 14, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

In this classic example of High Tragedy, Ms. Maryclaire Dale of the Associated Press tells the five-kleenex-box story of Stephen Massof, an “unlicensed doctor” who just couldn’t get a U.S. residency. The poor man. Working for Gosnell was his “backup plan”; he really had nothing else to do, you see — he was backed into a corner. 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. [Read more] Read more

On Kermit Gosnell and Facing Human Evil

April 14, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

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? The politicians and pressure groups and doctors who make abortion possible all exploit scared young women for no other reason than profit. [Read more] Read more

The Papacy, Necessity, and Unbroken Succession: A Reply to Mr. X

April 12, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

Mr. X---the redoubtable TurretinFan---has directed me to six arguments he has made against the Catholic teaching of an unbroken succession of popes from Peter to Francis. First, there is a sede vacante between every papacy. Second, Pope Benedict IX was deposed twice. Third, perhaps a sede vacante would occur when a pope commits an outrageous sin. Fourth, perhaps a sede vacante would occur if the pope teaches heresy. Fifth, the papacy was in Avignon, not Rome, from 1309 to 1376. Sixth, the Council of Constance had to be called to determine the true pope among three contenders. In this post, I show all of these claims to be cleverness in search of coherence. [Read more] Read more

St. Francis and Pope Francis: To Teach By Gesture

April 11, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

We live in a visual more than a print culture. I am not entirely comfortable with that. But when we consider how souls are to be reached, isn’t the point of the episode in Acts of “talking in tongues” that we are to reach people through their own language? John Paul II and Benedict XVI used their “teaching pontificates” to explain and elucidate what the Church teaches. Francis is showing us what that looks like. Already there are indications that Francis is inducing lapsed Catholics to return to the Church — not by negotiating away the faith, not by instituting clown masses, but by showing us what the Gospel looks like. That is what Pope Francis is about. [Read more] Read more

The Necessity Argument Against the Papacy

April 10, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

Occasionally an anti-Catholic apologist will attempt to discredit the papacy, or the priesthood, or some other element of the Church, by saying, “We don’t need it.” Mr. X is the latest to make this odd claim against the papacy. Mr. X’s claim rests on two observations. The first of them is that “For a brief time earlier this year, there was no pope”; during the interregnum, camerlengo Tarcisio Bertone (Benedict XVI’s secretary of state) was in charge of running the Vatican government. The second is that, despite this “break” in the “unbroken succession” (which Mr. X admits was only a break “of sorts”), “life went on.” It is here that Mr. X’s analysis takes a truly odd turn. [Read more] Read more

Is John Bugay’s Rejection of Infallibility Infallible?

April 8, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

Given the basis of Mr. Bugay’s critique, one would think he’d be grateful for the doctrine of infallibility, because it is the very thing that prevents a pope from changing doctrine to suit his own whims or the pressures of the secular age. Protestantism does not possess this safeguard, and thus the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 became the first Christian convocation to give an imprimatur to the use of contraception. Official councils of Protestant denominations far and wide are now giving the stamp of whim to homosexual relationships, homosexual marriage, and even homosexual clergy. Mr. Bugay's denomination, I am confident, is not one of them. But what’s the guarantee for the future? [Read more] Read more

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

April 4, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

Mr. Green begins with an allusion to the “narrow way” of Matt. 7:14, and then declares that “those who’ve gone before us line the way.” Now, isn’t this talking about the Communion of Saints? And please tell me where, in Scripture, it says that the “narrow way” is lined by the dead? Steve Green is evidently relying on some extra-biblical tradition here — and a pretty grotesque one, at that. Just picture a narrow way lined with the bodies of the dead. That’s the kind of image that one would expect of a Romanist, not a Christian. It doesn’t get any better, either, because Mr. Green goes on to describe these dead saints as “cheering on the faithful” and “encouraging the weary.” [Read more] Read more

Rhology’s Ontological Error About Mary

February 13, 2013 By Scott Eric Alt

This is the latest in a series of back-and-forth posts between myself and Buggers All. The beginning was a post by Rhology, in which he described the Rosary and other Marian prayers as “blasphemous” “verses of sheer awesomeness” which “mak[e] demons laugh uproariously.” The fact that he had encountered these prayers from the mouths of “older Roman Catholic gentlemen” at an abortion mill raised my curiosity about whether a pro-life occasion was appropriate for a display of anti-Catholic sentiment. Both myself and Dave Armstrong responded. Having begun that way, the conversation has turned toward the theology behind what Rhology insists on calling prayers to “the dead.” [Read more] Read more