fbpx

Author: David Wanat

Mercy for me, but not for thee

“At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them—in this case the...

Sincerely-held errors

I’ve been encountering a lot more conspiracy theories—though not by choice—on social media lately. The tendency always seems to be based on observing the facts of a case and giving a dubious interpretation of those facts. Sure, there might be...

The New Theology of Dissent

Anti-Francis Catholics frequently identify themselves as “orthodox” or as strict adherents to Church teaching. While doing so, they must reconcile those claims with the fact that they have chosen to reject the official teachings of the current pope as heretical...

Respecting Continuity in Church Teaching

There are, unfortunately, Catholics who think that defending Pope Francis involves tearing down his predecessors. Throughout his pontificate, they have portrayed almost everything Pope Francis has done as “finally correcting” the bad practices of his predecessors and ignoring the good...

Confusion in the Church is not caused by the pope

Throughout the history of Christianity there have always been people who read Scripture, Patristics, Magisterial documents and other things and used the conclusions they drew to argue that the Church—whether through the teachings of Pope or Council—had gone wrong and,...

The False Authority of Personal Interpretation

Certain Catholics who oppose the decisions and teachings of Pope Francis (or other recent popes) proudly announce their “orthodoxy” by citing certain Scripture and Church documents—the latter frequently from the time of St. Pius X—in order to argue that the...

Hijacking Legitimate Authority

As I continue to work my way through the dreary Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, I notice a good deal of what I call hijacking legitimate authority. By this I mean that he claimed his interpretation of Scripture was the true meaning...

Bizarro World Catholicism

As the antics of some Catholics continue, I am reminded of the DC Comics Bizarro World. The basic concept here is whatever is seen as right, true, and good on Earth is seen as wrong, false, and bad in Bizarro World....