The Church of Nice vs. the Church of Mice

December 15, 2015 By Mark Shea

It’s telling to me that in a conflict between a rich pro-abort bigot like Donald Trump and his brownshirts on the question of helping Syrian refugees the bishops of the supposed Church of Nice are showing all kinds of guts.

Meanwhile, the pope of Church Militant TV and his flock of the Greatest Catholics of All Time are quiet as mice, though quite ready, willing, and able to bash Benedict XVI or Bishop Barron, of all people, in their neverending quest to poison hearts and minds against decent Catholics, secure in the knowledge that decent Catholics will turn the other cheek.

On the bright side, one decent and courageous young man finds freedom. Please keep him in your prayers. The cult of personality does not like apostasy.

On the Amazing Malleability of “Private Judgment”

September 11, 2014 By Mark Shea

My reader Zippy Catholic used to note that when Progressives want to blow off Church teaching they appeal to “primacy of conscience” as the All-Excusing Catchphrase. Don’t like the Church’s teaching on the Pelvic Issues? Voila! Primacy of Conscience excuses you from obeying or even listening to what the Church says.

Meanwhile, he noted, conservative dissenters perform the same feat by invoking the magical incantation “Prudential judgment”. Does the Church bug you with its teaching on war, torture, capital punishment, your sacred wallet, the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable who happen to have been born in the wrong country? No problem! Just say the magic words “prudential judgment” and you can ignore the Church completely.

Both camps make use of Court Prophets to lend themselves an illusion of weightiness for refusing docility to the Magisterium’s teaching. Need an excuse for ignoring Humanae Vitae or Evangelium Vitae? Hey! Just quote Charles Curran or Dick McBrien or Hans Kung. Beside HV defined no *dogmas* so it’s optional.

Likewise, if you are a conservative dissenter who wants to torture somebody, just go get a screen grab of Fr. Brian Harrison’s tendentious (and long repudiated by the author) defense of torture in interrogation. Or if you want to launch an unjust war, just ignore two popes and all the bishops of the world and go read Michael Novak explaining why “prudential judgement” means you can go ahead and do it anyway. And if there’s something about the Church’s social doctrine that inconveniences you, just have George Weigel highlight it in red and gold so you can take the stuff you like and blow off the bits you don’t. Or, better still, you can simply hire a court prophet to declare to you that Catholic Social teaching is a complete myth *and* declare that anybody who says otherwise is an “idolator” for that extra-special below-the-belt sense of “‘Shut up!’ he explained” demagoguery that crushes conversation and scotches troubling intellectual inquiry in the egg.

The key to all this sort of thinking is to avoid docility to the Church’s teaching at all costs (the notion that you should listen to and obey the Church, even on on non-dogmatic issues unless you can show a *damn* good reason why not) and instead insist that as long as a single voice can be found somewhere in the Church advocating whatever you want to do or ignore then, as this guy says “the jury is still out” and you can go ahead and bullheadedly ignore the Church, even when it is quite luminously clear and unambiguous:

Yes. The jury is still out on a war that failed to meet a single criterion of just war teaching. The jury is still out on whether grave and intrinsic evil acts of torture are really always wrong when you want to call them “enhanced interrogation”. The jury is still out on whether to listen to the Church’s teaching on the death penalty when you really really want to kill somebody you could just as easily incarcerate for life. The jury is still out on whether you should help desperate children at the border or remand them to rape, sex slavery, and death in their country of origin because paperwork takes precedence over their lives. The jury is still out on whether you should give state benefits for poor families with “too many” children (though it’s not out on whether those families must not use contraception on pain of mortal sin). If you *dare* to suggest that you should heed the Church here, you are declared a “papal idolator” for thinking that docility is smart even when the Church does not define its teaching as dogma.

In all these areas, “prudential judgment” is used adroitly and perpetually to excuse dissenting conservative Catholics from listening to or heeding the obvious guidance of the Church.

But how about in matters like “whether Catholics should continue to be involved in a parade in New York?” or “whether the pope should marry couples who have been living together and have children out of wedlock?”

These questions–which really *are* matters of prudential judgment and patient of real debate and argument–are treated by many of the same Catholics who routinely invoke “prudential judgment” to ignore the Church as matters of settled dogma. In such cases, the failure of Cdl. Dolan and Pope Francis to do what the dogmatists demand is seen as yet another harbinger of the apocalypse.

Me: I think good faith cases can be made that

a) Dolan should back out of the parade since it is no longer Catholic (and hasn’t been for some time) and is merely an occasion for cheering about vaguely Irish things and getting plastered. As a local cultural event without even a tenuous relationship to the Faith anymore, it was basically inevitable that it would reflect New York’s (and let’s face it, America’s and the West’s) embrace of homosexual acts as no big deal. So to avoid giving the impression that the Church agrees with that, Dolan should back out.

BUT: This being a matter of prudential judgment, I also think that the case can be made that in absenting itself from this important part of New York’s cultural life, the Church is simply ceding the field rather than acting as yeast and that most non-Catholics would simply see this as Dolan hating on gays for whatever weird inexplicable reason Catholics do that stuff. Like it or not, the acceptance of homosexual acts (bad) and homosexual persons (good) is here to stay in the West and the Church can either engage with that or retreat into the Fortress.

Both of these are respectable cases to be made and argued in the recognition that this really *is* a matter of prudential judgment. Yet, for the “prudential judgment excuses all” Right, this is being treated as a matter of self-evident “wickedness” (in the words of one Chicken Little demagogue) and Dolan is (there is no other word for it) threatened with dangerous and reckless language like “Do not think the punishment visited on you will not be of the most severe sort when you die, perhaps even before you die, if you do not change” followed by vague calls to “have an Authentic Catholic uprising” to a mob that may well decide to make sure Dolan gets that “severe punishment” Chicken Little is calling for. (That’s the kind of language that very rightly gets the cops called and I hope the Archdiocese of New York does exactly that. As Gerard Nadal truly says, Chicken Little “has crossed a line. A very dangerous line.”)

My point is this: For a subculture that *thrives* on ambiguity and making excuses for ignoring the Church unless “Simon Peter Says” with a dogmatic pronouncement we are suddenly not in prudential judgment territory at all. When it comes to holy and sacred right wing culture war stuff, it’s dogma and there is only one possible opinion. To even consider the other side of the question marks you out as a CINO, as wicked, as not an Authentic Catholic, and as deserving “severe punishment” not only in the next life but (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) maybe in this one as well, if you catch my meaning, if you get my drift.

Same with Francis. There are cases for and against him celebrating these weddings. Against: Appearing to give approval to fornication, etc. In favor: Better to get married than to remain in fornication and so forth. (FWIW, I think the latter case is *obviously* the stronger one and is, in fact, done constantly as a a matter of pastoral practice anyway.) But the point is that it really is a matter of prudential judgment and the pope is entitled to his opinion.

But I can absolutely guarantee you that the Greatest Catholics of All Time are going to see in this prudential judgment, not a debatable case patient of differing views in good faith. They will see yet another catastrophic disaster, evil conspiracy, etc. Indeed, they are already panicking and convinced that the Synod on the Family is a Franciscan plot to undermine TRVE Catholicism. So again, prudential judgment is shown to have very strict limits. It’s useful when you want to kill or torture or crush weak and poor people, but the line has to be drawn at being merciful or pastoral or having contact with those outside Fortress Katolicus.

I look forward to the day when both real docility *and* real private judgment are exercised by Catholics toward the guidance of the Church.

Technology is a Force Multiplier

August 12, 2014 By Mark Shea

The more access we have to technology, the easier it becomes for fewer and fewer people to have a bigger and bigger impact on more and more people. And as the impact gets bigger, we have a hard time taking in the fact that so few people could really have such devastating effects. So, for instance, even though all the evidence really does point to the fact that he acted alone, 50 years later many people still can’t believe that one jerk with a gun could break the hearts of millions of people or, a century earlier, ignite a vast European civil war, fought in two acts known as World War I and World War II, that destroyed that civilization and fundamentally changed the geopolitical structure of the world.

Likewise, with the force multiplier of technology offering a huge assist we now live in an era where 19 jerks could achieve on 9/11 something that no nation-state 50 years ago could have achieved.

Those are two big examples. But the vast majority of examples are much smaller and are not shown by physical acts of violence, but by intellectual and spiritual acts of great goodness or epic stupidity. The internet is the great force multiplier for these things, an immense unfiltered purveyor of wonderful information and damnable lies. It is affording hitherto unheard of opportunities for unknown people to do wonderful things (like the delightful work being done by Fr. Robert Barron, the Vlog Brothers, and Jonathan Coulton, or cool ideas like Kickstarter funding all kinds of inventive and good undertakings. Heck! Youse guys have demonstrated many many times your own selfs that the Internet can be an awesome tool for good with your spectacular feats of generosity to people in need).

But as with all things human, technology is also enabling quacks and cranks–who hitherto had only xerox machines, a crazy vision, and a soapbox in a park as their means for getting The Message out–to gain a much wider and better networked audience with lots of other quacks and cranks.

Case in point, the ridiculous spectacle of the Catholic Geocentrism Movement (and assorted related groups devoted to paranoid conspiracy theories), a small group of kooks who have, thanks to Teh Interwebz, managed to help God’s name look stupid on a scale far in excess of their numbers, and necessitating, in the 21st century, that some Catholic take up the thankless task of making clear that, no, most Catholics do not believe this idiotic rubbish and do not endorse the trickery of the quacks who have snookered sane people into appearing to support it. On the bright side, it also afforded a chance for people who may have snoozed through their sophomore science class a chance to catch up. So all glory, laud, and honor to Dave Palm for taking up this thankless job! He writes:

In the coming months, you may be hearing more about geocentrism, the view that the earth is the motionless center of the universe, especially in connection with an upcoming movie called The Principle.¹ Unfortunately, this fringe scientific view is also being touted by these proponents as the official teaching of the Catholic Church. The mainstream media and blogsphere have been having a field day with this, often seeking to make the Catholic Church look ridiculous. And some good folks, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, have been confused and troubled by these geocentrists both as to the actual teaching of the Catholic Church and the science involved.

You can view new updates to Geocentrism Debunked (www.geocentrismdebunked.org), a web site that provides a great deal of information debunking this claim that the earth is the motionless center of the universe, particularly that this is the official teaching of the Catholic Church. In the latest update, you’ll find a selection of newer articles covering the topic from various angles—science, theology, history, and more.

I hope you find this information helpful. If you know anyone else who might benefit from it, please feel free to pass it along. (If you would rather not receive future updates, just let me know and I’ll remove you from the list.)

David Palm

The Magisterium Rules: The Debate is Over – In 1820, Pope Pius VII decreed that there are “no obstacles” nor “any difficulties” for Catholics to hold that the earth moves. Two years later, the Holy Office even decreed that there would be canonical punishments for any Roman censor who refused to allow publication of books supporting the motion of the earth. With good reason, then, Pope St. John Paul II stated in 1992 that the debate concerning whether Catholics may hold to modern cosmological views which include the motion of the earth “was closed in 1820″.

There He Goes Again – In a follow-up to his scientific critique of the new geocentrism, Here Comes the Sun, physicist Alec MacAndrew spotlights still more of Robert Sungenis’s scientific misunderstandings and errors. Sungenis continues to argue that geocentrism works under classical mechanics, but MacAndrew demonstrates that Sungenis’s claims of gravitational balance and his “center of mass” arguments fail. MacAndrew also notes that Sungenis failed to address the glaring Great Inconsistency at the heart of the modern geocentrist polemic, namely, that they reject General Relativity while simultaneously using it to promote geocentrism.

The Fathers Don’t Support an Immobile Earth – Fr. Melchior Inchofer, S. J. was one of the theological assessors who examined the Galileo case prior to his trial. Regarding the motion of the earth, which geocentrist Robert Sungenis insists is the crucial point in the debate, Fr. Inchofer said of the Church Fathers that, “I have not found a single one of the Holy Fathers who has dealt with the motion of the earth clearly and positively, as the saying goes.”

The Four Elements and the Four Humours: Will You Go the Distance? – The Catholic Church teaches that a consensus of the Church Fathers only binds on matters of “faith and morals”—the Magisterium has clearly shown in both word and practice that matters of natural philosophy (i.e. science) are not included. But the new geocentrists insist that a consensus of the Fathers on any topic whatsoever automatically becomes a matter of faith. This error puts them squarely on a collision course with the Magisterium.

It’s Elementary My Dear Geocentrist – The Fathers and Doctors of the Church are in agreement on the view that the entire physical universe is made of four and only four elements—earth, water, fire, and air. They held this as a matter of natural philosophy, as the best science of their day. But according to their own standards, the new geocentrists should therefore insist that all Catholics hold that view too, as a matter of faith. Similarly, as they do with geocentrism, they should also be insisting that the Magisterium of the Church has been completely derelict in its duty to uphold the “True Faith” on this issue. Those who have been influenced by their appeal to the Fathers of the Church might want to look a bit more closely at exactly where this train is headed.

The Geocentrists Have No Sense of Humour – The Fathers and Doctors of the Church are in agreement, as a matter of natural philosophy, that the physical and emotional health of the human body is determined by the balance of the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Why have the geocentrists not produced a documentary and books decrying all modern medical advances and insisting that Catholics must hold to humourism as a matter of faith? Will the new geocentrists be consistent and denounce the Magisterium as derelict in its duty to teach the “True Faith”, the four elements and the four humours?

That’s the Whole Ballgame Right There! – Podcaster and Michael Voris associate Christine Niles follows in Voris’ footsteps by conducting an infomercial/interview with Rick DeLano about the upcoming movie, The Principle. Depending upon whom he’s talking to at the moment, DeLano can be coy about the ultimate intent behind the movie. But in this interview Niles and DeLano make it very plain that geocentrism is first and foremost a matter of faith, not a matter of science. Listen as Niles herself inadvertently gets caught up in the theological confusion.

Piling On, or Holding Back? – Robert Sungenis has recently complained that documentation of six examples of his conspiracy theories on the Geocentrism Debunked Backgrounds page proves that, “Making a fool out of Bob Sungenis is paramount,” and that “[David Palm] must leave no stone unturned.” Read on to see the proof that Sungenis has it exactly wrong – a great deal of other goofy and paranoid material was originally withheld, precisely to avoid the appearance of piling on.

Who Are You Going to Believe? A Matter of Credibility – If you’re going to present yourself as both trustworthy and qualified to accuse and castigate virtually the entire scientific community and the Magisterium of the Church, as Robert Sungenis has, then credibility matters. Read on to see a few recent examples demonstrating that Sungenis can’t even be trusted to get the simplest and most easily verified information correct, let alone the kind of complex information necessary to turn both the Church and the entire scientific community on their heads.

¹ See “The Principle is About Geocentrism? Don’t Be Silly!”

If you know somebody who is being snookered by this rubbish–or somebody who is looking at the Church and scandalized by it, point them to Dave.

Also, for an absolute fantastic education in science history that is a joy to read, go see Mike Flynn’s magnificent series on the The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown, which chronicles, in delightful, funny and really informative prose the works of (mostly Catholic) intellectuals and scientists as they labored to figure out basic astrophysics–and gives the real history of Galileo and his relationship with the Church. Seriously, one of the best pieces of pop science and pop history I’ve ever read. I keep hoping he will do the world a favor and publish it as a book. Great stuff.

Karl Keating Does all the Heavy Lifting So I Don’t Have To

May 29, 2014 By Mark Shea

Evidently, CMTV has done another puff piece on “The Principle” and Karl Keating, Dave Palm and Yr. Obdt. Svt are fingered as the sinister agents of the Church of Nice out to destroy the Work of God Almighty. Karl responds:

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT MUCH

For the second time, Bob Sungenis and Rick DeLano appeared on Michael Voris’s “Mic’d Up” program to talk about their film “The Principle.”

DeLano, at his blog, had done his best to hype this evening’s show, but in …his promo he pretty much said what ended up being said on “Mic’d Up”: that the film’s producers had in their possession signed releases from those whose interviews are in the film and that the film has been taken on by a distributor.

I don’t remember anyone claiming that those interviewed, such as Lawrence Krauss and Michio Kaku, hadn’t signed releases, so that always was a non-issue. Krauss claimed a lack of memory of having been filmed, but a clip shown by DeLano on “Mic’d Up” made it clear that Krauss was aware that he was on camera.

What wasn’t made clear tonight–and apparently it wasn’t made clear to Krauss or Kaku prior to the interviews–was the undergirding argument of “The Principle,” that geocentrism is true.

The real issue never was whether those interviewed had signed releases but whether they had been told what the film was intended to argue toward. Nothing in tonight’s program would lead one to believe that Sungenis and DeLano had been up front with the interviewees.

(The signed releases were shown on screen, to prove the interviewees had been paid for their time. The amounts paid were redacted except in one case, where the release showed that the interviewee was paid $1,500.)

As in the earlier edition of “Mic’d Up,” Bob Sungenis said very little. Most of the words came from DeLano, secondly from Voris.

The two of them posited the existence of a concerted effort by what Voris has dubbed “the Church of Nice” to undercut the film. Three people were named as ringleaders: Mark Shea, David Palm, and me. My name was mentioned just once in passing;* more or less the same for David Palm’s. But Mark Shea got considerable attention.

DeLano showed on screen a tweet that Shea had made on Krauss’s Twitter feed in which Shea asked Krauss whether he knew that “The Principle” actually was made by people backing geocentrism. In DeLano’s opinion, it was this query from Shea that made Krauss–and later the film’s narrator Kate Mulgrew–go public against the film.

Considerable time was spent on promoting the idea that Shea, Palm, and I have been trying to undercut the film by claiming it promotes anti-Semitism. This was an argument Voris repeatedly made, but none of us ever alleged anything of the kind about the film. We never have said or even implied that there is a hint of anti-Semitism in the film. We presume there isn’t.

What we have said–repeatedly, over many years–is that Bob Sungenis wrote many dozens of articles, at his website and elsewhere, against Jews, accusing them of being responsible for manifold political, social, and cultural evils. For instance, he argued that Jews were responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers.

I more than once noted that Sungenis seemed obsessed with Jews and that he freely and uncritically reproduced statements that placed Jews in a bad light–going even so far as to quote a high Nazi official against the Jews.

On tonight’s program Sungenis didn’t refer to any of his tens of thousands of words written against Jews. He just claimed that in his writings he criticized Catholics twice as often as he criticized Jews. No doubt a word count of the articles that appeared at his website would show that this is a grotesque exaggeration.

A puzzler: Voris said that he didn’t know Mark Shea. Strange. They had a public debate at the Argument of the Month Club in St. Paul last October. Hundreds of people were in attendance. Has Voris forgotten that encounter already?

At the end of the program Sungenis and DeLano announced that “The Principle” would have its theatrical release on September 9. It will be shown, apparently, at one theater in one (unnamed) “major city.” The distribution is being handled by Rocky Mountain Pictures.

According to the website Box Office Mojo, this two-man organization has promoted 24 indie films. Five of them grossed more than a million dollars, the two best known being “2016: Obama’s America” ($33.4 million) and “Expelled” ($7.7 million). But 12 of the films brought in less than $100,000, the least bringing in $2,000.

The two big-grossers had famous names (Dinesh D’Souza and Ben Stein, respectively), which no doubt accounted for much of their box-office success. “The Principle” features no one of comparable fame.

Of the 24 films handled by Rocky Mountain Pictures, 15 appeared in 30 or fewer theaters–hardly enough to cover costs of production.

Box Office Mojo lists the production budget of only two of the 24 films. “The End of the Spear” brought in $12 million and cost $10 to produce, so it made a profit. “Atlas Shrugged: Part I” brought in $4.6 million but cost $20 million, so it had a big loss–surprising, perhaps, for a film based on a best-selling novel.

What can one expect for a documentary based, if it’s based on anything, on the non-seller** “Galileo Was Wrong”?

The bottom line is that Sungenis and DeLano didn’t announced what, months ago, they promised to announce: Opening night in multiple cities with a major distributor handling their film. Rocky Mountain Pictures is a small outfit, and “The Principle” will open in just one city, presumably at just one theater. It will have to do very well there to go on the road.

(*I think my name was mentioned just once. The sound was off during a good portion of the program–there was a glitch at the studio–so it’s possible I was referred to more than once.)

(“Galileo Was Wrong” has an Amazon best-sellers rank of 7,874,135 among books.)

Actually John Farrell did most of the heavy lifting bringing it to Krauss’ attention, since he seems to know the guy a bit. I don’t know the man, so he never responded to me. I am quite happy to acknowledge that I did what I could to make sure that the people who got lied into participating in it were alerted to the lie (which wasn’t much on my part) and that viewers were warned that it is out and out quackery. I’m also happy to acknowledge that I was critical of CMTV for throwing Sungenis softballs and never questioning his history of nutty Jew-hating commentary (a pattern repeated here). But again, much of the heavy lifting in chronicling Sungenis’ Jew-hating work was done by the redoubtable Karl Keating, whom I am proud to call a friend. I did do what I could to make sure that people were forewarned what an incredibly dodgy and discreditable thing it was to back this piece of junk, but I don’t think I did all that much. I wish I could have done more, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to this project than was necessary.

What’s funny is that I am also being informed that, thanks to me and my awesome satanic power, the film is on track to make millions due to my foolish attempt to stop the Work of God. We know this because the ever-reliable trifecta of DeLano, Sungenis and CMTV have declared it so–and when have they have been radically out of touch with reality? And when none of this happens, that will be my fault too. Wonderful to live in the Bubble of Denial and Unreality.

Meanwhile I am already getting email demanding I repent and make reparation.

Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger…

March 31, 2014 By Mark Shea

…on why bishop-bashing is wrong.

I agree with him in part: the orgy of bishop-bashing by Reactionaries who all seem to imagine they are Catherine of Siena Redivivus has become ridiculous. On the other hand, I think that, as our bishops have demonstrated on multiple occasions, when a bishop is engaged in criminal behavior it is not only a right, but a positive duty of the faithful to call him out publicly.

The thing is, Reactionary hysterics treat almost everything as though it is a wilful sin and a crime on the part of “the bishops” (that wonderful amorphous gestalt scapegoat for all Reactionary rage about everything). Fr. Angelo (and, by the way, Reactionary hysterics) are quite right that Michael Voris is being inconsistent in his adamant insistence on refusing to treat the pope with the radical lack of charity that Reactionaries demand in their hatred of the grave sins of faith, hope, and love.

The thing is, I take that inconsistency as a hopeful sign. It means the Mr. Voris recognizes that such Reactionary lack of charity to the Holy Father and such embrace of despair, hopelessness, and malice are wrong. My hope is that he will work backward from this fundamental apprehension of truth and apply the same standards to the other people he so often treats uncharitably in his attack videos–that he will consider the possibility that “the bishops” are not the monsters he makes them out to be, that people like Karl Keating and Jimmy Akin and Fr. Robert Barron are not the corrupt stooges of “the Church of Nice” he has taught his audience to defame them as, that people who receive communion in the hand are not tainted with heresy as he suggests they are, that the Knights of Columbus are not the Enemy.

Reactionaries, in contrast, attack Voris for not being sufficiently despairing, hopeless, and malicious and want him to extend his bad treatment of the 99% of the Church they already loathe and despise to the Pope as well. They think the resolution to the inconsistency is to despise the pope too. I think the resolution to the inconsistency is to treat the Church’s members with the same charity Mr. Voris extends to the Pope.

And that, by the way, includes Reactionaries who–as loathesome, Pharisaic, prideful, anti-semitic, self-pitying, and repellent as their behavior often is–and as much as they would love to see a vile “neo-Catholic” like me kicked out of the Church–remain members of the Body of Christ who are welcome at the Table they would deny to me and most of the rest of the Church. You can pick your friends, but you are stuck with you family. That’s life inside the herd of cats that is the Catholic Church.

You know, I can actually feel the power to destroy the Church crackling along every nerve of my being!

February 6, 2014 By Mark Shea

A reader responds to my self-interview about By What Authority? with this penetrating analysis:

Dear Mark Shea:
Yes there was! A golden age of purity. Before Vatican II. I lived it.
The just published translations of the original schemas of Vatican II (unam sanctam catholicam blog) shows the pure Romanita we have lost. Until 1939 France was the most Catholic country on earth. (In 1880 more than 75% of all Catholic missionaries serving abroad were French, by 1930 this number had only slipped to more than 50%). In 1970 20% of French adults attended weekly mass, in 1995 only 8%, in 2004 only 4.5%. One explanation is “The Devirilization of the Liturgy in the Novus Ordo” by Fr. Richard Cipolla (Rorate Caeli).
The Protestant invasion (Hahn, Ray, Shea et al) has made Catholics sceptical of their own tradition. Fr. John Riccardo recently suspended most parish activities to put his congregation through the Alpha program. Questioned by Teresa Tomeo, he acknowledged that the program was not Catholic. But it works, he said, because it is non-Catholic. Catholics, he maintained, do not trust their Church.
Until the Protestant invasion, “the first seven years were the ones that count”. Every Catholic possessed the short pithy responses of the Baltimore Catechism as their lifelong possession. Newman in the Idea of a University tells the story of three Anglican ministers traveling in Ireland. They were guided by a 13 year old youth who surpassed them in his knowledge of the Catechism.
You and your colleagues in the EWTN marketing network are undermining the authority of the bishops creating a parallel magisterium. Pope Francis recent critical remarks on capitalism were carefully avoided by EWTN. Mother Angelica’s fight for Catholic tradition is only a distant memory.

There you have it: Everything was perfect back when pre-Vatican II Catholic JFK was love harpooning mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe. On the bright side, this reader’s keen analysis of the Protestant Convert plot to destroy the Church reminds me: Hahn, Ray, Akin and the rest of the gang have yet to schedule our next cell group meeting to continue drafting The Protocols of the Learned Converts of EWTN.

Notice, yet again, the absolutely consistent habit of mind of the Reactionary: The huge problem the Church faces is *converts*. Riff raff. Impure and unclean people getting into Fortress Katolicus. So all the animus is directed at people like EWTN, who are attempting to do evangelization. And in the effort to shout that down, it matters not a whit that complete nonsense is spoken. So a book devoted entirely making the case that the Church tradition is reliable becomes the launch pad for the charge that “converts” are trying to make Catholics skeptical of their own tradition and the guy glosses over the emphatic insistence of this blog that we listen to pope Francis *particularly* concerning his economic teaching. Somehow, Scott Hahn and Steve Ray, writing in English, become responsible for the state of the French Church and assume blame for some priest somewhere using the Alpha program.

Here’s the governing paradigm: Reactionaries hate evangelism. It explains everything from Michael Voris’ constant attacks on Fr. Barron, EWTN, and Catholic Answers to Rorate Coeli’s stupid attack on Tolkien (who has, the critics claim notwithstanding, been a powerful force for evangelism as any number of converts will tell you) to the intense loathing for Francis’ evangelical witness to this. If anything presents the threat of calling riff raff and rabble into Fortress Katolicus, the unfailing instinct of the Reactionary is to attack it.

Because Reactionaries hate evangelism.

More Evidence that Reactionaries Hate Evangelism

January 16, 2014 By Mark Shea

The sort of mail I get from the Combox Inquisition typically begins with a “question” that seeks, not information, but ammunition in that oily sort of voice that used to ask “Tell us, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” and “We caught this woman in the very act of adultery. What should we do?” and then hangs back waiting for the quarry to step into the trap. It drips with malice:

Below is a comment you recently made. Your vagueness prompts me to ask, are you saying it’s ok to receive Communion while living in a grave sinful state without confessing and repenting?

He means that holier than thou super-Catholics who spend much of their time demanding that the Impure be barred from the sacraments need to pipe down and accept the judgment of their pastors when they allow weak sinners to approach the Altar. He’s addressing a sort of latter day Jansenism that wants to keep as many people as possible from approaching the sacraments.

Note to reader: I was discussing Francis here and his encouragement of people to approach the Eucharist and not be slowed down by the Piety Nazis who think God died and told them to make sure people they deem unworthy of communion are barred from the sacrament. This is, among other things, due to the fact that Francis sees the sacraments as opportunities for encounter with God, while Reactionaries see them primarily as reducing valves designed to keep as many people away from salvation as possible.

I answered my reader’s “question” as clearly as I could:

No. I’m saying laypeople should mind their own business and leave such judgements about others to their priests and bishops. I, for one, have no idea whether the person in the pew next to me is in grave sin as a general rule. Nor if they have been to confession. I am not their personal Holy Spirit. Piety cops who appoint themselves tut tutters when they see somebody go up for communion are usually fake soul readers who should be attending to the log in their own eye.

Whereupon my reader sprang his attack:

Oh I get it. Don’t be judgmental…Right?
You’re a member of the church of nice…like Michael Voris says.
So, if you know that one of your “friends” is sleeping around, because he told you, and you say nothing …that’s better…yeah right.
That position, just like many “nice” clergy, will really help them get to heaven…you must be part of the I’m ok ..you’re ok crowd.
Your thinking is a left over from your protestant days.
Get a grip on reality!

So many words in my mouth and none of them mine. I guess imagining you are rebuking somebody for things they never said is easier than actually doing what the Church teaches. This guy lives out the classic pattern of the Reactionary: attacking people who are obedient to Holy Church and in dissent from none of her teachings while doing nothing constructive and imagining himself competent to know which of the dozens of strangers in the pew around him is in mortal sin. The Church of Nice is an imaginary construct of Reactionaries. Fighting with it siphons off energy from the Church and devotes it to the worship of the cult of Anger. These people are auditioning for the role of Accuser of the Brethren when that role is already filled. The Reactionary mentality (which is, at the end of the day, arguing with Francis, not me) teaches its devotees to spend all their time attacking faithful Catholics while contributing not one calorie to toward the reform of the Church or obedience to its teachings. It goes in search of witches to burn, not converts to win. This guy’s rhetoric is a prime example of what the cult forms its disciples to do.

And of why that cult is not going to end well and eventually eat its young. Avoid it.

The Hell Kerfuffle and Fussy Perfectionism

November 14, 2013 By Mark Shea

Recently, in this space and elsewhere, I defended Fr. Robert Barron from the charge of being “WRONG!” in his speculations about hell. As I pointed out then, Barron represents a school of speculation, not only permitted by the Magisterium, but actually voiced by Pope Benedict himself in Spe Salvi. Of course, right on cue, fifty million people showed up in my comboxes to argue urgently that HELL EXISTS (something Barron and Benedict do not deny) and to press ever and ever harder for their curious desire that it be as densely populated as possible.

“That’s not fair! Nobody wants hell to be densely populated! They just know it is and are speaking the TRVTH.”

Actually, no. They don’t know that. What they know is their favorite proof texts from the Bible, selected according to their pre-ordained conclusions, just as Universalists brandish their favorite proof texts “proving” the opposite. We don’t *know* anything about the end of the story. Which is why the Church prays–in hope, not knowledge–that all will be saved. In the liturgy no less. All Barron and Benedict say is “It’s better to hope that all men will be saved than to hope that some will be damned. And since the liturgy encourages us to do exactly that, it’s permissible to hope (though human free will always means that anybody is capable of choosing damnation). Indeed, it is *commanded* to hope since Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. It is only forbidden to claim to *know*.

Now, for me, the interesting thing is that the exact same subculture of More Pure than Pure Catholics who are so eager to declare Barron (and, though they won’t admit it, Benedict) Teachers of Error for the crime of hoping, are also the same people who have, for years, complained at me for being a prissy perfectionist because I won’t “get my hands dirty” by endorsing political agendas that involve supporting sins the Church herself says are worthy of the everlasting fires of hell. From torture, to unjust war, to supporting lying in order to deliberately tempt somebody to help commit murder for the sake of a photo op, to voting for candidates like Mitt Romney who spent years supporting abortion and transparently had not changed his mind one bit, to excuse-making for Ayn Rand’s hellish philosophy of contempt for the poor that makes Dives look like Glinda the Good Witch, the same subculture so *eager* to hope that most will be damned was, just a couple of years ago, telling me that if I didn’t “get my hands dirty” and support torture, or tempting clinic workers into committing gravely immoral acts for the sake of a photo op, or lying for Jesus, or voting for pols who advocated grave intrinsic evil, I was (to quote one egregious and embarrassing attempt to strongarm me into line) “spilling my vote upon the ground” (if you get my meaning and catch my drift).

Here’s reality: I do not and never have denied the possibility of hell for me or anybody else. Nor, by the way, does Barron or Benedict. The proof of it in my case is that I think that wanting to attain heaven and avoid hell is elementary Catholic instinct and not fussy perfectionism. I make absolutely no judgment about how *other* people vote since that’s between them and their conscience. But I’ll be (literally) damned if I’ll let somebody strong arm me into voting for somebody who advocates grave intrinsic evil “for fellowship’s” sake”. It would be great if the people who are so eager to hope for the damnation of most would consider the disconnect between that hope and their weird desire to portray refusal to support grave intrinsic evil as “perfectionism” and not as what it is: the bare minimum of human decency.

Michael Matt and Kent Wuchterl

October 22, 2013 By Mark Shea

…of the Argument of the Month Club chew the fat on the recent debate between me and Michael Voris:

As I say, I’m the last person to consult about who won the debate. If you want my worthless opinion, I won. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

The more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems to me that it would only be an exercise in folly for me to write up my account of things since I’m bound to forget something–and to be immediately pounced on as a “liar” when I do. So instead, I’m waiting for the AOTM guys to just post the audio of the debate and then link it so people can make up their own minds. Hopefully, that will be soon.

Back, But Super Busy

October 10, 2013 By Mark Shea

The thing about road trips is that work and correspondence keep piling up like snow while you are gone. Which is to say, “I know people want to hear about the debate and all that, but I have to write two study guides and plow through my mail (80 emails!) and get other stuff combobulated. So I will try to get to it in the next few day but it may have to wait till next week. Meanwhile, I have already front-loaded a bunch of stuff to run each day for the next few day (before I went to Minneapolis) so that will have to do.”

I will say that I am very grateful to the Argument of the Month Club for graciously inviting me and to Michael Voris for good debate. The turnout, I’m told, was somewhere between 500-600, which is a real sign of hope to me: Over 500 Catholic men who care enough about the Faith that they crammed themselves, standing room only, into Church basement to deliberate how best to serve the Church! Fantastic! Wonderful!

As to “Who won?” the last person you should ever ask that question is me. I can’t see the wood for the trees and there are going to be 600 opinions (more than that when the debate is posted on line). If you want my worthless personal opinion, I think I won, of course. I wouldn’t have argued the position I did if I did not think it the true one. I think I won not because it was me arguing, but because it was me regurgitating with dull unoriginality the basic teaching of the Church, namely that the way to meet the crisis in the Church is prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Since this is basically the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25, distilled through the Tradition of the Church, I don’t see how it’s possible to really argue against that since to do so is to argue against Jesus Christ, not me. The only real issue is “Did I argue it well or did I argue it poorly?” That, I have only the sketchiest notions since it basically comes down to “If they aren’t learning, you aren’t teaching.” If people agreed or were persuaded of my point, then I’ll call that a win. If not, not. But since I have no idea what 600 guys concluded the outcome of the debate to be, that one will be known only to God, I reckon. Dale Ahlquist thought I did fine, as did a small group of folks I chatted with, but that’s a pretty small sample. Still, I’ll take was rah rahs I can get and declare, “Dale Ahlquist is just and wise.” So that settles that, I guess.

I really don’t have time to give the full blow-by-blow right now though. So call this the Cliff’s Notes for the present. I’ll try to give a fuller account in a few days. Now, I’m glad to be home. And I am grateful to the Ahlquist family for letting me sponge off them. If you haven’t done so, do consider joining the American Chesterton Society. What a gift those guys are.

Oh, and one final thing: thanks to Michael Matt of the Remnant for just being a classy gentleman. We spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago and I liked him and I like him even better when we met in person. So I just wanted to be sure to mention that since (I’m not clear on the org chart) he seems to be one of the principal drivers behind AOTM. Kudos for a really group of guys!

More later!