Stealing other people’s words…

is easier than coming up with my own, especially when they say stuff better than me.

So I get a tongue-in-cheek email sent to me by a member of a little group of friends, double-dog daring them to blog on this story, in which some priest offers his “courageous” stand on homosex, blah blah blah theusualblahblahblah. The friend who sent it is as weary as I am of the Tolerance is Not Enough: You MUST approve!! mindset of the media.

One of those cc’d writes:

I hate videos with poor sound quality and there is a sense of SMUGNESS arising out of those proponants that’s really starting to bug me. While they talk about Christ and love, they PREEN — it’s incongruous. They are publican and pharisee together, talking humility and love while standing there before God saying, “don’t you just love me, God? I’m being so loving, except to the ones who disagree with me. Those Pharisees!”

I’ve never seen anything like it before, actually. It’s false humility and hate wrapped tight and shared amongst like-thinkings…so it feels like love.

And the comments. I hope you know you’re ALL homophobes and haters just itching to light your pyres! Come out of your evil Babylonish Whore now! Come out, come out, and be real Christians (and Protestants) with us!”

Exactly. This is what I call “bravely facing the applause”. As though it takes some great act of courage to flip off the Church and bask in the warm approval of the media. What people forget is that in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, it was the Pharisee who was seen as the respectable figure. Today, it is the person who pours contempt on the Church who is the entirely conventional, safe, and bourgeois guardian of smug self-righteous pride.

Another correspondent adds:

What I find interesting is the growing presence of a progressive Catholicism that seems determined to embrace the crown and forgo the cross. The only burden these people need to bear is “love,” wrapped in “acceptance” and “tolerance.” Anything requiring sacrifice or self control is anathema.

It’s very squishy and Osteenian; God is all love and understanding and would never EVER want us to do anything like, you know, refrain from sex outside of marriage or avoid the near occasion of dildos. God wants us to be happy and orgasmic. Doesn’t He?

So it would seem, if you went by the MSM coverage. And yet, as one correspondent noted:

What is really interesting to contemplate is that the Deacon’s Bench has a piece up saying “the true Christianity is the persecuted Christianity” — very true words. And here is the irony — while the “pop-culture-approved” Catholics (and lately Evangelicals) who are eager to conform with the times are busy pretending that they’re being persecuted (with the fully sympathetic coverage and support of Comedy Central, the NY TIMES, Huffpo and so forth) the Roman church will soon (if the gov’t gets its way) be experiencing real pressure, real oppression.

It is difficult to stand as a sign and a contradiction to the world. That is what Rome — in keeping true to herself and to Christ — is doing. Jesus said they would hate us for it. It’s much easier to trend to the times. As Chesterton said, “only a dead thing flows with the stream.”

While Christians are getting killed all over the world, spoiled Americans in the first world posture before the mirror and spout about their “courage” for fighting for the right to fornicate–to the loud applause of the world. The only proper response is not merely an eye roll, but a Tina Fey Eyeroll.