Wow!

I’ve just been alerted to the fact that I’m not only a neocon indistinguishable from George Weigel in my modernist dissent from our glorious Traditionalist Restorationist Pope, but in the discussion of Mershon’s piece at Phil Blosser’s blog, I’m also an ultramontane mouthpiece who never ever questions or doubts the infinite perfections of the Pope.

This, like the discovery that I am a Palestinian stooge and a Zionist tool, a liberal who cares nothing for the teaching of the Church and a rigidly orthodox robot who cannot think for himself, a secret Obama supporter and a conservative McCainiac is but one of the many facets of my kaleidoscopic and inexplicable personality. I am large. I contain multitudes.

Ahem. A reading from the Prophet Chesterton:

The great temptation of the Catholic in the modern world is the temptation to intellectual pride. It is so obvious that most his critics are talking without in the least knowing what they are talking about, that he is sometimes a little provoked towards the very un-Christian logic of answering a fool according to his folly. He is a little bit disposed to luxuriate in secret, as it were over the much greater subtlety and richness of the philosophy he inherits; and only answer a bewildered barbarian so as to bewilder him still more. He is tempted to ironical agreements or even to disguising himself as a dunce. Men who have an elaborate philosophical defence of their views sometimes take pleasure in boasting of their almost babyish credulity. Having reached their own goal through labyrinths of logic, they will point the stranger only to the very shortest short cut of authority; merely in order to shock the simpleton with simplicity. Or, as in the present case, they will find a grim amusement in presenting the separate parts of the scheme as if they were really separate; and leave the outsider to make what he can of them. So when somebody says that a fast is the opposite to a feast, and yet both seem to be sacred to us, some of us will always be moved merely to say, “Yes,” and relapse into an objectionable grin. When the anxious ethical enquirer says, “Christmas is devoted to merry-making, to eating meat and drinking wine, and yet you encourage this pagan and materialistic enjoyment,” you or I will be tempted to say, “Quite right, my boy,” and leave it at that. When he then says, looking even more worried, “Yet you admire men for fasting in caves and deserts and denying themselves ordinary pleasures; you are clearly committed, like the Buddhists, to the opposite or ascetic principle,” we shall be similarly inspired to say, “Quite correct, old bean,” or “Got it first time, old top,” and merely propose an adjournment for convivial refreshment.

Nevertheless, it is a temptation to be resisted. Not only is it obviously our duty to explain to the other people that what seems to them contradictory is really complementary, but we are not altogether justified in any such tone of superiority. We are not right in making our geniality an expression of our despair. We are not entitled to despair of explaining the truth; nor is it really so horribly difficult to explain. The real difficulty is not so much that the critic is crude as that we ourselves are not always clear, even in our own minds, far less in our public expositions. It is not so much that they are not subtle enough to understand it, as that they and we and everybody else are not simple enough to understand it. Those two things are obviously part of one thing, if we are straightforward enough to look at the thing; and to see it simply as it is. I suggested recently that people would see the Christian story if it could only be told as a heathen story. The Faith is simply the story of a God who died for men. But, queerly enough, if we were even to print the words without a capital G, as if it were the cult of some new and nameless tribe, many would realise the idea for the first time. Many would feel the thrill of a new fear and sympathy if we simply wrote, “the story of a god who died for men.” People would sit up suddenly and say what a beautiful and touching pagan religion that must be.

That bit about things being complementary rather than contradictory is the big clue here. So, for instance, I think that Traditional piety is complementary with traditional virtues like faith, hope, and charity, not with old sins like anti-semitism or reactionary paranoia. Similarly, I think progress is connected to moving people forward to the kingdom of God, not backward into slavery to the servile state, whether it be Bush’s vision of salvation through leviathan or Obama’s vision of the New Centralize Economy. I have this notion if you claim to care about the Little Guy, you should care about the Littlest Guys (and Girls) of all the ones in the womb. I have the crazy notion that you can’t achieve good ends by evil means, whether through torture or abortion. I don’t see the faith as a tradeoff between love or liturgy. I have this notion that both Israelis and Palestinians need a home. It think war crimes are bad even when good guys commit them. I think even the worst person might have something good about them and the best person is not above suspicion.

To me, all this seems like a unity. To many of me readers, it constantly appears as a mass of incomprehensible contradictions that I am forever having to explain to somebody.