Catholic and Enjoying It!
…not is it Inflamed Secularism. It is, believe it or not, healthy spirituality.
Today’s case study: South Park vs. Jihad
The Andrew Sullivans of the world continue, along with the Neocon types and the various American Way Uber Alles folks in the Grand End to Evil Project to exult whenever some post-Christian with anti-religious dementia like Christopher Hitchens says something insulting about Islam as though this is automatically a Triumph for America. More to the point, Christians who have been suckered into believing that support for the Neocon End to Evil project is coterminous with faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ join in cheering for such people.
To unobservant people, it’s a fairly easy blunder to make. After all, inevitably what then happens is that some Foaming Bronze Age Thug wets himself and issues a fatwa whenever somebody stands up to the bullies of Islam. So when South Park did what South Park does and insulted Mohammed, some Bronze Age Thug obligingly issued the death threat and the encomiums to Our Western Way of Life started rolling out and right wing Christians join in the cheering.
Now, make no mistake: I like living in a part of the world where people like the creators of South Park can do what they do and not have to face death from foaming Islamic morons. But, here’s the thing: that doesn’t make what they do good. It just make what they do protected. The other day, the Supreme Court ruled that people who make something called “crush” films are protected by free speech. These films (I am not making this up) involve women in high heels crushing small animals like mice to death. Certain sorts of people like to watch this. And it’s protected by our Supreme Court. Hoorah for our immensely superior civilization!
In the case of South Park, Christian should really note well the last paragraphs in the piece I link:
In 2006, Comedy Central banned the men from showing an image of Muhammad on their show. They had intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper’s publishing of caricatures of the Islamic leader. Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous.
Instead, “South Park” showed an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George W. Bush and the American flag.
Such is the madness of our time that Christians–Christians!–rejoice because now South Park, passing from glory to glory, moves from a blasphemous depiction of Jesus to pulling the nose of Mohammed! O Happy Day!
Are we really willing to settle for so little? Well, you *did* depict Jesus defecating on somebody, but, aw heck, since you are willing to pluck up the guts to mock my political movement’s current ideological enemy then heck! Come here and let me hug you, ya big lugs! We’re all on the same page after all!”
Talk about selling your manhood cheap!
Clues for the clueless! South Park is the production of very funny, very gifted cultured despisers of Jesus Christ and him crucified. The devil always sends enemies of the gospel into the world in pair so that fleeing one, we might embrace the other. For quite some time, the alternative has been inflamed Islamic spirituality or watery secularist spirituality. Of late, the West has been tending a bit more toward “Inflamed Islamic spirituality vs. some form of inflamed secular spirituality”. But both of these are false choices. Christians should be about radical commitment to the healthy spirituality of Jesus Christ (which, as a Catholic, I would argue is found in the tradition He has handed down to us in the Catholic faith). Selling that for the pot of message offered by the cultured despisers of South Park, or the equal opportunity haters of God like Christopher Hitchens, is but one of the signs of the madness that has gripped Christians in the US who don’t seem to get that post-Christian Western Culture is, well, post-Christian.
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