Lying for Jesus: A Faustian Bargain

June 5, 2012 By Mark Shea

When I criticize Live Action for lying to Planned Parenthood, I can typically be guaranteed that I will hear that I am a) secretly supportive of Planned Parenthood because I am criticizing Catholic Folk Heros who have saved more lives with a single video than I have in my whole worthless life and/or b) I am, as one reader told me, “about one step removed from the Pharisees who were angry at the disciples for plucking the grains of wheat on the Sabbath”. The notion, of course, is that I am majoring in minors, straining at gnats and swallowing camels, fretting about trivial fibs while children are being slaughtered, etc. The implicit accusation that immediately comes up is that to oppose Live Actions lies for Jesus is to be in the exact same moral category as the kind of moral idiot who would rat out the Jews in the cellar to the Gestapo in order to keep one’s precious morality pure. And besides, the complaint goes, it’s not *really* lying. As my reader said, “Calling every falsehood “lying” is like calling every killing “murder.”

Ahem. Last things first. Let’s stop with the euphemisms and with the attempt to pretend that show up at somebody’s door with a fake name and a fake purpose is anything but lying. Trying to euphemize it by some other name is exactly like trying to euphemize torture as “enhanced interrogation” or abortion as “tissue extraction”. When even the *defenders* of Live Action call it lying (as my friend Peter Kreeft did), it’s lying.

That said, let’s make another distinction: plucking grain and eating it on the Sabbath is not intrinsically evil. Lying is. I’m perfectly aware of what the intention is: stopping abortion. And I applaud the intention. But lying is still lying. Now, I am perfectly aware that lying, while intrinsically immoral, is not always a grave sin. All sorts of things enter in. There are lies that are fibs. There is the matter of freedom and understanding and culpability. I get all that. And I get that the goal is a noble: hasten the day when salt is sowed on the ground where the last Planned Parenthood clinic has been razed and abortion is a thing of the past. I fully support that goal and praise Live Action for desiring to achieve it.

But here’s the problem: All sin consists of the attempt to achieve some good end by disordered means: and attempting to establish truth by lying is profoundly disordered and will only end in mischief and damage to the faith to the prolife cause.

So I think that before the discussion get too abstract it’s important to ask what real good is even being accomplished by Live Action’s lies. People immediately rush to the Nazis at the Door Scenario and fall into the delusion that lives are being saved by Live Action lies to Planned Parenthood employees.

Understand this: not one. single. life has been saved by Live Action’s lies. Not a single abortion has been prevented. All that happened is that PP is temporarily embarrassed and prolifers get a thrill for a day or two.

After that, PP fights back and says “Those videos were edited and LA is lying.” And right there is the problem: because Live Action has openly acknowledged that they *were* lying about their identity and purpose. So Planned Parenthood then appeals to people on the fence about abortion and says, “Why should you trust self-confessed liars?” And their supporters, who might include some future Bernard Nathanson or other troubled conscience, look at the spectacle and join the herd in the comboxes denouncing Christians as liars–a hard point to argue when they are in fact lying. Indeed, while Christians desperately want to tell themselves that Live Action’s “stings” have been devastating to Planned Parenthood, the reality is that flagscows of the Left like the Nation are *exulting* in Live Action’s tactics and celebrating “the genius of Cecile Richards” for taking this gold-engraved opportunity to shout “Look! Christianist liars are persecuting Planned Parenthood!” and driving donations way up.

More than that, though, you have the *deeply* corrupting reality that defenders of Live Action–Christian defenders!–spend massive amounts of energy, not asking “How can we act with integrity?” but “How can we justify lying? How can we figure out some way to tempt a Planned Parenthood clerk to commit a mortal sin?”

Saying “They were going to do it anyway” is morally insane. Saying “We must do evil that good may come of it” is morally insane. Indeed, even arguing that good has come of it is morally insane. Because at the end of the day, all we really have is some video footage which is being argued about by two groups of people who are documentably liars–and in this particular case, only one of those group specifically confessed to lying in order to make the video. People who think this is going to persuade fence sitter or persuade anybody outside the zealously prolife camp have simply lost touch with reality. People who think that a Christian message about the gospel as the Truth can be founded on lies are insane.

And that’s the most insane part of this: in the end, this tactic leaves the Christian community burning itself up in the insane pursuit of justification for lying and tempting people to grave sin that produced not *one* good outcome (unless prolife schadenfreude over a minor PP embarrassment is now Priority One for the prolife movement), while Planned Parenthood is enjoying increased funding from donors by sending out fundraising letters saying, “Christianist Prolifers are Lying about Us”.

This is why I say consequentialism such as Lying for Jesus is a Faustian Bargain. You lose your soul and get *nothing* in return. Sorry, but Augustine, Aquinas and the Catechism are right. Lying is intrinsically immoral and fundamentally corrupting of human relationships. And before you try, yet again, to euphemize these lies as “acting” or “role playing” or “fiction”: no, this is not “acting” or “role playing” or “fiction”. Those speech acts involve the fundamental reality that the the audience is willingly and knowingly suspending disbelief and knows the actors are acting and the writer is telling a tale. This. was. *lying*. Christians are bloody fools to defend it.

And, by the way, they would be fools to defende it even *if* it had worked. But that they are wasting breath defending it when it is not just wrong but destructive of the prolife cause is double folly.

I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of acting in worldly fashion. For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. – 2 Corinthians 10:2-5

Prolife organization demonstrates that Lying for Jesus is unnecessary

March 31, 2011 By Mark Shea

For those people who were wringing their hands last month, wondering how on earth a big, evil, and powerful organization like Planned Parenthood could ever be stopped if Live Action was not permitted to lie to them, I have good news. An exciting new prolife organization has successfully conducted a humiliating sting operation which conclusively showed that, you guessed it, Planned Parenthood was lying through their teeth when they claimed the needed fed funding for their vital mammogram program.

The name of this new prolife organization?: Live Action.

Turns out they just called a bunch of PP centers and asked about mammograms, only to be told they don’t do mammograms. Whaddaya know? PP lied! Way to go, Live Action! More non-lying stings. Go! Fight! Win!

No. Really. Lying for Jesus is a Faustian Bargain

February 24, 2011 By Mark Shea

A reader writes:

I’m a regular reader, occasional commenter. I really appreciate the work you’ve been doing on the Live Action issue. Here in the trenches, I can’t tell you how important is the moral integrity of the pro-life movement. So often when we talk to legislators, they throw back at us every offense ever committed by pro-lifers. In the old days it was acts of violence, but now it’s lies. For example, we’re fighting a bill in NYC that accuses crisis pregnancy centers of deceptive practices, and the legislators eagerly fall upon every possible instance of lying or deception by any pro-lifer to prove their point. It’s very discouraging when we’re trying to influence the law, but we’re undermined by the misguided tactics of our own side. The heroes who advocate lying never have to sit at a table and have the lies thrown in their faces, and then used as an excuse for dismissing all our arguments.

On another point, I blogged today on the Archdiocese website about the President’s decision to surrender his duty on the Defense of Marriage Act:

Yep. Lying for Jesus is disastrous, not only because it is just one more piece of soul-corroding consequentialism, but because you sell your soul and get *nothing* in return. You hand the enemies of life a nice shiny sword with “Liar” inscribed on it and they run you through with it.

As to the DOMA business, I saw that and cheer the Archdiocese for trying to talk sanity. The Prez’s cowardly and unconstitutional choice to simply ignore the law is a direct violation of his oath. But this amateur has made it clear that his conception of the office is only tangentially related to the concept of law.

The great Lying for Jesus Debate Continues

February 20, 2011 By Mark Shea

in which I discuss Faustian Bargains, argue with people whose sandals I am not worthy to untie, and plead for calm in the factional world of St. Blogs. I would urge those who love babies, Jesus and the Faith to remember that this includes everybody on both sides the debate and to pray for each other and for peace, love and truth to prevail.

Still grinding away and am on deadline this week, so still not much blogging. However, the argument at the Register should keep everybody content for days with grist for conversation.

Building Bridges of Trust vs. Winning

May 22, 2020 By Mark Shea

A little while back I remarked on the fact that, despite the constant complaint of “liberal persecution” from MAGA Christians, the primary thing I noticed from liberal critics of Christians was not hostility toward the Faith, but hostility to Right Wing betrayal of the Faith.

As I said then:

What has struck me consistently is how people on the Left are not interested in persecuting Christians and how often they beg them to be Christians, to act like Christians, to give balm to their souls by not being simply awful, selfish, appalling human beings.

And what consistently strikes me about the Right is how often that hope is struck down with extreme spite.

As if to illustrate my point, this tweet washed up in my feed the other day:

i am pro choice, but i love this tweet. respect the logical consistency….

— Büsi Love (@buesilove) February 19, 2020

What we see here is simple: respect for a prolife Christian who actually is prolife. The pro-choice tweeter disagrees with them about the question of abortion because the pro-choice tweeter has a differing view of the personhood of the unborn baby. But the person who owns the car makes very clear that they are not flaming hypocrites whose sole interest in the unborn is to use the child as a weapon in order to inflict suffering on all those forms of human life useless to MAGA ideology. They are actually motivated by a sincere love of human life and the pro-choice tweeter can see that. And so: respect, despite the difference over abortion. This is where a conversation can begin.

I use this to illustrate a point constantly made by Sherry Weddell in her fine book Forming Intentional Disciples.

Sherry discusses the five thresholds people pass through on their way to becoming Intentional Disciples of Jesus Christ in the heart of his Church (Trust, Curiosity, Openness, Seeking, Intentional Discipleship). The most elementary of them is mere Trust, and for an elementary reason.

Trust is not the gift of faith. It is merely Trust. That is to say, the person on the path to discipleship finds something about the Faith with which they have a positive association, something trustworthy. It can be virtually anything: a relative, some positive association with a person who is Catholic (Sherry menti0ns a Muslim woman schooled by nuns she admired). Alec Guiness was moved by a young French boy who took him for a priest when he was filming a Father Brown movie and who happily took his hand and chattered at him as he walked. It can be a rosary, or a medal, or a book that affected you. It can be music or art or, yes, even a bumper sticker. Something associated with the faith that strikes a person as reliable and trustworthy. For some people, it’s been listening to somebody on Catholic radio. For Edith Stein, it was her encounter with Teresa of Avila’s work.

The point is simply this: Without trust, nothing else will ever happen. If you are not perceived as trustworthy, you can totally forget bearing witness to the Faith. And the way to do that is simple: don’t try to appear trustworthy. Just be trustworthy. Period. In the words of Mark Twain, “Tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you said.”

The news that Norma McCorvey (aka Roe of Roe v. Wade) was a bought-and-paid for liar for the “prolife” movement since 1995 makes clear why simple trustworthiness is so vital.

“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. “Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”

Sweeney shows the video of McCorvey’s confession to her friends and acquaintances on the pro-abortion and anti-abortion sides, including pro-choice activist Charlotte Taft who, on the verge of tears, says, “That just really hurts because it’s big stakes. It’s just really big stakes.”

Reverend Schenck, the much more reasonable of the two evangelical leaders featured in the film, also watches the confession and is taken aback. But he’s not surprised, and easily corroborates, saying, “I had never heard her say anything like this… But I knew what we were doing. And there were times when I was sure she knew. And I wondered, Is she playing us? What I didn’t have the guts to say was, because I know damn well we’re playing her.” Reverend Schenck admits that McCorvey was “a target,” a “needy” person in need of love and protection, and that “as clergy,” people like Schenck and Benham were “used to those personalities” and thus easily able to exploit her weaknesses. He also confirms that she was “coached on what to say” in her anti-abortion speeches. Benham denies McCorvey was paid; Schenck insists she was, saying that “at a few points, she was actually on the payroll, as it were.” AKA Jane Roe finds documents disclosing at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the anti-abortion movement to McCorvey.

Reverend Benham then blurts out, “Yeah, but she chose to be used. That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Schenck’s thinking is quite different: “For Christians like me, there is no more important or authoritative voice than Jesus,” he explains. “And he said, ‘What does it profit in the end if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ When you do what we did to Norma, you lose your soul.”

The Buying of Norma McCorvey is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of the Liars for Jesus strategy of the American Religious Right that has flowered into the MAGA Cult of Lies. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame Norma McCorvey. I blame the people who manipulated a woman who was kicked around and used all her life. My fury is not at her. It’s at the Liars for Jesus who have utterly corrupted the “prolife” movement.

I, slowcoach that I am, only began to be aware that Lying for Jesus was a feature, not a bug, for the “prolife” conservative Christian about a decade ago. When Live Action starting doing videos in which they lied about their identity and James O’Keefe started doing phony videos (for which he got massively sued and lost) I argued in the pages of the National Catholic Register that you cannot do evil that good may come of it–which is, you know, Catholic teaching going back to Romans 3:8. So did various other Catholics around the web. I and others pointed out that Augustine, Aquinas, and the whole Catholic tradition down to the Catechism said that you cannot lie, that lying is always intrinsically immoral and that, as Augustine pointed out, a revelation that is received by faith must be proclaimed in truth or (duh!) people will reject it when they discover they have been lied to.

But the bulk of “prolife” Catholics managed to convince themselves that Lying for Jesus made them morally indistinguishable from those who lied to hide Jews from Nazis. They turned their lies into a point of pride and followed Pied Pipers like John Zmirak into buying completely the lie that they could ignore the Tradition of the Church on lying for the greater good. They labeled critics of Lying for Jesus scrupulous Pharisees and got on with the work of destroying their credibility for short-term political gain.

I thought that this was the moment when the “prolife” movement lost its moral moorings.

Now I see I was inaccurate by at least 15 years. 2011 was merely the moment when the Lie for Jesus ethos of the “prolife” leadership became the Lie for Jesus ethos of the rank and file as well. That leadership now tells us “Who you gonna believe? Me or your own two eyes?” to keep up the shameless grift, as Frank Pavone does when he scrambles to maintain the lie he did so much to help promote:

Various others immediately took to the airwaves and interwebs to say “Pay no attention to the video recording of Norma McCorvey saying it was all a lie. You can trust us.” So the head of Live Action assures us. Just as she assured us you could lie to Planned Parenthood for the greater good. Because surely Live Action would not lie to us, right?

There are only two options here: Norma McCorvey was lying with the knowledge of these “prolife” leaders or she was lying without it. If Frank Pavone or Live Action were trustworthy, I would assume they were dupes. But Frank Pavone is the biggest and most shameless Catholic “prolife” apologist for the biggest liar in the history of the Presidency, a man willing to commit sacrilege and stain his priesthood for power, a man who will not even tell us who his bishop is, a man whose grift has sent him from one diocese to the next in order to escape financial accountability. And nearly all the “prolife” leadership shouted me down a decade ago telling me it was fine to lie to defend the unborn.

And so, there is not a reason in the world to believe what they say here while there ios every reason in the world to believe Norma McCorvey’s “deathbed confession”. The MAGA “prolife” cult inspires no trust except in one demographic: “faithful conservative prolife” Christians who have embraced the idea that lying for Jesus is AOK because opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world.

The “faithful conservative Christian Prolife” movement is dead, not at the hands of “liberal persecution” but by suicide. The credibility of the Church in the US is, meanwhile, in critical condition, due to a subculture that embraced the Noble Lie as a shortcut, not to living as disciples of Jesus the Truth, but to Winning.

The way back is plain: tell the truth, even if it means losing. Because there is no replacement for trustworthiness, and no way to bring people to faith other than via trust.

There are people who get this. As I say, I was by no means the only one who opposed Lying for Jesus ten years ago. And I am not, by a long shot, the only one advocating a Consistent Life Ethic now. The Magisterium does it. Pope Francis does it (notably declaring that the Preferential Option for the Poor is “Non-negotiable” in a way that “faithful Conservative” American Catholics don’t mention in their “Vote GOP or the baby gets it” voter guides). Rehumanize International gets it. Simcha Fisher gets it. And Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa of New Wave Feminists gets it.

You shall not do evil that good may come of it. A faith founded on lies is doomed. Opposition to abortion does not take away sin. Forget the lust for power and winning. Live in truth even if it costs you victory. For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?:

For our appeal does not spring from error or uncleanness, nor is it made with guile; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never used either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed, as God is witness; nor did we seek glory from men, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember our labor and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our behavior to you believers; for you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:3-12).

It can be done. It has been done. Do it again.

A Kindly Traditionalist Writes Me

November 5, 2019 By Mark Shea

Sez he:

I’m nine years a convert to the Catholic Faith, three years a ‘tradvert’, and currently thick as thieves with those Fr Z/Steve Skojec/Taylor Marshall/Cardinal Burke-loving characters who cause you and your readers such grief and distress for the future of the Church in America. The rules of tribal combat would indicate that I should join them in grinding your heart and soul into the dust and doing my level-best to drive you out of the flock once and for all (and I will admit, mea maxima culpa, there are moments when I’ve been sorely tempted to do so)…but there are two big reasons why I’m NOT going to do that:

You intrigue me. �

1) When it comes to a lot of the political controversy that has dogged you over the years, you and I are actually in agreement on several points (though certainly not all):

* I agree that waterboarding is torture and that torture is not an acceptable means of interrogation;

Excellent!

* I agree that the sting tactics used by Live Action and C.MP. are not exactly compatible with traditional Thomistic teaching on lying;

Good! The tragedy of watching conservative Catholics embrace lying for Jesus not only for this but for the Liar-in-Chief has been one of the many things that has broken my heart.

* I agree that free-market capitalism is just as dangerous to souls (and just as anti-Catholic) as socialism or communism;

Agreed.

* I agree that the pro-life movement as a whole has shot itself in the foot – from multiple angles – by focusing so much on abortion/euthanasia laws and court cases without ALSO trying to build an integral, holistic Culture of Life;

It is the greatest failure and most toxic subculture in the Church. The use of the unborn as human shields for all the evils the “prolife” Cult of Trump now passionately defends instead of defending the unborn is a massive scandal and had wreck the witness of both the prolife movement and of so-called “faithful conservative” Catholics.

* and I agree that choosing to bow down and worship the Swamp Creature (as my former prof, Larry Chapp, once called him) as if he were the reincarnation of Constantine was basically the point at which conservative/traditional American Catholics popped their collective cyanide capsules.

Yes.

2) As vehemently as I might disagree with you on various fine points (and probably some big points) of theology, your works have been a great help to me in recovering a right attitude toward myself and my fellow Catholics – in particular this very sobering piece from InsideCatholic:

There Ain’t No Pure Church

I’m glad. All I’ve ever wanted to do is try to serve holy Church as best I can.

Whenever I recognise that I’m letting anger, fear, resentment, et al, get the best of me, reading that article does a lot to help me remember that, far from being the Greatest Catholic of All Time, I am in fact the commander-in-chief of the cowards, shufflers, and snobs.

A GKC ref!

Being that I’m both on the mild end of the autism spectrum and blessed/cursed with a triple helping of Italian-German-Irish cussedness, a healthy dose of humility is basically my life preserver in the storm.

For all of us.

Therefore, instead of joining my unfortunate confreres in ripping you to shreds, I’m going to do something you suggested, which I should have started doing years ago: From henceforth, I shall be including in my daily Rosary the intention of ‘peace of heart, mind, and soul for Mark Shea, and true and lasting peace and healing between himself and the Trad Subculture’.

That is very kind of you. And it may be bearing some fruit already. The Holy Spirit has been urging me to pray “deliver them from evil and bless them with your grace” for my enemies.

I know it doesn’t excuse or make up for the viciousness of my fellow trads, or the cowardice of those who say that ‘not all trads are like that’ without doing anything to effectuate that statement, but I hope it will show there’s at least one reactionary fussbudget out there who’s trying to do the right thing – and I pray it will bear its intended fruit on all counts!

I really, truly appreciate it. On line, I have found genuine love from Trads to be rare as hen’s teeth. Your gracious letter moves me and I am grateful to you for it!

In the meantime, even if the Truly True Catholics have soured you on ever attending a Traditional Latin Mass again, I’d still like to extend an invitation to my parish. There’s at least one person there who’d be happy to see you 🙂

Thank you so much. If I am ever in your town again, I will take you up on that!

God bless you, sir!

On Recovering the Fearlessness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

October 3, 2019 By Mark Shea

Yesterday, I wrote of my appreciation for the Catholic intellectual tradition and what a relief it was for me to step into the wide sunlands of a Catholic Christianity that was not afraid to engage with the wide range of human culture and thought. From St. Paul on the Areopagus down through the Catholic invention of the university to the present, the Church’s capacity for engagement with the breadth of the human experience is one of the most beautiful things about her and I have always loved her capaciousness and ability to, as Paul says, “test everything and hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

I also noted that, like tofu, Catholic culture tends to take on the tint of the culture in which it finds itself. This can be both good and bad, depending on the culture. In the early English Church, for instance, when the martial virtues of the Anglo-Saxon warrior were prized by the culture, the author of The Dream of the Rood saw and celebrated the courage of Jesus’ embrace of the cross.

In the high Middle Ages of Dante, the doctrine of courtly love helped Dante to see something the ancient Greeks missed: that the love of woman could be ennobling. His Beatrice (and far more, the Blessed Virgin) are encounters with divine grace. And, of course, just a little before him, Thomas’ encounter with Aristotle vastly enriched our way of speaking about the Faith and about the world.

This has happened again and again in the history of the Church and the Church has always had within it those who seek to capitulate to the culture, those who are cautious and judicious in “testing everything and holding fast to what is good” and those who simply live in fear of the culture.

In the past twenty years, especially under the influence of American white conservative Evangelicalism and an alliance with increasingly demagogic Right Wingery culminating in the Freak Show of Trumpian Republican Rite Christianism, conservative Catholics have embraced the habit of fear, panic, and conspiracy theory as their primary reaction to cultural phenomena they deem “liberal”. Rather than thinking with the Church and with the tools of her intellectual tradition, they have come to think with the often dubious opinions of certain Folk Heroes whose judgment is spectacularly bad. As a result, they give utterly unnecessary scandal to sensible people of good will.

So, for instance, there is the absurd phenomenon of Catholic geocentrism, promoted by Robert Sungenis and endorsed by the reliably wrong Church Militant and Michael Voris. Employing a flat-footed Fundamentalism to reading certain Catholic texts as foolishly as a Flat Earther reads the Bible, they have taken the same hostility to “liberal science” that animates Climate Change denial and hatred of environmentalism and applied it to cosmology. In an infamous essay (now flushed down the memory hole), called the “The Fall of the Pink Einstein”, Sungenis managed to glue together a great many of the fears and obsessions of Conservative Catholics with the ingenious thesis that the relativity of the Jew Einstein was one of the sources of liberal science’s fiendish moral relativism contributing not only to godless heliocentrism but also to homosexuality and gay priests abusing kids.

No. Really.

Meanwhile, there is also the Kolbe Center for Creation Research, a quack organization that is basically the Catholic-flavored version of Ken Hamm’s Answers in Genesis. Of them, Augustine wrote long ago:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

Augustine grasped that baptism is grace, not magic, and that it did not confer competence in the sciences: study, brains, understanding and hard work do. And all these things are achievable by Christian and non-Christian alike. Because of this, non-Christians can tell when you are a crank and when you are competent and honest.

Augustine, who also wrote a (now tragically neglected and opposed) treatise against lying made the obvious point that Lying for Jesus is stupid. What lay at the back of his thought was a profoundly Catholic confidence that the Faith is really true and therefore does not need to be defended by tricks and lies. Like St. Thomas, he really internalized the conviction that “all truth is God’s truth” and that the Author of Creation is the same God as the Author of Redemption in Christ Jesus. He deeply and truly believed Jesus when he said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). He did not, as so many conservative American Christians today do, live in the everlasting fear that the other shoe was going to drop, that the whole thing was a fraud, that something would turn up to show the Faith was a lie, and that he needed to be perpetually on guard against those who might discover that it was all a scam. So he was able to grasp that the temptation to tell pre-emptive lies was just that: a temptation from hell and not, as some absurdly claimed, “being wise as serpents.” In a word, his faith was not fragile, but sturdy, and able to stand up to one of the most rigorous and searching minds and consciences God ever created.

It precisely this jittery fragility that now characterizes conservative Christianity in the US, both Catholic and Protestant. From Evangelicals terrified of evolution to Catholics afraid of the Pope to conservatives afraid of the brown “invader” and willing to endorse every single lie Trump tells in order to defend this most fragile of gods we see a demographic endlessly stampeded by

birtherism panics
tan suit panics
Amoris Laetitia panics
Infiltration panics
fist bump panics
Liberal Batman panics
“Francis the Modernist Evolutionist” panics
Francis the Heretic panics
Francis the Antichrist panics
vaccination panics
FEMA concentration camp panics
Jade Helm panics
panics about such dangerous films as “The Lego Movie” and “The Muppet Movie“
fraudulent James O’Keefe panics
Saul Alinsky-the-Satan-worshipper panics
Lattegate panics
“refugee invader” panic
“war or mushroom clouds over American cities” panics
pro-torture panics

Most recently, on the Catholic side of the aisle we witnessed the ridiculous resurgence of the Harry Potter Satanic Panic as Fr. Dan Reehil, pastor of St. Edward Church and School, in Nashville, TN, banished the boy wizard from his school, explaining:

These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text. I have consulted several exorcists, both in the United States and in Rome, and they have recommended removing the books from circulation.

This is, to be blunt, a move rooted in fear and ignorance. I know this, not because I am an exorcist, but because I know how to read a book. In point of fact, there is no, none, nada, zip, zero, invocational magic in the books. Nothing and no one is ever summoned or invoked. Literally, the worst curse in the entire series is “Avada Kedavra”–Abracadabra. The “spells” in HP are Latin doggerel and if you think they have occult power, I recommend you try waving a stick at somebody and shouting “Expelliarmus!” If the book or teacup they are carrying flies out of their hands I will sell you the Brooklyn Bridge free of charge.

I do not know what exorcists the good Father consulted with. I am frankly sceptical he has consulted with any beyond the opinion of Fr. Gabriele Amorth (of whom more in a moment). But whoever he consulted with, they simply cannot have read these books if any of them seriously claim the books invoke demons. Magic is treated as a sort of super-power in the books, exactly the same as the powers used by super-heroes in Marvel comics and precisely the same as the powers used by Gandalf or Elves in the Approved-by-Righteous Catholics Lord of the Rings. Father’s simplistic declaration about a work of literature that any presentation of magic as anything other than evil being a “clever deception” condemns the work of Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, E. Nesbit, LeGuin, the Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang, Greek myths, and a host of fairy stories, not to mention a good portion of the works of Shakespeare, to the flames.

Which reminds me, Shakespeare (whom we are reminded by Joseph Pearce, was a Catholic):

does actually write a chilling Satanic invocation in Macbeth as Lady Macbeth prays to demons:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”

Here’s what does not happen and has never happened to any actress playing Lady Macbeth when she says these words that were written specifically to be spoken aloud: no demon has ever come. Why? Because this is fiction and Lady Macbeth is not real and the actress is playing a part.

That does not mean I disbelieve in demons. Demons (and angels) are both real and we can wilfully open our hearts to their influence to disastrous or blessed effect. But, to paraphrase Claudius in the occult ghost story Hamlet, “words without thoughts never to heaven (or hell) go”. It is one of the more telling traits of panic-driven Christianism that it believes God must be begged and implored to respond but the devil will show up instantly if you even accidentally say some wrong magic word. And (more to the point) it believes that such fear authorizes the Christianist to tell wanton lies about the author of a series of pretty good books in order to accuse her of seeking to involve children with Satan.

So here’s the thing: instead of panicking about catching demonic cooties from works of J.K. Rowling or Shakespeare, what the Catholic intellectual tradition does is engage such books as the works of literature that they are and see how to “test everything and hold fast what is good.”

Fr. Reehil’s assessment of Harry Potter is a compound of ill-informed rumor, ignorant opinion, and lies that have spread everywhere in conservative Christian culture, both Protestant and Catholic. On the Catholic front, the lies come from Lifesite News who, in 2005, chose to lie that Benedict XVI “condemned” Harry Potter. Jimmy Akin, no fan of the books by the way, but an honest man, does the autopsy on that lie.

Then there was the opinion of the late Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the alleged “Chief Exorcist of Rome” (that there is not and never has been such an office as “chief exorcist” is already a warning that the fanboi who grew up around him were inclined to exaggerate his authority and his often crackpot opinions):

“Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he told a film festival in Umbria this week, where he was invited to introduce The Rite, a film about exorcism starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a Jesuit priest.

“In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses.”

This is, again, the words of a man who either has not read the books or who does not understand even elementary things about literature. It is also the words of a man who is notorious for saying absurd things (such as his ridiculous claim to have performed 30,000 exorcisms in the space of nine years, totaling nine exorcisms every single day including Sundays), as Jimmy Akin and others have also shown on more than one occasion.

Now it is true that there is evil and black magic depicted in the books. Just as there is evil and black magic depicted in the works and authors mentioned above. But it is also true that the entire point of the depiction, as with the works and authors above, is to show the triumph of virtue. And the real battle in the books is, as in those other works and authors, a moral struggle. Indeed, every book–and most especially the culminating book in the series, is a recapitulation of the Paschal Mystery of self-sacrifice, death, and resurrection. In fact, asked if she believed in magic, Rowling replied that she did not and that she was a Christian and a member of the Church of Scotland. She even noted that she did not discuss it too much because she did not want to give away the ending of the series.

Are the books perfect? No. And indeed, moral critiques can be made of the characters and it is clear that part of what Rowling is doing is struggling with aspects of her own Christian faith–a faith she has lived with beautiful generosity to the least of these. My strongest objection to the book is that Dumbledore attempts a consequentialist (“end justifies the means”) solution to the problem of the main conflict in the book. It fails, as perhaps Rowling intends, but I find it troubling. All of that is legitimate fodder for ordinary literary criticism as the Catholic intellectual tradition has done for centuries. But banning the books as “demonic” and then giving a rationale that is both ignorant and false, not to mention vicious and slanderous, is a dreadful way to address a series that is, on the whole, a fine collection of stories. And it is a sure-fire way to teach a generation of kids that their Faith is stupid and fearful and afraid to test everything and hold fast to what is, in this case, obviously good.

Unsurprisingly, parishioners at the parish report the pastor is a man with Right Wing Culture War and control issues:

Psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse of the school children through his messages in and outside of the church, including in the confessional, that has resulted in children seeking professional counseling. This is including, but not limited to, public assertions at school Mass that Lady Gaga made a pact with the devil for fame and suffers from fibromyalgia as a result
Bullying of students, teachers and parents who disagree with his views
Irresponsible administration of the school, resulting in plummeting school enrollment and mass departure of long-term faculty

And last, but not least, they report he “hates Pope Francis and views himself as ‘a soldier of God.'” Their rather sensible response to him was, “‘Our school, however, consists of children, not soldiers.'”

And thereby hangs a tale, of which more on Tuesday. Tomorrow, we switch gears slightly and look at another manifestation of related phenomena coming to a theatre near you.

A Reader Has an Interesting Poser About the Morality of Security Work

May 13, 2019 By Mark Shea

They write:

In the past, you’ve written a lot about lying, specifically exploring edge cases, questions of “the right to know the truth,” and the fact that lying is always materially wrong. I think you’ve approached the subject in a very reasonable and Catholic way.

Thank you.

I know people have raised the issue of undercover police officers, spies, etc. but you haven’t deep-dived on those concerns in the past — understandably, since most of the time people aren’t asking in good faith, they’re just desperate to justify the lies that Their Side wants to say are okay.

Yeah.

However, I genuinely DO find myself in situations where my job involves misleading people and assuming fake identities. I’m a security consultant, and one of the things I sometimes do in my job is what’s called a “red team” assessment where my colleagues and I simulate a break-in. Sometimes these engagements involve running phishing campaigns or social engineering where we try to trick employees into downloading malware or giving us credentials.

Okay.

My question is: is this lying? And if so, is it materially sinful?

It sounds like it’s lying at first blush. And if so, then Thomas would say yes, it’s sinful—likely a venial sin, like most lying. But then again, something in my bones also suspects it’s not the same kind of speech act as, for instance, the lying for Jesus scenarios of which the prolife movement has become so passionately enamored in the past decade. So I’m not sure.

The question turns on whether what you describe is lying or something else. If it is, then yes, it’s sinful. If it’s not, then it may well be morally legit. The difference between that and what the Liars for Jesus in the Christianist Cult of Trump advocate is that they eagerly support lying with abandon if they think they can gain power by it and then try to legitimize it by saying the ends justify the means, a moral position categorically condemned by the Church ever since Paul wrote Romans 3:8. That you are taking such care to discover the distinction between the diabolical sophistry of the Christianist Liars for Jesus and the Church’s teaching speaks very well of you.

I’m not going to reason about culpability & gravity, because those will vary by circumstance. I also see how undercover work could be a near occasion of sin for some people, or form bad habits that they find hard to shake even outside of work… but since that’s a specific concern aimed at particular peoples’ personalities and weaknesses, I don’t know that it works as the foundation for a universal rule.

Okay.

My instinct is that there’s probably some nuance that makes deception in good faith not lying. It seems ridiculous to claim that testing people’s security awareness by simulating attacks is *evil*. But I can’t reason my way to the conclusion I expect without lapsing into consequentialism. And I definitely don’t want to shoehorn my logic to fit pre-determined conclusions just because they’re convenient.

I am not a moral theologian, nor do I play one on the internet. I’m giving you my personal impression and my personal reaction, based on how I would navigate this in light of the Church’s teaching if I were in your shoes. So don’t feel like I’m passing judgment on you. I’m not. And I may be missing something here. My prima facie impression is that deceiving people about who you are is lying. However, if your workers have been informed that they will be subjected to assessments that will include the sorts of things you are doing, it could be argued that what you are doing is closer to role playing or acting, which is a different moral category altogether and is not lying since there is a social contract between the actor and the audience in which the audience understands that they are, if you will, agreeing to let themselves be ‘deceived’ via willing suspension of disbelief.

This is not precisely the same as the contract between the worker and the company who have hired you. But there is a quality of ‘you have been warned’ if we assume the company has told the worker that they will be subjected to assessments and tests like these. So on second thought, I wonder if I am wrong here. Bottom line, I’m not sure.

Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. – JRR Tolkien.

What have solid theologians and philosophers had to say on this? How might I reason with this edge case?

I have no idea what real moral theologians and philosophers have said about such situations. But you might contact, for instance, Christopher Tollefson, who is a real moral philosopher and who has written extensively—and rightly—about the immorality of lying to see what he has to say about this particular situation. He did brilliant work refuting the Christianist Liars for Jesus back in 2011 and writes with real integrity. If he answers you, I would be interested in hearing what he has to say.

Also to clarify: I’m not asking for spiritual direction or how I should proceed in my unique circumstances. I’m just interested to hear your take on it as a hypothetical, philosophical question.

Excellent. Understood.

Elizabeth Bruenig on the Dissolution of our Culture of Lies

October 5, 2018 By Mark Shea

Back in 2011, the “prolife” movement that now forms the backbone of Trumpism chose to definitively commit itself to Lying for Jesus as a core strategy. I warned at the time that this was a massively stupid idea, as did others. We were, of course, shouted down as fake Catholics and babykillers by the Greatest Catholics of All Time as they, yet again, opted to make yet another in the long series of choices that would establish them as the most wrong subculture in American political life.

Now we are in the apex of their reign as they exalt a lying Sex Predator and his party which not only established and expanded our abortion regime, but which have re-funded Planned Parenthood eight times and are now about to confirm a drunken sex predator who says Roe is settled law (as GOP appointees always do) but who promises to protect the Sex Predator in Chief from the law. This is what the “prolife” Christianist cultist now stands for. Elizabeth Bruenig does the autopsy on the achievement this cult has wrought:

If Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court is confirmed, which I would rate as fairly likely, a significant chunk of the population will have substantial reason to argue that whatever decisions this supposedly neutral arbiter of constitutional justice hands down are influenced not only by partisan commitments but also by partisan animus. Likewise, some percentage of people will discount his rulings based on their contention that he has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, the backlash against those who come forward to make allegations of sexual assault will likely increase. And then it will all be revisited next time there’s an opening on the court. No matter what happens, in other words, the legitimation crisis will only intensify.

But it’s not really about the court. This inevitable ratcheting up is only a metastasized form of a systemic disease. In American life, politics unfolds almost entirely in a language of lies, and people know when they’re being lied to — and they hate it. (This is perhaps why our badly damaged democracy features some of the lowest rates of democratic participation in the developed world.)

The reason for all the lying is, at least in part, nonpartisan, and it has to do with the limitations of classical liberalism, meaning the philosophy that underlies our entire system of government. Because liberal democracies aim to be tolerant and inclusive of multiple conflicting versions of the good, they have to find a way for people with vast philosophical differences to talk to each other intelligibly about politics. So we have a language of public reason, as political theorist John Rawls called it, which is a rhetorical universe in which we supply reasons for our political desires that don’t really have anything to do with what we believe or want — or at least, they’re not the primary reasons for what we want. Instead, we supply reasons that we think will be persuasive to people who don’t necessarily have anything in common with us philosophically.

I believe, for example, that our society should distribute wealth differently because I think God made everything for the flourishing of all of humankind in common. I can say this because I’m just writing a column, not running in an election. If I were running in an election, I would say something about general fairness, probably, or a featureless and vaguely defined justice, “translating” my actual beliefs into something I think other people would like. In this case, the translation would be pretty faithful to the original. In many cases, it isn’t.

And everyone already knows this. This is why so much of our political discourse is about unearthing the real reasons that politicians and political movements are doing what they’re doing: Are welfare reform and union-busting really about independence and freedom, or are they about animus toward the poor? Is hawkish foreign policy really about spreading liberal democracy, or is it about enriching our tiny corner of it? Are #AbolishIce and #MeToo about limited, specific issues — correcting a particularly heinous agency, prosecuting sexual assaults even if they don’t fit the usual stranger-rape mold — or are they about dismantling larger forms of white, male hegemony? Less plausible conspiracy theories abound in the Infowars universe, but what all of these questions share in common with the panicky conjurings of Alex Jones and Co. is that they all presume politicians are not being transparent about why they do what they do.

And that assumption, I must emphasize, is true, several times over. Politicians are bought and suborned in ways they won’t admit, and ideologically committed in ways they find it difficult or inadvisable to talk about in public. The result is that we all know we’re constantly navigating a web of lies and misrepresentations that possibly have a relationship with the truth and possibly don’t. Our entire democracy functions under a noxious haze of justified mistrust. What does anyone really believe? Do they even know? Is it even possible to determine?

One consequence of living in a web of lies is that one is always on guard to defend themselves against deception. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows this circumstance can also be called “the complete dissolution of trust.”

What’s needed, when one political faction honestly intends to understand whether a member of an opposing political faction is guilty of a nigh-impossible-to-prove — but extremely serious — allegation of sexual misconduct, is trust. Each side has to trust that the other wouldn’t advance a scurrilous allegation for dishonest reasons, and likewise that their adversaries wouldn’t ignore a genuine allegation for dishonest reasons. Otherwise, the entire thing is an exercise in brute force: The truth is inaccessible; all that matters is which side has the power to win the day.

It’s a self-destructive cycle. I wish I saw a way out of it. If I did, I would tell you. But who would believe it?

Christians talk about “salvation by faith”. But Christianists strategize about winning through lies. Good job. You won. And nobody believes you or your gospel anymore. Who would put faith in your word or the word of the liar to whom you have utterly prostituted yourselves? Behold. Your house is left to you desolate. What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

People of the Lie

November 28, 2017 By Mark Shea

Back in 2011 the issue of the Noble Lie really came to a head when prolife Christians lost their minds and decided that it was a brilliant idea to become Liars for Jesus.

I warned at the time that this was both sinful and stupid and that the Church taught that lying is, by it very nature, sinful.

But prolife Christians convinced themselves that this was all a great idea, that just a *little* moral methamphetamine would really up their game and that it was all for the Greater Good.

So here we are now in 2017 and the prolife movement is now the passionate defender of a sex predator eager to damn his 16 victims as liars, as well as now being absolutely In The Tank for Roy Moore, a visible-from-space child molester. More than this, conservative Christianity in the US, both Catholic and Protestant, has in large measure morphed into Christianism, a false gospel which uses the forms and images of Christian culture in the service of a cult of personality centered around the worship of Donald Trump and his cult of lies, money, ego, power, violence, misogyny, and racism. One of its curious habits is to use accusation as a form of confession.

Exhibit A: James O’Keefe, the architect of Lying for Jesus, who just got busted again doing exactly what he tried to frame the Washington Post for doing.

The WaPo has done some extremely good investigative reporting using what we call “facts” and “evidence” from multiple victims and roughly 30 supporting witnesses.

People with brains and the ability to process facts and evidence using reason can see that this man is in no way worthy of office.

People in the 37% of the American electorate who still support a massively documented liar known as Donald Trump (the enormous bulk of whom self-identify as “prolife conservative Christians”) still strongly support Roy Moore, child molester. They don’t like fact, evidence or thinking. They like conspiracy theories and the belief that anything which suggests they and their Christianist cult might be wrong is “fake news” told by evil liars in the mainstream media.

One of them is that great conservative Catholic culture war hero, James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas. O’Keefe will be one of the featured speakers along with an Absolute Feast of Lies from the finest grifters, adulterers, wife beaters, propagandists, deadbeat dads, white supremacists, traitors, Nazi sympathizers and seducers of the young and the faithful in the US:

O’Keefe is one of the many figures in the freak show that is now the Party of Trump bent on demonstrating a principle that is one of the hallmarks the Christianist heresy: that accusation is, for these people, always a form of confession.

What did O’Keefe do? Convinced that the WaPo are liars who will tell any lie in order to nail their culture war enemies, O’Keefe sent a woman to them with a salacious but false story about Roy Moore.

In other words, she lied to the Post about Roy Moore in order to discredit the Post — and by extension support Moore — by enticing them to print a false story converging with their previous coverage of Moore. Unfortunately, this massive act of project by the liars at Project Veritas failed because the Post practices something called “journalism” and checked the woman’s story to make sure it was legit. It wasn’t. She (and O’Keefe and Project Veritas) were exposed as the frauds they are.

Now you would think that people claiming the name of Christ, who is the truth, would look at something like this and say, “Yikes! O’Keefe is a liar! I won’t trust him again!” But the mark of a Christianist (as distinct from a Christian) is that the content of Christianity does not matter, only the forms and images. So a failed lie means only that more cunning will be needed next time, not that lying must be renounced and repented.

For the Christianist is, in his massive pride, full of certitude that the ends justify the means. And because of his pride, he ceaselessly projects on his enemies the vices he himself holds dear. So he lies to prove that honest journalists are liars.

And in a few weeks he will be hailed as a hero at that conference.

If your faith can only be maintained by lies, it is not the Gospel.

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming. The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Th 2:7–12).