{"id":1006,"date":"2016-01-25T13:36:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T13:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/striking-a-nerve-for-the-sake-of-the-good.html"},"modified":"2016-01-25T13:36:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T13:36:00","slug":"striking-a-nerve-for-the-sake-of-the-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/striking-a-nerve-for-the-sake-of-the-good.html","title":{"rendered":"Striking a nerve for the sake of the Good"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I broke my promise<\/a> and went back to visit Mark Shea\u2019s Facebook page.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 I said I wouldn\u2019t. What am I, some glutton for punishment?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t comment on anything. I just went to look.\u00a0 I wanted to see if Mark was continuing with the very problematic practice of having \u2018Isn\u2019t Bernie Sander\u2019s the cutest thing?\u2019 posts on his very Catholic Facebook page.\u00a0 The whole thing, and my banishment, came from that.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

When CAEI went offline, I decided to take a look at Mark\u2019s Facebook Page.\u00a0 I don\u2019t typically do Facebook that much, and I had never visited his page.\u00a0 I heard horror stories, but found it hard to believe them.\u00a0 Well, once I was there, I believed them.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

By now, of course, Mark falls into that Orthodox Liberal Catholic group.\u00a0 That is, they don\u2019t reject traditional doctrines about God or the Trinity or the Resurrection.\u00a0 They also stand with the Church on issues like abortion and gay marriage.\u00a0 But in almost any other area where there is wiggle room, they tend to fall down along the modern, post-Christian liberal paradigm.\u00a0 The reasons are, no doubt, many.\u00a0 For some, as my boys pointed out with our parish, it\u2019s less that they love liberalism as much as they hate American Conservatism and the GOP.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Be that as it may, today Mark could in no way be called a conservative or traditional Catholic and have those terms mean anything.\u00a0 And his Facebook page reflected that.\u00a0 Moreover, those who commented were a rough brood, many of which seemed to be the sort of thing Pope Francis could have been thinking of<\/a>.\u00a0 It often got mean and ugly.\u00a0\u00a0 Quite a bit of contempt and condescension toward those who aren\u2019t following lockstep behind the modern Left.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, for all his Left leaning and liberal cheering, Mark remains adamantly pro-life and passionately against abortion.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 No suggestions otherwise can be entertained.\u00a0 So it came as quite a shock, in those couple weeks I was visiting there, to see how many \u2018Bernie Rocks\u2019 posts Mark had uploaded.\u00a0 Especially when it was set in juxtaposition to almost every other candidate Mark mentioned, who received nothing but scorn and insults from Mark and most of his readers.\u00a0 Like a sore thumb, Sanders stood out above it all and\u00a0Mark\u2019s Facebook page looked like quite the Pro-Sanders Facebook headquarters.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So when Mark posted yet another \u2018Equestrian Sanders Pic\u2019, I merely said that his page was becoming like a campaign stop for the Sanders campaign, and he might want to do a double check.\u00a0 After all, Sanders goes beyond pro-choice.\u00a0 He is pro-abortion, and in fact, pro-culture of death<\/a>.\u00a0 He is part of that secular liberalism that reminds us how so few societies that have opposed war or the death penalty have done so in the name of life\u2019s sanctity.\u00a0 Just the opposite.\u00a0 They do it because things like torture, war and the death penalty run afoul of the Left\u2019s great sinful promise: that pride is, in fact, a good thing.\u00a0 The universe does rotate around me.\u00a0 Things like death penalties or punishment or war suggest there are things bigger than me, and so they are clearly bad.\u00a0 But things like abortion, any marriage or sex any way I want, euthanasia, assisted suicide: they serve me and a world set firmly under my whims and desires. <\/p>\n

That is the sort of Left Sanders advocates<\/a>.\u00a0 As a politician, he has gone into areas that even pro-choice politicians fear to tread.\u00a0 He advocates post-Christian sexuality, and further appears to support the punishment of those who don\u2019t do likewise.\u00a0 He supports gay marriage, and also the HHS mandate, thereby solidifying his opposition to multiple things that Mark holds near and dear.<\/p>\n

In some ways, it reminded me of Mark and Ron Paul some years ago.\u00a0 For a while, Mark became quite the Catholic voice for the Ron Paul campaign.\u00a0 While he insisted he wouldn\u2019t vote for him, that he was merely pointing out where he thought Paul was correct, his blog became a major boost for Ron Paul supporters.\u00a0 Eventually, Mark did admit that if Paul was in the primaries by the time they came to Washington, Mark would vote for him.\u00a0 When he did that, it wasn\u2019t really a shock.<\/p>\n

In some ways, this sudden high-five to Sanders sniffed a bit like the old Paul posts.\u00a0 Sure, he wasn\u2019t saying \u2018Vote Sanders\u2019 or \u2018I Support Bernie!\u2019\u00a0 But his posts were stacking up quickly, with many having nothing to do with anything other than \u201cBernie Sanders: Awesome Guy!\u201d\u00a0 Sorry, but someone who pushes to loosen the restrictions for a partial birth abortion has dropped at least one rung down the awesome ladder in my book.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So I posted my message.\u00a0 And oh my, all hell broke loose.\u00a0 Mark came at me with everything: mocking me, calling me names, accusing me of passive aggressively suggesting he is pro-choice.\u00a0 He used the old Sea Lion cartoon against me.\u00a0 Several of his readers did the same.\u00a0 I tried to keep it where I was, insisting that while you can quote someone you don\u2019t agree with (as a general rule I try to find better examples unless I\u2019m making a specific point), there is a logical difference between a single quote and days of \u2018thumbs up\u2019 posts. <\/p>\n

Mark and his readers would have none of it.\u00a0 Mark simply repeated the charges over and over again.\u00a0 Even my oldest son tried to bring some perspective, echoing a logical assessment of the current political climate being partly to do with Obama\u2019s legacy.\u00a0 That went as well as you can imagine. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Finally, I had enough.\u00a0 Especially since Mark continually repeated the charge that I was passive-aggressively insinuating he is pro-choice.\u00a0 Of all the things I could say about Mark, that would never be one of them.\u00a0 And I told him that.\u00a0 But it did no good.\u00a0 Mark was falsely accusing me of falsely accusing him; like a fundamentalist insisting that Catholics worship Mary no matter how many times we say we don\u2019t.\u00a0 I simply couldn\u2019t do anything.\u00a0 Mark was answering with mockery and accusations and hearing nothing else.\u00a0 With readers sympathetic to Mark\u2019s position, I was outnumbered.<\/p>\n

Finally, Mark told me to just leave.\u00a0 To get the hell off of his page.\u00a0 At that point, there was little else I could do.\u00a0 There was no reason to stay.\u00a0 I might as well have gone to Jack Chick\u2019s website and argued for a Dungeons and Dragons tournament in a Catholic Church.\u00a0 Which is a pity.\u00a0 Mark Shea, c. 2016 bears almost no resemblance to the Mark Shea I first encountered, c. 2004\/2005.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But, never one to cry quits, I just wondered.\u00a0 I wondered over the weekend.\u00a0 I wondered if he was still going full steam with the \u2018Awesome Sanders\u2019 posts.\u00a0 So I snuck over today to grab a peek<\/a> and,\u00a0guess what?\u00a0\u00a0 From that day, and in fact that post, there have been no Bernie Sanders posts.\u00a0 There was one blasting Sanders and Clinton for their relations
\nhip to Planned Parenthood.\u00a0 But that was it.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So you see kiddies, sometimes you have to suffer the slings and arrows to help keep someone from going down the dark path, even if their intention is to do no such thing.\u00a0 Part of me wants to be smug and go there and point it out, but I know better.\u00a0 That would be wrong anyway, and it could back fire.\u00a0 For now, be glad that a leading Catholic voice in Apologetics isn\u2019t allowing his Facebook page to be a major stopping point for one of the most ardently pro-culture of death politicians in our national government.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I broke my promise and went back to visit Mark Shea\u2019s Facebook page.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 I said I wouldn\u2019t. What am I, some glutton for punishment?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t comment on anything. I just went to look.\u00a0 I wanted to see if Mark was continuing with the very problematic practice of having \u2018Isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nStriking a nerve for the sake of the Good<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I broke my promise and went back to visit Mark Shea's Facebook page.  I know, I know.  I said I wouldn't. 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