One of the defining characteristics of fundamentalism, at least as popularly portrayed, is that of self-righteous judgement. \u00a0These are folks who, with a King James Bible in one hand and a rod of righteousness in the other, go around declaring how sinful everyone else is. \u00a0Nobody is as righteous as The Fundamentalist. \u00a0All are spiritually inferior, don\u2019t know the Bible, don\u2019t believe the Bible is the Word of God, don\u2019t love Jesus, whatever. \u00a0Such self righteousness is what one thinks of when one thinks of a Bible toting fundamentalist, correct?<\/p>\n
Well, the world of Internet Catholicism has its own brand. \u00a0Sometimes it\u2019s similar to your run of the mill\u00a0fundamentalist\u00a0where some Catholics insist theirs is the only proper interpretation of\u00a0Magisterial\u00a0Teaching, and everyone who disagrees\u00a0will\u00a0burn in Hell. \u00a0But there are also other forms as well. \u00a0Perhaps the most common form is that of intellectual fundamentalism. \u00a0This is a sort of \u2018the rest of the Christian world just isn\u2019t as hip and cool and sophisticated and intellectual as I am\u2019 approach to Christian living. <\/p>\n
This Internet Catholic Fundie approach would balk at the thought of declaring others to be spiritually inferior, or suggest that others do not love Jesus as much as they do. \u00a0But in a tradition that boasts the likes of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Moore, St. Aquinas, they can at times be, well, a little on the snobbish side when it comes to insisting that others just don\u2019t shine in the light of eternal mind the way they do. <\/p>\n
To that end, the Internet Catholic Fundie is quite prepared to call stupid those who think\u00a0differently, to embrace stereotypes and promote unfair caricatures of other Christians who don\u2019t see things as brilliantly as the ICF. \u00a0Suddenly, you realize it isn\u2019t the spiritually pure, but the intellectually superior to whom the world belongs. The one who can analyze\u00a0philosophically, who can line up his intellectual reasoning with\u00a0Thomistic\u00a0flare, those are the ones called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.<\/p>\n
I know, most would never admit such things. \u00a0They don\u2019t have to. \u00a0Watch how they react to others who disagree with them. \u00a0Count how often the ICF rushes to embrace \u2018he\u2019s an idiot.\u2019 Tally the times in which an ICF embraces the\u00a0critiques\u00a0of fellow Christians given by those firmly planted against the Faith. \u00a0Heck, see how often a cool, hip,\u00a0sophisticated\u00a0ICF rushes to embrace a stereotype of\u00a0those\u00a0who just aren\u2019t as cool, hip, and sophisticated as they are. <\/p>\n
Case in point. \u00a0Marc Barnes, who can rattle off a witty retort to a host of non-Catholic views with the best of them, has at times fallen into this trap. \u00a0Without realizing it, he has embraced some sweeping, at times\u00a0inaccurate, portrayals \u2013 not of those against the faith or against his viewpoints, but of those who stand beside him but are not fully in his camp.<\/p>\n
So in this little blog piece<\/a>, in which Marc turns his attention to the hypocrisy and falsehoods associated with our modern takes on sexuality, he includes this little dig, not at those pushing animal sexuality above all things, but against those who are trying to save as many young people from the slime pit of modern sexual ethics:<\/p>\n Or look at the general \u201cChristian\u201d response to the sexual culture, incarnated in abstinence-education programs: Sex is dirty thing, a dangerous thing, an evil thing. Perhaps this is not intention of those running such programs, but it is another affirmative response to the death of sex.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n You see that? \u00a0First, I can honestly attest that fundamentalists today don\u2019t think sex is dirty or unclean. \u00a0There may have been a time, but it isn\u2019t in recent memory. \u00a0Second, Abstinence Education, no matter how effective you think it is, doesn\u2019t teach sex as a dirty thing either. \u00a0Those are stereotypes promoted by the same forces for sexual decadence that Marc \u00a0appears to be lambasting.<\/p>\n But rather than stick to his guns and go after the enemy of Christian teaching, he can\u2019t resist jumping on those other \u2018not-me\u2019 Christians and not just criticizing them or\u00a0critiquing\u00a0their methods, but fully\u00a0embracing\u00a0the meanest and most inaccurate portraits used to paint\u00a0as vile and\u00a0contemptible\u00a0losers\u00a0anyone not embracing the modern sex culture. \u00a0In other words, the ICF does overtime when it comes to shooting fellow believers in the back in order to demonstrate the superiority of the way I would do it.<\/p>\n The irony? \u00a0Not even\u00a0fundamentalists\u00a0nowadays are that\u00a0careless. \u00a0In fact, one of the things that helped me in my journey to Catholicism was the fact that Protestants, Evangelicals, and even some\u00a0fundamentalists\u00a0were beginning to realize that to attack the Catholic Church was, in our post\/anti-Christian culture, to essentially attack Christianity. \u00a0They realized that shooting fellow Christians did little more than give ammo to forces all about destroying the legacy of the Christian Faith.<\/p>\n So here we have Mr. Barnes, jumping in and lambasting those not-hip\/not-him types by embracing a false stereotype when those same types have been learning, in some cases, that they cannot do the same thing to their fellow Christians who are Catholic. Those other types actually spent the years I was a Christian praising, even if at times reluctantly, those aspects of Catholicism with which the agreed. \u00a0 Pro-life? \u00a0Sure, Catholics rock! \u00a0Or so they said.<\/p>\n And yet the ICF, always out to show he or she is really the hip, cool, intellectual Christian who Jesus would want to party with if he were here, will pull out the best anti-Christian stereotypes, use it on fellow Christians, and then cry all the way to the Eucharist because other non-me Christian types just aren\u2019t as into it as I am.<\/p>\n Lesson learned. \u00a0When in a world of rising anti-Christian hatred, when calls to once and for all put the kibosh on all this right to be a traditional Christian garbage are beginning to increase, don\u2019t aid and abet the enemy. \u00a0Don\u2019t feel the need to take the worst things said about Christianity and Christians, endorse those things, and magically think because you are just all that and a bag of chips, the anti-Christian forces aren\u2019t applying them like a laser straight at you. \u00a0Fact is, if you think non-sex-culture Fundamentalists have a bad reputation in the country, it isn\u2019t anything compared to the lousy reputation regarding sexuality that Catholics have. \u00a0Every sperm is sacred anyone? \u00a0If you want to proclaim the True message of the Church\u2019s teaching about a subject like sexuality, you will increase your\u00a0credibility\u00a0by not positing yourself as the only valid interpreter of that teaching by celebrating the unfair and untrue\u00a0caricatures\u00a0applied to other Christian traditions.<\/p>\n For bonus example of other approaches the ICF embraces, Leah Libresco has had a series <\/a>\u00a0of <\/a>\u00a0posts <\/a>that originated as thinly veiled attempts to apply\u00a0philosophical, ethical, and theological arguments for why football is a bad thing. \u00a0This type of \u2018that which I loose should obviously be loosed, that which I bind should obviously be bound, and of course things I like or don\u2019t like are the measure of really pleasing God\u2019 is another symptom of fundamentalism \u2013 trying to use the tools and language of our Faith to support th One of the defining characteristics of fundamentalism, at least as popularly portrayed, is that of self-righteous judgement. \u00a0These are folks who, with a King James Bible in one hand and a rod of righteousness in the other, go around declaring how sinful everyone else is. \u00a0Nobody is as righteous as The Fundamentalist. \u00a0All are spiritually […]<\/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-2448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nose extra curricular activities I do or don\u2019t enjoy. \u00a0But since Leah is still in the journey, I\u2019ll cut her some slack. \u00a0More telling are those in her comboxes who try to take their own personal dislike of the game (it\u2019s\u00a0obvious), and with all the best academic and scholarly jargon, attempt to establish\u00a0 profound universal explanations for why\u00a0everyone\u00a0should\u00a0agree with them, under the auspices of \u2018clearly it\u2019s what really profoundly ethical types would think.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"