BenOpt-Out

July 14, 2015 By Max Lindenman

I’d like to get ahead of the crowd and opt out of the Benedict Option. I’m referring to Rod Dreher’s proposal that Christians adopt a “more consciously countercultural stance toward our post-Christian mainstream culture.” In agreement with After Virtue author Alisdair McIntyre, Dreher believes that a new dark age has dawned in the West. Just as St. Benedict helped preserve the Christian heritage after Rome’s fall by regulating and propagating monastic life, so 21st-century Christians should, in McIntyre’s words, invest... Read more

The Not-So-Simple Faithful

July 13, 2015 By Max Lindenman

How do you welcome someone who’s convinced he holds the deed to your house? That’s the question I’d put to Pope Francis. Or maybe I should say the latest question. Addressing an enormous crowd in Paraguay, he urged the Church to “welcome those who do not think as we do.” Maybe Paraguayan bishops are in the habit of conducting regular purges or checking IDs, but it seems to me that we in the US have been doing this all along.... Read more

Bill Cosby and Creepiness Creep

July 12, 2015 By Max Lindenman

Cancel the culture war. When newspapers of record start writing headlines in the language of teenage girls, you know there’s no culture left to have a war over. Following the public revelation of court documents in which Bill Cosby admitted obtaining Quaaludes for the purpose of getting women into bed, Washington Post associate editor Carlos Lozada reviews passages from the comedian’s books that he thinks reveal a predatory turn of mind. Or, as he puts it himself: “In hindsight, Bill... Read more

Pope Francis and the Mommy Trap

July 10, 2015 By Max Lindenman

The Holy Father is all about mothers. In Ecuador, he warned of a “mother wound,” which threatens to leave children too emotionally crippled to give and receive love. According to the pope, everyone emerges from childhood with a mother wound, since no mother is perfect, but the children of harsh or negligent mothers sustain an even deeper one. To help the family realize its potential as a “hospital” and a “domestic Church,” Francis proposed a “mama ministry” and a “mama... Read more

Of Obergefell and Ostracism

July 9, 2015 By Max Lindenman

Just as I was learning not to hate the term “national conversation,” gay marriage supporters decided to quit speaking to us. That would, at any rate, be the earnest wish of Daily Beast columnist Sally Kohn. In last Sunday’s piece, “The New, Post-Homophobic Christianity,” she ticks off all the denominations that have changed their teachings on homosexuality and asks, “Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized?” Her answer: “I sure hope so.” Regarding the social part, I’m curious to... Read more

Moral Injury Shows the Limits of Forgiveness

July 8, 2015 By Max Lindenman

Among veterans of the Global War on Terror, the conscience is alive and kicking. The problem is that it kicks very hard. In The Atlantic, Maggie Puniewska describes a growing awareness of moral injury – the term used by professionals used to denote “a psychic bruise” left after the patient, or someone close to the patient “violated a moral code.” For service members in war zones, these transgressions might include harming civilians, failing to rescue a comrade, or placing trust... Read more

Alessandro Serenelli: Sinner for Our Time?

July 7, 2015 By Max Lindenman

Yesterday, as Michelle Arnold and Simcha Fisher dutifully observed, was the Feast Day of St. Maria Goretti. Let’s give her the day off and turn our attention over to the sinner Alessandro Serenelli, who murdered her after she refused to have sex with him. He, too, may have something to say to this generation. The details of the crime are even more horrible than the broad-brush version that appears in most saint-of-the-day summaries. For one thing, Serenelli didn’t use a... Read more

Those Stupid Private Race Wars

July 6, 2015 By Max Lindenman

While marching last week through Istanbul’s super-historic Sultanahmet district to protest the Chinese government’s restrictions on Ramadan fasting for its Turkic Uighur minority, a gang of roughnecks from Turkey’s National Movement Party ran into a group of Chinese tourists. Fulfilling the calling of angry mobs everywhere, they went on the attack. The riot police promptly intervened and succeeded in saving the tourists, who turned out to be Korean. Korean soap operas have a huge following in Turkey, so the mistake... Read more

A Requiem for Abnormality

July 4, 2015 By Max Lindenman

A few weeks ago, a longtime reader, a gay man in his 60s – his age, as we’ll soon see, is relevant – PM’d me on Facebook and charged me with high treason. To credit him with realism and flexibility, he had not expected me to support any particular cause. But, in my piece accusing the Church of pastoral helplessness vis-a-vis transgender people, I had used a word that, in his judgment, had belittled him, and exalted myself, unforgivably. Here... Read more

Hiding My True Colors

June 30, 2015 By Max Lindenman

In my misspent youth – which is to say until my early 30s – I used to visit the clothing-optional section of Black’s Beach, in La Jolla, California. The appeal wasn’t strictly exhibitionistic or voyeuristic, although of course it contained elements of both. Visits there were profoundly relaxing, and, being a naturally tense person – I have woken up spitting shards of molar that I managed to grind off in my sleep – I figured I needed all the relaxation... Read more