Fr. Joseph O’Leary responds with a good solid lie

by continuing to use the word “neoCath” in a way that only he and his immediate circle seem to do. For him, it simply seems to mean “any conservative Catholic I dislike” or, more briefly, “all conservative Catholics”. His most recently targeted “neoCaths” are people who would not be caught dead associating with the likes of me or Scott or Jimmy or other people whose “enthusiasms and opinions are mostly defined by John Paul II’s papacy” (as was defined for me to the general applause of other self-described Traditionalists). Why? Because we don’t regard Nostra Aetate as a disastrous concession to the Perfidious Jew. We don’t think JPII’s overtures to the Jewish people to be contemptible. We don’t, in a word, see the Jews tunnelling under our houses.

In short, one of the many bones of contention with John Paul II to be found in the so-called Traditionalist community (which is who O’Leary is really targeting when he gripes about anti-semitism) is a cherished and lovingly preserved hostility to Jews. The documentation of that is shown right in O’Leary’s article. It is a small readout of anti-semitic twaddle from people who describe themselves as “Traditionalist” and it has nothing to do with those whom those very sources contemptously refer to as “neo-Catholics”. The failure to be anti-semitic is, indeed, one of the charges continually made against us “neo-Catholics” by Traditionalists (or more precisely, by *some* Traditionalists). Among our many sins of docility to the Council and the Pope is that we tend to follow JPII in being “too friendly with the Jews”, doncha know.

Down deep (perhaps down shallow), I think Fr. O’Leary knows this. But when you are engaged in an Internet-wide battle to ignore your priestly duties while prattling on and on and *on* in comboxes about the glories of gay sex, you can’t be held back by things like honesty in tarring the foe with the ugly charge of Jew hatred.

Update: However, I do have to give him credit for this. It’s the part of Wilde’s hagiography that Stephen Fry never got around to mentioning. The weird campaign to somehow punish the late Abp. Dermot Ryan for his role in the Irish sex abuse case by renaming the park after a serial predator is one of the more spectacular displays of obtuseness in our time. Wilde himself, to his credit, became a penitent Catholic, remarking, “The Catholic Church is for sinners. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”

Oh, and by the way, I’ve walked past that park, which is directly across the street from Wilde’s house in Dublin. There’s a statue of Wilde sitting on a rock. Dublin is filled with statues to a) people who helped kick out the Brits and b) poets. Lovely town!