A reader asks

I was fortunate enough to hear you speak at Theology on Tap in Sydney a little while back and I do recall you tackling some of the issues around the history of Christianity and unfair criticism of it by even other Christians.

Here’s an article that appeared, quite tragically I think, on an Australian Catholic News website. The original was in the Huffington Post it seems.

I’m not at all qualified or well read enough to be able to post a response to this, so I was wondering if you might be able to help out and have a go? I recall in your talk at Theology on Tap, you talked about the proud tradition of the Church with respect to art, literature and spirituality; and how this is oftentimes misrepresented or forgotten by critics.

I’m sorry if this is a rather weird request, and please forgive the abruptness of this email as well.

Yours sincerely in the Truth of Christ and His Church

If it were up to me, I’d title the piece something like “Vandal complains about the Mess She is Helping to Make”. What does she do in the piece after all? She, who actually knows a bit about the history of the West, is confronted with a student who know nothing at all, thanks to the Academy’s assiduous determination to kick down the ladder of history. Instead of telling the student about the riches of our history, she “doesn’t have the heart” to do so. Instead, she stands around in tragic grandeur pretending to lament that loss of memory while doing nothing to preserve the past except with a faux lamentation and a standard larding on of the expected rhetoric about how the past is the home of all pre-modern evils.

Meanwhile, the comboxes are full of the preening pride and ignorance that characterizes progressives who are sick of hearing what they have never yet heard.