Catholic and Enjoying It!
It’s gonna be a well-earned bloodbath. I keep thinking of that Simpson’s episode where they go to the Democrat convention and the signs read “We Hate Life And Ourselves” and “We Can’t Govern”. (Of course, the signs at the GOP convention read, “We Want What’s Worst For Everyone” and “We’re Just Plain Evil”.
Speaking of which, a word about my exceedingly low view of politics, ocassioned by my bleats of complaint last week about some of the Tea Party candidates.
A reader wrote:
Mark, you know that the tea party isn’t fascist. But by using that rehetoric you can ignore what they do say and bash them with impunity. It is disingenous. Consider the gospel this Sunday. Let’s reword it a bit. “And Mark prayed to himself saying. I am glad I am not like those other guys. They are all Bush lovers and torturers. Especially I am glad I am better then that tea party guy over there. I go to Mass on Sunday, have the right political views, and am theologically infallible.”
Do you see what I am getting at? Your attitude lacks any sense of humility or charity. You come across as self-rightous and arrogant. You don’t practice the golden rule and you do to others what you object to yourself. You don’t like being called a liberal or terrorist lover and it annoys you. You say that is false. Well…that is how those in the tea party find your rehetoric. It is wrong and insulting. Even worse you know it isn’t true, but are just trying to score points because you don’t like them or agree with them. You make them all out to be evil in the same way that the real fascists treated the Jews. Rather ironic. The tea party is no more fascist then the founding fathers were. You can criticize without being hateful. Even if you are right what use is it? In the gospel the Pharisee was “right” but went away unjustified because of his lack of love and his cruelty.
Btw, I don’t watch Beck.
Mark, I know I am being hard on you. But you are hard on conservatives and it seems almost everyone else. You need to occasionally take some criticism and really think about it. Be a bit more kind.
My intention was not to label the whole Tea Party fascist (so I changed the little label thingie from “Tea Party Fascists on the March” to merely “Bringin’ the Crazy”. However, it was to complain about my ongoing sense of disappointment that has only grown over the past six years or so, as it has dawned on me that the tribe I naively believed was serious about the claim to be “faithful conservative Catholics” (in sharp contradistinction to those damned progressive liberal cafeteria Catholics) is, to a large degree, simply in dissent from the Church about different things than progressive dissenters are. The endless torture justifications were the eye-opener for me. No, it’s not the case that all self-described conservative Catholics do this. But an awful lot do. So much of my sense of trust has been pretty effectively destroyed when it comes to claims that to be a Catholic on the right is to be a Catholic who takes seriously the Magisterium.
So when I see Tea Party candidates advocating “second amendment remedies” and suggesting the violent overthrow of the state is on the table if the election doesn’t produce desired results–and then listen to the typical tergiversations in defense of these loony propositions, my mind casts back to things like “just war doctrine”–a bit of Magisterial guidance that has already been treated with contempt once in the past decade by self-described conservative Catholics who had no problem at all chucking the unanimous guidance of two Popes and virtually all the world’s bishops to plunge us into a disastrous war. Now I hear Tea Party candidates who offer the unique perspective of loving your country so much that you should plunge it into civil war (a war which would, if successful, turn the US into something like Beirut, Lebanon and, if unsuccessful, would result in a couple of Wacos, some arrests and executions for treason, and the broad public conviction that the Right has devolved into craziness, a conviction perfectly justified by the facts (and corpses) on the ground).
Look. I sympathize with the Tea Parties. I sympathize with the awareness that the state is bleeding us dry. I loathe the Robin Hood in reverse economics of an age where people work and save, only to have it all vanish and then, to add insult to injury, more of their money is take in order to pay for rich guy’s retirements after they’ve bungled running their company. I don’t trust any pol. But then, I don’t trust many people when it comes to the lust for earthly power. I don’t mean to be mean, and I certainly don’t mean to send the message that I’m some how better than anybody. I don’t think I am. I think I’m as subject to temptation as the next person–and frequently give in to it, as my confessor would tell you if he were not bound by the seal. I am flippant to hide my fear. And my fear is that I will give a pass to my own tribe because they are my own tribe.
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