{"id":100931,"date":"2017-08-09T15:52:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T22:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=100931"},"modified":"2017-08-09T15:53:22","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T22:53:22","slug":"culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html","title":{"rendered":"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \u201cdesecration<\/a>\u201d of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently refused Christian burial for decades<\/a> in order to\u00a0perform a 45 minute stump speech for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s back, still stumping for Donald and, with unerring timing, choosing the exact moment when Trump is threatening to commit what the Church calls a \u201ccrime against God and man meriting unequivocal condemnation\u201d in order to inform us<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to see someone who is driving the liberals crazy. They have been totally unhinged since November and I\u2019ll tell you what, it\u2019s going to get worse and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to get better until they just disappear from the American landscape altogether with their destructive philosophies \u2013 good riddance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The key takeaways here are that all who object to this lying, incompetent crook and self-c0nfessed sex predator are, by definition, both liberals and people motivated solely by destructive philosophies. \u00a0It goes without saying, of course, that they support abortion since this Fr. Pavone, one of the biggest leaders of the \u201cprolife\u201d movement condemning them and he certainly wouldn\u2019t condemn people who are prolife, would he? \u00a0No he would not. \u00a0So opponents \u00a0of Trump are ipso facto, babykillers.<\/p>\n

And since they are babykillers, it only stands to reason that all Right-Thinking Catholics can join with Fr. Pavone in saying that opponents of Trump need to \u201cjust disappear\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pity more priests don\u2019t use their pulpits for telling the 62% of Catholics who did not vote for Trump that they need to \u201cjust disappear\u201d. \u00a0That\u2019s what Mass is all about, isn\u2019t it? \u00a0\u201cCome unto me you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will tell you to just disappear if you didn\u2019t vote Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some time back, the Pope gave an interview with America<\/em><\/a> that helped kick off the four year long freakout that has been the relationship of American conservatives with Francis.<\/p>\n

For years and years, the perception that Christianity was essentially a school of moralism and ethics with smells and bells was primarily the province of the Left. \u00a0The conservative Evangelicalism (and Catholicism) in which I was formed had, again and again, to remind theological liberals that Jesus did not come primarily as a social reformer or prophet teaching about ethics, but as the Son of God here to suffer, die, and rise. \u00a0Ethics, while important, are an offshoot of the essentially supernatural mission of the Son of God to make us participants of the divine nature.<\/p>\n

But then, with the emergence of Pope Francis, all that seemed to suddenly change. When he said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you\u2026.<\/p>\n

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.<\/p>\n

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church\u2019s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026conservative Catholics suddenly lost their minds and freaked out that he was abandoning \u201clife issues\u201d which were the \u201ccore of the gospel\u201d.<\/p>\n

What?!<\/p>\n

No. \u00a0\u201cLife issues\u201d are not the core of the gospel. \u00a0Neither is the family, gay marriage, contraception, euthanasia, pacifism, a just wage, Laudato Si, climate change, or gun control. \u00a0It is not primarily about moralism at all.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the deal for anybody, left or right, who tries to turn the faith into a form of crowd control with a penchant for robes and funny hats. Christianity is essentially<\/em> supernatural. A\u00a0Christianity drained of the supernatural and \u2018purified\u2019 to its \u2018essentially moral teaching\u2019 is a Christianity purified of its Christianity. Any pagan can practice an ethical system and many pagans do. But it takes a real God Man to rise from the dead and that\u2019s what Jesus did.<\/p>\n

Christianity exists, not to bring the world news that prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude are admirable qualities for the very good reason that this is not news.<\/p>\n

It exists to bring the world the news that God was born in Bethlehem as a member of the species homo sapiens, that he lived as a Jew among that species, and that he was subjected to the death penalty by a Roman procurator, not in cloud cuckoo land, but at a definite GPS coordinate outside the walls of Jerusalem and then buried in a tomb you can still visit today.<\/p>\n

And it exists to announce that he rose from the dead, ate fish, was touched by the hands of men and women whose skeletons we can still see today, and then returned to heaven leaving behind 500 eyewitnesses to this fact who went to tortured deaths shouting it at the tops of their lungs.<\/p>\n

Anything\u2013including the family or precious babies\u2013that is put in the place of that is being turned, by us, into an idol. \u00a0And the tragedy is not merely that God is insulted, nor that we wind up seeking our happiness, fulfillment and completion from creatures who can never satisfy us, but that we put an intolerable and cruel burden on the creature which it can never bear.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of the sort of \u201cprolife\u201d cult that Fr. Pavone is now encouraging is that it is now eating itself from within. \u00a0What was once about saving babies and respecting life is now about using babies and seeking salvation through earthly power in the person of Donald Trump. \u00a0It will only end in tears if it does not return to its first love, which is not the unborn, but Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \u201cdesecration\u201d of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently refused Christian burial for decades in order to\u00a0perform a 45 minute stump speech for Donald Trump. Now he\u2019s back, still stumping for Donald and, with unerring timing, choosing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[926],"class_list":["post-100931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-abortion-but-not-prolife-monomaniac-heresy"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of "desecration" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of "desecration" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-09T22:52:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-08-09T22:53:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html\",\"name\":\"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-09T22:52:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-08-09T22:53:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\"},\"description\":\"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \\\"desecration\\\" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/\",\"name\":\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\",\"description\":\"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\",\"name\":\"Mark Shea\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mark Shea\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act","description":"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \"desecration\" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act","og_description":"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \"desecration\" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html","og_site_name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","article_published_time":"2017-08-09T22:52:56+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-08-09T22:53:22+00:00","author":"Mark Shea","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark Shea","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html","name":"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-08-09T22:52:56+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-09T22:53:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5"},"description":"Fr. Frank Pavone\u00a0was last seen committing what his own bishop called an act of \"desecration\" of an altar: \u00a0using the corpse of a baby he has evidently","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/08\/culture-warriors-not-priests-talk-act.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How Culture Warriors, Not Priests, Talk and Act"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/","name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","description":"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5","name":"Mark Shea","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Mark Shea"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}