He writes:<\/p>\n
Hey Mark,<\/p>\n
You may or may not remember me by my name, and we\u2019ve never met in person, but I\u2019ve been a reader of yours for years (and we\u2019re Facebook\u00a0friends!) and I\u2019ve appreciated and learned a lot from your take on American Politics and its relationship to Church teaching.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hi!\u00a0 Sorry for my incredible slowness to reply.\u00a0 I\u2019m working on three books\u2013cuz I\u2019m stupid.<\/p>\n
And so I\u2019ve been thinking about the state you find yourself in, which seems to be defending the Church from<\/em>\u00a0right-wing Catholics.\u00a0 Which is different than 2002 when I first came across you as part of the St. Blog\u2019s webring.\u00a0 I\u2019d say this started with the waterboarding stance that you and Erin \u201cRed Cardigan\u201d staked out, but it\u2019s only gotten worse since then, and since Trump, it seems to have hit a bat-shit-crazy level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Southern Baptist Russell Moore, a good man, remarked a couple of years ago that the Religious Right are the people the Religious Right warned you about 20 years ago.\u00a0 I never would have dreamed I would live in a time where the people I took seriously and honestly believed were committed, non-cafeteria Catholics who respected the Holy Father, took the Church\u2019s whole teaching seriously, and believed the ends did not justify the means would morph into this Freak Show that hates the Holy Father\u2019s living guts, is 100% committed to a lying, sadistic sex predator and con man, and believes whole-heartedly in doing any evil necessary to gain a good end.\u00a0 Nor would I have believed that they could morph so quickly.\u00a0 It is hard for me to see this seduction as anything but diabolical in origin.<\/p>\n
In particular, I\u2019ve been thinking about some of the discussions you\u2019ve had on Facebook with <strike>Catholic<\/strike> Republicans, and why you are being met with the responses you are.\u00a0 [Can you tell that I\u2019m stuck on HTML 2.0, and only spend time on the world wide web as a consumer, not as a content-provider?]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I stand impressed and believe you must still kill at playing Oregon Trail and Zork.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t really just thinking about you, it\u2019s about the whole nature of political and religious discourse: I\u2019m feeling kind of discouraged as I see friends and fellow Catholics (including some clergy that I know) thinking with the GOP instead of thinking with the Catholic Church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I hear you.<\/p>\n
Especially the bit about how are people really confused about Pope Francis?\u00a0 You\u2019ve written it before, but you recently published something on that topic, and I completely agree with it.\u00a0 Pope Francis is not the rigorous theologian that BXVI is, and more importantly, he is not going to clarify statements or doctrine in the way that BXVI would.\u00a0 Personally, as an educator and academic, this is frustrating and goes against my training, but I would be disingenuous if I tried to claim that it is the least bit confusing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yep.\u00a0 It\u2019s not confusing.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that they hate what he is saying.\u00a0 Because he threatens their views on evangelism (Francis: Evangelize! Cult:\u00a0 But that brings riff raff into the Church who don\u2019t care about our aesthetic obsessions!) and the poor (Francis:\u00a0 Put the Least of These first!\u00a0 Cult: But that threatens the power of white ethnonationalists who dream of being Trump someday!)<\/p>\n
The holy father\u2019s ambiguity comes from the fact that his statements are pastoral ones and not academic ones, and any clarifying followup would defeat the purpose of what he was trying to say to the people he was saying it to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yep.\u00a0 He has spent his life talking to Jose Sixpak in his little home in the favela.\u00a0 He has seen the glories of US policy from the other end of the gun barrel.<\/p>\n
However, I was thinking in reference to you, and the effect that the internet interactions has been having on you.\u00a0 And, as I was cutting down the jungle that is my back yard this evening, I might have an insight that could be helpful to you:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Okay.\u00a0 Fire away!<\/p>\n
What you\u2019ve been doing now for quite some time is catechetics.\u00a0 And you do it well.\u00a0 Your ability to develop rational lines of argument is strong, and you also have a good ability to identify aspects of peoples\u2019 understanding that are lacking and address your rational arguments in that direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thank you.<\/p>\n
But, what we are experiencing in the American Church (especially the parts that put the American part first and the Church part second or third) is not a lack of catechetics.\u00a0 Especially among right-wing Catholics the problem is not primarily a lack of catechetical formation (there is a lack, as evidence by the basic obliviousness exhibited toward authentic Catholic teaching, such as the definition of Social Justice) but what is blocking their understanding is rather a lack of discipleship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I agree with that.\u00a0 Much of the catechesis (I discover far too late) was rooted in the questions and issues that dominated Evangelical\/Catholic encounter in the 90s and beyond.\u00a0 Certainly that was the case with me.\u00a0 And I was graced by formation from a number of people who took discipleship to Jesus Christ in the heart of his Church for granted, Sherry Weddell (among several others) among them.\u00a0 I took it for granted when allegedly \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d told me they respected the Magisterium and were not interested in picking and choosing from the Tradition merely to accessorize their politics.\u00a0 It took me a loooooong time to realize that my simplistic trust in that claim was ill-founded.\u00a0 The first intimations that something was seriously wrong was the total embrace of torture by so many \u201cfaithful prolife\u201d Catholics, who led the charge for war on the Church\u2019s teaching.\u00a0 Then came the revolt against Francis and the stunning embrace of Trump and the game became clear: discipleship was not on the table for a shocking percentage of Catholics who proudly spent their time declaring that other Catholics (including the Pope) were \u201cfake Catholics\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s about power and rules and forcing people to act out of law and fear.\u00a0 The idea of conversion by the power of grace is not even on the radar.\u00a0 The Faith is something more like an abstraction or a set of rules.\u00a0 The very idea of a living relationship with Jesus in the heart of his Church is touchy-feely New Age pap, or else something reserved for \u201csaints\u201d, not ordinary people.\u00a0 Sherry\u2019s Forming Intentional Disciples<\/em><\/a> really nails this dynamic and show why it\u2019s conversion or bust.<\/p>\n
Sherry has been preaching for a long time about the dearth of discipleship that has been replaced by a knowledge of the doctrines of the faith, and I think what you are experiencing online is the obstinate refusal to submit to discipleship.\u00a0 I suspect that the lack of discipleship has always been there; if accusation is confession, the cries of \u201ccafeteria Catholicism\u201d from the JPII and BXVI era show that the problem existed before Francis ascended to the Chair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah.\u00a0 And unfortunately, I am enough of Platonist (and my charism is ordered toward teaching so strongly) that it is extraordinarily difficult for me to accept the reality that no amount of clarity can make somebody see what they do not want to see, nor achieve what only the Holy Spirit can do by an act of grace.\u00a0 It\u2019s intensely frustrating to me\u2013as well as deeply heartbreaking because it is precisely the subculture I have always reflexively identified myself with since I became Catholic that is now, in overwhelming percentages, the biggest enemy of the Holy Father (who I regard as a good man). They are also the biggest enemies of most of the Church (whom they regard as they regard\u00a0 me: a bunch of losers and reprobates who need to be kicked out so the Church can be \u201cpurified\u201d to include only themselves).<\/p>\n
But my point in sharing this with you is that it might inform your tactics.\u00a0 Since the problem won\u2019t be solved by a rational defense of rationality, you\u2019re just going to keep beating your head against your keyboard if you continue to offer those rational defenses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course.\u00a0 But what else is there?\u00a0 Irrational defenses?\u00a0 All I know to do is to keep trying to be clear.\u00a0 These days, I\u2019ve given up writing for the Francis-hating admirers of Trump and I\u2019m mostly trying to bear witness to legitimately scandalized people (both believers and non-believers) that there are still 7000 in Israel who have not bent the knee to Baal.\u00a0 I often don\u2019t do that well, because I struggle with both outrage at the assaults on human decency from the Cult and with crushing heartbreak over the spectacle of Christian Court Prophets for these horrors.\u00a0 I go to confession a lot and try to make it right when I fail on the blog.\u00a0 But, of course, such is the nature of things that when you fail to apologize you are told you are proud and when you do you are told you are a liar.\u00a0 Fun!<\/p>\n
On the other hand, prophets might sometimes be called to keep beating their heads against their keyboards, because you are obviously reaching some of your readers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have no views on my being a prophet (except inasmuch as all the baptized are prophets, priests and kings in Christ).\u00a0 I just know that I can\u2019t not speak.\u00a0 I can\u2019t<\/em>.\u00a0 I could not look God\u2013or my children and grand-children\u2013in the eye when (please God!) this degrading episode in the life of the American Church is past and say, \u201cI did nothing.\u00a0 I said nothing.\u00a0 When Christians overwhelmingly conformed and spoke a torrent of lies, I just joined in and took the money and kept my head down and shut my mouth.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve lost a helluva lot of friends.\u00a0 And sometimes deservedly so, because anger is my besetting sin.\u00a0 But on the whole, the ones I have retained are people who, even when I sin, confront me with love and do not embarrass me with lies or nauseate me with excuses for disgusting evils.<\/p>\n
As with most things I write down, this thought seemed a lot more insightful when it was still on the inside of my head.\u00a0 So, reading over what I just wrote, I probably haven\u2019t said anything useful.\u00a0 But in the interest of publishing every thought no matter how stupid, I\u2019m going to hit \u201csend\u201d anyway.\u00a0 At least know that I support you and my prayers are with you.\u00a0 Stay strong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thank you so much for this genuine encouragement.\u00a0 I apologize again for taking so long to respond.\u00a0 I deeply appreciate your prayers.\u00a0 May God bless your work in the Vineyard and please write me again if you ever feel you need to correct or rebuke me.\u00a0 Faithful are the wounds of a friend.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He writes: Hey Mark, You may or may not remember me by my name, and we\u2019ve never met in person, but I\u2019ve been a reader of yours for years (and we\u2019re Facebook\u00a0friends!) and I\u2019ve appreciated and learned a lot from your take on American Politics and its relationship to Church teaching. Hi!\u00a0 Sorry for my […]<\/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":[8],"class_list":["post-115515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mailbag"],"yoast_head":"\n
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