{"id":55103,"date":"2014-10-07T00:11:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T07:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=55103"},"modified":"2014-12-28T20:44:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T03:44:28","slug":"francis-is-preparing-an-encyclical-on-ecology-for-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2014\/10\/francis-is-preparing-an-encyclical-on-ecology-for-2015.html","title":{"rendered":"Francis is preparing an encyclical on Ecology for 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yet another reason for the Greatest Catholics of All Time to wet themselves<\/a>. He won\u2019t say anything new, of course. \u00a0Though he may well say something old in a new way that will surprise us. \u00a0But he\u2019s damned from the outset by the Arugula Principle of Heretic-Burning \u201cConservatism\u201d. Permit me to explain.<\/p>\n

Long ago, when Rod Dreher wrote Crunchy Cons<\/em>, he remarked that he was going off to lunch to have something\u2013I forget what\u2026 so we\u2019ll say, arugula \u2026 and somebody at the offices at\u00a0NRO remarked that his food sounded \u201cliberal\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Arugula Principle. \u00a0Conservatism used to mean \u201cthe absence of ideology\u201d. \u00a0The refusal to politicize every damn little picky thing in the universe the way Marxists did. \u00a0But now the Thing the Used to be Conservatism politicizes and polarizes every stupid thing in the universe, even stuff like Muppets and the Lego Movie<\/em>. It is obsessed with the hunt for heretics and not the making of converts. And the poison has penetrated deep into the minds of \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d who increasingly evaluate Church teaching not by \u201cIs it true?\u201d or \u201cIs it in accord with the Tradition?\u201d but \u201cIs this liberal-sounding, like arugula?\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s why Reactionaries could pore over a beautiful piece of work like Evangelii Gaudium<\/em>, completely and totally ignore the central point (our mission to make converts and disciples of all nations to this beautiful Faith Christ has given us) and instead spend *all* their time whining and complaining that the pope had noted that one (1) of the obstacles to our work as evangelists is a \u201cself-absorbed promethean neo-pelagianism\u201d that turns the Church into Fortress Katolicus instead of the missionary enterprise it must be. \u00a0Result: self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagians hunkered down in Reactionary bunkers all over St. Blogs and refused to come out, cursing the pope for failing to recognized their greatness and for leaving the Fortress to bring in more worthless riff-raff and \u201cneo-cat vampires\u201d as one of the Greatest Catholics of All Time so colorfully put it.<\/p>\n

Well, words like \u201cecology\u201d suffer from exactly the same aroma of heresy as \u201carugula\u201d. \u00a0The Greatest Catholics of \u00a0All Time don\u2019t need to know what he will say. \u00a0It is sufficient to know that he is talking about, ew, ecology<\/em>. Only Liberals care about that (insert obligatory brief caveat about something something Genesis and something something \u201cnature is important but don\u2019t make a thing of it\u201d before returning to the attack). The simple fact is, for the Greatest Catholics of All Time, Francis will be talking about things that are ritually impure. He needs to \u201cstick to the essentials\u201d. \u00a0And for the\u00a0Greatest Catholics of All Time the \u201cessentials\u201d\u00a0are twofold:<\/p>\n

1. The Church\u2019s teaching as equal to and co-terminous with Liturgy Wars (with the EF existing in order to provide a basis for dismissing\u00a0the 99% of the Church who attend the OF as \u201cneo-Catholics\u201d) and<\/p>\n

2. Morality as consisting solely of \u201chaving the correct views on abortion (except for children we want to abort in wars<\/a> or if they threaten a GOP shot at the Presidency<\/a>), euthanasia (except for prisoners we want to mercy kill with capital punishment<\/a>), embryonic stem cell research (except when a Republican favors it<\/a>), gay \u201cmarriage\u201d, and human cloning.<\/p>\n

Francis, in conceiving of Catholic teaching as, you know, Catholic<\/em>, goes way beyond such Minimum Daily Adult Requirement approaches to the the Church\u2019s social doctrine\u00a0and actually advocates the whole<\/em> of Catholic teaching, including the bits that are beyond the narrow confines of acceptable discourse in the circles of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism. Which makes him a very bad Catholic according to the Greatest Catholics of All Time. So God has chosen them to stop him by complaining in comboxes and panicking on blogs about his \u201ccold dead eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n

It makes for, so to speak, a bad environment. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another reason for the Greatest Catholics of All Time to wet themselves. He won\u2019t say anything new, of course. \u00a0Though he may well say something old in a new way that will surprise us. \u00a0But he\u2019s damned from the outset by the Arugula Principle of Heretic-Burning \u201cConservatism\u201d. Permit me to explain. Long ago, when […]<\/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":[374],"class_list":["post-55103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nFrancis is preparing an encyclical on Ecology for 2015<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yet another reason for the Greatest Catholics of All Time to wet themselves. 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