{"id":98550,"date":"2016-12-30T00:31:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T07:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=98550"},"modified":"2016-12-30T01:36:05","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T08:36:05","slug":"hes-right-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2016\/12\/hes-right-know.html","title":{"rendered":"He’s right, you know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Former Obama staffer Michael Wear tries to tell the Smartest People in the Room that the Democrats really do have a religion problem<\/a> and that the believers they so often hold in transparent contempt have gotten the message.<\/p>\n

As a general rule of thumb, I can expect most of the contempt for the Church\u2019s moral<\/em> teaching (except for the Pelvic issues) to come from the Right. Just as a taste of what I mean by that, here\u2019s Breitbart comboxers heaping one of many loads of manure on Francis<\/a> for having the temerity to quote St. Basil the Great and St. Francis on the warning that money is \u201cthe devil\u2019s dung.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money? \u00a0What does that have to do with the Church *moral* teaching? \u00a0Precisely the fact that that question is so commonly asked on the Right demonstrates how deep the blindness goes. \u00a0Economics, we are regularly informed by the Right, has nothing to do with morality. \u00a0But in fact, economics is about virtually nothing but moral judgments made by human beings concerning how they will order their use of resources for the flourishing or destruction of the common good of human life. \u00a0The fact that conservative Catholics are almost totally blind to that\u2013and that libertarians actively battle that\u2013is precisely my point, as it was Dale Ahlquist\u2019s some years back<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The illusion that Catholic morality and orthodoxy is almost entirely about what you do with your groin, coupled with a few aesthetic obsessions about how the liturgy should be celebrated while the entire economic sphere is left to libertarian dogmas is why I say most of the hostility to the Church\u2019s moral teaching comes from the Right. \u00a0Jesus talks about money more than any other subject. \u00a0And his guidance is at radical odds with contemporary right wing dogmas but strangely reflected by the Church and by the teaching of this hated-by-the-right pope (and his predecessors).<\/p>\n

But that said, most of the contempt for the Church\u2019s theological<\/em> teaching (and, of course, her teaching about Pelvic Issues) comes from the Left. And it is *contempt* indeed. \u00a0From lectures on my need to fall down in praise of \u201cPiss Christ\u201d to scolding for my failure to admire the blasphemy of \u201cThe Last Temptation of Christ\u201d to casual insults from overgrown high school sophomores who think it the height of sophistication to invoke the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the ambient noise from Democrats (often directed toward fellow Democrats, such as Rebecca Hamilton, who is a very serious believer) is casual scorn. \u00a0It\u2019s the sort of \u201cyou\u2019ll learn how we do things around here\u201d insouciant arrogance that makes very clear who the losers and second class citizens are. \u00a0And when the people who treat believers with this kind of contempt lose, they are so out of touch with the people they alienate they can\u2019t even attempt to bridge the conceptual gap between themselves and an actual believer in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really bizarre in some ways. \u00a0People who will go out of their way\u2013and rightly so\u2013to try to have some empathy for somebody from a completely different cultural background and understand how they think and what they cherish, cannot be bothered to cross the street in their own neighborhood and try to comprehend why a Christian might be just as offended by a Tim Kaine trying to exploit his Faith for political gain as they are by a Trump posing with Jerry Falwell, Jr. in front of his Playboy <\/em>cover shot. \u00a0They can\u2019t seem to grasp that endorsements from Philistine mockers of Jesus Christ like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Seth MacFarlane might somehow be off-putting to people who call him Lord and mourn his sorrowful Passion and celebrate his glorious Resurrection as the central fact of life, the universe, and everything. \u00a0Democrats who would never think to immerse a Quran in a bottle of urine so often find themselves amazed when Christians feel disrespected at the New York Times<\/em> calling them intolerant for failing to applaud how well-aimed the recent gobbet of spit in their eye was.<\/p>\n

I am, believe me, acutely aware that many Christians present a scandalous witness to Jesus Christ. \u00a0Dan Miller\u2019s appalling mockery of Carrie Fisher\u2019s death (for Jesus and Teh Babeez) is but the most recent in a long line of embarrassing crap Trumpified Christianity has presented the world.<\/p>\n

But, you know, there are still a helluva lot of Christians out here who are good and decent people who live out their Faith with honor and love. \u00a0And the self-regarding myth of the Noble Unbeliever Who Puts All Those Religious Hypocrites to Shame is something the intolerant cultured despisers on the Left should revisit. \u00a0When Sarah Silverman\u2019s nihilist mockeries of Christ and his followers go, not merely unchecked, but applauded, it is as much a stain on the Left as the unchecked applause of Trump\u2019s assaults on common decency are on the Right. \u00a0Not all unbelievers are noble rebukes to Christian hypocrisy. \u00a0Sometimes they are just cruel jackasses. \u00a0And the bulk of these mockers and cultured despisers of Jesus Christ and his devout, decent followers are, like it or not, on the Left. \u00a0And his followers, not being blind and deaf, get that message loud and clear.<\/p>\n

So I say to the Left what I say to the Right. \u00a0If your goal is to put ideology above relationship with persons, then carry on. \u00a0Ignore the goodness and decency that is so often present among the people you have chosen to scapegoat and reject. \u00a0Paint them as the vile cartoons you want to think they are. \u00a0Don\u2019t court their vote but drive them away. \u00a0But if you want to work for the common good, try treating them as you might treat the members of an alien culture or religion. \u00a0Make fun of genuine hypocrisy and sin all you like. I certainly do. But consider some other approach than condescension and dripping mockery of Jesus and genuine faith in him. You might be pleasantly surprised to discover that countless believers in Jesus Christ are not morons, Pharisees, and crooks and that historic Christian orthodoxy\u2013essentially summed up in the creed\u2013has real intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic vigor still.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Obama staffer Michael Wear tries to tell the Smartest People in the Room that the Democrats really do have a religion problem and that the believers they so often hold in transparent contempt have gotten the message. As a general rule of thumb, I can expect most of the contempt for the Church\u2019s moral […]<\/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":[870],"class_list":["post-98550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pleas-for-sanity"],"yoast_head":"\nHe's right, you know<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Obama staffer Michael Wear tries to tell the Smartest People in the Room that the Democrats really do have a religion problem and that the\" \/>\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\/2016\/12\/hes-right-know.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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