After a week of anticipation, we now know the culprit behind the massive leak of classified documents to a Discord server. He is Jack Teixeira, and he’s being described as a “patriot” and a “Catholic.”
And nobody’s surprised.
In case you’ve just joined us, it recently hit the news that a large number of classified documents, many to do with Russia’s war on Ukraine, had been posted on a discord server for gamers and were spreading all over the internet. The Pentagon was blindsided. Fortunately for everyone, the leaker was not a mastermind and used his own name and credit card information on social media. What seemed like five minutes after the news of the leaks broke, the New York Times was reporting that they’d tracked down his identity, and afterwards the feds said he was a person of interest, which seems like the opposite order to what usually happens. Next thing we knew, there was the photo of the arrest: Teixeira, in bright red gym shorts, being marched down a sunny street by gun-toting soldiers in flack jackets.
After the arrest, right on schedule, we got the interviews with friends. These were the standard descriptions of what a normal all-American fella Teixeira was, when he wasn’t committing espionage or yelling antisemitic and racist slurs. It always fascinates me how quickly the media rockets back and forth between describing obvious depravity and describing how ordinary the depraved person is, if the depraved person is a comfortably well off white kid with an impish smile. Teixeira is a libertarian, of course. He is a patriot who loves his country and is proud to serve in the military, all the while committing espionage. And, his friends told the media, he is a devout Catholic. In fact, Catholicism was one of the things the gamers discussed on the Discord, along with guns and edgy memes. They describe Teixeira as a “basic-brand Catholic,” a descriptor that’s been bouncing around in my own cradle Catholic brain for the last few days.
It certainly says a lot about how far off the rails American Catholicism has gone, that the kid who committed espionage on a Discord server can be described as a “basic brand Catholic” and a libertarian gun nut.
Being a libertarian gun nut who yells racist slurs has nothing to do with Catholicism. Catholics are supposed to believe in the common good and the universal destination of goods. We are taught that racism is a sin. We’re supposed to believe that killing is wrong and let the principle of double-effect govern when we have to defend ourselves with deadly force. Furthermore, we’re supposed to respect the laws of the country we’re in insofar as we can do so without sinning, but not be afraid to disobey where compliance would be a sin– espionage to impress your gamer friends doesn’t seem to fit those criteria. But in America, this tracks. This is something that can be described as a “basic brand Catholic.”
This is what we’ve come to expect of a certain type of Catholic. There’s an odd unholy alliance between American Catholics of a certain stripe, and the nastiest of the American Evangelical Protestants who don’t really even think Catholics are saved, which has become a culture in itself. This kind of Catholicism is so common and expected in America that you sound silly when you point it out, just as you’d sound silly for remarking that the sky was blue or that Bradford pear trees smell horrible.
This alliance has a history. I’m not the best expert to walk you through it, but I know some about it. It has nothing to do with theology; it has a lot to do with which ethnic groups code as “white” in America and which code as “foreigner,” and how this goalpost moves, and which religious practices were folded into the mantle of “respectable American Christian” because of it. It has a lot to do with Nixon’s re-election campaign and a bit to do with the megachurches in Orange County. It has something to do with the Dixiecrats and the Civil Rights movement. It has less than you’d think to do with Roe versus Wade and a bit to do with 9/11. The important thing to know is that somewhere along the line, a libertarian gun nut who considers himself a “patriot” yet fantasizes about Waco and Ruby Ridge, became a stereotype of American Catholic. Of course he joined the military. Of course he’s a 21-year-old white man who looks about twelve. Of course the newspapers are spamming us with his most innocent photographs and weirdly glossing over his shouting of racist slurs. It’s a type that Catholics in Germany or France or South Korea or Sudan might not recognize as “Catholic,” but we have them here.
It shouldn’t be a type.
If Catholics practiced what we’re supposed to believe to the hilt, such a type would be unheard of, but here we are.
This phenomenon of “Catholic” being identified with something incongruous and anti-Christ is not unique to my particular culture, of course. If Catholics practiced what we’re supposed to believe to the hilt, there also wouldn’t be a stereotype about preening, decadent, wealthy Cardinals who call everybody a heretic, or popes who hate scientists, or superstitious rural priests who think everybody is a witch. The Catholic Church has always been both a set of rules and a body of terrible people who do terrible things in a way that’s culturally acceptable.
In my country, at this point in history, Jack Teixeira is a basic brand Catholic. So is Robert Hanssen, if you recall. I’m a little surprised it hasn’t turned out that the Teixerias are an Opus Dei family.
This is the part where I’m supposed to say that Jack isn’t a REAL Catholic, but I’m not going to say that. Every Catholic is a real Catholic. We’re stuck with each other. Every unfortunate cultural movement that Catholics muck around with becomes part of the history of what it is to be a Catholic. If you’re Catholic, this is your circus. This is our circus. This absolute nut is a basic-brand Catholic.
I have no idea what we’re supposed to do about this, but here we are.
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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