Pikkumatti's Comment

Pikkumatti's comment deserves a post of it's own.

I was wondering what it is about Dreher that gets all of our danders up. Pauli's blog is relatively quiet, but then we have a Dreher-related post and blammy.

And then Pauli nails it. It isn't so much that the crunchy One left our Church -- that happens all the time. It isn't so much that he is a conservative poser -- we've got plenty of those around, esp. in Congress.

It is that he poses as a conservative somewhat-Orthodox Christian to the non-believing or fringe-believing "intellectual" world (think Franklin the pagan), and trashes the Church in front of them. (Ditto for conservative issues, but that hits a duller nerve.)

As I wrote back at the time of the Great Orthodox Conversion, it was as though he tossed a stink bomb into a party that he just left. And then called a crowd outside the house to watch the mayhem through the windows. We couldn't help but defend the Church, but to the outsiders, that defense couldn't help but appear ungracious at the least.

And the pagans et al think that Dreher himself plus the harsh words of the defenders are what the Church is all about. Either we are snobs who claim to care about Truth but will change our views for issue-convenience (Dreher) or we are just a bunch of touchy nutcases.

As Pauli said, we appear as believers in a system with no internal logic. And that unfair and incorrect appearance is not only annoying, but in fact is the deepest cut -- made by someone who should know better. That is what gets to me about him, anyway.

I think that's a good summary of what infuriates the infuriated.

Another reader remarked on the phenomenon of Rod Dreher being the one topic causing the most comments on the blog. That was about a year ago. I laughed at the time, and I still do. Although I don't post things merely for the sake of comments, it's obvious that comments―among other indicators―serve to demonstrate the interest level on the topic being blogged. But here's something else interesting to note. Over the last few days, a good portion of the hits on my humble blog have been coming from a google search of "dreher neuhaus", so it's not just the usual suspects driving up the interest level, outsiders―those not involved in the original discussions―are interested in this topic, too.

Also, I suppose I should find someone to blame for using a big nasty bowling word in said comment section. Well, I was watching this and this along with other Steeler-related material which might account for a spike in testosterone levels. This is not to mention 4-hours of Jack Bauer to kick-off the week. But it's possible that I'm just a crude human being who's prone to crudeness now and then. So let that be a lesson to me.

BTW, Tom, the Ravens are going down, mutha.



Update: To be fair, not everything that goes on over here makes Christianity look good to all people either, and maybe I ought to think about cleaning up my act a bit (burrrp.)