My dad could beat up your dad

People unfortunate enough to know me well know that my favorite humorist is Jack Handy of Deep Thoughts and SNL fame. Here is a Deep Thought which comes to my mind at the moment (source):

Grandpa used to describe the size of everything in terms of a calf. For instance, if he was describing a large dog, he would say it was 'about as big as a calf.' Or about a car, he would say it 'could seat four calves comfortably.' (Oh, that was another thing: how many calves could ride in something?) One time he was talking about a calf he had, and I asked him how big it was. He said it was 'about three-quarters as big as a calf.' Sometimes Grandpa would tell time by calves. If you asked him how long something would take, he'd say 'About as long as it takes a calf to drive over here.'

Yes, I know, completely absurd. And maybe you don't think it's very funny at all. I understand. Well, here's something else which is absurd and not very funny, and is a good illustration of obsessing, not about calves, but about Catholics. Witness a man who uses the occasion of a dear friend's death to attack his former coreligionists. Excerpt:

As Catholics, we figured an archbishop would be an exalted personage who carried himself with a sense of inner pomp. By that time, frankly, I had had quite enough of bishops and archbishops.

I was on the ropes spiritually, battered by several years of writing about the sex abuse scandal in my church, and disgusted beyond measure with our hierarchs. They carried themselves with such a pride and entitlement, but when it came to protecting the children of the faithful, they had disgraced themselves.

As usual, there's a lot here. "On the ropes" is a boxing metaphor. But what opponent is "battering" him in the ring? Dreher's answer: "several years of writing about the sex abuse scandal in my church". Ergo, he was beating himself up. Ding!

But this part made me laugh. Check out Dreher's own "santo subito"-induced blindness where his Gandalfian friend is concerned:

That said, Dmitri's leadership was not flawless. I never saw problems, because I came to know him only in the late winter of his life. But some parishioners with long memories told me that as personally holy and pastoral as he was, Dmitri hated conflict, and didn't exercise strong administrative oversight when he needed to have done so. (This is also true of Pope John Paul II, incidentally).

Oh, well, no staff-breaking scene from the Dallas Gandalf. Note the obligatory tu quoque tossed at John Paul II, a recent Catholic Pope, at the end of an otherwise boring paragraph.

Is it a coincidence that just about everything reminds the working boy of how much better Orthodoxy is than Catholicism? On March 17th, Rod Dreher attacked the Catholic Church in the midst of a piece supposedly about the glories of Eastern Orthodoxy. Back a few years ago, Rod Dreher used the occasion of the death of Father Richard Neuhaus to attack his differing views on priest scandals. If you were the proverbial man from Mars, you would have learned precious little about Eastern Orthodoxy or Father Neuhaus from those articles, but you might have probably noticed that the author disliked Catholicism a great deal and waited for a priest who was noted as a skilled rhetorician to pass away before attacking his views.

The Orthodox readers who comment on Dreher at this blog—on this post and others—reinforce the disgust that we Catholics have for his constant Catholic-bashing. They are embarrassed and appalled that someone seemingly ignorant of his new faith is so strident in condemning his former one. I invite them to add a first name or nick name to their comments so we have an easier time getting to know them.

How many times must the cannon balls fly at the Catholic Church? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.