Orthodox Barbara-Marie Drezhlo schools Rod Dreher on motes and beams
Matthew 7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Pauli had previously posted about Rod Dreher using both scurrilous news reports and outright fabrications to take another revenge swipe at the Catholic Church, a 2,000-year-old institution he left not long ago for somehow failing his needs in ways that Dante hasn't quite yet (with Dante there is still hope for a book deal). Tom Piatak of Chronicles and Red Phillips of Conservative Heritage Times each took note and called him out on it, and Dreher was forced to recant - or at least forced to be as honest as he is capable of being short of an outright waterboarding.
Now none other than Barbara-Marie Drezhlo whips it out and takes a shot at that soaking, forcing Dreher to at least dab a little sanctimony behind each ear with respect to Stanley Brittain and 'fess up:
Thank God they’ve put this wretched man behind bars. He should have been defrocked years ago. Why? According to a 2011 internal investigative report in the Orthodox Church in America (PDF here), Metropolitan Jonah reassigned him even though he sexually harassed a Reader at a church in Alaska (the details of the case are pathetic), and was allegedly discovered seeking out online gay hookups after he left for Australia in the company of his former bishop. The internal (SMPAC) report was right to hold Jonah responsible for allowing the depraved monk Brittain to serve in that Oregon parish, but what the internal report did not say was that Bishop Benjamin of the OCA’s Diocese of the West specifically requested that Brittain be released to his care and supervision. As I wrote a couple of years ago...
Whatever. Because Dreher offers no corresponding link to his own writing, however, frankly I have no idea whether what he goes on to say was actually written a couple of years ago as he claims or more conveniently dashed out only a couple of hours ago to neatly fit current needs. Or maybe he's just fuzzy on the details. Something in his eye, perhaps.
In fact, a casual reader only skimming Dreher's post might even be misled into thinking the perp was just another representative of the Catholic Church: the word "priest" immediately pops up as the tenth word encountered in the post. Seven paragraphs later "Orthodox" finally emerges as the 200th.
Other readers are encouraged to fill in the timelines more completely here. Where was Dreher and what was he doing with respect to the enabler Metropolitan Jonah in 2011? I think it's safe to conclude, though, that the only reason Dreher is now admitting that there are problems in his own Orthodox Church is that the episode in question happened in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the Orthodox communion he tiptoed away from without a peep, certainly without the wailing tantrum he delivered when leaving the Catholic Church, not in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) communion he has since affiliated his handmade backyard St. Francisville church with (when you order your new priest online yourself, I'm pretty sure that counts as handmade).
So why did Dreher order up a different Orthodox communion when putting together his personal Orthodox church several years ago? Why not just stick with the OCA? And, loquacious as he is, why not tell us all why, over and over and over again?
But while motes and beams may periodically clog his vision, as long as Rod Dreher remains religiously nimble enough there will never, ever be any flies on him. Wannabe religious hustlers and cult leaders out there take note: this is the model you want to study and follow. This is once again a master at work.
I recently created a cut-and-paste archive of Dreher's famous work Orthodoxy and Me. I didn't want it to be lost; I think that it is useful to look at it every now and again because it's such a treasure trove of excuse-making and logical fallacy.
ReplyDeleteI would advise people on the fence about converting Catholicism to definitely read it—in many instances it might be just the push they need.
Lol...thanks so much for this. Busy now but more later. Guys, email me sometime soon, ok?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI added an archive page for the famous Obstacles To Keeping It Local which I had copied before the abrupt departure of the Bonnie Blue Review back in Jan 2014. I think it's an incredible narrative that invites many questions: Is the writer a good source of information regarding serious topics such as religion or policy? Does the writer "get out much"? Is he in touch with the problems of normal people? Is it possible that the writer carries trivial obsessions like the one detailed here into other areas of his writing?
ReplyDeleteThat linked article is hilarious.
DeleteHe drives to Baton Rouge so they can shop at Whole Foods. Mama mia. "Is he in touch with the problems of normal people?" Ah, I think the answer to that one would be no, nein, non, and nyet. (That last one was the ROCOR response.)
Hey, Rod, just shop at freaking Winn-Dixie. I bet there's one in St Fancisville. They were all over Loozyana back when we lived there. Their store-brand BBQ sauce is great.
I'd add one more question to Pauli's list: Is the writer an honest analyst of the actual issues involved?
DeleteThe sour cream story provides the obvious answer. In that story, as usual, Dreher crams the actual problem into his preconceived "cause", square-peg-in-round-hole style. The sampled sour cream issue has little to do with whether the store is a mom-and-pop or a LeBlanc's or a Whole Foods -- it has much more to do with the behavior of Dreher's St. Francisville neighbors. But no, Dreher turns it into a localvore issue.
Of course, I'll guess that a St. Francisville branch of Whole Foods wouldn't have the problem because the locals wouldn't pay their prices.
P.S. I bet there are Frenchmen who dig into the sour cream on store shelves, too.
P.S. I bet there are Frenchmen who dig into the sour cream on store shelves, too.
DeleteLOL. I bet you're right.
I think it's an incredible narrative that invites many questions: Is the writer a good source of information regarding serious topics such as religion or policy? Does the writer "get out much"? Is he in touch with the problems of normal people? Is it possible that the writer carries trivial obsessions like the one detailed here into other areas of his writing?
ReplyDeleteI think we all understand that what Dreher has been engaged in his whole life has been little more than the scribbler's version of real estate flipping, but I'm wondering this time whether the greater fool theory will end up pushing him into his final position of incompentence. I don't doubt even Dreher is finally beginning to figure out that having a remarkable agent can never cure the chronic, congenital problems of a bad, psychologically disturbed writer, proof of the latter being one failed book after another. Nonetheless, once more into the breach
As many of you have suspected, I will be writing a book about all this. It’s called How Dante Can Save Your Life. I do not yet have permission to disclose the name of the publisher, but the deal has been struck, and the book is definitely going to happen.
There is a horror beginning to descend upon Dreher now, evident in these recent melancholy posts about his dying father, namely the dawning recognition that he will ultimately be recognized as the most fabulously consumerist, wealthiest, least accomplished Dreher in his family's history. His father and uncles and cousins did real things and built real things. His sister helped positively shape the lives of thousands of people in thousands of ways. By contrast, Rod Dreher only became notorious for talking loudly and frequently in a manner calculated to irritate and provoke others. He is a famous blogger, a literary barista. Nothing of his book production has been anything but parasitic on the lives of others; even now, the Dante book is being shilled as a "bookend" to the Ruthie book as a marketing gimmick.
I have no doubt Yeats' quintessential Hollow Man was "saved" by the galvanizing prospect of pushing and writing a Dante book, but what will there be left to save him after that's done? As he writes a little earlier in the piece I quoted:
Sitting at the foot of my father’s bed today, I thought about how for years, I lived in unhappy exile, always wanting to return to a home that was, I now see, a myth, though mostly an edifying one. Mostly. When I returned to my birthplace in the aftermath of my sister’s death and discovered that I couldn’t really go home, both because the home of my imagination didn’t really exist, and because I was not received for reasons beyond my control, I woke up in a dark wood. Yet as I have been writing here for most of the past year, learning that my exile was permanent, and that there was no Florence to go back to (so to speak), provoked me to go on a pilgrimage deep inside myself, led by Dante.
Until the next public reinvention of himself, of course, his pilgrimage sounds a lot like a dead-end, one-way trip to me: exiled from home, exiled on his return, loathed and held in contempt by his community, barricaded within himself, and the "salvation" of Dante no longer endlessly potential but now become an actual handful of grains running irreversibly down through the glass.
This is someone who in his own words fled his own real life to take up refuge in Dante, deep within his own head. No way this ends well for anyone close to him.
OK, that is just way too sad. I am praying for the guy and for his family.
DeleteI did notice that Barbara-Marie Drezhlo is — how shall I say this? — pretty feisty, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteBut what was more interesting to me were the links she had to some very good artwork. I especially liked some of the paintings from Mikhail Shankov,
Yes the artwork is very nice. Apparently she goes thru a lot of effort with it. Some how she does have a fixation on cats (she says she has 3) Oh, and BEARS (Russian bears to be sure). I like that ,it's fun. Nicky bear
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