The Cringeworthy Mantra

I've wanted to post this for awhile, and being that I have been very busy I have not set aside the time. But since my post last night sort of gave me the bug for blogging again, I figured I might as well use the momentum to fire this sucker back up.

Ohhhh, HECK YEAH!

Let me explain what the cringeworthy mantra is. I call it a mantra because I've heard it over and over. You can all decide whether it's cringeworthy or not once I explain what I am talking about.

First of all, some background on a quintessential example of this phenomenon. I had a very long hiatus from writing anything about Rod Dreher or his so-called Benedict Option between my "Main Dilemma" post of October 24, 2016 and my short, almost-joking post on September 11 of this year. So almost two years went by without me saying anything, except in this "meme-style" post wherein I stated that I didn't have much to say about the Benedict Option. It is worthy to note that during those two years Keith threw up several posts about the Benedict Option and I did 30 or 40 posts which do not mention Rod Dreher or the Benedict Option at all.

So this was a comment made after my aforementioned post on Sep. 11, 2018:

Whatever Dreher's many faults, "uncalled-for Catholic bashing" is not one of them. Rather than criticize Dreher for reporting on sexual abuse, McKerrick, Francis' inadequate understanding and response, etc., how about you and others here in this little anti-Dreher echo-chamber face the issues head on?

It was not a new sentiment, but it hit home in a new way because of my light blogging in general over two years and in particular light blogging on Rod Dreher. This blog is not syndicated, advertised or even updated enough to merit it being any kind of destination in the top ten million English websites; you have to try pretty hard to read this blog, or hit it from a web-search or back-link. You might not realize this, but when you only post an average of once or twice a week for two years, your hits go down to almost nothing. You stop even getting advertiser spam in the comments.

So when Mr. Pseudonym shows up, he has found something to pique his interest. From EmitFlestiKY (which is Time Itself spelled backward followed by the abbreviation for this, or maybe this) we get a lecture about what we should and should not be doing alongside a sermonette on why we should be doing this and not doing that. The assertions in this sermonette are (1) Rod Dreher is not a Catholic basher, and (2) You are not facing issues head on.

I caught this on Facebook several weeks ago — Diane will remember. A person quipped that "[a] better use of Catholic time would be strengthening the witness and reasons to stay rather than snarling at those who have left when faced with the same repulsive rot." When I surmised that he was spending more time on the topic than I, he replied that he was sorry that I felt ruffled.

The exchange basically followed the same pattern:

• Rod Dreher criticizes the Catholic church.
• A Catholic or two take umbrage about it and make a remark.
• A third party suggests that they should be doing something else, as if they have done something wrong.

The biggest problem I have with this mantra is that the ratio of our responses to something Dreher writes to his incessantly negative Catholic reporting is well below five percent. I challenge anyone to disprove this. The disparity is compounded when you include the fact that Dreher's megaphone at "The" "American" "Conservative" and his other media appearances dwarf anything that we do here or on our private social media platforms.

So now you know why I cringe. Please let me know if you find my reason valid. And stay tuned for a post entitled "How I Am Facing Issues Head On".

Catholic Priest to Rod Dreher: "Enough!"

It's a great word. "Enough!" A word of command, in my opinion. When I use it with my kids in a one word sentence I generally mean "too much, you guys are going overboard with [whatever], and I have been indulging you for [duration], but now you're done." Some examples might be "Enough of the Fortnight Dance demonstration", or "Enough of the collection of 'perfect snowballs' you stored in the kitchen freezer when it is 25 degrees outside."

So it is, I think, for Father Richard Munkelt in this open letter to Rod Dreher, regarding the latter's continuous, spiteful criticism of the Roman Catholic church twelve years after he left. I think from the tone and content of the article we may infer that Father Munkelt, like many of us at this humble blog, believe that when it comes to Mr. Dreher's coverage of everything bad going on in the Catholic Church, we have long since passed from abundance, to superabundance, and then on to super-duper-abundance....

...but ENOUGH! already of my commentary, and straight to the article. He begins:

Your recent articles in The American Conservative on "Catholic Triumphalism," constituting your latest broadside against the Catholic Church, were brought to my attention. After reading the articles, and in close connection with your remarks, I have some sobering thoughts concerning your departure from the Church and ongoing vilification not just of her abusive personnel (who are fair game) but of her very person. As such, I am not writing to you alone but also to those among your Catholic readers who may not be fully cognizant of your not-so-hidden campaign to turn souls away from and against the Bride of Christ. To them I say, there is nothing more unprofitable than to try to pick figs from thistles. It is my duty, therefore, to assist my fellow Catholics in not becoming unwitting purveyors of your Anti-Catholicism.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that some of what Father says makes my criticism of Dreher seem tame, at least to me. Perhaps not to purveyors of what I'm calling the cringeworthy mantra, but more on that later.

If you care to read on, brace yourself, for charity sometimes carries a stick, as St. Augustine noted. And I shall not spare it, especially since you boast of being irreformable. I promise you, therefore, something in the spirit of St. Jerome.

Right; I think the "you asked for it" is warranted, especially considering how many times Dreher has assured us that he will never come back to the Catholic Church.

[He does it again — hilariously — at the end of his response to this article with the remark that if he ever came back it would be in spite of horrible "rad-trads" like Fr. Munkelt.]

1) Catholic Moral Teaching? In the two articles in question, possibly the most astonishing statement you make is this: "More importantly, though, where are the other churches who allow in their teaching for the sexual molestation of minors?" [My emphasis.] In all my years of study in theology and in the history of the Church, this putative Catholic teaching permitting the molestation of minors has completely escaped me. To be frank, without a citation from an authoritative doctrinal source, and of course none can be found, your statement is not only evidence of your brazen malice, it is sinister.

Dreher has insinuated that the teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church is "OK" with horrible sexual predation of children on the part of clergy many times, and he finally comes out and writes it. In his response, he claims this was taken out of context. No, dude... you're busted.

2) Emotion vs. Reason. From your own words, all indications are that you left the Catholic Church not because you had any theological argument against it but because you had an emotionally charged reaction to the clerical scandals and only afterwards adopted a new theology. As you put it: "I had never really considered Orthodoxy until my Roman Catholic faith had turned to dust." This suggests that an irrational response then went in search of cognitive validation, rather than rational reexamination. While your initial revulsion and anger at the revelations of clerical misconduct are quite understandable (who couldn't feel the same?), you lost all mental proportion and threw the Christ child out with the bath water. Failing at self-control, you failed to distinguish between (moral) teaching and (immoral) practice, and thus incredibly and pervertedly equated the two, as we just saw in paragraph #1. Therefore, when rightly attacking the faults of various members of the Catholic hierarchy you regrettably resort to hyperbole and the fallacy of tu quoque, a fallacy Our Lord was careful to avoid when criticizing the doctors of the Law. Then, with your mind shot, there was nothing left but to create a fantasy of a religious paradise in the green pastures of Orthodoxy. Except you found, or rather others like me would find for you, that you had one foot in a cow pie and the other about to step in a second. With that, let's discuss reality rather than fantasy.

Brutal, but just wait. All these punches land, and they are well documented in this blog. I'm too lazy to link them, but not to humble to list them: emotion over reason, lack of proportion, search for cognitive validation, throwing the baby out with the bath water, creation of a non-existing Edenic Russian orthodox church in your mind (and your backyard), etc. We've hit on all of these.

Of course, in knowingly and purposely separating yourself from the Catholic fold, you are undeniably a formal schismatic. A situation aggravated, I should add, by your having made a career of assailing the Church, all the while absurdly preaching to Catholics how to live better lives as Catholics. Pertinent to this last point, you wrote a book called The Benedict Option and artfully curry favor with--and sales from--Catholics as well as Catholic communities and organizations, who in some cases have been foolish enough to throw you a party. Why didn't you call it The Orthodox Option?

The closest Catholic gift shop to me has a great stock of Catholic books. But they also carry The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. I am guessing the nice ladies who run the store have no idea that Dreher is an anti-Catholic, God bless 'em. But it was pushed out to Catholic stores by a publishing company who would never get the cha-ching they want from a book with the word Orthodox in it.

In addition, you make a declaration of your personal failings and seem to admit the superficial nature of your faith and spirituality while you were a Catholic, and then effectively blame the Church for your shortcomings! Strikingly, it is as if you stepped right out of the pages of the Gospel: your faith failed to take root, troubles came along, and you fell away. And now you proudly announce yourself practically immunized against any possible scandals in Orthodoxy by the device of downplaying the institution qua institution. Then why don't you try that back in the Catholic Church? Or how 'bout the Eastern Catholic Church? There you've got nice liturgy and no schism. That is not an "impassioned plea" for your return to the Household of Faith, for which I make no pretense. I am merely writing to direct attention to your penchant for subterfuge.

Told you it got more brutal. Penchant for subterfuge — bingo. Recently I've had to characterize this for a number of people unfamiliar with Rod Dreher's history of alternatively getting scandalized by Catholic scandals and not getting scandalized by Orthodox scandals. It works something like this: "I, Rod Dreher, looked at scandals in my own Catholic faith, and my faith was ruined! So I had to get a new one. So lucky that the Orthodox faith was there. And I learned my lesson: never report on scandals in my own faith community again. Only in others... and one other in particular: the Catholic Church. So convenient...." I know that is not exactly what Father is claiming that he does, but there is no logic in either characterization. Plus there is the added fact that there are very few people who leave the Catholic Church, attack it constantly, and still can be said to have any respect for it. That there are Catholics that don't realize this is the main reason for my bafflement about Dreher and why his condemnation is an ongoing necessity.

7) The Theological Question. It is in this area where you are most vulnerable, and so you tend to avoid it, preferring to whine that you just couldn't take the scandals anymore but still "honor" those who stuck with the Church. As you know and recall, I for one did, and could, as a newly ordained priest, reasonably claim to have undergone a greater conflict and ordeal than you went through. And so I thank you for your honoring and self-depreciation. I must admit, therefore, that in the context of spiritual warfare you remind me of the soldier that General Patton slapped in World War II.

"Don't know much about theology" has been one of Dreher's silliest cop-out lines. The guy has made his living in the world of religion writing.

In the wake of this theological adventure of yours (Protestant saints etc.), and in relation to your preposterous claim that you were "raised within historical Christian orthodoxy," I finally realized that your religion is not Orthodoxy at all. It is instead Pluralism, with devotion to all her pallid issue and slogans flitting about the walls of your cave...diversity, relativism, indifferentism, inclusiveness and the like. Either that or you are just invincibly ignorant of the massive break with historical Christianity that the Reformation represented, including Anglicanism, Arminianism, and Methodism. You should know that the Lutherans, in the sixteenth century, made an overture to the Patriarch of Constantinople and he rebuffed them on the central questions of justification by faith alone and the sacraments. But if you were raised as you say, why the need to become Catholic or Orthodox? Or is there some arcane difference between orthodoxy and Orthodoxy?

Certainly there is plenty of evidence to support Father's point in the 2013 book Little Way of Ruthie Leming, for which I wrote an early review. The faith of his sister which he praises so much can be easily seen to be really the "Moral Therapeutic Deism" which is so often derided by Dreher as the fake, Americanized version of the Christian Faith. And of course the Benedict Option is open to ALL Christians, and Jews, and Muslims....

"A figure like Pope Francis is unthinkable within Orthodoxy." Well, unthinkable until one thinks of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who is open to the ordination of women and same-sex marriage on the basis of "consensus," not excluding heretical communions. Ironically, Orthodoxy's continuous flirtations with Anglicanism and the heretical potpourri known as the World Council of Churches surely has, and will make, inroads into Orthodox teaching, especially in the moral arena.

That was just too easy.

All right, I'm just going to laze out the whole way and pull the ol' blogger standby: read the whole thing. There; I included a link for your convenience, O dear reader. I have to admit to be wondering whether or not Father Munkelt will be hit with the cringeworthy mantra. "What is the cringeworthy mantra you keep mentioning, Pauli?" In time, my friends, in time. As Robert Plant sang in Kashmir, "All will be revealed."

I will say one more thing for now. I've waited for something to come along like this, a long-form criticism of Dreherism coming from a member of the Catholic clergy and pointing out the tendencies which I and others have noted for some time. I have been impatient, I confess. It has taken a while for this to take place because this is the wise Catholic way. Many people are impatient for the church to act in small matters and great. "How long, O Lord" right?

I think that a quote from Pope Gregory VII pertains here: "It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law." In following the spirit of discretion, silent reflection is often the correct choice.

But St. Jerome tells is that, at some point, silence fails the virtue of justice. He sums up his reason for overcoming his reluctance and finally writing his letter against Helvidius, whom he considered an ignorant boor: "But all these motives for silence, though just, have more justly ceased to influence me, because of the scandal caused to the brethren who were disgusted at [Helvidius's] ravings." And we have been disgusted at Rod Dreher's ravings. So thank you, Father Munkelt, for your erudition in presenting the errors contained within the ravings. The friends and supporters of Rod Dreher have already begun to nit-pick at your work, but your words are just and true in defense of the Roman Catholic Church, and we welcome them.

Go-to Guy For Miracles

If a miracle happens in your church and you go directly to Rod Dreher with the news, are you trying to vet the authenticity, or are you going for maximum publicity? I report you decide. It's instructive to note what sort of pops out at me: the repeated use of the word Catholic. Four times in the original article post, once in the comments. I thought Mr. Dreher was an Orthodox Christian now? If so, what does he care about what the Catholics might say about an internal matter? Let's see:

After a couple of visits, we received an invitation to a party at the Archbishop’s house, after the Dormition feast. I felt divided about this. For one, I didn’t want to go to a fancy archbishop’s house. For another, I had had enough of bishops and archbishops, men who had wrecked the Catholic Church. I didn’t want to get mixed up with an Orthodox one.

Oh, OK. My bad. The use of the word Catholic is just a bonus leveraging of the story to once again bash the Catholic Bishops and Archbishops who had "wrecked the Catholic Church". Got it.

Some people asked me in emails "What's with the picture?" They wondered why his  head is covered. This caused me to search the terms incorrupt Dallas and I found much better pics here. Check this one out.

Looks a little bit nastier. And a lot less blurry than this one which is one being circulated the most. Love to get a face shot, but alas. One commenter notes: "The photographs look like a decaying corpse to me. Trust me, I know what dead bodies looks like. Haven't you people seen corruption before?"

And yes! You noticed it too. It's sort of like this phenomenon, I guess. Some people see red vestments, others see gold. Another commenter asks: "Can you please explain why the change of vestments? One photo shows Vladika Dimitry buried in gold vestments and another photo shows him in red. Was it changed from gold to red, because he is being proclaimed a Saint? Or was he buried in red and now is in gold? I'm wanting to explain this appropriately to others in my community." So I guess we're looking for another miracle of auto-changing vestments on top of the semi-incorruptibly.

Maybe Archbishop Dmitri, née Robert Royster, was a saint. I'll leave any doubts about that for the comment section; the truth will out as they say. But honestly, OCA, you are going to let Rod Dreher of the weeping statues, Rod Dreher of the family ghosts, Rod Dreher of Muzhik fame be the person to prematurely announce to the world your latest miracle?

Here's something else worthy to report. The Pravoslavie link with all the interesting pictures states the source for the photos as being this link on Facebook. Going to the FB page reveals an update:

Dear Friends,
Today, I have been asked by OCA Metropolitan Tikhon “to immediately remove this post an all images associated with it”.
Also, I am “forbidden to post any pictures of Archbishop Dmitri without permission of the Holy Synod” (!)
It worth noting, that being a citizen of a free country, on my personal page I will continue posting everything I want, as long as it is legal ant true. However, out of obedience and respect of the office of the Metropolitan I choose to follow his order at this time.
Thus, some pictures and parts of the text will be removed.
As I stated before, all pictures of the Archbishop Dmitri’s re-interment that are in my possession will be forwarded to proper Church authorities for consideration, and I expect them to inform us about their findings.
Yesterday we put Archbishop Dmitri in his final resting place in St. Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas.
I was blessed to be a part of a team, which uncovers Vladika’s earthly remains and transfers them into new coffin to be buried in the crypt of the Resurrection Chapel and probably should offer some comments about these events.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------/CENSORED/-------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few personal notes:
Obviously, I was glad to see Vladika's body incorrupt, but be it otherwise, it would not affect my opinion about his sanctity at all.
The body of St Seraphim of Sarov, the Patron of our Cathedral, was corrupted, but it does not change the fact that he is one of the most beloved Saints around the world.
We all know that incorrupt body alone is not the reason of glorification.
Knowing Vladika for 11 years, seeing fruits of his life in the Lord, I personally convinced that he is a Saint. I believe that there are many more people all over the country, who share that conviction.
There is no decision of any group of people, respected (or not) would be able to change that. If his body will be corrupted in two, 20 or 200 years (as some may wish), or will start to stream myrrh (as others may desire) it will not be changed.
No one can stop me or anyone else from addressing Vladika Dmitri in payer, and feel his response and intercession; same way as many others all around US feel his love and help.
All pictures I made during transfer of Archbishop Dmitri body will be forwarded to proper Church authorities together with my written statement for consideration.

So the plot thickens. It seems like a lot of this publicity wasn't welcome by the OCA, or maybe they had second thoughts when the thing got pimped by D Magazine, Wick Allison's other rag. It is worthy to note that the official article from the OCA on the reinterment doesn't mention the alleged incorruptibility of the Archbishop's corpse. At this point, the whole thing is purely a santo subito phenomenon.

Personally I had no idea that myrrh-streaming was even on the table. But I sort of appreciate the hedging of the bet here pointing out that the Archbishop's corpse may be corrupted at some time down the road even though it's incorrupt now. Some miracles obviously have a time limit. I mean, gee whiz, does anyone expect that the Red Sea is still parted?

But going back to the Dreher post, can anyone not see why we roll our eyes when he writes stuff like these paragraphs:

But we went anyway, showing up on a rainy August afternoon at the address on the card. It turned out to be not a palatial residence, but the modest two-story woodframe house behind the cathedral. Could this house, with the paint peeling, really be where the Archbishop of Dallas and the South lives? I knocked on the door, and in we walked, with our kids.

...

It was a family dinner. That’s how it struck us. Archbishop Dmitri, born Robert Royster in Teague, Texas, was the opposite of everything I had come to expect in a bishop. He was humble and kind and gentle. He loved his people, and his people loved him. I remember thinking how good it would be to be led by such a man.

Love and peeling paint, such a great combo. So, unlike Catholics who don't love their Bishops and don't receive any love from them, Orthodox Christians love their Bishop but can't keep his house in good repair. I've never seen peeling paint in any Catholic clergyman's house. The people of the parish won't stand for that. Or is love manifested in gushing words about supposed sanctity rather than concrete deeds? I was rather of the impression that Christ taught the opposite.

Actual Journalism vs. Spotlight

When I heard the title of the movie which lionized those oh-so-heroic reporters who covered the Boston Catholic abuse crisis back in the early 2000's, I thought it was perfect. Sunlight, Bryce's and Brandeis's "best disinfectant", illuminates half the globe at once — everyday. And we're talking about the actual globe we live on, not the Boston newspaper. But a spotlight only illuminates one particular thing at a time, leaving everything else in darkness. There is a searching quality about it; usually the spotlight adjusts a bit to focus on its target and moves along with it whether the target is a tap-dancer or a pop diva. The spotlight is unconcerned with anything else which may be going on in the theater or outside it.

So one might be led to think that the famous Spotlight division at the Boston Globe after which the film is named was shining light on the crime of child abuse. But they were actually shining light on a very particular subset of those crimes: only those in which the perpetrator was a Catholic priest. Just like the spotlight in a 1970's theater might have been indifferent that an aging Fred Astaire was enjoying the show in seat D5 and only interested in shining on a less talented dancer on stage, so this team was unconcerned that there was and still is child abuse going on in public schools, Hollywood talent scout offices and non-Catholic religious communities—that is, anywhere else.

But we've detailed all this before. There are several books about it (like this one), but most of it falls on deaf ears even though it's worthy to bring up again. My friend Jonathan Carpenter writes me in an email today:

Guess who watched "Spotlight" on his way home from Italy?

Did anyone ever ask Dreher or his Media buddies why they missed the terror Jerry Sandusky did at Penn State? How about the abuse of kids that went on in Hollywood during that time and still goes on? It is because it is easier for him and his friends to make it seem as if it is only a Catholic problem; when it is a human problem.

I agree heartily with Jonathan who, I confess, is more tireless than I. It's probably the military training, or maybe I've lapsed into an accepting sanguinity about the whole matter. People believe what they wish to believe.

But once someone knows the truth about a matter, they really have no right to opinions which deny it. Stated differently, when you learn something is full of lies, you should discard it as worthless. That is why I'm advising everyone read this article about the veracity of the Spotlight movie in its entirety. It is written by JoAnn Wypijewsky, a person who identifies with the political and cultural left and has no particular love for the Catholic hierarchy in Boston. It is meticulously researched and formidably executed. It is itself a spotlight on distortions, lies and obscuring the whole truth about characters and events. It is published in Counter Punch; it is a knock-out punch. The article is long, but I'll excerpt some of it in an attempt to entice you to read the whole thing.

I was in Boston in the Spring of 2002 reporting on the priest scandal, and because I know some of what is untrue, I don’t believe the personal injury lawyers or the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team or the Catholic “faithful” who became harpies outside Boston churches, carrying signs with images of Satan, hurling invective at congregants who’d just attended Mass, and at least once – this in my presence – spitting in the face of a person who dared dispute them.

I don’t believe the prosecutors who pursued tainted cases or the therapists who revived junk science or the juries that sided with them or the judges who failed to act justly or the people who made money off any of this.

And I am astonished (though I suppose I shouldn’t be) that, across the past few months, ever since Spotlight hit theaters, otherwise serious left-of-center people have peppered their party conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we all need more of.

Although I never had my face spit in, I have had people tell me directly that I don't care about the victims of abuse because I'm not more angry, and that I should support that ridiculous "Crimes Against Humanity" brief filed in the UN court against the Vatican if I really cared about The Children.

Both men were called monsters. Both men were offered plea deals by their respective prosecutors that, had they actually committed the crimes, would be an affront to justice and proportion. Shanley was offered time served – the seven months he’d been jailed while awaiting trial – plus two and a half years’ house arrest if only he’d say he was guilty of raping a child on Sunday mornings between Masses. MacRae was offered three years in prison, later reduced to two, if only he’d say he was guilty of cruelly molesting a teenager. Both men refused and went to their fates abandoned by church hierarchy.

“Can you imagine”, Shanley said to me after his conviction in 2005, “here I am, the worst monster, a danger to children everywhere, and they offer me time served? … But for refusing to lie, I got twelve to fifteen years.”

I have never denied that some priests did horrible things to children, but I have always thought the details smelled fishy. I remember hearing a local talk radio broadcast in Cleveland where the talkers were livid that a case against a priest had been thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Wypijewski confirms this phenomenon as abeing not just local, but Globe-al:

Besides normalizing the presumption of guilt, the Globe’s courtroom of panic made a high and punishing principle out of cheap popular opinion: Well, maybe he didn’t do this, but he had to have done something! Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! Where the victim has to be believed, it doesn’t much matter if one person is telling the truth and one person is a money-grubber (or, to put the kindest interpretation on it, just looking for a simple explanation for all the troubles of his or her life). It doesn’t much matter who is in the dock or behind bars for what because, after all, statutes of limitations are limiting, and the notion that guilt might go unpunished is intolerable. Someone must pay. The church must pay. Priests must pay, because even if they didn’t do something, they said something; or they said nothing but they should have spoken; they knew nothing but they should have known; they should have acted. We “thought they were God”, and we must have our pound of flesh.

I hope you have gone over to read this article in full by now. After all, it is much shorter, cheaper and less boring than watching a movie where Mark Ruffalo doesn't get to suck face with Scarlett Johansson or turn into a green monster. But I'll understand if you are busy at the moment. Here's one more excerpt which deals with the real issue for all the scumbags who rode this train of deception:

It’s unseemly to mention money. We are asked to believe that the ATM that is the Catholic Church, password VICTIM, could not possibly be an inducement to any of the thousands of accusers who have lined up since the “Spotlight” team’s first breathy reports – as if the usual reflexes of American money-grubbing are inoperative in this one area of life, and the people who, for instance, clambered for cash to ease the pain and suffering of having seen a priest naked in the YMCA really are salt of the earth.

The church was known to have begun making settlements with accusers by the early 1990s. Some, perhaps many, were legitimate, but as a closet culture, an institution scandalized by scandal, the church is also particularly vulnerable to extortion. Spotlight does not reflect that reality, just as the Globe did not seriously explore it. Every financial settlement in the film is proof of beastliness.

...

It was in the early 1990s also that a drug addict and criminal named Thomas Grover said he had been molested as a 15-year-old by MacRae. The first assault, he said, occurred during a counseling session in the early 1980s. He returned for counseling three more times because, he said, after each bout with the priest he suffered total amnesia, his memory erased until one day years later he remembered all. Grover eventually collected $200,000 from the church.

Under pressure from the Globe, MacLeish and others, the church paid Shanley’s accuser, a military malcontent named Paul Busa, $500,000; it defrocked Shanley, presumed guilty on every front, and it did all of this before the trial had even begun. Let that sink in, too.

Oh, what the heck. Just one more:

Gregory Ford had been Boston’s favorite victim, the ultimate proof of Shanley’s monstrosity, from the time MacLeish introduced him to the world during that PowerPoint presentation in April of 2002. I won’t relate the young man’s sad and tortured tale here except to say that his claim of recovered memory (which Busa copied in all important respects) did not ring alarm bells with those noble reporters or their editors. When it was pointed out that Ford’s own mother was the catechism teacher at the time he claimed his agony of weekly rape began, the family, the lawyers, the press, the prosecution, simply amended the start date. When the prosecution dropped Ford from its child rape case against Shanley because at various times Ford had also said he was raped by his father, a neighbor, a relative, our noble reporters did not review their past unskeptical reports and say, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Likewise when the two other men were dropped from the case, and Busa was left standing alone, the press, like the prosecution, pretended it didn’t matter. Against the advice of its legal counsel, the church had settled the civil suit MacLeish had brought on behalf of all four men. Ford faded away, with a check for more than $1.4 million. At the time of Shanley’s trial, broadcast live on TV and covered by media across the country, it was as if Ford had never existed, but he and the others are counted among Shanley’s victims.

Emphases mine. So the story was changed as needed. And lies were told under oath. For money. Please read this article. It's all you need to know about this Hollywood confabulation.

(H/T MediaReport)

Pope Francis supports actual exercise of religious liberty

Pope Francis often has a roundabout, "chatty" way of expressing Universal Truth, but he was pretty direct about conscientious objectors like Kim Davis. Excerpt:

"I can't have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection,” Pope Francis told journalists on his flight, “but, yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right."

"And if someone does not allow others to be a conscientious objector,” the Holy Father said, “he denies a right."

The pope also said conscientious objection must be respected in legal structures.

"Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: 'This right has merit, this one does not,'" he stated.

The unambiguous comments from Pope Francis in support of religious freedom come after other comparable statements he made, spoken and symbolic, throughout his historic visit to the United States, making religious liberty a recurring theme for the trip.

It would seem like the Pope believes, as do all of us in the whole 1st Amendment crowd, that you actually have to exercise your religious freedoms the way you exercise your muscles to keep them from atrophying. And it would seem that conscientious objections to bad laws would strengthen the case for religious liberty, not weaken it. It's in line with the whole St. James "screw faith without works" thing.

UPDATE: When I posted this yesterday I was thinking about Dreher's contempt for Kim Davis. But I wasn't thinking about the Benedict Option. Silly me; I forget about the principle of material equivalence. Rod Dreher is the Benedict Option, or BenOp, or Benny, or Strategic Withdrawal, or "Pull and Pray"... at this point in his life at least. I was also thinking about Michael Medved who said a lot of similar things about Davis on his radio show. Medved has a masterful mind and I usually agree with him, but I was not swayed on this point. Maybe Kim Davis isn't the best spokesperson for religious liberty, but this is a time in history to take a stand poorly rather than withdrawing or doing nothing.

Keith's posted comment showing Dreher's use of the photoshopped face of Pope Francis incenses me. And so that is why I feel compelled to make this update. I have lost friends over my refusal to attack the Pope over his deficiencies, real or perceived. Rod Dreher is NOT A CATHOLIC ANYMORE and therefore feels like he has the freedom to say whatever he wants about the leader of another religion. Oh, yeah—if it happens to be the Roman Catholic religion. But my guess is that he has borrowed this image from others with an opposite opinion from his, i.e., people who think it is great that Pope Francis is more lax, less rigid than his predecessors and aligned with mercy rather than justice. At the same time these people tip their hand on what they really think about the Office of the Papacy, the Vicar of Christ, by painting his face like a clown to get their message across, and that is what Rod Dreher and those on the opposite side have in common: contempt for the Catholic Church and her mission in and to the world.

A lot of people do not realize that a week before Rod Dreher penned his famous 2013 Time article "I'm Still Not Going Back to the Catholic Church" he wrote this article in the NY Times titled "The Pope Did More Damage Than He Realized". Taken together, these articles give the impression of a Goldilocks personality who doesn't even care for the baby bear's bed, chair or porridge. His position can be stated "I completely disagree with the Pope's position, he is damaging the church even worse than it was when I left it, he's proving my point about the general unseriousness of Catholics especially in America, he is empowering the dissidents, but I'm still not going back to the Catholic Church." Oh, well to be honest we sort of didn't think you would, Rod, after the article you wrote a week earlier.

So Rod Dreher is all for taking a stand... but not like Kim Davis, God forbid! He stands up and points a finger at her and cries "Who is she to judge!?" He is all for judging himself, and he damn sure wants a father figure who presages Almighty God at the final judgment. But everyone else can just shut the hell up.

If we are entirely confused at this point about how exactly Rod Dreher wants Christians to behave then it is Rod Dreher's fault. And this is nothing new. In his confusing world, we have seen over and over again conflicting images. We've seen a story where an Orthodox Priest reports jubilantly that Rod Dreher has left the Catholic Church and become Russian Orthodox, followed by an angry Rod Dreher lashing out at the messenger in the case, my friend J-Carp, a Citizen-Journalist, for revealing something he was supposedly proud of and yet hiding it under a bushel basket. We've seen him now constantly playing the part of a little, misunderstood Alfred Prufrock when people sensibly and persistently point out that the Benedict Option sounds an awful lot like the refusal to be "salt and light" in the world. And throughout all of this there runs a current of anti-Catholicism of Rod Dreher. The fact that his anti-Catholicism is more intellectual than that of Jack Chick makes it no less real. And no less disgusting.

And the fact that this update is long enough to be its own post... well, it probably means it will be its own post when I have a little more time.

How to be unconvincing

A reader sent me this last Tuesday and I promised to post something about it. Better late than never, I guess.

Are you, too, lost in a dark wood spiritually? If not, here are a number of wonderful stories telling you how you could be if you only tried a little harder. Remember, as Rod has told us over and over, stories are the way to really get your cultural marketing across.

And now, successfully lost lamb, are you ready to be found? The Great One is there to help with another, even more powerful dream story. But what's this?

I had enough self-awareness to know that it was impossible for me to read these books lucidly. The cloud of darkness around me was like stinging flies. What I recall learning from all that was that the Catholic case for Roman primacy was not nearly as airtight as I had believed. I had only seriously considered the Roman claim versus Protestant claims. Orthodoxy was a new thing.

Well, Pilgrim, are you gonna keep trying to get the Devil out of those filthy spiritual clothes over and over with that tired old lard-based soap and a rock, or are you going to try new, improved Orthodoxy the way your Dream Teacher has just laid out for you?

Tax-deductible, of course.

Another reader on the sender's email list then delivered this opinion:

Actually, I wouldn’t mind his far-fetched dream-state Orthodoxy stories so much if he focused on the blessings that Orthodoxy has brought to him. But he simply can’t do that except by comparison to the mean old not-as-important-as-it-thinks Roman Catholic Church (“Did you hear about the Scandal? Huh? Huh?”).

And I find it interesting that the Story of The Great Conversion continues to change over time, just like The Day That Rod Was There. It’s always something new, which means what we’ve been told previously (as well as now) is as likely to be false as true.

I see it just as click-bait. What better way to harvest comments by throwing out FOUR threads for people to bash and tout various faiths.

Here's my initial email response:

I likewise find the lack of focus on Orthodoxy qua Orthodoxy in his writing telling. It’s always “Orthodoxy for the doubting and/or disaffected Catholic”. But there is something else missing. Any kind of serious intellectual apologetic effort. He writes:

....Orthodoxy was a new thing. The Orthodox arguments were making some headway with me, but they were far from a slam-dunk, at least with me. What they did was loosen my confidence in the solidity of the Catholic claim. Yet I was highly aware that my own mental and emotional state was inflamed by anger and distrust, such that I was not sure to what extent my deliberations could be trusted.

What is missing is the details on these Orthodox arguments. The only thing we get is “What they did was loosen my confidence in the solidity of the Catholic claim,” so again, his Orthodoxy is relative to the Catholic faith. It isn’t the Eastern Orthodox Church’s/Churches’ claim to positive moral authority, it’s the negative claim against the Catholic Church. And he never even allows us a peek at those. Instead we get a full 15-minutes of exciting dream-footage in technicolor with spiders and magic prayer ropes.

Those were my initial musings, but I'll expound on them here.

Say a person just became a serious Christian and decided he really wanted to follow Christ's teachings. So he decided to study the claims of the ancient Christian communions. He'd heard that there is a blogger who writes prolifically about his conversion out of one ancient Christian communion (Roman Catholic) into another (Eastern Orthodox). So he decided to check out some of these many posts to discover why.

I don't think this person would find any advice for his own spiritual journey from this blogger named Rod Dreher who, by the way, really does write prolifically about his conversion out of Roman Catholicism. He'd learn that the blogger left the Catholic church over horrible abuse scandals which, the blogger doesn't deny, also exist in his current orthodox communion. He'd also learn that the blogger also left over the sometimes horrible mishandling of the scandals, but that the blogger admits that this mishandling sometimes happens in his present communion.

Not only is there not much of an effort at intellectual apologetics for Orthodoxy, but there isn't really any reference to an outside source for said apologetics which were "making some headway" with him *. I think that the this lacuna is possibly intentional for two reasons. The first is that for Rod Dreher, intellectual effort is completely unnecessary—you either get it or you don't. I think that in this case, prattling on ceaselessly about it is sort of pointless so I don't know why he would bother. But smug people doubling down on smugness quite often should surprise no one who has any worldly experience.

The second reason, and one which is more likely to my mind, is that any intellectual argument for Orthodoxy over Catholicism would present a vulnerable target. If regular readers here attack Rod Dreher's decision to leave the Catholic Church it is very easy for Dreher's defenders to dismiss us by saying "You just don't like him." Fair enough; we don't. But by not presenting foundational absolutes or general principles for why he left the Catholic church, his choice to do so comes across as individualistic, relativistic and circumstantial. He might have presented the idea elsewhere that the small and the particular are virtuous attributes, but in the consequential decisions of life, they don't provide for strong arguments.

This would account for another aspect of his famous conversion which I've noticed from the outset. There is no proportional recruiting effort. If indeed Catholicism is so bad and Orthodoxy so good then he should be trying to pull good people that way. But I think this ignores the particularity and individualistic nature of Dreher's conversion. This choice of Orthodoxy, he always seems to emphasize, was tailor made for him, reinforced by many and diverse subjective experiences including even his own dreams which, we all know, men never lie about except in pick-up lines.

Before I converted to Catholicism in the early nineties, I considered Eastern Orthodoxy. I even read Peter Gillquist's book Becoming Orthodox about a group of Evangelical Protestants at a college campus who all joined the Orthodox Church after studying the ancient liturgy. At the time I remember thinking that it was well-written and very convincing about the liturgy and the sacraments, but there was really no substantive reason why their conclusion couldn't have been to all become Roman Catholic. The year after I converted I remember reading the late Father Ray Ryland's article Evangelicals Who Journey East in the magazine This Rock. In this article, Ryland exposes the fact that at many points along during the journey of these Evangelicals, there was a sub- or semi-conscious desire on the part of the members of the group to steer away from considering the Roman Church. This desire was what drove the decision, not objective inquiry, and it made for an easier way forward for the group that avoided the more rigorous stances taken by the Catholic Church which we have before noted. Ryland demonstrates how they even borrowed arguments from protestantism in order to bolster their newly found Eastern Orthodox belief system.

So this is my conclusion. I believe that in the same way as those Evangelicals under Gillquist had a predisposition to avoid Roman conclusions, Rod Dreher as a Catholic had a desire to get out of the church once the going got tough, and the abuse scandal presented the opening he'd been longing for. He breathed a sigh of relief after leaving with seeming integrity, but, as Father Ryland opined, the "breath was not deep." The lack of depth has proved itself ever since through the ever-declining force of his words in his ever-changing narratives.

----
* - I realize that he discounts these arguments as determinative by stating "[T]hey were far from a slam-dunk, at least with me.... ...I was highly aware that my own mental and emotional state was inflamed by anger and distrust, such that I was not sure to what extent my deliberations could be trusted." But the fact is that he did leave the Catholic Church and he did become Eastern Orthodox. So it is impossible to conclude that he was not convinced to become Orthodox because that church professes the correct ecclesiology—unless you hold to an opinion that Rod Dreher joined the Orthodox church merely on a pretense. I choose to believe the former; it is the more charitable course. Yet the will is supposed to allow itself to be informed by the intellect. It is not supposed to ignore it.

OK, I admit it

I have a taste for completely insane writing. Every once in awhile I come across something on the internet that I have to read until the end. It's like a roller coaster—you can't get off until it stops. So here's the latest, and I'll excerpt my favorite parts below with all misspellings and grammatical errors left intact.

Lets go back a few thousands of Years when the Hebrews were taken from the hands of the Great Pharoah of Egypt. This was planned even before Moses came into being. It was Lord Enlil's Wonderful Idea to distablize the Reigns of Control from the EN KI TITES. From the Rebel Reptilian Queen and her nasty Grey Co-horts.

Lord Enlil's henchmen helped the Hebrews to leave Bondage only to become Pawns for Lord Enlil. The So Called Promised Land was Canaan , the Lands of the Giants, the Sons of Olympus. The Hebrews Wondered for 40years in the Wilderness and then after this Terrible Ordeal in the Wilderness the Hebrews were Conditioned and Trained to become Bloodthirsty Warriors, they had 40 Years of Training by Lord Enlil's Canus Warriors via Extraterrestrial Intervention.

The Hebrews had to follow Orders Period if they didn't the Canus UFO's would drop nasty Snakes to Bite the Hebrews and Poison them untill they served the Will of Lord Enlil ( Yahweh ). Many Hebrews Died by these Snakes and the Hebrews out of Great Fear from the Kods above surrendered their Free Will to the Will of Lord Enlil. The Hebrews became a tuned Army like no other and basically Marched to the Land of Caanan and with the Help of Enlils Space Ships they attacked Canaan.

The Canaanites were Powerful Titans with Awsome Size & Strength and they saw the Attack coming but they did not see the Cloaked Spaceships of Lord Enlil. The Armies marched towards the Cananite Army, the Hebrews engaged the Titans and were basically squashed like mash Potatoes but the Spaceships above launched a really good Assault which caused Panic among the Giants , this Panic was the Adavantage the Hebrews Needed to Kill every Man , Woman & Child in Canaan, Including the Large Beasts which fed the Colony.

So to this Day the Hebrews are not Free, they are Pawns and Slaves. How about Abraham he was played with Emotionally to kill his beloved Son on the Altar. Many Humans Fight and Kill each other so that those who are Above Laugh , Riddicule and Entertain themselves for their own Amusements ( Those Being Extraterrestrials ).

So just who is really the Bad Guy here?, the Pharoah did make the Hebrews work their Asses off, but he did provide Work, Homes, Food & Shelter for his so called Slaves. Lord Enlil provided a Promised Land?, a Land flowing with Milk & Honey?, more Like a Land of Blood & Carnage.

Now lets look into the Future , we come across a Messiah , Jesus Christ the Lamb of Enlil. Preaching Peace , did anyone know that Barabas was the Son of Jesus? , many still do not know this, Jesus was a Pawn also to play with the Hearts of Men. He did a fabulous Job and he served Lord Enlil very well. We look into the Future after his Crucifixtion and what do we see?, we see the Church being formed from the Roman Empire, we see an Emporer by the name of Constantine who created the Bible to make himself a GOD/DOG (Canus King).

No, I did not "know" that Barabbas was the son of Jesus. I do know that every neo-gnostic like this dude likes to say Jesus had kids; I have no idea why. I also know that the name Barabbas means "Son of the Father" in Hebrew, which to me makes a much more interesting story since he was a robber, murderer and all around rabble-rouser who was released when Christ was condemned.

I also did not know that the Emperor Constantine created the Bible, evidently going back in time to do so. Neither did I have any idea that Jews are pawns and slaves even "to this day". I'm not sure that's completely true; at least some of the Jews out there are well off and have good jobs.

You'll have to RTWT if you want to get to the big Catholic-bashing paragraph and the small Islam-bashing sentence or two that he throws in for equal time. My only remaining question: why go out and pay money for Dan Brown pulp when you can get much richer stuff like this for free? And the grammatical mistakes just make it all more fun. Plus this guy throws a lot more capital letters into the mix than are required. Again, 100% free of charge.

Too Many Catholics!!

From the Catholic League. Note the familiar chorus of "JFK was our kind of Catholic!" from the secular left.

Bill Donohue notes the reaction of bigots to the Hobby Lobby case:

“Once again an all-Catholic, all-male, all-ultra-conservative majority of five has voted en bloc to eviscerate fundamental rights,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor of the atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation. Yup. Catholics always conspire to do things “en bloc” (save for Sonia).

It's so laughable; we're continually told that the majority of American Catholics support so-called SSM and use birth-control, so the Catholic Church should merely give in on those things. Then some highly intelligent Catholic public servants who practice their faith—or at least defend the right of others to do so—cast a pro-freedom vote and it's all the fault of Catholics that “fundamental rights” have been “eviscerated”. Note that it is the secularists who have been employing the language of wild-eyed lunatics lately.

“Court’s Catholic Justices Attack Women’s Rights” is the headline of Margery Eagan’s Boston Herald article (it’s those Catholics again). The American Humanist Association issued a statement with a picture of a rosary next to birth control pills. Cute.

In the Huffington Post, Ryan Grim noted that “these men [the five judges who voted for religious liberty] are Christians.” He also said, “The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Christian business owners are special.” I guess the ruling does not apply to Mormons.

Some Muslims are against at least certain forms of contraception, especially ones which cause sterility (e.g., tubal ligation, etc.) Some Orthodox Jews are as well. I'm not sure a Muslim-owned business would care, though, since they like the idea of subjugation by all means possible, including out-breeding the infidels. (I like that idea, too, but I like the idea of people not damaging their souls even more.)

Also in the Huffington Post, Ronald A. Lindsay, a militant atheist, asks, “Is it appropriate to have six Catholic justices on the Supreme Court?” His hero is JFK, who famously threw his religion overboard to win votes. “Unfortunately,” he writes, “a majority of the Supreme Court may now be resurrecting concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen....” He’s not resurrecting the old canard—the Justices are.

Another unspoken canard in this whole Philip F. Cardarella, writing in the Kansas City Star, says that when JFK ran, the question was, “How could someone who owed his religious obedience to the Pope in Rome and the doctrines of the Catholic Church truly be trusted?” Now, he opines, “Five men on the Supreme Court—all Catholics—may well just have proven him [JFK] wrong.” Got it.

Catholics are 25 percent of the population and comprise two-thirds of the high court. Jews are 1.8 percent of the population and comprise one-third of the high court. Note: only the former is a problem.

There might have been another Jew on the court. His name was Robert Bork. Ironically, he got shot down by JFK's brother in 1987. Then even more ironically, he converted to Catholicism in 2003. He died a year and a half ago, but since the Kennedy-led assault most likely took 10 years off his life, he'd probably still be around but for that. Just an interesting tidbit.

Around the internets, Vol. 2

A friend sent me this email last week. Here it is slightly edited:

I'm really not trying to get you to snap your molars off at the gum line, but I can't help but point out this followup, once again illustrating what a master manipulator Dreher is. As we saw, having baited the anti-Catholics with the Home babies story, he then quickly picked a fight with Andrew Sullivan both to provide himself with a "cutout" and to get himself linked up the food chain by provoking a response from Sullivan, which Sullivan duly supplied.

But the guy who TMFKS reminds us ostentatiously made up publicly with Sullivan only a year ago now decides to use him as his condom in two ways: first as cutout, and now as representative of Catholicism. The screaming subtext from the man who's still not going back to the Catholic Church is hardly subtle: if you really want a safely non-libertine, sodomy-free religion, better become Orthodox like him. Otherwise you might have to settle for Catholicism 3.5.

BTW, for any who might want to discuss Dante with Rod up close and personal in a hot, steamy environment, he helpfully discloses the specific YMCA where he now regularly works out and can be found:

It’s amazing that I can stand in the Y in Zachary, Louisiana....

Later my friend followed up with an earnest bleg for a Catholic to respond to this story and I said I toss something up. Which I didn't; I didn't find the time. However yesterday he got a major answer to his wish in the form of this fine article by fellow Clevelander, Tom Piatak titled "More Anti-Catholic Hysteria". Here's the meat of it:

It now turns out that the story has been grossly exaggerated. On Saturday, The Irish Times—a paper that is about as friendly to the Catholic Church as its New York namesake—reported that Catherine Corless told the paper that “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did not come from me at any point. They are not my words.” One of the boys who found the bones in the 1970s, Barry Sweeney, told the Times that "there was no way there were 800 skeletons down that hole. Nothing like that number. I don’t know where the papers got that.” When asked by the Times how many bodies were in the pit, he replied, “About 20.” Nor is it clear that the underground pit found by the boys ever was a septic tank, though it may have been; or that the bodies they saw there were from the home, though they may have been; or that the nuns were the ones who decided to put them there, though they may have been. The Times story also notes that the number of dead children from the institution is "a stark reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly. At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100 mothers." Indeed, the Irish Catholic blog Lux Occulta calculated that the mortality figures at the home are in line with general infant mortality in Ireland at the time.

Four years ago, when the same papers and bloggers trumpeting this story were attempting to blame Benedict XVI for clerical sexual abuse in Milwaukee decades earlier, British atheist Brendan O'Neill made this telling point: “it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.” Whatever may have happened at one home for unwed mothers and their children in Tuam, O'Neill's basic point also applies to the vast number of Irish nuns who served in countless schools and hospitals in Ireland and throughout the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Rod Dreher's desire to pass judgment on Irish Catholicism on the basis of one poorly sourced story, and Andrew Sullivan's desire to jettison sexual morality on the basis of that same story, tell us that they cannot be trusted when it comes to the Catholic Church. Nor, indeed, can the myriad of newspapers that gleefully ran with this story.

I'm glad Tom was the one who responded to this. It's a common sense correction using facts and the title is so accurate. It is hysteria—note how old the subject matter is. Bill Donohue is always pointing out that the abuseniks must consistently go further and further back in time to find the evidence demanded by their narrative. It is anti-Catholic; Rod Dreher is anti-Catholic, Andrew Sullivan is a Catholic who is always bashing the Catholic church for its core teachings so he is basically an enabler of anti-Catholicism. And the initial word more just reminds us that this is just the latest round of hysteria from the scandal machine which will emanate from the tares among the wheat until the end of time.

Another reason I'm glad that a serious writer like Mr. Piatak responded was because it elicited this even more hysterical response from one of the aforementioned anti-Catholics in a lame partial-retraction:

It’s wrong to call all this “good news,” but to me, it is a relief to learn that the Church may be less culpable than the initial reports indicated. I posted the shocking first story, and have posted the debunking follow-ups as they’ve become available. That hasn’t stopped pious Tom Piatak, a stringer for a turgid Midwestern monthly, from losing his grip over my blogging. A “bitter apostate” he calls me, which is theologically ignorant; according to the Catechism, an “apostate” is one who totally repudiates Christianity, while a “schismatic” is one who affirms Christianity but who does not submit to the Roman pontiff. But this isn’t really about theology with him, but rather tribal breast-beating....

Who is losing their grip here? Sorry, but this verbal ad hominem assault on Tom Piatak is not going to go well for Rod Dreher. Tom Piatak is not some breast-beating neanderthal drone sent by the Catholic hierarchy. He is a nice guy and a smart, traditional conservative who writes for Vdare, Takimag, and ...oh, wait... lookie here! Seems like Mr. Piatak wrote for TAC once upon a time six years ago.

As Mark Levin once remarked in a similar situation, "Oh, the pain of it all."

Abuseniks

Manufactured anger is in the news right now with President Obama's latest stage performance over the VA scandal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about it right now with a fun montage made up of about 5 years worth of unconvincing Obama play-rage over things like the IRS scandal, the healthcare.gov fiasco, etc. Limbaugh also makes the very astute observation that the mock outrage is messaging which targets people he calls "low-information voters", not those of us who know play-acting when we see it.

The Media Report has a great example of the same sort of mock-rage-as-messaging with this piece about Mitchell Garabedian's recent fit asserting that the Catholic Church is "once again acting in the most immoral way by allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children" merely because the church wouldn't pony up over a false accusation:

Garabedian probably thought he would have it just as easy when he filed a similar lawsuit, also in 2012, against the Diocese of Fall River, alleging abuse by a priest starting in the late 1970s. In his suit, Garabedian made the astonishing claim that a priest abused two parishioners for nearly a decade starting when the boys were 9 or ten years old and lasting until they were seventeen.

Alas, however, the diocese hired independent investigators to look into the matter, and they concluded that the evidence did not support Garabedian's claim. Most notably, the accused priest died in 1996 at 83 years old, and not a single allegation had ever been made against him.

Yet even though no evidence of abuse was found by investigators, the diocese agreed not only to offer free counseling for the men but to also enter a mediation process to bring closure to the case.

However, as the Diocese of Fall River reports, Garabedian recently abruptly "ended the mediation process."

In other words, when the diocese apparently refused Garabedian's demand for money, he unleashed his tirade that the Church was now somehow "allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children."

Ah, yes, those pesky details. Why do you Catholics want evidence of wrong-doing? CAN'T YOU SEE HOW ANGRY I AM ABOUT THIS?!? GIVE ME MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!

The real treasure in this post is the comment posted by Publion. I'm including the full text here. It's long, but it does a great job at summing up what is really going in the Catholic Church-only abuse industrial complex.

I would also ask of ‘Another Mark’ (the 19th, 952PM) the same question that ‘Mark’ asks (the 20th, 652AM): why trust this lawyer (hereinafter: ‘MG’)?

Readers may recall my mention of a Boston attorney in D’Antonio’s book who was involved in various bits of quite possibly prohibited and unlawful skullduggery in helping the Boston Globe get its series published in early January 2002 (D’Antonio is pro-Stampede and sees MG’s activity as sort of charmingly enterprising). That attorney D’Antonio was discussing was none other than MG. And MG is certainly a prime candidate for inclusion among those torties who have taken the Anderson Strategies into the big-time.

And on what basis are we supposed to credit ‘Another Mark’s (hereinafter: ‘AM’) unsupported and global assertion that “the church HAS allowed the wholesale abuse of children”? [giveaway exaggerated formatting retained]

Which is then followed by snark to the effect that MG “must be doing something right now that David Pierre must attack you”.

Which also includes the classic Playbook legerdemain of presuming that the reporting of a historically and actually verifiable fact (i.e. MG’s publicly stated ire at the Diocese of Fall River) constitutes “an attack”.

And then a mere epithet about it being “laughable” that MG treats the Church as “a trip to the ATM”, also a juvenile bit from the Playbook that has been seen here many times.

And I would add that where the Church asks (as many organizations do) for “donations”, it does not try to take potential ‘donors’ to court in order to obtain vast sums from them on the basis of legal charges almost completely unsupported by any evidence.

Then a blunderbuss blam of a bunch of (otherwise quite rationally explicable) Church decisions in regard to “closing churches” that had been built – we see the smarmy heart-string pulling manipulative bit from the Playbook here – with “your hard earned heartfelt donations” from “you and your parents”.

Then a fresh paragraph with more Playbook stuff.

First, to the effect that “David Pierre acts as if every victim is a money sucking leach” [sic]: if anyone deliberately tried to bring a lawsuit against you, alleging acts from the long-ago for which they have no evidence but merely a story, and publicizes the whole thing highly, what would you consider such a person to be?

But then again: DP has never said any such thing as “money sucking leach” [sic] and I can’t recall any commenter using the term either.

But then again: in the Abusenik Playbook, if you don’t totally buy the script, then you are ‘attacking’ them. (The Abusenik objective here is to distract you from the fact that they may well be involved in something characterizable as the activity of a “money sucking leach”[sic] and therefore try to quickly get you (the reader or hearer) to focus on the (merely alleged) victimization of the whole thing.)

Second, we get – yet again – the mere but utter presumption of “the damage done” by alleged acts the nature and even the very existence of which has never been demonstrated. And I would also recall here the recent material here discussing the cautious use of “potential” in the statements of various scientific papers and research results. ‘Potential’ is not synonymous with ‘certain’ (and so even some phrase like ‘an absolutely certain potential’ would not move things forward at all in this regard).

Third, the Wig of Bemused and Honest Innocence with that “sadly”.

And then fourth: the use of the presumed “attacks” (discussed above in this comment of mine) to cluck condescendingly that “such attacks [do not] somehow support our church”. Would that be “our” Church? And is it not ‘supportive’ to point out how the allegations are unfounded and highly dubious and seriously improbable?

And in regard to “responsability”: did so many Abuseniks go to the same school of misspelling? There seems to be a pattern here.

And then fifth: the old “enabler” trope, right from the Playbook.

And then the next paragraph works toward whistling-away the profound and abyssal evidentiary and veracity problems with the Stampede and the Abuseniks: “simply because no one came forward while the priest was alive does nothing to prove he did not abuse during his lifetime” [correction supplied]

No, the fact that “no one came forward while the priest was alive” does not provide conclusive evidence that the alleged abuse never happened. But it also a) provides no evidence that the alleged abuse did happen and b) provides an element of increased-probability that the story was concocted opportunistically after the priest died, in order to cash in on the Stampede piñata game.

And it also provides some grounds for doubting the conceptual chops (and perhaps good faith) of anybody who would try to pass off such a conceptual misch as if it were clear and pristine logic, upon which he might base his assertions with no further need for explication.

And if the Church’s paid investigators “found no evidence” – although the Church (or Diocese, here) must know that it would very likely have to rely on those investigative findings in a public forum – then the same can be said for any investigators the tortie might engage (although, as we know, given the now-established dynamics of the Anderson Strategies in the Stampede, the tortie might well expect that his client’s claims and allegations and stories would never be required to face public and objective scrutiny in the first place anyway).

Abuseniks “really do see” us as “dumb blind sheep”, but “fortunately” – and especially through the work on TMR – that is not the case.

Which is what moves the Abuseniks to toss up the type of stuff we see here in the AM comment.

"Dump blind sheep", "low-information voters", whatever you want to call them the terms do not apply to us here. But I think "money-grubbing ambulance-chaser" applies to Mitchell Garabedian.

Good News is No News

Apart from going unreported, good news is also a relative term in the world of the mainstream media; that's why we must turn to alternative media like the Media Report for coverage on Catholic clergy abuse reports when the drive-bys go silent.

In a newly released annual audit of abuse by independent experts, it was reported that there were only ten contemporaneous abuse allegations made against priests even deemed "credible" in all of 2013 (out of some 40,000 active priests) and that the "fewest allegations and victims" ever were tabulated since annual reports were first compiled in 2004.

This is obviously good news. But predictably, the mainstream media is notably silent about this very positive report, even though in years past when the numbers were less encouraging, the media fell over themselves to breathlessly report any unflattering statistics which they could dig up.

A search of news coverage about the Church's new annual report found that not a single secular news outlet (e.g., the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune etc.) reported on the study.

Someone recently told me I should feature more links to alternative media where we could get the facts not reported anywhere else. So this article couldn't be more timely. The Media Report is an excellent source for coverage of what is really going on vis-à-vis the soon to be defunct scandal industry. You can sign up for their newsletter near the bottom right of the site page, and I suggest that all EQE readers do so.

Here are some good bullets points listed in the piece to fire at those who still clutch at the abuse scandal like Linus with his security blanket.

• 40% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 were already long deceased;
• 78% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 are either already deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or simply missing; and
• 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least 25 years ago.

It is obvious that the abuse narrative is now merely a media obsession as the article states. Unfortunately, too often obsessing leads to lying, and the lies continue to do harm:

The facts are the facts: Bogus accusations abound

And a closer look at the study further uncovers another issue that the mainstream media adamantly refuses to report: that bogus accusations against Catholic priests are rampant, and the vast bulk of accusations are either demonstrably untrue or simply unprovable.

According to this year's numbers, a staggering 80% of the 2013 cases in which an investigation had been completed fell into the categories of either "unable to be proven" or "unsubstantiated." Only a mere 14.6% of all 2013 cases were even deemed "substantiated" by the liberal standards of review boards.

Indeed, we have long reported on the pervasiveness of false accusations against priests, but no one in the mainstream media has the courage to pursue a counter-narrative story. The time is long overdue.

Check out the Falsely Accused Priest tag link. It's a gold mine for truth-seekers on this topic. It references the link to the WSJ article by Dorothy Rabinowitz The Trials of Father MacRae, a must read to provide balance and to unmask the predators who pretend to care about actual victims of real crimes. If these criminals and ambulance chasers really cared about the victims of abuse, they would move their operation to a place in which there was evidence that abuse was actually occurring.

"Crunched in the Head"

Thanks go to J-Carp for pointing this one out. Steve Kellmeyer has a succinct style which comes to the point quickly:

Many Catholics today are getting upset about Rod Dreher's insistence that he can't return to the Catholic Church because it is too touchy-feely. He'll stick with the Orthodox church because it "teaches the hard lessons."

Yes, it is hard to read the sentence above without snorting.
Now I hate the sugary sweet sermons and spinelessness of American Catholics as much as the next guy, but let's get serious.

The Orthodox Church accepts divorce and contraception.

If Rod Dreher was REALLY looking for doctrinal rigor, he wouldn't be Eastern Orthodox.

Now, I'm quite certain he is being honest when he says he can't bring himself to return to the Catholic Church. But I'm also sure that the problem isn't the treacle that American Catholic priests commonly mistake for preaching. God bless his little heart, as they say in Texas, but Rod didn't get where he is today by disagreeing with the mainstream media. His incoherent essay just proves that point again.

Yes, we know this by Dreher's own words.

What if a priest gives a lecture to young engaged couples on the constant teaching of the popes on the topic of contraception and the indissolubility of marriage? He starts with Castii Connubii by Pius XI and goes right up through Humanae Vitae by Paul VI and into John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Oh wait, I heard a priest do this once at a Couple to Couple league gathering. They are not a secret society; I'm sure Dreher would have been allowed to attend the lecture.

Would this be too touchy-feely a talk? Would this lecture lack "doctrinal rigor"? Would this be simply too sugary-sweet, and betray a lack of spine? Hardly. And yet Rod Dreher has gone on record stating that he "never really understood the church's teaching on contraception", but that he doesn't have to accept it because he stopped believing in papal infallibility. Again: Dreher's own words:

Because if any doctrine taught authoritatively by the Roman church is untrue, then it's all up to be questioned. I never really understood the teaching on contraception, but I lived by it because I did believe in the authority of the Roman church to teach these things. If you tell yourself, "Well, the Magisterium got that one wrong," the whole thing logically unravels.

This is not the voice of a man bemoaning wimpiness and lack of character in an institution. This is the voice of someone refusing to accept Christ's hard sayings, a sad reality which existed from the time of Christ Himself.

After this many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God. (Jn 6:67ff)

And this time he really really means it.

Oh goodie.

Rod Dreher was invited by Time magazine to write a piece about Pope Francis.  Of course, he was happy to oblige, and he did so in a way that only Rod Dreher could.  Literally, as it turns out.  I can't set it up any better than Dreher does himself:

I tried to think of something nobody else had said. 

And what might that be, you ask?  The title of the Time piece says it all:

I'm Still Not Going Back to the Catholic Church

And he's exactly right.  No one else had written on whether Rod Dreher is going back to the Catholic Church.

Read the whole thing, as Dreher himself would say (and did say).  Executive Summary:  Dreher goes into some length about how the Church did not preach "God's judgment", in effect preaching "Christ without the Cross", and that this lack of interest in teaching repentance was reflected in its reaction to the Scandal. Pope Francis doesn't help, not because of what he says (which Dreher likes), but because of how Francis will be misinterpreted.  Same old saw, but a bit more expanded.  Whatever.

The odd part about all this is that his Time essay didn't really say why Rod Dreher really isn't going back to the Church -- it just left the impression that it did. Instead, as he says in the TAC pimping of his Time essay, the real reason he isn't going back is "because [he does not] believe in Catholic doctrine any longer".   And he only tells us what the problematic part of the doctrine is when pressed in the comments: it turns out that the stumbling block is papal infallibility.

I'm confused, and at a loss for words.  I'm sure y'all won't be.  

P.S. The Time commenters are a bit rough on him already.

"Cautious restraint" versus "Voyeuristic intrusiveness"

I liked Bill Donohue's observations in comparing the media's treatment of Pope Francis and that of Pope Benedict. Excerpt:

There were 14 editorials on Pope Benedict XVI and 11 on Pope Francis. The difference can probably be chalked up to the familiarity of the former versus the unfamiliarity of the latter. But there were more similarities than dissimilarities.

Two segments of the population dominated the media’s interest in the two popes: homosexuals and women. In the 25 editorials, homosexuals were cited 13 times, and women 15. With the exception of a few editorials that gave faint praise to Pope Francis for not judging gays of goodwill, they were uniformly critical of the teachings of the Catholic Church on both subjects. Only two newspapers, USA Today and the Washington Post, did not mention either subject explicitly.

There is no other religion that is subjected to this kind of micro-scrutiny. The elite media react to Islam and Judaism with cautious restraint, and with voyeuristic intrusiveness to Catholicism. Yet when it comes to teachings on homosexuality and women, there is very little difference between the three monotheistic religions. Judaism is respected, Islam is feared, and Christianity—especially Catholicism—is loathed.

Of course one of my friends who I've blogged about is continuously sending me emails about how Pope Francis is pretty much the anti-Christ and Benedict is still the authentic Pope, though exiled by the gay mafia. The latest rumblings about relaxing celibacy mandates for the priests of the Latin Rite have him apoplectic. Personally, Pope Francis's style with the media reminds me of chasing parking lot gulls scrounging for old meat in back of the grocery store. It's amusing for the chaser and it keeps the gulls out of trouble for a bit.

"Miserabiliousness"

A reader sent me this comment on Rod Dreher's post Everything as Miserabilism. The reader had attempted to post it in the combox over there, but it was not approved. That's OK; we'll just read it and discuss it here. If the reader wants to claim the comment, the reader might do so in the combox; I'm posting this with permission. I really don't think Dreher reads this blog, at least not very much.

RD: Everything As Miserabilism

Certainly somewhere, somehow, in all of this there has got to be a tie-in to The Little Way of Ruthie Leming.

Maybe Ruthie was a kind of anti-miserabilist.

RD: At the end of my years as a Catholic, I had allowed anger over the abuse scandal to become almost the only way I could relate to the Catholic Church.

This is about the 10th thousand time you have reminded everybody about this. We are getting weary and miserable hearing about it, yet one more time. I suspect you might be having a bout of miserabilism here because miserabilists love to remind everybody not only about all their present miseries but all their past ones as well.

Perhaps, anti-miserabilists make miserabilists especially miserable in that the miserabilists obsess about what it is about those anti-miserabilists that makes them so dang un-miserable. I imagine that some miserabilists, being so obsessed with this perplexing issue, can concoct some very elaborate and far-reaching theories regarding the nature of Anti-Miserabilism.

Miserabilists might say to themselves something like this: “Why are all these dang anti-miserabilists not properly miserable like us? It just cannot be right. Don’t they know what’s going on in the world? Don’t they know that there’s something wrong with Kansas? There has got to be some kind of connection to anthropology or philosophy here! Maybe there’s this cultural predisposition among some backwards people that causes them to be anti-miserable when they should be cultivating all the proper feelings of misery that advanced people like ourselves have? After all, to be miserable is to be enlightened and refined and educated. Or maybe it is the food the anti-miserabilists eat? They are not getting the necessary nutrients and gastronomic experiences needed to render them properly miserable like us. Or maybe they listen to too much Fox News or Rush Limbaugh and they just don’t read enough profound and intellectual books like we do? They just need to study more Ludwig Wittgenstein or Søren Kierkegaard or Arthur Schopenhauer! Or Friedrich Nietzsche! Ah, we know! There has got to be a Unified Field Theory of Miserabilism. That explains it. It must be like matter and anti-matter meeting each other, except that instead of everything disappearing in a flash of gamma rays, their Anti-Misery Field causes our Misery Field to become even more amplified, thus making us even more miserable.”

Now here are my comments. Let's start off with some self-plagiarizing from two years ago. I made this in response to the anonymous Orthodox commenter; I provide his/her comment in italics:

There is no reason ever to convert to the Orthodox Christian faith unless one genuinely believes that it is the true faith. From the beginning, the signals from Mr. Dreher were that he did not convert to Orthodoxy because he believed it was the truth, but only because it was not the Catholic religion. It was sad to witness.

Thanks for this, Reader, you speak wisdom. We can't know for sure what is going on in someone's mind, but the evidence supports your balanced analysis.

If there is one thing I am trying to bring to light in my posts about Rod Dreher it is that he is haunted by the Catholic Church day and night. He can't stop writing about his Catholic experiences even when he tries to write about something else. He can't stop criticizing the Catholic church even when he is in the midst of criticizing a different church. He has become the professional ex-Catholic which he claimed to loathe. I see only one happy ending for Rod and that's to come back to the Catholic church quietly and take a seven year hiatus from writing about religion. If he can't bring himself to do the first, the least he could do would be to try the second.

I still stand by these words, and I'm still trying to hope that he does come back. People who consider themselves friends with Rod who are Catholic are certainly hoping that he returns. And they know that he knows that they want him to return to the church.

Here are my last thoughts about the matter. On the day I converted to the Catholic faith as an adult, a priest gave a group of us a talk basically stating that what we were about to do was one of the most serious and consequential things anyone could do. Based on that he said “No one will think or feel any less of you if you get up and leave and decide you don’t want to go through with it.” Something like that. I don’t know if Rod heard the same thing, but it really doesn’t matter—as a potential convert embracing the faith you know it already. I lost a lot of friends by converting, and my family was more religious than Rod’s so there were harder feelings there. Joining the Catholic church isn’t something you do on a whim. However it seems to me that Rod may have left on a whim. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man has tremendous guilt feelings about leaving the Church, and he is constantly “kicking against the goads” so to speak, and blogging endlessly about his departure is his continuing attempt at catharsis.

I don't think it's working. He's been at this for years now. We notice that the man's miserabilism about Catholicism flares up whenever there is Catholic stuff in the news. Flannery O’Connor famously stated that she didn’t know if the American South was Christ-centered, but it definitely was “Christ-haunted”. And along those lines, I believe that this man is haunted by the Catholic Church.