Musings on Topix by bookworm

Time to check in to out favorite Topix thread, now on page 25. First some commentary on the picture here from bookworm:

After all the sadness and disappointment his natural family has put him through, it's so gratifying to see the sheer, exuberant joy a virile young man brings to his face, even so far away. I guess some people have to travel far to finally find their true place in the world. 

Then bookworm demonstrates that he, too, sadly misunderstands the Benedict Option (like all other sensible people):

I think he's given up on that book. All he's talking about now is what he's calling his Benedict Option. Forming communes and stuff. You have to think the guy who's talking about it will be doing it himself, look pretty odd if he didn't. So sooner or later he'll be starting a Benedict Option commune around here. He's probably just waiting to get his hands on some land. Probably his family's land.

Well, bookworm, Rod Dreher has never worried about "looking pretty odd." Speaking of which, bookworm commentates again on gastronomy:

That sure does look like Rod's trying to make a doody. Or maybe like he has a cramp. Or maybe a gas pain. Hard to tell what that food's really doing to him, but based on that picture I think I'd pass on whatever it is he's eating and ask the waiter for a burger and fries instead. French fries of course.

and then bookworm museth further on the Benedict Option:

I'm not so sure how I feel now about Rod starting up one of these Benedict Option communes in our parish. In a comment one of his people is noodling over how to avoid the IRS by swapping labor, then asks, "If you could be certain that you can get away with it, would it be acceptable for a Benedict Option community to support itself by shoplifting?"

I don't think Rod himself would be doing any such thing, but he couldn't be keeping his eye on all his people all of the time. We could end up with something like a religious band of gypsies or those Irish travelers. They'd all be thinking what they were doing was justified because they were doing Rod's Benedict Option thing, but the lines could get real blurry real fast. 

I don't think bookworm needs to worry about this, and most people here probably agree with me. Dreher has always been about talking and writing about things and not really doing them. Besides, the Benedict Option has always been about what you need to do, NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, but what he needs to do is to think deeply and intensely about what the Benedict Option really, actually is, or could be, and somehow formulate ideas about something which has no formulas and write a book about something entirely new which he has been talking about for ten years.

Not an ostrich

Recent insinuations that I don't take serious problems in the Catholic Church seriously are perplexing to me. My first instinct is to link to some previous posts which should make the point that I'm not being some kind of head-burying ostrich.

Tom's and my remarks on Pope Francis "hysteria"

St. Ignatius School in Cleveland assigns crap for summer reading

Leaving no doubt I think Faithful Citizenship is garbage

Georgetown: A Lapsed Catholic University?

Dr. Jeff Mirus ponders formal excommunications

Weigel on the "Bernardin Era"

Do we really need so many Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist?

Cleveland Micro-schism

Bishop Aquila corrects Pelosi's distortions of Catholic teaching

Father Michael Phleger wigs out in Obama's church

But if you don't really have time to read a bunch of boring old posts, I offer this one to you. Ed Peters on the "perpetual state of collapse." It may shed some light on my attitude. I hope my posture is one of resolution and recollection and not shrugging stoicism. Feel free to contest this as always, using libelous "ad hominem" arguments and vuvuzelas if necessary.

Not holed up in the bunker yet

Recently I've been getting crazy emails about how Pope Francis is absolutely destroying the Catholic Church. These emails claim that Pope Benedict is the real Pope and has been blackmailed into exile. Supposedly Pope Francis has a crucifix which is really some sort of Wiccan magic wand. Or something insidious like that.

One reason I laugh at these kinds of conspiracies is how predictable they are. Back when John Paul I died in office there were plenty of conspiracies tailor made to fit pet agendas. One person told me he was killed because he was going to bring back the Traditional Latin Mass. This astounded me considering that another fan of the TLM told me that Albino Luciani had started the unforgivable practice of waving, smiling and shaking hands with people while in procession at the beginning of Mass. Upon suggesting this might be his interpretation of laetificat juventutem meam I was met with an unimpressed silence and a very holy frown.

Since John Paul II didn't die after a month after his election, the conspiracy theory I heard about him was that there were two Pope John Pauls. The real one was locked away somewhere and the one you saw on television or at WYD celebrations was a modernist plant with plastic surgery sent into the Vatican in the early eighties to destroy the church. If that were true I'm sure that was that agent's last mission, having failed so badly. There was reportedly a Mass celebrated by the soon-to-be-Saint John Paul II at Assisi where someone had put a statue of Buddha on top of a tabernacle. "But the Pope didn't put the statue there, did he?" I asked. "No, but he didn't remove it either, which he should have," I was informed. "Maybe he thought it was a statue of an angel. Some of them are as chubby as Buddha, you know," I suggested. I received more holy frowns for my insolence.

I'd had some conversations with Traditionalists of a more general nature which I remember fondly. Rich was a truly great guy who had a saintly devotion to the Latin Mass. He had read a lot of books about spirituality and I learned a lot from talking to him, but every once in a while he'd get really angry and blurt out an unqualified assertion. "Millions and millions of souls are going to hell all because of the Second Vatican Council!" Rich stridently stated. "Are you sure of that? How do you know that?" He was sort of apologetic and said "Well, I don't really know; I could be wrong about all of this of course."

My point is that defectibility doomsday predictions have so far been pretty far off the mark. They sometimes get downgraded to semi-doomsday predictions before dissipating altogether, or if they completely lack even a kernel of truth they go straight into the bin.

But laying wild-eyed craziness aside, I know a lot of serious people have real concerns about the current Pope's messaging that have nothing to do with weird conspiracies, rumors or exaggerations. But I still think those people can at times be prone to making overstatements. I'm in agreement with R. R. Reno's take and tone on our current Holy Father's recent interviews. More about this later.

With regard to being prone to overstatement about the present Papal interview material, I remember back when female altar servers were approved by Pope John Paul II. It was shortly after I converted, and I knew people who thought that was the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church’s tradition of a male priesthood and anything resembling reverence in the Mass. One friend who was extremely upset pointed out that seeing "cute girls" up in the sanctuary was going to make it impossible for red-blooded dudes like us to concentrate on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I think he might have had a bit of a point if he just would change the word impossible to more difficult. I wasn't worried so much about that; I'm not sure how distracting a girl wearing a shapeless white alb can be, especially compared to what I've seen some female Eucharistic Ministers wearing for years before altar girls were legalized. Not to mention women dressed horribly in the pew in front of you. Plus there are many more things to distract parishioners during Sunday Mass: football games, how your stocks are doing, the work week ahead, etc. And this was all before the iPhone was invented.

I was, however, temporarily convinced that female altar servers were not a good development and allowing them was a definite concession to secular pressures. I think I was completely wrong about that and recent history has proven that I was wrong. The dome has not cracked, lightning bolts have not been sent down from Heaven upon Masses with female acolytes, cute or otherwise. As a result, I have absolutely no problem with altar girls now and frankly I barely even notice it.

The Pope is first and foremost a Father in his essence and so my relationship to him always reminds me of my own relationship to my father. I sometimes get bored listening to my father talk about some conversation with some guy named Bill he had about something I totally forget now. But I'm intrigued when he explains how vacuum tubes work. I think my brother would rather hear news about what Bill So-and-so said and could care less about the vacuum tubes. But we love him no matter what he's off about. Most of the things we all agree on are discussed only cursorily.

Of course our father taught us right from wrong when we were children; he was indeed our first teacher. The Pope is also a teacher, I realize, but I accept his teaching as an adult who can examine my own conscience and decide whether what he is saying applies to me. When the Pope goes on and on about fighting poverty my eyes glaze over, I'll admit. I don't feel bad about this; even Jesus got sick of hearing about "the poor" sometimes (Mt. 26:11), although he directly commanded one rich guy to give ALL his money to the poor (Mk. 10:21). Obviously that was what that prig needed, and there is a time and place for everything. However I'll listen to the Pope and throw in an extra $50 when I can spare it. My eyes may glaze over but I still love the guy. Like I said in the comments before, I don't think he's talking about me when he says " It is not necessary to talk about these issues [abortion and same-sex marriage] all the time." I do know some people who are so obsessed with fighting abortion that their marriages have suffered or even failed. In other words, they may have saved the lives of unborn children, but they didn't harvest the grace of the sacrament of marriage and instead, they entirely blew their vocations and alienated their families. Randall Terry is a public poster child for this phenomenon. Maybe these people are analogous to those who said "Lord, Lord, didn't we cast out demons in your name? (Mt. 7:22)" It would appear to be so.

Another Francis, Francis Cardinal Arinze, was asked once about why the Bishops weren't fighting more against abortion and talking about it more. He said something like "You don't need a Bishop to tell you that abortion is wrong. An eight year old preparing for First Holy Communion can tell you it's wrong. (paraphrasing)" This comment is put a little less flippantly than "It is not necessary to talk about these issues [abortion and same-sex marriage] all the time," but contains a very similar underlying message.

The people I hear talking about contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage the most in America are members of the Democrat Party. They sometimes call the first two "women's services" and the last one "marriage equality", but those are merely code words. This is why one Bishop changed his party affiliation to Republican, by the way, and it made the news. Was Pope Francis upset by this at the time? I hardly think he would be. The Democrats are trying to push all this stuff on everybody, and we're pushing back. But we're not pushing back "all the time." It's not what solely defines us as Catholics.

These are random musings to be sure, and I'm jumping all over the place I realize. But I hope this gives people an idea of why I'm not in the bunker yet over Pope Francis and his different style. I think that Reno criticizes some of the Pope's words respectfully and I think respect is a key attribute in this dialogue. I've seen what is commonly called "Catholic Fundamentalism" by liberals—something I would merely call "speaking the truth without charity" (Ep. 4:15, I Cor. 13:1ff)—and it may not be as widespread as some Jesuits think, but its effects can be quite harmful, especially on the young and impressionable.

Musings on a "Third Way"

Allow me to relate a small part of my weekend musings here. I recently received a short yet hysterical email which tacitly accused me of using a pseudonym so as to conceal my identity. But as I've said before, Pauli isn't a pseudonym; it's a nickname. Most people here know my surname and generally where I live. These things are not hard to figure out if you read enough of the blog and follow the links, and I often send emails to readers—and sometime would-be readers—which reveal my actual name. I'm really not worried about people discovering it.

Some bloggers who are in the habit of using their full name are a bit obsessed with those who choose not too. They'll talk about how pseudonymity encourages excessive carelessness and insensitivity when expressing opinions due to an immunity from any consequences. Others advocate the importance of pseudonyms, and how they facilitate free speech which is otherwise gagged for fear of repercussions. The false dichotomy that some of these bloggers perpetuate is that you're either boldly announcing in neon your name, address, what parish you belong to, how many kids you have and pets you own, etc. or you are living a double-life, hiding behind a wall of deception and hurling bombs from the pseudonymous online bunker you've constructed.

A third way avoids both the neon and the bunker. You could call it the "nickname way" if you feel you must call it something. This way of presenting your ideas is probably not available to someone who writes for a major media company or is a published author. If you are already a public figure when you start a blog, and you don't have an established moniker, then you might be perceived as using a pseudonym unless you use your real name. And you'll probably be expected to identify yourself anyway, being a public figure.

Here's the thing: most of us aren't public figures or columnists and we'd rather not have the trouble that goes with that. If you get interviewed by the local rag because you found a lost puppy does that make you a public figure? No. If you speak up at the town council meeting about bad zoning decisions does that make you a public figure? No. If you witness a crime and give a recorded testimony to the police does that make you a public figure? No. Then why should running a free online newsletter, AKA a blog, give you all the responsibilities and burdens of being a public figure? It doesn't, and if you think it does, you might want to check your ego, man. Or woman.

None of this is to say that I'd be necessarily against someone going ahead and going the anonymous/pseudonymous route. That may be harder than people realize, as we know from recent blog history. Like I've said before, there's enough info within the pages of my blog to "out" me for who I am. Just be aware of this fact: nobody cares.

And here's another interested point to consider. The most pseudonymous commenters on my blog, people like The Man from K Street and our own blogger Pikkumatti, are some of the best commenters on the site, and they never indulge in scurrilous attacks or over-the-top accusations. Likewise for our first-name bloggers and commenters like Keith, Kathleen, Diane and Silicon Valley Steve. These anecdotes agree with the latest statistical findings on this topic, by the way.