Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Welcome to our visitors from St. Francisville, LA!

First, welcome to those who are stopping by here from the St. Francisville forum over at Topix.  We're glad you're stopping by.

I thought it might be a good idea to explain to our visitors why we have this strange fixation on the fine work of Rod Dreher, so you don't think that we are a bunch of stalkers.  Plus, that sort of rehash is always good fun for those of us who have that common interest. I'll explain things from my viewpoint, and perhaps the elders can elaborate in the comment box.

A few years ago, Dreher was operating a blog at Beliefnet, in the time following the publishing of his seminal work Crunchy Cons.  I was originally attracted to that topic because I thought that there were too many good things that we conservatives had ceded to fringe liberals, and that it was time to take some of them back.   And Dreher was also an op-ed columnist in our local rag here in Dallas, so I had some familiarity with the topic from that.  Not to mention that he was a fellow Catholic -- seemed to fit.

I was soon disappointed. And how.  My view is that Dreher confuses matters of taste with matters of truth.  In his world, the things he likes, and the things he dislikes, become criteria for judging authenticity, and for discerning good from evil.  So we got pieces trashing Wal-Mart, the humor of Roberto Begnini, global imports, and on and on, and we got pieces trumpeting the "finer" local things.  Rules became rules, except for the exceptions (the Beaujolais Nouveau, his Mercedes, etc.), and when Dreher changes his mind (suburbs, Kindle).  But nevertheless, readers were admonished to toe the line.  (Wish I could link to some of these, but they've mostly been taken down by Beliefnet and lost to the ether or at best the Wayback Machine.)

And then came the Great Conversion from Catholicism to Orthodoxy.  We should have seen this coming, because we got Dreherian diatribes on ugly churches, bad music, and homilies that would cause him to leave Mass.  But then (because he was outed, IIRC), Dreher owned up to his Orthodox conversion in  a piece of interminable length entitled "Orthodoxy and Me" (which has been preserved here in its entirety), in which he trashes the Catholic Church, and touts the wisdom of his conversion to Orthodoxy.

God bless anyone along their spiritual journey -- we each have to find our way.  But the manner in which he did this was so uncharitable that many of us (including those of us here) followed the call to defend the Church.  As I said at the time, that post was like a guest throwing a stinkbomb on leaving a party, for the enjoyment of those outside watching the resulting mayhem through the windows.  Defense of the Church was necessary, but certainly appeared amusingly unattractive to outsiders ("Haha -- look at the silly Christians fighting among themselves -- glad I'm a pagan").  We defenders were even called "Assholes for Christ", which I am happy to wear as a badge of honor from that time.

There was a blog among some of the elders here ("The Contra-Crunchy Conservative") where we had been venting against the Dreher posts and got to know each other.   Pauli then soon started this one, which is where we live now.

Again, welcome.  Stay awhile -- we talk about other cool things like guns and politics and religion, too.  But nothing brings up the tempo like a good piece about Rod Dreher.

25 comments:

  1. Basically, I would have been happy letting Dreher be after the conversion, except for one thing....

    He pledged that he was never going to be a professional "bitter ex-Catholic". When he effectively went back on that before his trunks were even dry from swimming the Bosphorus, analogizing everything to The Scandal, sneering at everything Roman, and generally being a hypocritical dick (cf. his treatment of now retired Cardinals vs. Archbishop Gandalf and his Mexican rent-boys), well, I have sworn upon my keyboard eternal hostility against every form of anti-papal idiocy over the mind of man...

    -The Man From K Street

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    1. Man from K Street, you took the words right out of my mouth. Mark Shea, it's time for another post imploring your pal Mr. Double Standard to leave our Church the heck alone.

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  2. Witness yesterday's post on "Catholic Whistleblowers". Read Bill Donohue's to get the Rest of the Story (as always).

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    1. ...well, the other RotS is that he refused to blow the whistle on "Gandalf" et al as TMFKS points out.

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    2. "Gandalf"?

      Are we talking about AB Bob?

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    3. Those who are "fighting [this] war that is long over" are obviously not doing it to protect children -- that is already being done.

      They are only doing it to besmirch the Church. Bashing of the Catholic Church is never out of style among that crowd. And shame on Dreher for fomenting this. (He's had several nostalgia pieces about the scandal in recent weeks. Each serving as a vehicle for him to again express his rage, of course.)

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    4. There are many rumors re Archbishop Gandalf -- and some substantiated stories, such as the documented fact that he harbored and sheltered a registered sex offender. (See pokrov.org; look up their open letter to Archbishop Dmitri.)

      But, while I believe the rumors are credible -- and highly ironic, given Rod's adulation of the hierarch in question -- they pale in the credibility department beside some of the other publicly documented cases detailed at pokrov.org. (Initially a pokrov.org supporter, Rod "Muzhik" later turned against it...presumably because it was goring then-Met. Jonah's ox. As well as the oxen of other Rod-Ray cronies, such as Father Fester.)

      It is ironic indeed that Rod refuses to praise Orthodox whistleblowers such as pokrov.org and the National Herald (the Greek-American newspaper which has scathingly commented upon such egregious scandals as the sex-abuse cases at the Astoria, NY, GOA monastery -- which imported young Ukrainian novices for the express purpose of molesting them).

      Rod's silence is deafening when it comes to these whistleblowers. Double standard much??

      Meanwhile, he actually expresses sympathy for Orthodox perps -- sympathy he never extended to their Catholic counterparts or even to their alleged RC episcopal enablers. Not that such sympathy would be warranted, but...if it's not warranted WRT Catholic perps, then it certainly should NOT be warranted WRT Orthodox perps, either. Yet, in his article re the notorious abuse scandal involving the Blanco, TX, EO monastery, which he and his wife visited several times, he expresses sympathy for the chief perp -- an evil teen-abusing pervert -- and remarks that "we are all sinners," and we all need mercy, and blahdeblah. Can you imagine Rod saying anything remotely like that about any Catholic perp or enabler? Again--not that he SHOULD...but it amazes me how dramatically he changes his tune when the perp is Orthodox. "What a difference a beard makes." Indeed!

      (I will try to find the relevant Dreherite article for you...I believe it's at pokrov.org.)

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  3. It's not bashing to shine a light on a creature who preys on, parasitizes, and cannibalizes others, not for any enduring principles, but only to his own selfish ends. It's just smart community defense.

    Whether it's gays - he hates them when he can make money putting them down, except for when he can make more money tossing Andrew Sullivan's salad, or techie culture, or off the grid conservative hipsters, or Catholics - this roaming creature sees the world through nothing more uplifted than the feral eyes of a hunting coyote. My deepest apologies to innocent coyotes.

    And the Oscar award-winning screenplay to be written here - Oengus? - won't be TLWORL, Rod Dreher's cannibalism of his dead sister to his own pathetic, narcissistic ends, instead it will the story of Rod Dreher's cannibalism of his dead sister to his own pathetic, narcissistic ends, of TLWORL's creation and its consequences and of the town of St. Francisville's wrestling with the same monstrous temptation, subsequently dividing them between those who found they could partake of that sort of offering - just a little taste, now, no more - and those whose consciences absolutely forbade their doing so.

    Cannibalism. Montrous! But, you know, what harm could there be in just a little taste, Grandmother's Buttons? Not greasy at all, really, and quite fresh and sweet, no? And of course those extra dollars don't do anybody any harm, now, do they. Maybe just another little nibble, Ronnie? And what about you, BettyLou? That community theater isn't going to fund itself, now, is it? Or maybe the Dreher's will favor you by inviting you to one of their dinner parties, Olive. That could make a difference, couldn't it, in whether your sister gets that part. And all because "Ruthie Leming" has now become the universal blog tag for the most personal of corruptions. Now how 'bout just another little nibble, hon. Sweet, actually, and not that greasy at all, really.

    This is just the latest iteration in a serpentine trail of temptation and betrayal winding back through Medea's pot pies all the way to the Garden, and its telling just never gets old.

    Keith

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    1. Well, I just threw up a little in my mouth. So thanks, Keith. ;-)

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    2. Heh.

      Anyway, you would hope it might dawn on the good people of St. Francisville that what Dreher has done to his own sister he can still just as easily do to any one of them, or to all of them as a group for that matter. In fact, I might have a different interpretation from what someone said in an earlier post about Paw Dreher pulling the rug out from under Rod in what he really thinks of the place.

      Because it's not Paw actually doing the public blabbing, it's writer son Rod telling "what Paw said", close quotes. For all Rod's fawning patronization about the extraordinary ordinariness of the little people, he then uses an alternate character mouthpiece, his elderly father, to tell them what a pissant little turdhole they've always had prior to his return to civilize them. And not a virile, 40-year-old father who might backhand him in real life for telling confidences he shouldn't or for all we know just making them up and making him look like an ungrateful tool, mind you. No, this useful tool father mouthpiece is now too elderly and frail to constitute any kind of threat to sonny anymore while also having already passed on all the Dreher family name value he's ever going to, so he's become as dispensable for throwing under the bus as any of Dreher's usual "anonymous friend" POV sock puppets.

      Keith

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    3. I think pere et fils are complicit in their passive aggressive treachery. Like i said, Dad taught Ray, who in turn decided to take it on the road. I'd wager this whole shebang -- leaving town, coming back, narrating the entire process-- is about getting Dad's attention finally.

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    4. I didn't instantly recognize what the acronym "TLWORL" meant. But anyhow I am going to the library tomorrow and I will request that the librarians obtain TLWORL for me. I just have to read the book and find out for myself what's going on here.

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  4. Not completely off topic, since this relates to Catholic doctrine. Do Roman Catholics believe that the Old Testament is fallible, that is, that there could be errors in it due to it being written by men? Some guy on Bookworm Room's site is very earnestly insisting that is RC belief. News to me, if so.

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  5. Barb, the primary author of the OT is God. So as such, it contains no errors. Obviously it is still subject to mistranslation, misunderstanding and misinterpretation. But that's not God's fault.

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  6. Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation written at the Second Vatican Council, puts it this way: "[S]ince everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."

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  7. Citizens of St. Francisville! Throw off your chicken yolks! If Rod Dreher can thumb his nose at the law banning chickens in the city limits, so can you!

    Why should your little tykes cry their eyes out because they can't have chickens in town when little Nora Dreher can have hers if she wants?

    To the chicken wire! Liberté! Égalité! Volaille!

    Keith

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    1. Breaking news!

      A legal neighborhood cat has already killed one of the illegal Dreher chickens.

      Revenge upon the local small town cats has been sworn by the contraband urban chicken interlopers from Philly.

      Commenter Engineer Scotty offers this helpful revenge advice:

      "(What you do with the neighbor’s cat after it is trapped–put a bell on its collar and let it go, take it to the parish animal shelter, take it to the parish animal shelter in New Orleans, tie it to a brick and “accidentally” drop it off the Highway 10 bridge, or mount it on a pike in your yard to serve as a warning to other cats–is entirely up to you)."

      "Hi, I'm Rod Dreher, and I moved here to shoot your cats."

      My oh my, there is no lack of bloody drama in sleepy little St. Francisville.

      Keith

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    2. Of course if Orthodoxy doesn't work out for Rod he can always turn to Catbearding.

      Keith

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    3. Two things I'll never understand:

      1) Why Dreher thinks that we might be possibly care about the daily events of his personal life; and

      2) Why so many commenters over there seem to actually care about the daily events of Dreher's personal life.

      To borrow a line from Doctor Zhivago, those posts are so "personal, petit-bourgeois, and self-indulgent".

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    4. Pik,

      Because Rod Dreher is the charismatic leader of the cult of Rod Dreher, and to become a follower of Rod Dreher is to rescue one's lonely, existentially tormented self from the alternative, an eternal damnation of catbearding.

      This is all very Circle of Life: had lonely Rod had a Rod to follow when lonely Rod was growing up, Rod would have followed him slavishly round and round the tree until Rod and Rod all melted down into one muddled puddle of butter.

      No one preys on the lonely and psychologically tormented as a Svengali better than the lonely and psychologically tormented, and no one has mastered this predation better than Rod Dreher.

      Keith

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    5. A legal neighborhood cat has already killed one of the illegal Dreher chickens.

      That is funny. My day is already made. Thanks, Keith.

      You can't make this shit up.

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    6. I'm more of a dog person than a cat person, but I must say my heart warms to that cat. I would like to buy it a can of tuna.

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    7. Or maybe some deli chicken salad.

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  8. Rod would have followed him slavishly round and round the tree until Rod and Rod all melted down into one muddled puddle of butter.

    OK, This cracked me up...I guffawed out loud when I read it. Youse guys have a gift. ;)

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  9. Funnily, the kids (mostly black and hispanic) in our old Cleveland nabe had a taunting name they used, "Chicken-head! Chicken-head!" But they sort of dropped the "n", so it was more like "Chick-a-head, chick-a-head...."

    When we all go down to St. Francisville for the Walker Percy Bourbon-fest next may we'll make sure to use this cat-call early and often.

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