Catholic culture tends, like tofu, to take on the flavor of the culture in which it marinates. When it came in contact with rigorism in North Africa, it became rigorist in the form of Donatism. When it came to Ireland, it took on the culture of the post-Roman Irish, when it met Calvinism it started to sound Calvinist. And currently, US conservative Catholic culture has taken on the taste and stink of the sociopathic narcissism of the MAGA cult we chronicled on Friday in brief.
As I noted then, US conservative sociopathic narcissism tends to see all sufferings but its own as
This holds true for conservative US Christianity (aka MAGA antichrist religion) too.
So, for instance, here is one of the loudest enemies of Pope Francis, Bp. Athanasius Schneider, using the MAGA propaganda organ, Lifesite News, to command depressives not to exist. Such people get in the way of the Reactionary need to see themselves as Shiny Happy People Who Have It Together. And their bothersome emotional difficulties do the thing conservative narcissists hate the most: ask them to think about somebody besides themselves.
Similarly, for the editor of the thing that used to be CRISIS Magazine, a once-Catholic journal now given over entirely to hatred of the Pope, self-pity, and conservative antichrist religion, sociopathic indifference to the suffering and death of millions of people who are not the conservative sociopath, coupled with a narcissistic self-pity over the slightest demand for empathy, means that 18 million dead globally mean nothing.
Not, of course, that the pandemic didn’t happen. As with the conservative sociopath who likes to talk about Juneteenth when he can make it All About Himself…
…and only hates it when it reminds him that brown people are human beings too…
…so Eric Sammons is willing to acknowledge the reality of global pandemic when it lets him bathe in self-pitying tears and accuse Amazonian Catholics being murdered by their fascist government and asking for sacraments and pastors of somehow causing it:
Their sufferings don’t exist, but Eric Sammons being inconvenienced is “horrific”. He must bear the wrath of God for sinful poor people honoring the Blessed Virgin in ways not pleasing to a Reactionary white guy’s aesthetic canons. None suffer as he suffers.
As we noted Friday, in addition to consignment to non-existence, the conservative sociopath also dismisses (and relishes) the sufferings of others by declaring them contemptible.
Indeed, so easily does the conservative sociopath spit on empathy that conservative sociopathic priest and grifter James Altman (now in total rebellion against his bishop), commented on the “top three causes for lynching” by saying that “homicides and rapes were behind it all. So it was capital punishment. Carried out by a mob, never a good thing.” In short, he says that lynching, while regrettably short on due process, nonetheless was “caused” not by the lynchers but by the contemptible victims who were all guilty of rape and murder.
Likewise, this servant of culture war uses the language of extermination to say that trans people should be “crushed like the vermin that they are” (to the thunderous applause of the MAGA cult). Interestingly, he also declares trans people mentally ill, inviting the question of whether he believes all mentally ill people to be “vermin” and therefore likewise recommends extermination for all people he believes to be mentally ill.
Speaking of extermination, Altman also recently participated in and gave his blessing to Patrick Coffin’s Hope is Fuel confab, which starred E. Michael Jones, the Reactionary Catholic rabid antisemite and Holocaust denier. Jones’ contempt for Jews is immense so, as ever, the sufferings of those who are not the conservative sociopath did not matter one iota, but Altman, of course, reserves oceans of self-pitying tears for himself as founder of the Coalition for Cancelled Priests, which grifts buckets of money from fellow conservative sociopaths who feel themselves wronged by bishops who told them to shut up and go do priest stuff instead of crazy culture war stuff.
Likewise, over a decade ago, the suffering and even deaths of torture victims were explained away by conservatives (especially Catholic ones) who acted as court prophets to tell the Bush Administration and Faithful Conservative Catholics[TM] in the EWTN audience that the torture of contemptible prisoners was just peachy.
And, of course, the contemptibility of death row prisoners is so self-evident to the conservative sociopath in the Catholic communion that not only will he battle the Church to kill them, but he will even kill four innocent human beings out of every hundred death row inmates, just to savor the frisson of their suffering.
Indeed, so much do some conservative sociopaths not merely ignore, but enjoy the sufferings of others they deem contemptible that they search for excuses to inflict it:
Of course, none of this applies to themselves. Their own sufferings are always a gross injustice, even when absurdly mild. And this applies most especially to the great messiah, lord and savior of MAGA antichrist religion, who constantly gets portrayed as the Suffering Servant by his cult:
As to finding the sufferings of others–and particularly others weaker than themselves–funny, conservative Christian sociopaths are no slouches. MAGA antichrist religion loves punching down. Whether it’s a leading Catholic “prolife” mocker of murder victims…
Or a conservative Catholic priest singling out a teenage kid on the Asperger spectrum for mockery:
…or celebrating the death of a hated culture war enemy like Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Conservative “humor” tends to distinguish itself by punching down.
Which brings us to the last way in which conservative sociopaths despise empathy: by assuming that pleas for compassion for the suffering of those not Themselves are guilt manipulation. Whether the plea is for a drink of water for workers in the heat of a Texas summer, or the idea that “love them both” means loving and not executing post-abortive women who are not Themselves…
…or the Holy Father showing kindness to somebody who is not Themselves
What always comes through is the conservative sociopath’s conviction that kindness is weakness and cruelty is strength. Once again, all pity is reserved solely for the conservative and those who function as extension of his ego. Compassion for anyone who is not Themselves is, in the conservative culture (including conservative MAGA religious culture), “virtue-signaling* and exists solely for the purpose of manipulating others.
So how do Normals in the Christian fold deal with such pathologies in the Church?
More on that tomorrow.
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One Response
I became one of those depressed Catholics after reading this. I just want to hope it is ignorance and, therefore, treatable with education.