Here’s a nice little cartoon on Day’s Catholic Worker movement (guided and formed by the great Peter Maurin):
What Maurin and Day meant by “traditional Catholicism” and what the modern freak show of so-called “Traditionalist Catholicism” means are two radically different things.
The former cared about persons, would give you the shirt off their backs, lived peaceful lives of service, believed in turning the other cheek and practiced radical hospitality because they took the Sermon on the Mount seriously.
The latter–an ironically modernist sect younger than the Beatles and entirely defined by hatred of the last Council and the Church living in obedience to it–is at war with the human race and filled with Inquisitors working night and day to destroy the Church in favor of a legalist vision of blood, iron, force, and fear perfumed with a few European and white nationalist aesthetic and pelvic obsessions.
The irony is that these self-appointed Defenders of the Faith from the Pope are ready to pour boiling oil from the battlements of Fortress Katolicus on those seeking Jesus and to drive out of the Church those imitating Jesus, including people like Day and the Pope. Meanwhile, Day and the Holy Father look to obedience the Christ, not obsession with Euro-aesthetics, as the measure of the Faith.
A pattern both Hosea and Paul noticed is that God often comes at his people when they have gotten to comfy and cocky through those they look down on and despise.
I suspect we are living in such an hour now as non-Christians beg the Greatest Christians of All Time to just act like Jesus and are met with “Drop dead, godless lib!” Indeed, the spectacle of conservative Catholics regarding it as an indictment of Francis that non-Christians are attracted to the gospel he presents to them as they labor to drive people away from and out of the Church in order to “purify” it is a spectacle that would have horrified Paul–and Dorothy Day.
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4 Responses
I’ve actually seen some of what you mentioned play out in real time. Remember that blog I linked to you a while back, where the author was decrying the evils of “enfettered empathy” and “unfettered kindness”?
Well, one the regulars in the comment section, whom I would describe as a normal Catholic who shows a degree of empathy and kindness towards others, at some point, got told by the bog author that he wary and and distrustful of his commentary and pushback. Why? Because that person often got upvotes from atheists and other left-leaning readers of the blog.
I don’t think these “conservative” Catholics actually comprehend the degree to which their professed ideology is so repulsive to the rest of us. Taken to its logical conclusions, it is, functionally speaking, a roadmap and an instruction manual on how to become a complete sociopath, while using the Church as a cover. And I don’t think they care; if anything, they probably revel in having such a reputation and see it as a validation of their beliefs.
The funny thing is that from my and other outsider’s perspective, the things they hate the most about the Church are the things that actually give it any value. I’ve compared it before to an investor seeking to buy out a company, only to get rid of most of the employees, especially those with the requisite institutional knowledge and experience, and just focus on keeping the building and the company logo.
I think that a Catholicism that wants to get rid of someone like Pope Francis and other like-minded Catholics like yourself, is essentially a worthless institution, and pretty much indistinguishable from any other alt-right enclave or what currently passes for conservative politics in the US.
I’ve heard the counter argument from conservatives that trying to be appeal to the other side does not lead to membership growth, and there might be some truth to that. For example, I currently see no path for me to ever become a Catholic: I don’t believe Christianity’s foundational claims regarding Jesus or even God are true. I also believe that several Catholic doctrines that are constantly being pushed front and center, are not only wrong but actually harmful.
However, taken as a whole, I do think that Catholicism has a thing or two to say regarding the common good. I do think that Catholic perspectives are worth listening to and including in these conversations. I also think that people with a desire to follow a God who is the embodiment of goodness itself, can and have come up with decent frameworks for a somewhat decent human governance. All those social democracies that are often touted as blueprints we can model after in one way or another? They’re in many ways a functional implementation of CST, regardless of their society’s level of religiosity.
You would think that if Catholics truly believed God was who they say it was, then they would also believe that God transcends and goes beyond the Church. Instead, we have the morbidly fascinating spectacle of Catholics, often failing to recognize their own (supposed) ideology, when its reflected back at them.
@EStriker, about a month ago my son’s H.S. Physics teacher went on a complete tirade about Christianity. He’s a skinny 40ish guy from Scotland with a very charming accent. He asked the class out of the blue with a LOT of intensity:
“Who here in this classroom is a *Christian*???”
My son and another boy out of about 30 raised their hands. He pointed at them, and said, “FOOLS! The vast majority of harm that has been done to this earth was by Christians!” My son calmly replied, “Mr. ______, the vast majority of Christians have been simple people with maybe a cow to milk and a family to feed.”
My son was amused by his impassioned outburst. After class he sort of half apologized, realizing he had crossed a line (and that the kid was right).
It’s so unoriginal to look down upon Christianity. My kid gets that. There’s just so much more to it.
That is quite an overreach. I’ve also seen overreach in the opposite direction, where Christian apologists try to claim that any and all progress is of the exclusive domain of Christianity. The way I see it, the history of Christianity is just like the history of humanity that its a part of: you have to acknowledge both the good and the bad, and sometimes it takes going through the bad in order to get to the good.
And as satisfying as it might be to some to characterize Christianity as “The Big Bad of Everything”, its just not.
Last Sunday, on the advice of a priest whom I’ve known for 3o+ years, I went to check out a parish in SF. I’ve been wanting to look into something more traditional, but not stuck on tradition. Haha –a tall order.
So my husband and I went to the Dominican church there. Crossing the GG bridge into SF is always cool because it’s almost like going to another planet. Our home is only about 8 minutes from the bridge, but the transition from greenbelt to cityscape is sudden. When we got to the church I was immediately struck by how gigantic and ornate the building is: flying buttresses, vaulted ceilings, carved wooden confessionals, giant stain-glass windows. It felt like we had stepped back in time a few hundred years, and were in a Cathedral in Europe. There was a large, multicultural choir singing really beautiful Latin hymns, nuns in full habit, friars in white robes, big rosaries hanging from belts. I was into it–so glad I could just swoop in without ever having been there, and feel a part of what was happening, no questions asked, no box to check, no list to point a name on.
After an hour and a half, we hopped back into our car and headed home. My mind was going a mile a minute, slicing and dicing everything that we’d just taken in. I peppered my husband with questions about how he felt, and what it meant to him.
I wondered what God thinks about it. I thought about how cool it must have been to be a peasant in Europe, and have the right to go every week to a God-palace –even if King and country were missing the mark in the way they honored my existence. What would Jesus say?
Alas–I’m a modern peasant. I don’t really need all of those trappings. I know I love to need Jesus, and that’s about it. WWJD and the comfort of the sacraments actually works for me. Belonging to a billion member sometimes dysfunctional family works for me too. I don’t want to do this pilgrimage alone.
I think we will bring the kids to that Dominican church every once in a while,(maybe once a month) just to switch things up, and maybe go to lunch and a museum afterwards. I do wonder what God thinks about it all, but my hunch is that he is utterly delighted with what his children offer (Him) with sincerity. We are told that when Jesus was born choirs of angelic beings sang in the heavens–so I know that singing will exist beyond this world–but I know he doesn’t really need the incense and all the candles, bells and brocade etc. to be made present. I’m reminded of my kindergarten students singing and dancing, and following directions with adorable gradations of focus, and can know that he delights in our similar efforts to delight in him.
I wonder how other humans get through all of this thing that we’re doing without believing that God delights in them. I can’t fathom such an existence.