This Is the Kind of Problem the Internet Has Increased
One of the great things about the internet is that it gives a vast amount of information at the fingertip. But with it, all kinds of misinformation and lies which have been previously refuted keep turning up and believed. Conspiracy theory is big on net, and this has led to a re-awakened anti-Catholicism. 19th century American xenophobia against Catholics, thinking the Church through the Jesuits desire to “control the world” through all kinds of evil means, is accepted a priori by too many of these conspiracy theorists.
Here is a prime example, from “We are Change” a “9-11 truth” movement which has completely merged with anti-Catholicism to produce one of the most idiotic videos I’ve seen from youtube.
I love how “it’s on the Congressional Record” makes it true – as long as it is not the official 9-11 story. The sad thing is that these people are not just to themselves, but they are influencing Americans from all side of the political spectrum. How is this possible? Because the foundation of American thought is the liberal Enlightenment with its rejection of authority. It’s a common agreement which is fermenting on the internet: authority is bad — authority is manipulative, and anything which has to rely upon official explanations is merely propaganda and only “sheeple” believe it.
While I can understand this sentiment within the context of the liberal tradition, one of the things we must remember as Christians is that Christ is the Good Shepherd; to be called “sheep” is not always a bad thing.
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This is an extremely useful follow-up to the early posting about “liberalism” being an enemy of traditional Catholic orthodoxy–so long as it is understood that, in the American context, “liberalism” is actually what the Americans call “conservatism,” i.e. antagonism toward communitarianism; denial of “personhood,” as opposed to “individualism”; fear and loathing of internationalism or cosmopolitanism, revulsion against theological imperatives carried over into the political or social spheres (a ramification of the radical Protestant doctrine that “salvation is by faith alone,” and that any attempt to “build the Kingdom” on earth is blasphemous), etc.
The theological premises of the Roman Catholic Church will ALWAYS be fundamentally at war with the radical Enlightenment philosophy and the Protestant religious underpinnings of the heresy properly called “Americanism.”
This woman’s revulsion against a “black Pope” is perfectly natural and unsurprising in the American religious context.
Digby
Right — this is exactly the problem with the wholesale acceptance of the libertine tradition from the Enlightenment. It’s not that there is no good which came from it, but the dark side keeps appearing, and I fear the internet is a demonstration of it (with this video being a mere example of how the internet engages the Enlightement’s anti-authority rhetoric).
Henry:
I had a series of reactions to the video. First, I broke out laughing because, like Fr. Nicolás, I’d never heard it before and I’m the sort of person who is easily entertained by Other People’s Delusions. Then, since “it’s in the Congressional Record” I looked it up with google and enjoyed the extended reading. It’s fabulously over-the-top stuff.
Next, I started wondering how I would have answered the woman’s question. Would I have tried to reason with her, would I have empathized with her fears, or would I have played along with her delusion (either as a fellow Truther or a blood-sucking papist) until she realized I was using her for my own amusement? Do I understand her delusion well enough to play along with it and stretch it like silly putty? Am I so far “outside” her delusion that I can see it for what it really is, and step into and out of it at will?
Finally, I wondered what are my delusions that might amuse or dismay someone “ahead” of me in perspective? Can I, even momentarily, step out of my own fears and delusions to see them for what they really are? How amusing or pathetic does my self-important attitude or my certainty in the real-ness of my self-constructed ego world seem to someone who’s been there, left it behind and returned as a sort of Bodhisattva? What does God really think of me? I can’t resist wondering.
Accepting the limits of our knowledge doesn’t come easily to anyone. We fear that we’re being “had”: Maybe by people in power, maybe by God, maybe by people who claim communion with God, maybe by people who try so hard to convince us of God’s reality that it becomes harder and harder to believe in God at all. How we respond to the challenge of not knowing is a matter of Grace.
Truthers and other conspiracy theorists respond to not-knowing by fabricating “facts” and clinging to them in the face of all evidence to the contrary. If it weren’t the Extreme Oath of the Jesuits it would be the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a Masonic Oath or some other fabrication. Like any addiction, if we “need” delusion, we’ll find it, and the Internet is an equal-opportunity feeder and revealer of all addictions: sex, pornography, hate, gambling,… It doesn’t really matter what the specific addiction is.
So I don’t think wearechange.org is particularly Anti-Catholic. They are just as willing to use governments, judges and corporations to feed their delusions. Rather than fear, pity or amusement, I think compassion is our best response.
Henry,
On the other hand, prior to widespread use of the Internet, it would have been very difficult to track down the origins of the alleged “Jesuit Oath.” However, it took me only a few minutes to discover it was a 17th-century forgery by someone name Robert Ware and to find two books on Google Books that shed light on it: Blunders and Forgeries: Historical Essays by Thomas Edward Bridgett, published in 1890, and Concerning Jesuits edited by John Gerard, published in 1902.
Briefly, Robert Ware was the son of the “illustrious” James Ware, a “well-known Irish antiquarian and annalist.” (I think he was pretty much what we would consider a historian.) Robert capitalized on his father’s reputation, pretending to find, in his father’s collection, documents that he (Robert) forged. Among these was the “Jesuit Oath.” I am no expert, having poked around for about a half hour, but apparently it took a couple hundred years for the forgeries to be completely debunked. They were either dismissed out of hand by Catholics and believed by those who were eager to believe anything scandalous about the Church.
Apparently the forgeries surfaced here and there over the centuries, and now this one has surfaced again, but we’re in a much better position, thanks to the Internet, to know where it came from and to demonstrate that it is false.
I have to say that if some such thing had come to my attention before I had access to the Internet, I probably would have been more inclined to say, “Well, you know, those were different times, and a lot of bad things have happened, but I am sure no Jesuit takes such an oath today.” Instead, I am able to say it is a complete fraud, not just a regrettable bit of history.
David
While it is true one can bring out such evidence, the skepticism to authority and “official responses” would be “well, of course you would say that.” The internet really allows this kind of thing to develop. The conspiracy boards, which are quite popular (and have had a strong connection to Beck, Tea Parties, and anti-global warming discussion, with Beck often getting insight from them) are quite strong with the “Vatican is TPTB controlling the shots.” And the rejection of the past forgery in present scholarship is seen as proof of the propaganda. It’s sad.
Henry,
Perhaps Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay titled The Paranoid Style in American Politics is more relevant here than a critique of the Internet or the Enlightenment. And Hofstadter ultimately concludes that the kind of paranoia he identifies is neither new nor unique to America.
Saying “it’s in the Congressional Record” is actually an appeal to authority, although an extremely lame one. And let’s not forget the importance the Enlightenment placed on reason. You can’t accuse these conspiracy types of buying into that aspect of Enlightenment thought.
David
They are willing to accept prior authority because they still have this ideal of America and its Revolution. So 19th century good, 20th century bad, 20th century is the rise of the “new world order” and its hiding the conspiracy. Anything which is not libertine-individualism is seen as “powers that be trying to enslave.” It’s a very liberal tradition in the proper meaning of liberal. Read godlikeproductions sometime to see how bad it can get.
David,
Thanks for digging that stuff up. I was wondering where on earth it came from.
Also, I am wondering, how much does the internet perpetuate this kind of nonsense (I’m sure it is not negligibe) and how much does it just make us aware of how much nonsense there is in the world even without the internet?
You know, the discipline of history is a very tricky thing, and the proper attitude toward its study is ALWAYS skepticism, I think. However, that means skepticism regarding the official version of things, as well as regards the paranoid delusions that can become the sentiments of the mob.
There HAVE been conspiracies in the past, and the denial of them has done inestimable damage to those singled out by governments as scapegoats; for instance, it is very widely accepted, now, that both the Babington Conspiracy of the 16th century and the Gunpowder Plot of the early 17th were “government projections” in which the espionage units of the British governments of the time knew all about the plots through their moles, nurtured and even encouraged the conspirators for months, and only stepped in to protect their sovereigns at the last minute, when the most damage could be done to the reputation and influence of English Catholics, but, also, at a moment their own sovereigns were in considerable danger. The purpose of those Protestant spymasters was NOT primarily to protect Elizabeth or James, whom the Cecils, in particular, regarded as impediments to the establishment of the Protestant republic they preferred, but to vilify the Catholics of Britain.
Nobody in their right mind believes, nowadays, that Oswald was the “lone gunman” of Dealy Plaza and most modern historians know for certain what were the consequences for American foreign policy of replacing JFK with LBJ, and who benefited from that exchange.
Frankly, after seeing how quickly Obama became an establishment politician and a protector of vested interests after taking office, I think I’ll trust the narratives of the powerful from now with even more skepticism than the paranoid delusions of folks of the ilk of this crazy woman.