“Why I Avoid Both the Catholic Left and Right”
The first thing to keep in mind is that following Christ is not a career move. The mark of authentic conversion is that it costs you something, not that it gains you something. So if you’re trying to become, say, a “pro-life” or an anti-war or a convert celebrity, that is something, but it is not Christianity. That is to bring the world into the temple; that is to be a money-changer in the temple: to make a name for yourself, to cultivate a reputation, to strive for notoriety based not on your love, but on your “views.” Both the right and the left are simply variations on “the world” in which the goal is power, prestige, efficiency, triumph, and the goal is to shame or bully other people into changing without changing one iota yourself. The Catholic media that traffic in this sort of incessant “opinion”-driven “discussion” seem to me to have very little, if anything, to do with Christ. Keep your own side of the street clean and pray–pray for us all–is more my idea.
To write some snarky “opinion” doesn’t cost anything. That’s cheap grace.
Catholic polemicists, don’t miss this stunning essay by the memoirist Heather King.
Comments are closed.
A great essay, speaking for all of us who don’t fit into the two little “ideological veal-crates” (as Bill Kauffman called them) Americans are asked to chose between.
“for all of us who don’t fit into the two little “ideological veal-crates” (as Bill Kauffman called them) Americans are asked to chose between.”
Sounds somewhat ideological.
Pen,
my thoughts exactly. Thanks for sharing this.
The “above the fray” position is no less susceptible to posture and judgmentalism and self-absorbtion than “left” or “right” are (for example, judging that prolife people, or converts, are aiming at celebrity rather than at, you know, saving the preborn and souls). The irony of “I’m a disciple not a hack like them” is apparent to most, except to the speaker and his yes-men.
Matt, that makes me genuinely sad. Is there really no difference at all between the quiet pursuit of holiness and interminable internet debates that entrench people more than convert them? Is it really just posturing to suggest that we should worry about our own conversion first and foremost?
Or are you saying that anyone who adverts to the importance of the quiet pursuit of holiness can’t really be engaging in it? Can we not give our sister a little more benefit of the doubt than that?
Are we really confined to fighting the world on its own terms? Did Christ not show us how to use completely unworldly weapons? Do not the saints have to teach every new generation of Peter’s to put away their swords?
Christ’s weapons can seem ineffectual, and we are tempted to despair. But if we look at what the world’s weapons actually accomplish we know that Christ was, however counter-intuitively, right.
I do not think she is “above the fray” as Matt states. She is “in the fray” with the perspective of Christ. She is in the world to love her neighbor as herself.
In the fray. I like that. I think what I detest about the poles is not the fray going on between them, or if you will, all around us, but the sense that the perspective of Christ is secondary to that of their own.
I think I could say the exact same thing for politics outside of the church.
Matt, because this comment is so gratuitously critical and doesn’t address any of the points the author made in her essay, I’m going to assume that you didn’t actually read it and are simply reacting to the excerpt I quoted.
Penny, sorry for delaying my response, I was spending my day doing “interesting” things. I am glad, though, to see some people acknowledge my valid point instead of being as dismissive as you and Brett. It’s not true that my comment addresses NONE of her points, or none of yours. Humble nonpartisan holiness does indeed exist. But it too can be just another posture. I don’t imagine you or Brett deny that. Calling prolifers evil celebrities from the posture of holiness is fundamentally no different than calling prolifers evil celebrities from MM’s leftist Catholic posture. It just stings to point that out, I guess. But since that meme is gratuitously repeated here every chance many of you get, you shouldn’t be surprised at being challenged on it.
Matt, I’m sorry for being defensive. I was — and am — so enthused by Heather King’s essay that I felt personally hurt by your response to it. I concede you make a valid point. And I will probably forgive you a lot of things I would otherwise find egregious because it tickles me that you called me “Penny.”
No I don’t deny that it can be just another posture. But the piece I read didn’t look like posturing to me. It looked like something worth aiming for.
And I must profess that I was not trying to be dismissive. I was genuinely sad because it looked to me like you were dismissing her and I thought she deserved better. It looked to me like you avoided engagement with her concerns by implying that she was nothing more than a poser. That made me sad in part because it seems so cynical. Even those who reject polemic are just one more kind of polemicist. Everyone is disqualified, from the beginning and by definition, from trying to have something better than politics as usual. It makes my heart sink. It really does.
Thank you for the forgiveness Penny. I wasn’t necessariy calling Heather herself a posturer. But, you and Brett would say you and Heather weren’t necessarily calling prolifers self-promoting celebrities. Interesting since in offering the critical possibility, I no more or less specifically applied it to Heather than you and she applied it to prolifers. But Heather was my example–and prolifers were hers and yours. So perhaps it is natural for you to read me as gratuitously slamming her, as i read her and you as gratuitously slamming prolifers and converts, because of the examples we used. I read and react to VN as a prolifer not dissimilar to the way VN prolifers read and react to conservative prolfers.
I understand that reaction, Matt, but you would have to look pretty hard to find any evidence of me “slamming” pro-lifers. My quoting other people’s criticism of pro-lifers is not the same thing – not even close – as “slamming” them. Ditto for me “slamming” converts: show me where I’ve done it. I understand you’re a busy man, and probably used to glossing texts, but I would appreciate it if you would read my posts and comments more carefully instead of reacting reflexively to what you *think* I’m saying. I promise to do the same with you.
Penny is easier to type than Pentimento. :)
Matt, that’s a possibility. It’s similar to the risk of becoming proud of your humility. But I’m not going to judge someone as posturing just because she aims to be above the fray, because then I’m being proud of not being proud of my humility.
To be humble, we must be just. That means judging someone else’s arguments on the basis of their arguments. It also means not judging someone else.
Modern day right and left labeling is nothing more than good old fashioned tribalism. I have read that there are 32 distinct personality types, and obviously variations within each type.
It seems for the most part that if you don’t agree totally with these two extremes, then you are painted into the “clan” of their polar opposite.
“That is to bring the world into the temple”
Exactly.
I have to call a “tu quoque” moment on this too. Really, posting how one is above the fray and having a donate button and “buy my books” plug in the margins seems to be an act of cognitive dissonance in my book. Guess like she hasn’t lost all just yet. And yes, Internet polemicists, the ones who engage in snarky acts of “cheap grace” also plead that it is their vocation, their ministry, “I help people”, etc… only visit my book table on the way out the door of my talk, etc. I’ll start believing people when they start giving their stuff away. Kind of like Jesus.
The Internet is a big consumer market. I have my readers, others have theirs, and so on. People buy into stuff. Some buy into snark. Others buy into snarkiness about snark, some buy into anti-snark. Catholicism was better when the clergy had a monopoly on religious discourse, where the lack of an imprimatur and a nihil obstat was the death of any opinion.
But all in all, if you want to blame anyone, blame St. Ignatius Loyola, or maybe even St. Paul. San Ignacio’s two standards meditation made spiritual life into one big video game, and ever since we have been imagining who is on the other side. Then again, Dante also put people he didn’t like into his Inferno.
The Catholics that I have most admired were never on the Internet, never wrote a darn thing, and were about as concerned about what the Vatican said as they were with the opinions of an old lady they barely knew across town. They just had a sense of decency, duty, and responsibility to those around them, and had no technicolor dreams or spoke no saccharine rhetoric about being a saint. If I ever decide to be a real Christian one day, I might follow in their footsteps.
One of the problems we find is that this left/right paradigm does indeed cause people to be concerned about sidelines and confuse the sidelines for the center of one’s faith. It is not that working for social justice, working to promote life, are unimportant; they are quite important and people are called to such activities and should do them. The problem is that, as I have pointed out elsewhere, such people then confuse their work as all that is important and begin to demand others to follow their pursuits or else to look down upon them. Spiritual pursuits are ignored – so much so, that the spiritual pursuit needed in order to properly engage one’s vocation is lost.
While I can, and will, speak on social matters, one of the reasons I am trying to focus on the desert fathers of late is to help center people once again to the wisdom of spiritual masters, and to once again understand what is most important first, and to see what is secondary as indeed, secondary.
Sadly, few people are interested in replenishing their spirit and being properly centered. My posts often get few people reading them. I would challenge people reading this thread, to read my posts based upon the desert fathers. Even my newest series on St Anthony is going to engage practical wisdom, even if there is more going on with it (trying to show a disputed work might actually be related to Anthony after all). It would do people well if they worked with and discussed spiritual maters — that way, they will be able to better engage other, social concerns far better. It is interesting to note, the monks were some of the best at doing just that — Catholic Social Doctrine is found in the life of St Anthony, and continues in the great monastic doctors, John Chrysostom and Basil. There must be a reason for this. If people can better engage this spiritual tradition and put it forward in their lives, I believe the rest will follow.
I found myself disappointed by the piece. I do think one has to acknowledge that Matt Bowman was correct in saying, “The ‘above the fray’ position is no less susceptible to posture and judgmentalism and self-absorbtion than ‘left’ or ‘right’ are,” whether you agree with the rest of his message. Probably the “above the fray” position is more susceptible to posture and judgmentalism.
I don’t want to knock Heather King—she’s on NPR, after all!—but it does seem that she is making a career out of her spiritual life. Most saints did not write their memoirs, although admittedly some very great ones did. She seems to be setting herself up as a good example. I am quite fascinated by the idea of not being of the left or right. On MOJ a few days ago I said that I assumed a good Catholic could be on the left or the right but might have to be atypical in either group to conform to some teachings of the Church. WJ replied:
Also, I have been fascinated recently with books about how the mind works and how we are “pre-programmed” for error, self-deception, and the belief that everyone is a hypocrite . . . except for me.
So I was looking for some insight along those lines, and I didn’t find it.
Also—a minor Biblical point—it is not at all clear to me that the moneychangers were doing anything wrong (they were integral to the whole system of worship at the temple) and should be used as a bad example.
David, I read the essay and I can’t remember her writing that she was “above the fray”. A point to consider about being in the fray is that it is a position of conflict which is generally in opposition to the hardwiring of the female brain except in extreme circumstances such as protecting one’s young or a loved one.
In my opinion she experiences the violence present in the situations she writes about and her desire is not to become part of that generally accepted form of interpersonal violence. The highly sensitive human beings are like the canaries in the coal mine, they are the warning system for the less sensitive and thus less self-aware humans who do not consciously experience the harm being created in these situations.
In my opinion, Christ used the money-changers in the temple as one way to become a sacrifice for us and to show us that this way of problem-solving will create violence acted out against the messenger. The Cross is where He taught us how to relate to others and to overcome the instinct to react with verbal or physical violence when in a position of vulnerability. To be vulnerable goes against every instinct wired in the brain for survival.
However, we cannot overcome those instincts by withdrawing from conflict and praying. There is a concept called state dependent learning which emphasizes that we cannot learn a new emotional response to a situation unless we are in a similar experience and state of mind which triggered our initial response.
Watch the Sunset Limited. It touches on it. How we are pre-programmed and set ouselves up for delusion.
That last comment was directed at David Nickol.
Henry stated “It would do people well if they worked with and discussed spiritual matters – that way, they will be better able to better engage other, social concerns far better.” ABSOLUTELY!
The question is, why don’t they?
I would think it is because they believe discussing spiritual matters doesn’t get social things done.
While I’m at home in neither the Left nor Right camps, I am nonetheless nothing if not politically opinionated, so this essay really speaks to me, and I would do well to listen.
My advice ( and it is just advice) is to be in fray on your chosen side. Just don’t indentify what you do in the fray as the total Mind of Christ.
As a Catholic liberal I am in the fray, with positions I am happy to be vocal about, at any time. This is far more virtuous than the cramped self-censorship under which so many hid their lamp for so long. I think some of you are suffering from needless liberal self-doubt because of the posting (which I haven’t yet read, but it smells to me of some kind of spiritual blackmail).
Heather King is certainly not above the fray — she is solidly with the right (as she has every right to be) and caricatures the left: “The religious left is all about faux love.” Two gay people “marry,” that’s supposedly an increase of love.” Is not this the very snideness she condemns in others? “Two people sleep together to see if they’re compatible, thereby (supposedly) saving the world from a ton of unhappy marriages: that’s an increase in love, the thinking goes. But it’s the “love” that urges people to take a shortcut to avoid suffering.” The suffering of sexual incompatibility? “It’s the “love” that says I think you’re too delicate to face and live out the truth. I don’t think you’re strong enough, or mature enough, to take in the whole picture, to hold the full tension of the suffering of the world before you; to admit that every time you take the shortcut, you are contributing to that suffering, not relieving it.” I don’t find this heavy rhetoric convincing. ” So if a kid you conceive might be “unwanted”: abort it. If an old person strikes you as no longer serving any “useful purpose”: help him or her to commit suicide.” This is the culture of death rhetoric of JP2, the very rhetoric that has made the Catholic right so shrill.
Critiquing the left doesn’t necessarily put one on the right.
I’m sure there are avowed right-wingers who could put together a list similar to yours to “prove” Heather King is on the left. This doesn’t prove much beyond the fact that she hit a nerve.