I am not the biggest fan of Damian Thompson as a commentator, but his basic observation about the state of conservative Catholicism is fundamentally correct.
Conservative Catholics are in a ghastly situation. Confronted by a malicious pope and pro-abortion Biden loyalists, they’re being offered Integralist sectarian fantasies or Vigano Mark of the Beast paranoia. I despair.
I am bracketing "integralism" for another day because Thompson is not a reliable political guide to anything other than British Toryism. But I am in complete agreement with him on Vigano, who has allowed a ghostwriting dipstick to turn his name into a byword for crankery.
But my sympathy largely ends there. The fact is, "the ghastly situation" is almost entirely one of conservative Catholicism's making.
The conservative wing has a minimal sense of the wider history of the Faith, replete as it is with failed councils, corrupt leadership and theological windbags in love with the sounds of their voices. Like the leftists they claim to oppose, their historical sense of the Church begins with Vatican II. Indeed, it is not a stretch to say that conservative Catholicism was birthed by the failed 21st ecumenical council and cannot live without reference to it.
In response to the chaos of "renewal" after 1965, the "conservatives" chained themselves to the papacy and the often-dubious "hero bishops" (coughBruskewitzcough) appointed by them. But by conceding the essential goodness of the reforms, they simply made themselves unpaid interns for whichever direction said reforms were taken by the holder of the papal office.
A reflex developed:
The documents just don't say what the leftists say they do. Read them, and understand that all is well. It's just not being implemented properly. The papal office we stand beside agrees with us. Reform is needed, just not the kind of false reforms the loonies are trying. We will triumph--it is inevitable.
And so the problem for conservatives began: their entire project rested on the invocation of authority, and nothing else. The unexamined circular assumption conservativism operated under was this:
Authority agrees with our interpretation. And authority will always be sympathetic to us because our argument is self-evidently reasonable and correct. Why? Because authority says so, and we agree with authority. And authority agrees with us.
So, when the inevitable occurred (contrary to their predictions of inevitable triumph) and a pope was elected who was unfriendly to the conservative Catholic project (such as it was), the game was up.
Oh, sure: they tried to persist with copes about how the current pontiff was really on board with them. How could they not? Authority had agreed with them for decades! Reading Francis through Benedict and all that. But, over time, that stopped working for most of them. Of course, there are still glassy-eyed papal maximalists out there who flack for every syllable coming from Casa Santa Marta in a way that would make average Latter Day Saints flinch, but the less said about digital cargo cults, the better.
The failure of conservative Catholicism is, at its heart, the failure of the 21st ecumenical council.
"Reform was needed," the chant went. But neither conservatives nor leftists ever questioned whether a damaged and smug church in need of reform was capable of generating fruitful, genuine reforms--as opposed to "valid-but-wrongheaded-if-not-technically-damnable" ones. See, e.g., Lateran V.
Indeed, the unreflectively self-assured and repetitive-beyond-parody declarations of the sole path to righteousness still issued from on high suggest that inflexible triumphalism is alive and well. How could it be otherwise? He was formed by the same damaged and smug church--indeed, by the order most central to it and the imagined reforms.
So, in the midst of chaos and wreckage, conservatives still have their old misbegotten authority reflex, but no one to imprint on. Sure, some have gone to substitute pope figures like the tragicomic Vigano, or a supposedly-heroic truth-telling bishop or priest who comes to notice of the the internet.
Thus inevitably repeating the cycle of disappointment and ultimate failure.
There is no way to save conservative Catholicism. But conservatives can extricate themselves from the failed paradigm. Recognize it is broken beyond repair and move on.
But not to a new paradigm or a new leader. Rather, to prayer, scripture, the saints and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Those never change, no matter who is in charge.
In time, God will find your cause for you.
Well said, Dale. I particularly agree with the devotion to the saints and the works of mercy. most of the Church's problems lie outside of our ability or competence, but most of us are fortunate in that respect as we are not required to act on that. What we are required to do is what we can with the powers and opportunities that we have and which come our way. As I have been telling my Knights, there are many things that the Lord says in the gospel which are obscure and difficult to understand, but his commands to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, etc, are neither obscure nor difficult, though some try to do so, and some succeed in turning 'feed the hungry into 'don't feed the hungry.' But that's another matter.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
ReplyDeleteIt is self-evident that there is much we can--must--do. And I, too, have seen how "don't feed the hungry" and a general distaste for the "undeserving" poor are endemic among people who are otherwise on "my" side. Less advocacy and more works are the essential cure, at least to me.
And to forestall an objection I can see to what some may think I should have said: at no point are we are called to be doormats to clerics or laity who imagine themselves to be God's stenographer/cops.
There's a time to push back. But fortifying yourself spiritually beforehand is a must for doing so productively.
But my sympathy largely ends there. The fact is, "the ghastly situation" is almost entirely one of conservative Catholicism's making.
ReplyDelete??
The conservative wing has a minimal sense of the wider history of the Faith, replete as it is with failed councils, corrupt leadership and theological windbags in love with the sounds of their voices. Like the leftists they claim to oppose, their historical sense of the Church begins with Vatican II. Indeed, it is not a stretch to say that conservative Catholicism was birthed by the failed 21st ecumenical council and cannot live without reference to it.
Ordinary pew sitters are not now nor are they ever going to be historical scholars. I'm having a difficult time honing in on just who you could mean. I don't think the messy history of the Church would ever have been a revelation to Ralph McInerney or Richard John Neuhaus.
It wasn't directed at prominent conservatives. But now that you mention it, I think it fits George Weigel reasonably well. His investment in the papacy of John Paul II is not faring well at the moment.
DeleteIt was not so long ago, in relative terms, that the triumph of conservative Catholicism was announced to be inevitable.
The adapted version of the Quebecois "revenge of the cradle," the power of the papal office issuing authoritative pronouncements which would channel things into an orthodox direction, and Cardinal George's widely-shared assurance that "liberal Catholicism" was an "exhausted project" led to a mindset that things were going from triumph to triumph.
Sure, there were setbacks, with pesky staffers inserting leftism into one of Benedict's encyclicals, and there were always bishops (frequently appointed by the good popes) who stood athwart what the good popes were doing. But all in all, things were progressing well.
Things look rather different in the summer of 2021.
Yeah, 'deserving' just becomes a weasel word, or an endlessly shifting goalpost: sure they support the *idea* of charity, but the poor soul in front of them right now is never *quite* deserving enough. There is a fair description of such people in Screwtape: their virtues are imaginary, while their vices are all too real. I have been one such person. I am trying to improve.
ReplyDeleteI, too, grew disillusioned with the conservative/liberal divide. I seldom enter the fray now, and the times I did in the past seem to me but a waste of time. I can't see any real achievements, no fruits. One of my greater disillusioning moments came with the election of Francis. For the seven years of Benedict I had seen a very ugly triunphalism amongst many, myself included. But I was a bit confused by how they would say how much they liked this Pope. that seemed to me to be an odd thing to say, as, like him or not, he is the Pope. aying you like the Pope seems to assume the right to aso say you don't like the Pope. But we railed against leftists like McBrien and his ilk who explained to their flocks that you didn't really have to listen to him. Benedict was old. He would soon be replaced and all they had to do was wait him out. Such disloyaty! How dare they!
And then Francis, and suddenly the roles were reversed. The left now supported the Pope with all their hearts, and the right was finding ways to conveniently ignore what they did not want to hear.
Ultimately, I decide to withdraw a little and consider my role in the Church, and I came to the conclusion that ny role is what it has always been: to live my faith to the best of my abilities: go to Mass, serve my family, help those in need. Do the good that lies before me. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That, and once a year I arrange a fishing trip for my knights. I am not certain it brings us closer to Our Lord, but he seemed to have a fondness for the Profession, so I'll take it.
Yeah, 'deserving' just becomes a weasel word, or an endlessly shifting goalpost: sure they support the *idea* of charity, but the poor soul in front of them right now is never *quite* deserving enough. There is a fair description of such people in Screwtape: their virtues are imaginary, while their vices are all too real. I have been one such person. I am trying to improve.
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated. Who do you have in mind? I've never at any level encountered someone in the Church who resembled in their thinking George Barton Cutten or Herbert Spencer or Ayn Rand. The closest I can think of was a rather tiresome (self-described) accountant from Pennsylavania who signed himself 'Adam Baum' and frequented Crisis. His shtick was that everything a public agency does fails. There's another Catholic blogger given to harrumphing about 'taking money from the government' now and again. Neither of these persons are using the sorting method to which you and Dale refer.
Note, every manifestation of the ethic of common provision has to understand what the object of the program is and thus to whom available resources are allocated. With regard to the distribution of large flows of tax money, you have to make an assessment of the trade-offs which attend your allocation principle. (A program like AFDC incorporated some very unsalutary incentives).
Then you are fortunate. I have encountered many. I know a deacon who preaches beautifully, who knows canon law and the Tradition inside and out, who will turn away from any and all beggars. I had a fellow Knight of mine accompany on one of my walking tours through my city who actively tried to stop and and all handouts to any who approached us. I could go on, but why? That you have never met any does not negate that Dale and I have.
DeleteVagrants are a tiny minority of the population (< 0.2%) and people have satisfactory reasons (if not necessarily compelling ones) to prefer other conduits to looking after them than just handing them money on the street.
Deletewas finding ways to conveniently ignore what they did not want to hear.
ReplyDeleteUh, substantive content in light of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium does matter.
That's rather my point.
DeleteI endorse your second-last paragraph. For "liberals" who "got" Vatican II and never made it to the internet, that was the m.o..
ReplyDeleteRather than enrich wider circles of friends with their anchor and perspective, many US conservatives, especially celebrities, played politics, inventing and advancing cancel culture and doxing and such long before they criticized it coming from other people.
"Do the good that lies before me." Best advice on this thread. More of us could take it, do it more often.
"Indeed, it is not a stretch to say that conservative Catholicism was birthed by the failed 21st ecumenical council and cannot live without reference to it."
ReplyDeleteI think this statement does conservatives an injustice. Every council had detractors following in the wake, the good, the bad, and the in-between. Nicaea hardly ended Arianism, and the pushback was fairly strong.
I'd say there's a whole range of resistance to Vatican II, ranging from the skeptical-but-loyal to outright schismatics. The ones who flock to Archb Viganó or oppose Pope Francis may have legitimate concerns. Or they are the far fringes of Catholicism.
Your call to "prayer, scripture, the saints and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Those never change, no matter who is in charge" is spot on.