There's currently a storm of controversy going on amid the patheos blogs as the internet gurus level their rusty apologetic canon, not against error (or the Turk) as you might hope, but against fellow Catholics. Even Paul Sumo at Americanist Catholic has to get into the fray to cast out, expurgate and revile the anti-Semite! Would it be too much to ask that if you're going to call someone's work into question that you at least be accurate and truthful?
These neo-Catholic wardens do this service not so much out of a desire for truth or even love of neighbor, but to demand conformity to some vague standards of political correctness when it comes to anti-Semitism, a term which has not only destroyed careers but has ended friendships and even gone so far as to cause unnecessary schisms among people who are allegedly on the same side. But since when has Shea done anything other than defend Old Catholic Bishops and attack those who expose or challenge their agendas? While a catalog of sins is listed, courtesy of Shea, it doesn't really amount to much more than guilt by association and eisogesis:
How is it that a major Catholic news source like Americanist Catholic can produce these schoolyard taunts and expect them to have any currency at all?
Mark Shea maintains that he doesn't like internet trials, but that hasn't stopped him from attacking E. Micheal Jones and Micheal Voris. He's never had much time for Micheal Voris, except to level irrelevant criticisms alleging a lack of respect for the hierarchy and uncharity. This time, however, Shea now has another weapon to use, the claim of anti-Semitism.
Shea might be willing to wage an internet Jihad against Judaism, but he's incapable of seeing anything except that as he commits errors in Catholic teaching to overly generous with things which don't really belong to him, and to assume an office upon himself he doesn't legitimately possess. As Fifth Column notes, would-be Pastor Shea, frequently an unofficial mouth of America's Magic Circle Bishops, falls far from Catholic truth when it comes to his obligations to Christian charity and judgment.
So, Mark mistakes charism for sanctification, he mistakes judgement of soul for judgement of action, and he (ironically) canonizes someone who the Church herself has not got around to canonizing. I say that last bit is ironical, because he actually does judge this poor sodomite's soul - he judges it sound enough to enter Heaven immediately, even though he himself says that the man's sins are Not. His. Business. I believe that's called "willful blindness."
Maybe it's none of your business if a devoted Catholic who for all appearances leads a blameless life, since you're as eager to be generous with other's sins as you are to be stingy about the alleged sins of others?
Using the criteria with which many of the participants in this discussion are electronically lynching Voris and E. Micheal Jones, you'd expect them to declare almost immediately that they can't be Catholic any longer.
Many of the critics are often eager to give absolution and blessings to avowed gomorrists and strike a blow for the zeitgeist, but are they willing to direct their ire at the Church they claim to belong to?
E. Micheal Jones' comments about the Jews pale in comparison to what Saints, even recently promoted ones like Blessed Cardinal Newman, have said about them.
"Let us pray for the Jewish People, that they will return to the Lord their God, whom they have crucified". From Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman
Ultimately, it's really none of Shea's business. If he's willing to look past sins of omission and active cohabitation on the part of a homosexual activist, he should be able to look past the dirty rose colored lenses he wears and the injudicious and outrageous claims of anti-semitism on the part of E. Micheal Jones, no?
9 comments:
Mark Shea is often good, but his commentary on Voris interviewing Jones was moronic. When some of his readers asked him to define antisemitism, we were suddenly in Rogers & Astaire territory.
I've found him to be wrong more than he is right. He's basically a reflection of the woes and worries of this age beneath the thin veneer of Catholicism he maintains for what appear to be pecuniary motives.
I'm sure Mr. Jones and Mr. Voris appreciate your defense here and would probably suggest it could be strengthened by spelling their first names correctly. I would add that there is no more grievous wound in the cause you support here than its adherents' extraordinary efforts to make bigoted views of Jews and Jewish history acceptable (all over again) to ordinary Catholics. The moral tonedeafness and historical obliviousness demonstrated by Jones' defenders simply devastates everything they have to say.
Sounds like calumny to me. Do you actually have a point or are you just going to leave a baseless accusation hanging in the air?
Ahem.
Baseless accusation hanging in the air it is, then.
Mr. Shea is really firing up the Mighty Wurlitzer on this one, pumping out prose ever purpler.
Here is one of his latest, from the combox at NC Register, as a matter of clinical interest:
"....some readers here have taken it upon themselves to organize a dimestore Inquisition and drum me and Pat out of the Church...."
Oh my.
"Pope" Shea continues to play to a smaller and smaller audience. Oh, his numbers may be the same, even better, but I get the sense he's less and less relevant.
Tancred nailed it: "I've found him to be wrong more than he is right. He's basically a reflection of the woes and worries of this age beneath the thin veneer of Catholicism he maintains for what appear to be pecuniary motives."
I find it amazing that the same man who was ready to declare any Catholics who supported water-boarding (which, I do not) apostates can now turn around and, regarding a gay man he admired, declared his apparent unchastity Not. My. Business.
Indeed, he is a man of his age.
One must always remember that Mr Shea, like certain others we could name, is a "professional convert". These professional converts seem to make it their business to purge their new-found Church of everything they find uncomfortable or unfamiliar in it. And it is most interesting, at least to me, that these types almost always find it necessary to take up their swords and purge the Church and any in the Church of "antisemitism".
What is antisemitism, by the way? It is a racial hatred of those who belong to the semitic race. As such, the Church condemns it. Who are the semites? Well, Arabs for one, also Iranians, Jews, Saudis and multitudes of others who inhabit the lands of the East. (Question: when the Israelis denounce the Iranians, or when the rabbis of Jerusalem spit upon Palestinians who walk down the street, are the Israelis antisemites?) So Mr Shea, and the thousands of others like him, understand not at all what antisemitism is and how to apply the term.
They apply the term to those who speak out against Jewish persecutions of the innocent, be they Christian or Muslim. They apply the term to those Jews whose hatred of the Church is palpable and who have done much damage to her politically, financially and otherwise. To speak against one's oppressors is not antisemitism; it is self-preservation. In the minds of these rather misguided philosemites, the entire Jewish people have been immaculately conceived and therefore may not be criticized under any circumstances..
Mr Jones is light-years ahead of Mr Shea both intellectually and, frankly, as a Catholic. I've read his writings. Unlike Mr Shea he doesn't feel the need to parade his Catholicity before the whole world...a telling point, by the way, when comparing these two gentlemen. He has done fine and brilliant work in the field of Catholic history and apologetics and needs no defense from me. Why lesser minds feel the need to attack him is beyond my comprehension.
As to Mr Shea's rather odd (to say the least) musings about homosexuals and his canonizations of them, and his use of the word "gay" to describe the most unnamable of perversions, this is quite interesting. If we apply his favorite tactic of guilt-by-association we might point out that he is a good friend of the unbelievably strange Father Robert Sirico, whose unsavory background is guaranteed to raise a stench in the nostrils of decent men. Father Sirico's story is fairly widely known, so I won't repeat it here, but on Mr Jones' CULTURE WARS website the whole sordid drama can be found, if one has the stomach to read it. Perhaps Mr Shea is merely trying to be "with it" when he announces the canonization of his homosexually-disordered friend. Perhaps, like a Junior High Schooler he wants to stand up and be "daring", or like the pimply kid who never gets noticed he wants to shout something outrageous just to draw attention. It's difficult to say.
And terribly uninteresting, too.
Shea really just needs to disconnect the internet for his own soul's sake. It's pathetic to watch this kind of crap. And the American Neocatholic is just plain laughable. I'm not even a big EM Jones or Voris fan, but they're a million miles closer to the truth than any of these obnoxious conservative bloggers.
I used to have more respect for Shea's acumen before this, but this is plainly childish and demonstrates very little actual grounding in actual Catholic teaching, much less wisdom.
You'd think a fifty-odd year old man who'd converted to Catholicism would be more circumspect, thoughtful, at least truthful, but no.
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