Monday, April 8, 2013
There is what amounts, in my view, to an unfortunate irony in Brother Patrick's 'Crickets' post just below. It is that, while I would not have counted Catholics among the nation's 'extremists' prior to reading that post, I might, did I not know better, come away from that reading thinking maybe there's something to the claim after all. I accordingly urge Patrick to dial it back a bit. This does not sound in faith, hope or love, but in triumphalist entitlement and paranoia.
Paranoia? Yes. Read the story to which Patrick links and, even though published in the notoriously partisan organ that it is, it reads as no more than a familiar tale of bureaucratic cockupery in the hiring of outside speakers and 'consultants,' not military conspiracy to marginalize and then 'target' half of the population of the nation. Yet Patrick's post has us imprisoned in a latterday Warsaw ghetto, apparently called to commence our own latterday 'uprising,' since 'the U.S. state ... today is the unjust agressor.' Have you read words like this before? I have, about a decade ago from foreign shores.
Triumphalist entitlement? Yes, that too. Here is what we are told: 'the Catholic Church understands that it is its role to correct and transform society, ... the state should receive its principles from the Church, not the Church from the state.' That too reads, to me, disturbingly reminiscent of what theocrats of other traditions in other corners of the globe - those to whom Patrick objects to the Roman Church's being likened - routinely say. Is this meant to be helpful?
One clue to how one might come to think in the manner reflected in the above quotations, I suspect, as well as to what is erroneous about it, is to be found in Patrick's regularly referring to our polity as 'the state' and then naming the state 'Leviathan' - as if our res publica were some utterly alien, baleful, implacable presence, hailing from Heaven knows where, that daily confronts us as an enormous unreachable metaphysical stranger. But that is not what our polity is. It is our fellows, some of whom partake of some religious traditions, others of whom partake of others, and still others of whom partake of none. Our task is not to confront these, our fellow citizens, as aliens or as wretched benighted savages. It is to embrace, cherish, and engage them as equals.
An easy way to see just what's 'extreme' in Patrick's post is simply to replace each occurrence of the word 'state' or 'society' in the foregoing quotations, as well as in other surprising statements in Patrick's post, with one or another instance of the second person plural, then to replace each occurrence of the definite article with the first person possessive and 'Church' with 'we Catholics.' Do that and you get statements like this: 'You, fellow citizen, should receive your principles from my Church.' And: 'My Church's role is to correct and transform you.' And: 'We bring you the peace that you know not.' All, apparently, through the apparatus of that 'state' which 'the Church' is to 'teach.'
'Gee,' I hear my fellow citizen saying, 'that sounds peaceful indeed - just like the peace prior to Westphalia. Where do I sign?'
