February 16, 2014             David Timbs (Melbourne)     

    (Comments welcome here)            David's previous articles

  Francis and the Trads Part II             (Part I)

The better of a dismal lot

Pope Francis has become, within a year of his election, something of a ‘corner-stone’ to be rejected by those who had constructed a temple incompatible with their own favoured design for the house of God. Intrinsic to this structure of contempt for Francis is the conviction that the foundational programmes for the identity and mission of the Church must be located in the teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

In Australia the Traditionalist/Conservative blog-scape is very similar to that in many other countries. It is bleak, introspective, self-interested, self-absorbed and a very sorry little scene. There is scant evidence of a broad expansive Christian vision for the Church with a Gospel inspired radical hopefulness.

 At the upper end of Australian Traditional/Conservative sites is Kate Edwards’ Australia Incognita. For her own reasons, she declared last Christmas that her blog is now defunct. Her decision is not surprising. She never came to grips with or accepted in good grace that God still had something profoundly novel or important to reveal after the Council of Trent. Kate, through the ministrations of the London Oratory number of years ago, reverted to the Faith albeit through a very narrow Traditionalist form. In fact, whoever re-catechised Edwards in London convinced her that Catholicism pre-1962 was orthodox while the Second Vatican Council and all that is associated with it was and remains, at the very least, suspect.

 Edwards and many of similar mindset have enormous difficulties in distinguishing the difference between the actual fundamental or core beliefs of the faith from the way these are expressed in historically conditioned language. The same applies with the liturgy. This is  common among Traditionalists and Conservatives and it unfortunately renders any attempts to engage in conversation almost impossible. Even more disturbing is that in the last few years, Kate and some of her loyal followers have shown alarming signs of becoming what they hate and condemn the most, namely dissenters from authentic Catholic teaching. In fact there is very little discernible difference between them and the schismatic Lefebvrists.  While Benedict was Pope, however, they still had enough oxygen to survive in some kind of catholic ecosystem but his abdication was a sheer disaster.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the election of Francis was a catastrophe.

Essentially Kate and those like her are more comfortable with the fossilised Church of the eleventh century than with a living, evolving, developing People of God incarnated in the twenty first century. Kate and followers feel that their theological cosmos is validated and confirmed on the cutting edge voices of the New Evangelization like this.

To her credit though, Kate has been a fearless, outspoken critic of popes, bishops and the whole clerical subculture for their colossal systemic, institutional failures in the clerical sex abuse scandals. The value of her advocacy in this matter cannot be underestimated. Despite the fact that she shared so much in common with the Traditionalist agenda, she parted company with most of them on this matter. Most of them are in locked into and paralysed by  denialism. Unfortunately, though, Kate compromises herself by losing a sense of perspective and therefore trivialising important issues. For example, she showed herself either unable or unwilling to distinguish between hierarchical failure in the clerical child sex scandals with their reluctance of most bishops to support her Latin Mass agenda. Kate could never discern lop-sided fixations and their accompanying relativism.

 Case studies in scandalous mediocrity

The publisher of the Vexilla Regis blog has become another show case for the petulance of a classic neurotic knuckle-cracker and hand-wringer hysteric. The level of his reactive anger and resentfulness directed towards Pope Francis is in reverse proportion the levels of to his sycophantic adulation of rigid authoritarian bishops. Tony is a former military man who clearly favours a Church run according to martial law supported by a culture of command and control. An example of his teenage attitude (cultivate by outside coaches) towards Pope Francis can be seen HERE 

What has to go down as a blog at the very outer far-side of intelligent Catholic life has to be True Catholic. This pathetic little rag has nothing in common with either truth or Catholicism. It has nothing to say about Jesus Christ, the Gospel. What it does represent are the clear agendas of rightwing religious ideology, politics and economics. Its champions are Michael Voris, George Weisel, Michael Novak, the neo-cons of Crisis Magazine and Andrew Bolt. Like similar blogs this True Catholic is predictably monochrome and mono-dimensional in its tunnel vision dogmatism and strange obsessions with sex.

Its origins are rather murky and pedestrian but it seems pretty clear that True Catholic was set up to provide a forum and bully pulpit for John George, a long-term invalid priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney. He has no real friends at all but is used as some kind of attack dog for someone else’s agenda. He has succeeded in alienating almost everyone, probably even his patrons and minders. Even his delusional co-bloggers no longer respond to his unfocused, incoherent rants. George has had a chequered career in blogosphere, having been banned, expelled/excluded from several of them mainly for reasons of ill-disciplined, vicious personal attacks on other posters and his constant use of psycho-sexually deviant cartoons. Along with a number of other vexatious trolls, he has been permanently banned from commenting on NCR. The ratbag thinks this is a badge of honour. [1]

When any intelligent conversation about important issues appears on websites, the cleric immediately materialises as the quintessential wrecker and vandal. The following is a pointer to what the cleric has to contribute to rational discourse and human elightenment..........

The cleric is clearly affected by cognitive dissonance that he never lets a chance go by to   deflect attention from Institutional Church failures in governance and its systemic cover-ups of clerical child rapists. While most of his spiel is scripted by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, one of his recent more bizarre and obnoxious recent efforts was perhaps a rare example of his own dreadful work. He now identifies the primary victim of clerical child abuse as not innocent children but God and ‘God’s’ wounded Sacred Heart! [Link] 

Cartoon – The Details.  Courtesy Jon Kudelka

This cleric demonstrates no evidence of having a moral compass, any conscience, any pastoral sensitivity, brains, heart or soul. He has nothing to say about Christ and everything to say about himself. What is far worse is that his bishop continues to let him get away with it.

But there’s more....

Another member of the team is a token female whose jobs are to it shriek like a harpy, to make smoke around the cleric and to support her ideologically driven mates. She has nothing to say about Jesus Christ.

The most colourful member of the True Catholic’s tiny gated community is John. His main preoccupation is to deflect any attention to things remotely embarrassing to his own understanding of Catholicism by frequent attacks upon his moralistic, psycho-sexually obsessive targets such as homosexuals. John has nothing at all to say about Jesus Christ, the mystery of Faith and Salvation. He has no distinguishable insight into or conversation about the great modern vision of the Church enshrined in the documents of Vatican II.  Like many in the Traditionalist/Conservative camp John is monumentally ignorant but still obsessed with sorting out the orthodoxy of everyone else. Another piece of common ground John shares with the like-minded is to squirn and wiggle his way clear of any Magisterial teaching counter to his own and especially those critical of unfettered capitalism, environmental vandalism and deniers of ‘global warming.’ John is also a splendid example of the white martyr. He thrives on and defines his identity by persecution. He’s a true believer and would take great comfort joining in that great boot camp song in the Israeli army, Kol haOlam neged l’anu, ‘The whole world is against us!’

He is also the site’s dual personality, acting as both a regular commenter and DB administrator. He gives no indication whatsoever that this could be construed as a conflict of interest or game playing or disingenuousness. But he is clearly flexible on that score. In a rush of zeal he has created a near perfectly sterile environment for his DB. John has banned pretty well everyone who have has contradicted him and yet, he is prepared to welcome and entertain a schismatic Lefebvrist and thereby sends a clear message that John is committed to exactly the same kind of sede-vacantist herd mentality. HERE.

On an even more worrying note, John also suffers from the Jerusalem Syndrome. Those so afflicted are convinced that they are the incarnation of some famous biblical character such as Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, the Queen of Sheba, Mary the Mother of Jesus, John the Baptist etc. John is not interested in intermediary figures. He believes that, after God, he is everything. This affords John the position and clout which are consistent with  a semitic tribal deity who has no time for messy, ill-defined and fuzzy notions like love, mercy, tolerance or compassion. John is energised by the image of the blindfolded agent of strict justice meted by the dispassionate Divine Chief Magistrate. John has nothing to say about the real Christ just a confected distorted fabricated projection of his own self.  An example is HERE. 

Another bite from John werein he sets an interlocutor straight on an important matter of doctrine. Note John’s ability to make those all important complex nuances,

{Note: NewChurch and Churchspeak are part of the word book John and likeminded have embraced enthusiastically. It originates in the writings of people like James Likoudis of Catholics United for the Faith, neoconservative commentators such as Michael Novak, George Weisel and others. It saves its adherents from the drudgery of doing independent thinking.}  [2]

No insight

One on the most obvious and saddest things about the overwhelming number of the Trad/Conservative commentators is that they rarely, if ever, mention Jesus Christ, the Gospel, Grace, compassion and merciful justice towards the poor. Another thing they are resistant to acknowledge is the need for the Church in all its members to be renewed constantly. They have nothing much to say about the great theological and pastoral enterprise of the Church or the power, wisdom and vision of the social Gospel. [2]  He’s far too uncontrolled, messy, unpredictable and inexplicable for them. It is a new, nerve racking experience for them but nothing like the psychological disintegration they experienced when Benedict abdicated. The Trads/Conservatives are far more angry and resentful at him for doing that than for the election of Jorge Bergoglio. That is what lies at the heart of their collective pathology and confusion... 

And finally, from the outer edges.....

For those who have never laid eyes on the nuttier, lunatic fringe of the ultra Trad websites, see here  And another ultra One, True, Catholic and Apostolic cousin site which finds a native agreement with its relative True Catholic just discussed. Here.

Next week we take a close look at (Fr) John Zuhlsdorf  who offers yet another view from the Far Side. He is one of the better known of the American Conservative clerical bloggers. He is also a merchandiser, peddler of trinkets, incantations, entrepreneur, gun owner and collector. He is also part-time Latinist and he too has nothing to say about Jesus Christ.

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1] Some examples of the cleric’s idiosyncratic, boorish, drama queen style can be found in these illustrations, here where he is challenged at the beginning of the thread by Brian Coyne of Catholica on faith practice figures for the Australian Church. And here where he embarks on a short excursus on his own importance in the overall ecclesiastical conflict with secularism outside and modernism within the Church. The reader will note the propensity to use Capitals which is regarded as a crude violation of cyber etiquette. It’s a form of abrasive shouting garnished with psycho-deviant cartoons is its own commentary.

[2] A sample of the ‘super’ Catholic mindset can be found in a regular True Catholic commenter, P.D. Howard, this time writing for the source of his ideology. See here. One of this fellow’s favourites is the recently retired Fr James Schall sj. For many years Schall was a leading ideologue for the Catholics United for the Faith journal, Crisis Magazine here.  Lifesite, Catholic Culture, Remnant, AD2000 etc are principal sources of inspiration for this particular True Catholic commenter. He also has nothing to say about Jesus Christ.

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A Note: Those who know the Australian Catholic blogosphere will perhaps have noted the demise of the old format of Cathnews. Every item published had its own comment box. However, in recent years, opposition to Cathnews’ culture of open free speech began to be aired at the Catholic bishops’ Conference. Two very highly educated bishops had been pressing the editors of Cathnews to get rid of commissioned blogs together with the inconvenient comment boxes.

 Under the pretence of upgrading publication formats to more developed, popular technological platforms, namely employment of the increasingly suspect Facebook and the mindless Twitter, the transformation was accomplished. The wider Catholic voice was not only dumbed down, it was effectively silenced. The Facebook likes and the Twitter equivalents are now mostly the work of Sydney based Neocatechumenate members. It’s a stage managed side show pretending to be serious Catholic media. It’s a collection of articles in search of a message.

David Timbs writes from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

16/02/14