Beavis and Butker-head

Yours truly in Atchison, Kansas in 2018 - where Harrison Butker gave the speech that summed it all up.

This is the speech. It’s worse than you can imagine. He starts by blaming the government for COVID (which has killed over a million Americans, but to hell with them, Fauci overreacted) and it goes downhill from there.

I’ve been writing this Substack as I try to sort out my issues, “deconstruct”, as it were.

But this speech was the last straw. I don’t know what I can write about anymore.

I told a friend of mine that - and he asked what I meant by “last straw”. I replied …

I don't know. In my mind, I keep giving my former friends the benefit of the doubt: they mean well, they think they're being good Catholics, etc.

But that speech was the clearest image I've had - probably because I know the folks at Benedictine pretty well and many of my Homeschool Connections students ended up there - it was the clearest image I’ve had that these people are hateful morons. This is who they are. They are all Butker. He is their existential representative, you might say. They are thrilled with what he said - all of it, even the antisemitic stuff, even the Taylor Swift swipe. This is who they are - out and proud for all to see.

I mean, they're not exactly Trump. They just love Trump because they wish they could be him - they wish they could be beyond the law, vulgar, grabbing 'em by the crotch. They admire Trump (secretly, in some cases), but they ARE Butker.

Really, what else is there to write? If you want to know what has become of the right-wing Revivalist Catholic cult, the EWTN / Catholic Answers / Chesterton Society / Scott Hahn Catholics, just read that stupid and self-righteous speech. Butker is these butt-heads incarnate. If the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so the Worm became flesh and gave that speech. This is the spirit I’ve been fighting at least since 2019 in one man, in one short text - come to a climax in that speech and in the crowds that cheered him.

Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas (where Butker gave this speech) almost hired me to teach drama in 2011 or so. My wife and I were even looking into property in Atchison and into a school to send our daughter Kerry to - in that sad little river town. I performed a Theater of the Word show for them, and pitched them on becoming their drama teacher and making my Catholic drama troupe, Theater of the Word Incorporated, their resident company. Butker kept mentioning “President Minnis” in his speech. I know President Minnis and met with him one-on-one several times, back in the day when I was trying to close them on the idea. I even played the part of their Benedictine founder in a promo video they filmed.

So this hits close to home for that reason too. I once admired that college and President Minnis and the whole Revivalist / Catholic Thing. I now regret how naive I once was, how little I understood the lack of regard for truth and compassion that these people have, the libido dominandi and paranoia that keeps them chugging along. And I regret how little I understood the profoundly anti-intellectual and insipid level of their thinking. St. Anselm spoke of “faith seeking understanding”. The motto of these Evangelicals with Rosaries is “tribalism seeking ignorance”.

And they are indeed Evangelicals with Rosaries. Maybe this makes them more Catholic than I am, more Catholic than the pope is. My friend Sean Dailey very patiently and thoroughly shows why this reactionary idiocy is not Catholic (see below).

But I don’t really even care about that.

All I know is, it’s awful, it’s sad, it’s moronic, it’s hateful, it’s contemptuous of the victims of COVID, and it’s sublimely and cosmically stupid.

And it’s WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE.

***

Sean Dailey from Facebook …

To those complaining that Harrison Butker is getting attacked for simply “giving a Catholic address,” please tell me: what about that speech was specifically Catholic?

Even the portion of the address that is getting the most headlines, that women belong in the home, that anything that says otherwise is “diabolical lies,” contradicts actual Catholic teaching. As then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 2004, as much as women have to contribute to the home and family, they have just as much to contribute to the world outside the home and family: “It means also that women should be present in the world of work and in the organization of society, and that women should have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.”

Butker, now full of himself, goes on to contradict Catholic teaching on regulating the spacing and number of children, even using the Protestant term for it: “Heterodox ideas abound even within Catholic circles. But let's be honest, there is nothing good about playing God with having children — whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive. No matter how you spin it, there is nothing natural about Catholic birth control.”

“Heterodox”? How is this Catholic? Has he read Humanae Vitae?

Then there are the anti-Semitic dog whistles, starting with this: “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.”

First, the Antisemitism Awareness Act does no such thing. Butker is lying. But more important, his subtle implication that the Catholic Church holds Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus is a worse lie. Butker directly contradicts the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, which clarified, finally, that Jews are not to be held responsible for the death of Jesus.

Butker’s other anti-Semitic dog whistle is the three words he closes his address with: “Christ is King.” This execreteble phrase appeared all over social media this year during Holy Week and Easter, in each case being used by far-right and Trad Catholics to promote hatred for Jews. Yes, Catholics believe Jesus is king of the universe. We celebrate an annual feast day: the feast of Christ the King. But anti-Semites use “Christ is King” as a bludgeon to beat Jews with.

EDIT: does this sound like prosperity gospel? Because it sounds like prosperity gospel to me: “when you embrace tradition, success — worldly and spiritual — will follow.”

And this: “an ordered, Christ-centered existence is the recipe for success”

There’s more. Sounds like Joel Osteen has a new recruit. Again, you apologists for Butker: what about his address is Catholic?

The rest of Butker’s address is the same trite twaddle that the Catholic Right and especially Trads (and he is a Trad - he says so) have been repeating for decades: whining that the bishops and clergy are weak, that the world is evil, that the Church needs to return to their idealized (and false) notion of the 1950s Church of incense, veils, and Latin. Cry more.

It’s an old script. It’s a tired script. It’s a script completely divorced from reality. Grievance and self-pity are the favorite pastimes of these people.

Harrison Butker needs to do what he really wants and join some schismatic Trad sect. There are plenty out there. He will be happier - and so will we.

And Benedictine College needs to do better.