I'm Looking Through You

Our Human Transparencies

I have often called the ostentatious right-wing Catholics that I used to hang with “Evangelicals with Rosaries”.  Like Evangelicals, my Super Catholic former friends are anti-intellectual, conspiracy believing, Puritanical, ultra-right-wing power-hungry bigots, who tend to be “preppers” and anti-science.  

Unlike Evangelicals, they don’t read the Bible.

In going through my old blog posts from Waiting for Godot to Leave, and republishing the ones that aren’t embarrassingly awful, I stumbled upon some quotes I pulled from a book that was mildly controversial back in 2013, Evangelical Catholicism by George Weigel.

Here’s what Weigel said in 2013 (which is 7 BC - BC meaning “Before COVID” and the Great Unmasking) …

The challenge can be defined simply: throughout the western world, the culture no longer carries the faith, because the culture has become increasingly hostile to the faith. Catholicism can no longer be absorbed by osmosis from the environment, for the environment has become toxic. So we can no longer sit back and assume that decent lives lived in conformity with the prevailing cultural norms will, somehow, convey the faith to our children and grandchildren and invite others to consider entering the Church.

No, in our new situation, Catholicism has to be proposed, and Catholicism has to be lived in radical fidelity to Christ and the Gospel. Recreational Catholicism—Catholicism as a traditional, leisure-time activity absorbing perhaps 90 minutes of one’s time on a weekend—is over. Full-time Catholicism—a Catholicism that, as the Second Vatican Council taught, infuses all of life and calls everyone in the Church to holiness and mission—is the only possible Catholicism in the 21st century.

I was suspicious of this at the time, but for mostly wrong reasons.

Now I see through the whole damn thing - and there’s nothing on the other side. It’s transparent.

Weigel assumes that the culturally infused Catholicism of the Old Days (before our culture became “toxic”, back when the Catholic Faith was absorbed by osmosis) was somehow effective.  In what ways?  Did the Catholicism that was absorbed by osmosis, say 90 to 100 years ago, make Catholics kinder?  Did it keep the German bishops and most German lay Catholics from praising Hitler?  Did it keep Sicilian Catholics from joining the Mafia?  Did the Ustaše in Croatia, the Catholic / fascist terrorist organization, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, back in the good old days before our culture became “toxic”, “convey the faith … and invite others to consider entering the Church”?  Things were really more Catholic then and less Catholic now?  Really?

And speaking of now, have Weigel’s brand of Catholics, his clan of deliberate or Evangelical Catholics, lived in “radical fidelity to Christ” since he wrote those words eleven years ago? Or have they, since then, turned a pandemic into a conspiracy theory, refused to do anything to protect their vulnerable neighbors, promulgated the Big Lie and the little lies of a vile and vulgar man who wants to be dictator, spread hatred of Jews, broadcast their obsession over the sexual practices of others, and created chaos and division throughout the land?

I’ll let you answer these questions yourselves.

I finished today the Super Catholic book I’ve been reading, written by a Super Catholic, which is a history of a group of Super Catholics, many of whom I know.  It ended with a vision of what I would call “serene certainty”.  The characters in this book, as a rule, behave no differently from everyone around them; what raises them above others is they are part of the team.  

What makes them part of the team?  They go to Mass, pray devotions and fight the “Culture Wars”.  That’s it.  

And by thus qualifying for membership in the team, they see themselves as holier than thou, or at least holier than the rest of us.  Holiness, in fact, seems to be just that - tribal belonging.  Nothing else.  They are no more virtuous - and far more self-righteous - than the ordinary folk around them, who are in no way impressed by the “full-time Catholicism” these folks put on display.  Consequently, my dear George Weigel, these “Evangelical Catholics” are unable to evangelize, unable effectively to “invite others to consider entering the Church.” Who would join such an organization that has such bad witnesses?

And yet, in all their ups and downs, our Super Catholic neighbors have a “serene certainty”.  They are convinced that everything they’ve done, they’ve somehow done for God; they’ve somehow carried out His plan … even if His plan is being a jerk and assuming you’re better than everyone else.  Because they’re pro-fetus, you see.

Or anti-trans.

Or fond of the Latin Mass.

Or queer about certain online celebrity priests.

That’s the only difference, and it’s a difference of fashion, as superficial as the clothes a person wears.

I alluded to the “Emperor’s New Clothes” in my last post, with the image of the Emperor proudly strutting naked down the street, convinced that his non-existent garments are, in fact, flowing and fabulous robes and regalia - and that only fools think he’s parading in his underwear.  But it’s not only the clothes on the Emperor that are invisible, it’s the Emperor himself.  His clothes, his rhetoric, his very self, have become transparent.

If my daughter “transitions” to a man, I’ll be a trans parent.  

But I won’t be as transparent as these people are.