GK Chesterton once wrote a book called The Thing: Why I am a Catholic. It was about the great goodness that surrounded him, that drew him into the Church.
But I am trying to find a name for the icky stuff that surrounds us, especially the icky stuff within the Catholic Church. The best I can come up with is The Thing. It’s not Chesterton’s “Thing”, but it’s … that thing, that thing that you know it when you see it. Or smell it.
That Clerical “Thing”
For instance, I just finished listening to David I. Kertzer’s The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe.
When the Italians of the Papal States revolted and demanded a democracy and an end to rule by priests in 1848 and 1849, Pope Pius IX went into exile for 17 months - into a life of comfort in Naples, where visiting dignitaries would kiss his feet; and all he did was whine and feel sorry for himself the whole time. He managed to convince the French to invade Rome and suppress the uprising, at the cost of French lives, and then he refused their pleas to return from exile; he refused to institute a constitutional monarchy in Rome. God hated democracy and wanted complete theocratic totalitarianism, Pius believed. Any move toward democracy and liberty would have been of the devil.
Eventually, Petulant Pius returned (on his own terms, renegging on the few conciliatory promises he had made to the French) and cracked down on his subjects, who (you’ll recall) simply wanted to end rule by priests and cardinals (I said this before, but imagine your state, your society, your culture … run by the people who run the Catholic Church! Good Lord what a nightmare.) Once Pius returned to Rome, if you criticized the Pope or advocated for freedom, you could be arrested and shot. In fact, the firing squads the Church kept busy were so inept that the Pope was given some guillotines by the Archbishop of Marseilles, and decapitation replaced shooting as punishment for those pesky laymen (this is in modern times, mind you, not the Middle Ages).
"How is it," Pius asked Britain's envoy at the beginning of 1866, "that the British can hang two thousand Negroes to put down an uprising in Jamaica, and receive only universal praise for it, while I cannot hang a single man in the Papal States without provoking worldwide condemnation?"
What is the “Thing” here? Is it hatred of liberty and love of power?
No. It’s that whining pouting spoiled self-centeredness that we see in our Church leaders, not in 1849 but in 2023. It’s that gap between them and reality. It’s that assumption that they are quite literally “God’s gift”.
That Revivalist Catholic “Thing”
Here’s another aspect of that “thing”. It turns out we not only know it when we smell it, but we can actually name it.
On Twitter, DW Lafferty linked to Michael W. Cuneo’s paper, "Soldiers of Orthodoxy - Revivalilst Catholicism in North America".
The paper, written in 1988, describes the Catholic Subcultre that I was immediately sucked into when I entered the Church in 2000. It’s the Catholicism of EWTN, Catholic Answers, Ignatius Press, the Chesterton Society, etc. It’s the so-called “conservative” Catholicism that distances itself from the radical traditionalists: more moderate than they are, but ultimately just as clueless.
Cuneo gives some characteristics of these Revivalists …
The world view of those Catholics under consideration here is founded upon twin convictions:
(1) North American culture has relapsed into a state of moral viciousness and institutional anarchy, and this is a state into which mainstream Catholicism has been largely absorbed.
(2) The authentic church in North America is an enclave of stalwart believers in fidelity to an ancient and unchanging Catholic tradition and at war against the neo-paganism of the wider society.
Such Revivalists believe they can “Reclaim the Culture” from the perils of sexual promiscuity, perversion and bad liturgy. They can save the Church and save the world! Oddly, all of the Revivalist Catholics I know and have worked with for the past 23 years believe they can “reclaim the culture” and save the Church and save the world … how? By pushing conspiracy theories, attempted coups, opposing vaccinations and supporting dictators like Orban and Putin. TALK ABOUT EVANGELIZATION! You go, Revivalist Catholics! Yay!
What is the Thing with Revivalist Catholics?
The “thing” with them is, like Pius IX, an attitude that is similarly obtuse, similarly prideful, similarly unaware of how flat their message falls on all but their own inner circle. Like Petulant Pius Pining, they have not gotten the memo: what they are doing doesn’t work. If it did, it wouldn’t have collapsed on itself from 2016 onwards.
And the term itself - Revivalist Catholicism - is like a diagnosis. It is an apt name for something that is not fully Christian. This “thing” I’ve been surround by and sometimes suffocated by for the last 23 years is not the Body of Christ. It is a mere reactionary movement or a subculture. It is historically and culturally determined; it is superficially intellectual or faux-intellectual (often anti-intellectual); it is laregly phony and always self-congratulatory; and knowing this - and giving this “thing” a name - is a relief.
But they keep on “evangelizing”, boy! Don’t they?
The Vested Vestments “Thing”
Speaking of which, the so-called “Vice President in Charge of Evangelization” for a Revivalist Catholic organization that shall remain nameless is a man who turns out to have some ties with many shady figures and possible felons, including John Eastman and Steve Bannon, as well as a few Hate Groups. Open Democracy goes into detail here. There’s Dark Money behind much of the Thing and the rot at its center.
And we all understand how that works. After all, “What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?” as one of George Bernard Shaw’s characters asked. The Thing is self-serving.
We get that. That’s why I became Catholic, in fact. I was tired of living a life that was self-serving. I was looking to Jesus Christ, who lived a life that was the opposite of that.
But when religion becomes something other than trying to understand and serve the mysterious mover behind all reality, when it becomes just another ugly Thing in the world, when it becomes not the great love that unfolds its meaning over the course of a lifetime, but an odd Thing that is disconnected from basic goodness or sense or sanity, then it no longer has anything to do with God, no longer anything to do with humanity, no longer anything to do with the Body of Christ.
In Conclusion
I still don’t have a name for this “Thing”. Part of it is Revivalist Catholicism. Part of it is Smug and Self-Satisfied Clericalism. Part of it is Hidden Moneyed Interests Trying to Fool People and Grab Power.
All in all, it is (as St. Paul called it) the Mystery of Iniquity; it is the great story of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, that overarching story of God’s grace and our resistance to it; it is what I write about and joke about and try to overcome.