Five Paragraphs in “Honor” of the Web-Log Being Back

During the few days this web-log was down, I had drafted several posts. Now I cannot find them (though I suspect I loaded them to one of the many cloud services I never thought I needed). Maybe that is for the best. Whenever I spend significant times pulling together posting material, I invariably lose steam. Moreover, the topics (which I will touch on below) probably do not demand their own treatment, at least not right now. Still, a few words shouldn’t hurt.

First, almost a year ago I gave a talk on Catholicism and race. Now I find out the philosopher/polemicist Ed Feser has penned a book on the subject for Ignatius Press. Naturally, I ordered a copy, but it has yet to arrive. Given Feser’s intellectual and political proclivities, the work is likely to be very informative or epically cringy. (It could be a mix of both, I suppose.) When I spoke on the topic, I relied heavily on Eric Voegelin’s The History of the Race Idea and Race and State, with only a handful of references to the Church’s magisterium. As time has ticked on, several folks offered me critiques of Voegelin’s work, which according to some is dated and maybe even “racist” (though I am not convinced). Where Voegelin is most helpful is tracing the development of race ideology; his examination of racialist politics is more timebound, but not entirely inapposite. When giving the talk, I had thought—naively—that no serious Catholic still accepted race categories as “natural.” It appears I was not paying attention since the reduction of human beings to biology alone is as acceptable to a disturbing number of Catholics as it is to other corners of the population uninhibited by Christian anthropology. I await Feser’s thoughts even if I am worried he lacks any appreciable understanding of what drives race-focused social movements like Black Lives Matter, and so forth.

Second, and sticking with the topic of race, I have been deep diving into the problem the Marxist social critic Adolph Reed, Jr. calls “race reductionism.” According to Reed, “[r]ace reductionism is ultimately a couple of things,” namely the “presumption that race as a category can explain social phenomena” and “that every grievance, injustice, beef that in any way affects a person of color, or a person of non-color, can be reduced to race, or can be reduced causally to race or to racism.” Those miffed at Reed accuse him of “class reductionism.” However, even a cursory glance at Reed’s works, including his recent book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, reveals his dynamic approach to socio-political problems. Reed takes race seriously, but it is not his idol—and for that he is castigated unfairly by those who should be most interested in aligning with him.

Third, if you enjoy the Dune serious, you should acquire the ongoing graphic-novel adaption of the original book. The second of three volumes came out last week. Although their vision of the novel differs at points from what was presented in Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film, there are striking convergences as well.

Last, having recently finished Harnack’s monograph Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, I find myself down a Marcionite rabbit hole with Dieter T. Roth’s The Text of Marcion’s Gospel and Sebastian Moll’s The Arch-Heretic Marcion. These works, in addition to a collection of articles I have picked up, carry on—and in some substantial ways modify—Harnack’s sympathetic portrait of the second-century dissenter whose intellectual efforts, though lost to the sands of time, still offer, via scholarly reconstruction, a fascinating window into early Christianity and the formation of the Christian Biblical canon. Harnack’s appreciation of Marcion’s religiosity is more than a bit infectious. Recent popular attempts to rehabilitate Marcion and the so-called Marcionite Christian Church are less impressive. It is altogether easy to praise Marcion’s portrait of a loving, redeeming God; it is exponentially harder to accept Marcion’s theology and its brutally ascetical implications.

Weaponizing the Rosary

Much handwringing is underway over Daniel Penneton’s online piece at The Atlantic, “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary.” Having a sneaking suspicion that many of those decrying it have not read it, I would recommend they do so. In fact, I recommend anyone who is interested in contemporary American politics and Catholicism take a gander, not because Penneton gets it exactly right (he does not) nor because he exhibits knowledge of the rosary’s history (again, he does not), but because the phenomenon he touches upon is real: the degradation of an authentically spiritual devotion in the service of worldly politics.

Penneton stretches his thesis a tad too far by making direct links between “gun culture” (which is also real, by the way) and the rosary, though certainly there are those involved in the former who like to parade their beads around on social media as a weapon—and not a spiritual weapon. Martial imagery and metaphors have long accompanied the rosary devotion, though the war they pointed toward was a spiritual war against the devil, not a political war, especially a petty political war over the meaning of the Second Amendment or whether one can defend themselves in court as a “sovereign citizen.” This is not to say that there are not legitimate evils in society which at their root are spiritual. Such demons may only be driven out by prayer, repentance, and fasting; posting cringe-worthy selfies with the rosary-as-practical weapon wielded in the service of nothing accomplishes nothing.

Some are curious about the origins of the phenomenon Panneton points to. Online culture can be, well, weird and Catholics are no exception to weirdness, particularly when they embrace it on Twitter and other social-media fora. How that is supposed to attract or edify is beyond me, but it happens nonetheless. What also happens to an embarrassing degree are (mostly young) males, lacking a compass for their (self-)repressed masculinity, promoting the rosary like it’s an actual broadsword that should be run through the gullets of heretics, schismatics, feminists, leftists, Muslims, Jews, and so on and so forth. Some of these folks cling to (neo-)integralism, which loosely aligns with their trite medieval vision of a well-functioning political order. Most appear attracted to more secularized alt-right postures, though as I have discussed elsewhere, these pathologies are not necessarily incompatible with integralism.

It is important to bare in mind that these cyber crusaders are an extreme minority of all Catholics, including Catholics who pray the rosary regularly. Although exact studies are lacking, again it appears that the online “rosary wielders” are primarily angry young man, sometimes derided as “incels” or “edgelords” by their social-media peers, who are grasping for a stature they never had and likely never will. Instead of huffing burn pit fumes like actual military service members, they spew quasi-Tolkienite tripe while giving nods to a romanticized past where men were men; women knew their place; families had a dozen children; and society run on “traditional moral values.” Many of these persons will grow out of this phase. Some will not. And of course, some will dabble in more extreme (and practically dangerous) online cultures.

Traditional Latin Catholics, who are more variegated than Penneton recognizes, often shoulder the brunt of these criticisms, though the are hardly to blame. A well-formed traditional Catholic should be able to distinguish between the rosary as a powerful spiritual weapon and the rosary as a blunt cultural instrument of little value. A so-called rosary crusade for the good of the Church and society is laudable; paying for violence against one’s enemies, real or imagined, is not. For those critical of Catholicism, online cosplaying with rosaries and images of crusader helmets and other such nonsense only feeds into their narrative that Catholics are dangerous, demented, and disloyal to American democracy.

A Note on David Bentley Hart Contra Integralism

I do not want to continue harping on (neo-)integralism, at least not for the moment. Having learned recently there is a critical book in the works, my suspicion is that I should await publication and fill in any “gaps” that may appear in the narrative. This is not to say that I will never mention integralism again. I simply do not want this web-log to become an anti-integralist hub in the way I once, modestly speaking, used it to promote integralism. (Those interested in the topic are free to comb the archives; I still stand by some of what I wrote.) Where integralism crosses over into public discourse, I may have a thing or two to say. I remain very interested in what the critics pen, though historically I have been unimpressed by anti-integralist screeds. Most miss the mark by failing to understand what integralism is, or at least what integralism is intended to be. These days, I am a tad more forgiving because integralism has casually blended with all sorts of noxious right-leaning ideologies and movements. Nobody is wrong necessarily to think of integralism as degraded Trumpism with incense.

It should surprise no soul to find out that David Bentley Hart is not a fan of integralism. He has some choice words for it in his recent book, Tradition and Apocalypse, and continues to berate it over at his Substack, Leaves in the Wind. Not wanting to interfere with Hart’s hustle, I won’t block-quote too much of the content he has tucked behind a paywall, but rather recommend his ongoing series regarding Christian politics (or, as he calls it, “Notes Toward the Definition of a Christian Political Sensibility”). Hart has touched on politics in the past, including bringing the ire of the Acton Institute down upon him for suggesting that early Christianity was communist.

According to Hart, integralism “is basically a neo-Falangist fascism.” Hart continues:

Predictably, [integralism] professes a special solicitude for the working class, for revered cultural institutions, and for the nuclear family, as all fascisms do. But this does not mean that labor, revered institutions, or families would be protected from state coercions under Integralist rule. These Integralists believe in nothing so fanatically as the duty of the “crown” to determine the licit forms of all civil associations. Nor is there any extremity of the state’s coercive powers—capital punishment not excepted—that they see as illegitimate for the suppression of heresy, blasphemy, sexual immorality, and other deviations from the sacral social order.

As I mentioned in my prior post, “[i]tegralism’s primary pathology is an obsession with power,” a feature that Hart also detects. Where I perhaps part ways with Hart is his seemingly dismissive attitude toward the “special solicitude” integralism (and fascism) ostensibly has for “the working class, for revered cultural institutions, and for the nuclear family[.]” This “solicitude” is not always insincere among fascists and indeed may always be very sincere, albeit poorly expressed. With respect to integralism, it is at its core a white, educated, upper-income movement with nothing approaching a faint echo of legitimate sympathy toward the working classes among its members. While integralists pay lip service to Catholic social teaching, economic encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno play almost no role in its socio-political imaginings. The raw exercise of authority is what matters.

Due to integralism’s easygoing mixing with Trumpism, QAnon Catholicism, and other detestable elements of the so-called alt-right, labor rights and unions are likely seen as an impediment to the “common good” (whatever that means). Race plays little-to-no role in integralist thought, though it is possible to find some adherents who will gin up conspiracy theories about racial politics or act as if racial divisions are either “natural” or in some sense “prudent” in order to maintain good social order. And of course class conflict is anathema; “class cooperation” under the watchful eye of a centralized power is needed. And even if integralism could devise an economic ordo that takes into account just wages and wider property distribution, the elites—that is, those white, educated, upper-income individuals (almost exclusively male) who promote integralism—must remain at the top of the hierarchy lest too much localized self-governance disrupt what is ultimately integralism’s final end, that is, an aesthetic state painted in the gaudy colors of romantic longing for an age that never existed.

Further Remarks on (Neo-)Integralist Pathologies

By way of follow up on my post from the other week, “Distributism vs. (Neo-)Integralism: Some Remarks,” I want to make mention of a handful of pathologies evident in the integralist or, rather, neo-integralist outlook. This list, which is admittedly impressionistic, is hardly exhaustive. Moreover, I am going to bypass drawing distinctions between integralism, which I still have some faith in as a spiritual-intellectual project, and neo-integralism, which is the dominant (and distorted) contemporary iteration of that “tradition of thought.” Although integralism is a Catholic tradition at its core, its influence and connections are detectable outside of strictly Catholic circles.

Victor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, is an integralist hero despite being a member of the Calvinist Hungarian Reformed Church. The charlatan pseudo-journalist Rod Dreher, who has made a living off appropriating Catholic intellectual currents while simultaneously crapping on the Catholic Church, is ostensibly an Eastern Orthodox Christian; his political idol, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is allegedly one, too. Dreher once locked horns with integralists online, but he has found common cause with them as of late due to his recent divorce (from reality). Various online pockets of far-right miscreants, the sort who thought storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was “cool” until the FBI got involved, express integralist sympathies at times even if they are not invested in smells n’ bells Catholicism.

Integralism’s primary pathology is an obsession with power. While integralists pay lip service to power being exercised in accordance with divine and natural law, few (if any) integralists are prepared to incorporate thick conceptions of either into their work. The closest they come is so-called “common good constitutionalism” which appears plastic enough to ordain a plethora of political arrangements without regard to right. Banal examples of common good constitutionalism in practice, such as having elemental rules of the road rather than chaos on the highways, does little to assuage skeptics’ fears that this integralist offshoot desires only basic background rules that allow a society to “flourish.” Such a conception of law is little different than the classical liberal legal order suggested by libertarian scholar Richard Epstein, whose Simple Rules for a Complex World is at least honest in its aims.

Why integralists are reticent to “fill in the blanks” on common-good constitutionalism or any other political-legal concept they promote is because it is important to them that it align with the wishes of a concrete (and at least mildly sympathetic) political authority. Integralists mortgaged their credibility during the Trump Administration by overtly or covertly embracing the “neo-Constantinian” justification for supporting a borderline madman unfit for office. Some in the integralist camp really believed that with a second Trump victory would come positions of power for themselves; the disappointment over his uncontestable defeat was bitter.

Another integralist pathology is tribalism. With their guru Adrian Vermeule leading from behind, integralists quickly circled their wagons online to ensure no “false thinking” weaved its way into their ranks. When brown-shirted thuggery on social media fails to work, integralists quickly dispatch their heads into the sand lest they acknowledge serious challenges to their sideways outlook. At times integralists will decry the downfall of academic freedom (or, really, their place at the discussion table since “academic freedom,” like “free speech,” is a sullied principle in their eyes), but they have a limited interest in real scholarly engagement. Even fellow Catholics who question the integralist project, particularly in light of post-Vatican II Church teaching, are often ignored or shouted down. And though integralism felt compelled in the early stages of its reemergence to connect deeply with Catholic social thought, few if any integralists bother these days.

All of this points to a third pathology in integralist thought, namely its irreconcilable endorsement of hyper ultramontanism with an empty anti-liberalism. Nary a word is mentioned concerning the sea change that occurred in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, particularly with respect to the relationship between church and state. For integralism to be coherent, the 19th and early 20th century socio-political encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and to a lesser extent Pius XII need to be in play. Yet integralists routinely reject what is called the “hermeneutic of rupture” approach to Vatican II in practice, though I know of no serious hermeneutical theory advanced by an integralists on this matter. Whether he considers himself an integralist or not, Thomas Pink surely comes the closest with his detailed analysis of Dignitatis Humanae and whether it represents a policy rather than a doctrinal change. Even if Pink’s assessment is correct, that does not paper over the fact that most integralists are wary to wade into hermeneutical waters lest their comedic fealty to whoever happens to be the pope is questioned.

There can be no serious doubt that Pope Francis is not an integralist, yet the ultramontane integralists rabidly defend him in their usual thuggish manner. The papacy, like Catholicism itself, has instrumental value for integralists. It represents a seat of seemingly unlimited power, one that has the benefit of lying beyond human convention. It is a “model” of sorts for them, albeit a poor one. Cast in a Schmittian light (such as what the former Nazi penned in Roman Catholicism and Political Form), the papacy is uninfected structurally with liberalism. (No words of comfort are offered on whether papal policies can be infected with liberalism.) This is perhaps why integralists are not bothered by papal blessings for liturgical deforms and doctrinal distortions; if they come from the top, they must be defended as good.

David Bentley Hart Is Not a Marcionite

Far be it for me to get too embroiled in one of many online fisticuffs over the works of David Bentley Hart, the recent fallout over Tradition and Apocalypse is as baffling as it is ridiculous. Tradition, which at its core is a critique of Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine, also features what I have elsewhere dubbed an “iconoclastic critical-historical reading of the Fall narrative.” This, along with some of Hart’s earlier remarks on various Old Testament lessons, has prompted some mental midgets to accuse Hart of—wait for it…—Marcionism!

Marcionism, in the popular polemical lexicon, is an empty-headed rejection of the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) that was vanquished successfully in the early centuries of Christianity. Marcion of Sinope, that deeply religious man who promoted what he believed to be the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ as found in a large portion of the Pauline corpus and an edited version of St. Luke’s Gospel, is the ancient villain; his contemporary disciple is apparently Hart. Others who are either accidentally or intentionally ignorant of the Old Testament are sometimes accused of Marcionism as well. Indeed, I have heard at least one Orthodox cleric chide his co-religionists for being de facto Marcionites. Perhaps he has a point, though what I think this priest is actually lamenting has less to do with an ancient heresy and more to do with general ignorance of the Scriptures.

The problem with accusing Hart or almost anyone of Marcionism, particularly when the concern is that a person either rejects the Old Testament or, in reading it, submits it to a critical-historical interpretation, is that it ignores Marcion’s own views. Marcion did not deny the historicity of the Old Testament; he believed it to be literally true. In his groundbreaking monograph Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, Adolf von Harnack goes to great lengths to demonstrate the degree to which Marcion took the Old Testament books seriously with nary a thought given to the possibility that they were distorted through alterations and interpolations as Marcion believed much of the New Testament had been. Moreover, Harnack also reveals that despite his low view of the judgmental “creator-god” of the Old Testament and his inferiority to the merciful “alien-god” of the New, the Old Testament remained a source of instruction.

Hart, by his own lights at least, falls into the orthodox Christian exegetical tradition where allegory and typology can have their say. These abominable interpretive twins were anathema to Marcion. Equally critical is the fact that Hart has never posited two deities, and despite accepting the findings of critical-historical scholarship concerning the origins of certain Old Testament narratives, he makes clear in Tradition that these stories are not without theological value. If anything, Hart appears much more interested in where these narratives, regardless of their “empirical” origins, fit within the story of salvation history rather than casting them aside as irrelevant myths that need not occupy serious Christians.

It is all but impossible to be a Marcionite in any legitimate sense without accepting Marcion’s unqualified belief that the creator-god of the Old Testament is not the alien-god of the New, that is, the merciful and loving Father of Jesus Christ. Although there will always be limits to what we can confidently believe about Marcion’s true thoughts, enough remnants of his intellectual work remain in the extant writings of his most rabid theological opponents for us to be sure that Marcionism had nothing to do with a radical rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Some might opine that this is all beside the point. Hart is dangerous, unorthodox, misleading, corrupting, vile, and so on and so forth; it matters not if he is truly a Marcionite. Maybe. If Hart were a Marcionite, presumably he would stay in line with the movement’s namesake by telling all with ears to hear about the higher alien-god of the New Testament, the one who remained hidden from human history until he revealed himself exclusively through the Gospel preached by St. Paul and kept, following some precise excisions and emendations, in Luke. A rhetoric of love, mercy, and peace would likely flow from Hart’s fingertips, not vitriolic dismissals carrying enough scorn to make the creator-god blush.

Hart, like most of his followers and critics, remains thoroughly Christian, however.

Look How They Love One Another

During several of the many revisions/enhancements/reconsiderations of his philosophy of history, Eric Voegelin drew attention to the uncertainty of life and its effect on the human soul. Life is hard—a banal observation until you start unpacking what that means. Materially speaking, life is exponentially easier today than it was 100 years ago. At the spiritual level, life may be as difficult as it has ever been. Never before have human beings been inundated with so much pneumatic trash. Keeping in mind the plethora of competing religions, sects, denominations, ideologies, and “reasoned” denials of all that once made us three-dimensional persons which work to assail Apostolic Christianity (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, etc.), it is little wonder that pseudo-intellectuals, grifters, and charlatans prowl about the Internet seeking the ruin of souls (and their money). So-called “defenders of the faith” fall over themselves to convince you not only of the reality of existential threats to “true religion,” but that they possess the means to combat them.

All of this is very performative, of course. Some are better at it than others. Unsurprisingly, many of these individuals and the cyber-enterprises they created in their basements turn on each other regularly. Looking for a second at the microcosm that is traditional Catholicism, it rarely resembles a callback to a “better time.” Rather it appears as bellum omnium contra omnes. Principled disagreements, of which they are legitimately many, are an afterthought in the race to accuse this-or-that person or group of being schismatic, heretical, sowing discontent, disobedient, capitulating, selling out, and so on and so forth.

Many wants to believe that the story of Christianity is mostly neat, linear, and without the sort of massive upheavals that are pervasive today. Sticking with Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council represents just such an upheaval or, perhaps, the gateway to numerous upheavals, both foreseen and unforeseen. Bishop Bernard Fellay, the former Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), observed repeatedly that when it came to the Council, both the “far left” (liberal Catholics) and “far right” (sedevacantist Catholics) shared a common belief that Vatican II changed things. Moreover, in defending the Council, conservatives (including those who were once referred to as neo-Catholics) joined the liberals in believing the Council is good because it came from the Church. Sedevacantists and some other extreme traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that because the Council is bad, it cannot have come from the Church. Those Catholics stuck in the proverbial middle are left with a mystery, an uncertainty if you will, that is nearly impossible to reason through. Faith is essential, but it is now in short supply. Is it any wonder then that unqualified self-promoters have a fresh opportunity to step into the fray to “make sense” of this dilemma?

This “making sense,” as noted, often means pointing fingers. The SSPX, as the veteran voice of resistance to the modernist pathologies that have invaded the Church, is routinely subjected to fierce criticism. Liberals believe the Society is in outright schism. Conservatives tend to agree with this position, though their tone has softened in light of recent circumstances, including a growing recognition that John Paul II, the pontiff that the Society so “egregiously disobeyed,” may not have been all he was cracked up to be. Traditional Catholics vary. Some, wanting to be seen as obedient and refusing to act in any way that forfeited their ultramontane bona fides, kept the SSPX at arm’s length or denounced the fraternity altogether for the usual litany of tired, unconvincing reasons. Others view the Society as “competition,” which explains why certain individuals and their enterprises expended a disproportionate amount of energy denouncing it.

Although it is not my place to defend the SSPX, especially since it has done an incredible job explaining its positions through books, periodicals, videos, and podcasts, I mention it only because it is a frequent topic of conversation among those who purport to “explain” the Catholic Church’s current circumstances while trying to square the circle by offering a worldly “solution.” Any soul familiar with the history of Catholicism over the past century ought to know that the SSPX is hardly alone in taking extraordinary action to preserve the Faith and minister to the faithful. The saintly patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Joyf Slipyj, fortified the UGCC against the brutal persecution of Soviet Russia and the political machinations of the Vatican. Given that few comprehend history well, it is not surprising that Patriarch Josyf’s heroic witness for the Church commonly goes unnoticed.

Besides, understanding others as they understand themselves, and through the lens of charity, rarely draws clicks.

The 7/27/22 Post

I made passing mention the other week of Catholic (and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox) social media being haunted by professional grifters, that is, those who blend armchair theology and unctuous spirituality outrage porn. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, grifting became so out of control that the charlatans turned on each other. Traditional Catholics chided far-right conservative Catholics for being weak which, in turn, prompted the latter to accuse the former of being crypto-sedevacantists. QAnon-style conspiracy theories spilled the banks of national politics while far too many of my co-religionists set aside prayer, the Bible, and common sense to hang their souls on the words of an episcopus vagans. It does not look like the crazy train plans to slow down anytime in 2022.

Meanwhile, over in the (neo-)integralist universe, the march for authoritarianism-for-authoritarianism’s sake continues. Gone are the days when this “movement” (if it can be called that) possessed spiritual roots; now it is the equivalent of a warped role-playing game where sorcery is secondary to a rarely mitigated lust for the last dregs of power. Confused over what it is they even stand for these days, it is not hard to find integralists fawning over China; making plans to relocate to Hungary; and praising Vladimir Putin’s murderous intentions toward Ukraine because somehow that beleaguered land has become the battleground for a clash of civilizations. It is meet and right that the integralists are increasingly viewed as cosplay jokesters who have worn out their welcome at the discussion table. They cannot demand to be taken seriously when they flee from criticism and opt for personal smears over intellectual engagement.

As for the Orthodox, well…it is a mixed bag. With a radically smaller audience than their estranged Catholic brethren, grifting cannot pay the bills. Orthodox blog-dom, like Catholic blog-dom, is radically less interesting today than it was 10-20 years ago. The loudest Anglophone Orthodox voices that I have come across online lack theological sophistication. These folks learned their history from YouTube videos and their understanding of anything not culled from one-sided polemics is minimal at best. Some of these lads (and yes, they are almost exclusively lads) are well-meaning; they want to have something—anything—to say that draws clicks. Unfortunately, the markets for lamenting over the Fourth Crusade or talking nonsense about the oft invoked yet poorly understood energies/essence distinction collapsed long ago.

Some might say I am complaining and complaining needlessly at that. Perhaps my approach to Christian social media should be the same as my approach to professional wrestling: Watch what I like and shut up. I confess that I have no grand solution to any of this foolishness. The best proposal I can draw up is for everyone to sit down, be quiet, and watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It is my current litmus test for the soul. I dare say that any person who spends approximately 90 minutes with this one-inch animated creature should renounce their professional guile while gaining a genuine appreciation for the wonders which surround us daily. Will it work? Doubtful…but I still have hope.

Not Gonna Panic

I do not understand Twitter in all its particulars, and maybe I understand less than that. When I popped the site open this morning I was “informed” that “Satanic Panic” was trending. After poking around a bit, I do not think the concept trended worldwide. Rather, Twitter’s internal gadgets and gizmos has found this is a topic I would be interested in, next to Vince McMahon’s fall from grace at World Wrestling Entertainment and the ongoing war in Ukraine. For those unaware, the initial wave of “Satanic Panic” began in the 1980s and marched onward into the 90s. Largely unsubstantiated claims of satanic ritual abuse sprung forth from the media, pundits, and law enforcement during this time, leading to wasted resources and, worse, the framing of innocent persons. (The case of the so-called West Memphis Three is one of the more popular and egregious examples.) Even this season of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things, set in 1986, refers to this panic as it related to the game Dungeons & Dragons.

Since everything old is new again, I should not be surprised that “Satanic Panic” is back in play. Heaven only knows what really gave rise to the phenomenon in the 1980s, though several sociological theories have been put forth. A number of those who decry this panic as little more than conspiracy mongering seem to enjoy engaging in conspiracy theorizing of their own. One such untested claim is that the “Satanic Panic” was a myth ginned up by Evangelical Christians to seize the reins of power. Another, slightly more plausible, explanation is that the “Satanic Panic” was bound up with “homophobia” which itself saw an uptick in the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS crisis. For my part, I think the “Satanic Panic” was caused by all that sweet heavy metal that came out of that decade, but I digress.

Apparently evil just isn’t intriguing enough without some supernatural/occult-ish twist. Today, heinous and violent crimes, including rape and murder, are explained (away?) by detailed psychological profiles that often attempt to track the emergence of a predator by peering into their past. A systematically abused child who graduates from animal torture to sadistic killing is a lot less interesting than someone possessed by a demon. And should this demon be a figment of the imagination, or an excuse conjured up by the perpetrator, the tale routinely proves more exciting than a “mere” determination that a criminal is mentally and emotionally damaged.

Some may object by noting that even if the “Satanic Panic” was and remains overblown, it does not follow that no criminal acts are carried out with infernal intent. That is true. I believe in the reality of demonic possession just as much as I believe that individuals, psychologically broken or not, can commit evil acts in the name of Satan. As the last century and this one proves, the demonic can mean much more than black clothing, mediocre Latin, and pentagrams. (As for hellfire and brimstone, mankind now has a comparative advantage in that department over the legions of hell.) Indeed, there is an argument to be made that we live in an era of casual demonism, from the way we craft foreign policy to the way we treat our neighbors. Its true power lies in the fact nobody is having a panic over it.

The Worst of Times?

Handwringing is never in short supply on Catholic social media, especially traditional Catholic social media. (Who would have ever thought such a thing could exist?) The latest impetus for despair is the set of restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass (TLM) imposed by the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Other anti-TLM moves, such as Cardinal Blase Cupich showing the Institute of Christ the King the door in Chicago, are contributing to the consternation. And while one former Catholic college professor has intimated that I am not taking the situation as seriously as I ought (perhaps because I do not believe Eastern Catholic churches should become TLM hubs), I remain disinclined from screaming, “The sky is falling!” We are not living in the end times. We are not even living in the worst of times, at least as far as the traditional Roman liturgy is concerned. Those who enjoy rending their garments often lack perspective. Until at least Pope John Paul II’s 1988 document Ecclesia Dei and, really, not until Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in 2007, the TLM was unavailable to a hyper-majority of Catholics. Indeed, the 1970s and 80s were the “wild West” of traditional Catholicism with random with typically aging clergy doing what they could to say the old Mass across the country. Few had time for liturgical minutiae. Arcane rubrical debates could not be front and center for the simple fact that clergy and the communities they ministered to had to get by with what they had—and it was not a lot.

Recently I had the privilege to do editorial work on a new book, The Story of Fr. George Kathrein. Kathrein, a native of Austria and Redemptorist, experienced the 1970s liturgical reform firsthand. Despite resistance from his superiors and fellow Redemptorists, Fr. Kathrein pressed ahead, offering the TLM and other sacraments according to the traditional Roman Rite to flocks of Catholics. And while he was never officially a member of the Society of Saint Pius X, Kathrein maintained ties with the fraternity while working to aid the most abandoned souls in the Catholic Church. Even as the years slowed him down, Fr. Kathrein never lost sight of his mission, nor did he fret for the Church’s future. Years before the strictures on the TLM were loosened, this Redemptorist and numerous other clerics forged ahead, laying the groundwork for the contemporary traditional Catholic movement.

How many untold stories are still out there? As time takes its course, more and more will be lost to history. Now more than ever, traditional Catholics need to hear and read about the “bad old days.” Perspective is key. Unfortunately, there is a temptation for not just traditional Catholics but all people to “outsource” their problems, to hope that someone else will come along to clean things up and set the room back in order. When Summorum dropped, Catholics accustomed to hyper-papal centrality and top-down ecclesiastical structuring, thought the good times were here to stay. Ah, but what one pope giveth, another pope taketh—and there ain’t nuttin’ you can do ‘bout it.

Or is there? Without committing to the thesis that 2022 is 1972 or 1982 redux, it would behoove traditional Catholics to take a close look at the years following the Second Vatican Council and the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae to assess how (relatively) bad they really have it (or not). What lessons can be distilled from that era and applied today? And though I am under no illusion that priests read this web-log, surely there are some throughout the country’s dioceses who will not allow the shifting and arbitrary decrees of misguided hierarchs to impede their duty to save souls. The highest law of the Church cannot be abrogated.