Category: Meta

One of the hazards of web-logging is that it induces a fair number of needless, though not necessarily uninteresting, distractions. After posting “Irrelevancy” yesterday, a few people sent me links to various blogs discussing critic Edward Champion’s attack on blogger Emily Gould and others Champion deems “middling millennials.” One friend in particular thought I was giving Champion’s takedown too much credit and, more importantly, that I had missed the sexist (if not misogynistic) nature of the piece. That’s not entirely true, but I am not sure why it matters. The accuracy of Champion’s criticism doesn’t rise or fall with the nature of his personal prejudices. Champion could be the most sexist, petty, jealous-driven man on earth and it wouldn’t necessarily undermine his identification of certain problems found Gould’s work and attitude, not to mention the larger pathologies infecting certain segments of the contemporary “literary scene.” If one wants to knock my take on Champion’s take of Gould, knock me for being out of touch with contemporary culture and, thus, prone to let someone like Champion do my analytical lifting for me. I am not saying I would agree with such a knock wholeheartedly; I did, after all, read some of Gould’s work following the Champion piece, along with her recent interview in New York Magazine. I won’t defend Champion coming unglued in his Gould takedown, but I don’t think he is off his rocker either. (Well, maybe he is a little bit: he threatened to commit suicide on Twitter following a wave of negative feedback for attacking Gould.)

Sometime around mid-2007, after graduating law school and worrying about a job as Son #2 was in utero, I became culturally irrelevant. Having sold off most of my (non-classical) music and movie collection a couple of years prior, I wasn’t interested in what was going on “artistically” in the world around me, mostly because very little of it sounded or looked like art; it resembled trash. I was dead to contemporary literature as well. After a brief but disastrous flirtation with being an English major in 1998 during my freshman year of college, I had sworn off fiction for almost a decade, though my wife, who double majored in English and Spanish, cajoled me now and again into putting down Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, or whatever philosophical page-turner had caught my fancy to read something — anything — of literary substance. It was nice. However, I quickly realized that I was woefully behind on all of those classics “everyone should read,” and so I told myself, facetiously, that  I would get around to folks like Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace right after I finished the complete novels of Anthony Trollope. (I haven’t even started yet.) Granted, I’ve made some exceptions here and there. For instance, in 2012 I bought used all of Cormac McCarthy’s novels for a song and proceeded to read them over the course of the summer. Also, during my brief tenure as a New Yorker subscriber, I read a short story or two.

If you have found this web-log then there is a good chance that you are familiar with its predecessor that occupied the now-defunct address modestinus.wordpress.com. When I launched Opus Publicum in January 2012 I did so to continue, in part, a critical engagement with the Eastern Orthodox Church from a Catholic perspective. As most of my early readers knew, I had been a member of the Orthodox communion for seven years and had only returned to Catholicism—the confession of my youth—during Lent 2011. Despite certain suggestions to the contrary, I did not part ways with Orthodoxy on bad terms even though some Orthodox Christians, including certain individuals I called friends, were less than thrilled with my decision. I should have realized, however, that every critical remark I made about the Orthodox Church and, more specifically, Orthodox polemics against Catholicism was bound to be read by the Orthodox (and some non-Orthodox) as manifestations of a deep, even pathological, animus toward Orthodoxy. As my blog continued to draw more and more traffic from Orthodox and Catholics alike, it became host to numerous inter-ecclesiological knife fights which were unedifying to say the least. Although I know a good deal of the chaos that ensued was, barring heavy comment moderation, beyond my control, I certainly see how the tone of certain posts and comments which I authored did nothing to relax the situation. At some point I had to ask, “Is this really the message I want to send? Are these words, even if true, the sort of words I would use in other public forums? Are posts riddled with sarcasm and inside jabs the sort I want associated with me years from now?” Finally, after discovering that I could only answer “No” to all three questions, I knew that it was time to sweep the contents of the first Opus Publicum into the digital dustbin.

The Orthodox Church was not the only topic that elicited ire over the past two years. As I transitioned away from my former libertarian commitments in order to submit my thought and talents to the social magisterium of the Catholic Church, I frequently found myself going nose-to-nose with certain—in my estimation—wrongheaded attempts to marry Catholic Social Teaching (CST) with the tenets of economic liberalism. Some of those engagements also resulted in me asking those three aforementioned questions in return for the same answer: “No.” In fact, there were few topics covered on Opus Publicum—law, politics, economics, liturgy, professional wrestling, etc.—that didn’t create a fair share of acrimony while leaving me wondering whether I would confront those issues with the same style over at Ethika Politika or in the pages of The Remnant. At that point I knew it was time to make a change, to “raise the game” so-to-speak with respect to how I approach blogging or simply exit the medium altogether. While I cannot lie and say I wasn’t tempted by the latter option, some much-needed encouragement has brought me to choose the former.

I know that there are certain risks attending Opus Publicum’s re-launch, not the least of which being the immediate loss in readership this blog is likely to experience. However, affixed with a clearer conscience about what I am doing here coupled with a renewed dedication to offer entries that consistently meet the standards set by the best posts I could muster during Opus Publicum’s first incarnation, I am confident that this blog can regain and even supersede its predecessor’s traffic. To that end, dear readers, I am humbly asking you to use whatever means are at your disposal—Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, the town square, and so forth—to advertise this version of the blog. In exchange I promise to keep plugging away on the multitude of subjects I normally address from a traditional Catholic perspective that is informed by the Church’s Eastern and Western patrimonies.

For those curious, I have retained an entire archive of Opus Publicum’s old content. If there is a particular post or comment(s) that you would like a copy of, feel free to contact me. Also, don’t be surprised if you see (potentially reworked) posts from the previous blog make their way back onto this one. For the sake of clarity and continuity, I will “flag” when earlier content is being recycled. Moreover, please be patient with me over the next several weeks as I add more content, including links and other things of interest.

Finally, for those of you who participated in some way, shape, or form on old Opus Publicum, thank you for two years of encouraging, insightful, and sometimes sharply critical comments. Thank you for the links and other information shared and, most of all, thank you for your prayers. Please keep me in them.