Fair enough. The Right, like anything involving people, has its bad elements and, being a human invention, its errors. There is a radical Right, a racist Right, an alt-Right, and all manner of evil to be found on the Right. Smart people with more than two brain cells know it. Likewise there is also a radical Left, an alt-Left, a movement filled with all the same loathing, hate, demonic, slaughter, racism and hellborn evil as the radical Right.
That's where Mark swings and misses by a mile.
Part of Mark's justification for his move toward the Left is that liberals are, in the end, just fine and swell people. They're nice, kind, caring, witty, compassionate, loving. Oh sure, they have their rough edges. Sometimes, for reasons not quite clear, they embrace bad things like abortion rights. But on the whole, they're good to the core. Not like non-repentant conservatives who aren't really Christians and who are rotten and evil to the core.
This is a major rationale for Mark's current ministry. This is how he explains assuming the best interpretations of what American liberalism has to offer while assuming the worst of conservatives. This is how he assumes that liberals would never do anything like use the poor or the immigrant as human shields for their agendas, while he knows full well conservatives do nothing else but use the unborn as human shields.
This is a major confession of faith for Mark. But it's obviously wrong. It's so wrong that it boggles the mind. You just can't get more wrong than that. It's so wrong that Mark himself once mocked the notion. When the Tuscon shooting happened, Mark openly mocked the liberal media narrative that somehow conservatives, being conservatives, were simply a bunch of brainless murdering zombies waiting for someone to drop the Queen of Diamonds so they could go on killing sprees. Mark rightly saw that this notion, that righteousness and sin are based on what color state people live in, is not just heretical from a Christian viewpoint, but idiotic.
So this very thing Mark once called out as stupid at best, is now his justification for running to the left of center. The problem is, it requires either a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth, or a dangerously ignorant level of denial. Take, for instance, this statement from his post:
I have never encountered a single abortion apologist–not one–who speaks with glee over the death of an aborted child.Sorry, but I posted on this growing trend in 2012. It has only grown since. The idea to bring abortion out of the shadows and into the light, with pride and glee and encouragement, has been one of the most frightful developments in the long, sad history of abortion in America. And it is spilling over into the proud and open push for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and even questioning the justification of violence in the name of shutting down free speech for those who don't conform. There are connections there not difficult to miss.
As for the fact that they don't say the word 'baby', or believe it is a baby? Who the hell cares? Slave owners were convinced that Africans weren't real people, worthy of the same rights as actual (Read: White) people. The Nazis were absolutely convinced that Jews and other minorities didn't warrant being called truly human. That people bent on slaughter will use euphemism rather than the truth to justify evil (something Mark used to point out, BTW), is irrelevant. The fact that the growing 'proud to have abortions' movement might avoid the term Baby because they've convinced themselves there is no human in the womb is not a damn bit different than the fact that Nazis, in their minds, weren't sending real human beings to their deaths.
If Mark lived in Nazi Germany in the 40s, would he excuse the Nazis just because they had convinced themselves Jews weren't really people? I have a feeling not. When a Catholic apologist, speaking in the name of Catholic teaching, must embrace such flawed justifications for his political positions, red flags must be waved.
As I already said, I've long ceased to listen to Mark. All his credibility left the building long ago. I comment on him because friends still like pestering me by sending links to his blog by email or Facebook. I would no more care to read his blog than I would visit some radical atheist or anti-Catholic blog. But this is dangerous. The post looks like a contrite 'I need to love these wretched sinners' confession. But it is wrong. Demonstrably wrong. Dangerously wrong. So wrong that it risks being complicit in the move to broaden the very Culture of Death that the New Prolife Christian movement claims to oppose. And it rests its downplaying of the manifold sins of liberalism on stupidity and falsehood. Stupidity and falsehoods that Mark, ironically, taught me to notice in suspect arguments all those years ago.
Someone needs to introduce Shea to the woman who wrote this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/15/i-wish-my-mother-aborted-me
Stunning. Words fail me.
DeleteConversely, I've never come across any right-wingers who, as Shea says, "love to dwell on the videos of the agonized families torn to pieces and weeping farewell at the airport". No doubt there are a few -- any group of people as large as the American right is going to have some evil people in it -- but I've seen no reason whatsoever to suppose that they're a significant element, either numerically or in terms of political influence.
ReplyDeleteFor example:
Deletehttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2018/02/lepers-outside-camp.html#
Even one link to those who 'gloat' over the suffering of a child, immigrant or otherwise, would help the case. Perhaps the irony is Mark saying driving people out of the in group is mocking Jesus, when there are few Catholics more noted for banning anyone and everyone who he doesn't consider to be part of his acceptable group.
This is what I notice from Shea's post:
Delete(The book of Job likewise illustrates–and rebukes–this evil habit of mind which assumes suffering must be punishment for some sin.)
Ok, true suffering is not ALWAYS a punishment for sin, but him and his seem to have run to the other extreme where sin NEVER causes suffering. Even though, as pointed out by the Boy who Cried Wolf, often suffering does come from our faults. Or at least we can alleviate our suffering (and others) by striving to be better and sin less. Now that group seems to take it as meaning any acknowledgement of responsibility is an evil habit of mind.
You know what it reminds me of? I forgot where I read it but one article once pointed out that the current problem in schools comes from a lot of administrators noticing that students which had high achievements had high self-esteem. So they assumed things would work both ways - give kids high self-esteem, and they'll accomplish things. The problem is that it obviously only works one way: achieving goals leads to high self-esteem (not the other way around). Shea seems to have bought into the paradigm that since saints often suffer as martyrs, anybody that suffers must then be a saint - no matter how self-inflicted the suffering is.
Mark has bought into the lion's share of modern liberal and Leftist ideals, including the sins of the flesh being the blame of someone else, the inherent stupidity and evil that comes with not being leftist, and the horrible notion that anyone should ever be accountable for their actions - unless their action is not being liberal.
DeleteYeah, I've never found any examples of his caricatures. He seldom links to any examples to go by. I'm sure there are some out there who would do such a horrible thing, just like you can find extremes in any group. I call to mind those radicals who, on the 10th anniversary, were celebrating 9/11. That shouldn't be the crux of an argument the way Mark makes it. That so much of his argument rests on this should be a warning flag right there.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this blog entry. I long ago stopped listening to the drivel that is Mark Shea and his sidekick Scott "I am not a leftist I just support everything on the left" Alt.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's sad. Mark is at the point now of actually teaching contrary to the Church. Not sure what happened there.
DeleteI still feel sad today too, T_T
ReplyDeleteAnd now... Michelle Wolf in July Fourth salute: 'God bless abortions and God bless America'
ReplyDeleteMr. Shea has written quite interesting things in defense of the Catholic faith, and whilst I do respect much of what he's done, I have noticed this interesting move of his to the left. Allegedly (although I don't know how true this is), people have threatened him and his family. That's wrong, too. I like some of what he has written, but he's become very crude, he is starting to remind me of Martin Luther (who was also quite crude). That said, there are MANY things I like about him, and I do agree with him on some things, but, I think he needs to tone down some of the ways he talks about things. I think, much of the time, he puts blinders on and only sees stereotypes of Conservatives.
ReplyDeleteHe used to write interesting things. He obviously has moved to the Left, for reasons I'll never. He says he's been threatened, but I know he's also falsely accused others of saying things to and about him as well (including me). It's not so much his crudeness, as that he engages in spreading lies and false accusations, largely to attack those not in line with, or critics of, the political Left. That Mark now almost entirely embraces most of what he once condemned, and condemns much of what he once celebrated, is only one more layer of problems.
Delete