Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Denying the obvious on a Catholic Facebook Page

Is under discussion at Mark Shea's Facebook page.  I dared to point out that the disproportionate number of positive, celebratory posts centered around giving high fives and kudos to Bernie Sanders was problematic, and he might want to look again at just what Sanders represents.  Sanders is one of the most tirelessly zealous advocates for expanding abortion rights and culture of death issues in government

What follows could only be described as the unraveling of the last shreds of credibility of a once great Catholic apologist.  I know it was getting bad in later years.  But I can't imagine going to Jack Chick's website to espouse Catholicism and getting worse than this.  It was just - childish. He continued leveling the same false accusation over and over and over again, saying I was accusing him of supporting abortion.  Try as I might to be civil, to be polite, to be direct, it didn't matter.  It was false accusation and slander, contempt and derision, mocking and insulting.  And this is one of the stars of modern Catholic apologetics.  I guess you can't argue with success.  But I have done my arguing, and won't be going back.  Bushy tail this time. 

BTW, one of Mark's main reasons for abandoning conservatism and traditional values and beliefs was, according to him, the constant false accusations made against him by conservatives; accusations that he was pro-choice, or pro-gay rights, or a socialist, or whatnot.  Given that I didn't, in fact that I had no intention of it, and was simply trying to tell him to back off the Sanders-love, and he insisted on saying that I was 'accusing him', I wonder how accurate his take on those other accusations actually was.

6 comments:

  1. Wait he SERIOUSLY dropped the sea lion comic on you? (for an idea on how bad that comic is, read through it again, only replacing every instance of "sea lion" with "black person/people".

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  2. Yeah, I even told him it was lame, but he continues. And it was just nothing other than insults, name calling, and of course, false accusations. I thought 'and this is one of the leading voices in Catholic apologetics?' I tried to think of any fundamentalists I knew as a pastor - and I knew many - who came close to that sort of behavior. Even those who pounced on me when I became Catholic didn't act like that. I couldn't believe it. I almost got to the point of being embarrassed. For him.

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  3. There was once a place for people who were both liberal and orthodox catholic and the polarization of our culture has made this very difficult. It is a hard line to walk and Mark needs to be careful. I think that challenging him will only lead him to embrace his liberalism harder. Let the liberals attack the Church and maybe that will force him to defend her and maybe take a look at his allies more closely.

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  4. I think you are right, though I fear the time for Mark being careful has come and gone. He has, for some time, gone over the line and made accusations and near slanderous attacks against those who, as often as not, merely pointed out the obvious. Nonetheless, you have a point. Mark has made it clear he is not going to have anything to do with people pointing out what he is doing and where he is on things. And it’s more or less like arguing with a bumper sticker anyway. With no real constraints, he can say anything he wants. Plus he has gotten more successful and popular doing so. Many of his current arguments make those of Glenn Beck or Bill Maher seem thoughtful and reasoned by comparison. Yet because of the influx of speaking opportunities and an increasing readership, it’s hard to argue with success. And doing so, as I found out yesterday, simply sends him over the top and creates a situation where he is willing to do all but sin, and then even do that at times, in defending himself. That’s partly why I’m moving on. I leave it to others to fight for that one. In the famous words of yore, I feel this one can only be handled with prayer.

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  5. Mark Shea, IMHO, was always a liberal. He just wasn't able to come out of the closet until the liberalism in the Church became more prominent in the American Church and the hierarchy in Rome.

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  6. He could have been. I don't know. In the day, he seemed to act more and hold to more ideas that were 'conservative'. For instance, after 9/11, he wrote a rousing piece titled 'Why We Must Fight', outlying why we must rise up and face the threat of Islamic terror and get behind the war effort of this new threat to the US and its safety. He was also critical of liberalism and its 'sinful' twisting of legitimate criticisms of America's past for its own gain. Those didn't strike me as liberal. Whatever it was, he clearly can't say he is still a conservative and have it mean anything.

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