The Friendly Atheist is a blog that, as the name suggests, purports to be a happy place where nice atheists are all warm and fuzzy and friendly. Utilizing a good cop/bad cop tactic, however, the FA was typically radical leftwing atheism that spent most of its time attacking anything remotely center-right, and all things religious, especially Christianity. While most of the main contributors did so on the slick, in the comments sections atheists were given carte blanche to spew any hate and even violent wishes on religious freaks and conservatives who they clearly hated.
Where Peter Is reminds me of that. It suggests a site dedicated to the importance of the pope in Catholicism. But it doesn't take long to see the ideological leanings of its contributors. Most posts follow a decidedly leftwing template where political liberalism's stereotypes of conservatives can be assumed, but to the left is nothing but beautiful people usually being correct about everything.
It also demonstrates a trend among the 'former Christian conservative' movement we've seen over the last decade. Some contributors claim to be 'former right wing Christens'. Nonetheless, it isn't difficult to see that they have simply taken the problems with fusing the Faith and Right Wing Politics and now apply the same to Left Wing Politics. They're still the same politically partisan Christians, but with an ass on their hats rather than an elephant.
To me that is a big problem with those who tack Left. Conservatives, if they have nothing else going for them, typically admit - even celebrate - their identity as conservatives. Liberalism has forever shrank away from such self-identification. Those on the Left prefer simply being correct about everything and without guile; advocates of truth and fact and nothing else. Therefore the injection of politics into the Faith must always be the fault of those other types who aren't them.
That forthrightness among conservatives, BTW, is why I tend to identify more with conservative Christians, even if I don't always agree. There's something about honesty over duplicity that gets me every time.
The problem with the left is that it’s all politics ALL the time! So I find those who have veered left see life mostly now through a political lens, and they don’t even realize it necessarily. Those who are more conservative tend to have lives and interests outside of political things.
ReplyDeleteIt’s challenging because one side just wants to live their lives in relative peace and the other side is on offense ALL the time because their religion is their agenda... ironically.
Passion beats apathy every time. Especially when that passion dons the cloak of 'simply truth'. Time and again I see leftwing Catholics bemoan conservatives for bringing politics into the Church - as if they aren't doing the same thing. That's one reason I typically identify with conservatism. At least conservatives admit it.
DeleteFor the sake of fairness, I have long been wary of the (Catholic) Church's typical stance about "not being political". It's true enough that differing ideas about applying faith to practice contribute to Democrat v Republican partisanship. I get it.
ReplyDeleteEven so, "politics" most accurately references "the will of the people", especially in a republic. Our faith in Christ has become effectively worthless if We, the People, do not exercise our will according to our faith's teachings. ..We risk being negligent of our faith if we omit religion from our decisions, formally political and otherwise. ..I think Democrats have long embraced abortion and Republicans have long embraced (appearance of) greed in part because our bishops won't publicly correct the public actions or statements of our "Catholic" politicians.
It certainly didn't help that you had priests and maybe even bishops specifically go to influential politicians (like Kennedys) and convince them they could be "personally pro-life" while voting pro-abortion. Then you had that Jesuit pro-abortion priest IN Congress itself. Not to mention all the Jesuit schools that have produced many of our illustrious "Catholic" politicians, most with Ds behind their names. Even with the Bishops' anemic "Faithful Citizenship" guide, the "don't be political" admonition seems to get largely thrown in one direction while the other side is either ignored or actively supported.
DeleteThis is just my observation anyway.
One of the biggest coups of the last couple centuries was the world convincing the Church to take its hands off the wheel in the name of fairness. Being told to stay out of politics by those who bath in politics was simply one form of this. But more to the point, it's usually not true anyway. The Church typically does meddle in politics. That was my beef with Orthodox Christians. They flew proud the banner that said they never engage in politics - only to dive head first into politics when it was convenient (think of how many jumped on the BLM movement).
Delete“The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes, but is tolerant in practice because she loves. Enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe, but they are intolerant in practice because they do not love.”
ReplyDelete(Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange)
I love that quote. It's as it should be.
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