I stopped reading Kevin O'Brien a long time ago

Maybe that is what he means by not being rigid

I had a chance to meet Kevin at EWTN studios many moons ago.  I was there with the Coming Home Network. He was with a group doing something with theater.  It was there I met Mark Shea, and was invited to an after event gathering featuring wine, chocolates and much talk.  IIRC, Kevin struck me as a decent fellow.  

He probably still is, but the post-modern secular world does have a polluting effect.  Kevin's sympathies are clearly left of center.  He's also in the world of drama and theater, which is not exactly ground zero for Gospel values. Nonetheless, I still used to read him and see what he had to say.

Then came the great Lying for Jesus kerfuffle.  That tempest was brought to us courtesy of Dawn Eden.  This is how it happened.   At one point, a decade or so ago, an undercover pro-life investigation discovered that Planned Parenthood might be doing some pretty horrible things with those aborted babies.   The news shot across the Catholic blogosphere like wildfire. Multiple Catholics were up in arms and the outrage even began to filter into MSM news rooms. 

Suddenly, out of the blue, Dawn Eden took fingers to the keyboard and, along with another contributor, said not so fast.  Not that it was difficult to believe Planned Parenthood would do such a thing.  Not that the allegations weren't horrible beyond imagining.  But you see, this investigation was undercover.  They pretended to be people who were in situations that they weren't.  That is, they lied to be undercover.  And that, friends, was the real grave evil.  Whatever evils done by Planned Parenthood paled in comparison to Christians trying to fight evil while being less than 100% pure and honest. 

Bam!  I consider that the day St. Blogs died.  Almost overnight, the LIARS FOR JESUS topic exploded and boiled over.  Soon we found out there was no room for anything but pure, untarnished holiness when fighting for justice or life itself.  No matter what the cost.  Better Jews be hauled off to the camps than lie to save them.  Take that Corrie ten Boom.   At one point Mark Shea linked to a Catholic pediatrician who said he would let a thousand children be murdered rather than risk his soul by telling even a 'white lie' to save them.  

A growing number of Internet Catholics ran in that direction, cheering Dawn Eden for her enlightened guidance in this area.  Among them was Kevin O'Brien.  Those Catholics trying to justify lying for any reason sinned a great sin. They became the infamous 'Liars for Jesus.'  Yes, we bemoan Planed Parenthood and its operations (at least back then). Sure, we weep for the death of the innocent.  Of course we should try to fight evils and injustices in the world.  But never, ever should we think of doing so with anything less than pure holiness, or we immediately become the true, grave and intrinsic evil in the room.  Oh, and the whole Planned Parenthood story all but dropped off the radar by that point. 

Shortly after that time, a year or so perhaps, Kevin wrote a post celebrating the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  He mused about how Ferris was such a noble, admirable figure seeking to live life in a freedom of spirit. He talked about the inspiring themes coming from the film.  If there were problematic people in the film, it was everyone but Ferris Bueller:  His parents, his friends' parents, the school principle, society as a whole.  

I asked him if he actually had watched the same Ferris Bueller's Day Off that I watched.  A movie about how a self-absorbed teenager lies, dupes, cons, and manipulates everyone around him.  He lies to his parents.  He lies to his school.  He lies to the entire city.  He mocks their kindness as one lie after another spreads and leads an entire metropolis to rally together to help save poor Bueller, who doesn't need saved at all.  And he doesn't do it to rescue Jews from Nazis or keep babies from being slaughtered.  He does it all just to be a lazy ne'er-do-well who cares about the latest creature comfort or itch for fun more than anything else.  

How do you square the loftiest of all principles that says 'better to let a thousand children die than lie' with celebrating a movie like that?  That's like emphasizing the high virtues of chastity then recommending Debbie Does Dallas.  He responded with what I call 'word drool.'  That is, he wrote a bunch of gibberish that sounded pretty, but meant he knew what I knew, but what could he say?  That is postmodernity in a nutshell: you care about lying when you care about lying.  When you don't, you don't.  Just like any principle or truth claim in our post-modern age.  Just like whether human suffering is important or not, or anything is true or not.  Or whether siding with the slaughter of Jews is a deal breaker or not. And that was the last time I read anything he had to say.  

Based on this that came to my attention, I haven't missed anything. It's a twist-turn on 'how to keep our focus on those rascally conservatives amidst growing leftwing support for Jew hate and the extermination of Israeli Jews!'  He even references conservative David French who reminds us that right-wingers are terrible for  expecting pregnant mothers to bring all babies to term or daring to suggest the Science wasn't 100% awesome when it came to Covid.  Sure, there is some leftwing Jew hate, but let's not take our eyes off  the ball!

People like David French and Keven O'Brien remind me of why I align conservative.  Not just based on common sense and an objective analysis of secular liberalism's staggering failures.  But because conservatives, for all their shortcomings, failures, badness and sins, tend to be honest about being conservative.  They are conservatives.  They admit it.  They admit what they do and don't like.  

People like O'Brien and French couch their leftwing sympathies in variations of 'I'm not a leftist, it's not my fault the thing wrongly called leftwing ideology just happens to incarnate the Messianic perfection of the Thrice-Holy God!  Hey, merely pointing out conservatives are usually fascists, racists, sexists and motivated by malice. Just following the science here!'  And when that comfortable narrative is threatened by, say, non-conservative, non-Christian, non-White and non-Western calls for ethnic cleansing and the slaughter of Jews, salvaging that unspoken narrative alliance becomes a top priority. 

I'm a stickler for consistency and basic honesty.  No matter my education, I have a meat and potatoes approach to virtue that I inherited from my less formerly educated parents.  Be honest, be consistent, be good, and be real.  And that includes following through with lofty values by which you define good and evil, even if it might impact a movie you like.  If you can't do better than that, I'll assume you can't do much good in anything.  Seeing so many on the Left pull Rodney Dangerfields over the leftwing Israeli Jew hate just goes to show what I mean by anything.