I have seen this pop up over the last couple days:
It references the continued push to expand sex change procedures on minors while lowering the age of exposing our children to our modern porn sex culture. It might include the sudden debate over just when celebrating the genocidal slaughter of Jews is or isn't a deal breaker. I don't know. I should mention that some of the individuals who posted this are not exactly your hard right of conservative types. A couple actually shocked me.
Almost hand in hand with this, I've seen this Rockwell pop up in response (a sort of how far we've fallen reference):
Suggesting that while never perfect, we certainly have lost something with throwing God out the window and into the ghettoes of our society. Believe it or not, there are Christians who think allowing God and Christ to be removed from our societal stage has been detrimental to our nation.
Well, as I'm seeing the above images, I then see this linked to from Catholic deacon and film critics Steven Greydanus:
Because to the Left, our past is 100% bad. One of my sons once quipped that with the modern Left, it's not a case of the glass half empty as oppose to half full. When it comes to our history, heritage and heroes, the glass is altogether empty, crush by a steamroller, and covered by radioactive waste.
Deacon Gredyanus swooping in to remind us that no appeal to the past can exist apart from focus on the sins of the past demonstrates one of the Left's main trump cards. Condemn the past for its sins. Define the past by its sins. Declare those all defining sins irredeemable and all tainting. Anything in the past is therefore tainted by these sins. Anything the past condoned is therefore suspect. If you think boys and girls used to exist, or raising kids should be parents' priorities, or judging based on skin color is always wrong? Well, that what those racists in the racist past said, ain't it? Therefore, anything and everything from the past is, at best, open to debate. Including the idea that sexing up our children or altering their underage bodies might be suboptimal.
In fairness, I should mention that I don't know Deacon Greydanus posted the above image in direct response to the others. After all, this isn't the first time that a Christian argued for remembering a time of more religious devotion in the past as a positive. Nor is it the first time Deacon Greydanus has swept aside appeals to the past that don't emphasize slavery or Jim Crow. It just all happened around the same time, and I felt it telling.
UPDATE: Then again. Someone explained to the good deacon that not all was bad in the past, and not all is the best in the present. Let's say, school shootings? And he responds:
So there you go. Trying to find the good of the past should always deflect to the bad. But if you pine for the good but don't embrace the proper politics of today, can faith ever be found on the Earth?
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteThe water fountains are salutary reminders against unthinking nostalgia, perhaps, for the past, like any era of human history, is a mosaic of good and evil. But as the pieces of a mosaic may have no necessary connection with their neighbors, so many good things like school prayer (for the sake of argument) have no logical connection with the bad things (like segregation). Clearly, the one can exist independent of the other, so one should be able to argue about them separately. Of course, the modern Left shuns real argument.
BTW: if a white student wanted to use a water fountain in designated black "safe space" (or a Jewish student one in a Palestinian "safe space") what do you think our liberal lefties would respond?
That was brought up in one of the comments. That we are watching that same Left he identifies with but won't admit to usually, being the ones who are setting up segregated meeting, events, spaces. Same exact principle. But the modern Left has perfected the idea that it's only wrong because the bad people of the past did it to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. The Left is now doing it all right.
DeleteOh.my.gosh. They didn’t even have many gun regulations back then and there were no mass school shootings. So something else must be the reason people are simply behaving worse on the whole.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tragedy of the age that we can't look at anything but guns as the problem. If people want the discussion, that's fine. But please look at what is likely the real problem - the modern world's void of meaning, purpose, and common sense values and virtues.
DeleteSeriously, what’s with capitalizing the word “White” in his post? It’s not a nationality.
ReplyDeleteI'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's trying to at least be consistent. Among some leftwing circles, it's fashionable to always capitalize Black and then openly keep white with lower case letters. One of those obvious little digs and jabs. So at least he capitalizes White too. It would just be nice if the only time he referred to white as an ethnic identifier it wasn't done as a pejorative.
DeleteHere's a suggestion for all deacons: Stop trying to tell people what political positions they should hold. Instead, try doing your actual job. See that the charities of your churches are well organized. Or is that too much to expect? --- G. Poulin
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about this the more I agree with it. A deacon’s ministry is to help the pastor in the administration of the church, not run his own things. Sure, you get a nice title but that title is for service, not platform. The best you can say no are very quiet but run things at their local churches effectively so the pastors are able to do things like focus on the sacraments or making sick calls or visiting the homebound, etc.
DeleteIf an issue needs addressed, that's fine. But be Christian, not political. For Deacon Greydanus, he follows pretty much the CNN/MSNBC template. Ignore anything unless it can be used to sustain the narratives and agendas of the Left. For instance, pretty much ignoring the antisemitism exploding around the country by anti-Israel activists, but then when there is a story of Scotland Yard offending Jewish people - jump on it. Sadly, some of his homilies fall into the same tendency.
Delete"For service, not platform". You are exactly right, Bernadette. That is why the diaconate was established in the first place, as we see related in Acts chapter 6. Our deacons need to spend more time waiting on tables and less time pontificating about world affairs. --G. Poulin
DeleteFunny, I could use Stephen's water fountain meme as a reply to any pro-Catholic efforts. Just post an image of one of Catholicism's wrongs with the caption "The good ole days of the church" or something. I mean really for him and his ilk, seems to me a fairly liberal Protestantism would have better claim to whatever reasoning he makes for Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about them, at least conservative Catholics are consistent in their reasoning and evangelism (probably also why they're more effective).
Problem there? In the Pope Francis era, it's become fashionable to bemoan the first 2000 years of Catholicism that just didn't get it right, just as much as anything. In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to invoke a Protestant-like belief that once the Church ended up in Europe with all those Caucasians, everything went off the rail and became corrupted by whiteness. They're the first to push Protestant fundamentalists out of the way and say 'we really should condemn those horrible not-us Catholics who crusade and inquisition and racism and sexism and on and on!' Perhaps 15 years ago your suggestion might work. Today? When Pope Francis explains the Church's historical position on the death penalty as a result of the spiritual inferiority of previous ages of Catholicism, the threat of bringing up the Church's past sins is likely null and void.
DeleteYou got me there, Dave. Though my larger point is that if all that is the case, maybe it's not those mean 'ole conservatives who are interfering with evangelism efforts.
DeleteI mean why would anybody join an organization that is claimed to be evil?
Oh, that's been the argument since forever. In fact, one thing that got me to look at the church was a theologian from my seminary days who said it's time for Catholics and Protestants to bury the hatchet. Because we they say 'look at the evils those Christians did', our post-Christian age hears 'Christians admit Christianity was stupid and evil.' The same with the Liberation spin on the Bible as a relic of ancient barbarism, bigotry, sexism, savagery and racism. It might come as a shock, but most people in our age won't exactly set the alarm early on a Sunday to hear how they can conform their lives to a hot mess like that. Best to watch Oprah, since most of what she says isn't far from those saying the Church and Scriptures were so awful all along.
DeleteYes, clearly the past has nothing to teach us, as we watch the best and brightest at our prestigious campuses warm up to Kristallnacht 2.0.
ReplyDeleteHe's a deacon in Newark, correct? I suppose if he wishes to continue to be one who exercises the privileges of his ordination, he is attuned to the party line from the Cardinal's office. Intoning DEI rhetoric is just fine from that perspective.
I believe he was a film critic long before becoming a deacon. Even then, he exhibited some tendencies of the postmodern. But wasn't terribly left of center, and certainly easy to discuss things with. Over the years, the more deacon he has become, the more to the left, and the more in line with some of the tougher tricks of online discourse. I actually called him out a few weeks ago when he said he tries to be polite. I told him you can't sit back and let people like Mark Shea and Rebecca Bratten Weiss wade in and do the dirty work of insults, personal attacks and calumny 'good cop/bad cop' style and call yourself polite. He was never like that years ago.
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