Inside the mind of a Catholic fundamentalist, Part 2

As if to help me make my case, Mark Shea follows up with a list that demonstrates the point I made yesterday.  What is a Christainist?  Mark explains that a Christianist is not a Christian, but a person who disagrees with Mark on a host of social, cultural, political and doctrinal issues.

To be honest, the majority of it is basically saying a Christianitist is a Christian who isn't increasingly interpreting the Faith through progressive lenses.  And at times, such as the 'War on Christmas' section, Mark represents the other side unfairly.  As far as I know, nobody wants to 'force' a store clerk to say Merry Christmas as much as they oppose store clerks being forbidden from being honest about what holiday is being talked about.  But that's for another post.

Though it does show another tendency that is common in fundamentalist circles, and that's misrepresenting the other side.  More than once, I rejected fundamentalist Protestants because of their tendency to put words in the mouths of others and blast them for things nobody is really saying.  It's not unique to fundamentalism of course, but it tends to be more common in those expressions of a given ideology.  And it often includes assuming much about the inner heart and soul, motives and desires, of those who don't agree. Notice how many of Mark's points are based on the idea that it's not what these 'Christianists' do, but why they do them.  As if he knows their thinking and their spiritual walk.

That's because fundamentalism, which is hardly confined to conservatives or people of faith, is predicated on the necessity of being right about everything, not just this or that key dogma.  And Mark's list, which includes topics that are far from doctrine or dogma, is a perfect example.  Taking a tactic that Mark once condemned - saying people are or aren't Christians one way or another, because that's not our place to judge - Mark draws a circle around his views, equates them with the Faith, and declares those who reject his opinions to be outside the circle of Christian.   At least all who reject his opinions who stand to the right of center.

The only difference with Protestant fundamentalism and what I see in Mark's approach is that Protestant fundamentalists would wrap the statement around some version of, "I'm not expressing my opinions, I'm just pointing out the Word of God.  Why don't these people believe in God's word?".  Otherwise, there is almost no difference with what I saw in my Evangelical days.  Mark has made it clear: here is the list, here is how one must approach these issues, or one is not a Christian.  There's no room for debate.  To even question Mark is to excuse sin and evil.  As is always the case when wading into fundamentalism, be it Protestant or Catholic, conservative or liberal, religious or secular.

Inside the mind of a Catholic fundamentalist

Mark Shea helps us understand the mindset.  Basically, he speaks of Donald Trump and those who support him in the way that fundamentalists once spoke of The Beatles, or Communists, or even liberals in general.   They are of the devil.  They are the enemy.

Now, I'm aware of no fundamentalist who ever said they 'hated' those enemies of God and man.  In fact, they most often spoke of loving their enemies, loving those they disagreed with, or loving those who were clearly misguided.  But enemies they were, and they spoke of those enemies of the traditional, American Christian faith as they would legions of demonic forces.

As does Mark.  And that's helpful.  I've said all along that liberalism has become the new conservatism.  And with that, of course, it has brought along with it a new form of fundamentalism.  Just as liberalism now speaks openly of what should be censored, what values should be imposed and legislated, what morals are repugnant and must be shunned, and how dissenters should be dealt with, so it is with those Christians running to keep up.

For Christians who have followed the developments, it increasingly sounds the same as it used to sound.  We don't disagree with people over this or that issue.  We don't find Trump to be a political threat or a bad politician.  We fight the Devil himself.  The powers of Hell are at work in Trump, his supporters and his pundits.  There is no jury or court or evidence needed.  Guilt is already assumed.  Roy Moore is a child rapist.  Trump is a racist and rapist and evil man hellbent on nothing but murder and destruction.  His supporters follow him because they are of the same ilk, or because they somehow are inferior in their faith walk.

I heard the same about Bill Clinton back in the day, if not in a milder way.  Bill Clinton was a tool of the Devil, liberalism and liberals were an evil, and those Christians who supported him did so because their faith was somehow inferior to those courageous defenders of the Way.

Nonetheless, the fundamentalist expression shows itself when it is no longer a matter of dialogue or discourse.  For Mark, the trial is over.  The verdict is in.  Trump and his supporters are tools of the Devil.  The presumption is one of guilt, not evidence.  Any defenses are therefore lies and of the father of lies.  It is not a political movement we fight, but Satan himself.  If love is insisted upon, it's to maintain a spiritual grounding in this fight against the cosmic powers of this present darkness.

I'm at pains to think of a fundamentalist I knew who made it clearer than Mark.  And like most fundamentalists I knew, I don't think Mark is open to negotiations at this point.  For once a person is convinced they are fighting Satan, how open to listening are they going to be?

Could The Remnant have a point about Fr. Longenecker?

As I said here, as long as people like Fr. Longenecker, Patrick Madrid, Simcha Fisher, Steven Greydanus, and other celebrities of the Internet Catholic Apologetics world continue to give high fives to Mark Shea, who in my opinion has become nothing other than a Catholic version of Jack Chick, they have no reason to launch salvos at arbitrarily chosen targets like The Remnant.

As for the argument at hand, I'm not saying I agree with The Remnant or would always take its side.  Truth be told, I don't visit there much.  Who knows?  Maybe everything Fr. Longenecker said about The Remnant, how it compares to the worst stereotypes of Protestant Fundamentalism, and why it's a problem, is spot on accurate.

My issue is that many of the same complaints could be said about Mark Shea.  I don't mean these people have to call out Mark if they are good friends and buddies.  Though truth be told, if I was Mark's friend or buddy, I'd do everything in the world to call him out to stop and change what he has become.  That's up to them.

But can they please stop running around denouncing Trump here, and Rad Trads there, and over there the dreaded Fundamentalists?  Almost nothing they say about those individuals or expressions of Christianity couldn't easily be said about Mark and so many of his followers.  If they aren't going to call out Mark, then they should keep silent about the subject altogether.  If, however, they feel compelled to step forward and offer what they feel is just criticism, that's fair.  But make sure it's done across the board and includes all - and I mean ALL - noteworthy examples.

Otherwise, they themselves could become guilty of one of the things they are quick to condemn various 'fundamentalists' for, and that's cherry picking the truth at hand.  And nothing says 'opinion over truth' faster than cherry pickers.  That's something I learned in dealing with Protestant Fundamentalists, BTW.

How to tell you've become a Catholic Fundamentalist

When you spend your time trashing Catholics who jettison the clear teachings of the Catechism for what they consider to be grave reasons, only to jettison the clear teachings of the Catechism for what you consider grave reasons.  Case in point.  Note well, Rush Limbaugh's insult against Sandra Fluke is called a "repellent screed."  Now, second case in point.  Having lambasted Limbaugh's 'repellent screed', we now see our intrepid host let fly with a similarly repellent screed against President Obama and Mitt Romney.

And when I step in and quote the Catechism's teachings on how we should deal with our fellow man?  I'm called a bourgeois passive aggressive jack-ass who apparently doesn't care about children killed by drones since I mentioned, you know, the Catechism's teachings on how we should deal with our fellow man.  Yeah.  Read the comments in the second link.  When you lambaste someone for pointing out that you might be doing what you lambasted someone else for doing, to quote Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a fundamentalist.

Oh, best point came from commenter Pancho. Watching me get tag-teamed on the thread, he pointed out that for folks all worried about the eternal damnation that could await us based on a single, simple vote, they don't seem at all worried about how the words we use affects us. Special kudos for picking up on the reference from James 3.  Again, if you spend your time pointing out to other people the dangers of departing from a particular take on the Catechism and the Bishop's teaching about voting, while dismissing the possibility that you could be doing the same by departing from many takes on a teaching pointed out in Scripture, you might be a fundamentalist.

FWIW, I don't say this because I hate Mark or any of the commenters on that thread.  On the contrary, I am very fond of them and owe them much.  That's why I say it.

Fundamentalism Internet Catholic style

One of the defining characteristics of fundamentalism, at least as popularly portrayed, is that of self-righteous judgement.  These are folks who, with a King James Bible in one hand and a rod of righteousness in the other, go around declaring how sinful everyone else is.  Nobody is as righteous as The Fundamentalist.  All are spiritually inferior, don't know the Bible, don't believe the Bible is the Word of God, don't love Jesus, whatever.  Such self righteousness is what one thinks of when one thinks of a Bible toting fundamentalist, correct?

Well, the world of Internet Catholicism has its own brand.  Sometimes it's similar to your run of the mill fundamentalist where some Catholics insist theirs is the only proper interpretation of Magisterial Teaching, and everyone who disagrees will burn in Hell.  But there are also other forms as well.  Perhaps the most common form is that of intellectual fundamentalism.  This is a sort of 'the rest of the Christian world just isn't as hip and cool and sophisticated and intellectual as I am' approach to Christian living.

This Internet Catholic Fundie approach would balk at the thought of declaring others to be spiritually inferior, or suggest that others do not love Jesus as much as they do.  But in a tradition that boasts the likes of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Moore, St. Aquinas, they can at times be, well, a little on the snobbish side when it comes to insisting that others just don't shine in the light of eternal mind the way they do.

To that end, the Internet Catholic Fundie is quite prepared to call stupid those who think differently, to embrace stereotypes and promote unfair caricatures of other Christians who don't see things as brilliantly as the ICF.  Suddenly, you realize it isn't the spiritually pure, but the intellectually superior to whom the world belongs. The one who can analyze philosophically, who can line up his intellectual reasoning with Thomistic flare, those are the ones called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I know, most would never admit such things.  They don't have to.  Watch how they react to others who disagree with them.  Count how often the ICF rushes to embrace 'he's an idiot.' Tally the times in which an ICF embraces the critiques of fellow Christians given by those firmly planted against the Faith.  Heck, see how often a cool, hip, sophisticated ICF rushes to embrace a stereotype of those who just aren't as cool, hip, and sophisticated as they are.

Case in point.  Marc Barnes, who can rattle off a witty retort to a host of non-Catholic views with the best of them, has at times fallen into this trap.  Without realizing it, he has embraced some sweeping, at times inaccurate, portrayals - not of those against the faith or against his viewpoints, but of those who stand beside him but are not fully in his camp.

So in this little blog piece, in which Marc turns his attention to the hypocrisy and falsehoods associated with our modern takes on sexuality, he includes this little dig, not at those pushing animal sexuality above all things, but against those who are trying to save as many young people from the slime pit of modern sexual ethics:

Or look at the general “Christian” response to the sexual culture, incarnated in abstinence-education programs: Sex is dirty thing, a dangerous thing, an evil thing. Perhaps this is not intention of those running such programs, but it is another affirmative response to the death of sex.

You see that?  First, I can honestly attest that fundamentalists today don't think sex is dirty or unclean.  There may have been a time, but it isn't in recent memory.  Second, Abstinence Education, no matter how effective you think it is, doesn't teach sex as a dirty thing either.  Those are stereotypes promoted by the same forces for sexual decadence that Marc  appears to be lambasting.

But rather than stick to his guns and go after the enemy of Christian teaching, he can't resist jumping on those other 'not-me' Christians and not just criticizing them or critiquing their methods, but fully embracing the meanest and most inaccurate portraits used to paint as vile and contemptible losers anyone not embracing the modern sex culture.  In other words, the ICF does overtime when it comes to shooting fellow believers in the back in order to demonstrate the superiority of the way I would do it.

The irony?  Not even fundamentalists nowadays are that careless.  In fact, one of the things that helped me in my journey to Catholicism was the fact that Protestants, Evangelicals, and even some fundamentalists were beginning to realize that to attack the Catholic Church was, in our post/anti-Christian culture, to essentially attack Christianity.  They realized that shooting fellow Christians did little more than give ammo to forces all about destroying the legacy of the Christian Faith.

So here we have Mr. Barnes, jumping in and lambasting those not-hip/not-him types by embracing a false stereotype when those same types have been learning, in some cases, that they cannot do the same thing to their fellow Christians who are Catholic. Those other types actually spent the years I was a Christian praising, even if at times reluctantly, those aspects of Catholicism with which the agreed.   Pro-life?  Sure, Catholics rock!  Or so they said.

And yet the ICF, always out to show he or she is really the hip, cool, intellectual Christian who Jesus would want to party with if he were here, will pull out the best anti-Christian stereotypes, use it on fellow Christians, and then cry all the way to the Eucharist because other non-me Christian types just aren't as into it as I am.

Lesson learned.  When in a world of rising anti-Christian hatred, when calls to once and for all put the kibosh on all this right to be a traditional Christian garbage are beginning to increase, don't aid and abet the enemy.  Don't feel the need to take the worst things said about Christianity and Christians, endorse those things, and magically think because you are just all that and a bag of chips, the anti-Christian forces aren't applying them like a laser straight at you.  Fact is, if you think non-sex-culture Fundamentalists have a bad reputation in the country, it isn't anything compared to the lousy reputation regarding sexuality that Catholics have.  Every sperm is sacred anyone?  If you want to proclaim the True message of the Church's teaching about a subject like sexuality, you will increase your credibility by not positing yourself as the only valid interpreter of that teaching by celebrating the unfair and untrue caricatures applied to other Christian traditions.

For bonus example of other approaches the ICF embraces, Leah Libresco has had a series  of  posts that originated as thinly veiled attempts to apply philosophical, ethical, and theological arguments for why football is a bad thing.  This type of 'that which I loose should obviously be loosed, that which I bind should obviously be bound, and of course things I like or don't like are the measure of really pleasing God' is another symptom of fundamentalism - trying to use the tools and language of our Faith to support those extra curricular activities I do or don't enjoy.  But since Leah is still in the journey, I'll cut her some slack.  More telling are those in her comboxes who try to take their own personal dislike of the game (it's obvious), and with all the best academic and scholarly jargon, attempt to establish  profound universal explanations for why everyone should agree with them, under the auspices of 'clearly it's what really profoundly ethical types would think.'