Right Makes Might: Why the Church Embraces Radicalization
Barron Mind, a Series of Grievances
On all things wrong (and some things right) with the Catholic Church...
Happy Easter! Well, it’s Easter, anyway. I’ve been MIA for a bit, partly to focus on other projects (“How you coming on that novel, Brian?”), but mostly due to soul-crushing despondency over the state of our world and the Church’s infuriating oscillation between “just let it burn” and throwing chrism on the pyre. But occasionally, the mood(iness) strikes, and the Church-adjacency of the recent Discord document leak at the very least provides a coveted “told ya so” opportunity amid a morass of petulant, “gee willikers, how could this be?” perturbation.
Specifically, the Washington Post cites a friend in describing Massachusetts Air National Guardsman and alleged leaker Jack Teixeira as “a devout Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America’s future. The friend said he met Teixeira…on a Discord server mainly focused on guns and libertarian politics, and bonded over their shared interest in Glock handguns and Catholicism." To be clear, I don’t know enough about the leaks themselves to draw any moral conclusion, and want to be careful not to cede too much veracity to anything the media—or US Government—are reporting. But beyond the act itself, the apparent revelation of Teixeira’s (radical, gun-fetishizing) Catholic faith has led to the expected, all-too earnest calls for “reckoning” within the US Church and “a faith culture that sees no problem in being ‘a devout Catholic with a love for guns.’”
Look, I don’t mean to Doubting Thomas on anyone’s Resurrection, but it quite honestly baffles and befuddles me how progressive Catholics can still cling to any hope for a literal “come to Jesus” among the US Bishops or their conservative flock. These guys have shown us—bluntly, brutally and repeatedly—exactly who they are. Isn’t it past time we started believing them?
Flock Out with Your Glock Out
When Donald Trump rose to political prominence, his villainous incongruence—racist immigration policies; crass sexual exploits and outright abuses; clunky, almost contemptuous faux-religious pandering—with the purported teachings and standards of the Catholic Church was largely critiqued on the Left as a sort of partisan Sophie’s Choice. The Church had played this game with Republican politicians before, after all, and Trump likewise promised to execute his office to the benefit of the USCCB’s socio-cultural agenda.
And benefit it did, in sweeping and awful fashion: Roe overturned, SCOTUS stacked with a reactionary supermajority…Plausible (though still evil), then, that the Bishops might simply “look the other way” on, say, Trump characterizing white supremacists as “very fine people” and stoking the flames of violent, anti-democratic insurrection. Hindsight’s 2020, right? No sense biting the hand, especially when your Sunday stalwarts skew towards a political party in which radical ideology plays an increasingly outsized role. Best to keep them in the pews and reaching for their pocketbooks—especially given the Church’s tenuous financials. (The Kingdom of God doesn’t pay for itself, after all.)
But this convenient narrative of coldly calculating clerics dispassionately “tolerating” some unsavory shenanigans is itself far too charitable. Radicalization, you see, increasingly serves as a feature, not a bug, of the Catholic-GOP alliance. While most of today’s godless youth stand for such slippery, nigh-luciferian ideals as not getting shot at school, the Church is steadily cultivating a new crop of holy warriors as devoted to Eucharistic Adoration as they are to combating the terrifying specter of universal human rights. Take Teixeira (at least as described by that friend above): even absent his alleged crimes, he seems to fit the exact profile of the Bishop Barron brand of gun-toting, machismo Catholicity, not to mention the dilettante doomsaying of his gall-pal Jordan Peterson (et fucking al) and “bad old days” reminiscence of Q-Anointed wartime USCCB prez Archbishop Timothy Broglio.
Public Deflations
In many ways, the USCCB treats the gaping wounds of distrust and disengagement as a sort of bloodletting, cleansing the Church of libertine rabble-rousers. Back in January, US Catholic framed things this way: “In the United States, the church hierarchy has continued largely undeterred on a path of making clear that certain identities—whether sexual, political, or otherwise—are irreconcilable with being Catholic. This includes pushes to oppose gay marriage and deny communion to politicians who support legal abortion.” But while a “smaller, purer Church” may sound all well and good (to those who suck), you still need someone hanging around. And, in that sense, Church leaders not only take what they can get, but manifest it directly, incubated like orcs in the mire of online toxicity.
#Notallbishops, of course. The likes of Cardinal McElroy and even the Bishop of Rome himself have taken notably to a congenial, ultimately somewhat deceptive “kinder, gentler Catholicism.” I’ve written with some sympathy about such efforts myself, inasmuch as they at least adhere to a baseline level of human decency and Gospel coherence. But I’ll admit, I am vexed. Recently, the Holy Father’s participation in “The Pope: Answers,” a Hulu documentary in which Francis discusses Church stuff with ten Spanish-speaking young adults, was lauded by America magazine as “a lived example of the culture of encounter to which Pope Francis exhorts us.” The article describes the Pope’s responses on such topics as abortion (“A woman who has an abortion cannot be left alone, we should walk with her”) and priests who promote hatred against LGBTQ+ people (“They judge others because they don’t know how to ask forgiveness for their own faults”) in gushing terms. Which, measured against the very low bar of “listening” and “not being an asshole,” fair enough: for a pope, this is prophetic witness akin to Paul no longer persecuting Christians.
But while listening is great, in this case the fact of it shouldn’t detract from what the Pope actually says. On the abortion response, for instance, Francis is quick to offer the unsolicited, “didn’t need saying” caveat on not justifying the act itself. And his “their own faults” response about bigoted priests can easily be turned on its head, calling on the targets of bigotry to examine their own implied fault and culpability. In typical Church fashion, “encounter” always comes with an asterisk.
Won’t Somebody (pretend to) Think of the Children!?
On trans questions, especially, the Pope has neglected a real opportunity to craft a scientifically accurate, theologically coherent doctrine, given the issues’ relative absence from the zeitgeist (and thus writings) of his predecessors. His initial dabbling hasn’t been encouraging. In Amoris Laetitia, he casually tosses out terms such as “ideology of gender” and claims that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated” (it’s unclear what scientific, psychological or sociological works he uses to draw such a conclusion). All of which provides US Church hierarchy more than enough runway to stay the contrarian course: recently weighing in on the trans healthcare “debate” with a scientifically ignorant, doctrinally presumptuous and overtly bigoted manifesto; urging Catholics to “contact their representatives and senators in Congress” in support of a proposed House Resolution “requiring federally funded female sports programs ‘to be reserved for biological females.’”
The attempted mobilization of lay political action in the latter case is particularly galling. Never mind that Florida seeks to expand the death penalty (another Catholic Social Teaching no-no) in cases of childhood sexual battery (in a climate of labeling trans affirming parenting as child abuse and drag performances as “lewd conduct”), and all with a lower burden of permissibility. Or that GOP lawmakers in Tennessee felt so-emboldened as to expel duly-elected (black) State Representatives for daring to advocate on behalf of murdered Christian children. Or, as highlighted in a recent piece by Mary Pezzulo, the anti-abortion movement so-championed by Catholic leaders leads to such horrors as stillborn births and near-death bleed-outs on public toilets.
No, “trans girls in sports” is how the USCCB wants to use its bully pulpit. Oh, and surprise, surprise: the committee co-sponsoring this action is chaired by none other than Bishop Barron himself, who also co-authored the aforementioned call to faction. Color me shocked that this dogged “defender of doctrine” would take such a presumptuous stance on a matter so doctrinally and theologically muddied.
Fool Me Twice
Amid this dystopian deluge, some may question why any of the “good people” still stick around. I know I do, at least for myself. Or, more specifically, I question whether you can stick around and still be good. But that’s my journey, and like most Catholics who aren’t rightwing wackos and just want a decent Mass with a compelling, non-batshit homily and nice choir, there is still something in Catholic worship, teaching and tradition which nourishes my tired soul.
But what confuses me truly is how anyone can stick around with anything but clear and open eyes. Pope Francis may at times stumble, but with the US Bishops there are few political missteps: when it comes to the Holy Father’s call for the Church to “embrace human life” and “touch the suffering flesh of Christ in others,” they choose instead only to bring the pain.
Much Aggrieved,
G. Fault