Vox Day draws our attention to a pair of wolves in sheep’s clothing, by which I mean humanitarian goops who pretend to be Catholic defenders of the faith (here). The first wolf is one Christopher Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. We are not told with whom Mr. Hale’s Catholics are allied, but one suspects their allies include the long-suffering and maligned denizens of Hell. The second wolf is one Michael Sean Winters, a fellow at Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. This Institute studies Catholics in the same spirit that the National Cancer Institute studies Cancer.
Hale and Winter are exercised over the rise of the Alt Right, and are angling to “engage” with “people drawn to this movement.” Since nothing breaks the ice like an insult, their novel strategy involves “denouncing the extremism and bigotry central to white nationalism.” Hale and Winter propose to win me over by calling me a vile and loathsome racist. Let’s see where this goes.
Winter does not see his own towering condescension and arrogance as a barrier to engaging with the Alt Right. No, he believes “the main difficulty in engaging the alt-right” is its “anti-democratic stance.” You see, when Catholics aren’t down at the parish hall voting for a new bishop, or canvasing the neighborhood with yard signs for the new Pope, they are out in the world spreading democracy. Two thousand years of Catholic teachings affirm that one man is just as good as another, shriven or unshriven, justified or unjustified, orthodox or heretic, Christian or infidel, wolf or sheep.
Well, actually, that isn’t quite right. In the past, when the Catholic Church wasn’t really Catholic, it harbored shameful and unchristian prejudices against the damned, against heretics, against infidels, and against wolves. Some even espoused the absurd superstition that Heaven is “superior” to Hell.
Winter proposes to combat “white nationalism” with “Catholic Social Doctrine,” which he describes as “the best kept secret in the Church.” Let me suggest that this doctrine is kept secret because it is not Catholic, it is not social, and it is not a doctrine. It is the rancid carcass of nineteenth-century humanitarianism so much beloved by wolves. As Day observes, there is nothing that betrays the wolf more surely than an affection for Catholic Social Doctrine.
According to Winter, Catholic Social Doctrine is a “leaven” that will ameliorate every “problem facing the political life of this country.” Indeed it is. It is “the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Matthew 16: 6, 11, 12, etc.). Apparently the study of Catholic Social Doctrine has left Winter no time to learn that, in Biblical symbolism, leaven is mostly a bad thing.
Islamophobia is one of the problems that Winter proposes to ameliorate with this “leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.” To this end he has organized a group called Apologies and Reparations for Lepanto, and describes the 1571 naval battle as “a low point in our sad history of Islamophobia.” Another Winter initiative is Never Again!, an educational program aimed at Catholic youth that seeks to ensure that the Gates of Vienna are left open next time. “We should not fear Islam in our nation,” Winter said. “Indeed we should not fear it in our Church, in our families, or in our hearts. Catholic Social Doctrine teaches that Jesus Christ was a self-effacing man who said nothing more often than ‘follow him.’ Follow the other guy. That’s really what it means to be Catholic.”
Winter goes on to claim that the Alt Right is “built on an edifice of racism, social sin, and exclusion,” and that it therefore “must never be tolerated.” Well, Winter, I retort, not only does not know the meaning of the word edifice, but has also built his house on a sinking (and stinking) morass of slander and lies.
Anyone with the slightest grasp of the theological meaning of sin can see that there cannot be a “social sin” because society is not a moral being. That it is composed of moral beings does not make it a moral being. A stone cannot sin; nor can a car, a dog, or a mathematical equation. Sin for such beings is ontologically impossible. And the same is true for “society.”
Anyone with the slightest grasp of philosophy knows that self-preservation is a property of being, since the absence of this property leads to speedy annihilation of being. And self-preservation means exclusion by the self of that which is inimical to the self. To be against exclusion, to put it rather bluntly, to be on the side of corruption and disease. Nothing hates exclusion like corruption and disease.
Anyone with the slightest grasp of the Bible is aware that “nations” play a very large part in the story. Not just one Nation, but many. And they play a part right up to the end. The opponent of Nations is, as I previously explained, the Great Whore Babylon, a beguiling hag with a tell-a-tale fondness for something that looks a good deal like Catholic Social Doctrine (here). Anyone who has plowed through the tedious genealogical tables with which the Bible is so copiously supplied will also perceive that these are not propositional nations, but nations sustained by begetting and being begotten. They are nations of biological descent.
I would be delighted to “engage” with Hale and Winter, but I cannot assure them that they would find the engagement in any way delightful. And the main source of discomfort will not be my “anti-democratic stance.” It will my obnoxious refusal to believe that they are sheep, or to pretend that their ugly snarling sounds like “baaaah”.
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Your post is very generous to Vox Day. You could have just as easily politely tore him a new one, a la Occidental Dissent circa two months ago, over his foolish post.
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“Deus Vult” has always been the foundation of authentic Catholic Social Doctrine. Just sayin’.
I thought about commenting at Vox Day that Catholics in Alliance… is a known and obvious Democratic party front group but then considered that the majority of the US bishops would agree with everything these guys said, so this observation wouldn’t really touch Vox’s main point.
As a side note, one should marvel at the power of confident assertion (when the media has one’s back). I mean, to anyone familiar with the Church’s doctrinal history, this idea that democracy is some sort of established Catholic dogma is very odd. But of course the bishops and even conservative/Republican Catholics won’t contest it, so it just becomes part of consensus thinking that skepticism about democracy makes one a bad Catholic.
I think American Catholicism was hopelessly twisted when it was forced into the unfamiliar position of being disconnected to power. This has left American Catholics with the weird idea that Catholicism is only the religion of the underdog and the slum. They really do not understand that it is (or was) also a religion designed to crown kings and launch crusades.
Prof. Jmsith
You wrote “[a]s Day observes, there is nothing that betrays the wolf more surely than an affection for Catholic Social Doctrine.” How can you deny Catholic Social Doctrine? I too dislike much of what Winters writes. He is an apologist for left-liberalism, he is the counterpart of someone like Robert George who for his part advocates right-liberalism. It doesn’t follow though that Catholic Social Doctrine is false. Catholic Social Doctrine is the product of thinkers like Joseph De Maistre and Louis de Bonald.
As we all know this latest influx of refugees into the West is the direct result of U.S. interventions in Iraq and Syria. These interventions where vocally opposed by Pope Francis. If Francis was apart of the global liberal elite why did he publicly condemn its interventions in Syria and other places? There are serious rightist thinkers who understand this too. Thinkers as disparate as E Michael Jones and Alain de Benoist understand this, and they both condemn modern racialism. They would rightfully characterize the nationalism of Vox Day as a “rancid carcass of [the] nineteenth-century.” Right-liberals like Vox Day hate Catholic Social Doctrine for the same reason the French Revolutionaries hated it. Nationalism is a modern ideology that supplanted and to a large degree replaced Christianity. Day and his pals are the true ideological successors to the philosophes of the eighteenth century.
We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water just because left-liberals try to appropriate venerable teachings. By the same token we should be careful about heretics and partisans of the Enlightenment who masquerade as “allies” and “friends.”
I don’t deny that Catholicism entails certain social norms and ideals, but do deny that these are what what is sold under the brand name Catholic Social Doctrine©. In my experience, with the exception of abortion, Catholic Social Doctrine© is indistinguishable from the Democratic Party Platform. That means it is derived from the Masonic and Jacobin principles that De Maistre and Bonald opposed. A genuine Catholic social policy would have to be an obvious “third way,” unlike socialism and classical liberalism. It would not be socialism without the abortions. It would not be classical liberalism with novenas.
There are two meanings to the word “nationalism.” One is simply national feeling or patriotism. It is love for one’s land, one’s people, and one’s way of life. This entails no hatred of foreigners, but it does regard them as “equal” in only a very abstract and moral sense. When properly integrated and ordered with other feelings and loyalties, there is nothing wrong with national feeling. Jesus clearly felt it, and he was only half Jewish. The other meaning of “nationalism” is inordinate love for one’s land, one’s people, and one’s way of life. In my experience, those who accuse others of “nationalism” in this sense define “inordinate love” as any degree of love that stands in the way of their political agenda. In fact, they aim to do to nationalism what they did to religion–make it into a private matter, into something that is not expressed in public or acted on in public life.
I do not think left-liberals are trying to appropriate venerable teachings; I think they have very largely succeeded in appropriating a venerable institution.
Muslims killing each other = the fault of Western intervention
Muslims invading the West = the fault of Western intervention
Here’s where I part with the neocon-bashers: When does Muslim bad behavior ever become Muslims’ fault? You guys do know that Sunnis and Shiites were murdering each other long before George W. Bush was born? Invading Christian lands has a pretty long track record too.
Bonald @10:50. Our not having invaded would have served refugee advocates equally well. It would also serve equally well as an explanation of their killing one another in their native lands. Muslims began to invade Christian lands as soon as they’d galloped about 200 miles north of Mecca. Half of today’s Islamic world is on land that was once Christian. Only a small fraction of the today’s Christian world (such as it is) is on land that was once Muslim.
Bonald,
I actually agree with you that a lot of the libertarians go too far in ascribing all the blame to interventionism. It assumes a liberal understanding of sovereignty that I reject. Still, I think our actions in recent years have been particularly egregious going beyond the usual meddling of great powers. Can we at least agree that our support for the Syrian opposition has been criminally stupid and it is the major cause for a lot of the chaos in Europe now? We’ve been supporting these extremists for decades and it has made everything worse.
0. Our not having invaded would have served refugee advocates equally well.
Certainly. Benoist points out that many North Africans were originally brought in to undermine the bargaining power of French worker syndicates. For this reason many of the socialist and even some of the communist parties of West Europe and North America opposed mass immigration for a large part of the 20th century.
Prof,
what did you mean when you said that Jesus was only half jewish?
Did Jesus have more than just jewish blood running in his veins?
That’s a honest question btw, as I really have no idea.
Liberals are fond of the abstract. The whole “I love mankind; it’s the people I can’t stand.”
Yes, and they tend to see the ways in which people diverge from the abstraction as defects.
Oberon @ 6:01 I meant that his Father wasn’t a Jew. I know Jews are matrilineal, so paternity isn’t so important, but in this case . . . I also know that there are Christological considerations that I don’t altogether understand.
Christ’s manhood is entirely Jewish (bearing in mind the many contributions to Mary’s germ line from among the gentiles). And Jesus is completely and thoroughly human. Nor is he any wise defectively human, ergo Hebrew. Finally, he is exhaustively human.
But he’s also God, exhaustively and completely and thoroughly etc.
The divine and human aspects of Christ cannot be separated or therefore sorted; they are integrally admixed without being confused. His manhood is nevertheless finitely embodied, while his divinity is infinite. So there is infinitely more to Jesus than his manhood; and his Jewishness is thus infinitely less than he is.
Notwithstanding all that, there seems to be no reason why the Holy Spirit could not have created some chromosomes of his own to link up with Mary’s. His chromosomes would not be Jewish. Genetically then, we might argue that Jesus was only half Jewish.
None of the foregoing should be taken as an indication that I understand the Christological issues relating to this question.
@Kristor
Firstly, thank you for that very helpful post.
But it brings to mind several questions that I hope you don’t mind answering:
1) “Christ’s manhood is entirely Jewish (bearing in mind the many contributions to Mary’s germ line from among the gentiles).”
This is what I was getting at in my original response to JMSmith. Was this because Jesus was a Galilean (and the Galileans were a mixed people, with anything from Hebrew to Phoenician to Greek, etc in their blood. At least that is what I have read before)? Is that the gentile contributions you are speaking of, or did you mean something else?
2) “Nor is he any wise defectively human, ergo Hebrew.”
What do you mean by this? I’m confused here. Are you saying that being a part of a tribe is defectively human? And thus Jesus, though Hebraic, was the archetypal man? Is this platonic thought at work?
Sorry! Sometimes you guys go way over my head, ha! I’m not trying to play dumb here.
3) “and his Jewishness is thus infinitely less than he is.”
Is that why Jesus (and even Mary) can appear as they choose to us (like in their apparitions)? Our Lady of Guadeloupe appears as an noble Aztec Princess,
while Our Lady of Fatima appears as a radiant European goddess.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0250/2340/products/Chambers-Our-Lady-Fatima.jpg?v=1376941661
Or is this just a trait of the resurrected body?
@JMSmith
I had a feeling that’s what you meant, but was unsure.
Thanks for the quick response!
@Kristor March 21 2017 10:23 PM
Thank you for your answers/corrections Kristor.
Now I need to make some corrections of my own:
I know Our Lady is not an infinite being, I only included her in my question to further make my point about apparitions and their different appearances, so that was a mistake on my part. But while Mary is a finite being, she is still the Mother of all peoples, not to mention her intimate relationship with the Triune God (Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, Spouse of the Holy Spirit), so I would expect that (regardless of what the resurrected body can do), she would be able to look however she wanted, amongst other things.
As per Jesus’s gentile blood, I was thinking in more recent times, not in Jesus’ distant past, but thanks for that correction anyway.
Why was I thinking about more contemporary gentile blood in Jesus’ line? Well, other than what you had written, recently I have been pondering Jesus’ appearance during his earthly life.
While the gospel is generally mute on the subject of Jesus appearance, early scribes were not. There are lots of (non-gnostic) texts that record his appearance. Even the Church Fathers got into it to some extent: some said his was ugly and denied him all beauty, while others believed him to be the most beautiful in all of creation. And, going back to those early scribes, some give him chestnut-brown colored hair and a ruddy complexion. A number of others ascribe to him grey-blue eyes, and several even give him blonde or golden colored hair! I guess I was thinking that would not be possible if Mary didn’t have some gentile genes in her (of the European sort).
Then again…the Middle-East was heavily brown-washed with the coming of the Arab invasions, and the people who lived in the near east in ancient times were more diverse looking then what we find there today (for example, I remember reading that some of the pre-Greek Egyptian Kings had red hair!).
Then again there is Origen, who believed that Jesus appeared differently to those who met him based upon their disposition toward him. So maybe in that sense, all the old accounts of Jesus’s appearance are true!
There is good reason to think that red hair and blue eyes might always have been present among the Hebrews, as indeed they are today. Adam, Esau, and David were all “ruddy.” So Jesus might indeed have been ruddy, like some of his ancestors.
It would be interesting to see a genetic analysis of the blood on the Shroud of Turin – and compare it to the results of similar analyses of the blood of the various eucharistic miracles.
-You did mean blonde hair, not red, right?
-“as indeed they are today.”
Of course! I didn’t even think about that. It makes sense though.
Also:
I never even thought about a blood analysis and comparison…that would really be incredible!
I doubt it will happen though, and even if it did and they proved a match, every academic in academia would be out there throwing anything and everything at the results, trying to disprove it on any and every level. There would be so much obfuscation that most would be lead to believe it was inaccurate or out right false.
I long for the days when Babel will be destroyed.
I long for the days when she is just a bad memory.
Well, David is described as “ruddy” – red – rather than as “shining” (which is how blondes were often characterized in the literature of the Ancient Near East). We are probably talking about a fairly dark, auburn color here, rather than the sort of pale skinned bright red haired ruddiness we see in Ireland.
As to Babel: yes.