Skip to main content

No Compelling Moral Vision

You know, I might have been a liberal, if a few things had gone differently when I was younger. One reason why I don't get angry about the GOP lapses from Catholic Social Teaching is that very few even know what it is. It's still pretty new to me.

And abortion is that thing for me that blows all that liberal righteousness away. You wanna talk to me about food stamps, and you're not even sure a baby is a baby! I like moralistic crusading zealots, but they'd better be right. (This is why Mark Shea is intolerable, God bless him. He's joining in their chorus against student loans today; sorry guys, your moral credibility died in 1973.)

I'm pretty sure I'm not against a national heath care system, at least in theory. Naturally, it's just going to be a means to enrich certain lawyers and doctors at the expense of everyone else, on top of implicating all of us in killing more defenseless children. Please tell me more about how the GOP hates poor people. Whatever our failures to address poverty as an issue of justice, we're not killing them.

The very engine of progressivism at its best was Christianity; your "Christian" president is attempting to purge any real faith from public life, and suing nuns for being faithful to the gospel. Please tell me more about the immorality of George W. Bush. (Actually, you can say plenty, and I wouldn't stop you, but you'd better be right.)

There's some snark here, and some real anger, but it's the bitter taste of betrayal. The party of William Jennings Bryan is now the party of death and birth control pills.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Thoughts On The Harrison Butker Commencement Speech

Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Alyse

 Today, you’re 35. Or at least you would be, in this place. You probably know this, but we’re OK. Not great, but OK. We know you wouldn’t want us moping around and weeping all the time. We try not to. Actually, I guess part of the problem is that you didn’t know how much we loved you. And that you didn’t know how to love yourself. I hope you have gotten to Love by now. Not a place, but fills everything in every way. I’m not Him, but he probably said, “Dear daughter/sister, you have been terribly hard on yourself. Rest now, and be at peace.” Anyway, teaching is going well, and I tell the kids all about you. They all say you are pretty. I usually can keep the boys from saying something gross for a few seconds. Mom and I are going to the game tonight. And like 6 more times, before I go back to South Carolina. I have seen Nicky twice, but I myself haven’t seen your younger kids. Bob took pictures of the day we said goodbye, and we did a family picture at the Abbey. I literally almost a...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

 I once had a friend, a dear friend, who helped me with personal care needs in college. Reformed Presbyterian to the core. When I was a Reformed Presbyterian, I visited their church many times. We were close. I still consider his siblings my friends. (And siblings in the Lord.) Nevertheless, when I began to consider the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded, he took me out to breakfast. He implied--but never quite stated--that we would not be brothers, if I sought full communion with the Catholic Church. That came true; a couple years later, I called him on his birthday, as I'd done every year for close to ten of them. He didn't recognize my number, and it was the most strained, awkward phone call I have ever had. We haven't spoken since. We were close enough that I attended the rehearsal dinner for his wedding. His wife's uncle is a Catholic priest. I remember reading a blog post of theirs, that early in their relationship, she told him of the p...
Post a Comment
Read more