(Originally posted on the Facebook wall of Mark Shea, who has resisted enlistment in Our Side with heroic stubbornness.)

The spectacle of Catholics insisting that it is their co-religionists’ job to ensure that all their public words and works support the cause of defeating Obama is distressing, and shows how little we have learned from the Sixties (ptui!).

Your humble Blog Goliard is reading Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion right now, and finds it intriguing that the collapse in Catholic and Mainline churches followed so closely on the heels of church leaders pulling out all the stops on behalf of the civil rights crusade—up to and including showing up on Capitol Hill en masse to directly lobby lawmakers on the specific Civil Rights Act. Support for civil rights may have cut across party lines, may have been grounded firmly in Christian morality instead of party spirit; but, due in part to the clergy’s impatient unwillingness to leave prudential issues of how to best move towards racial equality to the laymen, things did not stay that way for long. From p. 69:

These divisions and debates were often driven by idealism and high principle. But they had mostly negative consequences for Christianity’s spiritual witness. Religious leaders took too many positions on too many issues, indulged in Manichean rhetoric that overheated public policy debates, and generally behaved like would-be legislators or party activists instead of men of God. … Whether it was conservative Evangelicals hinting that the Holy Spirit had a strong position on the proper rate of marginal taxation, or liberal clergymen insisting that loving your neighbor as yourself required supporting higher levels of social spending, two generations of Christian spokesmen steadily undercut the credibility of their religious message by wedding it to the doctrines of the Democratic Party, or the platform of the GOP.

These were the inevitable wages of giving in to the temptation to break free of ordinary restraints, to move the boundary markers on the frontier between the City of God and the City of Man, for the sake of this (genuinely righteous) cause.

Robert Bork tells a similar story in The Temptation of America, regarding the law: giving in to the temptation to stretch the Constitution and aggrandize Federal power in order to help the civil rights movement led quite directly to all the other outrages of the Warren Court, including the privacy cases that culimated in Roe.

Once again, the Thomas More of A Man For All Seasons is proved right in his speech to Roper:

What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? … And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

Not even for civil rights should we have dared cut down law and custom, blurred boundaries between religion and politics, and bent the rules of morality…yet we did, and how hard it is for us to stand upright in the winds that blow now.

If your humble Blog Goliard is to spend his free time scribbling, he probably ought to post some of it here at his own place, as well as expending bucketfuls of pixels in other bloggers’ comboxes. So here are some words prompted by Simcha Fisher’s latest.

A new generation of priests and engaged laypeople are on their way, and they are rarely anything like the ritual-disparaging priest Simcha describes (and with whom Cardinal Martini, God rest his soul, was sometimes inclined to sympathize).

They have little or no memory of the ‘60s or ‘70s or ‘80s. They were not recruited into the armies of any side of those wars and so did not go half-mad from years in the trenches. With proper formation (which is becoming much more common in the early 21st century than it was at the end of the 20th), they are capable of embracing good things and rejecting bad things, without regard to whether the things in question came from the “liberal” or “conservative” wings. Finally—unlike those of us in the increasingly invisible “Generation X”—many of them will wind up being entrusted with responsibility and authority at relatively young ages.

The giant supertanker that is the Barque of Peter is turning, towards orthodoxy and towards the real (not the “spirit of”) Vatican II. In the Anglosphere especially, the corrected translation is a powerful new factor. These are hopeful days within the Church in America, even as (or perhaps partly because?) the situation in society at large becomes ever more threatening and grim.

Nolite timere!

The Chick-fil-A kerfuffle makes your humble Blog Goliard so irritable and so tired at the same time; but a few words here nonetheless.

First, well done to David French. In a post from yesterday he does the best job of succinctly expressing the following point that I’ve yet seen:

But free speech — truly free speech — depends on more than the basic assertion of legal rights. Free speech — truly free speech — depends on a culture that respects the existence of opposing views and seeks to engage and debate rather than bully and silence.

I can’t help but be grateful that the mask has been dropped a bit here. It puts the lie to one of the more popular same-sex-marriage arguments circa 2010: “You don’t like gay marriage? Fine. Don’t get one! It’s not like it’s going to hurt you if this nice couple here gets to have a wedding.”

Those with eyes to see have now been shown that that was false comfort, being offered mendaciously by the message-masters (though repeated often enough in sincerity by those they suckered). The real story is what we now see circa 2012: “You don’t like gay marriage? Bigot! Submit or be ruined!”

This episode calls for some hard rethinking on the part of those well-meaning Christians who, out of compassion for the homosexually oriented, are inclined to support them in their desire to redefine civil marriage. A necessary part of this equation is the understanding that, upon approval of same-sex marriage, they will not force us to change our religious definitions of marriage, our sexual ethics, or our customary private-sphere practices and teachings associated therewith. Live and let live and all that.

I remain firmly opposed to accepting that deal—first and foremost because, as now should be clear, that deal isn’t actually on the table and never was. As Matthew J. Franck puts it in a must-read book review from earlier in the week:

A future in which same-sex marriage is enshrined in the law is a future without meaningful religious liberty, freedom of speech, or economic freedom for millions of Americans.

Your humble Blog Goliard is also still completely gobsmacked at the boundless arrogance of those who expect everything to turn on a dime now that their secular Messiah has finally come around on this Greatest Moral Issue Of Our Times. They could make themselves wait patiently for the President; but now all patience is exhausted, and so all the stubborn clingers who haven’t yet abandoned the definition of marriage that was held by virtually everyone (of every sexuality, incidentally) in human history until about fifteen minutes ago is to be either bullied into changing their mind or driven out of polite society.

I think that the basic problem we’re seeing here is the over-moralization of politics.

As I so often do (mea culpa), I tend to blame lefty Boomers. The experience of backing such a plainly virtuous, white-hats-versus-black-hats cause as the Civil Rights movement, at such a formative age (and among such an already narcissistic generation), taught them the wrong lessons about politics—most notably that contempt and shame and even demonization are correct ways to deal with one’s political opponents; that one’s opinion on the most important political issue of the day is a serviceable proxy for whether one is a decent person or not; and that compromise is unacceptable, while refusing to take prisoners and shooting the wounded is mandatory once you’ve got the upper hand.

In extreme cases, some or all of the above is defensible. But only in extreme cases…and, if God is kind to us, few of us will live to see an internal fight within the American polity that calls for such extreme attitudes.

We should, in the meantime, work hard to find common ground, to turn down the temperature, to not call each other names, and to find any and every means possible to avoid breaking the “In Case Of Manichean Moral Crusade” glass to get at the axe within.

Boycotting is on the other side of the glass, in my view; so I decline to participate in boycotts and will continue to do so unless and until I start seeing, say, a sign in the shop window that promises “10 cents of every dollar spent at Target will be set aside and spent directly and exclusively on elective abortions”. Then, and only then, will I start to consider shunning Target and putting up with the ickiness of Wal-Mart to be a moral imperative.

Thank you for hosting a wonderful, lovely, Eucharistic Congress, and for just generally being a fantastic Archdiocese. Since your humble Blog Goliard has not had the occasion to offer such praise in this space before, let that be said at the outset.

Now that it has been said, yours truly has a bone to pick with you.

One of the Archdiocese’s official Twitter updates today reads as follows:

We are relieved to learn a federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of GA’s HB87. Vote 4 comprehensive Immigration! http://t.co/GHA8BTs

This pushes several of your humble Blog Goliard’s buttons.

So it’s now official Catholic teaching that governments may not enforce immigration laws, and that violating those laws must not be investigated and prosecuted?

And it’s the official position of the Archdiocese that the principles of subsidiarity and democratic governance can be thrown out the window, so long as the unelected lawyers in Federal robes are voiding only those legitimately enacted laws of our state government that we personally dislike?

“Social justice” is not the exclusive property of the open-borders crowd, and is not synonymous with “what liberal Democrats believe” (however much it may have been made to appear otherwise over the past forty-plus years). Catholics may legitimately disagree on many political issues, even when the peace and justice crowd would very much prefer to pretend otherwise. Issues—for instance—such as whom we should allow to enter the United States, and what to do about those already illegally here.

Neither the legal nor the political aspects of this dispute are within the Archdiocese’s areas of competence or authority. The Archdiocese should stick to those things that are.

Even though he terminated one of my comments with extreme prejudice in his combox, your humble Blog Goliard is becoming a fan of Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, aka “Fr. Z”.

Fr. Z now has a column in the Catholic Herald, the premier Catholic newspaper in the United Kingdom. There is a nifty feature available to bloggers, such as yours truly, who have digital subscriptions to the paper, whereby we can post clippings on our own blogs. Here is Fr. Z’s recent column on the new, corrected English response to “The Lord be with you”:

The Catholic Herald

18 March 2011

Page 16

Any of your humble Blog Goliard’s several readers who might have an interest in this fine publication will wish to know that there is a special offer being extended in the month of March. When using the promo code “CHPROMO”, a digital subscription to the Catholic Herald costs only £10 right now, for a whole year. (When paying by credit card and bypassing PayPal’s conversion service, this came out to just $15.94 for me, as Capital One is the least evil card provider by far when it comes to international transactions.) For more information, see Fr. Z’s link and instructions.

Fr. Robert Araujo and others on the “Mirror of Justice” blog have been calling attention to an academic program to be held this fall entitled “More Than A Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church”.

Your humble Blog Goliard would be most interested in attending such an event. Not out of agreement with the conveners’ worldview and goals, mind you; but rather for the opportunity to try, through the promised dialogue, to finally comprehend exactly how such dissidents propose to construct and properly ground an alternate ethics of sexuality. This is something which he quite honestly has never been able to come close to comprehending, even after perusing various representative writings of such thinkers.

While dissenting from certain orthodox teachings, these theologians do not consciously place themselves outside the Catholic community and Christian tradition. Yet what they are positing makes an implicit case that all major monotheistic religions have been consistently wrong about the morality of sexual acts since the beginning of time.

That’s a big ask, to put it mildly.

So what arguments are they able to deploy, exactly, that support the idea that after thousands of years, this band of enlightened 20th/21st century dissenters are the ones who have finally gotten it right? Your humble Blog Goliard has thus far only managed to find a lot of soft-pedaling of Sacred Scripture, the teachings of modern Popes, and everything in between. True engagement with any of these authorities is then evaded by privileging “contemporary experience”, the autonomous and unguided conscience, and the claims of social and human “science” over all of them.

It would be enlightening and encouraging to learn that there is something deeper and more solid underlying all this; that despite appearances, the dissenters are in fact grounded in something more than the typical Boomer-style narcissism, willful wish-fulfillment, and disdain for Dead White European/Semitic Males.

Clarification of just what is to replace traditional sexual morality would also be most welcome. If there is a coherent alternate sexual ethic being proposed by anyone, to guide us as to what intimate acts are licit and what are illicit, it has somehow entirely escaped your humble Blog Goliard’s attention.

Or is to state it that way to miss the point? Is it instead the dissenters’ position that sexual acts are, in and of themselves, morally neutral? Or that the moral question depends so utterly on the specific persons and situations involved, and on individuals’ subjective judgments and soveriegn consciences, that making clear distinctions and moral judgments is impossible?

Dissenting theologians do not seem inclined to do much more than leave hints as to how we are all to behave once the old oppressive sexual teachings have been finally routed. One can only hope that this is more the byproduct of mere thoughtlessness than of active evasion.

Finally, there is a direct (and, truth be told, rather impolite) question that your humble Blog Goliard would love to be able to ask such an assembly, full as it promises to be of religious persons who favor radical redefinition of the sacrament of Marriage:

Precisely how do they propose to define, for purposes of unions of two men or of two women, the act of consummation?

The question is posed not in a spirit of provocation or prurience, but rather in hopes that the answer—as well as the manner in which it would be delivered—would prove highly instructive for all concerned.

There’s been considerable discussion over in The Corner lately about the Latter Day Saints; and having grown up around them, and thought about and studied Mormonism to some degree, I can’t help but chime in here.

For me, Mormon history and beliefs raise many questions; but above all stands the following puzzle.

I am a Catholic. I became a Catholic because I came to believe that the Church’s doctrine, and its take on the historical story of Jesus, were the truest and most intellectually sound things in the world of religion. I still believe this.

On the other hand, my studies of things LDS have led me to believe, by contrast, that the Mormon scriptures and teachings and history range from merely derivative to flimsy to untenable to scandalous to flat-out unintentionally hilarious. (Please forgive me, Mormon friends—I know such criticism must sting, but I never could make it through more than a few pages of the Book of Mormon at a time without collapsing in laughter.)

But, presuming I am right…what has each of these belief systems wrought in America, over the past 30-50 years? Even discounting for grass-is-greener distortion, I’d have to say that the LDS is comprehensively kicking both Catholic and mainline Protestant butts when it comes to family life, to personal morality, to faithfulness and loyalty and unity within the church community, and to evangelism outside it.

So the puzzle that I am left with is this: After all these centuries of debate and conflict and even religious war, could it be that history and doctrine are really not all that important after all? Can a faith community not only survive, but thrive and bear impressive fruit, even when their history is embarrassing and their teachings a train wreck? (And—closely related to this—when their leadership and administration have long been dominated not by holy men and charismatics and theologians, but by businessmen and corporate types?)

I don’t know. Maybe I am still hostage to the outsider’s grass-is-greener perspective. Maybe the present successes of the LDS can’t possibly last—in that it is still based on real grave weaknesses, or that it is more specifically suited to a particular culture and age, than for all people for all time.

But if not…then what does that mean?

Drinking From Home calls our attention to the BBC’s questionable judgment in choosing which reader comment to highlight on a story about the B16 kerfuffle.

I had read that story, and noted the breakout quote from reader John Lin of Illinois, a day or two previously. Not delving deeply into the comments, I had simply presumed that Lin was representative of the usual suspects who can be expected to hang around the BBC website. Drinking From Home convinced me otherwise.

Which is a shame. More people should take to heart Lin’s brave and insightful words. Here is the sentence the BBC chose to highlight:

Pope Benedict probably should self-criticise Christianity’s violent past before commenting on the other faith

As this controversy has swirled, I have been waiting, waiting for someone to finally point this out. A house-cleaning at home is surely in order before we dare question the Other; the West has avoided criticism of its own past for far too long.

I mean, just try to find a university professor anywhere in Europe or America who is willing to say anything bad about the past of Christendom. They’re rare as hen’s teeth…though not as rare as apologies from the Holy See. Pope Benedict’s predecessor was, after all, famous for his refusal to examine the past of the Church and offer any sort of apology to anyone. Mr. Lin is quite right to call our attention to this failing.

It will be a difficult struggle, but perhaps one day Western civilization will stop blaming all its problems on others. Perhaps one day Westerners will show a willingness to open themselves to unflinchingly honest self-criticism—that same willingness that has allowed Islamic civilization to surpass all others in science, politics, popular culture, and so many other fields of human endeavor.