Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 3:45pm

Festung Shea

Festung Shea

 

 

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts brings us up to date on Mark Shea’s Facebook page, now that he has shut down Catholic and Enjoying It.  His trajectory to the left seems to have accelerated:

 

So I broke my promise and went back to visit Mark Shea’s Facebook page.  I know, I know.  I said I wouldn’t. What am I, some glutton for punishment?  I didn’t comment on anything. I just went to look.  I wanted to see if Mark was continuing with the very problematic practice of having ‘Isn’t Bernie Sander’s the cutest thing?’ posts on his very Catholic Facebook page.  The whole thing, and my banishment, came from that. 

When CAEI went offline, I decided to take a look at Mark’s Facebook Page.  I don’t typically do Facebook that much, and I had never visited his page.  I heard horror stories, but found it hard to believe them.  Well, once I was there, I believed them. 

By now, of course, Mark falls into that Orthodox Liberal Catholic group.  That is, they don’t reject traditional doctrines about God or the Trinity or the Resurrection.  They also stand with the Church on issues like abortion and gay marriage.  But in almost any other area where there is wiggle room, they tend to fall down along the modern, post-Christian liberal paradigm.  The reasons are, no doubt, many.  For some, as my boys pointed out with our parish, it’s less that they love liberalism as much as they hate American Conservatism and the GOP. 

Be that as it may, today Mark could in no way be called a conservative or traditional Catholic and have those terms mean anything.  And his Facebook page reflected that.  Moreover, those who commented were a rough brood, many of which seemed to be the sort of thing Pope Francis could have been thinking of.  It often got mean and ugly.   Quite a bit of contempt and condescension toward those who aren’t following lockstep behind the modern Left.

Nonetheless, for all his Left leaning and liberal cheering, Mark remains adamantly pro-life and passionately against abortion.  Period.  No suggestions otherwise can be entertained.  So it came as quite a shock, in those couple weeks I was visiting there, to see how many ‘Bernie Rocks’ posts Mark had uploaded.  Especially when it was set in juxtaposition to almost every other candidate Mark mentioned, who received nothing but scorn and insults from Mark and most of his readers.  Like a sore thumb, Sanders stood out above it all and Mark’s Facebook page looked like quite the Pro-Sanders Facebook headquarters. 

So when Mark posted yet another ‘Equestrian Sanders Pic’, I merely said that his page was becoming like a campaign stop for the Sanders campaign, and he might want to do a double check.  After all, Sanders goes beyond pro-choice.  He is pro-abortion, and in fact, pro-culture of death.  He is part of that secular liberalism that reminds us how so few societies that have opposed war or the death penalty have done so in the name of life’s sanctity.  Just the opposite.  They do it because things like torture, war and the death penalty run afoul of the Left’s great sinful promise: that pride is, in fact, a good thing.  The universe does rotate around me.  Things like death penalties or punishment or war suggest there are things bigger than me, and so they are clearly bad.  But things like abortion, any marriage or sex any way I want, euthanasia, assisted suicide: they serve me and a world set firmly under my whims and desires.

That is the sort of Left Sanders advocates.  As a politician, he has gone into areas that even pro-choice politicians fear to tread.  He advocates post-Christian sexuality, and further appears to support the punishment of those who don’t do likewise.  He supports gay marriage, and also the HHS mandate, thereby solidifying his opposition to multiple things that Mark holds near and dear.

In some ways, it reminded me of Mark and Ron Paul some years ago.  For a while, Mark became quite the Catholic voice for the Ron Paul campaign.  While he insisted he wouldn’t vote for him, that he was merely pointing out where he thought Paul was correct, his blog became a major boost for Ron Paul supporters.  Eventually, Mark did admit that if Paul was in the primaries by the time they came to Washington, Mark would vote for him.  When he did that, it wasn’t really a shock.

In some ways, this sudden high-five to Sanders sniffed a bit like the old Paul posts.  Sure, he wasn’t saying ‘Vote Sanders’ or ‘I Support Bernie!’  But his posts were stacking up quickly, with many having nothing to do with anything other than “Bernie Sanders: Awesome Guy!”  Sorry, but someone who pushes to loosen the restrictions for a partial birth abortion has dropped at least one rung down the awesome ladder in my book. 

So I posted my message.  And oh my, all hell broke loose.  Mark came at me with everything: mocking me, calling me names, accusing me of passive aggressively suggesting he is pro-choice.  He used the old Sea Lion cartoon against me.  Several of his readers did the same.  I tried to keep it where I was, insisting that while you can quote someone you don’t agree with (as a general rule I try to find better examples unless I’m making a specific point), there is a logical difference between a single quote and days of ‘thumbs up’ posts.

Mark and his readers would have none of it.  Mark simply repeated the charges over and over again.  Even my oldest son tried to bring some perspective, echoing a logical assessment of the current political climate being partly to do with Obama’s legacy.  That went as well as you can imagine.

 

Go here to read the rest.  This of course is predictable considering Shea’s hatred for the GOP, his love of the Welfare State, and the advent of a politically radical Pope. (As I have often noted, if a Pope decreed that all Catholics have to paint their bottoms yellow, Mark’s response would be to inquire what shade.).  That  Shea has embraced the Left, except on a few social issues, is unsurprising.  What makes this risible of course is that he still contends to be a true conservative.   An unexamined life is not worth living and Socrates was quite correct on that score.  Readers may recall Shea’s kindly “Liars for Christ” description of those who differed from him a few years back as to whether it is ever morally licit to tell a lie.  Self deception of course is the saddest and deadliest lying  that we mortals engage in.

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Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 6:55am

If Mark Shea supports Bernie Sanders the communist, then he is as much communist as Bernie Sanders is, and he ought to be treated as such, with complete contempt and disdain.
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If this nation, having stupidly chosen Barack Hussein Obama twice to be President, choses Bernie Sanders for the same office, then the Republic is lost and open persecution of Christians will commence. At that time Christians will have to implement the Maccabean solution to protect their families. There will not be any other choice than fighting against communist tyranny or being imprisoned or executed.
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We live in dangerous times.

DonL
DonL
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 6:58am

“Orthodox Liberal Catholic ”
The mother of all oxymorons?

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 7:06am

You can’t be pro-life and aid-and-abet the uber-abortion regime.
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Obama accomplishments:

Propped up Wall Street with Fed QE’s and zero interest rates, Main Street not so much

Pushed record numbers of Americans out of labor force

Increased poverty (record numbers on food stamps, disability, etc.) and income inequality

Gave over Middle East to terrorists and Russia

Doubled the national debt to $19 trillion

Screwed up millions of people’s health insurance
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Apparently, Shea is an Obama-worshiping imbecile and is at war with reality. His even-stupider acolytes are Shea-worshiping morons.
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I’m wondering if DG went to Confession and the priest told him to go to Shea’s page as Penance.

Murray
Murray
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 8:15am

Wait, what? Mark shut down his blog? When did this happen?

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 8:22am

It often got mean and ugly.
That is standard liberal discourse. They are a very intolerant bunch.
They do it because things like torture, war and the death penalty run afoul of the Left’s great sinful promise: that pride is, in fact, a good thing.
Fascinating.

Murray
Murray
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 8:58am

Huh. Well, that’s a good thing for the Catholic ephemeris, I guess. Shea poisons the discourse wherever he goes, and CAEI had long since become an echo chamber for the dwindling number of Catholics who appreciate Mark’s shrieking hysteria and gutter rhetoric. Did he say why?
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Political conversions are interesting. Since I moved from the atheist left to the (far) right and into the Church, I think I’ve become more sympathetic towards human weakness, even as I’ve gained a clearer and more severe view of the foibles themselves. But Mark, in moving from somewhat rightish to the (far) left, seems to have taken license to indulge his worst instincts. Temperamentally, he fits right in with the blind Manicheanism of the left, by which worldview opposing views are not just wrong or misguided, but actively evil.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 9:46am

“Wait, what? Mark shut down his blog? When did this happen?”
End of 2015.

But he still blogs at the National Catholic Register.

Murray
Murray
Tuesday, January 26, AD 2016 10:06am

Yes, I tried to engage with him on his recent Register article defending the four-equal-religions video, but he won’t engage with me. He prefers easy targets that he can drag down to his level., and an in-depth philosophical discussion of whether Mahommedans and Christians do, in fact, worship the same God just isn’t his cup of tea. Better just to go all sola catechismo on people and accuse them of being protestants if they disagree.

Guy McClung
Admin
Saturday, January 30, AD 2016 3:05pm

T. Shaw-Exactly! Say all the blahblahblahblah you want, do all the fancy logic dancing you want, deny what your eyes tell you and accept lies: the Democrat Party-ie all Democrats-is/are THE PARTY OF DEATH. Lock, stock, and barrell – look at what they have done, look at what they now do, look at what they said they would do, and look at what they now say they will do – this is why, assuming you have a wellformed conscience as defined by Holy Mother Church it is a MORTAL sin to vote for any Democrat. It is no adequate reply to say that – but-it is a mortal sin to vote for some independents or some GOPers, or some Green Party members. It is a MORTAL sin now to vote for any and all Democrats at all level or governments. And this means that giving them any money or any support is also a mortal sin. see VIRTUOUS CITIZENSHIP 2014 at sinvotedemocrat.com or pecadovotardemocrata.com [document soon to be updated for 2016 with all the heinous atrocities which can be laid at Democrat feet since 2014]. This is why it is beyond laughabale for an entity like Catholic Vote to come out against someone like Trump. Obama and Hillary are major demons compared to him and to just about any frontrunner of any other group. Guy McClung, San Antonio, Texas USA ps: re Mark Shea-watch Casablanca when Peter Lorre says to Bogart, “You must hate me.”

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