Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts takes a look at Mark Shea’s response to the sexual harassment avalanche:
Off the rails lunacy
Over at Catholic and Enjoying It. Like many, Mark jumped on the Roy Moore accusations, not just to demand Moore’s head, but to use the scandal to attack Trump, Trump supporters, conservatives and American conservative Christians. Like many, Mark said it was time to put aside the need for evidence, proof or due process. When those icky types are accused, it’s enough that they’re icky types, and it’s time to hie to the gallows.
Like the overwhelming majority of modern punditry, both right and left, Mark has also been stunningly silent about the myriad accusations against liberal pundits, politicians, activists, entertainers, and high profile personnel. Like so many who were quick to link Moore to entire swaths of American conservative culture, Mark has said nothing about these accusations against liberals and what it means about American liberalism. The most Mark did was link to a rather nondescript article that talked of the rock era tendency to sex after teenage girls. But nothing about rock and liberalism, liberal culture or the ideological similarities in the laundry list of recent accusations.
And that’s fine. I’m OK with this. I think this says something about our culture as a whole. Both the accusations, and the fact that we have no clear understanding of what is right or wrong behavior on any given day, or a desire to even sort it out before we destroy lives. All of those, to me, are symptomatic of a nation that long ago put punditry over principle. So I have no problem if people aren’t saying the list of liberals accused proves X about liberalism.
My problem is that they did just that against conservatives and evangelicals. Conservatives and liberals alike, never-Trumpers and left wing activists, all were happy to draw a straight line from Roy Moore to anyone and everything Right of center, guilty as accused.
Mark demonstrates this partisanship and, quite frankly, lunacy in spades. Not only has he avoided anything at all about the multiple accusations post-Moore, including his own folk hero Garrison Keillor, but he has continued to funnel all wrath and hatred at Moore, Trump, Trump supporters, conservatives and American conservative Christians, as if nobody else has been accused.
Pre-posting update: Jonah Goldberg, hardly sympathetic to Trump and the gang, nonetheless noticed the same trend.
A few weeks ago, the Federalist ran an incredible piece by the Lutheran Satire guy which was, alas, not satire. In it, he tried to argue that the slaughter in Sutherland was an awesome answer to the prayers of the victims and that anybody appalled and outraged by that slaughter loved government and not God.
One could hardly have asked for a more chemically pure expression of Christianism: the false gospel that cloaks the right wing culture of death in Christian imagery to battle for such things as (in that case) arms industry profits over human life.
Yet, not to be outdone, the Federalist again publishes an article oozing great slimy lies to the effect that you should support a child molester (excuse me, “morally questionable” person) like Roy Moore because God can use such people.
What is the urgent thing that Christianists need him for? Well, given that Planned Parenthood is already fully funded, the Party of Trump can’t really sell the “We’ll be magicking abortion away Real Soon Now” lie, so we have to just face the fact that Moore is important to help fund the Tax Budget Only a Child Molester Could Love.
It is, in essence, the greatest act of theft in American history, robbing the poor and the middle class to engorge the rich, according to the communists at Fortune.
Go here to read the rest. Besides telling us that Shea has apparently lost the ability to read, judging from his misinterpretations of the two Federalist articles that he references, his use of the term Christianist is deeply revealing. It is a term of abuse for Christians that Leftists hurl at Christians who have the temerity to disagree with them. Once upon a time, long, long ago, Mark Shea was a Catholic apologist. Now he is simply an apologist, and a very angry one, for an increasingly deranged Left. He has chosen poorly.
I think ‘Christianist’ was a coinage of Andrew Sullivan, who fancied it was the obligation of Church and State to put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on his exploits as RawMuscleGlutes.
Which leads to the interesting question: for what is Mark Shea seeking validation? Some sort of unquenchable free-floating rage?
Does Shea have any income to tax?
During Christ’s crucifixion, for example, the same chief priests, scribes, and elders who conspired to put Jesus to death mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God’”
Yet God proved his son’s divinity by, three days later, lifting him up out of the death those men gave him. Despite the chief priests, elders, and scribes doing all they could to silence the one who claimed to be the savior of the world, God turned their hatred into the catalyst of the world’s salvation.
Lutheran Satire guy did good.
Does Shea have any income to tax?
I don’t imagine you could ever make much of a living from the sort of books he produces and the implosion of print makes that even more challenging. (Amy Welborn once named what her receipts had been from her apologetics series. It was something like $14,000 in the previous year. That was around about 2005). I think he had a salaried position with Catholic Answers at one point. Catholic Answers tended to pay lush compensation to some of their employees, at least until they were hung out to dry by Michael Voris. A critic of Shea’s once suggested that freelance work was most appropriate for him because hiring him would be like hiring Rosie O’Donnell.
A dear cousin of mine recently lost her husband to frontotemporal dementia. She tells us she was married to one man for 40-odd years and then someone else for somewhat shy of two years and that he was unaware of the trouble he was causing during that time. You kinda wonder sometimes….
Shea flipped out years ago over the waterboarding issue. He then decided to hate who he considered to be “conservatives”, including Bush and anyone who supported him. He has since been on a left wing trajectory and has gone stark raving mad since.
The missus usually does not attend the Traditional Latin Mass with me and our sons. At the NO Mass she recently attended she brought home a copy of Our Sunday Visitor. In it was a column from Shea about saints. I doubt Shea knows more about saints than anyone who writes columns or posts in the combox here.
I don’t read Shea’s writings except for what’s posted here.
I don’t read Bergoglio’s writings except for what’s posted here.
There’s enough lunacy in my life without unnecessarily adding to it.
IT is the height of irony that Shea, who so loves to toss “liar” around when accusing others, is so dishonest about the two federalist articles in question. Heck he made the first article far more partisan than than did the author. Since the article in question, Shea has also posted…
“Magical Fascistic Thinking”
“A man who once lied Catholics into supporting torture…”
“The Base of the Party of Nihilist Misogynous White Spite”
Clearly, a sober, serious man who honestly seeks discussion and to understand the other side.
You know, for a catholic apologist, I wonder when was the last time he convinced anyone to become catholic…
Oh… oh this is also gold.
From Shea:
Now knowing Shea, I’m pretty sure “the communists at Fortune” is supposed to be sarcastic. Well let’s see here, the author of the linked piece is one “Josh Hoxie.” Who is he?
Do the Germans have a term for sarcasm backfire?
Shea the skimmer strikes again. I would accuse him of intellectual dishonesty except that I truly do not think he reads what he links to. I suspect he reads a distorted summary of a post on a leftist web site, which he accepts as Gospel because it confirms his prejudices, and then he links to the cited post without bothering to actually read it, but rather he simply skims it. He was doing this long before he signed on with the looney left.
It doesn’t stop him from accusing others of the same thing so I say what’s sauce for the goose…
The word has been around for quite some time
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Christianists&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CChristianists%3B%2Cc0
It is more useful if you click the links at the bottom and read the examples given; before 1990, the word seems to be a synonym for “Christian.”
The ones from the 1990s are similar, but all from what appears to be a Hindu newsletter. (????)
Notably not in the same sense– although not quite as different as ‘can’ are able and ‘can’ cylinder for storing food.