Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:11am

Why Mark Shea?

The core sin of American conservatives–and above all American conservative, “prolife” Christianists–is Pride. They cannot accept the fact that they were simply flat-out wrong. They have told themselves for twenty years that they are the *Real* Christians, the *Real* Americans, the *Real* Heroes. They are better than all their neighbors, better than the Pope, better, above all, than the Most Horrible Human Being in America, Hillary Clinton.

Mark Shea, July 20, 2018

 

 

 

 

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts explains some of the reasons why he posts about Mark Shea:

One reason I end up posting on Mark Shea so often is that several readers are among that growing demographic known as ‘Banned by Mark Shea.’  Mark will allow any instinct evil or mortal sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance to be advocated on his blog, as long as you join in his attacks against Christian conservatives and the GOP.

It’s true.  I’ve seen late term abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, state mandated termination of children, gay sex, gender fluidity, radical feminism, anti-Catholic bigotry, hatred of Jesus, Hitler’s Pope, and just about everything that a sane Christian – including Mark c.2005 – would consider grave evil and a threat to all that is good and sacred in the world.  These are sometimes debated by Mark but, as often as not, are allowed to be posted with impunity.  The only cost is that the individual come to trash Christian conservatives, Christian non-liberals, the GOP, Trump or anyone who dares challenge the dogmas of the political Left.

Mark’s sites are also a repository for the last few decades’ worth of Leftist propaganda and talking points.  This includes the idea that pro-life Christians are hypocrites who hate children and poor people and only use the unborn as, in Mark’s words, ‘human shields.’  That last part about human shields is actually a Mark distinctive.  To be honest, I don’t remember most pro-abortion activists suggesting pro-lifers don’t care about the unborn.  They might say it’s about controlling women or such (ignoring women pro-lifers in the process), but they usually at least concede care for the unborn on the part of pro-lifer.  But not Mark.  To Mark, to the right of center is all wickedness and void of goodness.

If their actions suggest otherwise, it’s no problem for Mark.  They may say they love Jesus, attend church and Mass, give to the poor, feed the hungry, donate to charity, and generally insist they care about all people.  But Mark knows their wicked hearts and souls for what they are, based on the fact that they dare challenge the gospel of liberalism.  That’s a benefit of liberalism today:  The John Lennon principle.  It’s not what you do in your life or how you act, it’s that you speak the words of the Left.  That’s how he knows that, whatever they do, they are truly evil at heart.  And he does this much to the glee of so many of his regular progressive followers.  Especially the non-Christian ones.  After all, it isn’t every day that, as a non-believer, you can get Christians to admit that [those] Christians are a wretched and evil lot.

But those who dare challenge the dogmas of the political Left?  Those who still defend conservative views, or dare suggest that there could be problems among some to the left of center?  Such will get you banned by Mark faster than you can say Bob’s your self-identifying aunt.  As a result, there are folks here on the blog and over at Facebook that will feed me the rage, the dumb, the calumny, the Leftist propaganda and talking points that make up the bulk of Mark’s literary output today.  After all, they can’t challenge Mark since he has banned them.  And they are often desperate to get the word out that this source of toxicity and leftist partisanship should be warned against, however meager my little contribution might be.  Especially since Mark continues to get accolades and high-fives from so many prominent Catholics, Catholic ministries and Catholic religious leaders.

So this one came across my table.  It’s basic Mark 101, c 2018.  He vomits all the rhetoric and stereotypes about those who don’t conform to liberalism.  There’s nothing anyone who has read Mark would be surprised by.  It’s just worth an explanation why, even though I avoid his blog like the plague, he is so often referenced.  My blog is merely one outlet for those who have been banned by Mark since Mark has little stomach left for debating those who challenge his devotion to the Democratic party and the talking points of the Political Left.  So there you go.

Fun note: It’s already been brought up that a commentator on the post compares the tactics of the right, including Evangelicals, to the Communists of Lenin and Stalin era.  They’ve also been compared to fascists and Nazis on his blog.  In all cases those making the claims are, at best, not called out.  At worst, Mark condones the comments.  Anyone remember when Mark spent months mocking Glenn Beck for his famous Communist/Nazi dig?  Yep.  Mark in a nutshell.

Go here to comment.  Mark engages in quite a bit of projection.  He always brands conservative Catholics as super Catholics who consider themselves as the yardsticks of being Catholic.  Actually, this is Mark’s sin.  Whatever he does is  done, in his view, for the sake of Catholic teaching.  Thus, when he supported Hilary Clinton in 2016, it was for the Church;  when he condemns pro-lifers it is for the Church;  when he engages in mendacious and vicious attacks on others, it is for the Church.  That he is taken by quite a few Catholics as a legitimate Catholic apologist, helps explain the current chaos and malaise within the Church.  It is this last fact that causes me to pay any attention to him at all.

 

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Texas Thomist
Texas Thomist
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 9:00am

Please, no more about Mark Whatshisname. It’s a waste of your time and ours. Spend that time on the other subjects you and your contributors write about so well.

Tom Byrne
Tom Byrne
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 9:37am

It was not alway thus. In a debate over homeschooling many years back, a poster challenged Mark to explain how he proposed to socialize his homeschooled kids in “the real world”. He shot back that they would socialize with the world on their father’s terms, not the world’s. Great answer, then.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 9:40am

About what am I supposed to have been wrong in re American public life? How ’bout our host? Paul Zummo? Do we get any specifics?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 9:41am

There’s a 10th planet influencing Mark Shea, but cannot figure out what it might be.

Kneeling catholic
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 9:45am

Yep!!!

I got banned for linking to an msm article announcing the thaw in north-South Korea relations….Mark had been running the narrative aboutTrump being a dangerous war monger

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 10:18am

Mark who? can read (and pass judgment on) 63 million Americans’ consciences.

It all makes sense when one assumes that he is a liberal fan boy and all his hot, steaming stuff is liberal fan fiction.

Even more stupider are the idiots that lap up his crap.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 10:38am

At that link blog post, Mark Shea twists around Scripture to support his leftism with the best of any right wing Protestant fundamentalist. Hey, Mark, the devil knows Scripture too. Is he the father from whom you learned to pervert the meaning of God’s Holy Word?

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 10:45am

you know, what I dislike about most liberals is not their putative feeling for humanity, but that they seem to be bereft of reason and appeal to rational arguments. My only knowledge of what Mark Shea writes is second hand (from this blog) but he seems to be a prime example.

The original Mr. X
The original Mr. X
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 4:22pm

Mark engages in quite a bit of projection. He always brands conservative Catholics as super Catholics who consider themselves as the yardsticks of being Catholic.

He also accuses the pro-life movement of distracting attention away from the unborn by focusing on a load of unrelated issues, as if this wasn’t the new pro-life movement’s whole schtick.

Incidentally, one of Mark’s few remaining sane commenters has a rather nice rebuttal of one of his points:

It’s not liberal believers who most often face persecution for their Christian beliefs. By persecution I don’t mean tsk-tsking from defenders of the faith, I mean lawsuits, organized harassment by leftist radicals, loss of employment, abandonment by one’s leftist bishop to the applause of the media and the like. Christ reminded his followers that as he would face attack and persecution, so would they. I’ll start looking leftward for spiritual inspiration when I start seeing liberals suffering for the true faith. Defense of LGBT “rights”, indifferentism regarding religious beliefs, compromising the lives of the innocent unborn, promotion of environmental zealotry etc., doesn’t cut it.

Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll be before “Chris C.” gets banned?

The original Mr. X
The original Mr. X
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 4:26pm

Oh, and incidentally, surely I can’t be only one to think that “Finding Fellowship in Innocent Sufferings” is an unbelievably self-righteous and pharasaical headline?

@ Kneeling Catholic:

I got banned for linking to an msm article announcing the thaw in north-South Korea relations….Mark had been running the narrative aboutTrump being a dangerous war monger

Yeah, I got banned for linking to a source showing that Alder Hey Hospital staff had been neglecting Alfie Evans rather than providing “world-class care” like the media was reporting. The offending post got deleted, too; can’t have anything threatening the narrative, after all!

Dave Griffey@columbus.rr.com
Dave Griffey@columbus.rr.com
Saturday, July 21, AD 2018 8:18pm

Texas, just to reiterate. I post on Mark because people keep me abreast of what he is doing, largely because they are shocked and concerned that someone like that not only continues, but gets accolades from those who should know better.. Just as if I heard of a doctor who operated on patients while drunk, I feel the need to get the word out that Mark represents a threat to proclaiming the actual Good News..

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 3:59am

Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll be before “Chris C.” gets banned?
According to Mark, it is no big deal if a Christian is fired for his beliefs since he, too, was fired from the Register for the sole reason of not being Republican enough. I guess either two wrong make a right, or they did it to him so if someone does it to someone else, or something. Hence my assertion that Mark is a menace to the reputation of the Faith and its teachings and most basic moral principles.

David
David
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 4:53am

Pride.. yuck.
My wife and I were given a standing ovation with other NFP promoters at a diocesan event. We all hated it.
I wanted to yell out at the top of my lungs “we just trying to be catholic”. It wasn’t pride in thinking we’re better that motivates us to promote NFP.

Lazarus Gethsemane
Lazarus Gethsemane
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 9:33am

So Shea doesn’t like any other Catholics who think they are better than him. Which obviously means that Shea thinks his own version of “Katholicism” is beyond all moral reproach. And yet – those Conservative Catholics are the proud ones.

Lazarus Gethsemane
Lazarus Gethsemane
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 9:50am

Once you come to the realization that Shea’s entire motivation for his “conversion” to Catholicism was purely the soothing psychological balm of his deep insecurities that his earlier “fame” and moderate “success” granted to his faux-intellectualism, you will soon understand that he has always been a fraud; only now his mask has fully slipped and he is a sad joke. And let’s be realistic here: he’s not really persuading anyone to his side, he’s merely preaching to his partisan ilk in the Special Ed choir.

And if anything: his horrid juvenile reasoning, blatant hypocrisies, and bratty snot-nosed snarkiness have actually converted more people away from him and TOWARDS the Conservative moral values that ARE at the heart of the timeless Truths of Catholicism. Shea serves as a cartoonish display of everything that Catholicism never was – and never can be. And that is an invaluable tool in this age of uncertainty and vagueness.

Phillip
Phillip
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 2:42pm

I don’t think that Shea has always been a fraud though I would agree he is a weak intellectual. I think the torture debate warped his thinking and now he is well on the road to justifying any intrinsic evil in order to establish a Leftist Heaven on Earth. Soon he will see the only intrinsic evils as those which fail to justify an increase in the marginal tax rate, open borders etc.

Foxfier
Admin
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 3:02pm

According to Mark, it is no big deal if a Christian is fired for his beliefs since he, too, was fired from the Register for the sole reason of not being Republican enough.

…should I be annoyed that he’s misrepresenting his stance, or should I be flattered that “not bearing false witness” and “not being an incredibly, indefensibly nasty jerk on social media” are apparently now “Republican” things?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 4:26pm

Once you come to the realization that Shea’s entire motivation for his “conversion” to Catholicism was purely the soothing psychological balm of his deep insecurities that his earlier “fame” and moderate “success” granted to his faux-intellectualism, you will soon understand that he has always been a fraud; only now his mask has fully slipped and he is a sad joke.

Making sense of the inner life of someone you know well can be an error laden enterprise. Don’t think we should wade into those weeds. He is a puzzling figure, though.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 4:27pm

I post on Mark because people keep me abreast of what he is doing, largely because they are shocked and concerned that someone like that not only continues, but gets accolades from those who should know better..

Does he still work for Catholic Answers? I’ve heard Jimmy Akin is quite protective of him.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Sunday, July 22, AD 2018 6:23pm

Making sense of the inner life of someone you know well can be an error laden enterprise. Don’t think we should wade into those weeds. He is a puzzling figure, though.

As I posted somewhere else once before, Mark has self confessed on his blog in the past (link available upon request) that he values and desires honor & recognition. From there it seems obvious that if some on the right thought he made a mistake somewhere and the left flattered him easily that he would be quickly swayed to join their cause.

What makes it doubly annoying is that he so insists on “truth! truth! truth!” and yet cannot bear any correction to anything he talks about unless it is coated in excessive flattery – no matter how wrong he might be.

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Monday, July 23, AD 2018 7:41am

Apparently Mark is doubling down on his statement that he was fired by the National Catholic Register for not being Republican enough. Someone copied the Register’s official statement. He said it’s typical right wing pharisee, then went on to say that he was a human sacrifice for the Register in order to appease their donor base. You can’t argue with that sort of person. Since many of his regulars also accept that approach to logic and debate, I don’t think there’s much hope outside of prayer and fasting at this point.

Lazarus Gethsemane
Lazarus Gethsemane
Monday, July 23, AD 2018 11:03am

Making sense of the inner life of someone you know well can be an error laden enterprise. Don’t think we should wade into those weeds. He is a puzzling figure, though.

On the contrary, with a clown like Shea and his nearly 20 years worth screeds – his inane motives are quite easy to discern.

David Davies
David Davies
Monday, July 23, AD 2018 12:31pm

Hello! My name is David, and I have been banned by Mark Shea. Not just once, but three times. Yes, I created new Disqus identities to try to get my points in. Banned. Banned!! BANNED!!!!

He wrote, in a tirade against ‘guns’ and their owners, that the US had a greater level of killings by firearm than any ‘civilized’ country. Since Colombia has a murder rate between 4 and 5 time our murder rate, I conclude that Mark says that Colombia is NOT civilized. That pretty much makes Mark a racist. Part of my family live there, and Bogotá and Cartagena are much nicer and cleaner places than that slum by the Sound called Seattle.
Mark is a catholic pharisee, filled with pride, who projects upon his ‘enemies’ all his own sins.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, July 23, AD 2018 2:00pm

It doesn’t seem to occur to Shea that a number of vectors influence crime rates and that that such rates aren’t particularly sensitive to the availability of firearms. The homicide rate in non-metropolitan counties in New York is about 1.2 per 100,000. That in densely settled urban and suburban zones is around 2.4 per 100,000 if you’re outside of select neighborhoods. That in the slums and neighborhoods adjacent in Upstate New York runs to about 35 per 100,000 in Rochester and Buffalo. In New York City, you won’t find a police precinct with a homicide rate in excess of 15 per 100,000 and the city as a whole as a rate of 4 per 100,000. The same gun laws cover all of thee jurisdictions.

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Monday, July 23, AD 2018 2:02pm

David,
I did that once, too – created a new account using a name I typically reserve for hobby sites. My intention was to coax him over toward writing about travels and sightseeing in America instead of his usual vitriol. At that moment, however, he posted several broadsides over some issue of the day. At one point, he posted something accusing a Catholic (whose name escapes me) of being an antiSemite and racist. I asked him to show actual evidence, since the only evidence he produced were a couple comments on that Catholic’s post that were later banned. That hardly proves racism. He argued briefly, then banned me. He then let everyone know it was me, and let them pounce and drag me through the digital dirt, so to speak. He insisted he didn’t know it was me until after he banned me, which means the only reason he banned me – by his own account – was because I asked him to show evidence for his accusations. Not a good quality for a Catholic spokesman.

Again, he is a menace to the Gospel message, but the worst part is the continued support and accolades he receives from Catholic leaders and ministries and parishes.

Nathan
Nathan
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 8:45am

Mark Shea was very helpful to me. I reached out to him in a panic for some issue I had and he generously spent a good amount of time helping me. I didn’t know him either. I reached out to him and I was a total stranger.

And for the record, he defended Church teaching. I disagreed with it.

The original Mr. X
The original Mr. X
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 11:14am

At one point, he posted something accusing a Catholic (whose name escapes me) of being an antiSemite and racist. I asked him to show actual evidence, since the only evidence he produced were a couple comments on that Catholic’s post that were later banned. That hardly proves racism.

That seems to be a common tactic of Shea’s. I remember once, in the course of an article accusing Austin Ruse of anti-Semitism, he said “Here’s an example of the subculture Ruse is writing for” and added screenshots of an anti-Semitic Facebook conversation — which, as far as I could see, had nothing to do with Austin Ruse, and didn’t even seem to be discussing him or any of his writings.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 12:41pm

That’s a nutty accusation to make contra Ruse.

Crisis did suffer from a pair of idiot anti-semites on their comment boards. I was banned for chastising one of them, who seems to have been a pet of someone on the Crisis editorial staff. Crisis during that period was being edited by someone recruited from ISI Press. ISI Press is a palaeo outfit, but not sectarian in the manner of Fleming and the Rockford Institute. That type of thing is the ‘line’ in palaeo or Traditionalist publications, but it is part of the discussion. I did wonder at the time if that particular editor had brought a remora with him who fancied Joseph Sobran America’s most perspicacious student of public affairs.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 12:42pm

“is NOT the line…but it is part of the discussion.”

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 1:34pm

Nathan,
The same with me. Mark came to our aid years ago, bringing several of his regular readers on board to help. Nobody says Mark is some fiend who delights in torturing puppies or throwing banana peels in front of nursing homes. The problem is, he is often wrong, often inconsistent, often hypocritical, and often seems to think he can say black is white and it is so. That doesn’t get into his practice of not only judging the hearts of others, encouraging negative rumors about them, spreading false information, and even engaging in calumny. That is the problem. And it’s a problem that so many cheer him on, rather than intervene. But as far as being a good person? I assume he still is. That would be one of the few things left of him that is the same as Mark c. 2005. Because the best way to understand Mark now is to go back 15 years and see what he praised, and bet now he curses it, and that which he cursed, he will now either praise, or at least make excuses for or deal only in the most loving and respectful ways possible.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 3:35pm

From Art Deco, Word Of The Day: “perspicacious.”

My last (literally last) encounter with him was 15 years ago. In addition to what Dave Griffey wrote, Mark-who wasn’t funny.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 3:55pm

Shea flipped out over the waterboarding-torture thin in Iraq. For some reason known only to him, waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation tactics” were pretty much the same thing as abortion and anybody who considered themselves pro-life and yet supported the Bush Administration’s War in Iraq were hypocrites of the lowest order. Since then Shea has despised conservative Catholics, Evangelicals, etc.

He would be an anonymous fruitcake if reputable Catholic publications like Our Sunday Visitor…and even the Pittsburgh Catholic would stop publishing his pablum.

The original Mr. X
The original Mr. X
Tuesday, July 24, AD 2018 4:24pm

That’s a nutty accusation to make contra Ruse.

Yeah, but he wrote an article critical of George Soros. Soros is Jewish. QED.

(As a matter of fact, I did think the article Mark was responding to was pretty weak — not that I’m a fan of Soros, but Ruse didn’t really prove his case that certain Catholic bloggers were being funded by one of his organisations. Mark, of course, chose to bury this reasonable criticism of the article in a whole load of ranting, paranoia, and general ridiculousness.)

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, July 25, AD 2018 3:48am

certain Catholic bloggers were being funded by one of his organisations.

It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case. I had to wonder at one time why Religion News Service seemed like a supplement to The Advocate. Then I discovered two things: it’s editor had worked there since he was 25 years old and really had had no other occupation; and it received 55% of it’s financing from the Arcus Foundation, then run by one Kevin Jennings. Mr. Jennings you will recall was an official of Obama’s Department of Education notable for his congenial disposition toward pederasty.

Remember ‘Catholics for a Free Choice’? There’s a certain amount of astroturf out there and Soros is the liberal moneybags. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that David Blankenhorn was suborned by his donors, or that a lavender mafia ensconced in corporate foundations has been behind the corruption of the Boy Scouts.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Wednesday, July 25, AD 2018 2:41pm

Clearly we must pray for Mark Shea.

Those who believe they have been wronged by Mark Shea should consider the course of action described in Matthew 18:15-17.

“Where the bishop is, there is the Church.”–St. Ignatius of Antioch

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 26, AD 2018 5:20am

I’m praying for the conversions of Mark-who, Planned Parenthood, al Qaeda, ISIS, Brennan, Hillary, Obama, Comey, McCabe, 20 million invaders, sinners in toto. And, that Mark-who gets the help he needs.

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