Interesting observation

Last updated on: January 1, 2015 at 2:59 pm by Mark Shea

Interesting observation 2015-01-01T14:59:59-07:00 Mark Shea

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In my view, the singular focus upon abortion as THE issue over which conservative Catholics will brook no divergence and around which we are called to rally reveals, to my mind, not evidence of robust Catholic culture as much as its absence. It seems to me that – along with the opposition to gay marriage – this issue represents the last stand, the inner-most wall barely keeping the hordes from overrunning the sanctum. The ferocity over this issue – and this issue almost to the exclusion of nearly every other issue that might be part of a rich fabric of Catholic culture – suggests to me that Catholic culture, where it existed, has been largely routed. And, in fact, it suggests further that it is precisely for this reason that this issue has become largely defined politically – and not culturally – with an emphasis on the way that the battle over abortion must be won or lost at the ballot box (and, by extension, Supreme Court appointments).

Most Catholics have long ago ceased to live in a Catholic culture, per se. I would go so far as to surmise that many of the most vociferous opponents of abortion – ones lined up in this particular battle – do not by and large live in particularly Catholic cultures, so much as occasionally gather with like-minded Catholics at various locations (Church, a conference, a retreat) and otherwise live suffused in a decidedly non-Catholic culture. Most of us – Catholic or non-Catholic – live by default in THIS culture, whatever we would call it – liberal, modern, American, global, polyglot, anti-culture. THIS culture is decisively a “culture of choice.” Even those who would seek to inhabit a Catholic culture do so as a matter of individual choice – a lifestyle option. But this is not a Catholic culture as we might historically and traditionally understand such a culture – where that culture (as with any culture) shapes and forms your worldview, largely unbeknownst to you and without prior consent or choice on your part.

One of the most ardent and conservative Catholics that I know lives in an ocean-side house in Malibu, California. His opposition to abortion is fierce; however, in no way could it be suggested that he lives in a Catholic culture. He is a Catholic living in a culture of materialism, individualism, hyper-mobility and hedonism. While perhaps more extreme than the case for most of us, nevertheless his situation is closer to most American Catholics today than not. American Catholics have largely assimilated into mainstream American society, and come to seek success and approval from that culture on its terms.

I think there’s something to this. In a funny way, the “bama at ND”controversy seems to me to illustrate this. Both the protests and the cheer squad seem to me to to largely be cuiture warriors dancing to tunes being whistled by cultural forces that have little interest in specifically Catholic stuff. My interlocutor below jerks the knee to decry “the Catholic Right” when what he manifestly means is simply “the Right” with no interest at all in the question of whether support for abortion, you know, contradicts Church teaching. Team Left needs to win points and this looks like a chance to do it.

But many on the Catholic Right also act as though its all about secular team sports too. So, we get cries from the Right which make it clear that the job of the Magisterium is not to guide us in our responses, but to get on board with whatever current culture war agenda is being prescribed by the rabble rousers in Talk Radio and FOX News. If the Pope isn’t barking like Rush Limbaugh over Notre Dame, well that just goes to show what a bunch of Eurowussies the Vatican crowd are and to hell with them. The *real* culture that is driving a great many on both sides is just the divided culture of American culture warriors. The teaching and guidance of the Church is just a convenient prop, to be discard at will whenever it fails to assist in supporting one’s ideology.

And so we find Fr. Jenkins embarrassing himself by fawning over the Son of God, while Catholics in the blogosphere focus all their energies on this event photogenic culture war event but very little on other, equally Catholic, issues that are inconvenient to what Talk Radio tells them to be upset about. Indeed, some of them labor with might and main to ignore it when the same consequentialism routinely employed by Obama in the matter of abortion is employed by the Right to justify war crimes.

What this suggests to me is that Deneen is basically right. Catholics have largely abandoned the notion of being “strangers in a strange land”, of being aliens on earth in search of a heavenly homeland. Instead, we appear to be highly invested in the kingdom of this world, with the sole difference being “which side of the culture war do we hope will win?”

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