How We Do Things Here

Last updated on: December 30, 2014 at 9:28 pm by Mark Shea

How We Do Things Here 2014-12-30T21:28:09-07:00 Mark Shea

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So what’s this blog about, Mark?

Glad you asked! Basically, what I’m interested in here is… whatever interests me. That’s a fairly wide variety of stuff since I think the world is interesting, it being made by God and all. The world is, at bottom, a good and beautiful thing, like the people in it, since God made it. At the same time, of course, the Fall has done a number on us and we have to contend with that.

My general habit is to try to view the world through the lens of a lay non-revisionist Catholic who thinks we should try to think with the Church about our kneejerk political, cultural, and ideological preferences rather than try to press-gang the Church into cooperating with those preferences. In terms of subject matter, I will be chatting about whatever the stream of news washes up on shore each day, as well as ideas that occur to me in the shower, things I read, or Catholic theology as it happens to apply to things. Some stuff I talk about is de fide and therefore not negotiable. Some of it is the obvious and clear teaching of the Tradition even though the Church hasn’t said “Simon Peter Says”. Some of it is my prudential application of the Church’s teaching. Lots of it is just reflective of my taste. Since this is very much a personal and stream of consciousness blog, expressed very much in my own idiosyncratic way, I urge readers to bear that in mind and not imagine I think I’m a magisterial authority. I’m just this guy. In certain, very narrow areas, I’m a guy who knows what he’s talking about. But mostly, in this blog, I’m a guy who’s sounding off about stuff that interests him, speaking as a free man in a free country about his views on things. Often I’m just Statler and Waldorf wise-cracking as the Muppets on stage are delivering the news.

One theme that pops up a lot (mostly because it is so persistently neglected by our culture) is this: I have come to be convinced that the number one favorite moral heresy of Americans, left and right, is consequentalism: the lie that you can do evil that good may come of it. I am also persuaded that the most scandalous teaching in the entire corpus of Catholic moral theology is Mark 11;25: “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone,
forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Press on these two things for long and people get mad. Not a little of my writing has had to do with these extremely unpopular teachings. (It’s partly therapeutic, because I don’t like them either, and therefore need to keep reminding myself that the Faith does not exist in order to affirm my personal preferences.)

In addition to the heavy duty “Culture Seen Through a Catholic Lens” stuff, I enjoy the cool, the weird, the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the hilarious (YMMV) and the daffy. As an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s job, I love conversation (when I find time for it given my crushing workloard) and I generally run a pretty loose ship in the comboxes and there are lots of disagreements with what I say most days. At the same time, I make it clear that my rule of thumb is “Disagree all you like, but behave toward me and others as you would in my living room.” I do *not* owe anybody a forum and it is *not* “censorship” if I decide a reader is too much of a jerk to be allowed to continue posting. If you have a burning need to denounce me as a communist/fascist, liberal/conservative, reactionary/progressive, homophobic/gay apologist, traditionalist fanatic/modernist heretic, Nazi/Zionist, unscientific lunkhead/evolutionist heretic, fetus loving woman hater/secret abortion lover or some of the other remarkable combinations of charges leveled against me over the years, feel free to set up your own blog and alert the world to my undiluted evilness. The gratitude of humanity will, no doubt, be yours.

We observe the Welborn Protocol here. If you email me, it’s grist for the blog unless you tell me not to publish it.

Lets’ see… what else? I think that’s it for now. Oh! Try to keep combox threads on topic. I’m not too keen on people who hijack a combox discussion for their own personal hobby horses. On the other hand, I realize the fractal nature of conversation and don’t mind when tangents get taken, within reason.

One final point: I don’t have a lot of patience for conspiracy theories, especially ones in ALL CAPS or cutting and pasting lengthy diatribes from paranoid.kook.net. I’m not interested in 9/11 truth, JFK assassination conspiracies, Obama the Devout Muslim-Atheist Antichrist, the International Jewish Conspiracy, the New Age Conspiracy, Masons Tunneling Under Our Houses or whatever other world-spanning All-Explaining Web of Evil you think you might be on to. I have a congenital allergy to All Explaining Theories of Everything and ideologies (but I repeat myself). I do, however, like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, as well as brown paper packages tied up with string.

I look forward to getting to know you if you are new, and continuing the conversation if you are one of my long time readers! Excelsior!

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