The Catholic Apologetics Subculture has developed spiritual lupus

Last updated on: December 6, 2018 at 10:09 am by Mark Shea

The Catholic Apologetics Subculture has developed spiritual lupus 2018-12-06T10:09:30-07:00 Mark Shea

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Lupus is an autoimmune disorder in which the systems that are supposed to defend the body from pathogens start regarding the body as a pathogen and attacking it. A subculture that now regards the Holy Father as the greatest enemy of the faith on planet earth while cheering for this

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as well as lying to defend sawing an innocent man to death so that we can help starve 14 million Yemeni to death, and shouting to shoot the Holy Family at the border as “invaders” is a subculture that is not longer defending but attacking the faith.

As I mentioned yesterday, the people who used to read my apologetics work are, by and large, now convinced that I am a pathogen who needs to be driven from the Church. But since they see the Holy Father the same way, I take that as a consolation.

Many of them, projecting on to me what they themselves would do in my place, have convinced themselves I want them expelled from the Church because I criticize the evil they do and the lies they tell. But that’s not so. I want them to repent, not be kicked out as they long to kick me out. It’s not surprising they don’t understand my point. They can’t hear because they are so sure they are right that they can’t even hear the Holy Father. They perpetually declare he “confuses” them when, in fact, he just says things they don’t like to hear. They do the same with me. They are utterly mystified by what I am writing these days and can see no conceivable connection between my interest in defending Christ present in the least of these with my previous defenses of things like the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I am mystified at their mystification.

Indeed, one of them wrote me recently:

Perhaps a debate on the Eucharist will wake you up out of your spiritual coma…

Translation: “Snap out of this weird interest in caring about the sadistic Christianist cruelty to the poor, brown, and desperate and get back to those good old arguments with Fundamentalists that made me feel superior to Protestants. I like it when the gospel makes me feel awesome, not when it says to die to myself and see Christ in people I can’t be bothered with because it does not accessorize my right wing politics.”

Sir, perhaps listening to the Holy Father and not pitting the Eucharist against the least of these will wake you out of your spiritual coma.

Here, if you really want to honor the Eucharist, do this:

Do you wish to honour the body of the Saviour? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honour it in church with silk vestments while outside you are leaving it numb with cold and naked. He who said, ‘This is my body’, and made it so by his word, is the same that said, ‘You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ Honour him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls. (St. John Chrysostom, On Matthew, Homily 50, 3 (PG 5 8,508)

If you just want to get in a pissing match with some Fundamentalist so you can feel like a man, carry on.

To slightly paraphrase St. John Chrysostom, “If you cannot see Christ in the beggar at the border or in the Yemeni your Cult Leader is covering up murder in order to starve to death, you shall not find him in the chalice.”

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (1 Corinthians 11:27-32)

Want to start thinking like a Catholic? Then stop with the everlasting Protestant either/or and return to the Catholic both/and. It’s not either defend the Eucharist or Catholic social teaching but defend both the body of Christ in the Eucharist and the body of Christ present in the least of these.

And for the love of God stop confusing Catholic apologetics with apologetics for the Cult of Trump or any other earthly idol.

Cue, “Oh yeah! Well the pope/liberals are your idol!!!” in 3…2…1…” Because the Cult of Trump cannot answer any critique with anything other than whataboutism. I’ll respond to that lie some other day. I have a ton of work to do. This will have to serve for now.

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