Breaking up with the Pope is hard to do

Oh, that terrible moment when you finally realize the Pope you fell in love with is not the Pope who's running the Catholic Church nowadays.

Some people are still in denial, of course. Philip Pullella of Reuters, for example, chooses to believe that Catholic conservatives are some kind of political constituency that Francis has to keep pacified while he lays plans for Vatican III. So he insists that the Pope's reference to abortion in Monday's "State of the World" speech, in which he called the practice "horrific" and part of a "throw-away culture" in which "human beings themselves ... are discarded as unnecessary", is a mere nod to Church conservatives, backing his contention with one quote from Bp. Thomas Tobin of Providence and an allusion to conservative websites.

Well, yes, there are a few ultra-conservatives who think Francis doesn't go far enough on anything they hold to be crucial. But they've sung the same song about every pope who's followed Ven. Pius XII, with only slight changes in the lyrics here and there. No one who's been paying attention to Papa Bergoglio the last few months can doubt his orthodoxy, his sincerity or his passion concerning the horror of the Great Western Atrocity.

Philip, buddy, you're only fooling yourself. Francis is no Hans Küng; he's no Dan Berrigan or Andrew Greeley; he's not even the kind of Jesuit we here in North America have gotten used to. He's not the kind of progressive you're looking for, because the Church has her own goals and standards by which she measures "progress". You're only going to get hurt if you think he's going to change, or that he'll be okay if you just get him away from those big ol' meanie conservatives.

Maestro! A little break-up music, please.

Being a jerk about gender pronouns

"A few years back," author T Cooper relates in The Slate, "if I had to draw a pyramid to represent who has it 'hardest' with respect to the subject of me and pronouns (with 'most difficult' on top and "not really difficult at all' on the bottom), it would look something like this:

"Notice that I am nowhere on the pyramid," Cooper continues. "This is because for many years, I was generally apologetic about my situation. I didn’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable, ever, so I readily shelved my own discomfort over being referred to by the wrong pronoun." HANH!?

That's right ... Cooper is one of the thousands of people who think creative linguistics can overwhelm biology. In this case, Cooper is a woman trying hard to get us to accept her as a man.

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:2)

Welcome to The Impractical Catholic ... although, given the recent predominance of a particular subject, it tends to read more like "The Armchair Economist".

Today is Sunday, which means another episode of "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. If you're a Catholic blogmaster looking for an outlet, here's how we play the game: First, you write a post with links to things you've written over the last week; be sure to give it the "Sunday Snippets" title and link to RAnn's weekly post. Then hit the "Publish" button and copy the link; go over to RAnn's post, and use the Inlinkz function to add your link to the rest. 

While you're there, write a nice note to RAnn thanking her. Also, while you're there, check out the links to the other Catholic writers participating. You see, they're in the main new or obscure, just waiting to take the Catholic blogosphere by storm; and they need you to go tell other people in Netland that they're out there and deserve to be read.

So what did I do this week? Well, I wrote a lot about income inequality ... or, to be more accurate, I wrote a lot about what other people wrote about income inequality. This week actually saw two posts on Outside the Asylum: "Catholics can't have 'designated sinners'", in which I take the Obama Administration and the New York Times to task over the persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor; and "What's the problem with income inequality?", in which I endeavor to demonstrate that the "wealth gap" is a problem not just for the poor but for the rich as well. By contrast, there was only one other post besides this one on The Impractical Catholic: "Cutting taxes doesn't work", in which I tear apart a favorite conservative cure-all for economic sluggishness.

And there you have it. Now go get your Catholic reading on! Have a great Sunday!

Cutting taxes doesn't work—UPDATED

Is this the year that The Impractical Catholic becomes a blog on economic issues? God, let’s hope not.

Normally, when I spout off about economic matters, it’s on The Other Blog, as part of that platform’s current-events orientation. I’ve had to write on economics a couple of times in the last month or so, first because Evangelii Gaudium brought out the conservative “cafeteria Catholics”, and second because Pat Buchanan, a prime example of conservative “cafeteria Catholicism”, wrote a bunch of inane blather about income inequality not two days after I’d finished a post concluding that the rising tide for the top 1% was not lifting the boats of the bottom 80%. Income Inequality, it turns out, happens to be one of the hot topics now, and appears to be one of Pope Francis’ bugbears, so don’t be surprised if it comes up more in my writing.

One point I try to bring up whenever appropriate is that the Catholic Church is neither “conservative” nor “liberal/progressive” as those terms are usually meant in American political discourse. The Church has her own agenda, which means her own benchmarks for progress and her own ideas about what needs to be conserved. Both Popes Benedict and Francis have said substantially the same things vis-à-vis social justice; the differences have been of style and of the meta-narrative imposed on them by the media (“God’s Rottweiler” vs. “The Progressive Pope”).

I make this point because it seems to me the conservatives who write for Human Events are historically and economically illiterate; at times, they’re as guilty of historical revisionism as any radical college professor. [But see the update below!] First it was Buchanan. Now it’s Donald Lambro, whose post, “Look to what’s worked before to spur sluggish economy”, is a welter of conservative parrot-talk mixed with nostalgia for a past that didn’t happen the way he remembers it.

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:1)

Welcome back, my friends,
To the show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend;
Come inside, come inside!
—Emerson, Lake and Palmer, "Karn Evil 9"

Yes, once again it's time for "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. As she explains, "We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each other." First, I create a post (here) to discuss and link to my week's efforts (or, my weak efforts, ATCMB). Then, I create a link to this post at the "Sunday Snippets" main page above. 

This has (hopefully) two effects: 1) It drives readers to my blogs from other blogs; 2) It exposes you, Dear Reader, to some tasty writing by other Catholic authors just waiting for their chance to break out of obscurity. Do please follow the turquoise-linked road ... you may very well be glad you did.

So what did I do over the last week? Not much, I'm afraid. 

In Outside the Asylum, I kinda stepped out of my normal comfort zone to write about "the recovery that isn't" — that is, the persistent lack of confidence in our economic recovery despite the most recent news about the gross domestic product (up 4.1% at the end of the third quarter of 2013) and the unemployment rate (down to 7.0% at the end of November). My answer: the recovery isn't nearly as strong as it's being painted, and it won't get much stronger until something is done about income inequality.

That post wasn't up two days when I came across an article written by Patrick J. Buchanan in Human Events, entitled "Inequality — Crisis or Scam?" (Guess which side he took?) It's not just that he missed the point of everyone's concern with income inequality; he missed it while making such stunningly obtuse statements that at the end I no longer wondered why the GOP shuns him ... he's the kind of Republican that makes the GOP look like it's the party "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich". (Well, in some ways it is — in fact, both parties are pretty much run for the pleasure and benefit of the wealthy — but most Republicans at least realize that such an appearance doesn't contribute to electability.) 

Anyway, that's what brought on my latest post here, "Pat Buchanan's clueless defense of income inequality", which ended up recycling some things I said in The Other Blog. Sometimes that happens: when a particular story gets hot, or a particular issue produces a spate of events and commentary, I'll find myself writing two or three posts on the matter, such as on l'affaire Phil Robertson (see last weekend's "Sunday Snippets").

And ... that's it! Go do some reading, and have a great day!

Pat Buchanan's clueless defense of income inequality

Patrick J. Buchanan

Recently, a friend posted an old Cracked.com post by David Wong, "6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying". The list includes such aggravating and patronizing sentiments as "Hey, I worked hard to get what I have!", "If I can do it, so can you," and "You shouldn't be punishing the very people who make this country work!"

If Wong read Pat Buchanan's latest piece for Human Events, "Inequality — Crisis or Scam?", then he's no doubt updating and adding to the list of arguments which demonstrate how clueless and out-of-touch with poverty many rich people (and their defenders) really are. Buchanan makes it worse because he buys into the Randian fairy tale that the richest are by definition the brightest and best of society and therefore deserve everything they get because they do and create everything (and the poor do and create nothing save babies).

Buchanan begins with a comparison of China under Mao Zhedong in 1972 (more equal) with the China of 2013: "Today there are billionaires and millionaires in China, booming cities, a huge growing middle class and, yes, hundreds of millions of peasants still living on a few dollars a day. Hence, there is far greater inequality in China today than in 1972. Yet, is not the unequal China of today a far better place for the Chinese people than the Communist ant colony of Mao?"

Buchanan not only forgets that China is still nominally Communist, he ends this beginning section with this jaw-dropper: "Lest we forget, it is freedom that produces inequality." Funny ... I thought we were talking about the People's Republic of China; it seems to me they've done a great job of creating inequality without doing much in the way of liberty. So, for that matter, did Soviet Russia. Plenty of illiberal nations throughout history have produced and sustained dramatic levels of income inequality. Buchanan is hardly 200 words into his argument and has already shown he's either oblivious to what he's saying or living in an alternate universe.

Belated: Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 13:52)

My apologies for the late appearance of this post. My brain decided it hadn't had enough rest on Wednesday and shut down on me Sunday.

"Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival" is, as I've explained before, a selection of posts from around the Catholic blogosphere collected by RAnn of This, That and the Other Thing. In this manner, it's sort of like New Evangelists Monthly, to which I also contribute, except instead of directly linking you to the articles themselves, Sunday Snippets links you to posts in which any number of articles can be linked. So while it entails more steps, you'll find some good writing by writers that the big blog aggregators can miss.

On this blog I haven't done much ... just passed along a message from Phil Robertson concerning cuts to veterans' benefits, as well as linked to my quater-weekly submission to Catholic Stand, "Talking white trash". On Outside the Asylum, my only effort was "Phil Robertson's other controversial statement", where I turn my attention to the public perception that the Duck Dynasty patriarch had said black people were happy under "Jim Crow laws" and find it to be an exaggeration. Hopefully I'm all done with the Bearded One, and can discuss other things closer to my heart than a "reality show" I never watch.

And that's it for now. Have a great week, and a safe New Year's Eve!

Catholic Stand: Talking white trash

People of a certain age ought to remember the routine that made comedian Jeff Foxworthy a household name. And I’ll give just one example: “If you mow your yard, and you find three cars and a couch, you might be a redneck.”

What Foxworthy was describing, though, wasn’t really a redneck. No, there’s another name for the ignorant, slovenly boors Foxworthy’s jokes painted in such garish colors: white trash. We could go less race-specific and use the term I heard growing up — trailer trash. Either name makes the egalitarian-minded liberal shudder; and yet, while progressives are good at talking populist, when the crunch comes they can be as elitist as any Porcellian among the Boston Brahmin.

The term white trash has been popping up here and there since the infamous Phil Robertson GQ interview; understandably, since Robertson used it to describe himself and the people he came from (post-WWII, pre-Vietnam rural Louisiana). Peter Lawler, in the blog “Postmodern Conservative” on First Things, remarks:

The phrase “white trash” is, in fact, one of the most unattractive features of aristocratic Southern Stoicism. The Stoic, aristocratic (not to mention gay and racist) poet-philosopher William Alexander Percy disparaged “white trash” far more than southern blacks. And we see that same sort of stereotyping in To Kill a Mockingbird, where the white trash are really, really trashy — so trashy that nobody minds how cruelly Stoic attorney Atticus Finch deconstructs the pretensions of their way of life in the service of justice for a noble — if simple — black man. And of course the white trash jury was too trashy to keep an innocent black man from being convicted. …
When a Stoic Walker Percy character says that the behavior celebrated on our talk and reality shows is that of white trash — of people who don’t know how to act because they don’t know who they are — we can’t help but want to agree. … White trash, any real Southern Stoic would say, describes a way of living not confined to the impoverished or the South. (Here I refer you to the novels of Tom Wolfe.)

Read more at Catholic Stand!

Please stand by ...

Well, the essay for Catholic Stand hasn't posted yet — what the heck, I got it in late, and it's Christmas so everything's bound to be in disarray for a little bit — so let me offer a filler:

In the essay, "Talking white trash", I discuss the term white trash in connection with the Phil Robertson GQ interview and the rise of cultural illiteracy in which, as Southern writer Charlotte Hays puts it, "white trash has become the new normal". In a society that's culturally illiterate, people don't know enough of their culture to intelligently oppose or promote a viewpoint; yet, with an ever-increasing incidence of classic narcissism, the coming generation isn't bothered by their lack of subject-matter knowledge: "I don't know that s**t! Keep it real!" They believe they know enough to have a valid opinion ... and aren't we supposed to think for ourselves, anyway? Despite our technological progress, in some areas we're actually more ignorant than any previous generation ... and we're smug about it to boot. The essay is mostly in the context of religious knowledge (cultus being both the etymological and anthropological root of culture), but I fear it extends to other aspects as well.

Well, since the post is finished and committed for review, I can't incorporate this op-ed piece by Patrick B. Craine in LifeSiteNews: "The real 'war on Christmas' is perpetrated by Christians themselves". In my own piece, I mentioned the "stoopid lefty meme" as well as a CNN BeliefBlog piece which Terry Mattingly dismantled in GetReligion. Both of these items are good examples of what Craine is talking about:

The problem is that Christ and His Gospel have been co-opted and distorted. The Cross has been edited out, and Christ has been re-envisioned according to modern sensibilities. In the public mind, the Lion of Judah has become a hippy sentimentalist; the Lamb of God a cuddly teddy bear. He’s nice; He doesn’t make great demands of us – except for the ones the culture does. Our path to heaven is laid wide by being a “good person,” in other words, by staying on the right side of the law and giving to charity now and then. One of the key challenges of proclaiming Christ in this culture we live in is that to get our message across we have to first break through these preconceived distortions.

Granted, this is nothing I haven't said before elsewhere ... but then, I write in defense of Catholic Christian orthodoxy; there is a sense in which originality is a liability rather than an asset. Or, perhaps I should say that it's more important to get something right than to make it original or idiosyncratic.

A message from Phil Robertson

... or, at least it claims to be from him. With Photoshop you can never be sure. But given the kind of person Robertson's revealed himself to be, I can believe he is behind this message.

That's gratitude for you. Gratitude to all those who have served. Seems every time Congress wants to save a nickel, veterans are the ones they screw to save it.

Of course, the real problem is the longer lifespans we live. If you enlist right out of high school, you qualify for a 2/3rds pension when you're not even forty years old ... a pension the government pays you for conceivably twice as long as your original term of service. Go thirty years, and the government pays you 3/4ths pension for about as long as your service term. In either case, you have plenty of years left to earn a civilian salary while collecting a military pension; some even go to work for the government in another sector and become "double-dippers". Is it any wonder Alexander cut the Gordian knot rather than try to untie it?