In a new Americanist manifesto, George Weigel forges ahead against his favorite scapegoat:"For the challenge now is to give America a new birth of freedom ... . This challenge will not be met by Catholic Lite. The challenge also won’t be met by Catholic traditionalists retreating into auto-constructed catacombs."Now, it is almost "adorable" to watch men like Weigel seeing their life's work of a "new" kind of "Catholicism" (let us call it pseudo-Wojtylianism) dead and buried -- and so trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Roman order. In the new order of things, like roaches hit by insecticide, they do not know what to do, or where to go, or whom to ask for help. The easiest way for them, of course, is to attack "Catholic traditionalists".
Weigel usually attacks us for our "Constantinian", "Triumphalist", heritage. Now, he also attacks for "retreating into auto-constructed catacombs" -- catacombs being the epitome of the pre-Constantinian Church. For Weigel, cursed if you do, cursed if you don't, as long as you are a Traditionalist.
What Weigel sees as insults, though, we consider integral parts of our heritage. The image of "auto-constructed" as applied to a catacomb certainly sounded better and clearer in Weigel's mind than printed out, as so much of what appears under his prolific and careless authorship. Yet we are joyful of being Catacombs and Constantinian, Medieval and Renaissance, Tridentine and Ultramontane: throw them at us, and we will accept them, because this is what being a Traditional Catholic means, that is, to love and to live the fruitful organic growth of our Catholic patrimony.
We are not "to the right" of Weigel as he presumes in order to dwell in his own imagined "via media", but we remain above such concerns and epithets. We invite men like Weigel to stand back from the smallness and pettiness of the present moment and view with awe the greatness of the edifice that is the Catholic Church, that has outlasted and will outlast all worldly empires, including America, as incredible as it may seem. Yes, it is ironic that Weigel, of all people, accuses us of small-mindedness...
All parts of our Traditional heritage are precious to us, we do not disregard them because we cannot do so, bathed as they are in the apostolic rivers flowing directly from the Living Heart of the Lord. In the catacombs, our Dead who bequeathed us the treasures of Tradition await the resurrection, and so shall we, when all fads and politicking of the present time will give way to the Everlasting Jerusalem, under the sempiternal Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Happy Sunday of Christ the King!
9 comments:
As an Americanist Firster, he is a cute cuddly heretic.
To be like George, all one has to do is reject the Kingship of Jesus Christ and accept the kingdom of J.C. Murray.
It is interesting to contrast the views of Weigel with those of Dr. E. Michael Jones who in the latest Culture Wars avers that Russia was converted as promised by the BVM and that Russia is ..a Christian country in a sense of that word that applies nowhere in the west... and that Russia.... has not abandoned its christian roots... whereas the America Weigel praises is ... a cabal of criminals acting in Jewish interests
Ever since William F. Buckley, who was an early and earnest advocate of Collectivism and Jacobin Militarism and who threw Traditionalists under the Zionist bus so as to curry and retain favor with those who run America, NRO has been the faithful Fifth Column Catholic mouthpiece for the ones who run America and while Weigel is rewarded handsomely for running-down his brethren, he'd lose his job faster than Miley Cyrus sheds her clothes were he to identify the real enemies of Holy Mother Church.
No,, the neo-cons Weigel, Deal Hudson, Mark Shea, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the rotten right all know on which side their bagel is buttered.
As what's-his-face correctly observed, to know who it is who rules over you just see who it is you may not criticise.
Will someone kindly inform this buffoon that it is impossible to marry neocon Americanism to South American socialism, much less American Catholicism, which has always been a toady of American government (lest it jeopardize its tax exemption), and Bergoglio's liberation-theology-by-another-name?
IANS,
"NRO"?
Dear Doc. National Review Online.
I ought to have just written Nat Rev so as to include Mr. Buckley who stood athwart history yelling; Mater, si ; Magister, no;
I liked his brother, Reid Buckley, mo'better (his columns used to appear in The American Spectator back when Mr Tyrrell was terrorising and satirising ,The Hive.
NRO = National Review Online
Actually, by the time NRO took off Buckley had withdrawn from the scene.
NR was begun in the fifties with the express purpose of drawing all the shades of conservatism (traditionalism, neocon, libertarianism, etc) into an uneasy alliance, which is why I object to IANS's characterization of Buckley, to the extent that I understand it, as "an early and earnest advocate of Collectivism and Jacobin Militarism."
Russell Kirk was one of the best known voices of what I would call tradition-based conservatism. For years he wrote a regular column and occasional articles in NR. Unfortunately he was not as driven as other voices of the magazine, which in the seventies began to tilt more toward conservatism based on internationalism, globalism, and paranoia, and which today is commonly called neoconservatism.
Buckley and Pat Buchanan (who had a column for awhile and also wrote occasional articles for NR) reached a parting of the ways in the days when Buchanan had the temerity to run against GHWB, the anointed one, who developed a taste for the pork rinds of the common man. Buchanan was a strange brew of traditionalism and realpolitik. He is as close as traditionalist conservatives will ever come to political power. Modern day "conservatives," even the genial matinee idol of the second level, Ronald Reagan, was a neocon by any sensible measure. Goldwater was too -- of course, back in those days there was an openly liberal wing of the party, to which the more or less neocon Goldwater was honestly opposed. If this proves anything, it proves that the contemporary antinimo-baloney of republican "conservatives" vs the republican "establishment" is out of whack. The antinomy should be the Republican establishment vs "conservative" pets of the republic establishment: in other words, a false antinomy, a phony opposition. If you wish to dine republican, you have to order nouveau cuisine and wash it down with a can of New Coke.
I don't know whether E. Michael Jones would agree with any of this. I am still recovering from his stunning revelation about Russia. Perhaps he should inform the vodka-guzzling abortionees that they have been converted by the BVM to Russian orthodoxy. (:D)
BTW, does anyone remember the hilarious episode of the cartoon "Futurama" where the living head of Richard Nixon, preserved in a specimen jar, commandeers a robot body, and is elected president against two opponents, Jack Johnson and John Jackson? No? Oh well.
Dear Ralph. WFB was a Big -Gov Conservative before Big-Gov Conservatism was cool:
http://tinyurl.com/kb8nx42
As to Russia, it is the only western country of consequence that is legislating against the promotion of Sodomy and standing-up to the Messias-Deniers who are itching for America to launch wars against Iran and Russia.
The change in Russia was sudden and massive and I do not think that attributable to merely man; that is, I think the BVM must have had a hand in this - and, Lucy did say the consecration had been done
Well, I will agree that Buckley was a big word conservative.
And if you and E. Michael will excuse the Yiddish idiom, you don't have to be religious to find homosexuality disgusting.
Dear Ralph. You ought to read Dr. Jones explication of the Bradley Manning affair; "Manning's Problem - And Ours" in the most recent, "Culture Wars," issue - "Leviathan Blinks in Syria."
Few writers are knowledgable enough and courageous enough to identify sodomites (Jones uses homosexual, sadly) as classically narcissistic and naturally-born traitors.
And he goes on to diagnosis some fundamental evils besetting America.
I know you have written that he is not really your cup of meat but he is rarely boring - if routinely prolix.
But I have never failed to be learnt something of crucial importance by him
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