"Sarah Palin rebuked for comparing water boarding to baptism" (Catholic World Report, May 1, 2014): "Even if you don’t believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at."As always, food for thought from our underground correspondent. Thanks, Mr. Noir.
But note here that no one is actually doing anything close to laughing, even in derision. And what Dreher and the others really want is excoriation [as exemplified recently by Mark Shea on Facebook--PP].
Instead it is what seems to me like sanctimonious outrage and offense over a figure of speech. No one was outraged over Dolan saying "Bravo." No one was outraged over when Bush was called stupid or an idiot. Nor over Cardinal Schonborn's teachings finally leading down the line to two lesbians celebrating their same-sex household via a baptism ceremony. But now, to dare even rhetorically to appropriate a phrase in a non-liturgical manner... ! Wow, suddenly we become apoplectic over our Sense of the Sacred....
Personally, I find Palin's comments in keeping with her preferenced Joe Six Pack swagger and thus mildly annoying. Also no one is noting Palin may have been born Catholic, but her current identification is Fundamentalist or Charismatic, so she is shredding no loyalties here.The fact so many commentators find the baptism line so offensive shows just how bogus the state of commentary has become. IMHO. Professional Catholics now swoon over Pope Francis and take extreme offense over Palin. They speak religiously-motivated compulsions that make their version of Moral Majoritarianism seem not counter-cultural but irrelevant.
Saturday, May 03, 2014
Palin is excoriated, Dolan gets a pass
Our correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, sends us this:
Dolan is my bishop. He is a loser as was his predecessor and his before him..
ReplyDeleteGod, save us from the hierarchy!
Karl
A counterpoint might be this:
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But even here I read the comments and think, really? Palin's "sick" comments? Americans are aghast at the idea of torture, but gorge themselves on film violence far wore than murder and are increasingly supporting mixed martial arts. I wonder if much of the electricity around the issue is far more tied to it being government or military sponsored, since we all know all things governmental or military in a conservative sense are "de facto" bad. So much of our perception is distorted by our associations. I still recall listening to one of my students give a speech about their hero, an African-American around the civil war who went around cutting the throats of plantation owners and starting riots. I had to ask him afterwards, "So, you think he was wrong, but he's a hero?"
If the government water boarded a woman agent who had blown up a Harlem bus and who had key information about a cult group that had plans to blow up black churches across the country in the name of white supremacism, would that be sick? If they were religiously motivated like Fred Phelps, and Biden quipped, "I guess he got another sort of baptism," would people be phased? I highly doubt it. Her cavalier attitude is off-putting. But offensive as in truly sacrilegious? Again, the umbrage seems inflated.
Having read the Anchoress chiming in with "Seriously, now that I consider it, how dare she?" I am confirmed in thinking that the Everyman and Everywoman Catholic bloggers have pretty much now jumped the shark. "Seriously, now that I consider it, how dare she?" Seriously? This from someone who rides shotgun with Mark Shea. How dare she.
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