Sex, lies, and Catholicism

Seventh-century icon of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, 4th-century martyrs who some believe united in a wedding-like ritual of "adelphopoiesis". Via Wikipedia.

The money grafs, for me, in the Times coverage (by Jason Horowitz, and really worth reading) of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's lurid accusations that Pope Francis has been orchestrating a multiyear coverup of the sins of Cardinal McCarrick isn't the fact that Viganò was involved in a coverup himself, while he was serving as nuncio in the US in April 2014, when he ordered a halt to investigations of sexual misconduct with adult men and seminarians on the part of Archbishop John Niestedt of St. Paul, which I more or less knew, or that he was responsible for embarrassing the pope by arranging a meeting for him with Kim Davis, the gay marriage-license martyr town clerk from Kentucky, which I used to know, but the way he fought against being shipped to the US in the first place:

Throughout his power struggle, Archbishop Viganò had been writing urgent appeals to Benedict to stay in the Vatican.

He said he needed to stay because his brother, a Jesuit biblical scholar, was sick and needed care, and he accused Cardinal Bertone of breaking his promise to promote him to the rank of cardinal....

But Archbishop Viganò’s brother, Lorenzo Viganò, told Italian journalists that his brother “lied” to Benedict that he had to remain in Rome “because he had to take care of me, sick.” To the contrary, he said he had lived in Chicago and was fine and hadn’t talked to his brother in years over an inheritance dispute.

Viganò is really a big liar, a shameful thing to say about a 77-year-old archbishop. If you read his scabrous letter with the understanding that he's probably lying, it reads more coherently, and if conservative Catholics down to our own nuncio Monsignor Douthat are taking it seriously, it's because they really, really want to—Douthat shows he doesn't really believe it by offering his own fictional account of the McCarrick business in which Viganò's accusations are false but Francis is still sort of guilty:

The Eggs Benedict Option

Wendy Goodfriend's Springtime Eggs Benedict with Asparagus, Ham, and Quick Lemony Hollandaise Sauce on Meyer Lemon–Rosemary Toast, via KQED San Francisco. I've used this gag before and I'm sure I'm not the only one but what the hell.

Shorter former New York Times columnist David Brooks, "The Benedict Option", March 14 2017:

The most important religious book of the decade is The Benedict Option by my friend Rod Dreher, which argues that we are entering a new Dark Age, as the struggle over gay rights drives Christian merchants out of business, threatens the tax exemptions and accreditations of Christian schools and colleges, and threatens to blacklist Orthodox Christians and Jews from many professions and corporations. The L.G.B.T. armies have won the culture war, and the only option for the faithful is to follow the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, who organized monastic communities around Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed in the sixth century, and withdraw from the wider society into scattered settlements in which the fires of doctrinal purity can continue to burn. But that's only because he hates the gay, unlike me. I think we should adopt Orthodox Pluralism, in which each of us surrenders to some orthodoxy that will overthrow the obsessions of the self and put one's life in contact with a transcendent ideal, while staying friendly with those who disagree with us.

I guess that's why it's the most important religious book of the decade even though the decade has almost four years to go and even though, as Brooks makes clear, it presents an absurdly false view of the current state of the world, pushes a preposterous proposal that the author obviously has no intention of carrying out, and is based on the stoking of irrational fears of our fellow human beings to arouse hatred and paranoia. It's really important because it enables Brooks to display what a wonderful person he is, with his tolerant magnanimity, being infinitely superior to Dreher but loving and respecting him all the same.

Update: LA

Updated—see below

Authorities say suspect going to L.A. Pride had 3 assault rifles & chemicals for explosives: https://t.co/POZtiPwKIg pic.twitter.com/p0qYMSBRQF

— Ryan Parker (@TheRyanParker) June 12, 2016

Not to stereotype, but I'm betting the James Wesley Howell who was apprehended in Santa Monica on his way to the Los Angeles Pride Parade with a deadly arsenal in his car was not an Islamic terrorist (I'm not a bit afraid to use the words).

But I'll bet you any money he's got something deeply in common with Omar Mateen: a gloomy, hate-filled, and theologically ill-informed and backward interpretation of a fine old religious tradition, a deep-seated fear (first) and hatred (afterwards) of the idea of men having sex with men, presumably rooted in conflict over his own sexual identity, and an attraction to violence and death, including his own. In other words a typical religious conservative male with some (hopefully) very atypical emotional issues.

The particular religion (Muslim, Protestant, Catholic—other traditions have terrorists, but not so marked perhaps with sexual terror) isn't the important thing. The important thing is the attitude. Can you admit that, WASP or Waziristani, al-Qa'eda or Y'all Quaeda, it's the same disease? Can you say the words, "conservative fundamentalist, homophobic terrorist"?

If you can't say them, it's because you've otherized the problem into a place where you can't even see it,  probably because you're afraid to see it in yourself, and I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to talk to you. You need to see it in yourself, as you need to see racism if you want to cope with it. What we need isn't a war with Islam, it's a jihad, a struggle that would be better conducted nonviolently, against conservatism in that hidebound, murderous sense. If you can't say the words, you're part of the problem.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.

UPDATE: I lose my bet there, as commenter Saurs pointed out at NMMNB after I went to bed; the Powell guy does not fit that profile in any clear way; he doesn't seem to have any ill will toward the the LGTB community, being a 20-year-old out B himself, or any standout religious affiliations. He does qualify as a rightwinger from my standpoint, an NRA enthusiast and a dweller in the mists of Mt. Paranoia, based on what the Los Angeles Times says about his Facebook page:

The site includes political posts, including one in which he compares Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler. In another, he repeats conspiracy theories that the government was behind notorious terrorist attacks, including Sept. 11, 2001. That post shares a video claiming that last year’s terror attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was a hoax and attributable to the “New World Order.” 

He absolutely should not have been traveling with all those weapons, since he was on probation since mid-April in lieu of a one-year prison sentence for intimidating neighbors with a firearm, and getting rid of all his guns was part of the terms of his probation. But we have no idea what, if anything, he planned to do with the things.

I'll leave the post as it is as an object lesson on the danger of jumping to conclusions.

Update

"He was not a stable person ... He beat me," Orlando gunman's ex-wife says https://t.co/eLhFSCrUnI pic.twitter.com/zUXz56Os93

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 12, 2016

Gunman's father tells NBC News it wasn't religious motivation, says son seeing men kissing "affected him very badly" pic.twitter.com/aOVQr9SxPR

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 12, 2016

Ron Paul is no sodomechthriac

Update below the fold

Poor Ron Paul has been taking a lot of heat because of the former campaign staffer who claims that the candidate is not homophobic, even though he is afraid to shake hands with gay men, or to use their bathrooms.

Of course he clearly is a homophobe by any etymologically rational definition of the term--composed out of homo- (ὁμο) (short for the modern Greco-Roman bastard term homosexual) and phobos (φόβος) (Ancient Greek for "fear"). That is, he is scared to death of gay people. He may love them all personally, as his Savior commands, and respect their right to Do It any way they like, as a true libertarian must, but he fears that something really bad will happen to him if he touches one of them, or something that one of them has sat upon. Not the same thing at all. Similarly [see below the jump]...

 If you are chiefly worried about homophobia, you might find this song pretty offensive, with its rank stereotyping and reference to old spouses' tales. If it's sodomechthria that concerns you, you may like it anyway.