Hieronymus
17d ago
No dunk taken. I was inclined to suggest in an earlier post that part of the difference in perspective came from our different views of grace, imputed vs. infused, but enough Roman Catholics concerns have rhymed with mine to give me pause.
Merry Christmas!
Hieronymus
18d ago
But if you build up trust, it is sometimes possible to be there at the right moment when someone is ready to hear the hard truth that they need.
Thanks. You’re right, of course. I am so used to public figures giving this sort of reasoning disingenuously that I don’t stop to consider whether one might be sincere.
Hieronymus
19d ago
Thanks. Reported as AAQC.
Fr. James Martin is 100% serious and a true believer. He doesn't actually compromise on abortion, he just thinks gun control is an equivalently serious pro life issue.
I know that OP brought up abortion, but I wasn’t thinking of abortion here: I was thinking of Martin’s approach to sexual sins, particularly homosexuality but also various kinds of cohabitation. He seems to prefer having a group of massgoers in unrepentant grave sin over the kind of call to repentance that would split them into a smaller group of repentant massgoers and a larger group that eschews the faith entirely. If that reading is correct, it’s hard to see how he isn’t at odds with the gospel.
I suppose that your understanding of Martin’s motives is much better informed than mine, which is largely limited to social media and reading him in quotation. But man, the pattern match is strong.
… and the college of cardinals retains a conservative plurality large enough to maintain a functional veto.
Interesting. I did not know this.
These are institutionalists who see gentlemanly behavior as very important; liberals know that setting a precedent for hardball will blow up in their faces and conservatives know that there's no real need to play hardball.
The contrast to the evangelical experience in twentieth-century America is really striking here. In the early twentieth century, evangelicals in many denominations realized that all of their institutions – seminaries, universities, missions boards, denominational leadership – had come to be controlled by modernists. They fought back, still not realizing how badly outgunned they were, and in all the big denominations they lost.
But of course we evangelicals aren’t permanently tied to any hierarchy, so they were free to build new institutions and leadership structures. In the middle of the century there was a renewed debate about how those ought to relate to the mainline churches, which still had some orthodox believers in them. In 1979, conservative Southern Baptists realized that modernists were beginning to gain control of their denomination and used the convention to begin their own march through the institutions. After his appointment to lead the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1993, theological conservative Al Mohler famously (and controversially) purged the faculty.
Different evangelical institutions have taken different stances over the years. Those that accommodate liberal theology in their ranks usually have an easier time dealing with secular institutions, and their leadership may be able to stave off mission drift for a generation or so. But those which play hardball with theological liberals have done a much better job staying on mission across generations. As evangelicals have come to realize that we live in negative world, the Southern Baptist approach has become more popular.
In the first draft of my reply to Sloot, I began to speculate that evangelicalism will become more theologically and politically conservative, and that it will at the same time shrink to become less politically relevant to the secular right’s interests. But of course I cannot say for sure.
Traditional Catholics who actually matter simply do not think in terms of years or decades and so the current pope is viewed as a temporary and ineffectual roadblock.
A dear friend of mine is Roman Catholic, though by no means a traditionalist. It is remarkable to me just how many things her social environment within the RCC accepts as valid Catholic positions because of the lack of disciplinary boundary drawing from the hierarchy. It’s an ongoing source of temptation to her, made all the more subtle because she doesn’t recognize it.
Of course, I hope that you all come to your senses and convert tomorrow. Failing that, I hope you are right that theological liberalism in the Roman church is just a passing phase. But if the time to wait it out is measured in generations, then the cost must also be measured in generations.
Hieronymus
19d ago
Yes, by the religious left I mean what early twentieth century Protestants called modernism. (I think that contemporary Catholics had a different, broader definition of the word.) It’s what you get when you accept the tenets of secular progressivism and try to rebuild Christian practice on top of them. It’s not really Christian.
That said, I’ve always understood James Martin to be in this camp. Roman Catholic ecclesiology didn’t allow the fundamentalist-modernist controversy to take the form it did among Protestants, so the divide isn’t as obvious; at least that’s my take.
If you are ever inclined to do related effortposts, I’d love to read about the dynamics (positive and negative) created by having the likes of Martin and Vigano in the same institutional church, as well as how tradcaths have reacted to Francis’ papacy and the loss of the Vatican’s social role as a countercultural bulwark.
Hieronymus
19d ago
I want to ponder a couple of your observations a bit more, because I have some thoughts to untangle. But as a religious righty myself, I would encourage you to distinguish three groups:
- The religious left when it is code switching to speak to the religious right: I think the United Methodist pastor from OP is here.
- Folks traveling from the religious right to the religious left, who may or may not have admitted it yet
- The religious right itself
In particular, I think that the growth of the second group is distinct from drift within the third group. That doesn’t imply that the religious right proper isn’t changing at all, because it is, but if you try to plot its course by following, e.g., Russell Moore, you are going to be confused.
Hieronymus
20d ago
I can see why one might think so, as a polytheistic precursor to the version we now have, but it's not in line with Judean polytheists' practice. When King Josiah of Judah decided he was done putting up with all this pagan nonsense, the Jerusalem temple had plenty of artifacts of polytheistic worship for him to burn, grind up, and/or throw into the river.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Are Christians morally obligated to forgive someone if God has forgiven them? ... Would it be wrong of me to refuse to marry/date her because of her past?
You would have to forgive her her sins. That doesn't entail pretending that her past experiences won't impact her future relationships. So the answer depends on your motives, but generally no, it's not wrong.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Agreed. I think that doing that at scale is necessarily tied up with acknowleging and respecting gender roles so that you can equip people to fill them. Doing away with no-fault divorce would also help in the long run.
I think that modern Fishtown residents have rational concerns about the risks and benefits of marriage in their social environment. There are a lot of pieces to that. Top down changes could help, if that were an option, but there need to be on the ground changes too. I don't know how practical any of that is, absent another Great Awakening.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Do religious people actually genuinely believe that those who willingly perform such stunts are capable of having all their sins washed away?
Sure, if she repents and puts her faith in Jesus Christ. Believers' righteousness is not based in what we have done, but in what Christ has done for us. God forgives much direr sins than that.
The cherry on this cake is that she can get married to a fairly normal guy tomorrow because riley reid, another adult entertainer did this too.
Maybe. Christianity doesn't draw an automatic line from forgiven to ideal wife material, to be clear.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
If you look at the US political spectrum through a lens of economics and authoritarianism, both parties do look pretty far right compared to most of Europe.…
On economics, I buy it. But authoritarianism is slipperier. On issues of speech, religious freedom, gun rights, or search and seizure, the U.S. is far from perfect but far better than most of Europe – certainly than the European countries most visible from this side of the pond: the U.K., France, and Germany.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
If that were the case, wouldn't it apply to Roman Catholic undergraduates as well as to seminarians?
I'm not Catholic nor close to Catholic seminaries, so this is just spitballing: I wonder if the situation can be explained by the facts that Roman Catholic seminarians are a relatively captive audience regardless of how liberal the institution is (in a way that Baptist seminarians, say, are not) and that young Catholic seminarians are heavily preselected for cultural and theological conservatism in a way that their professors weren't.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I think it was several years ago now that they made messages impossible to use from the mobile web site so that they could pressure you to install the messenger application.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I am a “Roe v. Wade Republican” who also opposes Griggs v. Duke. The 2024 RNC publicly diminished pro-lifers’ influence. This is probably a consequence of Dobbs, and while I am annoyed at the squishy middle of America on the issue, I am grateful for the win that inspired the blowback.
It is true that opposition to Roe has a discrete constituency, whereas opposition to Griggs does not. But I think that opposition to affirmative action is almost universal among red- and gray-tribe Republicans. To the extent that the median Republican voter understands disparate impact analysis, he doesn’t like it.
I think your “Griggs Republican” is in a tough spot for two reasons, one shared with “Roe Republicans” and one not. Like pro-lifers, opponents of Griggs have the problem that a lot of elected Republicans are in fact blue tribe and are thus either hostile to the issue or indifferent and unwilling to spend any political or social capital on it. But I think what distinguishes your image of a Griggs Republican is not just opposition to Griggs; it’s also membership in the gray tribe. And it’s true that gray-tribers are a small part of the Republican coalition.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
The descriptions of 4B make it sound a lot like MGTOW. I don’t know a ton about either, but I remember Men Going Their Own Way as a neighborhood of the broader manosphere, when the blogosphere was more of a going concern. It was generally made up of men who had been burned hard.
I also don’t know if the causes are similar – men mostly seem to come to MGTOW when they are looking to explain and contextualize bitter personal experiences. Is 4B an actual backlash in the West, or is it just that some journalists want to cultivate a backlash? When women join in South Korea, are they operating from painful personal experiences, or are they reacting to a consensus that tells them that any self-respecting woman in their situation should be bitter?
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Maybe it's because I was a teenager, but it sure felt like there was a gray tribe in the '90s. The mores of Slashdot weren't blue tribe mores, but the mores of Reddit now are. The Eich affair and CoCs in open source made it clear a change had taken place.
I'm enough of a red-triber that I don't know how it happened, only that it did. And I think we lost something important.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
The political environment isn’t at all conducive to it, but even under a narrow reading of federal powers the feds could prohibit interstate traffic in abortifacients or crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I am curious to hear your reasons for this. My state seems to be moving dramatically (and for me, quite disappointingly) in the other direction.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
What was uniquely bad about the initiative in Florida that it caused some supporters of legal abortion to vote against it?
I don’t think we can speculate too much without seeing the survey question. 14% is a pretty small number of abortion supporters, so maybe it’s the percentage comfortable with heavy restrictions plus or minus the lizardman’s constant.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
1 Corinthians 10:14-22, which Paul is writing to Christians in Corinth:
Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Hieronymus
3mo ago
...instead just try to filter for the intelligent liberals and leftists.
I'd say that the Motte is full of '90s-style intelligent liberals. Old-school economic leftists aren't common but aren't totally unheard of, and social democrats are common enough to be unremarkable. We do lack for woke and woke-adjacent folks.
That said, I am quite conservative by Motte standards, so this is a view from the right.
I don't endorse Richard Hanania but I sympathize strongly with much of his recent writing on this topic.
I don't usually read Hanania, but he is sharp. Is there a post or two of his you would recommend on the issue?
Hieronymus
4mo ago
I think there are a modest but meaningful number of men online, whether they were successful cads or not, who are coming to realize that rejecting Christian sexual ethics has been bad for people of both sexes. I wonder if they'll be the one group of irreligious moderns who will find the natural law persuasive.
Hieronymus
4mo ago
What you're observing is that most people are 'suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards'.
I don’t think this is true, and let me give an analogy. I have been several times to a sportsmen’s show in a small city, with classes, vendors hawking their wares, guides pitching services, that kind of thing. The level of firearm proficiency among attendees is pretty high, and the level of firearms safety is very high. At an event like this, you could pull random people out of the crowd on a busy show floor and hand them loaded rifles without causing me any concern at all. Obviously there was no reason to do this and no one did it, but the odds of an incident would be low.
One year there was a booth selling stun guns, and people did some pretty irresponsible things with them – things they would never have done with firearms. The people were the same, but their behavior was very different. To everyone there guns were serious and required respect, but to many stun guns were toys, and they treated them like toys.
Hieronymus
4mo ago
You know, as an actual literal tradcon I can say that this guy just shouldn't be dating- the man pays in relationships, that's part and parcel of rejecting modern gender roles.
But society should do its best to make it possible for men to fill those roles. I think OP is right to suggest that the British government is setting out to avoid this responsibility more or less explicitly.
Hieronymus
4mo ago
If the story is true, why is U.S. intelligence leaking the details now?
I think it does increase the likelyhood that the Ukraine did it rather than the United States, but I am taking the story's allocations of personal responsibility with a shakerful of salt.
Cultural differences are real and meaningful, but in this case I wonder if the difference in honesty looks bigger due to a difference in norms about how to return lost property. Unless I were in a small town, handing a lost wallet in to the police probably wouldn't occur to me, and then it would likely be option two or three.
More options
Context Copy link