By SHAUN KENNEY
If one requires some sort of preface to the entire week (and to this week’s column), one is reminded by way of First Things of the words of Richard Pipes, a noted Russian historian who commented on how the Bolsheviks managed to overrun their native country so quickly — by co-opting the populace through guilt. To wit:
“Like the protagonists in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, the Bolsheviks had to spill blood to bind their wavering adherents with a band of collective guilt. The more innocent victims the Bolshevik Party had on its conscience, the more the Bolshevik rank and file had to realize that there was no retreating, no faltering, no compromising, that they were inextricably bound to their leaders, and could only march with them to ‘total victory’ regardless of the cost, or go down with them in ‘total doom’.”
Thus we are reminded of Nietzsche’s sentiment in The Gay Science about the endgame of power and the drowning of innocence in a sea of blood — that God is dead, God remains dead, that we are His murderers and nothing can wipe the blood from our hands.
Such it was with the Bolsheviks, so too is it with the social media mob.
Two ugly sentiments, to be sure. Yet we see both play out time and time again as social media and the “trust me, I’m lying” set push us into defending what a mere five years ago would have been indefensible. Read on. . . .
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We start with a set scene. Students from Covington Catholic School wearing the wrong hats, the Hebrew Israelite agitators, a drum-beating indigenous activist, and the Twitter mob that plunged forward in a public lynching of students guilty of Orwellian facecrime (or as the whittled argument currently suggests, inappropriate smiling)?
Of course, the reaction becomes the story.
Yet if one found oneself as part of the lynch mob who advocated violence against the kids in this situation because of what you wanted the story to be and still do, one should be ashamed.
One may not feel shame. One may hide it in excuses that are little more than racism. One would be entirely wrong, because such excuses make us the problem — not the students.
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At the Catholic Diocese of Covington, whose public relations team chose to react in fear rather than behave as a prince of the Church ought — with decorum, gravitas, and authority — and threw their Catholic students under the bus for an edited click from a Twitter account eventually banned by the platform. Cowards, all.
Where is such expedition for the likes of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick?
Where is this energy directed against Planned Parenthood, whose profits were boosted 150 percent and whose abortion business spiked another four percent this year?
Where was this leadership as it relates to religious freedom in America?
I do not blame the bishop as much as his handlers; a chronic problem among a bureaucracy that seeks to manage the bishops without informing them. What outrageous timidity. Anathema sit.
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Mrs. R writes to First Teachers regarding my column of September 20 about her husband who potentially missed a priestly vocation and what a unique and perplexing burden that is to carry.
What amazes me more is that I am not alone in carrying this. Many men shared their stories privately with me in the weeks after penning that article, and it is indeed an intensely private matter.
To have offered oneself as a priest during a vocations shortage and be told “no” due to — of all things — rigidity in one’s faith? In a sea of McCarricks?
There is nothing to worry about. I have seven children, three of whom are sons. Perhaps there is a vocation or two in the mix and the last laugh will not be mine, but God’s.
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The following is a four-part series penned by Anonymous Andrew entitled “An Opinion From the Trenches” — republished with permission from the author.
I hope it impresses you the way it impressed me. — SVK
Part Two
Although it is surely a touchy subject, also caught up in this firestorm was the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There was a delicate balance between the confessor and the penitent that may have been disturbed. Consider:
First: The loss of the old confessional and any semblance of anonymity and comfort. Some, at least, could have more readily envision confessing to God through His representative rather than a sort of one on one with the priest.
Second: Being practically coerced at the time into always receiving Holy Communion every time one went to Mass, whether one felt comfortable with that or not. Now most everyone feels out of place if they don’t always receive Communion every time they are at Mass.
Third: It is doubtful that we now receive nearly enough all-around clear moral guidance and reinforcement to make a confident formal Confession. At least since the turbulent 1960s and especially in our current troubled times.
Fourth: It is reasonable for us all to hope to get to Heaven and where there is hope to find our non-Catholic friends. Also goodwill among religions is desirable and wonderful.
However, if the Catholic hierarchy goes overboard in exalting other religions it can mislead the faithful, such as some of us thinking that we have been given tacit approval to confessing straight to God instead of through a priest.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
Fifth: The introduction of face-to-face Confession inadvertently created two classes of confessors and subtle problems.
Confession is a powerful sacrament and, at least, the most normal, easiest, and surest way to have our sins washed away by our good God. Tough it out.
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We love your comments! First Teachers encourages readers to submit their thoughts, views, opinions, and insights to the author directly, either via e-mail or by mail.
Please send any correspondence to Shaun Kenney c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Road, Kents Store, VA 23084 or by e-mail to svk2cr@virginia.edu.
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