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Traditional Catholic Faith => Fighting Errors in the Modern World => Topic started by: Matthew on April 24, 2007, 10:09:35 AM

Title: Common sense and the Virginia shootings
Post by: Matthew on April 24, 2007, 10:09:35 AM
Title: Common sense and the Virginia shootings
Post by: Cletus on April 24, 2007, 02:03:39 PM
Fleming makes some good points. But two things. First, I think that he could use some good taste counseling. It's in horribly bad taste, to say the least, to refer to college professors generally as "feebes and foulballs" in a column having to do with an incident in which college professors, five I think, lost their lives. (As for "feebes", how about the old scrapper who headed Cho off at the pass and probably saved the lives of a few of his students?) I thought that Fleming had a thing about Southern courtliness.

But the real problem is that last sentence. Talk about delusional. WHAT "Church"? The one that allows shrines to St Judas Iscariot? Throws St Valentine Happy-Masses at which gαy couples are blessed? Has posters in the vestibule advertising a feminist play with an obscene name which promotes statutory rape? Has fat nuns in leotards prancing about the altar? Got rid of the statues of Our Lady of Sorrows and St Peregrine and replaced them with smiley face banners that read, "Renew! Rejoice! Feel Good! God's Cool!"?

Mainline Christian churches, including the Conciliar one based in Rome, have been causing misery for over forty years by inflicting sinful "neopagan" rituals on those who blunder into their domain. Where does Fleming think the pagan world got its smarmy touchy-feely liturgical shtick from? The "churches" offer the WORST of what he is denouncing.

Fleming should get real by getting specific. He might direct people only to Evangelical churches that have big stained glass windows modeled after Plockhorst's beloved Good Shepherd painting. Or to Traditional Catholic churches. But these are not always really churches. The one closest to me is an abandoned shoe store that is open for two hours on Sunday mornings.

Or did he really mean Church with a capital C? Something spiritual you can access in your own chamber with the door closed? But only belief can make the C capital, and his advice was for unbelievers too. And then it should be a question of the comfort of Christ anyway.



Title: Common sense and the Virginia shootings
Post by: Matthew on April 24, 2007, 02:09:29 PM
Yes, he's not perfect, but he did make many good points.

If I only posted things that were "perfectly kosher", I would be restricted to a few authors -- and most of the posts would end up coming from myself ;)

But since I don't have that much time, I will post other articles, even if they have their flaws.  :reporter:

In Christ,

Matthew
Title: Common sense and the Virginia shootings
Post by: Cletus on April 24, 2007, 02:27:20 PM
No problem with posting it. It's understood that that does not necessarily imply even partial approbation. (Though I would suspect that it does. And I've never read anything by Fleming with which I didn't mostly agree.)

I've had it out for him personally ever since he compared Mel Gibson's intelligence unfavorably to that of Malibu Barbie. (Not that Gibson isn't worthy of public rebuke on a few scores. But he's definitely not dumb.)

But the broader gripe is a certain patronizing attitude which apparently clueless political conservatives have towards "religion" and "the church"and "the place God has in human experience."

The really orthodox Catholic objection to Fleming's closing counsel is that there's only one True Church, and getting mixed up with even the least objectionable aspects of false ones will be of small solace to anyone in the end. But even on Fleming's own terms his counsel if absurd for the reasons I indicated above. (Of course, if Fleming is a true Catholic, he could claim that he MEANT only the True Church of All Time. Good for him if that is what he meant. But I think that we all know that that is not what he could have thought his readers would think he meant without its being spelled out.)
Title: Common sense and the Virginia shootings
Post by: student on April 26, 2007, 07:56:40 PM
I'm not sure if Fleming is Catholic, although I would guess that he is from his other writings.  However, that magazine, to which I am a very satisfied subscriber, is not overtly religious, and so he has to write in such a way as to take into account the sensibilities of palaeocons from all denominations.  That is unfortunate, but I think it explains some of the ambiguity in his references to "the Church."  It's in most of his articles.