“But… but… the Traditional Ways Are… Are… Toooo Haaaard!” Wherein Fr. Z Rants.

Father Zed draws the logical connections between Mao's Cultural Revolution and today, and between a 'big character poster' and Shawn King's tweets, which I posted here.

From Fr Z's Blog

I blocked out the name of the nut job who posted this tweet, lest he get traffic.

It couldn’t have been closer to “Pò sì jiù!… Down With The Four Olds!”

The tweet is the less eloquent contemporary version of a “big character poster”.

The twit who tweeted this has a page which says that his political party is Black Lives Matter.  I didn’t know they were a political party now.

This is from the About page of the official site of Black Lives Matter:

Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

I am not entirely sure how destroying religious art (which the property of others) “centers Black joy”.   How does that create an “immediate improvement”?

Any person, anywhere, and really for any reason, sincere or not, could claim that is why he did X.

Also from that page:

We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

Big-business abortion, Planned Parenthood was created for the elimination of black lives.   They exploite black lives in the worst ways possible.

Has Black Lives Matters denounced and attacked big-business abortion?  I really don’t know.

From the Black Lives Matter “What We Believe” page:

We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate differences and commonalities.

We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people.

We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.

We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.

Is that what we are seeing across the country?  Are differences being celebrated? Are commonalities being celebrated?  Is freedom and justice for all people being promoted?  How beautiful has Black Lives Matters been for the 1500 buildings destroyed or damaged in Minneapolis, including low-income housing?  How restorative has it been for the people who owned those buildings?  How are the immediate improvements for those who lost their livelihood over night?

How about this?

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer?affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).

I don’t have a clue about who wrote this, but I can’t grasp how “patriarchal” things can be when a huge percentage of families in this communities don’t have full-time, life committed fathers in their homes.  I don’t know how much more disrupted the nuclear family structure could be.  And … “comfortable”… what does that mean?  Not having to overcome any obstacles?

“Queer-affirming”?  “Homonormative thinking”?

This stuff is way out there.

Take a look at their “Co-Founders” page.  HERE

My great fear is that this movement, as it becomes radicalized among those who are enthusiastic but maybe not very bright, will cause terrible backlashes.

Yesterday I was cursed at and given the finger by a young white woman driving a car with sheets of paper taped to her windows scrawled in black marker with “Black Lives Matter”.  Her penpersonship was as finely crafted as the rest of her skills in communication.

I suspect that this poor young thing is so doped up on left-wing talking points, so irrational because of years of lousy public education, that she has not a clue about the meaning of or consequences of her actions.  Vast swathes of our young people live consequence free lives.

A small slice of the leadership of this and of other groups want purposely to drive people to recklessness and anarchic violence because they want to spur a harsh counter-reaction from the Right.

They want counter-groups to form with which they can have open war in the streets, all as a prelude to tearing down society.  

They destroy public memory through, for example, destruction of statues.   

They want a Year Zero.

Everything promoted by the Father of Lies … is that too patriarchal?…, the Serpent… is that too speciesist? …, the Enemy of the Soul has grains of truth which make the susceptible person liable to latch on and to swallow the hook with the lie.

And there is always the technique of telling the lie so often that it punches through incredulity.

A tree is known from its fruits.

As I write this, I am in S. Minneapolis where I grew up, near to where there are blocks of wrecked buildings and damaged lives.

How indifferent to the sufferings of those who will be trampled under the feet of the looter, arsonist, and anarchist are those greater powers with the deep money and the long-term goals?

There is a proverb in French and English, the chilling, “On ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs… You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”  This is famously attributed to both Lenin and Robespierre.   “So, lots of people die and suffer.  If you want to make an omelette, you’ve gotta break some eggs.”

I don’t expect many people younger than I am to know who those two people are, Robespierre and Lenin, given the state of education for the last decades.   That’s scary. George Santayana said:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Meanwhile, we had better think through the implications of a growing movement of mindless destruction. That’s what the loon at the top of this post really wants: destroy everything.

Do you suppose it is a coincidence that neighborhoods and communities purposely targeted by the Planned Parenthood death-for-profit machine for de facto genocide are where the howls of rage and violence now rise?

Is it a surprise that young people whose minds have been turned to slime by the acid flowing from their little screens should buy into the hollow rhetoric of revolution?

Are any of you really puzzled that the confluence of COVID-1984 and the well-orchestrated eruption of anarchy has overlapped this summer, before a Presidential election and an important cycle for the Senate?

The implications to me suggest we priests had better get really serious and stop fiddling around with the half measures of complacency and the easy path of minimal challenges.

If we stick to the squishy path rather than the rocky upward climb of our Tradition, we will sink out of sight in the slow-drowning quicksand of the world.

“But… but… the traditional ways are… are… toooo haaaard!”

I keep talking about our Catholic identity.

If we don’t know who we are, as Catholics, and if we cannot articulate who we are and what we believe, then why should anyone listen to us?

In the public square, powerful catholic politicians make a mockery of the Church in the eyes of the world by their support for things precisely contrary to the precepts of nature and teachings of the Church.

Why should the Church have any influence in the public square?

A lot of people and groups of people have lost their compasses.

Meanwhile, crux stat dum volivitur orbis.

This is where we have to re-orient ourselves, at least we Catholics.

If we want to have any influence in the present state of affairs, we have to reclaim our identity.

If we want to save souls, we have to reclaim our identity.