Note: this post is excerpted from my Equus nom Veritas blog. The whole thing can be read here. I think that Mr Mark Shea is right, when he writes that "The Catholic Fascist"
seems like a nine day wonder blog. Actually, his analysis is pretty much spot on in general:
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Mark Shea wrote:
We'll see how long it goes before it peters out. I am glad that all that pent-up contempt for actual church teaching about abortion, women's ordination and homosexual practice, so long dammed up behind a wall of pretense at the Debate Club at Auschwitz, is finally finding release....Too bad really, because some of their satire is wicked funny and can only be outdone by the unconscious self-parody of some of the crazier voices in the right wing blogosphere....satire without regard for what the Tradition actually teaches will soon be trained on the gospel if you are an ideologue who holds the Church's teaching in contempt when it happens to threaten your ideological commitments. And without regard for the Tradition, you can also wind up just saying anything in order to score points and lashing out at anybody with the wrong perceived tribal affiliations.
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I would add that their general focus seems less like a parody of the truly crazy folks on the far right of the blogosphere as it is a general attempt to get at anyone who has ever slighted them. Actually, I will go further: it's an attempt to get at anyone who disagrees with them. How else does one explain their targeting of the
Zippy Catholic--who mostly
returned to blogging to stalwartly stand with the
Coalition of Clarity and others who oppose the intrinsic evil of torture? He is not so much guilty of being a far-right extremist (how many of those make opposing torture the focus of their blogs?) as it is that he duly noted that Vox Nova might as well be "
The Debate Club at
Auscwhitz."
Their blogroll is the very image of inconsistency as a parody. While there are some Catholics who would rightly be included in any list of "crazy, far right" Catholics, this can't really be said of such folks as Fr John Zuhlsdorf (props, though, for their parody of his feeder feed, which at least began as a good parody before falling captive to their unhinged hatred of Fr Z and all that he stands for), Mr Jeff Miller (who actually knows how to do parody), the Archbold brothers, or Elizabeth Scalia, to say nothing of the fairly mainstream tho orthodox Inside Catholic website). These folks all have in common only that they are conservatives and Catholics; and surely they have each at some point taken the wrong side in a debate (as have I), but the lampooning leveled at them looks far less like a matter of giving correction in a funny manner than a malicious smear campaign which occasionally manages a few laugh-lines.
Continue reading.
Tags: Rant Idiocy Cafeteria-Catho Licism
