Sed Contra: Benign Appearances

Today’s radicals hide behind the skirts of old liberals. This tactic pervades the National Catholic Reporter’s lame defense of Call to Action (CTA), recently disciplined by Bishop Bruskewicz of Lincoln, Nebraska. In that piece, Editor Tom Fox makes CTA’s radical dissent sound like the mild idealism of aging flower children.

Far more serious issues are at stake. The problem is not the old liberalism, however misguided it was. Old liberals sought to reinvigorate a Church they thought basically sound; CTA’s radicals want to tear it down and replace it. Radicalism means “getting to the root,” and they mean to do just that.

As the Crisis exposé (February 1996) made clear, what CTA offered for consumption at its annual meeting was directly disrespectful and dismissive of the Magisterium and the Holy Father’s leadership. The diocesan newspaper of Lincoln promptly reprinted our article in support of the bishop’s judgment that CTA is at odds with the Catholic faith.

It is typical of Catholic radicals, when they are called on the carpet, to run for cover under the blanket of “responsible dissent” and “freedom of conscience,” the familiar mantras of the old liberal establishment. But even the liberals of old did not seek to overthrow all hierarchical authority in the Church, or look to goddess and nature worship to “correct” the so-called patriarchal problem of the Catholic tradition.

Such is the nature of this revolution, as our society moves from modernity into the postmodern. Modernists, for all their faults, were still largely romanticists—they believed the world had an intelligible order, a heart that could be discovered, though they labored in vain to find it.

Postmoderns no longer look for the logos in the world or in humanity—they reject the possibility of its existence. They reject the knowable order of the world, the given nature of things, because it restricts their personal options, their agenda for restructuring society.

Groups like CTA suffer from the postmodern malaise—a radical disdain for hierarchy, tradition, and claims to universal truth, especially moral truths.

Not all the people attracted to CTA and its look-alikes are aware of its downside. A spiritual quest can place us among diverse wayfarers. But some know exactly what they’re doing and allow their message to be conveniently and usefully laundered through media always willing to champion the enlightened activist against the hidebound traditionalist. Notice how the label “extremist” is always slapped on the same side!

Don’t mistake it, a deep philosophic divide is emerging in this country—and it’s not necessarily between liberals and conservatives. It’s between postmoderns, those who improvise their morality to justify unfettered self-definition and fulfillment, and those who still seek to know and obey the moral order as it was created before us.

As Russell Hittinger has pointed out in these pages (September 1992), even our highest court has been infected by the postmodern mentality as witnessed in the Casey decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Orthodox Catholics and realists of different stripes find themselves in an increasingly countercultural stance. Bishop Bruskewicz has had the honesty and courage to point this out. Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider, was at the top of his list of offending organizations. It seems somewhat incongruous that at the same time the bishops would stand up to the president on his partial-birth veto, they would fail to offer the bishop of Lincoln some public support.

Indeed, the president’s veto perfectly illustrates the bait-and-switch tactics of the postmodern mind. Clinton’s justifying rhetoric about “health” masks the underlying nihilism of a culture increasingly clueless about how to make a moral argument.

Catholics who consider themselves moderates are being duped by the rhetorical evasions, the liberal masquerade, of postmodern dissidents. Ever so sympathetic to those who are seeking greater participation and inclusiveness in the Church, they fail to recognize the destructive consequences of their ideas and attitudes.

But once moderates begin to trace their unease about the state of society to the duplicity of radical slogans, they will see that the debate has gone well beyond the vagaries of personal fulfillment. Today it’s about protecting innocent life, marriage, the priesthood, and the infirm against the principalities and powers arrayed around us.

Author

  • Deal W. Hudson

    Deal W. Hudson is ​publisher and editor of The Christian Review and the host of "Church and Culture," a weekly two-hour radio show on the Ave Maria Radio Network.​ He is the former publisher and editor of Crisis Magazine.

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