Shea Takes Aim At Traditionalists (Again)
It’s no secret to those in traditional circles that Mark Shea has spent more than his fair share of words on blasting traditionalists for their conduct. Practically trademarking the term “rad-trad-malcontent”, he is known for his ready use of hyperbole and generalization in dealing with his opponents.
Most people who care to have reasonable discourse on the topics they disagree with him on have either resigned themselves to repetitive cranial interaction with the proverbial brick wall or have given up entirely. Some try to get themselves banned from his comment boxes, as a combination of these two strategies.
What is a shame in all of this is that Mark is sometimes a great guy to have on your side. We’ve had perfectly reasonable exchanges and he’s been helpful to me personally when I needed prayers and he was willing to ask his readers for them. I usually keep my distance from him, only sparring when I feel he’s said something particularly obnoxious.
If you feel like it, drop a comment in the box on his article at Inside Catholic. It was a pretty shoddy piece, and I continue to be unable to grasp why he just won’t bother himself with liturgical debate, when he’s so ready to criticize those who care about this pivotal part of Catholic life.
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After reading Mark Shea’s blog I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s not a gentleman. I don’t go near his blog, and I don’t read his stuff on Inside Catholic. You either have to agree with him or he treats you like a mentally retarded bigot.
Just as I was starting to hate him less.
I can’t help but like the guy, but what I find odd about him is that the out-n-out sarcasm and mockery he employs (to devastating effect) on, say, atheists and liberals, he can’t stand in a traditionalist criticizing the Novus Ordo, accusing them of being uncharitable and incapable of being good Christian witnesses to the Faith. I find this reasoning odd because he no doubt turns off any number of non-Christians with his approach to them, but it is he who holds forth on Why Traditionalists Don’t Convert People and why this means that Traditionalism Is Joyless And Doomed To Die.
I couldn’t agree more. I try to be polite and amicable (and this takes great Christian restraint), but I pretty much stay away from his blog (though I do read his Inside Catholic postings).
Nice to discover your blog Steve.
Tito
I’ve learned to ignore Mark when it comes to “Rad-Trad” bashing…he simply takes the most extreme examples, makes them the norm and then proceeds to excoriate the group based on those individuals.
On the other hand, there are definitely kooks at many TLMs. A conversation at a local TLM in which some men were talking after Mass (in front of their young children) about how much they couldn’t wait for the Bishop of Rochester to die was enough to turn my wife and I off to regular attendance there.
On the other hand, I can understand the mentality of those who lived through those times. I’m learning more and more about what happened over the last 40 years and am becoming outraged the more I learn. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been a young father in the late sixties…I have a feeling I would have become a hard, bitter person after a while if I had managed not to jump ship all together. We can’t expect a group of people to spend 40 years being persecuted to immediately “mainline” after the motu proprio (especially when it’s not being implemented as it is in many places).
On the other hand…well, I’m out of hands, so I guess I’ll leave it at that.
Mark Shea’s post reminds me of Bishop Rifan’s critique of “Traditionalists”: http://www.angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6656&sid=1a0b15b951fb185add86010ead9a70c8 .
What I find in his statement is a challenge to change the negative image, perception, and experience of Traditionalists and Traditionalism so that the message won’t be missed or simply disregarded. He also rightly acknowledges our calling, our obligation to “get out of the bunker” to evangelize.
All the rest is merely static IMO…
Mark seems to be unable to write clearly on this issue. It’s like he’s out of his mind. I agee with him on many issues, but I’m losing patience with him on this one. With no other group does he seem more to relish picking a fight.
Perhaps, Peter … but Mark Shea seems to love creating that static. Longtime readers of his site know that that column, both in its initial content and in his rebuttals, is a ritual that has been done over and over and over and over at CAEI.
(1) Shea writes about Trads using the same buzzwords, caricatures and generalizations as last time;
(2) Some Trads complain and Shea says:
(a) “I’m not talking about *you* (if he knows and respects the person), only those BadTrads over there”;
or
(b) “Thanks for proving my point about how bitter and angry Trads are (if he doesn’t … or if the person makes the slightest gesture in the direction of sarcasm or anger).” One of the most comical features of Shea on this or any other subject is how easily and freely he deploys sarcasm while being so thin-skinned about having it tossed back at him. If you write like the Anchoress, Amy Welborn, or Disputations, you have a right to take offense at others’ sarcasm or to say “anger is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.” Not if you write like Shea does.
And we see exactly this schtick playing out in his responses to the Inside Catholic thread.
Another thing: For someone who professes not to care about liturgy, he seems to care an awful lot about the people who do care about liturgy. The way not to care about liturgy is not to write about it. To write about the people who care about a subject that you yourself don’t care about indicates that the issue really is ad hominem, i.e., about persons.
Fair enough, Jonathan. Nevertheless, let’s take the challenge and make a difference in the perception and experience of Tradition for Tradition.
Lest we forget, our faith is to work in love (Gal. 5:6).
Be blessed.
Jonathan,
“he seems to care an awful lot about the people who do care about liturgy.”
I couldn’t agree more on this statement.
Peter,
I’m on the same page with you here as well, let’s make a difference in the perception and experience of Tradition…
Lest we forget, our faith is to work in love (Gal. 5:6)
– That would be something St. Josemaria Escriva would say!
In Jesus, Mary, & Joseph,
Tito
Indeed, you can tell what people don’t care about from what they don’t write about. You will never, for example, find anything about sports, American politics or Indonesian shipping exports on mine. But the regularity with which Shea takes aim at the likes of us convinces me that he has not approached this with a shred of honesty. The fact that his arguments can be so easily identified on a list of classical logical fallacies (straw man, ad hominem, etc) and his utter inability to acknowledge his own prejudices, shows me that he really cannot be trusted to be intellectually honest. It brings everything else he writes about into question.
The odd thing is, I’ve never encountered “trads” of the type so often discussed. I really believe its an application of the stereotype deployed against anyone who is more conservative than the one speaking: joyless, repressed, angry, bitter, possibly mentally unstable.
I have met occasional traditional Catholics who had odd ideas, were into conspiracy theories, and so on. Even these, however, have not been the vicious, angry, bitter people I so often hear about. I’ve met people who have been uncharitable, but I have met uncharitable people among all types of Catholic and non-Catholic. Remember, “lacking charity while being a ‘trad’” should not be some special category of the sin.
In fact, having converted in college, I don’t think anyone actually bothered to come over to me and speak with me until I started going regularly to a weekly TLM. I greatly enjoy the “coffee, doughnuts, and fellowship” after mass, and I find that almost everyone I talk to is kind and happy. Perhaps sometimes annoyed at the treatment the TLM receives, and the stereotyping they are so often put through even by those who are almost completely “on the same side” as them, but most are decent and good people whose faith and devotion are their most characteristic qualities.
I am always astonished when I see Traditional blogs that link Shea. I am also astonished that anyone can bear to read him. He personifies the cottage industry catholic who are trying to make a living by prostituting their Faith.
And does anyone remember when he went after Diogenes of cwnews? And condemned him to hell after determining that he was in an objective state of mortal sin. All because Diogenes had questioned certain , uh inconsistencies in the ministry of Cardinal McCarrick. Funny that I found out that one of Shea’s Cathecism programs was approved for use in the diocese of Washington, D.C. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you.
I call his blog, “Catholic and Cashing in on it”.
And what can you expect of anything tainted by the presence of Deal Hudson? In Mr. Shea’s list of criticisms I guess he had no ire to waste on an adulterer who molested/raped one of his students at Fordham.
I suppose Mr. Shea has gotten very good at the virtue of forgiveness and charity when it comes to Deal Hudson and he has thus expended it all.
Mary,
You know I love you, but I feel like you’re kind of proving Shea’s point. He can be a real jerk, but the level of cynicism with which you attack him is beneath you, and is the very sort of thing he would point to to make his case.
I don’t know what a “cottage industry Catholic” is, but I hope it’s not me. I get paid to write about Catholic stuff, and if I could do it full time like Shea does, I would do so in a heartbeat. Not because I want to prostitute my faith, but because I love it, and would very much enjoy making it’s exposition and defense my profession.
As for Deal Hudson, I have no personal relationship with the man, but I’ve met him, and he acted like a gentleman, and was in fact complimentary to me as a writer.
He has apologized for what he did, and again recently addressed the issue publicly, taking responsibility for his actions, and I believe that he is sincere. I disagree with him frequently on many topics, and I even have concerns that he is too political or carries a worrisome amount of baggage, but I wouldn’t write for Inside Catholic if I thought it reflected badly on me through the “taint” of his presence. I enjoy the debate there, including the debates I have with him.
Now, I’ve talked to a number of people who don’t like Deal, and they’ve given me their reasons - reasons that often enough have nothing to do with his scandal. I personally don’t have a sufficient basis to make a judgment of the man, nor should I. I’m a sinner too, and I would hate to have the contents of my confessions paraded through the news. If sin - even grave sin - were a disqualifier for being a Catholic in the public eye, who could step to the plate?
I’m prepared to give Deal the benefit of the doubt. Say what you will about him, but he’s good at keeping a Catholic publishing venue going when few seem to make money doing it. I’ve submitted articles to other Catholic outlets and was told bluntly that they can’t pay. Inside Catholic is quite generous with their writers, as such publications go, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thankful for the opportunity to write for them, and to write alongside some other quite talented and intelligent people. (Tom Woods, Jeffrey Tucker, Todd Agliaro and Fr. Rutler, to name a few.) He’s put together a good thing, in my opinion.
Back to the point at hand, I think Mark can be an abrasive (and even insecure) bully who fails to see, as Jonathan pointed out above, his own hypocrisies, and that makes him at times an unfortunate example. Because of how well-known he is as a public Catholic figure, he is a fair target of the reasoned criticisms everyone has posted here today, but I think you’re pushing the criticisms too far. He’s not an evil guy, he’s just a first class a-hole sometimes, who doesn’t like it when people push back just as hard as he does.
Considering my own insecurities and faults, I think it’s probably best that I express my frustration with him and with his conduct as I have, rather than show contempt for him as a person or take delight in his faults. That’s not the way I want to handle my disagreements, even with those I find most disagreeable.
Mark Shea’s other favourite whipping boy is us Boomers. All of us, according to him, are narcissistic 60’s folks who grew up to have a strong sense of entitlement, and have never had to work for anything. I’ve called him on this a number of times, but it seems to be another blind spot for him. Just goes to show he’s human like the rest of us.
Thank you Mary.
(Don’t listen to Steve. He’s got some kind of late-onset Sheaitis).
The thing about Shea that really gets me is how much he seems to enjoy starting fights. Trads do have their nuts but so do Novus Ordo folks. The folks whose faith hinges on Medjugoje and the labyrynth ladies belong solidy to NO land. In the past 40 years traditionalist Catholics were treated badly, often times cruelly. I’ve heard stories of women being reduced to tears by a priest who mocked them for saying the rosary or wearing a scapular. These weren’t urban Catholic legends either. Stuff like that left a scar.
If the church can apologize for making cannibal sput on clothes and stop eating people 450 years ago why can’t we be charitable to traditionalists now? And as for the abuses Shea mocks, well, I’ve never been to a clown mass but I have been to one where the priest brought his dog. I’ve also been to one where the priest insulted the pope .Ugly, stupid things do happen and yeah, I was upset about it
As another Irish Catholic I kinda get where Mark is coming from. He gets hundreds of emails a day from everybody with an opinion on Catholicism. Some small percentage are from bitter, hostile and paranoid loonies. He must have gotten another email from another loser, who this time happened to be off the traditionalist end of the balance.
There’s an old joke about Seattleites. “You see a man walking down the street at 4:00 am. How do you know he’s from Seattle? He stops for the crosswalk lights.” We tend to value manners more than content. Mark combines that with a certain blindness to his own faults in that regard. At the same time, being Irish, he won’t walk away from a fight, even if he is losing.
I value these qualities when he’s on my side in an argument. The torture debate in his comboxes comes to mind. That single-minded tenacity in the face of an actual evil was admirable.
No, he’s not consistent, but, contra Hilary, he is honest. He calls them as he sees them. His vision is a little skewed and he’s really not very bright about a lot of things, but he is honest.
The most important thing about Marks’ writing is that he’s a polemicist. He writes for effect, not for logic, rigor or consistency. Once he’s taken a side in a issue, often prematurely, he will argue to sway the crowd, not to convince a philosopher. And he can be spotted carrying grudges, often long past their sell-by date.
So, convince him you’re his enemy, offend him and start an argument with him. He will attack you, mock you, and be very slow to give up that attitude. At least with Mark, he is open to being converted, and will apologize when he figures out his unfairness amounts to sinful behavior.
Well said, Danby. (’course, I have late-onset “Sheaitis”, so by all means, don’t listen to me.)
Mark Shea is right. Consider all the energy that trads put into heresy-hunting. And then consider how they put no energy at all into direct, person-to-person evangelization. It tells you something about what spirit is behind some trads, and I think it is not the Holy Spirit.
Jeff,
Again, you’re trying to paint all trads with the same brush. For many of us, what is most important is having access to the liturgy and sacraments that we hold dear. Having to fight for that is where the anger comes from. It’s not about heresy-hunting.
In my lifetime, I’ve done a LOT of person-to-person evangelization. Before I became a husband and father (and before I became a trad) I went on six separate missions where we engaged in door-to-door evangelization. I still bring those experiences with me in the way I deal with others, whether on the blog, through e-mail, or in person. I believe I’m still effective in that regard, and I hope that God will make my example fruitful.
When you’re angry about not having your basics, it’s hard sometimes to keep in mind how that comes across to others. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.
Steve, here’s an interesting take on the ongoing traditionalist flap newswithviews.com/kress/joe/joe31.htm