ex cathedra: Combox mobocracy

Friday, April 26, 2013

Combox mobocracy

I was tempted, and I fell. Mea culpa

I commented on a story in a liberal Catholic paper. The National Catholic Reporter. Where it's still 1968.

A gay man who got civilly married was removed from his volunteer ministries at his parish. Not forbidden communion or excommunicated, just told he can't have a public role there anymore. The local bishop is now Simon Legree.

I pointed out in my comment out that Roman Catholicism is not whatever you want it to be, but has a clear and public shape. Too many lefty Catholics live in the the Church of Wishful Thinking and then whine when The Real Church appears in view.

Well. I was treated to a lesson in Jim Crow and slavery. Yes, Jim Crow and slavery and other "White Southern" crimes that Jesus didn't like. Etc. A little gang of liberal Catholics treated me, well, worse than the bishop they were so angry at for his incivility.

There's a conservative rhetorical form called Godwin's Law, that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, the likelihood of the conservative opponent being compared to Hitler grows exponentially. The reductio ad Hitlerum. I'd suggest a corollary about Confederate Slavery and Jim Crow.

As for the scores of other comments on the story, well, kinda like a madhouse. Not so different from comboxes everywhere. And especially at that paper.

Someday, when sanity is restored and universal suffrage is an antique idea that we shake our heads over --Can you believe they used to let every moron over 18 actually vote?!-- the recent institution of the online comment can serve as an easy Exhibit A on why.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: As soon as I can find it I'll post the verse where Jesus condemns slavery. I'm only in my late 40s, and the oldest texts quoting Jesus are only a few thousand years old, but I'm confident that such a verse exists and I'll be able to find it quickly. I'll post it right here.

Meanwhile, let the critics content themselves with sure knowledge that the institution of slavery was condemned by the RC in 1965. Only Oman and Mauritania abolished slavery after that, with every other nation on the planet going ahead of the Holy See. But I'm confident those critics know what they're talking about.

- The Bishop of Portland; 4:08 PM, April 26, 2013
OreamnosAmericanus said...: Yes, it's perfectly obvious that Jesus was preaching the modern liberal welfare state back then. What a pioneer.; 11:31 AM, April 27, 2013

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Liberals believe that the chief role of the State is to force everyone to be equal, (ie, take vengeance on the successful). So when they are confronted with any group that they deem less well off than themselves, they are morally disarmed, completely and utterly. Any group that can achieve Victim Status is on their way to power and the (White) liberal's only job is to give them what they want, no matter how much that damages him. And nothing may ever be expected, much less demanded, of them in return. It's a recipe for suicide: no other outcome is possible.