Unless you've been to seminary or some such theological locus, the name of Friedrich Schleiermacher is blessedly unknown to you.
He was a very big deal in the Protestant church world in the 19th century. Like so many who bobbed around in Kant's wake, he tried to re-establish religion on non-metaphysical foundations.
But he wrote a set of lectures whose title has stayed with me, even as the content remains foggy:
On Religion: Speeches To Its Cultured Despisers.
Religious liberals all follow in Schleiermacher's footsteps in that they pitch their doctrines and disciplines to please the group that is least likely to appreciate their efforts, the Cultured Despisers.
Religious liberals, and political and social conservatives who continue to play the game within the boundaries and according to the rules, quite underestimate, I think, the contempt in which they are held by their secular counterparts.
Any attempt to accomodate them, even if praised in public as wisdom, is despised in private as weakness. I think of hapless George Bush's attempt to work with Ted Kennedy on education bills.
The school of marital therapy that I generally follow holds that while conflict is painful, it is not nearly as important as the capacity to recover from it. Couples who clash frequently may in fact be just fine, as long as they have an established and non-crazy route to reconnection. The greatest sign of marital failure is when, in the presence of others especially, one party expresses contempt for the other, from a position of superiority. When this happens, the relationship is pretty well dead and divorce is almost a certainty.
Unless you are entranced or blind or tone-deaf, it's pretty clear that the liberal attitude toward religion --real religion, not Liberalism itself-- is contempt, from a position of superiority. And frankly, it is only contempt for actual Christianity. Islam, as we know, being a code for People Of Color, is kowtowed to and never critiqued. Its most basic features are denied in order to maintain the larger Narrative.
And Judaism, protected by the religion of Holocaustianity, is likewise danced around. Liberalism is so disproportionately dominated by secular Jews --who make up the great majority of Jews in the world now-- that actual Judaism is usually ignored unless attacking something in Israel. And it would be naive of me to think that the large Jewish energy in Liberalism had nothing to do with its loathing of Christians. (Thank you, once again, alas, Dennis Praeger.)
Watching all the happy Episcopalians congratulating themselves on their new Black head bishop and their gay wedding rites makes me shake my head. The passengers on the Titanic cheering for the iceberg. And the moribund German Catholic Church, pushing to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion...it's pathetic. As with the Protestants and gays, in order to please a very tiny minority, these churches gut themselves on the altar of pleasing the Cultured Despisers. Even the Mormons just donated several thousand dollars to an LGBT homeless youth program in Utah. If they think that will soften the loathing of the gays toward them, they are deluded.
As some wise man said, The lion and I may be brothers, but the lion does not know that.
Part of my move from conservative to reactionary is the realization of the depth of the contempt that the Left has for the Right. (And I confess right away that it is reciprocated heartily by me.) But in a political climate where the other side of the aisle is no longer your competitor or even antagonist but your deadly enemy, who wants not only to win the discussion but to humiliate and erase you, seeing all conflicts as battles in a war is the only way it makes sense to me now.
And divorce, at some point, seems the terrible but only non-suicidally crazy option.
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3 comments:
Can you not receive communion in the German Catholic Church even if the Pope blesses the diviorce?
Most people want liberalism, I think. I bet the real conservatives are shaking their heads just like you are. Now that it is out, proud and allowed (or just loud) they are all jumping on the fureedumb bandwagon. The commoner really does need someone to tell them to shut their mouths and get back to work.
The actual liberals, the ones that do not need any coaxing, are just peasants that think they are deserving of the Crown. They hold everyone in contempt who is not another SFS (Self-Fart-Sniffer) like themselves. Clearly, see, they are the true Elite who have been oppressed since the Days of Ur and now, things are going to be set right at the End of History where the Jews will help Angloize Islam and we will all be Ascended by the Great Singularity up into Heaven/Outer Space to live as immortal Genderless Machines. Gender Ex Machina! These people either deserve punishment or commitment...to the psyche ward.
-A
You are on a roll there, -A.
Catholics may divorce if they have to and still receive Communion. But if they remarry --without having the first marriage annulled by the Church courts-- then it is considered adultery and they are excluded.
The Germans (and some other Europeans) want to be merciful and let people come to Communion if they plead hardship, even though they are technically bigamists. The Pope, with his usual intentional fucking things up, let people think he was gonna do this. Which would have exploded in his face. It appears now that he will not allow it, but it upset a lot of actual Catholics, while getting cheers from the contemptuous liberals, both outside the Church and in it.
Hardship, huh? Would adultery exclude someone if it were known among the parish as confirmed gossip? I doubt it would if it were confessed. I really cannot see any Catholic actually remarrying before the Church annuls it outside of very rare circumstances such as when someone's marriage to an abusive spouse is not annulled. A friend of the family's (we'll call her Sue) was being beaten by her husband way back, and the Church did not annul it. She switched to Greek Orthodoxy. My mother and I both tried telling her it had to be a mistake but, she is totally off of Roman Catholicism. My mother got her annulment and all that happened with her was my father cheated. The interesting thing is, she regrets leaving him and even my grandfather, who never really respected my father, asked her if it was what she wanted to do. I can't help but think that people would ignore what happened with Sue and make a mountain our of a molehill if mom was not given her annulment as if Sue's case were common. I think most marriages would work out just fine if they were not allowed to be treated as whimsies. I think mom should have been told no for her annulment. It was not the best arrangement in the world but it would have been better for both of my parents if they stayed together. It would have worked out in the end if mom stopped conflating her feelings of being emotionally cheated on with infidelity in general and if dad just stopped being a horse's ass for five minutes. I hate to admit it but, I get a little bit of bullheadedness from him.
Anyway, my point is, as tempting as it can be, mercy for mercy's sake is not a virtue, it is an indulgence. Just like with what you note about Pope Dolarhyde. It is best that the people most interested in society-building be the ones made happy. It is going to take a bit longer before that is realized, I am sure. I would like to know more about how adultery is viewed and treated in the Church, though. Just because it is practical wisdom that, well, men fuck, that does not mean that there should not be measures to make as civilized of a society as possible with Moral Authority doing their end and Administrative Authority doing theirs.
Before I go after typing your damned eyes out, I think that the Church having so much power in Eastern Europe has only driven the people there into the arms of America. It is never a wise idea to allow a real admixture or Moral and Administrative Authority. One cannot really operate without the other, though. Were we in each other's physical company, I would be a regular chatty Kathy today!
-A
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