Saturday, September 16, 2017

Triggered by Trads

Karl Keating's dislike for Latin-loving traditionalists is well known. He formed his cadre of apologists at Catholic Answers according to his own preferences during his long tenure as president. In his retirement he has published a full-length book about the imminent danger posed by geocentrists and many smaller collections of essays on apologetics and hiking. While his public Facebook page has been filled mostly with thoughts on hiking and self-publishing, most recently he could not help himself from dancing on the fresh graves of a few traddy friendships:
Louis Verrecchio, who once made a living explaining and defending Vatican II at parishes around the country, now decries the council, calling it heretical, and thinks the current pontiff and his immediate predecessors have been heretics. 
But he finds heretics elsewhere, too, such as in the Fatima movement. He says the Fatima Center, which was headed by the late Fr. Nicholas Gruner, has gone off the rails since Gruner's 2015 death. It has betrayed Verrecchio's understanding of the Fatima message. 
As a result, he has castigated the group and in return has been criticized by its supporters, such as Christopher Ferrara, a long-time associate of Gruner. In a post at the Fatima Center's website, Ferrara faulted the group's opponents without naming Verrecchio, though it was clear he had Verrecchio in mind. (He referred to "a grandstanding Catholic blogger.") 
In turn, Verrecchio has responded, saying that, under Gruner, the Fatima Center never would have had nice things to say about a "celebrity cardinal"--a reference to Cardinal Raymond Burke. And so on....
[F]issionble material keeps fissioning. Uranium 238, when it's done fissioning, ends up as lead. That may be a trope for what's happening among a good chunk of the Traditionalist movement. 
The unchristian glee Keating takes in the fallout of friendships among fringe figures is especially aggravating considering the fission among Catholics "in good standing" that he spent his career sweeping under the rug. The man who could never find anything negative worth saying about Cdl. Mahoney's reign of bad taste and bad doctrine never found himself short of words against doctrinally sound if intemperate traditionalists.

Today's Catholic Answers radio show regularly tackles tough, troubling questions like "Why do nuns but not priests take vows of poverty?", "Is it really a sin to vote in favor of homosexual marriage?", and "Why do Catholics pray to saints?" His apologists condemn the iconoclasm of mobs attacking statues of St. Joan, but never the iconoclasm practiced by the clergy. Mediocrity with a sheen of intellectual pretension is Keating's major legacy to American Catholic apologetics; swiftness to wrath against trads his minor legacy. I am convinced this man has done more damage to the traditionalist movement in America than many bishops combined:


In many ways he reminds me of E. Michael Jones, a man who prides himself on properly interpreting arcane aspects of canon law concerning the criticism of bishops while loudly slandering and defaming everyone else in sight. Karl similarly is very intelligent about a small set of outdated apologetics and extremely modern ecclesiastical legislation, while lacking a broader wisdom about the life of the Church as a whole. He is a more learned version of Mark Shea, who once had his feelings hurt by trads long ago and, just like a good Christian, never forgave and forgot.

What future is there for Catholic apologetics? If it is to pull itself out of the depths of irrelevance, it must engage with the more urgent questions of the age. I agree with Dr. Edward Feser that atheism and insufficient philosophies of being are some of the greatest threats to the Faith, but one cannot expect niche-burrowers like Keating or intellectual lightweights like his apprentices to bother engaging with these in any tangible way. Total faithlessness is on the rise, and who will stand against it? Much easier to shoot the easy targets of Protestants and Trads than to mount a defense against a real menace.

14 comments:

  1. "I am convinced this man has done more damage to the traditionalist movement in America than many bishops combined"

    Even if that were true, so what?
    Although i think that traditionalist more often than not do damage to themselves.

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    1. No doubt we do. Many trads are as innocent as doves but wise as lemmings.

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    2. The safest work to do is attack the victim not the perp. O, and it is also the liberal thing to do.

      How man times have men like KK claimed that legitimate criticism of so-and-so is fine but they never give any example of their own criticism of so-and-so.

      No, their criticism is directed at those who can never do them any harm...

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  2. Have there ever been times in history during which relatively obscure philosophers like Feser (he's my favorite, but let's be real here) or radio personalities like Akin have prompted a sudden wave of newfound zealousness among a nation's cradles or a truly massive influx of converts? It has generally been holy political leaders or heavyweight academics when universities were more serious (and taken more seriously), no?

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    1. Now that would be something interesting to research.

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  3. In Psalns God through St David mentions "the edges of the earth". What are those then if the earth is round? I also challenge Christian sphere-round-earth - how come? What do we believe? What ppl are saying or the Bible? Why are we ashamed of God's words?.why isn't our heart with His? Or we may as well be..
    https://youtu.be/UGfKMV5AbMI

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  4. ABS would like to hear Catholic Answers explain it is a good thing that ABS can not worship as he did when he was an adolescent (He is the same age as Israel) to say nothing about worshipping as did his Father and Grandfather etc.

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  5. In Psalns God through St David mentions "the edges of the earth". What are those then if the earth is round? I also challenge Christian sphere-round-earth - how come? What do we believe? What ppl are saying or the Bible? Why are we ashamed of God's words?.why isn't our heart with His? Or we may as well be..
    https://youtu.be/UGfKMV5AbMI

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  6. Isaias 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth....

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  7. Timothy 2, 11-12: "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.".

    Maria Anna, listen to these words, and please be silent.

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    Replies
    1. Nobody is asking you to be a moderator, thanks.

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  8. Patrick Coffin recently left CA. He’d been there for a while, and his new work seems more aggressive. Whether it fits well into Tradistani culture or not, I don’t know, but I found the move to other ventures insightful nevertheless.

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  9. I couldn't reg with them for some reason, and looking at its content to see if it was worth typing in my alt email, or even a throwaway address, I saw it wasn't. Yet one year I went to a Sunday morning Low Mass (normally something I've only heard in the nearest SSPX chapel) in St Kevin's church, Harrington St, which was offered by a bishop (bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, I think but I might be wrong) leading something called the 'Catholic Answers Cruise.' It was interesting except seemed His Excellency was neither able to use the satisfactory amplification nor project his voice. That meant it was well nigh impossible to hear him. I had thought CA were okay with the Mass of Ages provided no claims of superiority for it, or unworthiness, even invalidity of the Bugnini-Montini liturgy, could be made. Yet there appears to have been a creeping hostility towards trads, not just tradistani radicals.

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