Eric Johnson – Page 9 – Catholic Light

For Rod Dreher, it’s all about Rod Dreher

Richard notes that Rod Dreher, religion correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and a convert, is considering leaving the Church.
This isn’t very surprising. A while ago, many people chastised Rob for his increasingly unhinged writing about the gay sex scandals. Catholic Light had commentary such as this and this, where Rod himself left a drive-by comment.
There is a strong element of narcissism in Rod’s public conduct: Me, me, me. What I think, what I experience, what I believe. Playing out one’s most intimate internal struggles for public consumption, in a manner that calls attention to one’s own virtue, is not the approach of a serious man. It is the hallmark of the adolescent.
Sounds harsh? Maybe so, but it’s the root of the problem. Rod is not having an intellectual difficulty. He believes that he has the right — no, the duty — to stand in judgment over the Church and her clergy. Read this 2004 column, where Rod “outs” his parish priest who was accused — not arrested, much less convicted — of molesting a male minor. Google isn’t telling me what the resolution was.

I spent the next several days trying to find whatever information I could about Father Clay’s situation. It was true: Father Clay had been banned from active ministry.
What to do with this information? I wasn’t worried about Father Clay. I was worried about Father Allan Hawkins, the parish’s very fine pastor, and the good people of the congregation.
I thought: Can’t this be handled quietly, so Father Hawkins and the parish aren’t embarrassed?
And then I thought: If I go that route, I am no better than the bishops and others I have criticized. They kept it in-house for the sake of the church and led us all off the cliff. Public exposure is the only sure way to handle Father Clay.

Father Clay might have been an innocent man unjustly accused, swept up in the frenzied reaction to the scandal. But Judge Rod will not be deterred by considerations of prudence, avoiding scandal, or protecting the reputation of others. Father Clay was accused, and so he must pay!
God is allowing Mr. Dreher’s faith to be tested. Will he be a man and contend for it? Or will he allow his own personal disappointments to divert him into rejecting the head of the Church? I pray it is the former.

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare

Today is the traditional date of Shakespeare’s birthday, and also the day of his death. You may not have learned in school that Mr. Shakespeare may have been a closet Catholic; it is indisputable that he was surrounded by Catholics his entire life, and they must have had some influence over him. Wikipedia has a brief but cogent discussion of his possible religious committment(s).
Of course, today is an excellent day to visit Open Source Shakespeare.

Slashdot, home of adolescent lunatics

Among my friends, there are plenty of ex-Slashdot readers. They just couldn’t take the number of asinine contributors in the discussion threads, and I don’t blame them for avoiding the site.
I still read the front page on most days, because are usually two or three items that are worth reading. Occasionally, I will read a thread if there is a good chance the participants aren’t mentally out to lunch. But on any political topic, the lefty-libertarian fringe comes out in full force, screaming at the top of its lungs about Bushitler MONITORING MY FREAKING BROADBAND CONNECTION!!!! This is interlaced with huge doses of adolescent sarcasm, misfired jokes, and signature lines referring to Unix system processes.
Case in point: you know how when you’re in a group of people, you can pretty much assume that everyone will agree that kiddie porn is horrible, and child pornographers are the lowest form of human scum? Not on Slashdot. A sample of the discussion is below — each paragraph is from a different person:

When will the think of the children bullshit stop?
It’s obvious why they want all this data retention, and it AINT child porn.
dataveilance…
The whole “child porn argument” is poorly thought out. It’s a knee-jerk line brought out by politicians when they don’t have any other way of garnering support for an unpopular and invasive policy, which is so polarizing that it automatically casts a shadow on anyone who opposes it.
If America sacrifices its ideals and stops being America, there won’t be any “American” children to protect.
Wholly 1984 Batman!
This is yet another attempt by the Bush administration to increase domestic surveilance, and to create a de-facto state of permanent constant survelliance on all Americans.
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we’d want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren’t? So they’re going to keep records of everyone’s activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn’t it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that…. no wait, theye’re too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
Well, it’s like the AG said, the internet is creating a feedback loop where younger and younger children are exploited. Since there’s a lower limit to how young a child can be, those sickos have gone on to fantasize about children that aren’t even born yet! That’s why they’re using cartoons, because they can’t take pictures of people who haven’t even reached the stage of fertilized egg yet. They’re being victimized years before they’ll even exist. Think of the future children!
Funny thing is, I can take measures to protect my daughter from sex perverts, but how do I protect her from a government that is slowly turning into an orwellian police state?
I think that laws making child pornography possession illegal are, at best, in line with laws making drug possession illegal to try to reduce the demand to squeeze out drug sellers. We want to step on sexual abuse of children, so we stomp on child pornography production. To stomp on that, we try stomping on child pornography consumers to reduce demand. You’re talking about a pretty darn indirect benefit at a potentially steep privacy and civil rights cost.

This is what happens when you let Johnny have a computer in his room.

Good Friday, 3 p.m.

Anybody read the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

I haven’t read it yet, but I’d like to dig into the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Ironically, the condensed version has a much longer title.
Jimmy Akin has read the Compendium, and likes it. I happen to like Jimmy Akin, as we once sat and smoked together in a San Diego tobacco store, so you can trust his judgment.
One reason I’m anxious to get my hands on this volume is so I’ll have better answers for my kids when they ask questions. Explaining justification is quite easy. Explaining the Trinity is not.