As part of the presentation a few posts back, Paul Elie discussed the rise of what he called the default position of atheism. We may actually be getting to the point where we are no longer Christ-haunted, culturally speaking. I mean, the Onion isn’t funny any more, so I’m not suggesting that you’re going to chuckle over this bit, but it still has some cultural significance, I think. Maybe.
This item backs into – well, OK, more or less accidentally removes the emergency brake from the dump truck parked on the sloping driveway which, gathering an alarming rate of speed, plows into – the question about the Onion’s intended target(s):
Sometimes I think it’s believers.
Sometimes I think it’s non-believers.
Sometimes I think it’s the media.
Sometimes I think it’s consumers of the media.
Sometimes I think it’s politicians.
Sometimes I think it’s those who place their hopes in politicians.
Sometimes I think it’s possible to hit more than one bird with the satirical stone.
Sometimes I think it’s impossible to hit more than one target at a time.
Just what the hell did that boy learn in Richland Center High School, anyway?
JOB
Thanks Matthew.
Guardini, Romano. Excerpt from The End of the Modern World.
Precisely.
Ratzinger, Joseph. Introduction to Christianity, pp. 42-45.
See also.
Yeah. Thanks. I will miss Benedict so. Excuse me, I’ve got some modernity in my eye…
I’ll miss him too. He ‘gets’ it.
As an expert on motes in other people’s eyes — though I could be wrong here — I do suspect that your discomfort has less (though surely still some) to do with the modernity in your eye, than with the humanity of your eye. Here’s more Ratzinger, more Introduction to Christianity, pp. 49-50:
Yeah, except for all that downplaying of blood reparation.
JOB
There is no pleasing some people.
Yeah, that was not funny at all. One really mundane “joke” beaten to a smarmy pulp.
This one’s better in terms of the default atheist bumping into the sacred:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-would-like-to-be-pope
The Onion of today strikes me as being similar to the Community of today: following the departure of the people who provided its heart and soul (writers/creators), it soldiers on, remembering the formulas that used to make things funny, but unable to conjure the necessary elements.
Good call on the McSweeney’s piece. What’s kind of interesting is, in reading various, um, comboxes (I know, I know) about Elie’s editorial in the Times, I have come to the conclusion that there are a good many Catholics who have precisely this notion: that being pope is entirely political. They don’t have to take anything the pope says at face value, because they never take anything a politician says at face value.
Actually, if we look at it from St. Augustine’s point of view, the papacy is almost entirely political – mostly he’s serving as a sort of Ellis Island customs agent ready to give us civic lessons on the City of God…Where it is, how to get there, what to do once you get there, etc.
JOB
Fair ’nuff. But that’s supposing that there is a City of God, which I’m not sure is what’s going on in these people’s heads.
I made the mistake of spending some time in the Patheos Progressive Christian portal the other day. If you really want to get a sense that God is dead, that’s the place to do it. No sense of humor.
(I’m seeing a correlation here between the death of God and the death of comedy–didn’t Ellen write something about this?).
Forget about the pope. They don’t take anything Jesus says at face value. Everyone has to improve on him, “find a new vocabulary,” take the old politics out of the Bible, and in so doing, embrace a gospel that’s inevitably defined by their own political blind-spots.
The pagans have more faith…
Well said. I read one progressive recently who cataloged the great number of cardinals who have cited the need for reform in the Vatican. And it’s hard to fault the progressive tendency to muckrake – they have any number of saints to emulate in that regard. Yay progressives! But then you encounter things like the things you mention, and you think, “Why do you bother? Are they the words of everlasting life or aren’t they?”
I’m sure I’m being too simplistic here. I’m a bit bruised these days.
Need an ice pack for that bruise?
Or maybe an ice axe?
Amen.
So fed up with these poseurs who say, every conclave, that if a contributor to Communio gets elected Pope, they’re converting to Episcopalianism.
ECCLESIA: BELIEVE IT OR LEAVE IT!
Lack of sense of humor is irritating at best, ominous at worst.
Or maybe vice versa.