Unmoored From The Past

The Jesuits, woke Social Justice warriors par excellence, decided to remove all references to Flannery O'Connor at Loyola. Rod Dreher, who is always good for a morning panic attack, addressed the situation here. His analysis was dead wrong.

Did you see this news?:

Thirteen years after naming a new residence hall at Loyola University Maryland in honor of the Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, Jesuit Father Brian Linnane, the university’s president, removed the writer’s name from the building.

The structure will now be known as “Thea Bowman Hall,” in honor of the first African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration...

I think Elie makes a fair criticism. I love O’Connor, and hate that there was any flaw in her character, but she was a woman of her time and place. It is breathtakingly anti-intellectual, and anti-art, to believe that this character flaw negates her monumental literary achievements. There is no American Catholic fiction writer greater than Flannery O’Connor, and there the Loyola University of Maryland, a nominally Catholic institution, is going to (cancel) her because she held ugly opinions that were overwhelmingly common in mid-century rural Georgia.

Elsewhere, Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles went after AOC. His analysis was dead wrong, too. 

In defense of St. Damien of Molokai: Part 2 pic.twitter.com/YYIFZU2DV4

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) July 31, 2020

It's not about Flannery O'Connor. It's not about Father Damien. It's not about Robert E. Lee or even Jefferson Davis, either. It's about cutting yourself adrift from your past. It's about hating the people who got us here.

Hating the past is all well and good if the things you love don't draw from it. If you're forever "leaning forward" and see change itself as the highest moral good, then burning down buildings, destroying monuments and rewriting history is righteous.

If you rely on teaching from the past, you're in big trouble when the Social Justice crowd comes a-calling. Those at risk include scientists, engineers and Christians. When we focus on the value of an individual statue, we're simply trying redirect the flow of Social Justice rage around our favorite historical figure towards someone else. The destruction of the past is the problem, not whether Father Damien or Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee is the target.

Catholics in particular need to wake up about this. We are entirely rooted in the past. In fact, Jesus himself is vulnerable to the Social Justice thugs. 

Catholics repeat the Centurion's words at every Mass, after the consecration of the Eucharist. If you're a traditionalist, you strike your breast and say, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." ...

Unburdened by Judeo-Christian notions that all men are created equal in the image of God, (the Centurion's boss) Caesar is the ultimate, secular Utilitarian. He has a job to do and he gets it done with minimal fuss. If you submit to Roman rule, even after battle, he takes hostages from your royal families and demands a tribute to pay for garrison legions. Your nation is allowed to survive, albeit as a vassal state to the Romans. If you betray that agreement or oppose him through any kind treachery, he defeats you in battle, burns your villages to the ground, slaughters your leaders and sells the population into slavery.

 All of our traditions and the entire Catechism comes from the past. As the past gets firebombed by the Social Justice crowd, we're at risk. If you don't believe me, click on Bishop Barron's tweets above and look through the replies. They run about 50-50 with half of the respondents siding with the modern-day Nazis who see everything through the lens of race.

This isn't going to end well for us.