Be Nice Unto Others As You Would Have Them Not Judge Unto You

Here's one more post in my be nice, don't judge series discussing how and why the Church has become pathologically feminine, a near-perfect instantiation of Carl Jung's devouring mother.

Way back in 2023, 10 days after the diabolical Hamas attack on Israel, I wrote this post with the following excerpt.

I worked part of a men's retreat weekend on Thursday and Friday and heard another "God loves you" sermon. In light of what had happened in Israel and what is happening in our own children's hospitals and then the protests on campuses supporting both, that sermon was an obscenity. It's taken me a while to figure out what it is that makes them inappropriate and tasteless. I've come to the conclusion that they are childish. Not innocent and naive, but sickeningly infantile and weak in their blindness and dishonesty.

One of the priests who was on the retreat saying Mass has a habit of saying, "It's x o'clock and you are loved" with a simpering smile. I've always felt that to be a little creepy, talking to me like I'm an anxious child. This time it was sickening.

We're at war. Evil is no longer talking in euphemisms. It is livestreaming its rapes. It is shouting and dancing about its abortions. It is marching in the streets chanting, "Gas the Jews!" It is flashing swastikas from its cell phones at Jews in the streets. It is proudly talking about genital mutilation and mastectomies for children.

In this environment, prancing around and saying, "It's 11:30 and you are loved!" is an obscenity. It is a denial of the pain and loss of the innocent. There is no pain, there is no loss, there is just gooey goodness and love all around. There is no need to fight and argue and stand for what is good because there isn't any existential threat around us. Evil is nowhere to be seen, we can all go back to our soft beds and go back to sleep.

Synodal Nausea

At the diocesan synod meeting last weekend, we were given handouts where the slogan for the synod was "Pilgrims of Hope." It was nauseating in exactly the same way. It was infantilizing and condescending and useless in its utter emasculation of the participants.

I'm facing a major decision in my life right now. I'm aging out of the chance to achieve one of my life's goals - a vacation home in Alabama. I'll soon be too old to enjoy it if I buy it, but at the same time I have significant financial commitments to our extended family that must be met before I can spend money on myself. Outside of a DeLorean some 30 years ago and a few trips to sporting events, I've not spent much on myself. Throughout my adult life, my time and money have all gone to parents, wives, children and others.

That's not a complaint, it's simply part of being a man. The decision is right there in front of me every day. At the same time, my employment situation is uncertain. I worked about 60% this last fiscal year and am only 60% funded for the coming year. I'm working hard to land new clients and get to full time, but I've got nothing but prospects right now. I don't feel comfortable taking a plunge on a Fish River house at 60%.

Simultaneously, I'm fighting the bottle, just like almost everyone else in my family has, particularly on my mother's side, for generations. That battle has been up and down for years. Right now it's mostly up, but I know it will never go away completely. It's hand-to-hand combat with demons every single afternoon.

Into that situation comes my church, oozing docility and creepiness, saying things like, "It's x o'clock and you are loved" and "Pilgrims of Hope." It prattles on about uplifting the marginalized and amplifying their voices. The marginalized face the same choices and temptations I do, that we all do. We're freaking adults, not pouty toddlers.

This is how my Church sees me and everyone else, too.

After the Synod, trying to put my finger on just what was sickening me about this, I listened to this talk by Jordan Peterson summarizing his outstanding book, 12 Rules for Life. Here it is, queued up to one of its many good points.

Jordan is useful, the Church prelates are not. More tellingly, Jordan loves me, the Church prelates love themselves.

The Bishops Love Themselves

In Matthew 7:12, Jesus famously says, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets."

I want, heck, I need my friends, family and church to treat me like an adult and not a disturbed child. I am a fallible, sinful person and only by changing myself will my life improve. A friend wouldn't pat me on the head and tell me they were going to uplift me because I was marginalized. If I'm marginalized, it's because I did it to myself.

Hello, double Elijah Craig Old Fashioned. And a refill after this one, please. I'm on the Highway to Marginalization, as AC/DC might say.

Last night, I began to think what it would be like if I talked, in a treacly voice, to the bishop or the pansy priest the way they talked to me.

“Father… oh Father… I can see the strain in your eyes. Do you need to be uplifted? Don’t worry, I’ll hold the space for you. Your poor little voice hasn’t been heard, has it? I’ll amplify it. I’ll be your megaphone of hope. You’ve carried such burdens, haven’t you? So heavy, so unfair. And yet you keep smiling—oh, how brave! But Father, you don’t need to be brave with me. Not anymore. You can put it all down. You can weep if you need to weep, wail if you must. Don’t hide behind your vestments. It’s going to be alright. I will nurture you, protect you, love you into wholeness. Shhh… there now. Let go. Let me be strong for you.”

Vomito de gato.

This isn't love, it's moral masturbation. The Church prelates don't talk to us like this because they love us, they do it because they get a virtue orgasm out of it. They couldn't care less about us, we're just 2-dimensional pornographic images to them. 

The scene where I condescend to the priest is plainly wrong because both the priest and I know our relative positions in the Church. It is inappropriate for me to talk to him like an infant. However, both the priest and I know our relative and utterly equal positions in the eyes of God and it is inappropriate for him to speak to me that way, too.

Further, and more obviously, we're both freaking adults, man. No one talks to an adult that way, not if they want to keep all their teeth. It's beyond insulting.

I think I'll stop here as this one is getting a bit long and I still want to go to the gym before the Newcastle game at 0930.

Maybe, while I'm at the gym, someone will uplift my weights for me. That's what Jesus would want - for me to go to the gym, but not lift anything and have me sit there and watch others lift for me.

Vomito de gato indeed.