American has an article from Cardinal Dolan:
Cardinal Dolan: In Defense of Culture Warriors
The sobering reading from Ezekiel in the Liturgy of the Word from Sunday, Sept. 11, 2023, is still echoing in my head. You may recall it: The Lord is reminding the prophet that he, Ezekiel, is a “watchman,” whose task includes warning God’s people, including telling them they will die if they do not change their ways in accord with the Lord’s commands.
It is hard to dodge that call as anything but a challenge to be a “culture warrior.” I might prefer “critic” rather than “warrior,” but the call is to speak for the Lord in sternly calling the people to fidelity. If not, the consequences are death, for both the prophet and the hearer. Rather somber!
Yet today, such a style of advocacy and preaching is dismissed as improper and ineffective. Sure, a positive, conciliatory style is to be preferred, and we readily admit that a nonstop negative, condemning, threatening style is usually counterproductive. But the prophet’s role as a “culture warrior” is hardly novel or evil.
It seems to come down to this: We like “cultural warriors” when they are on our side; we are not so pleased when they take on issues not on our agenda:
My comment on the America Website was:
As one of his Four Principles, Pope Francis has said that “Realities are more important than Ideas.” They are both important and they live in tension, but ideas, which are a means of communication, must give way to the rich reality of God’s presence in the world which is not limited to certain ideas.
The problem with becoming a culture warrior is that ideas prevent us from seeing the realities of life, most importantly the rich diversity of persons with whom we need to communicate whose experience and situations may not fit our experience and ideas.
Culture warriors tend not to just critique ideas as an academic exercise, but also criticize people who hold those ideas, making dialogue and community more difficult. It does not matter that cultural warriors may be right about their concerns if they cause a lot of harm to others and the social fabric in the process.
Finally religious cultural warriors suffer from the great temptation to think that only they are on God’s side. We all need to recognize not only that we may not be on God’s side in many ways but that others with different ideas may have an experience of God which we are lacking.
Our priest recently talked in a homily about breaking the second commandment, taking God's name in vain. He was speaking about the use of God's name in a careless or disrespectful way. Which of course is wrong. But I was thinking at the time, that there is more than one way to take God's name in vain. One way would be to attempt to speak in God's name about something that is more a personal opinion than a revealed truth.
ReplyDeleteJack alludes to that in his last paragraph when he wrote, "...religious cultural warriors suffer from the great temptation to think that only they are on God’s side. We all need to recognize not only that we may not be on God’s side in many ways but that others with different ideas may have an experience of God which we are lacking."
Interesting point about taking the Lord's name in vain, Katherine.
DeleteI think of it as, putting words in God's mouth. We need to be careful about doing that.
Delete... putting OUR words in God's mouth.
DeleteSqueezing God into manmade boxes.
DeleteA squandered opportunity by Dolan, imo, that offers nothing in the way of pastoral guidance. He might have advised culture warriors to stick with facts, avoid ad hominem attacks, and stop spinning elaborate conspiracy theories. I've listened to Raber try to school me on various things for more than half my life. But the reason we're still married is because a) he has never told me I am going to the Everlasting Fire for supporting a ring of pedophile baby killers drinking blood in the basement of a Pizza Hut and b) has never told me I could not have another cat.
ReplyDeleteI may be doomed: I've told my wife on quite a few occasions that she can't have another cat.
DeleteLOL, Jim,, how many cats are in your household now?
DeleteWe have two cats at the moment. For some reason, one decided that the litter boxes are not for her, at least for Number Two. So every morning, my first act after emerging from the bedroom and feeding them, is to clean up her droppings. She always picks the same spot, in the dining room near the chair of one of my children who left the nest a few years ago. She's as regular as clockwork. I'm using Clorox disinfectant wipes to clean the carpet in our dining room, putting the mess in plastic shopping bags (I am counting this as a valid reason to continue to bring a few home from the grocery store each week), and then putting the package in the garbage bin in the garage. The carpeting is in pretty awful shape, so I'm not too worried about the cat poops or the Clorox wipes doing a number on it.
DeleteI'm hard-hearted enough that, if it was up to me, I probably would take her to a no-kill shelter and let them know that she (we?) more or less failed in her being housebroken. But I'm not considered the cat mom in our household. Besides, she never has trusted me (all the other cats we've had have been pretty chummy with me - she's just paranoid) and won't let me get within five feet of her. Trying to get her into a carrier to get her to the vet for regular check-ups took 45 minutes and all members of the household last time.
I'm struggling with the term "culture warrior". Is that really what Ezekiel was? Or Isaiah or Jeremiah?
ReplyDeleteI'm not completely certain how to define "culture warrior", but I think I grasp the essence of the term's meaning well enough to see that the culture warrior par excellence of our time is Donald Trump. His political method is: divide the country into Us and Them; seek to rally all the Us's to his side; and then crush the Thems. (In point of fact, he inadvertently unites the Democrats more fully than any other figure I've seen during my lifetime; and he divides conservatives, although not nearly enough!)
I don't know why Dolan, or any religious leader, would wish to lionize that sort of thing.
I think what he means to lionize are the prophetic types who seek to hold the country to moral account - to call the country to reform its ways. The Right had a few of them in our political life, although most of them are leaving politics now. Mitt Romney is a prominent and recent example. I think Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney tried to be call-to-accounters a few years ago.
Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. is the American exemplar of qualities I think Dolan wants us to admire. I wouldn't have thought of applying the term "culture warrior" to King, though.
As for those 80's-vintage American bishops' documents: have they aged well? Personally, I think they may be a little on the culture-warrior-y side.
Good food for thought. If Dolan is trying to lump the Holy prophets and more astringent saints (lookin' at you, Jerome) in with culture warriors like Jerry Fallwell Jr, his homily falls apart on two fronts: Inapt comparison and failure to offer prescriptive change.
DeleteMaybe he doesn't have enough cats.
Remember that Benedict had cats.
Delete