After reading Antony's blog, Canoe in the Mist, regarding the "Orthodoxy's Dry Drunks" article from the June 3rd Our Sunday Visitor I went back and read the article itself. Antony picked up some choice quotes from Commonweal, but I think he majored in the minors by not citing the end point of Greg Erlandson's argument.
While by common consent there is a lot of Catholic dreck out there on the Internet, Erlandson ends up by pointing out where I think we all should eventually land. Without Erlandson's closing caveat Commonweal's comments come off sounding like a center-left parody of the very intolerance which both Antony and Erlandson long to decry.
Here's the missing piece from Erlandson's article:
"We have a need for prophets in this confusing time, but I find the most effective ones are those who manifest God's love most eloquently. Pope Benedict XVI is no shrinking violet when it comes to confronting the world. Yet his first encyclical was on love, and his apostolic exhortation on the Mass painted a compelling and positive vision of the Eucharist even as he sought to nudge our liturgical awareness in a more traditional direction.
One blessing of my vocation is that I have known so many great Catholics whose words and deeds proclaim their faith in God's merciful love, not their lectures and complaints. It is by their fruits that I have known them."
Amen!
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The key of the entire article is not to become hate. It is an easy thing to do in our present society that seems to be feuled by conflict. A society where people are divided into tribes that they might be contrasted against each other and then manipulated into conflict to serve the interests of others.
We see this happening every day, all around us, to such a degree that many of us either don't notice it anymore or have become so sickened by it that we withdraw. Then there are those who have been maninpulated into joining a side, and then suckered into the conflict. This breeds hate, this living in a world separated by differences where the other side is seen as "enemy." Where the only form of "engagement" is the virtual combat of verbally tearing one anotehr apart.
This is our world. This is what the "powers" want us to serve. But, instead we must greet the world with the love of God. Not capitulation or relativism, but the conviction of belief that is grounded and founded in love. Perhaps an impossible task, but surely one worth sacrificing onself to pursue. It is that, or we all bow to the "powers" of our age and submit to being puppets.
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