In response to one of my periodic bleats arguing that Catholics would be better employed getting their instruction in social teaching from the Church than from Talking Hairdos on TV who teach their viewers to hyperventilate about Imminent Nazi Takeovers, a reader writes:
I know that you, and many other people like yourself, who get low television ratings and feel that you need to boost them by directing your comments to individuals who are looking out for the american people.
You learn something every day. It turns out that the reason I write what I write is because my television program is getting low ratings, not because I think Catholic should learn their faith from the Church. This is exciting news to me, since I didn’t know I have a television program. However, my reader knows me better than I know myself, so I’m not gonna argue with him. My reader continues to read my mind.
You have been blinded by the liberal left because they continue to give and give. But we know that is wrong!
I didn’t know about the liberal left blinding me. I thought I had said that we should be taught by the Church, not by shallow ideological tribalisms, whether left or right. But my reader has set me straight. Clearly, as he says, nothing could be more wrong than giving and giving. So when Jesus said “Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42), he was wrong, as we learn from our Talk Radio catechism.
You help a person to get back on their feet. You DO NOT enable them. Living on welfare is a sin! Plain and simple!
Funnily enough, the Catechism tells us:
2427 Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another. Hence work is a duty: “If any one will not work, let him not eat.” Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work. He shows himself to be a disciple of Christ by carrying the cross, daily, in the work he is called to accomplish. Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ.
2428 In work, the person exercises and fulfills in part the potential inscribed in his nature. The primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and its beneficiary. Work is for man, not man for work.
Everyone should be able to draw from work the means of providing for his life and that of his family, and of serving the human community.
And I have always agreed with that. Indeed, I think it obvious that staying on welfare when you can be gainfully employed is a sin and that a state system that encourages such learned helplessness is very bad. In the universe I inhabit, I’ve never said any different.
In the universe my reader inhabits, however, I appear to have said plenty in celebration of the welfare state. Apparently, somewhere in that universe, I said that people should live on welfare forever and never get off it. I don’t remember saying that, like, ever. But my reader is talking as though he is sure I did. Maybe I said it on my TV show. At any rate, he premptively rebukes my endorsement of the welfare state that I must have made somewhere. Then, he reveals to the world (and to me) that I seem to have been ordained at some point:
As a man of the cloth, I thought you were above this. Obviously, I’m wrong! Congratulations, you at least have one person who recognised you long enough to let you know my disdain for you.
It’s hard for a priest like me to endure the disdain of people who know me so very well. I feel naked! Exposed to the withering X-ray vision of somebody who sees through me, my personal history, and my motivations as though I were made of glass.
I almost can imagine from the article that is attached [the reader attached to his email a piece about the Nazi takeover of Austria], what would it have been like if there had been that one voice that warned these people about the horror that was about to enter their lives. Would he have saved some? Would history be changed?
Hmmmm… Appealing to the Anschluss and the rise of Hitler as a way of saying that FoxNews demagogues aren’t training their viewers to panic about Nazis under every bed seems like an unpromising way to argue, if you ask me. Likewise, passing from a rebuke of my liberal blindness to my non-existent endorsement of a permanent welfare state to my failure to oppose the imminent rise of National Socialism in America is also a dubious train of logic, particularly if you are trying to persuade me that dumping the Church’s teaching in favor of the rants of televised Talking Hairdos is the best way to learn how to think clearly. But I’m just a simpleton who listens to our socialist Magisterium instead of to authentic God-anointed teachers on TV.
We have already seen how this administration has used it’s powers to take over a car industry. Is this God’s plan? To have people work for something and the Government take it. I thought only God could do that?
Er, when did I ever say anything about Government Motors? Much less about God’s plan for GM? I presume that, being sovereign, He must have some plan or other for GM, but it beats heck out of me what it might be. From what I can tell, the State threw a ton of money at an incompetently run car company to keep it afloat, so that a lot of people wouldn’t get thrown out of work. Now that company appears to be getting back on its feet and the State is going to bow out of owning it. Not an optimal story of capitalist success, I’ll grant you, but hardly a sin against God’s almighty plan for America that i can see. Checking Ott’s Fundamentals of Christian Dogma, I in fact find nothing in the Church’s teaching about how Americans should deal with a bankruptcy crisis at GM. So it would appear that one possible strategy is to keep the company afloat with temporary infusions of capital till they figure out what they are doing and get back on their feet. It’s sort of like welfare, only for giant corporations. Now I’m not super keen on taking my money so yet another giant corporation can get bailed out. But if GM gets on its feet and starts earning it’s keep, it will probably be worth it in jobs saved. At any rate, that’s a prudential judgment, not a dogma of Holy Church.
As to the rest of your complaint, I can’t figure out what you mean. I’m not sure what it is you think only God can do. If you mean only God can run GM, I’m pretty sure that’s not true. If you mean only God can take a portion of what we earn for the common good, then I suggest you familiarize yourself further with the concept of taxation in Scripture. If you mean that I think the government takeover of a failing company is terrific, I can only ask where you got this impression since I have not held forth on the subject as far as I know. If you mean I approve of the ginormous bloated government bequeathed to us by Democrats who believe they can create the Great Society domestically by gouging us out of our hard-earned wages to supply a welfare state (whether for corporations or individuals), then you are mistaken. If you mean I approve of the ginormous bloated government bequeathed to us by Republicans who think they can create the Great Society in Iraq and Afghanistan to supply a militarized empire by gouging us out of our hard-earned wages, then I again must question my reader’s mind-reading powers.
Because Christians feel that it is our obligation to help our fellow man, they look the other way when Democrats give things away. I’ve witnessed people living off welfare. “Why should I get off welfare. Ain’t nothing like free money!”. That was the 70’s. Now I see their children on it! Was this what Jesus envisioned! Don’t say that you understand and that we need to ween them off slowly!
Why should I say anything when you are doing such a marvelous job of reading my mind? I certainly had no idea that I look the other way when Democrats give things away, nor that this was due to my Christian faith. It must be one of those things they taught me in seminary that I talk about on my failing TV show.
I worked in the projects last summer. A caseworker was walking towards my coworkers and I. We stopped him to ask what they pay. He said that the house he had just left pays $19 a month with her and her daughter. Two bedrooms. The guy that lives there, does so illegally because she sneaks him in at night (they have already warned him three times, but do nothing). This is one of three woman he does it to in the projects. He gets into a fight with one, goes to one that will take him in. He has a child to two of them. The taxpayer has to pay for this!!! When do we say “Enough is enough”!! How bad has it gotten for people giving from their hearts? Pretty bad I’d say.
Okay. And this has to do with anything I’ve ever said how?
This administration has caused a lot of peoples hearts to turn black, yet you are going after someone that wants us to defeat it. Not with guns and violence, but to elect people who will look out for the working man. Shame on you!!!!!! Read the document and tell me that this can’t happen in America. When one man tells the country “your vote doesn’t count. The Government knows what’s best for you! Illegals over running your state and you want to combat that, how dare you! You want to ban gay marriages, how dare you! You don’t want to purchase my government run healthcare, how dare you!” When a majority speaks, the government is supposed to honor it. We all answer for our individual sins.
So… if I criticize panic-mongering demagoguery about America being on the verge of a National Socialist regime of mass murder, the proof that I’m wrong is that you believe the demagoguery about Obama as Hitler Redivivus and feel that comparisons of America 2010 and Austria 1938 are perfectly sane? And if I’m skeptical that Obama=Hitler, that means I support endless welfare, gay marriage, and judicial usurpation of democracy? And from this airtight syllogism, I am to conclude… what (apart from the fact that Catholics who get their primary social catechesis from self-descibed “rodeo clowns” instead of the Church are not as good at reading minds as they suppose)?
I’m afraid all I can glean from this illogical farrago of extrasensory perception (and not the first I’ve received by a long shot) is that people who choose to get their catechesis primarily from TV and not from the Church should, for once, listen to the man who said, very wisely, “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.” My beef is not and never has been with the Talking Heads on Fox or The View primarily. They are earning a living ginning up hysteria and passing along pseudoknowledge as they are paid to do. The business of corporate news and opinion media is to sell beer and shampoo by screaming about fear, sex, and power and trying to pull in viewers like carnival barkers. My beef is with Catholics who ignore the Catechism, let their TV do their thinking for them and who can’t even be bothered to find out the first thing about those they ignorantly denounce as “blinded” when these facts are pointed out to them.
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A very illuminating email. But it and your reply left out one very important fact….. where can we watch the Mark Shea tv show?? Leaving out information like that must be why you have such low ratings. You should probably change the format. It’s obviously not working as the emailer is so confused. I’d suggest remaking it as “Catechism Island”. Two tribes made up of lefties and righties. Every week the individual who espouses a view furthest from the Catechism of the Catholic Church gets sent home. With a free copy of the Catechism. Just my two farthings worth.
Why spend so much time tearing down a straw man?
He obviously hit a nerve with you Mark. But how many people do you think are interested in reading about it. Weren’t there any serious emails to which you could have responded?
You don’t seem to understand what a straw man is, Jason. A straw man argument is when *I* invent dumb ideas that are easily refuted and then tear them down. I didn’t invent that letter, nor the countless similar letters I get from people who attribute all sorts of silly beliefs to me, read my mind, and inform me that I am actually a godless, America-hating liberal when I happen to disagree with their favorite talking hairdo and suggest that Catholics should get their catechesis in social teaching from the Church and not from TV. This particular letter summarized this method of argumentation particularly well, so I decided to have fun with it. The nerve it hit was the one in my brain that says, “Catholics who argue this way really need to spend more time learning how to think and less time imagining they have psychic powers.”
I hear that Father Shea even says Mass FACING THE PEOPLE!!!!
Is there no end to his iniquity?!? :-P
Only on my Catechism Island show. I have to face the cameras when I make those pleas for everybody to stay on welfare, support gay marriage, and welcome the National Socialist takeover of Amerika. My sponsor, Government Motors, has that stipulated in the contract.
Thanks for posting this Mark, that was the most intertaining work of insanity (the reader’s letter, not your response) that I have read all week. Keep up the good work! BTW, I’ll be watching the listings for your TV show. LOL!
Like I said before or words to that effect: Shea you evil genius liberal mongrel dog (thats god spelled backwards:)Cease and desist logical thinking - it HURTS it HURTS!!!:P
I thought this article, itself, was the funniest thing I’d read all day, but Mark’s comments here are even funnier. Nice work. :-D I’m staying tuned for The Reverend Fr. Mark Shea’s Tent Revival Variety Hour. I’ll be sure to lay my hands on the TV set and send in my checks promptly.
I like the way your mind works Mark Shea!
So I guess when you go to confession people get in line for you? That’s gotta be confusing.
Oh so now we have a married priest, with a wife and four kids living
in the state of Washington…and with his own TV Show!! How did I miss
all this? And tell me where do you hear Confessions? Maybe that’s where
you get all your ideas for this column…and do you give tougher penances to the Conservatives than the Liberals? Let’s have a column on that!
As should be obvious, married liberal priests like me don’t believe in confession since everybody is naturally good and only needs a little welfare money to make them actualize their potential. I talk all about this on Catechism Island in my homilies on “Health and Wealth the Bible Way”. It’s what I learned in seminary. All people need to do is give me money and their sins are forgiven. I have a family to support you know. Charity begins in my home. Tough, tough penances for those who resist that prophetic call from God. Like, for instance, remedial reading lessons. That’s a good penance for some people.
Mark, this is the first time I have read your blog. It will not be the last! Funny that I hit on this article as my first, but you seem to articulate so well what has been on my mind lately when dealing with less catechized ‘Catholics’....
“My beef is with Catholics who ignore the Catechism, let their TV do their thinking for them and who can’t even be bothered to find out the first thing about those they ignorantly denounce as “blinded” when these facts are pointed out to them.”
AMEN, brother!
I look forward to following your blog :)
“Fr.” Shea, do you do on-line confessions & marriages? I know some people who would pay you double your salary as a priest and give you your own FB Page. Thanks for all your posts.
Yes, Diane. Yes I do. As a liberal married priest with a TV show, I believe electronic new media are the future and will, via email, marry and/or absolve anyone who votes for huge spending increases by the federal government. Including gay marriages, which my long long track record of writing clearly favors.
By the way, we need a new Catholibabe for the “Wheel of Progressivism” part of our show where we spin the giant wheel and randomly choose new doctrines to believe this week based on liberal media headlines and trends. I believe all Catholics should believe what the NY Times and MSNBC tell us to think. Send us an 8x10 glossy of you in a bathing suit and you could be our lucky new girl. Wanna be a star?
Mark, Are you a liberal married priest that also agrees with the fact that a baby in the womb is not really a person. One of those priest who are afraid to mention the word “abortion” from the pulpit for fear of losing funds from the congregation?
You know the liberal Democratic priests??? Are you one of them?
The Judas priests
Thank you so much, “Fr.” Mark. I may call you by your first name as long as I use your title, isn’t that right? Or do you have a nickname? I will respectfully have to decline your offer. The last time I submitted my 8x10 glossy to a talent scout, he offered me the lead in a comedy horror show as the featured “scary woman”.
God help us all. We sure need His help.
d.dunn:
I think that the body of my work over the years makes it very clear just how much of a liberal married proabortion Democratic priest I am. If that’s not clear enough, then I suggest you watch my TV show and you can see for yourself just how accurate my reader was in his assessment of my views and motivations.
Diane:
Sorry to hear that, but I understand. Just so long as you keep watching my TV show and voting for Democrats as I famously urge people to do, you’ll be all right. Now get out there and apply for welfare!
Mark, I missed the conversation that u had with Jayson, would have loved to have read it. I usually try to follow u, i like what u write, hmmm must have been fighting off some other liberal trying to tell me it was her body or not a viable fetus. I do have a lot of work to do with u liberals!
u know u r right, i think i am going to switch over to ur side, welfare is easier, abortion ah heck lets spend a little to save a lot! Mosque at ground zero, why not it was just a few extremest!!! Yes u r right evil is easier, i am on ur side now, hook, line and sinker! You convinced me
No sweat, d.dunn. We liberal married priests with failing TV show are awfully busy too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go hear Adele’s confession and report it to my socialist cell group.
Mark, lol lol lol, I can’t wait to see how they r going to build it!! Not one union will even talk about it. There is your next piece, finding a union to build the mosque!!!!
Thank you “Fr.” Markie. I will take your advice. I’ll have to quit my job or work under the table to do the welfare thing, but you are always right. My DVR is set to record your show every time it airs. The repeats too! And also I will burn them to DVD for my private collection. When will you be releasing your 10 best shows for sale on ebay?
Mark
I was making an honest comment to you. I was suggesting that you should cherry-pick only those emails and letters that lend some value or contribution to whatever discussion in on the table.
You responded to my comment as follows:
Mark Shea: “You don’t seem to understand what a straw man is, Jason. A straw man argument is when *I* invent dumb ideas that are easily refuted and then tear them down. I didn’t invent that letter, nor the countless similar letters I get from people who attribute all sorts of silly beliefs to me, read my mind, and inform me that I am actually a godless, America-hating liberal when I happen to disagree with their favorite talking hairdo and suggest that Catholics should get their catechesis in social teaching from the Church and not from TV.”
Thank you for educating me, Mark. Respectfully, I would suggest that you do, in a sense, invent this individual when you give him voice in this kind of forum just so you can tear him down. This is particularly so when you offer his views as a sort of general representation of those that disagree with you. The singular quality of the letter (or email) you chose for this purpose was that it is an immature diatribe against you. It was poorly thought out and it added precisely nothing to any discourse of which I am aware. To cherry-pick such an obviously substandard comment from the plethora of correspondence that I am sure you receive just to smugly, sarcastically refute and ridicule it, and further to suggest that this is representative of those that disagree with you, is to tear down a straw man. It is easy and unimpressive.
Mark Shea: “This particular letter summarized this method of argumentation particularly well, so I decided to have fun with it. The nerve it hit was the one in my brain that says, “Catholics who argue this way really need to spend more time learning how to think and less time imagining they have psychic powers.”
No disrespect intended but intellectually dishonest comments like this are of no importance. Do you think this characterization will help this person (or persons) to understand things better or at least, to understand your positions better? Ad hominem arguments are no arguments at all. If this is the level of commentary you engage in then I suppose it is no wonder that you get letters like the one you shared. You seem to embody that which you decry.
By the way, this was the first time I have ever read your blog. I will not do it again. There are infinitely more pressing and interesting issues about which to read and discuss.
Sincerely
Jason
Social Justice is against the Church - if it progesses socialism or communism (2425), and does not include “Subsidiarity” (1883, 1885, 1894 and 2209).
Therefore, we are each better off reading the “CATECHISM of the CATHOLIC CHURCH, Second Edition” ourselves. (Unless the Pope will give private lessons.)
Also some forget (on purpose ? ? ? ) 2245 The Church, because of her commission and competence, is NOT to be confused in any way with the political community. She is both the sign and the safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person. The Church respects and encourages the political freedom and responsibility of the citizen.”
Anne..You have brought up the crux of the matter here on the topic of
what is true social justice….a topic of great controversy within the Catholic Church and one that is at the heart of much of the division that exists. As you state, the Church’s position is very clearly stated in the CC. It is really plain and simple. Those who want to say they are Catholic but at heart are socialist/Marixist are not following the Church’s calling
for subsidiarty. Plain and simple! Liberation theology is not in keeping with the teaching of the Church…inspite of what even some Bishops are
teaching and following.
Anne and Adele:
All your comments would be terribly relevant, if I had ever expressed any of the unCatholic views that Adele, Anne, and my reader psychically attribute to me. Instead, Anne and my reader have me pegged as a married liberal priest with a TV show and Anne scolds me for my non-existent rejection of subsidiarity. When you learn to read, I will be interested in your scoldings about my non-existent opinions.
I read everything that comes in to my inbox (Daily Register) by you, and I generally agree and enjoy your work, but I’m with Jason on this one. I would have liked to have seen the article that you wrote that he is referring to so I would have had a frame of reference. At times I was confused, and I think it would have helped. And I find it a teensy bit uncharitable to ridicule someone so soundly who took the trouble to share his views with you (whether he knows much about you or not). I did find myself laughing out loud twice, and I am not the type who generally does that. For what it’s worth.
FoM:
My reader was taking issue with the fact that I have, in the course, of criticizing Catholics who get their catechesis from TV more than from the Church, criticized Glenn Beck. If you click on my name in the header bar, you can see my previous articles, including the two or three where Beck’s name comes up. One could say just as much for Catholic who get their catechesis from The View, but readers here are not likely to be doing that. They are, however, very like to defend Glenn Beck from all questioning, no matter what ludicrous thing he says or does. Hence the focus on him.
ROFLMAO!!!! “Fr” Mark I have to confess that the article was good but the comments following were even better. I’m sure your liberal personage is not offended by my text abbriviation. Thank you for showing me that saving myself for marriage and working towards advancing my studies to become a larger taxpayer are futile things. I need to move to the projects and let some guy use me for his benefit and give me whatever disease he picks up from the other women he uses. Wow. So I was wrong in searching for truth in the cathechism and authentic church teachings. I’ll have to start listening to popular culture and making my own assumptions as to what is right and wrong. Boy does that explain alot of why I’m such a misfit.
Please make a conscious special effort not to use “dumb” when you mean “stupid”.
Wow, I really had a good chuckle with this. My husband and I no longer subscribe to any sort of television and for the first few sentences of your reader’s letter I actually thought you had gotten a TV show and I didn’t know it…I was almost ready to get cable again!
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