Essays in Idleness

My piece over at Catholic Thing this morning (here) is once again assigned to my Idlepost readers. What I write for them is probably better than what I write here, for I’m compelled to stop after one thousand words. Also, there is “editorial oversight,” the anticipation of which makes one less wayward. The commentariat at the Thing is, for some, an attraction. I have noticed that certain self-established commentators hold court, and post not on my, but on their own, personal obsessions. Subsequent comments are addressed mostly to them, which has the effect of excusing one from any sort of liability. Choose a highly political topic, and one hundred comments will self-assemble around the usual nodes. Choose one that is narrowly “religious,” or “philosophical,” and maybe a dozen will appear. This is impressive, for at a more “secular” website (or as I like to say, “profane”), the ratio will be closer to a million to one.

We (religious nutjobs, such as myself) do not risk prison by our writings, because they are so easy to ignore. Believing Catholics, and other Christians, have managed to locate “the still point” in the moving media world. Those who would persecute, will first have to find us. Our views might be expressed in provocative language, but will be soon seen of no consequence, given present public concerns.

One might claim to be writing for future generations, but I doubt the Internet cloud will persist. Moreover, I am persuaded by my readings in history that future generations will prove as stupid, and incapable of learning from experience. Hope for the world’s future has always been misplaced. We are wiser to fix our hopes on Heaven.

By contrast, the views of the more flamboyant Muslims are noticed, but only because they are blowing things up. I should think that if a Catholic, or even a Presbyterian, were to detonate bombs in a crowded place, while citing passages from Scripture, we would be taken more seriously. It would also help if we had millions of refugees, from countries under Christian theocratic rule, to improve our demographics. But on checking I find that there are no such countries.

Our pope tells us — and here I should allow that his remarks may have been a sarcastic parody of the crazed, liberal way of thinking — that Catholics in Italy commit as many violent crimes as Muslims; and, I would guess, in Argentina, too. He notes that upon consulting his newspaper each morning (he claims to read only La Repubblica, the communist paper) he discovers that some possibly Catholic person has murdered, say, his accountant, or his mother-in-law. He insists that all religions have their fundamentalists — Catholics, too — and so, who is he to judge?

Perhaps if, while murdering unwanted tradesmen and relatives, Christians would remember to shout, “Jesus is Lord!” — they would get the rest of us more publicity. Alas, I suspect they do it for the tedious, customary reasons; their “hate crimes” focused on only one person at a time. Yet even there, the traditional Muslim may be tarred for his statistical advantage, for the poor man could have four mothers-in-law to deal with.

We are told, incessantly, that the great majority of Muslim people are peaceful and law-abiding. This is also true of the rest of the human race. Is it not unfair that this should be specified only of adherents to Islam? Again, one suspects some invidious special pleading: for surely the fact that Muslims are like the other humans — complacent, anxious, trying to get by — should not need explaining.

My piece at the Thing this morning has nothing to do with Islam, incidentally. It has more to do with that background complacency, in its Western, post-modern iterations. There are different ways to escape this condition, and let me clarify that becoming a violent psychopath is not the option I prefer.