Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) October 12, 2014: Fr. John W. O'Malley's new book THE JESUITS: A HISTORY FROM IGNATIUS TO THE PRESENT (Sheed & Ward Book, 2014) is clearly aimed at the American Catholic theocons that Damon Linker writes about is his book THE THEOCONS: SECULAR AMERICA UNDER SIEGE (2006).
For understandable reasons, progressives and liberal in the United States today should be wary of American Catholic theocons -- and by extensions, of books aimed at them, as Fr. O'Malley's accessible new book clearly is.
For a time in European history, prestige culture could be styled Christendom. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church dominated Christendom, spearheaded by Catholic bishops and priests and men and women in religious orders. Catholic theocons in the United States today carry the baggage of Christendom with them in their collective unconscious.
Historically, the prestige culture in American culture was dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) until roughly the election of Senator John F. Kennedy to be the first Roman Catholic Irish American president of the United States.
In the spirit of knowing the enemy, I will review Fr. O'Malley's new book for the benefit of those progressives and liberals who may want to know the enemy -- all those practicing Catholics in the United States who are against legalized abortion in the first trimester, against same-sex marriage, and against the use of artificial contraception and its public funding through Obamacare.
I know, I know, not all practicing Catholics are against all of the things that their American bishops are against. So those practicing Catholics who are not against all of the things that the bishops are against should not in fairness be characterized as theocons.
If you enjoyed the rosy movie "The Bells of St. Mary's" with Bing Crosby (1945), you might enjoy Fr. O'Malley's rosy and triumphant look at the Jesuits, the religious order of men in the Roman Catholic Church that was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556).
Hopefully, Catholic and non-Catholic Americans will become sufficiently disillusioned with the Roman Catholic Church that they can put aside such sentimental idealizations as that movie represents.
Hopefully, even Jesuits and other practicing American Catholics will become sufficiently disillusioned with sentimental idealizations about Jesuit saints and about Jesuit history that they will put aside Fr. O'Malley sentimental idealizations about certain Jesuit saints and Jesuit history.
For a discussion of the virtue of disillusionment, see the book THE WAY TO LOVE: MEDITATIONS FOR LIFE (2012, page 123) by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931-1987).
To be clear here, I am not arguing against having ideals. Arguably people should have ideals.
But idealizations of certain individual persons and of the past are an entirely different matter. If and when we indulge ourselves in idealizations of certain individual persons or of the past, we should undergo disillusionment about our idealizations.
By definition, idealizations always involve over-admiring arguably positive features, and overlooking or neglecting negative features.
In the spirit of being fair-minded, we should always strive to give credit where credit is due.
Regarding significant individual persons in our lives and regarding the past, we may tend to prefer to accentuate the positive, but we should also strive to do this without overlooking the negative.
But when we prefer to overlook the negative, we tend to have recourse to sentimental idealizations -- as Fr. O'Malley does in this book.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
