12/28/04
The Neo-Catholic Movement--the great revolution of prayer, scholarship, rediscovery, renewal started by Pope John Paul II and now carried by the young people he has inspired has just hit some nasty bumps, the first bumps, in its American theater. Some of the movement’s most promising figures and institutions have stumbled. We are finding out who doesn't like whom.
Best known is the toppling of Deal Hudson. This Texan convert from fundamentalism was forced to leave his posts as an advisor on the Catholic vote in the Bush-Cheney Campaign and as publisher of Crisis magazine because it came out that he had been accused of seducing a female student at Fordham U. in 1994. There has been a hint of further and more recent hanky panky.
There are some other developing stories involving another prominent Neo-Catholic star of web sites and Faith-On-Taps and one of the new universities, but facts in these stories are not yet clear.
So today, we'll have to stick to the lessons to be learned from these disappointments. They are:
1) Stay away from politicians. Deal Hudson would still be intact at Crisis and undressing the interns with his eyes had he not gotten mixed up with the Bush Administration. Lefties like those who produce the National Catholic Reporter can’t stand conservative Catholics “exercising influence” in Washington and so they went after him. They are probably now going after the Opus Dei gentleman at 1522 K St., NW, with his apostolate to the rich and powerful.
Politics is tempting because it offers quick solutions, but we must remember that the full revelation of God’s Kingdom takes eons. Jesus, himself, rejected political power when offered it by the devil (Luke 4:5-8). Hurrying things up usually in results in setbacks at best, atrocities at worst.
Also, politics in democracy is comprised mainly of sleazebags. Indeed it favors sleazebags because sleazebags have the crust, amorality and aggression to claw their way past all the other sleazebags up the hill of government. This is why there are so many philanderers in politics. Good people are above hoodwinking mobs and find being lied about and the other ordeals of seeking office too much to bear.
The real power, anyway, is not in Washington but in the way people live their daily lives.
2) Have high standards and not double ones. Regarding Hudson, Traditionalist Chris Ferrara of Catholic Family News, in criticizing building a movement on the “shifting sands of celebrity,” is quite right to ask “how a man who was widely known to have had three marriages and two annulments before his adultery…became a neo-Catholic icon in the first place.” (3)
I could not use better phrases. If Deal Hudson is allowed to be a star on EWTN, what does that say of Mother Angelica?
The movement has to have leaders (and they should get respect and compensation), but the leaders should never be bigger than the movement. When a hero is unmasked as being something less than his noble projection and his worshippers start making excuses that they wouldn’t make for their villains (Oh, he made a mistake a long time ago. We all have our faults. Everybody has “something” in his past. I have to wonder how intelligently and sincerely devoted to the cause the worshippers are. Are they, perhaps, just another bunch of idiots who chase after anybody who says what they want to hear?
By the way, everybody doesn’t have “something” in his past. There are many people who’ve never had harmful addictions and who have been faithful to their one spouse, who sincerely believe in the truth of Catholicism. Some of them have every bit of the learning and articulation of Deal Hudson.
Let me close this with an anecdote: I knew a man who was a hero because he raised half a million dollars. What people didn’t know was that had he not been a pathological liar and a screwball, he could have raised two million dollars.
3) Watch for the red and yellow flags. Hudson began to make my nose wrinkle when his magazine attacked the credibility of Michael S. Rose, author of Goodbye, Good Men, a book about liberal and gay infiltration of the priesthood. Why such an attack against a should-be ally?
Unfortunately, not everyone has my worldly-wisdom and comprehensive moral sensibilities, so you’ll have to take my word about the following yellow and red flags. Attacking allies (except to expose them as frauds) should be a yellow flag. Two annulments should have been a red flag (especially to the Third Mrs. Hudson). Priests and religious who don’t wear religious habits: yellow flag. Religious who are narcissistic, enjoy the finer things in life, the limelight, schmoozing with bigshots: red flag. Any ex-priest, nun or other religious violating final vows: red flag (They are committing mortal sin.). Someone using “I” more than any other pronoun: yellow flag.
Stay tuned. There may be more….
Source Footnotes
Copyright © 2004 by Neal J. Conway. All rights reserved.