Scrutiny in Scranton: A Teaching Opportunity Missed?

Readers of CP may be familiar with Michael Voris, whose self-styled “RealCatholicTV” videos on YouTube are, well, unique in the world of Catholic new media.  Packed full of colorful statements about such subjects as lesbian yoga-teaching Marxist nuns laying nuclear waste to the Church, Voris’ regular video output—“the VORTEX”—is not exactly a model of subtle, nuanced theological reflection, nor of the kind of indirect, positive appeals to the heart that will gently entice agnostic modern man into the bosom of Christ.

The funny little graphics and floating text in his videos remind me a little bit of something you might have seen on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” back in the mid-‘90s; in fact, when my wife first saw a “RealCatholicTV” video, she thought it was a joke.  

I’ve always thought that the most disturbing thing about Michael Voris was his haircut.  But apparently, the Diocese of Scranton, PA thinks there are more troubling things about him than that: a recent privately-financed speaking engagement was cancelled when diocesan authorities announced he was non desideratus:

The Diocese of Scranton has determined that Mr. Voris will not be allowed to speak in a Diocesan or parish facility. After these engagements were scheduled, the Diocese became aware of concerns about this individual’s views regarding other religious groups. In videos posted on the Internet, Mr. Voris makes comments that certainly can be interpreted as being insensitive to people of other faiths. The Catholic Church teaches us to respect all people, regardless of their faith tradition.

Although the Diocese shares Mr. Voris’ support of efforts to protect human life, his extreme positions on other faiths are not appropriate and therefore the Diocese cannot host him.

Hmmm.  I haven’t watched enough Voris to feel totally comfortable defending him and his views on their merits.  But he does seem to have been accused and convicted of some pretty nebulous charges in Scranton.  I can see how this diocesan statement might leave the faithful confused about just why Voris was banned by the bishop.

The first big problem with the Diocesan statement this: Mr. Voris, we are told, expresses “extreme positions on other faiths,” and these positions, being “not appropriate,” are the basis of his banning.  But wait a minute—a “position” can really only be true or false.  And if a speaker espouses false positions, such as “women should be ordained” or “abortion is an essential part of the common good and should be protected by law,” then by all means ban him from parish podiums.   If someone has publicly expressed and widely disseminated views that are demonstrably false in the light of established Catholic doctrine, then say so.  But by itself and with respect to its content, a “position” or a statement cannot be “inappropriate”.

An EXPRESSION of a true position at a particular time or in a particular way could be inappropriate or imprudent, depending upon the circumstances—but those are judgment calls.  For example, it would probably be inappropriate to choose the occasion of Thanksgiving dinner to denounce Aunt Sherry’s adulterous unmarried cohabitation with “Uncle” Chuck in front of the whole family, even though said shacking-up is a scandal to the nephews and a sin before God.  Similarly, it would probably be “not appropriate” for Michael Voris to do a version of his “Islam is murder and Muhammad was a rapist” routine in front of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade Class of 2006 Reunion in Baghdad, but that would of course depend on what he wanted to accomplish.

Ban the man if his views are “not true”.  But “not appropriate”? 

Another problem with the diocesan statement is the labeling of Voris’ views as “extreme”.  It is important to note that the use of this word as a simple condemnation that justifies the exclusion of this person or that view from polite society or public discourse is straight out of the playbook of the repressive  totalitarian ideology of the cultural left.  Such newspeak was cooked up in the Easy-Bake Ovens of liberalism, and not forged in the furnaces of Christ’s Church.  It is language worthy of a college administration’s policy on ‘hate speech’, not of a successor of the apostles.

“All is permitted,” say the Tolerationists, “except for saying that all is not permitted; any questioning of our worldview is extremist and intolerant and must be punished.”  By using the language of tolerationism, the Scranton statement implicitly endorses that way of thinking.  It doesn’t help anyone to understand why there’s a difference between the University of Illinois firing a Catholic professor for articulating positions that made some people uncomfortable and a Catholic diocese banning Voris for espousing some other positions that made other people uncomfortable.   If the moral vocabulary we use is so impoverished and muddled that “extreme” is the best we can come up with to denounce something, then we are a long, long way from the splendor of truth.

Blessed John Henry Newman, before he entered the Catholic Church, famously fancied the conservative Anglicanism he espoused in the 1830s as the reasonable and “moderate” position, the Via Media, the middle path between two “extreme” and apparently false deviations from Christianity: the un-apostolic Protestantism of Luther and Calvin on the one hand, and the un-biblical errors and superstitions of the Roman Church on the other.  But, as he writes in his autobiographical Apologia pro vita sua, in the summer of 1841, while working on a translation of the works of St. Athanasius, the famous Bishop of Alexandria, Newman’s studies of the Arian heresies of the fourth century made him reconsider “extremity”:

I had not sought it out; I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a “metaphysical” subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then.  The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called “the extreme party.” 

Catholics should remember that our Church has ever seemed “extreme” to partisans of those errors to which She has been most energetically opposed.

There is one last equivocation in the Diocesan statement that needs to be addressed.  Let’s grant that Voris’ publicly expressed views about, say, Islam are considerably more negative than anything we’ve ever heard from President Obama, former Pres. G.W. Bush, or Pope Benedict XVI.  (That alone doesn’t mean that Voris’ views are FALSE.)  The Scranton statement tells us that such views about a RELIGON as a body of doctrine or belief –not about persons who are faithful to it—“can be interpreted as being insensitive to people of other faiths.” 

Criticism of views is ipso facto an attack upon the people who adhere to them?  Come on.  That’s the ethic of adolescent music fans—if you say anything bad about Morrissey or The Cure then YOU AREN’T MY FRIEND!  YOU HAVE TO LOVE THESE BANDS BECAUSE I LOVE THEM!

The insinuation is clear: any criticism of a religion with respect to its truth or falsity, its historical origins, or its currently-sanctioned practices is “insensitive”—no, wait—“can be interpreted as being insensitive.”  So it doesn’t matter if what you say is true—if someone interprets it as insensitive, then you are at fault for saying it. 

That is STRAIGHT OUT of a college “speech code”, and is exactly the same reasoning that was invoked to dismiss the Catholic professor in Illinois last summer for informing his students that “Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY… In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

I am not in a position to have an opinion about Michael Voris’ suitability for a diocesan venue, and even if I did have an opinion it would be a mere private judgment–the only venue which I am competent to grant or deny him is my dining room table.  But it does seem to me that the very brief statement released by the diocese that banned him falls a bit short.  A teaching opportunity missed?

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Tagged as: American Culture, Evangelization, Postmodernity