Conservative Catholic Paranoia

I've never paid much attention to "Traditionalist" Catholics before (basically, the ones who are devoted to the Latin Mass, actually follow Papal teaching on contraception, and freak out about how everything in the Church has gone to hell in an handbasket since Vatican II.)

But reading the Catallaxy blog,  which has in the last couple of years increasingly attracted a significant number of Traditionalist Catholics and Catholic supporters, has led me to look at some conservative Catholic figures over the last 6 months or so.

What a worry they are.   In the US, they have culturally aligned with the Tea Party, so I suppose it should be no surprise that they seem to like Catallaxy, which is like the Australian Tea Party sub branch.

Father Z's blog  seems to be very popular in the US, and I gather that Zuhlsdorf has been on Fox News quite a bit.  A look around his blog indicates he likes guns, and nuns who use them.  (Yes, really.)  The blog gives an excellent taste of the Pharisaical obsession that this branch of Catholicism has with liturgy. 

He is pals with Michael Voris, a conservative lay Catholic who has built a subscription media business out of videoing himself every second day explaining how the Church must return to its pre-Vatican II state.  He seems to be pretty big in the Trad Catholic circles, but how is it possible that a man (especially an American) who advocated in all seriousness that a Catholic monarchy is "the only way to run a country" still have any popularity at all?  He does tick the box on other Right wing obsessions, though:  climate change is all a conspiracy to do something or other, for example.

In any event, the point of the post is this:  it would seem that the recent legal successes in court cases in the US for gay marriage, as well as Italian media reporting about gay priest in the Vatican, has sent both of the them in great paranoid spasms about the e-vil currently befalling the Church.  Here's Father Z a few days ago:

There are those who hate the Church with as much hate as we love the Church. They are organized, they have a great resources, they have a Dark Prince. Dreadful liberal publications and websites, and even the blitherings of some priests and bishops, are only shadows of the deeper agenda flickered out on the back of the cave for popular consumption by barely witting dupes.

Deeper enemies, like our own beautiful missionaries and martyrs of ages past, are willing to set aside their appetites, put on a facade, and endure for patient years for the sake of a long term plan.

Yes, I buy it. I have seen manifestations of communist, Masonic, and especially homosexual networking in the Church both in the USA and in Rome. It would be stupidly naive to think that it isn’t present. In the USA, Masonic and communist? Maybe not so much.  Elsewhere, yes.  The other thing?  Ohhhh, yes.

Those agents will probably go to Hell.  Let us remember that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.

However, Our Lord did not promise that Hell would not prevail in these USA or, in the Roman Curia, in any other particular place.

When you hear awful stories, do not become discouraged.

We are nearing some kind of turning point. I think it is time to press forward HARD and with courage to renew our Holy Church’s liturgical worship, the best, clean antidote.

 Yes sir-ee.  Purity of liturgy is the answer to the "homosexual networking" in Rome.   Sure.

Voris has also been in Rome recently at the same time as Zuhlsdorf, both attending the same liturgy conference I think, and if you have never seen him before, this video of him hyperventilating about Roman gay priests and whether there is Satanism involved is as good a place as any, I guess.

(Actually, you could also look at this video in which he also paints the broad picture that the Church has gone all wrong since about 1960.)

These guys are hopeless:   poisonous Catholic Right wing cultural throwbacks who lack charity to a profound degree.  Even if they are "right" on a topic, they express it in such a way that it is embarrassing to say one agrees with them.   The Church will pass them by, but their ugly noise in the meantime is interesting to watch in a train wreck type of way.