Coronavirus and Conservative Cafeteria Catholics

 On my main blog, I've occasionally written about the "CCC," especially combining it in January with the second CCC of the Covington Catholic Chuds.

But, it's time to look at how these modern Conservative Cafeteria Catholics really have followed many of their Protestant brethren to a place where their religious brief plays handmaiden to political convictions and some of what is supposed to be god's still becomes Caesar's. (Another C, even!)

The Cut offers a story of a person seeing their grandfather die, and calling out Dan Patrick and his "duty to die," who actually is nothing compared to the editor of First Things, who this spring dove DEEP into the empty pool of Religious Right wingnuttery, Catholic division, claiming that the degree some people were going to save lives was "demonic." No, really. I hadn't realized until reading this JUST how much Conservative Cafeteria Catholics had sold their souls.

Read:

At the press conference on Friday announcing the New York shutdown, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “I want to be able to say to the people of New York—I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” 

This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism. Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life. And yet we have been whipped into such a frenzy in New York that most family members will forgo visiting sick parents. Clergy won’t visit the sick or console those who mourn. The Eucharist itself is now subordinated to the false god of “saving lives.” … 

There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. … 

Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.

Reno, as I told First Things on Twitter, is also ignorant of church history. Quarantines existed in medieval times. Of course, that was secular. But? Priests across Europe fled their parishes at the coming of the plague. Eucharists were left unconsecrated and uncelebrated 700 years ago. 

He's also a flat liar. Churches closed in 1918. 

This secularist knows that, metaphorically, sacrificing one's children to Moloch, to qup

The piece strives for a veneer of deep theological insight. So did First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus, who also often failed at that, for people who looked carefully.