Mark,

Not too long ago I made a very similar comment about getting too negative and sardonic on my Catholic morality blog. I call my blog "Gaudium Veritatis" (the Joy of the Truth), which is also the tagline of my apostolate. Yet, I find myself being negative and critical instead of sharing the joy that the truth of our faith should bring. It is indeed a difficult balance to do battle with error but still respect the people who are in error and still celebrate the truth.

Unfortunately I have noticed that since I made and attempt to write more gently and positively, my readership has gone down. I hope it is an unrelated trend and not evidence that I am unable to write respectfully and still be entertaining and though-provoking.

God bless your efforts. I will pray for you. Please pray for me as well.
Jeffrey S Arrowood, MTS | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 2:20 pm | #

Wonderful post, Mark. May we be an encouragement to each other and to all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

As my husband and I live in Fargo, we are quite excited that you are coming to our neck of the woods and will do our best to attend one of the functions!
JoAnna | 09.29.08 - 2:22 pm | #

Just about everyone could do better in this department.

It is a constant temptation for me to;

1)find something stupid or infuriating happening somewhere,

2)do a quick post on how stupid and infuriating it is,

3)Pile on a side order of triumphal self-congratulation to me and my readers for not being that stupid,

4)Lather, rinse, repeat.

Blogging that way is just too easy (which is a big clue to how valuable it is), and if I don't have something positive to offer in the place of the stupid thing I just harpooned... what is the point? The blogosphere is choked with people *already doing that*... adding my pathetic squeak to the din of whining and bitching is just pointless.

And yet, there are plenty of times when legitimate protest becomes a duty.

*sigh*

So, how did I lead off this morning at my blog? Complaining about the presidential debate...
Tim J. | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 2:40 pm | #

Mark,

It's the first defense of the powerless and I live in a time in which I feel increasingly powerless to change the large-scale and dangerous follies of our culture.

But you are not powerless when you go forth and speak the truth. Yes, we should be careful to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. (Something I manage to fail at routinely.) The truth can get lost when righteous anger is misdirected, and so our anger becomes an albatross instead of catalyst to do good.

With that in mind, you're right to be angered about the McCain campaign's weasel-wording on stem cell research. Do not let go that. It may very well be that McCain is uncertain about his previous support of ESCR and his conscience is now tugging him in the right direction. Let's hope so. In the meantime, he can be honest with us about his uncertainty.

That way, even if he doesn't know the truth, at least we would know he is searching for it. That would give me a lot more comfort in a leader than one who firmly holds to the lie. But if McCain and his campaign want to play word games on the stem cell issue instead, keep calling him out on it. Catholics aren't obligated to cut him slack on that.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Bill Tingley | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 3:09 pm | #

Well said!
Please excuse my attempt to "Lather, rinse, repeat" on the topic of the day on the squawkbox (Mammon) and not the topic of eternity (Abundant Life in all its fullness) but I was wondering if your pitch on philosophy to the hughschoolers (teachers included, not just the students, eh?) may benefit from some reflections on certain aspects of logical positivism (aka tryanny of relativism) so detrimental to human action in the economy of late? If you have a moment to spare here's some reading material Requiem for homo economicus
http://www.mayoresearch.org/file...les/ REQUIEM.pdf
you may be able to mine for a nugget of wisdom or two, up to date with JPII's teaching on Christian personalist phenomalism and BXVI's decrying the loss of the natural law learning by dehellenization. To buttress the classical worldview of "a priori" human wisdom against the errors of "scientism" in economics, here's an essay connecting the dots from Aristotle thru Menger the Polish academic founder of the Austrian school, to Mises the promoter of praxeology, the study of human practices, who wrote "Human Action" tracing the "best practices" of civilization as cultural goods, such as the invention of money, markets and artisanal specialization.
Clare Krishan | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 3:53 pm | #

oops missing URL
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smit...les/ menger.html
Clare Krishan | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 3:53 pm | #

And the diamond-water paradox that can only be solved with a theory of marginal utility based on human free will, not utilitarianism!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Par...aradox_of_value

"Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk illustrated this with the example of a farmer having five sacks of grain.[6] With the first, he will make bread to survive. With the second, he will make more bread, in order to be strong enough to work. With the next, he will feed his farm animals. The next is used to make whisky, and the last one he feeds to the pigeons. If one of those bags is stolen, he will not reduce each of those activities by one-fifth; instead he will stop feeding the pigeons. So the value of one bag of grain is equal to the satisfaction he gets from feeding the pigeons. If he sells that bag and neglects the pigeons, his least productive use of the remaining grain is to make whisky, so the value of one more bag of grain is the value of his whisky. Only if he loses four bags of grain will he start eating less; that is the most productive use of his grain. The last bag of grain is worth his life."
And of course the last grain in his sack is eternal life:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit”
______John 12:24
Clare Krishan | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 3:58 pm | #

Well said.

The same splinter is in my own eye.
Stephen J. | 09.29.08 - 3:59 pm | #

Mark, please accept my congratulations on this honest and introspective post. I had noticed the trend and was worried by it. I usually agree with you on most issues, but I had noticed an increasingly negative turning of your demeanor that made me less enthusiastic about visiting the blog. I'll pray that you'll be able to reach your new goal, and now I'll be more willing to visit!
Miguel | 09.29.08 - 4:00 pm | #

Good job, Mark.
Chris-2-4 | 09.29.08 - 4:13 pm | #

Thank you, Mark. Apology gladly accepted. I was tending to visit your weblog less for this reason.

Believe me, I have things to work on too.
Justin Soutar | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 4:36 pm | #

And I think I owe all y'all an apology. I have various folk in my life whom I regard as saints. Part of what marks them out is purity of heart, something I conspicuously lack. By purity of heart, I mean a particular posture of reverence for the human person that is often very far from me. My ingrained habit (and habits are always ultimately our responsibility, not somebody else's fault) is to respond with flippancy to things I dislike.

I am sure the trad readers of your blog are happy to know you finally feel some contrition about...wait a minute! Are you talking about the political class?
It's about time | 09.29.08 - 4:44 pm | #

Always good to have a Trad around to kick you when you are down.

In answer to your question, I include Trads in the class "human beings". Of course, I've already made clear that my criticisms of Trads are not blanket ones, but don't let that stop you from taking the opportunity to smack me a good one when I say, "Sorry". I will try to regard it as my first lesson in figuring out how to speak the truth in love to people who give me little earthly reason to even like them.
Mark P. Shea | 09.29.08 - 4:53 pm | #

Mark,
I did not account for the tenderness of your feelings at this time and hurt you inadvertently and for that I am deeply sorry. My own flipness and attempt at levity back-fired. Keep up the good work on your blog.
Contrite Traddy | 09.29.08 - 5:22 pm | #

Unfortunately I have noticed that since I made and attempt to write more gently and positively, my readership has gone down. I hope it is an unrelated trend and not evidence that I am unable to write respectfully and still be entertaining and though-provoking.

Some people just aren't interested if it doesn't involve drama, and lots of it.

While your overall readership might be down, you never know who you might reach with your less vitriolic talk. It might not be today, or tomorrow ... but down the road you might speak the truth in love to someone you wouldn't otherwise had if you hadn't softened your rhetoric.
TomJoe | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 5:28 pm | #

Thanks, Contrite Traddy.
Mark P. Shea | 09.29.08 - 5:41 pm | #

God bless you, Mark. It's hard to take a look at yourself, even harder to apologize for sins that are discovered upon looking, and hardest of all to actually do something about it (otherwise, I would've stopped gossiping years ago . . .). You've just taken a step that most of us are still struggling with.
Rachel | 09.29.08 - 7:52 pm | #

And as postscript to the wonders of free will: the timely house vote in favor of sanity -- love the sinner, hate the sin!

"The big point to remember here is that both society and the market are sui generis: that is to say, self-generating. They come from themselves. No one created society except the people who live in it. And they did it by there multitudinous interactions. They did it by the interactions of a free people, exercising their freedom. Adam Smith correctly called this the system of natural liberty. It is natural because God gave all human beings a free will, just like his. God created the universe absolutely freely, and gave his creatures a free will. He also gave us reason, similar to His, but his reason is so far above ours, it is not that similar. Hence, our free will is more like God’s than our reason."
cited from http://blog.acton.org/archives/2...anding- Man.html

So what if the Fed went ahead and printed $650 bn of funny FIAT money, the principle "of the people, by the people, for the people" prevailed. That's good news for those of us who know that the Truth requires sacrifices, we ought congratulate those of both sides of the House who stood their ground even if they lose their seats in the coming weeks.

more of Dr Luckey on Wojtyla at
http://blog.acton.org/archives/ 2...n.html#extended
Clare Krishan | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 7:59 pm | #

We all do struggle with this, Mark. I have had to add mea culpas in comboxes recently. Part of the problem ,as well as our own sin, is that we are in a spiritual battle. At the very least, we are going to get a bit muddy. Of course, our main "weapons" are virtues, so the sharper they are, the better off we'll be.

It is *very* hard not to be seriously concerned about the culture/s in which we live.
Louise | Homepage | 09.29.08 - 9:54 pm | #

Thanks for this brave post. Good luck with staying on the right side of that line.
Anne | 09.29.08 - 11:50 pm | #

Mark, it's a sign of Christ's love that you can examine your soul and come to apologize. For my part, I would like to apologize as well. I think it's very easy to forget the humanity of people, especially when they are far removed from our own spheres of influence, or the somewhat faceless writer behind a blog (although I finally did see your face as Innocent Smith!). Take care of yourself, and God bless, friend.
Michael | 09.30.08 - 12:22 am | #

Hi, Mark.

While I appreciate the "apology," I have to say that it doesn't quite make the grade when you add on "it's just that..."

What it says is, "I'm sorry you're offended, but..."

Or "I didn't mean to call you x, but you did y."

What you wrote was "And I think I owe all y'all an apology"

and you added some potential reasons for why this was necessary.

So far, so good.

Then you said, "But here's the thing."

So what you're saying is really that you're not sorry?

Yes, McCain's ads are vague. I wish he'd be very clear. As SDG has mentioned, McCain's support for escr is very narrow compared to others. Is it narrow enough? No. I think some of his recent statements reflect that he is tightening up even more (from accepting experimentation on existing lines to not accepting it at all). I pray that he goes all out and condemns it all. However, your presentation has been consistently that he fully supports "less canibalization" than the other candidate with the implication that he's just fine with most ESCR, which is clearly not what he has demonstrated in his voting record or in his public statements. Your current explanation doesn't mitigate this position.

I don't like the gradations for any of these position either. I do believe torture and ESCR are always immoral, but I also think we need to present other people's positions, flawed as they may be, as they actually stand and not via hyperbole. So instead of exaggerating each candidate's position so that neither is acceptable, maybe you could simply outline where you agree and disgree with each candidate's true positions.

Just a thought. One of the reasons I cut the invective from my own blog was because I started to understand the risks. I don't get much traffic, but I also don't have to stay up late explaining why someone on the Web is wrong.

Of course, maybe this comment is self refuting?
Bill B (AKA Theocoid) | Homepage | 09.30.08 - 12:55 am | #

As you are wont to say in these situations: You are a mensch.

It's not easy to bite back on that, and I commend you for doing so.
Dale Price | Homepage | 09.30.08 - 9:59 am | #

Very nice post!
Tom McDonald | 09.30.08 - 10:37 am | #

I think you are basically a good man from what I've seen and I'm glad you said this. It is a difficult time to know what to do politically, it always is I suppose, and I apologize if I was uncharitable to you as well.
Thomas R | 09.30.08 - 11:07 am | #

So what you're saying is really that you're not sorry?

No. What I'm saying is that I'm trying to do moral reasoning and assessment of my responsibility for my choices in a complex situation. If I didn't think I'd sinned I wouldn't have posted.
Mark Shea | 10.02.08 - 2:18 am | #