The Theocon Panic, Ctd

Pope Francis Visits Sardinia

At first, we got denial. Theocon Matthew Schmitz at First Things even tried to argue that there is no difference between the vestments of the Liberace pope and his modest successor. A Vatican source relayed to me, in contrast, the words that Francis spoke as he was presented with Benedict’s wardrobe before going out for the first time on the balcony of St Peter’s: “Il carnevale è finito.” Then there was the attempt to argue that because Francis excommunicated a rogue Australian priest for violating the eucharist, heresy and misrepresenting the faith, he is no different than Benedict! You can read the details here. Money quote:

The letter, a copy of which NCR obtained and translated, accuses Reynolds of heresy (Canon 751) and determined he incurred latae sententiae excommunication for throwing away the consecrated host or retaining it “for a sacrilegious purpose” (Canon 1367). It also referenced Canon 1369 (speaking publicly against church teaching) in its review of the case.

I don’t know anyone who believed that Francis had just junked canon law, or had somehow come to believe that violating the Eucharist was something the Church should ever tolerate. I have never written or believed that. What I have written is that it is impossible to read the America interview without seeing it as a blunt repudiation of the last thirty reactionary, legalistic, and failed years of the church hierarchy.

And after the initial denial, some theocons are adjusting. Their adjustment is a form of revolt. In a splenetic tirade against today’s Jesuits, George Neumayr argues that Francis must be corrected:

For the good of the faith, laity, clergy, bishops, and particularly powerful cardinals should start playing Paul to Francis’s Peter, as his culturally conditioned liberalism threatens to undermine the unity and orthodoxy of the faith.

Peter snapped out of his pandering phase; let’s hope Francis does the same. Even if given the most charitable reading, Pope Francis’s recent interview with Jesuit publications was alarming in its spirit-of-Vatican II liberalism … It is not petty, disrespectful, or un-Catholic to object to the liberal parts of his agenda. Indeed, the need for a St. Paul to correct him grows with each passing week as his pontificate emboldens the Church’s enemies and undercuts her friends and most loyal members.

Bingo! The reactionaries determined to fuse Catholicism with the Republican right are rightly rattled. But note the pivot. They were only recently the relentless advocates of total obedience to papal authority. Now they’re calling for a mutiny among “laity, clergy, bishops, and particularly powerful cardinals” against the Pope. Well, at least their denial is wearing off, I suppose.

(Photo: Pope Francis greets sick people as he arrives at the Marian Shrine of Bonaria on September 22, 2013 in Cagliari, Italy. By Vatican Pool/Getty.)

Shamed Into Writing

Karl Ove Knausgård talks to The Believer about how shame influenced the writing of his six-volume autobiographical series My Struggle:

BLVR: I’m thinking that shame has a function for you: it pushes you to write.

Knausgård: Well, that’s really interesting: what shame is and what it does to me. It’s constructed for social purposes, to protect us and make us behave well to others. But for me, the shame has become a bit extreme. However, if you take for example my mother, you’ll see that she’s driven by moral values – meaning that you should behave and shouldn’t behave in certain ways, and not trespass any limits. If you go back further, to my grandmother, you’ll see that she’s even more like that: driven by shame and the thought that you shouldn’t think you’re someone special… but now, society has become almost shameless. That’s actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that’s when you can write.

BLVR: Maybe you must overcome your sense of shame to be able to be individual and personal.

Knausgård: Yes, I think so. Shame tells you when you’ve gone too far. Then you try if it’s okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.

Previous Dish on Knausgård here.

Missing: Wired Women

Internet Gap

Meghan Neal points to a new UN-backed report indicating “there’s a major online gender gap that needs closing, quick”:

Worldwide, 200 million fewer women have access to the internet than men, and that’s expected to widen to 350 million if nothing’s done to change it. In today’s information economy, that puts women at a socioeconomic disadvantage right out the digital gate – not to mention it creates an unbalanced economy that’s not doing society any favors. In fact, according to the report, if the world were to add 600 million female internet users, it would boost the global GDP by up to $18 billion.

Tim Sampson delves into the report:

In some regions extremely hostile gender politics are what keep women offline. In certain Arab countries, women are discouraged or outright banned from online activities, leading to the biggest gender imbalances in countries where Internet is relatively accessible. In Saudi Arabia for instance, nearly two-thirds of men with Internet access were engaging in e-commerce, compared to less than 50 percent of female Web users. Similarly, smartphone usage in that country has a 4:1 male to female ratio.

But even in the Western world there is a gender gap, albeit a smaller one. In this instance, the gap is blamed on more subtle hostility toward female Internet users. “[T]he U.S. access gap is entirely the product of socioeconomic differences between men and women, while the use gap is the product of both socioeconomic differences and underlying, gender-specific effects,” the report states.

What’s The Plan To Avoid A Shutdown?

Collender asks:

At this very late point in the debate, it’s hard to discern even a hint of a strategy among House Republicans about what to do and how to get it done. The GOP plan that seemed to be emerging to vote this week on a debt ceiling extension that included tea party legislative priorities and punt on the CR was abandoned yesterday when the leadership realized it didn’t have the votes from its own caucus to pass that bill.

Here is a gif-summary of the GOP’s current strategy.

Republicans Reject The Romney Agenda

The insane demands of Republicans to avoid a government shutdown aren’t insane enough for some Republican Congressmen:

The House proposal (at least as originally conceived) is a grab bag of GOP goodies, most of which were bullet points in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign platform. But it lacks the most controversial elements of the GOP agenda — Medicare privatization, Medicaid devolution — and as such doesn’t cut enough spending for some of the most hardline conservatives in the House Republican conference. It also doesn’t include any abortion restrictions.

As such, Boehner and his leadership team can’t whip up 217 Republicans (the current threshold for passage) to back it, and since zero Democrats will support their crazy plan, it’s dead. At least as currently written.

Chait thinks that there is a perverse logic to this turn of events:

Why would the most conservative Republicans settle for forcing Obama to implement Mitt Romney’s platform? They thought Romney’s platform was too timid in the first place! They were willing to vote for figures like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, not to mention Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, as an expression of their dismay with Romney.

Now, it may seem a little silly to insist that Obama accept an agenda that was too extreme to prevail in a Republican primary. But if you’re already insisting that Obama accede to an agenda that was too right wing to win a general election last November, at this point, what’s the difference?

In The Tank

Molly Ball reminds us that the Heritage Foundation’s turn to “hard-edged activism,” especially since Jim DeMint took the helm, poses a long-term threat to conservatives:

[T]here is more at stake in Heritage’s transformation from august policy shop to political hit squad than the reputation of a D.C. think tank or even the careers of a few squishy GOP politicians. … Today, prominent Republicans publicly worry they’re becoming the “stupid party.” In its prime, Heritage rose to rival the power and capacity of the liberal academic establishment, giving conservatives a reputation as serious thinkers. “There was a time when leftist intellectuals dismissed conservatives as the party without intellect. Heritage undid that,” [former Heritage trustee Mickey] Edwards said. “The Republican Party for a while had the high ground. Everyone said that’s where the ideas are, that’s where the intellectual ferment is. When your intellectual ferment is nothing more than a political platform, that [reputation] is undercut. That hurts the conservative movement in general.”

The Deficit Is Falling

Kevin Drum wants more recognition of that fact:

deficitDave Weigel notes a conundrum today: according to a new poll, 54 percent of the public disapproves of Barack Obama’s handling of the deficit. And yet, as the chart on the right shows, the deficit is shrinking dramatically. … It’s unfortunate that the deficit is falling so fast. It’s a headwind against the recovery that we don’t need. Nonetheless, the deficit is falling fast, and no one seems to know it yet.

Exra Klein thinks the falling deficit spells disaster for the GOP:

This is the context for the latest debt-ceiling fight: Republicans delivered on their 2010 promise to reduce the deficit, and now they’re adrift. There’s no single goal –save maybe the impossible dream of repealing Obamacare — that really serves as the raison d’etre of this Republican Party. When’s the last time you heard an elected Republican really try and sell the Ryan budget as the key answer to the nation’s problems?