You can't keep a good Style reporter down
On the "Pontifications" blog, one finds Dreher's most recent explanation of why he went public with his conversion dance: "I did not want to go public with this struggle, which my wife and I have been dealing with for some time now, but I made the mistake of clumsily evading a Washington Post reporter’s questions about the practice of my faith. He could tell that I was trying to hide something, so I finally yielded and told him what I was dealing with. He put it in his story — how could he not? — and when that came out, I felt as if I owed my readers an explanation.... I loathe and despise being in this place of uncertainty...."
Kinda like Leave it to Beaver: Mom: "Junior, did you eat the chocolate chip cookies?" Son: "Ummmm, uhhhh" Mom: "well?" Son: "Y-Y-Yes mom! I can't take it anymore! I-I-I did eat the chocolate chip cookies!"
This is a cute story for Rod to tell himself. There's just one problem -- Rod has already demonstrated to his audience how skillful he is at evasion when he WANTS to evade. He's not clumsy when evading questions from contra crunchies -- in that situation he is a Jedi Knight of evasion ("These questions don't exist ... these voices are silent ... I do not hear them, I do not read them ... I addressed them years ago, I shall not address them again ...") But when faced with a question that would garner more attention for himself and his struggles? Well, then his evasions are "clumsy".
Apparently Rod expects us to believe that one would need some serious rhetorical skills to put a Washington Post *Style* reporter off the scent of impending religious conversion. Yeah that sounds right! Reporters from Washington Post's Style section are totally up on the fine theological distinctions between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. They can smell a religious conversion a mile away -- never mind that their beat usually consists of investigating stories like whether Britney Spears is pregnant again.
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1659#comments
Kinda like Leave it to Beaver: Mom: "Junior, did you eat the chocolate chip cookies?" Son: "Ummmm, uhhhh" Mom: "well?" Son: "Y-Y-Yes mom! I can't take it anymore! I-I-I did eat the chocolate chip cookies!"
This is a cute story for Rod to tell himself. There's just one problem -- Rod has already demonstrated to his audience how skillful he is at evasion when he WANTS to evade. He's not clumsy when evading questions from contra crunchies -- in that situation he is a Jedi Knight of evasion ("These questions don't exist ... these voices are silent ... I do not hear them, I do not read them ... I addressed them years ago, I shall not address them again ...") But when faced with a question that would garner more attention for himself and his struggles? Well, then his evasions are "clumsy".
Apparently Rod expects us to believe that one would need some serious rhetorical skills to put a Washington Post *Style* reporter off the scent of impending religious conversion. Yeah that sounds right! Reporters from Washington Post's Style section are totally up on the fine theological distinctions between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. They can smell a religious conversion a mile away -- never mind that their beat usually consists of investigating stories like whether Britney Spears is pregnant again.
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1659#comments
posted by kathleen at 8:00 AM
4 Comments:
Maybe to Rod, Orthodoxy is the "slow food" equivalent to the "fast food" of the modern Latin Church. Think about it: cheesy music composed by the imfamous St. Louis Jesuits, crappy McMansion-like architecture, "Pope-mobiles" - all this stuff is very mainstream and un-crunchy. How can he stand it?
Sometimes, as a Catholic, I have a hard time standing some of the seeming compromise with the culture and the horrid music, of course. But the Church is one city I'll stay in even amid the "white flight" of Rod and others into the safe suburbs of Eastern Orthodoxy. Everything else is ephemeral in my view, the Platonic chickens, the convivial coffee, the Republican party....
I have pretty good sources within the church - I could probably pull together a reliable list of priests in Rod's geographic area who won't molest anyone in his family. But I doubt that's enough for Rod - he probably wants a second honeymoon with a new church which will appreciate him more.
err, i don't "hate" rod, James kabala, I just think he is full of bunk and should be called out on it.
everybody calls us obsessive. man, i wish. I have loads of other pressing stuff to think about besides how rod tries to bamboozle people into thinking he's at the vanguard. there is nothing obsessive about discussing Dreher and his book at a blog set up for precisely that purpose. sorry.
and who's Jonathan carpenter and Kevin miller?
Criticism and hate are different things.
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