"Happy-clappy modernism?" I'll give Rod Dreher the benefit of the doubt and assume his condescending sub-headline was written by an editor trying to be clever. But the rest of the column is no different. It contains enough put-downs of anyone who doesn't share Mr Dreher's desperate need to find a patriarchal society to subserve himself to that the unknown headline writer may deserve more credit than not.
For Mr Dreher, the ability to achieve holiness and understand truth depends on what language you pray in — it's better if you don't speak the language, and a dead language like Latin is best of all. He says "how breathtaking and exalting the Mass can be when said reverently, using the ancient liturgical language of the church." Whether you understand a word of it or not is apparently unimportant. Maybe the Mass is like a symphony, where the words don't matter.
Mr Dreher recommends embracing a more traditional form of Christianity for the "binding" it gives to the generations of Christians who came before. Like a monk in a monastery, Mr Dreher derives great satisfaction in copying and preserving ancient manuscripts, letter by letter, whether he understands the language or not. I'm reminded of a story a Western traveler in the land of Islam tells about a discussion he had with a Muslim about a finer point of Islam. The Muslim said he was an expert in Islam because he had memorized the entire text of the Quran. But he couldn't cite the chapter and verse that would answer the question at hand because he didn't speak Arabic, the language of the Quran.
Also important to Mr Dreher is "the freedom that comes from not having to reinvent the faith every time the cultural Zeitgeist shifts." Yes, it is so much easier to mindlessly adhere to biblical accounts of history and science and morals no matter what discoveries and advances in science and philosophy and archaeology are made in the meantime. Mr Dreher claims that "if it is to have any weight, tradition must be viewed as the most trustworthy conveyor of religious truth." Instead, it's a lazy, defeatist way of dealing with the complexity of life. Mr Dreher quotes (approvingly, it seems) a New Testament professor, who admits the awful truth, that students considering converting to Orthodoxy "want existential relief from having to decide what to believe among these thousands of denominations with their truth claims." In other words, if it's too hard to reason it out, just accept tradition as truth. Whew, that was easy.
Mr Dreher and those like him repeatedly grow dissatisfied with whatever church they find themselves in, endlessly seeking something new. This time, what's old is new. Orthodoxy is the new fashion. For people like Mr Dreher, religion is like a scented candle: The purpose of its light is to provide a comforting psychological ambience. No, wait. That's supposedly the failing of those churches Mr Dreher is dissatisfied with ... today.
2 comments:
Rod Dreher cited his DMN column on his Crunchy Con beliefnet blog. A poster named jaybird replied,
"pointing out the amusing contradiction in Rod's DMN column, wherein he claims that most Americans treat religion no more seriously than a scented-candle that creates a comfortable atmosphere, but then goes on to gush excitedly about the 'panoply of colorful icons' and 'clouds of incense' in his own church."
This resulted in Rod Dreher deleting the post altogether. The quote above is from a second response by the persistent jaybird, reporting the censorship and adding that he thinks Rod Dreher is thin-skinned.
jaybird's second post has now gone missing on beliefnet, too. I'm beginning to think jaybird may be right about Rod Dreher being thin-skinned. Either that or the incense has gone to his head. ;-)
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