Via Creative Minority Report:
Novelist Anne Rice is working out some of her issues very publicly and attacking the Church.
Carl Olson writes:
Novelist and Unvert Anne Rice (who is also a Notable Catholic Commentator, according to Nicholas Kristof) was recently interviewed by her homosexual son, Christopher, and spoke at length about the Catholic Church. The MetroWeekly has transcribed some of “highlights” (and also has the videos); here are a few:
•”I am completely confident that gays are winning the battle for equal rights in our country. And that the battle for same-sex marriage will be won. And that Don’t Ask, Don’t tell is going down.”
•”I hadn’t been a Catholic for 38 years, so I began to study it. I began to live it…. And I came to the conclusion 12 years later that it was not a fine religion, that it was dishonorable, that it was dishonest, that it’s theology was largely sophistry… and that it was basically a church that told lies. And that it was for me, for my conscientious standpoint, an immoral church; and I had to leave it.” <font color=”#ff0000″><b>[No one who lives her Catholic faith leaves the Church. I don’t know what she was living or thought she was living.]</b></font>
•”They’re very eager to blame the liberals, but the liberals have had no power in the Church all these years. <font color=”#ff0000″><b>[She must be taking some sort of hallucinogenic drug.]</b></font> And 75% of the priesthood and the hierarchy are gay.” <font color=”#ff0000″><b>[B as in B. S as in S. That’s just a pure lie.]</b></font>Since announcing to great fanfare last summer that she was ditching the Church, Rice has revealed that she possesses a wealth of emotional baggage and a poverty of knowledge about Church history, practice, and theology
Loading ...
More cynical than the average Catholic, my guess is that book sales and attention have both diminished since she returned to the Church and that this is a way for her to a) garner more attention and b) attract new fans.
Please, ask, tell.
Let’s hear it for the 25% club.
I have met a few “former Catholics” since I converted, and there is undoubtedly one thying common to them all. They don’t know nor understand anything the Church teaches. I had one tell me that she didn’t know what all the hoopla was over the Eucharist. “After all”, she said, “it’s just a bland wafer”. When I said the Eucharist is the body, blood, and divinity of Our Lord, and that it is the Sacrifice of the Mass, she called me ignorant. I told her that was OK with me, that the pharisees saw John and Peter as ignorant men, too.
Unvert? Devert?
I think the word you’re looking for is “apostate”.
Fr. Basil says:
Unvert? Devert?
Unvert isn’t actually a word. Whomever wrote this article should have used the term, “devert”.
Urban Dictionary defines Devert as,
someone who was brainwashed with religious myths from birth onward until they decided they’d rather think for themselves than blindly believe the myths written centuries ago with no proof that create all the world’s various religions that if you did not bow down and worship some supernatural omnipotent being, you’d be sentenced to burn in the flames of hell forever.
•”They’re very eager to blame the liberals, but the liberals have had no power in the Church all these years. And 75% of the priesthood and the hierarchy are gay.”
Wow! That just threw me back to high school when students used to call people gay when they ran out insults. Those two thoughts really had nothing to do with each other.
Oooohhhh – she forgot to say “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
In most interviews Anne Rice comes across as a kind-hearted – if somewhat eccentric – woman. That she has abandoned the Church is to be regretted, especially if she has done so over a failure to understand the truth of Catholic moral teaching. Still, given that she reads Catholic blogs, I’m not sure comments mocking her are very likely to hasten her return. If we’re honest, some of what she says is true; who can deny that there are many problems in the Church, including widespread deceit and clerical homosexuality? The solution lies not in abandoning the Church and her teachings, but in embracing prayerful fidelity. As the Holy Father wrote prior to his election:
Father Dwight Longenecker has a wonderful take on Anne Rice on his blog. Go read it. I think that she is a woman whose head rules her brain. Her son is gay, she thinks it wonderful and because the church does not approve, then the church is wrong and evil. The current scandals haven’t helped.
Her love for her son is admirable – she is one who loves the sinner. Unfortunately, she also loves the sin.
I will keep her in my prayers
Ms. Rice has clearly never spent time at any major seminary or house of religious formation. Just ask any seminarian who has shown any attachment to traditional piety, Latin or the EF Mass.
Of course, many of those people are now former seminarians (or have been forced to move to another diocese).
I don’t quite get it. First she champions same sex marriage, the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell”, and says that she is confident that “gays are winning the battle …”, but then, in her attempt to discredit the Church, she says that 75% of the hierarchy are gay. Um….. shouldn’t that make her happy???
Ms. Rice is so unarticulate with her criticism of the Church that it makes you wonder what exactly she did study, if at all, during the 12 years she was Catholic.
With that kind of people, the better thing is just to ignore them.
If ‘convert’ means to turn with, ‘revert’ means to turn back, than what is the word for ‘turn through’? ;
Ms. Rice is in need of our loving prayers. Let the Holy Spirit deal with her.
I would like to suggest we refrain from calling those in RCIA “preverts.”
Let’s not be too harsh. Good information about the Church and its doctrine is easier to come by than it used to be, but it’s easy to shy away from exactly the stuff that’s most reliable if you have a lot of issues or a bad foundation. We don’t know what kind of peer pressure she suffered, and worse, what kind of misinformation she was given by sincere, concerned friends. Well-informed people often tend to go off or suffer brain freeze around exactly the people who need their info (like her).
Beyond that, it’s fatally easy in this society to get the wrong feel, or to be persuaded that by believing X fact you are committing Y crime. Faithfulness may or may not give you wisdom, but a little bit of unfaithfulness or sin tends to make you really stupid and unwise. Some of us have resources to help us get back on track, like friends and family or even habit. Rice seems to have ended up facing her temptations and doubts pretty much by herself. And for somebody as insecure as she has seemed to have been throughout her career, I’m sure it was very difficult to resist and easy to fall back into bitterness.
The best thing we can do is pray for her. There’ve been literary reverts before who wavered back and forth several times, each time violently convinced of the rightness of their current position. As for the “good riddance to bad rubbish” folks out there, I find that a dangerous position for any Christian to hold. Only by the grace of God do any of us have faith or a reasonable hope of salvation. Can any of us afford to mock those who don’t have faith, or wish them to go away? Aren’t we in effect asking God to take our faith away too?
Obviously, it would be nice if all ex-Catholics or nonbelievers argued like gentlewomen and scholars, full of reason and amity. But when we don’t do it either, it doesn’t give us much room to talk.
*echoes Suburbanbanshee*
That last paragraph is pretty incoherent. So . . . 75% of the clergy are homosexual, but liberals have no power? That would mean they’re anti-liberal homosexuals, I guess. She’s really going to argue that a majority of homosexuals are fighting to keep down other homosexuals? I guess that’s the closet theory: I can’t do anything nice for homosexuals lest anyone find out I’m one. But caving in on homosexual marriage wouldn’t cause that, when practically every other church has done it. It’d just be following the expected trend.
This is a sad story, though. I was a few chapters into her book where she talks about her reversion when she announced this. She wrote very eloquently about her childhood Catholicism and what drew her back, though in retrospect her focus was the trimmings — the beautiful church that she and her mother visited daily, the icons, etc. — and not the doctrine. (I didn’t finish the book, so maybe that came later, but now it seems unlikely.) Not that the trimmings aren’t important, of course; they certainly are. But they aren’t the whole story.
Considering her son’s homosexuality and the ideology of her likely social circle, the surprising thing isn’t that she’s left the Church, but that she came back in the first place. Maybe at first she encountered primarily the Pelosi/Keehan/Mc’Brien “progressive” wing, and assumed they were taking over; then as she got more involved, she realized they’re actually dwindling and things are moving the other way, with no chance of “progress” on sex issues.
Still, her conversion had to be a good thing. I wonder how many other lapsed Catholics were inspired by her story to come back to the Church. When we pray for her, we should pray for them too, that they won’t follow her right back out.
If they were of the truth, they never would have left, but since they never really were of the truth, they couldn’t remain (St. John of the Cross)
Eric,
Thank you. Many conservative and even traddie Catholics have and are teaching in RCIA programs here and abroad. I left the program only because the last two pastors were openly disobedient to the Church in their programs regarding marriage laws, contraception, etc. Those who are true Catholics and stay in the programs do exceptionally good jobs at stemming the tide of liberalism.
To label someone a prevert who is either teaching or in the RCIA program is most sad. I challenge those, especially young traddies, to get involved and help out. There are new catechetical books and helps, such as the ones used in the Diocese of St. Joseph and Kansas City in some parishes, which are quite good.
As to Ms. Rice, she has done what many in my diocese have done and that is, when faced with a homosexual or lesbian in the family, especially a child, switch from being good Catholics to cafeteria Catholics, and from republicans to democrats. Even, tragically, one of our deacons fell into this trap.
I remember when she converted, there were a couple of areas in which she was still publicly dissenting from Church teaching; I believe her local bishop, when presented with this fact, said something to the press along the lines of, “Well, conversion is a process, we have to meet people where they are, it’s a journey and we hope to get to the right destination…” Well, clearly THAT mindset didn’t work. If someone’s going to enter the Church, maybe we should ensure that they actually believe this stuff first.
Did anyone ever teach Ann Rice about the basic spiritual life. I’m not talking about “social justice”, One wonders if she was seriously taught about giving up sin, working daily on vices and the sincere practice of the virtues? And what about humble daily prayer for life changing ways and closer union with God. Yes God?
It doesn’t sound that way. Does being a Catholic mean examining ones own conscience, or examining everyone else’s conscience, and most arrogantly… the Church’s “conscience”.
Nevertheless, when was the last time any of us have ever heard at the
prayer of the faithful in the NO to pray for the conversion of sinners. Never never NEVER Most of what it consists of is telling God to create a utopia on earth. In the Divine Office there is even a request to have Jesus “find proper housing for the homeless” as if Jesus was a realtor.
The “apostate” Ann Rice and everyone needs prayer for the conversion of sinners. Jesus said in Luke 18 “Will there be any faith left when I return.” Our faith is a precious gift that we can all lose.
Supertradmom
Thanks!….. I think.
Best regards to Supertraddad!
It’s obvious that Ms Rice is someone for whom drama and celebrity are things of which she cannot do without, in her life. I am glad that she had the convenience of attaining notoriety when she “converted”, enough to fill the coffers after her vampire series was one-upped by Stephanie Meyer and Team’s Edward and Jacob. As well, I am sure she felt no ill effect from her publisher, agent, or earlier friends telling her that she no longer is relevant to modern literature and that her days are behind her.
In the end, I think SemperfiCatholic has it right. Those who embrace the Truth, stay. Those who don’t….don’t.
I read “Called Out of Darkness”, Rice’s story of her reversion, a couple of years ago and really liked it; in fact, I found some helpful points in it. According to the book, her approach to the “hard” teachings of the Church was not simply to disregard them, but to trust that Christ, the saints, and then-Pope John Paul II were holy people who knew what they were doing when they taught these things, and would steer the Barque of Peter in the right direction. The way she expressed it seemed to me to be a very good example of genuine faith — admitting that she DIDN’T have all the answers and didn’t have to. I was very saddened to discover that she had left the Church.
I don’t know that you have to insist on 100 percent understanding and acceptance of EVERY single point of Church doctrine before you can convert. Obviously you don’t want to just tell people that it doesn’t matter if they are divorced and remarried, if they support abortion on demand or gay marriage, or if they willingly practice contraception (there are cases in which one spouse insists upon it over the other’s objections; if so, the spouse who desires to be faithful to the Church should not be penalized for the other’s disobedience). You don’t want people entering the Church without knowing what they are committing themselves to.
But, to insist on people having perfect faith BEFORE they can enter the Church kind of defeats the purpose of entering the Church… it’s like insisting that you have to be healthy before seeing a doctor, or be sober for a year before you can enter rehab. In many ways, faith has to be learned “on the job” or by doing — it can’t all be learned from books ahead of time. And the sacraments themselves are meant to increase our faith.
Does the fact that Rice has left the Church yet again “prove” that her reversion was insincere or mistaken? I don’t think we can assume that, any more than we can assume that a couple who separate or divorce must have never really loved one another or taken their marriage vows seriously. People have free will and can choose good or evil at ANY time — that is why we have to pray for the grace of perseverance.