Robert Mickens – Scaredy Cat

The analogy has been offered before.  Once upon a time there were only a few news outlets which had a strangle hold on news, which was pitched from only one, liberal, view.   Then came talk radio and after that cable. There was a whole new world of possibilities.   In the Catholic sphere, there were very few news outlets.  Then came EWTN and the internet and the whole scene changed.

Liberal hate this. They fear conservative voices in the new Catholic media and the power of the blogs.

This is a prelude to a quick romp and stomp through the befuddled head of Robert Mickens lately of La Croix International.   This is his latest platform, ultra-liberal, wherein he exercises his role as cadre in the New catholic Red Guards, attacking the Four Olds in defense of Francis Thought.

Here’s his latest piece.

Supporting the pope and his vision for reform

Reform-minded Catholics should ask God to bless Francis with good health and Benedict XVI with continued long life.

[…]

LOL!  Mickens hates Benedict, frequently insults him, and got fired from The Tablet because he publicly wished for his death.  HERE  The reason why he now says their ilk should hope for a long-life for Benedict XVI is because Francis shouldn’t resign while he is still alive.  As Mickens wrote: “But privately he’s also told aides that it would probably not be wise to resign as long as Benedict XVI is still alive.” Mickens’ hypocrisy has no bounds.

Going on…

Follow the logic.

There is another element regarding the perceived state of the Church. It is the myth of a Catholicism deeply divided, something that is being perpetuated by a very small minority within the Church, but which also includes a few of the voting members in the College of Cardinals.

It is becoming much clearer by the day that one of the main aims of this tiny group and its false narrative that Pope Francis is causing confusion and doctrinal uncertainty among ordinary Catholics is precisely to influence the next Conclave.

But it is a strategy based on a bogus hypothesis – that the Church is fractured into more or less equally opposing camps; or at least that those in the disaffected one are numerous. There is absolutely no evidence to support this beyond the rhetoric of a small cabal of bloggers and the presence of, in comparison to the worldwide Church, a minuscule number of neo-Tridentinist communities.

They are like shell companies. They look and sound like they are vibrant and growing, but they are actually quite hollow and unsustainable.  [A clever simile, but the traditional seminaries are growing and the families that frequent them have lots of kids.]

If a significant number of voting cardinals are swayed by this pressure group’s unsubstantiated narrative they will, in turn, try to convince the rest of the electors of the need to choose a “unifying” or “reconciling” pope. But this is a trap that, hopefully, most of the cardinals will see for what it is.

So… let me get this straight.   There is no confusion or doctrinal uncertainty in the Church.  Those who say there is confusion are a tiny minority.  There are traditionalists and bloggers who are pushing “fake news”.   They are hollow and unsustainable.

But apparently Mickens is pretty damn scared of them.

It seems that these bloggers have more power than he will openly admit, if they can sway the next CONCLAVE.

Does that sound hollow to you?

How scared is Mickens of these bloggers who are pushing fake news in an environment in which, as he claims, there really is no confusion?

If Francis wants to help make it more likely that the next Bishop of Rome is someone who will continue the “missionary and pastoral conversion” and vision for the Church he has begun, then the current pope might consider raising the number of electors. He could then fill those slots with new cardinals unwaveringly committed to his vision.

He is so terrified right now that he thinks the Pope should raise the number of Cardinal electors and then stack the College to stuff the ballot box.

Ecclesiastical gerrymandering?  Yep, he’s a liberal, alright.  What a hoot.

As far as his fear of bloggers is concerned, I am reminded of the story St. Augustine tells in City of God IV.  Alexander the Great captured some pirates.  Alexander asked the pirate chief how he dared to maraud on the seas.  The pirate responded, “How do you dare to seize the whole earth? Because I have a little ship, I am called a pirate. But because you have a great fleet you are styled an emperor.”

To Mickens and his kind, I respond:

Because I have a blog, I write “fake news”.  But because you have a magazine behind a paywall you are “journalist”.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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7 Comments

  1. majuscule says:

    The reason Mickens says They are like shell companies. They look and sound like they are vibrant and growing, but they are actually quite hollow and unsustainable is because that is the tactic used by progressives–in the church and secular world alike. Start a lot of blogs! Corner the news market! Make yourself look big and powerful!

  2. richiedel says:

    The confusion isn’t even the start of it. It’s also the discouragement that the laity face when the difficult situations they are faced with are met by double talk. As if making distinctions for the poorly catechized between the “Catholic divorce” and what a true decree of nullity is wasn’t enough, we are now faced with the seemingly varying degrees of indissolubility which may or may not come into play: as if the Church’s presumed validity of the marriage not only takes into account the state of the spouses at the time of the sacrament is conferred, but also whether one of the spouses later on down the line decides to divorce and remarry. In determining validity and/or indissolubility, it’s BACK to the future! Now, when the laity are faced with difficult situations in there marriage, what standards for a Christian marriage do they have to keep fighting for? With such apparently malleable standards for marriage, the laity are forced to hope against hope as they strive to maintain their marriages, and their situations are made more difficult than they have to be.

    Mickens’ “nothing to see here, folks” attitude toward this state of affairs is not helpful, to say the least. It seems for all he cares that marriage and the family can fall apart as long as his partisan concerns are acknowledged.

  3. Kathleen10 says:

    There are two entire and distinct camps. We keep trying to reconcile the two but it is not going to happen. Group 1 believes one thing, which is entirely different from what Group 2 believes. It is going to continue to be a crazy-making experience until this is no longer the situation. The answer to this may come tomorrow, we don’t know, but until it does, this is the state of affairs. Are souls being lost while this is the case? Surely. But only for those of us who believe in such things as lost souls. There are many people who don’t believe that can even happen, unfortunately, many of them are our clerics.
    What is surprising, is the sniveling and unattractive behavior of those on the Left, no matter where you find them. A less admirable group can hardly be found. They do use Red Guard tactics, as you put it Fr. Z., and in general these are effeminate behaviors, there is nothing manly about them. [RIGHT!] The church and the world are being taken over by a spirit of effeminacy. [You’ve hit this on the head.] Those of us who were fortunate to have been raised in an era where men were men and women were women, and the actual virtues were taught and seen as valuable, can tell the difference, and it is glaring to our generation. They bully, they throw hissy fits over nothing, they isolate their enemy, they tattle, they work in gangs, they use words to injure or try to embarrass, they run to the authority figure to try to hurt, humiliate, and punish their opposition. If successful, they show satisfaction, never magnanimity, they don’t know what that is. In short, they aren’t gentlemen. This is all right out of the Rules for Girls Playbook. Please no one tell me it’s not, I know, I grew up as a girl person, I recognize it. It’s bad behavior in a female, it’s really nauseating behavior in a male.
    Mickens is obviously afraid, or he wouldn’t bother to point out the insignificant enemy. He is afraid people may get informed, and start a movement, and the tables will be turned, and true Catholic teaching will be rediscovered by the masses, and then what would happen to the lofty plans of men like little Mickens.

    [You’ve called attention to an important dimension of their behavior.]

    Fr. Z's Gold Star Award

  4. un-ionized says:

    Kathleen, yes, some of what you have described is the behavior of malignant narcissists. There is a relationship between this and male homosexuality. I ran into this personally with some parish priests and my faith has been changed forever. I have questions about this that no one seems to want to address, especially in the light of canon law, perhaps because one of the things that these people do is threaten people.

  5. TonyO says:

    One of the best reasons why we should not cave in to the demands of the far fringe left for women priests to “solve” our priest shortage is that it wouldn’t do any good. We have had a bunch of old ladies in a lot of the chanceries for 2 generations now, and things just keep getting worse. The old ladies in miters are even worse than the old ladies in the rectories.

    Now we seem to be getting old ladies in the left-liberal media, as well. Well, I suppose it was inevitable, but it’s still ugly seeing it happen.

    They look and sound like they are vibrant and growing, but they are actually quite hollow and unsustainable.

    “That’s right – unsustainable. Why, if … (puff)… we hold …. (grunt) …. down…. (uuurrh) …. these pillows over their …. (wheeze) … heads long enough, … they’ll die a natural death. Darn it, why won’t you die already?”

    That kind of unsustainable?

  6. Pingback: MONDAY CATHOLICA EDITION – Big Pulpit

  7. Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda says:

    The left sees the internally consistent Catholicism of history as the irrelevant ramblings of a fringe minority.

    I would agree with him that those who believe as the Church has always believed are a minority these days, which is sad.

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