Gosh, I make it a point not to visit Vox Nova often as it is a very silly place. It is just so darn convenient when your religious beliefs coincide with your political beliefs. When its not so convenient, you need to make them coincide. One of the easiest ways to do such a thing is not to clearly define your terms and expect that nobody will bother to ask.
Matt Talbot at Vox Nova entitles his post “Nationalism is Idolatry.” Hmmm. Ok. I think this is a point on which we might agree, provided that some distinctions are drawn and terms defined. Here is how Mr. Talbot defines his terms.
His foreigner friend says “Boy, you have lots of flags in this country.” Matt Talbot responds, “We do? I shall drive around and assess for myself.” Matt Talbot drives around and says “Omigosh, we do have lots of flags in this country. Flags are evidence of nationalism. We are evil nationalists!”
Matt Talbot then calls upon every right (sorry, left) thinking Catholic to fight against the ghastly sin of flag exposition.
Think I exaggerate?
…Callie, my coworker, was right: there was never a place where an American flag was not visible. We made 20 stops, and most of the time we did not even have to get out of the car to find one. This was not the 4th of July or Memorial Day (and well before 9/11/2001).
Nationalism saturates American life – it is just the ever-present, ambient sound coming from every form of corporate media, 24/7/365, so ever-present that it has become, in an odd way, invisible. I have come to understand that it is idolatry – subtler, arguably, than building a golden calf, but no less idolatrous. And it disturbs me a great deal.
I wish Catholic priests and laity would stand up more often against this sort of thing. We Catholics, at every level of our society and in every vocation, me included, have failed to do our jobs of providing clear witness against this spiritually destructive idol.
Without fail, the lefty echo chamber (aka Michael Iafrate) responds with this insightful comment.
Exactly right. Great post.
The propaganda becomes even more obvious when you live outside of the u.s. for a few years and then come back.
We definitely should not have them in our churches, or flying outside of our churches.
Mr. Iafrate, having been outside of the country, is in the unique position to know such incredible things.
How these folks make the leap that exposition of the flag is sinful nationalism is beyond me. I fly a flag at my home because I wish to signify the respect for my country and the God-given freedoms that she has endeavored to secure for me. I fly a flag to show respect for the men and women how have sacrificed and died to to protect those freedoms. I fly my flag to show my proper and fitting esteem for my country and to show the honor properly owed to her.
In a similar way, while not blind to their faults, I show honor and esteem for my parents as God has commanded.
To suggest that flags flying at car dealerships, libraries, malls, and even churches constitutes a sinful nationalism and idolatry is simply as disingenuous as it is senseless. In other words, perfectly Vox Nova.
December 15, 2009 at 2:59 pm
So, if I fly my Texas flag…am I a Big Idolater…or just a parochial one? 😀
December 15, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Out of ideas and now just thrashing about like a helicopter with its stabilizing-rotor shot off.
December 15, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Morning's Minion has his cut-and-pasted tu quoque in response to every criticism — makes life easier for him, I suppose, never having to come to grips with his own insistence on imbuing his political preferences with religious authority. What a sanctimonious theocrat (and iafrate too).
December 15, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Is nationalism is a sin? It depends on how nationalism is intended.
If by nationalism one means bigotry, then it is a sin.
If by nationalism one means patriotism, then it is a virtue.
If one's religious and political beliefs do not coincide, then one
can make them coincide by many ways:
1. rendering to Caesar what is God's
2. not rendering to Caesar what is God's
3. voting for Mark Anthony
4. getting out of Rome
5. leaving it up to the people to choose and washing one's hands
6. paying Judas to get Jesus
December 15, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Brendan,
Give it up.
You know they are left-wing loonies.
There comes a point that intellectual stimulation only feeds the anti-Catholic diatribes that occur over there at Vox Nova.
Where they worship Bono, blessed be upon his holy instrument, and bow down at the altar of Noam "I hate, HAAAATE, America" Chomsky and Karl "Obama's Daddy" Marx.
Tito
December 15, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Nationalism saturates American life – it is just the ever-present, ambient sound coming from every form of corporate media, 24/7/365, so ever-present that it has become, in an odd way, invisible.
Invisible eh? Well that's convenient in that allows one to engage in snctimonious finger-wagging while freeing them of the burden of actually making a case that x person, institution, practice is an example of idolatrous nationalism. Give me ambiguity, or give me something else!
December 15, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Trying for intelligent discussion with Vox Nova followers proves an old saying, "Trying to teach a pig to sing only annoys you while pleasing the pig."
December 15, 2009 at 8:36 pm
"Morning's Minion has his cut-and-pasted tu quoque … What a sanctimonious theocrat (and iafrate too)."
Hah! Nobody has yet addressed my basic point – American arch-liberals, direct offsprings of the Enlightenment, are under some illusion that they are "conservative". Couldn't be more wrong. As for me, I'm an old-style Christian Democrat with not much time for rights-based individualism, the so-called separation of church and state, lassez-faire liberalism, or muscular nationalism. I'm a corporatist, I'm fully on baord with Bendict's world political authority, and I'll take Catholic social teaching over American Calvinist economics any day, thank you very much.
Who is supposed to be the conservative again?
December 15, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Morning's Minion, you just used tu quoque again!
Please do not attempt to claim our Holy Father wants a "world political authority." Did you perhaps forget the Catholic Social Teaching of Subsidiarity?
December 15, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Brendan, I'm more than familiar with subsidiarity, thank you very much – it's the very reason why I am suspicious of the nation state and its insistance on a direct loyalty between each and every "citizen" and that same state, subordinating all other mediating institutions and claims on loyalty. These are all very old criticisms of the liberalism that this blog so strongly endorses…
As for the world political authority, see Popularum Progessio and Caritas in Veritate. Here's the latter:
"To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority… Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good… Such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights…"
December 15, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Da flags are coming from inside the Church!!1~!
As a Knight of Columbus, there's a lot of stuff I'm tempted to say about this, but I'll pass, since it's a little too internet fight. And I get where everyone’s coming from, even if it is a little too “between acoustic acts in the quad” for my taste.
I will say that if I was at a Catholic Church in another country, I'd be glad to see them process their flag down the aisle as well. This is as innocent as Nationalism gets, folks. Having enough pride in your country to acknowledge that it’s there isn’t exactly planting seeds of evil.
December 15, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Shorter Obama's Minion:
Blah Blah Calvinist blah blah Enlightenment liberals blah blah nationalism.
Maybe one day you can write something original that indicates you have an understanding of political philosophy that is somewhat more advanced than that of college freshman, but until then, all I hear is blah blah blah.
December 15, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Paul, you can dress it up any way you want, but like your Enlightenment-era heroes, you are an American liberal. Desist from self-delusion.
December 15, 2009 at 9:39 pm
like your Enlightenment-era heroes
Considering that you know the topic of my dissertation, and that we've had discussions about my loathing of the French Enlightenment, I find this remark pretty sad.
December 15, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Nobody has yet addressed my basic point
Who the f*** cares about your basic point? You cut and paste that into every discussion regardless of its relevance, as a way of distracting from the stupidity and hackery on your own side.
December 16, 2009 at 12:33 am
Morning's Minion might want to take a minute or two to consider that he can't have his cake and eat it, too. He claims to loathe the subordination of mediating institutions to the state, yet he consistently advocates for greater state powers. Apparently it hasn't occurred to him that the gradual of accretion of authority upwards will only subordinate those institutions even more. (One of those institutions being the Church, of course.)
It's all well and good to call yourself whatever political label you like, "Christian Democrat", but you know damn well that collectivism only increases the likelihood of religious suppression. "World political authority" sounds nice when the Holy Father is talking about it; not so much when it's coming from the foaming, rabid mouths of most United Nations dwellers.
December 16, 2009 at 1:27 am
Anonymous @ 7:17am:
I did not write the blog post in question. Matt Talbot did.
Patrick:
You quoted me verbatim and then decided to collapse my view into Matt Talbot's, summarizing it saying "How these folks make the leap that exposition of the flag is sinful nationalism is beyond me." Whether or not this summary expresses Matt's view is for him to say. It does not express my view and is therefore a distortion of my view.
Anonymous soldier's wife @ 8:36am:
I am not surprised that you think my views are offensive. You and your husband clearly have a lot invested in the military discipleship community. I am very much invested in another discipleship community (called the church) and I find the inability to be critical of the military and the u.s. in general offensive. The "beef" I have with the u.s. should be obvious to anyone conscious of our history and current imperial ambition.
Chris M:
Micheal (sic) believes that honoring our soldiers is "chest-thumping nonsense".
No I don't. I think we should honor soldiers as human beings and stop turning them into killing automatons by getting them out of the military cult. This quote of yours, on the other hand, is chest-thumping nonsense: "99.9% of those in uniform are better men than he could ever hope to be." It's also boring as shit. Grow up.
Darwin:
Use of national flags in Christ worship contexts is never a good idea. But the Mexican context is different from the u.s. american context. Should be obvious.
December 16, 2009 at 1:30 am
Darwin – My last comment should read "Use of national flags in Christian worship…"
December 16, 2009 at 2:05 am
J. Christian,
You are arguing from the liberal perspective. Sometimes authority must be granted to the overarching level – to claim otherwise is a misunderstanding of subsidiarity (as American liberals do when they falsely equate subdidiarity with "small government"). Liberals also downplay solidarity, without which subsidiarity become sterile (again, refer to Caritas in Veritate for an explicit statement of his point).
Legitimate authority does not subordinate mediating institutions. They work together to promote the common good. This is the correct starting point, not the notion that the individual is king of his castle. And when did I refer to "collectivism"? Here, I follow Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, when he referred to both collectivism and individualism as the "twin rocks of shipwreck" – and American liberals are firmly in the latter camp.
December 16, 2009 at 2:07 am
"my loathing of the French Enlightenment" – as you well know, the Enlightenment went beyond France. Some of the Scottish thinkers were equally dangerous.