I’ve seen it occur throughout my life. When I was involved in running political campaigns, I saw the light go out in people’s eyes when I made my pro-life stance known. I was once urged to take a job by someone who had a great deal of power and presently has a great deal more. He laughed when I said I couldn’t work for him because of his political stances. He said nobody really cares about that stuff. He was talking about life.
Life.
And there it was. The moment. I could’ve laughed along and joined in. I could’ve been part of some powerful circle that speaks cynically. But truth be told, it didn’t really occur to me until much later what I was truly being offered. One thing I’ve learned about myself is I don’t do subtlety very well. I too often think that you’re actually saying what you intend to say. Only much later would I see that you meant something very different. That stupidity on my part may have saved me from a major mistake, more than one, in fact.
CS Lewis said, “To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
Me again. This leads me to what I wanted to talk about, which was we are so often betrayed by our “leaders” or “elites” because of the temptation of the Inner Ring. Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., said to me once that so many people’s inexplicable actions can be explained if you just think of them wanting more than anything to sit at the cool kid’s table. I laughed at the time but the more I thought about it, the more serious I knew he was.
I’ve heard people slam Catholics but then when they find out someone in their crowd is actually a Catholic, they might add the “but not you” caveat. I don’t know if that person could actually explain why not them but it sends out a signal to Catholics.
To be a nominal Christian is fine but you want to stay away from being too serious about it. Otherwise you may be called a “fundamentalist” or in the case of Catholics, a “rad trad.”
Gasp.
So many of our Christian and conservative “thought leaders” are constantly attacking Christians and conservatives. This is for a few reasons. One, we deserve attacking. We do. We’re not perfect. But secondly, it is because by attacking Christians and conservatives they set themselves apart as the good kind, the kind that can be trusted to belong to the Inner Ring. Yeah, but not you.
They get published in all the elite publications such as The New York Times and the Atlantic. But at what cost? Now, in some cases they could argue that they didn’t say anything wrong. But it’s the fact that their guns are always facing inward that is disturbing. Could Christians and Catholics use reminding to speak kindly about those in homosexual relationships? Yes, of course. Could Christians and Catholics be reminded that post-abortive women are suffering out there so we should be careful how we speak about it sometimes? Sure. But when that is the sum total of what you’re talking about, that becomes a problem. Why? Because you’re no longer making the case for life. You’re no longer holding up the Church’s teachings on sexual ethics. You’re simply tut-tutting those who are doing so. You’re acting like a ref that’s only calling fouls on one side. Are they all fouls? Maybe. But you have to call both sides. Otherwise you’re just bought and paid for. And with that you may gain the whole world. But what do you lose?
The Theological Pugcast guys talk about this issue at length. It’s worth a listen. Their focus is squarely on evangelicals but it works on a larger scale than that.
