I don't think Michael Novak is a bad guy. I do think that the attempts by the Money and Power guys who are writing policy to hold up Novak as a sort of Voice of Catholic Teaching Blessing our Policies vs. the Euroweenie opinions of our Peacenik Pope and his Clueless Bishops was highly cynical. I wish Novak had been more vociferous in saying that it is precisely at the moment when the whole world is shouting for one thing and an almost unanimous chorus of bishops is saying "Whoa!" that the duty of the Catholic is to inform his conscience with the teaching of the Church, not join the shouting throng. But I also think Novak is not a materialist so much as a guy who has been beating the drum of democratic capitalism for a long time and who naturally gravitated toward people who found him...useful.
SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It March 23, 2006.
This is why I'd like to see a healthy Dem party re-emerge. Opposite evils, so far from balancing, aggravate one another. A Wilsonian Drunken Sailor Safety Through Torture Right inflames an hysterical angry vengeful Left. Meanwhile, when Elephants and Donkeys fight, it is the grass that suffers. The Left fanatically aims for the maximum number of babies to die, while the Right continues pissing away our grandchildrens savings and trying to make the world into the image and likeness of Michael Novak through the exportation of our democratic capitalist system at the point of a gun (only to wind up with Muslims who tend to see the image and likeness of Madonna instead--and to to hate us all the more).
SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It March 22, 2006.
I don't say Novak is a materialist. I do say he's a cheerleader for claims about democratic capitalism that seem to me to be in excess of the facts (recall that he was the Neocon Advocate of Choice to go to Rome and try to explain to the Holy Father and bishops of the world why their almost completely unanimous judgment against the justice of the Iraq War was wrong). Novak is the court theologian for this particular experiment. The people who looked to him for theological rationales for the war and the experiment in nation-building to follow have to face the fact that we ain't exporting what we used to export. The manufacturers of our culture are apostate Puritans who could not care less about a civilization of virture or a culture of life. It's Madonna, M-16s and money for them. Novak, probably with good intentions, allowed himself to be used to push this war to plant the American Way in the Islamosphere. The trouble is, the American Way is not the gospel and is becoming increasingly hostile to the gospel.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 03.22.06 - 8:18 pm |
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