Damian Thompson on the Changing Catholic Blogosphere

Do you remember Damian Thompson? His description at The Telegraph notes that he was once described by The Church Times as a “blood-crazed ferret.”  Be that as it may, what he says about “The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Blogosphere” is quite interesting – especially because Damian means the rise of fall of the right-leaning Catholic blogosphere. I share his perception on many points.

To be sure, Damian is unnecessarily snarky (for example, about peace and justice). He has a habit of sneering at the (allegedly) liberal hierarchy and Catholic establishment in England and elsewhere, at least as he imagines it to be. If I recall correctly, he has taken a few swipes at the Pray Tell crowd too.

But now this. It is interesting to read observations from Damian such as the following:

Young, devout Catholics are, paradoxically, both more conservative theologically than their predecessors and more tech-savvy than liberal believers, possibly because the latter tend to be older.

And this:

The internet is a mighty instrument in the hands of conservative and traditionalist Catholics. They have used it to disrupt the power structure envisaged by enthusiasts for the Second Vatican Council…

Damian says that “the Catholic blogosphere”

reached its heyday during the reign of Benedict XVI, when it was dominated by supporters of his liturgical reforms…

And that for such as these, it was

Payback time!  … Many were traditionalist Catholics thrilled by the opportunity to settle scores after years of being ignored by control-freak trendy priests.

After many, many hours moderating the commbox at Pray Tell, I appreciate Damian’s honesty about the reality online, back in the days of Benedict XVI:

…The problem was that the conversations kept turning nasty.

You have no idea what manner of nastiness came pouring in to Pray Tell, what rage and outrage. And even in its milder form, there was no mistaking that a tiny extremist segment was way, way over-represented in the commbox. I did my best to keep an even hand (deleting extremism on both ends and, yes, banning people from both ends), but I’m sure I didn’t always get it right.

It is one of the tragedies of Pope Benedict’s papacy that he was so badly misrepresented by liturgical folks far to the right of him who claimed to speak and act at his inspiration. What was it about him, or his liturgical style, that so fired up this lot of people??

Now this is Damian speaking, not me:

Perhaps it was just as well that the election of Pope Francis took the wind out of our sails.

I observe that the commbox here has calmed down dramatically since that day on March 13, 2013, when the man in simple white appeared on the loggia of St. Peter’s. I find it quite amazing how much Pope Francis has changed the tone of discussion here for the better. Pray Tell still gets a commenting crowd that is not representative of the entire Catholic Church, and there are still plenty of folks criticizing a liturgical reform that they don’t really understand. But pretty much gone is the sense of some that it is their mission to attack and demean what most of the Catholic Church has done with the liturgy for these last 50 years. And for that I am deeply grateful to Pope Francis.

I’m thinking about all this because in Collegeville we have a two-day task force starting tomorrow on the future of Pray Tell. We’re bringing in some outside experts and some inside experts and the folks on the editorial board and dreaming about where to go next with this thing. Who know, maybe we’ll tack a bit right-ward, now that we’re feeling less defensive and under siege? Or maybe not! I look forward to a stimulating discussion.

There’s still time to respond to our survey, if you haven’t yet. Do so in the next twelve hours or so, and we’ll notice the most recent responses to come in.

And do go read Damian’s piece. His thoughts on the right-wing blogosphere are what drew my attention, but you’ll want to read his laudatory remarks about bishop-elect Robert Barron, and why he thinks various forms of social media will be important to the coming synod.

BTW, I’m flying out of London just now, and a good friend there thinks he should arrange for me to have tea with Damian the next time I’m in London. I’m sure that would be most interesting.

Say a prayer for Pray Tell, woudja? And for everyone who blogs about church and liturgy, whatever label you might attach to them.

awr

Anthony Ruff, OSB

Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a monk of St. John's Abbey. He teaches liturgy, liturgical music, and Gregorian chant at St. John's University School of Theology-Seminary. He is widely published and frequently presents across the country on liturgy and music. He is the author of Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations, and of Responsorial Psalms for Weekday Mass: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter. He does priestly ministry at the neighboring community of Benedictine sisters in St. Joseph.

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Comments

23 responses to “Damian Thompson on the Changing Catholic Blogosphere”

  1. Gerard Flynn

    I think that should read “bishop-designate Robert Barron,” Anthony.

    If only it really were “bishop-elect.”

    Reply
    1. Deacon James Anderson Murphy

      @Gerard Flynn:
      How very true.

      Reply
  2. Charles Day

    As much as I generally enjoy the internet, the guerrilla warfare that passes for thinking and commentary is sad. Damian makes the case for that point. It is much less important to be thoughtful than it is to have a snarky ‘hook’ that can be reposted several thousand times by folks who don’t think for themselves. Academia is too stodgy sometimes, but there is genuine value in standards and legitimate peer review.

    Reply
  3. Peter Kwasniewski

    “Pray Tell still gets a commenting crowd that is not representative of the entire Catholic Church, and there are still plenty of folks criticizing a liturgical reform that they don’t really understand.”

    Point 1: Is anyone representative of the entire Catholic Church? Not even the Pope, really, unless he is intending to teach ex cathedra. This much is clear: there is no longer simply the “three cheers for Vatican II and the liturgical reform” perspective out there, and those who welcome a good serious conversation should rejoice that they are not doomed merely to echo themselves over and over.

    Point 2: Don’t really understand? Isn’t that the classic move — “You can’t possibly disagree with this; you just don’t understand it.” I daresay that in the conservative/traditional movements, there are plenty of serious thinkers and writers who have studied carefully what was done by the Consilium — and want none of it, or very little of it. (Tastes do vary.) Thanks be to God that Pope Benedict at least had the generosity and charity to recognize that big mistakes had been made and that it was time for a little open-mindedness.

    Reply
  4. Alexander Larkin

    I appreciate the posts and the generally helpful/intelligent comments on Pray Tell. It is one of the few Catholic blogs that I regularly follow. Thank you to all who are part of it.

    Reply
  5. Karl Liam Saur

    My sense is that Pope Benedict XVI was aware of how he was spun in traditionalist quarters and not happy with it, much as I don’t think Pope Francis cares any more to be spun. Pope Francis has a particular distrust of ideology across the spectrum, which is a welcome distrust.

    Certainly, one sees that the Internet has allowed ghettoes to become more intense echo chambers. Mind you, this happened among subtypes of the other end of the spectrum in the late 1980s in to the early 2000s. It’s very telling to see common patterns of behavior within certain traditionalist writing circles as with radical feminist Catholic writing circles. One can predict the things that will trigger an impulse of doubling-down – because they are more about ideas that real persons.

    Utopia is nowhere to be found.

    Reply
    1. Elisabeth Ahn

      @Karl Liam Saur:

      “My sense is that Pope Benedict XVI was aware of how he was spun in traditionalist quarters and not happy with it…”

      But, how would he have known? For him to be aware, somebody had to have told him, someone who saw that as a problem that warranted Benedict’s attention, but who, among those B16 surrounded himself with would have? Gänswein? Bertone? His brother? Marini?

      Had he known, of course, he would’ve been very unhappy; I just don’t think he knew, not unlike how he didn’t know a whole lot of other nasty things that were happening right under his nose.

      Reply
  6. Halbert Weidner

    I would like to see a sampler from the comment boxes publsihed…My earliest experience with Pray Tell depressed me because it was as if Newman and the Development of Doctrine never saw the light of day, or the careful distinctions even in the Baltimore Catechism (No. 3 along with a great Maryknoll Father instructor that got ignored (here thinking of the place of conscience and the salvation of Non-Christians. If I got the word in 1960 a lot of comments indicated many others had another idea of orthodoxy. Of course my Maryknoller was a German American from the Midwest who actually said the institution narrative out loud so we knew where we were in the Mass.
    I think if the comments were published people preparing RCIA materials and apologetic materials would get a better idea of what thye were up against. I survived my depression, so will the brave souls who would read the compendium now.

    Reply
  7. Steven Surrency

    The tragedy of Pope Benedict’s pontificate is how little he was actually read. When it came time to write an encyclical, did he turn to the liturgy? To the need to double down on moral issues? No! He wrote about love and hope. Even truth was unwearable only in the context of love. Benedict was no farther “left” than Francis on most political issues. On some, he was even perhaps farther to the left.

    Reply
  8. Jordan Zarembo

    I doubt that a rightward or leftward shift would benefit PTB. Quite the opposite, actually.

    A rightward move will invite from the right an explosion of combative tridentistas who will try to tear apart the normative liturgy. Some tridentistas will also fashion an excessively legalistic criticism of the normative rite as a weapon to metaphorically battle moderate to progressive Catholics. Also, tridentosphere is often significantly concerned if a gremiale is the correct liturgical color or if a vestment is early or later Austrian baroque. This minutiae detracts from a sober apology for the 1962 rite.

    A leftward tact will result not necessarily in an insightful progressive blog but might invite more Tridentine-adherent polemics. To its credit, PTB has managed to avoid these discussions in favor for incisive apologies for the Ordinary Form. I may not always agree with these apologies, but the apologies are academically rigorous.

    Please stay the moderate course, PTB.

    Reply
    1. Jordan Zarembo

      @Jordan Zarembo:

      I apologize for use of the terms ‘tridentista” and “tridentosphere”. These terms are perjorative, as if all adherents of the EF are guerilla warriors against modern Catholicism. “tridentosphere” suggests that certain narrow range of pro-EF websites represent the entire movement. Perhaps I do not find these terms pejorative as I still have one foot in the neo-Tridentine world and one foot in the modern mainstream Catholic world. For many years I have been a “tridentista”, happily taking pot-shots at postconciliar thought. Perhaps I am a double agent.

      The ideological disjunct between these schools has widened to the point where even single words distill into multiple and conflicting meanings. Is there enough time and interest on PTB to constantly and consistently pick apart even individual words?

      Reply
  9. Joseph Villecco

    “It is one of the tragedies of Pope Benedict’s papacy that he was so badly misrepresented by liturgical folks far to the right of him who claimed to speak and act at his inspiration. What was it about him, or his liturgical style, that so fired up this lot of people??”

    A few things come to mind (liturgically speaking).

    1) He was able to discuss the “Tridenttine Missal” without dismissing it as un-reformed and therefore irrelevant.

    2) He was never dismissive of the people the who preferred the “Tridentine” liturgy.

    3) He was one of the few members of the Roman hierarchy willing to step back and at least ask some questions about the direction things went in post-Vatican II – putting it to the sunshine test as they say.

    Reply
  10. Agman Austerhauser

    Right vs. Left is an illusion when talking about Catholic orthodoxy. I wish people would stop using those loaded political terms.

    If a blog wants to to push Catholic un-orthodoxy, then we get into a Right vs. Wrong scenario, and there are loads of blogs with that agenda out there already.

    As someone who has never attended an Extraordinary Form mass, but who has suffered silently through some sickening abuses of the Ordinary Form, I am glad to have blogs where I can express my opinions on decorum, justice and rightness. This is not “conservative rightness”… this is Catholic rightness.

    The Devil fervently desires for good, otherwise likeminded Catholics to disagree violently over rubrics and “liturgy”.

    Reply
    1. Tony O'Brien

      @Agman Austerhauser:
      “As someone who has never attended an Extraordinary Form mass, but who has suffered silently through some sickening abuses of the Ordinary Form, I am glad to have blogs where I can express my opinions on decorum, justice and rightness”.

      My thoughts exactly.

      Reply
  11. Jonathan Day

    Here’s what I said in a longer note to Anthony about the blog:

    I hope that, for the most part, the ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ appearance of Pray Tell will be an outcome rather than a prior decision. The world of Catholic blogs doesn’t need another parti pris. There are too many of those already; a lot are ‘conservative’ (though from a historically informed perspective most of these are anything but conservative) but a few are ‘liberal’. Both too often lapse into ill-informed polemic.

    What we need here is a balance of views, but thoughtful, informed views. Those are sadly lacking in many of the blogs out there, both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, which start with strong prior commitments and then twist history and philology to support them.

    A group blog has the opportunity to acknowledge personal ideologies but not to be captured by them; to hold a point of view without being held by it. That’s what we ought to be doing here.

    Reply
  12. Donna Eschenauer

    Balance is key, as noted above. That is what I like about PrayTell.
    Fr. Anthony, you have my prayers and support!

    Reply
  13. Ed Nash

    The strength of this blog is the usual quality of the posts. I learn from many of them.

    As with most Papal leadership, it is the group under the Pope that advise him that are the most significant in defining his papacy. At one point Benedict XVI was told he could admit some bishops back into the fold and he did…15 minutes later the Internet is blowing up with one of the restored a Holocaust denier. Two weeks later Benedict apologizes basically to the faithful religious of the world with remarks that if he had done an Internet check, he would have seen that and not moved in that direction.

    My question is, who told B XVI that it would be good for the Church and himself to restore this gentleman to the Roman Church. That person put an agenda over the Pope’s reputation. Benedict’s choices of staff and confidants, much like Francis’ will do much to set direction of the Church.

    But getting back to the blog piece, I am able to come back in and out to these pages and continue to appreciate their wisdom. If the author is correct in that a Francis effect has toned down rhetoric on these pages and others, (Some blogs have gone after him and his thinking with a Sharknado effect.) one can only hope what the year of mercy starting in December will bring us.

    Reply
  14. Jo Manabat

    Rest assured of my prayer for you and Pray Tell, Fr. Anthony. You are doing a great job! God bless.

    Reply
  15. Charles Culbreth

    As I remarked in the survey, the next logical step that needs taking by PTB/NPM/CMAA/Adoremus blog forums is to use the internet towards articulation, consolidation and dissemination of vital information and concerns upon which all can reach consensus. This was exemplified in the PTB roundtables of those same organizations and English chant. Hopefully such moves towards de-polarization would increase, contention would decrease and this (pardon me) constipated status quo could be relieved.
    Lastly, as one of the few CMAA’ers who still not only finds the discussions here relevant and valuable and occasionally comments, PTB isn’t the only forum that has settled into a comfortable groove in the “commboxes.” Stridency of thought has pretty much disappeared both here and at MSF. The trouble is, of course, is that early in both their formations, the long knives came out if a David Haas or Todd Flowerday dared challenge presumed group think at MSF, and the same “you’re outta the pool” invective caused many CMAA folk to retreat from sharing here. Very sad. It is vitally important to distinguish people from polemics, and characterization of opinion from caricature. There are so many incredible problems the Church must deal with that we musicians/liturgists/clerics ought not to take the “liturgy wars” and make it a sideshow as we all agree on the “Source and Summit” and “Lex orandi….” principles, but our intrapersonal dysfunction eventually is irrelevant to the Faithful, whom we’re worried are leaving en masse.

    Reply
  16. Matthew J. Meloche

    Perhaps, to echo Charles’s thoughts above, it’s time to un-ban those who are banned? Not just here, but at the Musica Sacra Forum also… Forgive and forget – welcome those from the other side of the aisle for discussion.

    In other words, bring Todd Flowerday back to the CMAA Forum.

    And let some of the banned CMAA folks back here to Pray Tell.

    Reply
  17. Abe Rosenzweig

    “Do you remember Damian Thompson?”

    Slow clap. This is A+ shade!

    Reply
  18. Karl Liam Saur

    I miss Jack Rakosky’s contributions here. Don’t know why he disappeared from here.

    Reply
  19. Todd Flowerday

    I heard my name mentioned …

    I value the project of accompaniment–as an instrumentalist. That word also implies a companionship with other people. Those two have some overlap.

    In my years online, I repeatedly offered my web site and suggested other forums for a dialogue, if not an accompaniment, with people tilting significantly more traditional than I. Jeffrey Tucker was one of the few who took me up on the idea. Deal Hudson was another. Those pairings never lasted long. Some were rejected outright, and not without derision. To me, it was a headscratcher, for I consider myself far from the left field of liturgicaldom.

    Sad but simply: Patheos, CMAA, the Chant Cafe and others do not need me. I do not promote their aims. The center unsettles the extremes, especially when it offers questions and not certainty. Frankly, if I’m going to explore the fringes of Christendom, I’d rather do it with people who are at the boundaries of belief, not ideology.

    I suspect the era of Francis finds many people on the front porch, frozen out by choice, resentful of the message of mercy. Deep down, they know it. We aren’t talking about spiritual tyros here.

    Real musical accompaniment must be live. Not karaoke. Not sound sampling. Those are fun things, but they are not accompaniment. One still needs a real forum that facilitates authentic communication not only of words, but of our faces, our gestures, our affect. Emoticons don’t suffice. In other words, blogs are fun, but I don’t think they are accompaniment.

    I’m not interested in the old forums. I can barely sustain interest in blogging these days, much less comment elsewhere. The advertising jingle once asked, “Is it live?” My answer: it has to be.

    Reply

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