Michael Lofton : Bulverises Reactionary Christians

What Do All Reactionary Christians Have in Common?
11.X.2022 | Reason & Theology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umsKCfYhlBk

3:16 I have been called a scoffer by the Dimond brothers (not sure which one) for considering Bian lian (face shifting in a second, traditional Chinese art) and David Copperfield as acting with natural means. Not demonic aid.

19:32 If "Pope Francis" is invoking this very general principle in order to motivate some cases (specifically when diverced and "remarried" communicant is victim of divorce), when divorced and remarried people, not living like brother and sister, not on the death bed after living like brother and sister, can receive communion, he is simply historically wrong.

One proof text for Catholic versus Orthodox - modern Orthodox, not first millennium, as far as I know - views is the Council of (if I recall correctly) Aquileia. Not sure what year.

Prequel, part 1 - some men went off to war, and after some time were presumed dead
Prequel, part 2 - some of their wives remarried (thinking themselves widowed)
Immediate situation - some of the men presumed dead turn up alive and find their wives remarried

Decision : those who refused to quit their new "husbands" and go back to their men who were in fact still alive were excommunicated.

I think this extended also to the new "husbands" not really such.

My own distance from Amoris Laetitia (Amaris Stultitia is my nickname) is simply the new pastoral, even if it is in a footnote.

20:26 Your list is "Taylor Marshall, Jay Dyer, Peter Dimond, Mike Gendron, Peter Kwasniewski, Bryan Denlinger, and Kennedy Hall"

For Peter Dimond, the relevant example is David Copperfield.

For exactly whom is the relevant example taking Amoris Laetitia as "PF" denying Hell?

All of the others?

I think there are other ways where "PF" did at least suggest he didn't believe damnation is an eternally ongoing reality, I had not even heard of Amoris Laetitia being used that way before right now.

20:45 If your ambition is intellectual honesty, rather than beating Sedevacantism at all costs, "numerous issues" is too broad a brush.

If I am very unhappy with both "PF" and "PEB-XVI" and "PStJP-II" directly endorsing Evolutionism and opposing nearly in so many words the obvious and Young Earth Creationist readings of Genesis 1 and 2 with 5 and 11, and definitely endorsing a US Episcopate doing so (for instance in an older translation of the new Christmas Proclamation) and a French episcopate allowing Sébastien Antoni to remain in good standing as Assumptionist Father after denying the individual existence of Adam and Eve, how is that related to what you consider "this problem"?

Perhaps it's easiest for you to paint with a broad brush ...

21:25 When I converted, I had forgotten about Assisi 86, however, I had occasion to react to it while in the conversion process.

I did not start out with a bias against "JP-II"

When "B-XVI" was "elected" I had been a sedevacantist for a while, first time over, and I was more precisely a sedeprivationist in some moments. At last, I thought, we had a "papa materialiter et formaliter" again. "Cardinal" Ratzinger had been kind of a hero of mine earlier on.

When "B-XVI" left, I was sure he did well to step down, but thought he ought to have looked into some other claims - Pope Michael, Palmar de Troya, starting some kind of follow up to the Pisa Council to fix this. Instead, normal "election" as if "B-XVI" had been undisputed.

But first time, basically rest of 2013, I was giving "PF" a chance.

I defended him against, I think, Rush Limbaugh. His "Austrian school" or whatever isn't Christian dogma. The points attacked by (I think) Limbaugh were not Communist errors.

I wanted to see, not that he was Pope - I had been less sanguine about him than about the other two - but if by any chance against probable odds he could be Pope.

I was willing to end this if and when he endorsed Evolution (you know, the big story, not pepper moths changing colour pattern) - and he did.

22:49 I bet you have heard dozens or tens of dozens of reactionary Christians say things like the ones you cite.

I also bet, apart from Peter Dimond who partly has this style, you cannot give examples from "Taylor Marshall, Jay Dyer, Mike Gendron, Peter Kwasniewski, Bryan Denlinger, and Kennedy Hall" for this.

You usually won't see me using that language either.

22:59 Tu quoque. Et omnis.

No man goes around intellectually facing opposition to his belief system and each time allowing himself to be challenged.

Seing an intellectual challenge about the argument is one thing. But doubting the reasons one had each time they are met with some somewhat reasoned contradiction is not a normal human activity.

You are basically stating that you can get away with not being challenged on what leads you to take up the cause of "PF" and oppose reactionary Christians, because you are right, but other people who are against this are not just wrong, but insane and as insane their duty to restoring sanity would be to question "themselves" or rather the stance they took up, everytime when someone like you requires it.

To me that sounds like psychiatry, an even worse work of the Devil than Evolution belief. It is destroying lives.

And I am not buying it.

In fact, you have just used the kind of argument that C. S. Lewis calls "Bulverism" - you are not proving myself or Taylor Marshall, Jay Dyer, Peter Dimond, Mike Gendron, Peter Kwasniewski, Bryan Denlinger, and Kennedy Hall wrong on a wide array of issues. You have given one issue for Dimond, and one issue for unspecified, and then reduce all other issues to these, because you stop proving what is wrong about our arguments and start explaining how we came to be (or remain) wrong.

Psychology instead of argument is kind of disrespectful. If you recall a certain Saint Vincent Ferrer, you should see there is some value of being respectful even of those who are opposing the true Pope as if he were a false one (which is how you class myself or Peter Dimond).

24:07 I specifically do endorse the idea that false religions have trace amounts of the true one, what Lumen Gentium considers "element" rather than "traces" and I do endorse the idea these traces would in and of themselves be pointers to salvific truth.

As for Dignitatis Humanae, I did hear you out on the contradiction with Prop. 33 (I think it was) of Exsurge Domine.

And I gave a fine analysis, not a gut reaction, on why you were wrong on each of the attempts you made to harmonise this with Dignitatis Humanae (even if that document wasn't mentioned in your video on Exsurge).

And I gave it without pleading for burning heretics now or indeed even condoning the idea of doing so as anything but highly imprudent even where it might still be fair, and I would add, for populations like US or Sweden it would be highly unfair, and that is how the famous reactionary Catholic Belloc thought about it too.

So, if you are so put off by Reactionaries doing gut reactions, why do you engage with them rather than with a more fine calibred pen like mine?

If it is because you think a fine intellect like mine sooner or later must come around or get cured by neuroleptics or exorcisms if you only continue protecting me from the limelight?

I have a gut reaction against that attitude : STOP IT.

24:25 I think Vatican II Ecumenism goes way beyond just giving Orthodox communion.

It's more like, you have a Catholic intellectual, he will say unecumenic things, like Coligny being a war criminal and hardly an innocent victim in 24.VIII.1572 and comparing lots of the rest to how French Anti-Nazis dealt with any collabo in 1944 in certain areas, certain number of months ... and someone will complain to their ecumenic partner in the Catholic Church, and that ecumenic partner will try to solve the issue by ... destroying my livelihood as an intellectual. Because, if I claim to be Catholic, I must really at heart be rather ashamed of my lack of ecumenic spirit ... no. Not quite so.

24:33 By endorsing what he thinks can now replace Death Penalty, "PF" is endorsing evil things like lifelong psychiatric oppression.

In a novel, a spokesman for Chesterton, not Innocent Smith, but his "attorney," answered one accuser (wanting Innocent Smith institutionalised) "I know the difference between the ancient and the modern morality - the ancient morality locked a man up for one year for stealing, the modern one locks him up for all his life for cleptomania"

The one issue where I would consider there is something evil about a man like Mark P. Shea is when he (who had played Innocent Smith) concludes that, not just for the very emotional scene before the philosophy professor, but basically the rest of the novel, where we meet Innocent Smith, the hero of Manalive "does not see things as we do" and saying it in a tone as if he meant "unbalanced" ...

24:41 If "PF" had no idolatrous intent, why did he refer to the statues as "statue della pachamama" when apologising for the work of Tschueggli?

My source is
CNA, Vatican City, Oct 25, 2019 / 09:43 am, "Pope Francis apologizes that Amazon synod 'Pachamama' was thrown into Tiber River" ...
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/42636/pope-francis-apologizes-that-amazon-synod-pachamama-was-thrown-into-tiber-river

25:03 Not in any meaningful fashion?

Like granting all your premises and buying all your statements as a preliminary to discussing what remains or doesn't of their position after doing so? Is that what you consider "meaningful"?

Because, if not, I have definitely tried to engage with what you say in a meaningful fashion, except, perhaps it isn't meaningful to you, for the reason stated.

Considering the kind of analyses you offer of some people, how do you think that could be analysed?

25:25 I must actually admit I have overlooked your presentation of Amoris Laetitia ...

26:02 I spent years and years of suffering trying to harmonise the pastoral I received by the Vatican II Sect and stances held by its proponents, with what I knew from Bible and Catholic Catechism.

I am not the guy to lecture on first trying to harmonise.

And I am not buying that your list of people named in the descrition ... Taylor Marshall, Jay Dyer, Peter Dimond, Mike Gendron, Peter Kwasniewski, Bryan Denlinger, and Kennedy Hall - and I feel left out! ... all started out as bitter enemies of "PF" who never even thought of trying to harmonise anything.

Is Vox Cantoris from Canada on this list?

Return to Tradition isn't, since his name is Anthony Stine.

26:28 Are you sure you are not encouraging rash judgements galore?

It is one thing to note "such and such does not try to harmonise here" and quite another thing to prove from that he never even tried to harmonise.

By making a note of a stranger, you are not obliging yourself to know his history, you are encouraging yourself to "know" it from what appears to your own bias.

26:02 I spent years and years of suffering trying to harmonise the pastoral I received by the Vatican II Sect and stances held by its proponents, with what I knew from Bible and Catholic Catechism.

I am not the guy to lecture on first trying to harmonise.

And I am not buying that your list of people named in the descrition ... Taylor Marshall, Jay Dyer, Peter Dimond, Mike Gendron, Peter Kwasniewski, Bryan Denlinger, and Kennedy Hall - and I feel left out! ... all started out as bitter enemies of "PF" who never even thought of trying to harmonise anything.

Is Vox Cantoris from Canada on this list?

Return to Tradition isn't, since his name is Anthony Stine.

26:28 Are you sure you are not encouraging rash judgements galore?

It is one thing to note "such and such does not try to harmonise here" and quite another thing to prove from that he never even tried to harmonise.

By making a note of a stranger, you are not obliging yourself to know his history, you are encouraging yourself to "know" it from what appears to your own bias.

26:59 "they are not thinking critically"

Oh dear ... "critically" actually means "judging" ... if anything they are (the ones you describe, which could be strawmen) thinking too critically.

I have two claims on my thought.

It should harmonise with the Faith.
It should be naturally sound, like logical and based (as much as I can) on factually accurate information.

But "critical" ... it's if anything a habit I risk overdoing.

To certain people smugly between themselves, "critical thinking" sometimes simply means "thinking like we think" ...

Do you have a better definition than that of what you are asking?

27:29 First, from my point of view, this was not helpful. Because you are wrong. Except on David Copperfield, but you know, you might be the kind of clock that's right twice in 24 hours ...

Second, supposing you were right, no, it would not have been helful in that case either.

You see, you are teaching to not engage with reactionaries, you are teaching to treat them with a kind of prejudice. If not everywhere on all your videos, at least on this one.

And, if we reactionaries were wrong, this is not helping anyone who's (on your view) right to make a good impression on us.

And if I were on your side, I'd ask : don't we have any better intellectual options to cope with these pesky reactionaries than using the kind of psychological prejudice that Michael Lofton is here promoting.

It just struck me, you are replicating a tactic the Catholic Church has actually used - but against heresiarchs already condemned as such.

As far as I know, no council or bull by "PF"' has made "Reactionary Christians" fair game for that kind of tactic.