Lessons We (Probably) Won't Learn From the Coventry Catholic Debacle

Believe it or not, this is my fifth attempt at this article on the confrontation between Nathan Phillips of the Omaha Tribe and the Covington Catholic High students. (I had actually submitted the fourth attempt, only to retract it when some last developments came up. The perils of commenting on current events as they unfold.) By this time you, Dear Reader, are probably sick of the whole megillah. You should be. Nevertheless, I plead your patience one last time.

The only thing that prevented me from fully participating in the virtual blanket party was the fact that, because of my duty as an in-home caregiver, my blogs are in mothballs. No hot takes or running commentary to retract in embarrassment. Thank God my presence on Twitter is minimal. But I still get no moral brownie points for prudence or judiciousness. Now, at last, I think I’m in the proper frame of mind to draw my own conclusions from this travesty:

1. The American left got played. Bamboozled. Suckered. The person who released the first clip knew the left would accept the “teenage MAGA goons harass Native American” narrative without hesitation or question and form a virtual lynch mob to harass and denounce the Coventry Catholic kids. The right has no monopoly on credulousness, or on vulnerability to sociopaths with agendas.
2. Many on the right have properly concluded that the MAGA gear helped the false story along. They haven’t yet asked why the MAGA gear made the story credible, or what that says about them, the GOP, and Pres. Trump. Perhaps they’ve forgotten what our ancestors used to say: “If you lie down with dogs, expect to get up with fleas.” Calling guilt by association a logical fallacy doesn’t take away its power. Sorry, no moral victory for the right here.
3. Similarly, much (but not all) of the left has grudgingly concluded that their assumption of the Covington Catholic kids’ moral fault was incorrect. They haven’t yet asked whether it was bigoted, or what that says about intersectionality theory and their uncritical acceptance of it. Perhaps they’ve forgotten the immortal quip by cartoonist Walt Kelly: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sorry, no moral victory for the left here.
4. The Catholic Church teaches that racism is an offense against the dignity of persons (CCC 1935; cf. Gaudium et Spes 29.2). But she also teaches that rash judgment and detraction are sins against the Eighth Commandment (CCC 2477-9). You can’t tu quoque or “whatabout” the injustice against the Covington Catholic boys into a morally neutral mistake, let alone a virtue. It was still rash judgment. And the virtual lynch mob was still a grave act of injustice. There’s no room in Catholic moral theology for a karmic balance of class wrongs. Sorry, no moral victory for the Catholic commentariat here.
5. Another name for a rash judgment is a “hot take.” (See Terry Mattingly’s comments on the debacle.) The compulsion to comment on every story from the moment it breaks is an invitation to further travesties and injustices. We of the Catholic commentariat ought to impose on ourselves a preference for “warm takes”; that is, adopt a minimum 48-hour moratorium on commentary and a critical attitude to the first narrative attached to incendiary stories even if it plays to our sympathies.
6. One contributing factor to the travesty is the “with us or against us” dilemma both the left and the right push on us. How many white and/or male Catholics joined in on the Covington Catholic beatdown out of fear that, if we didn’t, the intersectionalists would account us racists or racist enablers? By contrast, Jesus was not afraid to be seen associating with drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors — the social lepers of his time (cf. Luke 5:30-32; Matthew 11:18-19). Nor was he afraid to be seen in conversation with Samaritans and Romans, who were equally anathema to the Judeans. To denounce and ostracize racists may give us all sorts of warm, righteous fuzzies. But we Catholics are called to make converts, not outcasts.
7. By no means is the previous point an argument that Catholics should join or lean toward the Republican Party in its current state. If anything, this debacle has shown just how poisonous to authentic Catholic religiosity is an ideology of any stripe. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, all the tributary ideologies of the classical liberal tradition carry implicit assumptions about the human person that are not only false but detrimental to our understanding of the Church’s social teaching. If we Catholics are going to fight against bigotry, we should do so on Catholic grounds, in Catholic terms, rather than using those secular ideologues try to impose on us.
8. Furthermore, so long as we continue to buy into secular ideologies and the “us versus them” narrative both sides impose on us, we leave ourselves open to manipulation by every sociopath who knows how to use social media to advance an agenda. This is a lesson we failed to learn from the 2016 election cycle and which we still fail to accept.
   And a good part of the reason for our failure to learn the lesson is our conviction that nobody on our side would ever stoop to such tactics. We are the good guys; only the bad guys in the other political tribe would be guilty of such mendacity. If we were really thinking like Catholics, we’d realize each person — even a good person — has the capacity to commit great evil, especially if they can convince themselves that they are acting for some noble cause or in the pursuit of the greater good.

Will we learn from this? Given the reality of original sin and the powerful temptation of Pride, I say, probably not — or, at least, not until some climactic event robs our current social divisions of power (perhaps the parousia). These social media-generated hatefests provide too many people with the opportunity to get warm, righteous fuzzies through shaming, pharisaic moral posturing, and reinforcement of tribal loyalties. And if you don’t say what they want you to say when they want you to say it, you’re as bad as “them.”

God help me, I’m vulnerable to it myself.

The news just broke that a young man, Zephen Xavier, shot five people dead at a bank in Sebring, Fla., then called and confessed that fact to the police. Dear God. And I know in my heart this means yet one more iteration of the snarling, yowling cacophony that used to be the gun-control debate. More shaming; more moral posturing; more tribal chants. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, hate goes on.

Meanwhile, Satan smiles. Mission accomplished.