So, This Catholic Convert Walks Into A Bar

I had Taylor Marshall's blog on my blogroll for a period of months after I expanded the scope of this blog, but I began to have my doubts, and soon enough, I took it off. As a Catholic convert myself, I'm acutely sensitive to the risk of deciding, on the basis of a few years' experience, that the Church has got it all wrong, and that way lies the punch lines to jokes, some of which Old Nick may be chortling over as we speak.

So Taylor Marshall has come out with a book. Fr Longenecker has a good post. He's pulling his own punches very charitably, since he and Marshall are both converts, but he does include links to some very severe reviews. After relatively brief exposure, I decided Marshall's intellect is somewhere below third rate. There are guys out there who are Chesterton or Belloc wannabes, but Marshall isn't even at that level, and unfortunately, he doesn't have a clue that it's the case. I won't even bring up Ronald Knox or Abbot Butler. Or Edward Feser, who so far seems to have had better things to do than notice Marshall.

As best I can tell from the reviews -- the heck if I'm going to risk perfectly good money to buy a book that seems this hinky -- Marshall regards the loss of the Papal States as the beginning of the end for the Church, among other things. So, what are we to make of Vatican I, not just Vatican II, if Vatican I was in part a response to this event? And in that case, aren't there various Old Catholic groups that emerged in response to Vatican I that Marshall might find more congenial, if so many errors followed in its wake?

Just wondering. And let's keep in mind that the four US "continuing" groups that are moving toward merger are now also considering merging with the Polish National Catholic Church, and in fact The Episcopal Church has already been in communion with the Philippine Independent Catholic Church. Perhaps becoming Roman Catholic was a rash move for Marshall in the first place, huh? There are options for Anglican losers who still want to pursue careers beyond the ordinariate.

But this has me thinking further about the traditionalist con and why the North American ordinariate seems to have so much appeal to Catholic traddies -- in fact, it would seem it has more appeal to them than to the target market of Anglo-Catholics. And this goes to the question Fr Longenecker poses to Marshall:

So instead of arguing against this book or calling the book “stupid” and picking it apart line by line, I’d simply respond by saying “so what”?

Let’s assume, for the sake of this blog post, that everything Taylor says in his book is 100% accurate. The Catholic Church has been infiltrated by a host of nasties from the deepest, darkest corner of hell. Nefarious influences intent on world domination have met in secret to set up a long term plan to bring about a one world government and the takeover of the Catholic Church is crucial to their overall design.

So this is news?

The Dave Armstrong review that Fr Longenecker cites discusses "radical traditionalism" and suggests Marshall has been drifting toward it. This seems credible, although so far, I haven't seen outright sedevacantism or anti-Semitism in Marshall, or in fact ordinariate traddies. But these aren't the only wacky viewpoints people can hold; my regular correspondent thinks there's a strain of young-earth creationism in some of the ordinariate homeschoolers. The overall sense of everyone-else-has-got-it-wrong is pervasive here, but it's allowing these people to be had by bad actors who tell them what they want to hear.

All I can think is there's a con going on. Marshall is running it with his book, but there's more to the con than Marshall's particular take, and there are ordinariate communities that are marks for this con as well.