I'll give you the two examples of Dwight Longenecker and John Horvath II.
Dwight Longenecker wrote this essay:
Are Conservative Catholics Fundamentalists?
https://dwightlongenecker.com/are-conservative-catholics-fundamentalists/
And I quote from it:
To be fair, there are some conservative Catholics on the lunatic fringe who could properly be termed “fundamentalist”. I’ve engaged with some traditionalists who really are racist, anti-semitic, ultra right wing, geo centrist conspiracy theory nut jobs.
As for nut job, that is an evaluation. As for Geocentric, that is a fact about me. As for Antisemitic, Ultra Right Wing and Conspiracy Theorist, I am such on some definitions. But I am not a Racialist.
Nor are most Fundies who are normally considered such that.
So, he is at least clearly maligning Fundies, making "racist" a prominent part of the mix, and since I am one of comparatively few Geocentrics, and I have engaged in debates with him before, I am suspecting at least that refers to me.
But since he is not naming me, he can always pretend if he likes that my responding to it and refuting the charge of racism is paranoia on my part.
John Horvath II:
Is It Immodest to Wear Deliberately Ripped Clothes?
By John Horvat II
http://www.returntoorder.org/2017/06/immodest-wear-deliberately-ripped-clothes/
However, outside this extreme, most people seem to think they can wear anything, anywhere and at any time without any consequences. Clothes don’t have to be clean anymore. People can wear clothes that are deliberately ripped, stained and full of holes without fear of rejection. Clothes don’t even have to be clothes anymore. They can be shredded rags, the dingier the better.
I am often enough forced to walk in unwashed clothes, since begging has become of late less lucrative. Even while I am offering something in return, namely reading on my blogs, or perhaps precisely because of it.
To do one task on internet may involve changing the library, and to go to where I can get hours for free involves removing myself from where I could have a shower and (after longer or shorter time) a wash for the clothes.
And I often do have to fear rejection - and John Horvath II hopes I should have to fear it even more, I find probable.
But the main point is clothes full of holes. My outer garment has such and my trousers tend to accumulate such.
Note, not holes at my nipples or breasts, and not (usually) in the crotch, but holes that I have adorned with borders that are meant to prevent them from spreading.
Obviously, there is a difference between deliberately ripping a clothing which was not ripped, and deliberately wearing clothing which was not deliberately ripped (outside one specific case I'll explain in a moment). But that difference will be lost on some.
This one exception is, if a piece of cloth is starting to rip, I will softly rip as much as gives way easily, so as to know how much I need repair - by sewing a seam or by attaching a cord with a seam. I am wise and wily of rips I repair only to find next day the rip has gone beyond my repair, and I need to extend it.
John Horvath deliberately goes out of his way to pretend that either this clothing (or rather a general description of clothing which can be applied to it) offends my dignity or proves I don't have any.
Deliberately ripped garments work against the purpose of clothes. They are caricatures of what clothing should be. Far from adorning the body, the process of ripping turns that which should be strong, beautiful and orderly into something weak, ugly and frayed. Tattered attire is disordered and therefore should not be worn.
The Landsknechte disagreed. After each battle, they saw how many rips the swords of enemies had given their clothing, and mended, leaving the rip open but sewing new cloth under its both edges. Some did indeed rip more deliberately, so as to give and impression of having been in more battles than they had.
This is my model for how I deal with clothes now, especially my coat. Except the part of adding rips just to show off.
Most people would object that as long as tattered clothes stay outside the extreme point of undress that is considered morally and socially unacceptable, you cannot say that it is immodest.
And "most people" would on this point be right.
Modesty is the virtue that safeguards the dignity of a person in association with others. It benefits both the individual and society because it governs the exterior appearance and behavior of the person and thus helps make society civil and harmonious.
Beyond dress, modesty is concerned with the manner of speech, posture, gestures, and general presentation of the person. Modesty calls upon people to behave well with others and conform to standards of decency and decorum found in the healthy customs of an ordered society.
When you present yourself properly to others, you are modest. When you control yourself in your external actions and manners in society, you are modest. When you act erratically and speak in a manner that offends and disregards others, you are immodest.
Now, here comes a point:
In matters of Catholic dress, this means holding to all that is proper to a soul that is a temple of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, you dress in a manner that is ordered, dignified and reasonable to who you are. Adults dress like adults; children dress like children. Authorities dress in accord with their office.
It also means you should not dress carelessly. Saint Thomas Aquinas states that you are immodest when you are unduly negligent in your appearance and fail to present yourself according to your state in life.
The real problem for John Horvath with me, if, as I think, he is subtly referring to me, is, by being a blogger, I am stepping outside my state in life as a beggar. Writing is for professors on full time or office clerks on spare time, but not for beggars, you know.
Never mind that I had more than 6000 articles last time I counted. Never mind that starting to print even some of them would prevent someone else from economic disaster and take me out of it.
The thing is, if trousers are ripped at the knees, I also object to this being deliberate, since it is a waste - but my objection is repairing, repairing and repairing - not in invisible ways as my grandmother would have done, but in very visible and undiscreet ones. And when knees of some trousers are beyond repair, they become shorts - and I have more cloth to repair my coat with.
But his and his friends attitude to trousers torn at the knees is probably throwing them away. Why do I say so? Well, look at how he deals with a writer "torn at the knees" by the life of begging ... he knows I agree with him on sufficient things for it to make sense to publish me ... except, perhaps, his disagreement on this one. And similar ones.
But even a disagreement could be handled by polemising openly against a much read rival writer. He, like Dwight, seems to prefer "not to give me a platform" as the presumably Jewish and certainly Protestant description of this tactic goes.
Perhaps if I said, as I will not say "sorry, I realise I am a nobody, give me a decent job, even if not a very intellectual nor a very well paid one," he would think I were doing according to my station in life. I think such an attitude to a poor man's temporary station in life as poor is a Protestant one, confusing "estate" (the classic ones being clergy, nobility and commoners, sometimes these are subdivided into burghers and rural commoners) with "situation".
[posted on FB on Corpus Christi 2018]
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