Greg Erlandson

Orthodoxy's 'dry drunks'

We need prophets in this confusing time, but the most effective ones manifest God's love

One of the great good fortunes of my life was a providential encounter with a dynamic Catholic editor at a time in my life when I was unsure about my faith and unsure about the direction of my life.

Francis Maier was at that time the visionary editor of the National Catholic Register, and he took me -- a survivor of the Crazy '70s -- under his wing. He introduced me to a faithful, relevant, exciting Catholicism that I had not encountered in many years. He introduced me to Pope John Paul II and Henri de Lubac and Julie Loesch Wiley and Communion and Liberation and a host of other fascinating exemplars of the Catholic resurgence that was taking place in the early 1980s. The trajectory of my life was permanently altered, and I am forever grateful.

From the beginning, however, my encounter with what I have called "dynamic orthodoxy" has been occasionally darkened by the shadow of doctrinaire Catholics who hold all the "right" positions and say all the "right" things, yet exhibit an angry, sour attitude that seems the opposite of Christian joy or an evangelizing spirit.

They do not so much engage culture as demand its unconditional surrender, and they take greater satisfaction in elaborating on sin and its punishments than on the beauty of the Savior. They tend to be all Inferno and little Paradiso.

Over the years, what I have found unsettling about such characters is that they seemed perversely obsessed with the perversions they decried. They never wrote half so eloquently about the Masses they enjoyed as they did about the Masses they deplored. Chastity was not nearly as compelling a topic as fornication. Heterosexual marriage not nearly as interesting as homosexual agendas.

It is no coincidence that many of these obsessions centered on sex. It is probably one of the ironies of our age that we all are enmeshed in the dominant vices of our society -- even when we actively resist them. Some folks, however, seem unduly obsessed by that which they claim to deplore.

I talked to an experienced priest confessor about this once, and he remarked that the most rigid people he has known often compensate for that one area of their lives that is most out of control. This phenomenon certainly explains the Jim Bakkers, Jimmy Swaggarts and Ted Haggards of the world, and probably a few of our guys as well.

But, it was a recent reference to the term "dry drunk" that really got me thinking about this phenomenon. A dry drunk has been described as "a condition of returning to one's old alcoholic thinking and behavior without actually having taken a drink." One writer on the subject said that some people may attend a lifetime of Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and never touch a drop, yet they are "still stuck in their anger, bitterness and resentment at having to make the change in their lives."

The blogosphere has become a veritable catch basin of these folks. Unedited, unrestrained and unhappy with the state of the Church and the world, they obsessively chronicle every twisted phenomenon, every perversion, every disillusioning anecdote. They fancy themselves proclaiming truth to power -- the emperor is wearing no clothes. The trouble is, they can't take their eyes off the emperor.

We have a need for prophets in this confusing time, but I find the most effective ones are those who manifest God's love most eloquently. Pope Benedict XVI is no shrinking violet when it comes to confronting the world. Yet his first encyclical was on love, and his apostolic exhortation on the Mass painted a compelling and positive vision of the Eucharist even as he sought to nudge our liturgical awareness in a more traditional direction.

One blessing of my vocation is that I have known so many great Catholics whose words and deeds proclaim their faith in God's merciful love, not their lectures and complaints. It is by their fruits that I have known them.

Greg Erlandson is president and publisher of OSV.