Ebony and Ivory Revisited

"It's something these Yankees do not understand, will never understand. Rivers, hills, valleys, fields, even towns. To those people they're just markings on a map from the war office in Washington. To us, they're birthplaces and burial grounds, they're battlefields where our ancestors fought. They're places where we learned to walk, to talk, to pray. They're the incarnation of all our memories and all that we love." -- Robert Duvall portraying General Robert E Lee in the movie Gods and Generals

This week I read of the death of Rosa Parks. She was a reluctant catalyst of the civil rights movement, for refusing to give up her seat at the front of the bus to a white man (obviously not a gentleman in the Southern tradition, inasmuch as a lady of color is still a lady). The result of her arrest was a bus boycott that changed the policy of the city transit system, a boycott led by a young heretofore-unknown preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.

As if by coincidence, TCR News reports that two traditionalist Catholic luminaries, Thomas E Woods Jr and Robert Sungenis, are under investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In the case of Dr Woods, his association with The League of the South could make him a racist. As for Mr Sungenis, his writings on the Jews may be cause to align him with "anti-Semitism."

I can't be accused of agreeing with Dr Woods on everything, including some of his more outspoken remarks on Vatican II and the traditional Latin liturgy, let alone any prospect that the late John Paul II was "a material heretic." On the other hand, his recent book How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization should be required reading for any practicing Catholic who ever took a Western history class in a public school, from pre-school to post-graduate. What's more, the notion that the Confederate Battle Flag could only be a symbol of racism, as opposed one of pride in the Southern regional and ancestral heritage, is ludicrous. In fact, the League of the South has made their position on racism quite clear. (Granted, their initiative to continue the secessionist cause may appear a little over the top, but to a strict Constitutionalist, hardly indefensible.) Their existence is easier to understand, when one is better acquainted with little-known aspects of the history of northern-southern tensions, which date back to colonial times, and have more to do with economic and social-political forces than with inter-ethnic relations.

Then there's Mr Sungenis. Several years ago, he penned one of the best commentaries on the clerical sexual scandals written up to that time. At some point after that, however, he made a sharp hairpin curve towards the black hole that is Catholic integrism, which in some corners (if his writings on the subject are any indication) is virulently anti-Semitic.

Hopefully, I won't be ratted on to the Southern Poverty Law Center for being a strict Constitutionalist at heart. It would certainly come as a surprise to my best friend Sal (who is a Filipina, a mestiza in fact), were I accused of being a racist.

Discuss.