Maggie Gallagher writes:
Social conservatism as a movement has its own problems: The key one is, with masses of voters on our side on an issue like gay marriage, six years into a national debate on the topic, the movement hasn’t really created large, effective, competent, strategic grassroots organizations that can influence politics. Social conservatives have bad models of political engagement and we aren’t on enough of a learning curve from our experience; the main criteria for leadership tends to be fidelity rather than competence.
What we need are fewer people quoting Mother Teresa’s admonition that God requires fidelity not success, and more people who say, as a good friend of mind once told me, “Just because you’re a good Catholic doesn’t mean you get to waste a lot of money.”
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Exactly. Professional Catholics(tm) tend to be simpleminded, two-faced, passive aggressive, incompetent boobs. They do more harm than good and would really help their causes by retiring quietly. They never will because they fancy themselves “white martyrs” and get a juicy frisson out of that self-image.
