I reviewed a book in 2013 about
The Saint Benedict Center, a Feenyite (renegade Catholic with old-fashioned trappings) group in rural NH. I link back to it now because they very much believe that they are victims, and victimhood is in the air more than ever at present. I believed as I wrote it that much of what I said then had general applicability, and rereading it today, I still think that.
Longtime readers might recognise that this last point is of particular importance to me. The more deeply pathological people are, the more they are certain that absolutely none of the fault is against their score. Ultimately, it is the perpetual victimhood of criminals and narcissists, that cannot allow there is even a 1% chance they are 1% wrong. Stalin, as an example, believed he was the victim of the starving Ukrainian peasants, who wanted so desperately to discredit him that they would even starve themselves to death rather than admit his enforcement of collectivisation was a better idea. Hitler did not see himself as a an aggressor, but as a lone defender against the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. SBC is orders of magnitude less pathological, certainly, but the tone is the same. That they did not live up to their permit agreements, that they repeatedly moved beyond what was allowed even as they promised not to, that they made insulting comments about their neighbors, these things are never mentioned. It’s all those others against them.
It is related to paranoia, and the genesis is similar. The feeling of victimhood comes first, like the paranoid interpretation, and then goes looking for an explanation that validates it. They are first driven by the whine, not the divine. Victimhood is a pose of weakness that is actually a cover for inordinate retribution. Being thin-skinned and attuned to small sleights and being “disrespected” is a prelude for revenge. We have all heard guys who say, “I’m not looking for a fight, but if anyone messes with me…” Yeah, dude, you’re looking for a fight.
As this was a several years ago and I had paid them no further mind I did wonder if they had mellowed, as I don't like to kick folks unfairly. I looked them up again. I suppose they might have mellowed, but it isn't showing in their online presence. They are
still out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church and claiming they are right and the others are all wrong. Seldom a good sign.
3 comments:
And yet, every so often it turns out that the paranoid, extreme party that everyone dislikes turns out to have been in the right, while all their more respectable critics turned out to be wrong. Not usually, but it has happened enough times in my lifetime to make me cautious about dismissing them. Sometimes the heretics are in the right.
@ G. Poulin - a fair point
If you look back into the comments on the earlier posts, that was on my mind when I first started researching this. As a nutcase Jesus person from the 1970s, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they at least had some important point that was being overlooked.
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