Wednesday, May 8, 2019

The Mark Shea Chronicles: Volume 4

It has been a while since I posted, so I thought "hey, why not see what good ol' Mark Shea is up to?" I could post on his latest apology in which he eventually does at the end via a Latin sentence fragment ("So: mea maxima culpa."). But I have to confess my own culpa that I stopped reading after his call to crush right wing Christians "without mercy".

But really, this post on Facebook from yesterday is too good not to point out:

"As predicted, this one jackass is succeeding only in sparking a Panic du Jour from a subculture that loves lone jackasses like him because it gives them the chance to feel as though the Reign of Antichrist has dawned and they are martyrs. Sims needs to shut up or apply to Donald Trump as the Chair of Dems to Re-elect Trump in 2020."

First off, Shea calls the Pro-life movement represented by people like Abby Johnson, Lila Rose and Matt Walsh a "subculture". And one that is happy when a "lone jackass" (e.g., Dem. Rep. Brian Sims, whom Shea admits is awful) does something asinine so they have "the chance to feel as though...they are martyrs."

But when you look at the remarks these people made, they are saying nothing of the sort. There is no language of martyrdom, apocalypse or anti-Christs. On the contrary, the tweets are pretty mundane: "let’s organize a pro-life rally", "we will peacefully protest violence and bullying" and "my ticket is booked; see you there" are some of the responses from the pro-life leaders.

This Facebook post is an example of Mark Shea's standard strawdogging of the Pro-life movement against which he seems to be a Martin Luther nailing up his grievances again and again. This time he may be a bit off, though, when he refers to Sims as a "lone jackass". Just today we have another story about a feminist at UNC flipping out and attacking an abortion protester, punching him and shouting "This is not OK!"

That Daily Wire article provides a link to another article about an woman having her leg broken last month. That link, in turn, contains the video of Jordan Hunt, male, kicking a woman protesting abortion in Canada.

Oh, and here is another which I blogged last year by a university employee. This stuff happens all the time, and the attacks seem to be increasing. Certainly we have more reports of them than ever before. I've mentioned five here with very little effort.

Honestly, if school shootings happened as many times as threatening behavior and violence toward pro-life protesters, I would be much more sympathetic to the wild-eyed gun-control fanatics rushing to the mikes in their aftermath.

The fact is that you can't really call someone a lone wolf (or a "lone jackass") if they are part of a larger movement. These people are pretty united in their disdain for pro-lifers and their beliefs about the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy. It is fairly obvious that they feel justified in what they are doing and they do it in broad daylight with the cameras rolling. Considering the unity of their opinion on abortion and those who protest it can you really say these people are all acting alone?

If Brian Sims is a lone wolf/lone jackass when he calls for doxing girls who protest at abortion clinics on Twitter, who is he calling out to? Other lone wolves and lone jackasses who coincidentally share his hatred of pro-lifers? Mark Shea can lament these occurrences because they show pro-life activists in a good light and as victims of violence and show that pro-abortion activists are not all the eminently sensible people that he and his comrades in the mainstream press would like to believe they are. But with the evidence piling up, he is really hard-pressed to demonstrate there is no pattern and that these people have no connection to a larger movement.


  1. The problem with Mark is that he teaches a false gospel, mixing his politics and how he explains the teachings of the Faith, all while engaging in lies and calumny against those who disagree with his opinions and behavior. That can't be ignored. And yet, ignoring is probably the best bet since Mark is to the point where there's not much hope in engaging him.

    1. David, take it from me. There's never been much hope in engaging Mark. He's been working his MO ever since the turn of this century, when I had the misfortune to run into him online.

    2. Agree with you both. I do think that he has gotten worse. To some degree, we all get more stubborn as we get older. I've gotten "grumpier" as I've gotten older. Shea seems to lack the self-awareness of this in himself. He has always been "ban happy" -- I'm currently banned on his Facebook page. This indicates that he does NOT want to engage other peoples' opinions.

      The best thing to do about Shea I think is point out his most egregious mistakes as a cautionary tale to anyone who might encounter him.

  2. Here's a comment made to Mark Shea's post: "I love you mark but to imply that women who minister outside of those death gates aren’t being persecuted is just not true. As a matter of fact, from my vantage point they’re probably the only Christians in this country who are consistently worthy of persecution and oddly enough the majority of them are catholic. (I actually got my rosary from one) what that woman endured was literally nothing compared to what many of the holy women I’ve stood beside have endured. Death threats. Threats of rape. Male intimidation etc. intimidation by police, state governors etc. of course if you’re not saying that these women aren’t being persecuted then disregard"

  3. I never gave Mark Shea much thought, but I'm struck by the contrast with his Bush-era rants on interrogation.

    Apparently he cares about intimidation and outright violence only against members of al Queda and not against children in the womb and the women who speak out on their behalf.

    Assuming any sort of consistency on his part over the last two decades, I think it's reasonable to conclude that his m.o. isn't really defending the vulnerable, it's dehumanizing people to his right politically. I'm amazed he has ever had any credibility, anywhere, as a Christian or a thinker -- to say nothing of his being both.

    1. Bubba, I couldn't have said it any better myself, and I've been saying it for two decades.