Ask Nathan Anything

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In your inner circle how much support are the running Democratic candidate getting from the locals? The town you reside seem to fit the profile of Bernie's constituency in Vermont, rural, very white, extremely liberal, middle to lower class, which makes me believe he would win your county in the primary. Would love to know if Joe Biden is having the monstrous appeal to people in your county, as the frontrunner as we type.

Bernie won Franklin County by 41 points in 2016 and will probably win Franklin County in 2020 too unless he completely implodes. Even if he does completely implode, he'll still overperform here. I know a few local Biden supporters, but not many.

A few rapid-fire ones:
-Favorite fast food chain?

McDonalds if I had to choose, just because its ubiquity means it's the one I'm most familiar with.

-Favorite ice cream flavor?

Coffee or raspberry.

-Favorite kind of pizza?

Margherita.

-Favorite soda?

Ginger ale, but I don't drink soda much.

Also a random one:  have you ever seen the show The Good Place, and if so, what did you think of it?  I think you'd like it. 

I've been meaning to watch it but haven't yet. The idea of a mainstream American television show about the afterlife put me off initially, but I've heard it's actually really sweet and heartfelt.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Asking because the implied notion of this I sometimes get vibes of people believing here I've always found extremely strange, I've never met any person in real life I even suspected had this kind of mindset on any level.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Would the US be better if it were governed like Vermont?

[S019]

What is one piece of advice that you can give for college admissions

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Not really. It's more harmful to my own form of Christianity (not least since one fewer normal, sane Millennial or Gen Z Catholic is proportionally one more Lefebvre-adjacent one), so in that sense it bothers me a little more, but the Catholic Church doesn't have some sort of socially-enforceable right to the loyalty of its membership that Protestant denominations don't have.

Would the US be better if it were governed like Vermont?

Yes, but that's not saying much.

What is one piece of advice that you can give for college admissions

Unless you have a very specific personal focus that thrives in really rarefied academic environments (which, idk, you might; I don't know your circumstances very well), Tier 1 schools aren't worth the elitism and Tier 2 schools aren't worth the insularity or the money.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Not really. It's more harmful to my own form of Christianity (not least since one fewer normal, sane Millennial or Gen Z Catholic is proportionally one more Lefebvre-adjacent one),

Not really, because the sort of person who does this is almost always fully detached from Catholicism for years before they do.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Not really. It's more harmful to my own form of Christianity (not least since one fewer normal, sane Millennial or Gen Z Catholic is proportionally one more Lefebvre-adjacent one),

Not really, because the sort of person who does this is almost always fully detached from Catholicism for years before they do.

True. Invested, involved Catholics who get fed up with the Church beyond what they can accept are likelier to just become Episcopalian or UCC or something like that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Not really. It's more harmful to my own form of Christianity (not least since one fewer normal, sane Millennial or Gen Z Catholic is proportionally one more Lefebvre-adjacent one), so in that sense it bothers me a little more, but the Catholic Church doesn't have some sort of socially-enforceable right to the loyalty of its membership that Protestant denominations don't have.

Would the US be better if it were governed like Vermont?

Yes, but that's not saying much.

What is one piece of advice that you can give for college admissions

Unless you have a very specific personal focus that thrives in really rarefied academic environments (which, idk, you might; I don't know your circumstances very well), Tier 1 schools aren't worth the elitism and Tier 2 schools aren't worth the insularity or the money.

Aren't a lot of large public universities Tier 1 or 2?  Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by these terms?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you believe that if someone raised Catholic converts to hipster Christianity that is somehow more "wrong" or in some harmful to society than someone raised Protestant does? Or if there's a difference in this if it's someone Italian/Irish/whatever and some rather whitebread and actually WASPy person who just happened to be brought up Catholic?

Not really. It's more harmful to my own form of Christianity (not least since one fewer normal, sane Millennial or Gen Z Catholic is proportionally one more Lefebvre-adjacent one), so in that sense it bothers me a little more, but the Catholic Church doesn't have some sort of socially-enforceable right to the loyalty of its membership that Protestant denominations don't have.

Would the US be better if it were governed like Vermont?

Yes, but that's not saying much.

What is one piece of advice that you can give for college admissions

Unless you have a very specific personal focus that thrives in really rarefied academic environments (which, idk, you might; I don't know your circumstances very well), Tier 1 schools aren't worth the elitism and Tier 2 schools aren't worth the insularity or the money.

Aren't a lot of large public universities Tier 1 or 2?  Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by these terms?

The way I was taught to use the terms has "elite" private universities (the Ivies, Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, etc.) as Tier 1, "elite" liberal arts colleges (Oberlin, Middlebury, Washington and Lee, the remaining Seven Sisters, most Jesuit colleges, etc.) as Tier 2, and public universities with good academic reputations as Tier 3, but the way the terms are used may have changed since I first became aware of them.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What's your opinion of the Krassenstein brothers?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your opinion of the Krassenstein brothers?

Hilarious People.

[DC Al Fine]

Here's a few I've been meaning to ask you:

1) I recently learned that the Catholic church officially teaches predestination. However, when I went to dig into it a bit more, the only writers I could find that dealt with it were Augustine and Aquinas. Can you recommend any more recent Catholic writers who reflect on the topic?

2) Ignoring the sex abuse crisis and hot button political/doctrinal issues, what are the areas where you have the most criticism for the Catholic church and her Bishops in America? On the flip side, what do you think they are doing well?

3) Thoughts on the future of the church in America? (either Christianity as a whole or specific movements)

4) Favourite political party anywhere in the world? (must have seats in a national legislature, no fringe parties allowed)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Here's a few I've been meaning to ask you:

1) I recently learned that the Catholic church officially teaches predestination. However, when I went to dig into it a bit more, the only writers I could find that dealt with it were Augustine and Aquinas. Can you recommend any more recent Catholic writers who reflect on the topic?

One of the classic treatments of compatibilism in Catholic theology (since compatibilism is what Catholicism teaches) is Luis de Molina's, in which, in addition to knowing basic axioms and necessary truths ("natural knowledge") and knowing the past, present, and future ("free knowledge"), God also has a "middle knowledge" of what His creatures could have chosen. The classic proof text for Molinism is Matthew 11:23. I think the prominent online apologist Dave Armstrong has written about Molinism recently. There's another understanding as well, one that hews closer to the classic Augustinian/Thomistic framing (Molinism is primarily associated with the Jesuits whereas this other understanding is primarily associated with the Dominicans; Aquinas of course is the ur-Dominican theologian), but I don't understand it as well. It's possible TJ might.

2) Ignoring the sex abuse crisis and hot button political/doctrinal issues, what are the areas where you have the most criticism for the Catholic church and her Bishops in America? On the flip side, what do you think they are doing well?

It's hard to ignore those things because the sex abuse crisis in particular affects my understanding of practically every aspect of what the American Church is going through right now. I guess I think the bishops are too quick to shutter struggling parishes, although I don't know enough about the economics of parish consolidation to know what could be done differently; I know that there are some cases within the Diocese of Springfield where parishes have been merged but continued to use two or more of the old church buildings for different purposes, which strikes me as a good way forward in places where it's feasible. Conversely, I think most of the bishops are doing a good job of pivoting away from focusing like a laser on two or three hot-button issues and towards more direct care for souls and bigger-picture views of what's happening in this country as American society, especially in traditional Catholic areas of strength like New England and the heavily Mexican-American parts of the West, secularizes.

3) Thoughts on the future of the church in America? (either Christianity as a whole or specific movements)

Not bright, but not at risk of outright extinction either. As I said in a thread in US General recently, I personally feel a little more at home in the boutique witchcraft and e-conversion age than I let on, and I do think historical Christianity will be able to survive in this ecosystem, but it's probably going to have to survive mostly by means other than vertical propagation from parent to child; in other words, I suspect that the so-called Benedict option is almost the exact opposite of what historical Christianity in America will actually look like in fifty or a hundred years. I'm not really happy about this either, because a lot of e-converts (to any religion) turn into political extremists of some kind or another.

4) Favourite political party anywhere in the world? (must have seats in a national legislature, no fringe parties allowed)

This is really hard because there are parties that I really like by comparison to other parties in their country but not by comparison to parties elsewhere in the world. Meretz would be a perfect example of this; I wouldn't think especially highly of them in most countries, but in the Israeli political spectrum I like them a lot. I'm tempted to say the same about some of the more moderate Christian parties in the Low Countries for the opposite reason (those countries' creepy normalization of things like child euthanasia as opposed to Israel's creepy normalization of things like tub-thumping ethno-jingoism), but I don't know enough about those parties to commit to a positive opinion of them. UK Labour also used to be high in my estimation until it became clear that the antisemitism problem is really not being dealt with adequately.

[DC Al Fine]

Thank you for the answers. Would you mind elaborating on the bolded part below?

Here's a few I've been meaning to ask you:

1) I recently learned that the Catholic church officially teaches predestination. However, when I went to dig into it a bit more, the only writers I could find that dealt with it were Augustine and Aquinas. Can you recommend any more recent Catholic writers who reflect on the topic?

One of the classic treatments of compatibilism in Catholic theology (since compatibilism is what Catholicism teaches) is Luis de Molina's, in which, in addition to knowing basic axioms and necessary truths ("natural knowledge") and knowing the past, present, and future ("free knowledge"), God also has a "middle knowledge" of what His creatures could have chosen. The classic proof text for Molinism is Matthew 11:23. I think the prominent online apologist Dave Armstrong has written about Molinism recently. There's another understanding as well, one that hews closer to the classic Augustinian/Thomistic framing (Molinism is primarily associated with the Jesuits whereas this other understanding is primarily associated with the Dominicans; Aquinas of course is the ur-Dominican theologian), but I don't understand it as well. It's possible TJ might.

2) Ignoring the sex abuse crisis and hot button political/doctrinal issues, what are the areas where you have the most criticism for the Catholic church and her Bishops in America? On the flip side, what do you think they are doing well?

It's hard to ignore those things because the sex abuse crisis in particular affects my understanding of practically every aspect of what the American Church is going through right now. I guess I think the bishops are too quick to shutter struggling parishes, although I don't know enough about the economics of parish consolidation to know what could be done differently; I know that there are some cases within the Diocese of Springfield where parishes have been merged but continued to use two or more of the old church buildings for different purposes, which strikes me as a good way forward in places where it's feasible. Conversely, I think most of the bishops are doing a good job of pivoting away from focusing like a laser on two or three hot-button issues and towards more direct care for souls and bigger-picture views of what's happening in this country as American society, especially in traditional Catholic areas of strength like New England and the heavily Mexican-American parts of the West, secularizes.

3) Thoughts on the future of the church in America? (either Christianity as a whole or specific movements)

Not bright, but not at risk of outright extinction either. As I said in a thread in US General recently, I personally feel a little more at home in the boutique witchcraft and e-conversion age than I let on, and I do think historical Christianity will be able to survive in this ecosystem, but it's probably going to have to survive mostly by means other than vertical propagation from parent to child; in other words, I suspect that the so-called Benedict option is almost the exact opposite of what historical Christianity in America will actually look like in fifty or a hundred years. I'm not really happy about this either, because a lot of e-converts (to any religion) turn into political extremists of some kind or another.

4) Favourite political party anywhere in the world? (must have seats in a national legislature, no fringe parties allowed)

This is really hard because there are parties that I really like by comparison to other parties in their country but not by comparison to parties elsewhere in the world. Meretz would be a perfect example of this; I wouldn't think especially highly of them in most countries, but in the Israeli political spectrum I like them a lot. I'm tempted to say the same about some of the more moderate Christian parties in the Low Countries for the opposite reason (those countries' creepy normalization of things like child euthanasia as opposed to Israel's creepy normalization of things like tub-thumping ethno-jingoism), but I don't know enough about those parties to commit to a positive opinion of them. UK Labour also used to be high in my estimation until it became clear that the antisemitism problem is really not being dealt with adequately.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Would you mind elaborating on the bolded part below?

Sure. I have a hectic few days coming up, so if I don't get to it by later tonight or tomorrow, please remind me after the weekend.

[Crumpets]

This isn't a topic that I know a ton on, so this might be a poorly-worded question, but I'm curious on your thoughts:

What is your opinion on the larger Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement? How do you see this ending in the long term, and what are your biggest concerns?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Would you mind elaborating on the bolded part below?

Sure. I have a hectic few days coming up, so if I don't get to it by later tonight or tomorrow, please remind me after the weekend.

Okay, so. What I mean by this is that "liquid" online modernity is a time in which there isn't really much in the way of social control mechanisms to keep members of families or otherwise natural communities more or less thinking and believing the same things. There are good things and bad things about this but for purposes of answering your question I'm focusing on one of the bad things, viz. the additional difficulty that this creates in the process of religious and moral formation for the younger generation. Obviously most people still end up in roughly the same religious and moral state of mind that their parents lived in, but that's much, much less universally the case than it used to be.

So where does this leave the "Benedict option" model of the future of the Church, where historical Christianity is transmitted in tight-knit communities and family structures over against the indifference-to-disdain of the broader culture? Undoubtedly some structures of this kind will be present in future Christianity--just as they're present on today's religious landscape in the form of (to give a value-neutral list of examples) Amish/Old Order Mennonite communities, Hasidic enclaves, NRM/cult compounds, etc.--but the idea of entrusting the future of historical Christianity only to people and families with this mindset is 1. likely to expose it to more trouble in the future rather than less as people raised in this milieu begin to feel "locked into" it and outsiders aren't presented with meaningful opportunities to engage with or enter into it and 2. sort of a form of "hiding one's lamp under a bushel" as Christ tells us not to do. That's why I'm saying that the public face of historical Christianity in 2069 or 2119 will probably involve a lot more "rootless" e-converts and ~seekers~ of various stripes and a lot fewer thriving neo-Cluniac communities than people like Rod Dreher seem to think. To be clear, I'm not saying I think this is necessarily a good thing.

This isn't a topic that I know a ton on, so this might be a poorly-worded question, but I'm curious on your thoughts:

What is your opinion on the larger Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement? How do you see this ending in the long term, and what are your biggest concerns?

I think the likeliest outcome is some sort of broad intercommunion/"inter-recognition" without formal reunification. I don't see the Catholic Church giving up on papal spiritual supremacy, and I definitely don't see any of the various Orthodox churches submitting to it. So closer intercommunion than exists currently, on the framework of a mutual recognition of valid Eucharist, holy orders, etc., is much likelier than reunification. I see this as a good thing, and honestly a better goal to aim for than actual full reunification would be; my biggest concern as this rapprochement continues is that historically illiterate and theologically insensitive hot takes like this one will become the most popular or, God forbid, the officially sanctioned way of going about this.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Opinion of this Twitter account?

https://twitter.com/bowiesnodgrass

I guess she's my favorite account on Twitter now that my previous two favorites were banned.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Opinion of this Twitter account?

https://twitter.com/bowiesnodgrass

I guess she's my favorite account on Twitter now that my previous two favorites were banned.

Seems pretty good. The Daily Office tweets are pretty cool, especially as someone who keeps trying and failing to get into the habit of Morning and Evening Prayer myself.

[All Along The Watchtower]

What is one thing you'd like to know more about (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity?

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

This is totally random, but have you ever listened to any Childish Gambino songs, and if so how did you feel about them?


Redbone is actually my favorite song at the moment, and I love 3005, When Me and Your Mama Met, Heartbeat, Sober, etc.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What is one thing you'd like to know more about (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity?

I'd like to develop the same familiarity with the underlying concepts and principles of the Divine Liturgy that I have with the Mass and with the Anglican liturgy.

This is totally random, but have you ever listened to any Childish Gambino songs, and if so how did you feel about them?


Redbone is actually my favorite song at the moment, and I love 3005, When Me and Your Mama Met, Heartbeat, Sober, etc.

"Redbone" is great! I'm not super-familiar with most of his other songs but I've listened to "Awaken, My Love!" several times and I like it a lot.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bumping this thread to flatter my vanity and because other people have been bumping theirs.