On the outside looking in
Arturo with characteristic accuracy answers this bit that Jeff and I recently blogged from G.K. Chesterton much like I thought he might: he has no more time for those who reduce Catholic cultures to a Renaissance Faire (however well-meant and/or unintentionally) than he and I both do for SWPL’s multi-culti liberal condescension (Rousseau and the noble savage redux) or online glurge from conservative Christians who for example tell Anglo-Catholics if they’d only give up their artsy-fartsy Englishness they’d find St Novus of Suburbia practically perfect in every way (like Stepford Ave Maria, Florida?), or the convert Orthodox version with the recent ex-Assemblies of Godders at St Parasceva’s saying everything in Western Christendom is wrong if not evil and Greeks or Russians are either openly looked down upon or romanticised beyond recognition.

I find this rhetoric a bit patronizing. Thank you for the tourist plug, but really, no thanks. Catholic societies were scary places since human beings are scary.

Commenter Phil rebuts the rebuttal:

Christianity is not true because it is good for society. But that does not mean it is not good for society.