Most Reverend Horse's Ass

So we get this today from the Diocese of Covington:

See if you can see what's missing

 You might remember this notice from a few weeks back:

Categorical

So, what about those actions? And what about the underside of the bus, where Bishop Foys threw those kids he now lauds? Read through the letter from Foys. See if you can find the apology.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Bishop is a horse's ass. He owes the students of Covington Catholic as public an apology as the denunciation he previously issued, not the namby-pamby "sorry if you're offended" version he sent out previously, via letter. And if he had any decency, he would resign his position. But he doesn't.

The third-party investigation Foys references may be nice for the historical record, but it's a CYA maneuver. A shameful end to a shameful moment.

Profiles in Cowardice

It is traditional to refer to a bishop as "your excellency." We don't stand much for tradition these days, because, frankly, most bishops aren't excellent in any way. And that goes double for Roger Foys, the bishop of Diocese of Covington. Let's recall the original bleating from this moral colossus:

Condemnation

Now, we get this:

“We apologize to anyone who has been offended in any way by either of our statements which were made with good will based on the information we had,” said Bishop Foys in the letter, which was addressed to the parents of Covington Catholic students.

 We're sorry if you were offended? Our statements were made with good will? And based on the information we had? Did it occur to you that you might get more information from the people who were actually there? Did you even talk to anyone from Covington Catholic before you issued your statement?

The next paragraph is closer to the truth, but still well afoul of the 8th Commandment.

“We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it.”

Pardon my French, but how in the hell does a bishop get bullied? You have the staff and the hat, sir. You preside over the high school these students attend. You also have a responsibility to defend not only the faith, but also to provide aid and comfort to the faithful. There's more:

“I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann and his family as well as to all CovCath families who have felt abandoned during this ordeal. Nicholas unfortunately has become the face of these allegations based on video clips,” said Foys. “This is not fair. This is not just.”

Felt abandoned? No, Bishop Foys. Sandmann and everyone else there were abandoned, in straight-up Pontius Pilate style. And your malignant statement was up on the diocesan website for two full days before you shut the website down for "maintenance." You're right about one thing -- it wasn't fair. It wasn't just. And you were responsible for it, along with your superior, Joseph Kurtz, who had this to say:

Since I joined with Bishop Foys in condemning the alleged actions by Covington Catholic students, I apologize for what was a premature statement on my part based upon incomplete information. I very much regret the pain and disruption in the lives of the Covington Catholic community and in the broader Church and society.

We look to our bishops and archbishops to provide moral and spiritual guidance. We expect that guidance to be based on reflection and prayer. Instead, we got a couple of hot takes.

Back to Foys:

Foys’ most recent statement said that it was his “hope and expectation” that this investigation would “exonerate” the students, and that they will be able to move past this ordeal. He also expressed support for Robert Rowe, the principal of Covington Catholic High School. Rowe is a “fine leader,” said Foys, and “those calling for his resignation simply do not know him.”

The buck doesn't stop with the principal, Bishop Foys. It stops with you. There's more:

“I pray that with the grace of God and the goodwill of all involved peace will once again reign in the hearts and minds of our faithful,” said Foys.

For peace to reign, there needs to be justice. And justice requires those in position of authority to do more than offer a liturgical version of "whoops, my bad."

Meanwhile, as you consider the matter of goodwill, consider what happened in Washington, D.C., as the Covington Catholic students were returning to a firestorm and a bishop with a gas can:

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception has confirmed that protesters led by the Native American activist Nathan Phillips attempted to disrupt the celebration of Mass on the evening of Jan. 19.

On Jan. 23, a spokesperson for the Washington, DC basilica released a statement to CNA confirming the previously reported events of Saturday night.

The statement said that while Mass was being celebrated, “a group of approximately 50 individuals attempted to gain entrance to the basilica while chanting and hitting drums.”

I don't know the condition of Nathan Phillips's soul, but based on the available evidence it's difficult to find much goodwill in his actions, either at the Lincoln Memorial or at the Basilica the next day. I would encourage Bishop Foys to continue to pray for Mr. Phillips, but I'd also suggest that Bishop Foys ought to have a resignation letter in the mail to the Pope.

Getting Some Strange

John "Doc Zero" Hayward started out as a commenter and then contributor at Hot Air, the group blog where Ed Morrissey plies his trade. These days he's at Breitbart and spends most of his time writing about foreign affairs. I wish he'd write more about what's happening in the United States, because he's uniformly excellent at it. His latest is spot-on:

Passive conservatism was so thoroughly terrorized away from social issues over the past generation that it became reluctant to engage even when leftists are clearly the aggressors and their attacks are utterly dishonest.

The debate on the passive Right was never about pushing back or fighting, especially not by top-tier Republican officials looking to preserve their “electability.” The only serious topic of discussion was how much ground to yield, how many of the Left’s premises to agree with.

The idea was that yielding all cultural battles to the Left would allow Republicans to focus on “fiscal conservatism” and win over moderate voters who only care about pocketbook issues. Curiously, the Left never saw it that way, not for an instant.

As we would learn, ceding cultural battles to the Left without a fight, or actively helping them to score a little Strange New Respect and maybe some roundtable seats, made the “pocketbook issues” largely irrelevant. The Left frames everything in moral terms now.

The "Strange New Respect" thing dates back to 1992 or thereabouts, when a conservative writer named Tom Bethell first codified it:

If you’re not familiar with the “strange new respect” trope, a short primer. The American Spectator’s Tom Bethell introduced the concept in a 1992 article to ridicule the practice of liberal journalists who would reward conservative politicians who migrated from right to left by commenting in print on how they were now commanding “strange new respect” in Washington, showing “growth,” “maturity,” “wisdom,” and “thoughtfulness.” 

As I recall, David Broder of the Washington Post was often the guy who would bestow Strange New Respect. John McCain was a full-blown junkie for it, but as we know it was always a provisional honor. McCain was respected as long as he didn't contest the Left too seriously -- when he became the Republican nominee for president in 2008, he was a monster, but only until the election was over.

Back to Hayward:

What passive conservatism ceded to the Left was righteousness. Every left-wing issue is presented as a righteous crusade which no one can legitimately resist. The motives of dissenters are ruthlessly challenged and they are damned as apostates by the Church of the State.

The Left gained an almost unchallenged ability to designate cultural villains and target them for destruction, an ability they were boldly exercising against the Covington kids until citizen-journalists brought them up short with amateur video.

Meanwhile, the Right was completely stripped of righteousness. It cannot present anything as a moral crusade, not even when it speaks up for unborn children or victims of violent crime — not even when it champions those the Left allegedly cares about, like the “working class.”

The passive Right lost the ability to project righteousness even when defending core American principles, and indeed the pillars of Western civilization, like the presumption of innocence. The Left openly demands we sacrifice those things for their crusades.

Again, this is spot-on. And it's ground that our pal Gino has been tilling for years now. And Hayward's suggestion that the State is a Church is 100% accurate as well. It's all straight out of Eric Hoffer, but it's mostly a product of people trying to find a substitute for the social structures that they've rejected, as Jennifer Kabbany notes:

In the absence of a strong family identity, young people look for meaning and belonging. It may be a feminist, a socialist, or a Democrat tribe. The only requirement is that the tribe define itself in some way as a victim of the predominantly white, western culture and its institutions. Thus, if you challenge such a person’s tribal identity—perhaps by declaring that “there is only one race, the human race” or “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”—it is perceived as a threat to his existence. You threaten his life’s meaning. It’s much harder to practice tolerance if you think a challenge to your ideas is a challenge to your significance. It’s a recipe for endless division. The hunger for identity is what fuels the mob-ready grievance culture …

Too many students are stuck in a bottomless pit of social media posturing, where there is nothing more meaningful to do than to find the “bad guy” who thinks differently, line up for a cellphone video, and chant your way to a feeling of righteousness.

Kids from a suburban Catholic high school wearing MAGA hats are a threat because they aren't down with the struggle. Middle-aged middle managers writing early morning blog posts at their dining room tables are not. I'm easy enough to ignore and I prefer it that way. If young Nicholas Sandmann were to take off his MAGA hat and get on the platform with David Hogg, he'd get Strange New Respect for sure. But for now, he's a smug little bastard who deserves to get punched, or put into a wood chipper. Because compassion.

Elder

One can be an elder and still be other things. As we learn more about Nathan Phillips, the man who presented himself as a victim of evil Cincinnati-area teenagers, we discover a few things that might be worth consideration.

First, he's not a "recon ranger," whatever that was supposed to mean:

Discharged, but not never promoted

He was actually a guy who repaired refrigerators, and he never left the United States while he was a Marine:

Cold hard truth

Nothing wrong with that, but the records show he not a guy who ever saw combat, even though he hinted he served in Vietnam. And yes, he did hint that:

Phillips: When I was there and I was standing there and I seen that group of people in front of me and I seen the angry faces and all of that, I realized I had put myself in a really dangerous situation. Here’s a group of people who were angry at somebody else and I put myself in front of that, and all of a sudden, I’m the one whose all that anger and all that wanting to have the freedom to just rip me apart, that was scary. And I’m a Vietnam veteran and I know that mentality of “There’s enough of us. We can do this.” (Emphasis added.)

As has been well established, Phillips wasn't surrounded; in fact, he instigated the incident. And he wasn't done:

While chanting and playing ceremonial drums, a group of Native American rights activists reportedly led by Nathan Phillips attempted Jan. 19 to enter Washington, D.C.’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during a Saturday evening Mass.

The group of 20 demonstrators was stopped by shrine security as it tried to enter the church during its 5:15 pm Vigil Mass, according to a shrine security guard on duty during the Mass.

“It was really upsetting,” the guard told CNA.

The kids from Covington Catholic, including the kid with the apparently radioactive smirk, did not enter the day intending to be the target of invective. It's quite likely these kids are sinners. We all are. But it simply won't do to say these kids were victimizing a tribal elder. They weren't.

Profiles in Courage

After pulling their website down all morning, the Diocese of Covington punts:

A statement from the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School 

On Monday afternoon the Covington Police alerted us that they had intelligence concerning a planned protest, Jan. 22, at Covington Catholic High School and a vigil at the Diocesan Curia. Due to threats of violence and the possibility of large crowds the Diocese was advised to close Covington Catholic High School, the Diocesan Curia and neighboring Covington Latin School. We thank law enforcement officers for their protection and will reopen when they say it is safe to do so.

Concerning the incident in Washington, D.C., between Covington Catholic students, Elder Nathan Phillips and Black Hebrew Israelites the independent, third-party investigation is planned to begin this week. This is a very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people. It is important for us to gather the facts that will allow us to determine what corrective actions, if any, are appropriate.

We pray that we may come to the truth and that this unfortunate situation may be resolved peacefully and amicably and ask others to join us in this prayer.

We will have no further statements until the investigation is complete.

The facts are there. There is video galore. The only corrective action needed in this case would be for the bishop and his pals in the chancery to admit they jumped the gun and to apologize to the children who were placed in their care. You don't need an independent third-party to do the right thing, folks. Or you could just resign, too. That would work.

Closer to home

I've written twice about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial involving professional protesters and a bunch of Catholic school kids wearing MAGA hats. This incident bothers me more than most things I write about, most likely because I can envision what these kids were thinking. I am a product of Catholic education and graduated from Xavier High School in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1981. While I didn't send my own children to Catholic schools, it wasn't because I didn't value my own experience.

Covington, Kentucky, is across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The kids who attend Covington Catholic High School are, most likely, upper middle-class. But if you look at them and the way they are behaving, I don't see arrogance. I can imagine being a high school junior, in a strange place, being confronted without warning or, in my view, provocation. I understand that wearing a MAGA hat seems to cause some people consternation, but it's still free speech and the kid most prominently featured in the videos, isn't really saying much.

If I had been the kid, I might have told the guy with the drum to leave me alone. Perhaps that would have been the better course, rather than standing still. The closest thing I can remember to that was being accosted in the Miami airport when I was on my way to Guatemala as an exchange student. I was confused and tired and was suddenly accosted by some Moonie-type guys who pinned a flower to my lapel and grabbed me while I was attempting to work my way down the corridor to my plane's gate. They would not let go of me until I gave them $5, which in 1979 was a lot of money for a 15-year-old kid. I was separated from the rest of my group and didn't know how to ask for help.

Is this a different set of circumstances? Of course. But if you are suddenly confronted with something new that you do not understand, whether it is a couple of guys grabbing you in the airport, or a guy beating a drum in your face, it's difficult to know how to react, especially if you are young.

Before it goes down the ol' memory hole

When we look back at the Covington Catholic kids and their excellent adventure on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, let's not forget this archived piece, which National Review pulled down after the argument became, well, non-operative.  Your author is Nicholas Frankovich, who seems to have forgotten what the 8th Commandment says:

It appears that most of the teenagers in this video are from a Catholic high school near Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. “Bullying” is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here.

For some of us, the gospel stories of Jesus’s passion and death are so familiar we no longer hear them. The evangelists are terse in their descriptions of the humiliations heaped on Jesus in the final hours before his crucifixion, the consummate humiliation. Read the accounts again or, if you’d rather not, watch the video. The human capacity for sadism is too great.

Evil. Sadism. Those are strong charges, even if they've been pulled down. But Frankovich had one more observation to make:

In any case, keeping in mind the parable of the proper priests and the Good Samaritan, whose religious practice Jesus’s listeners thought was wrong, listen to Phillips reflect on his experience on the Mall. Decide for yourself who is more pleasing to Christ, Phillips or his mockers. As for the putatively Catholic students from Covington, they might as well have just spit on the cross and got it over with.

National Review has a piece up on their site now excoriating people for jumping to conclusions. Kyle Smith describes what happened properly:

If you insult someone, and that person insults you back, you don’t get to cry, “Oh my gosh, for no reason whatsoever I’ve just been insulted!” The Christian thing to do is of course turn the other cheek, but if we’re being honest, people do tend to take the bait when they’re being baited, and teens are less likely than others to turn away from outright provocation. Nathan Phillips went out seeking to create an incident, and he fooled the New York Times and the Washington Post into accepting his false version of it.

All right and proper. But as of this writing, we've not heard a word from NR, or Frankovich, about the calumnies they heaped upon the Covington kids in believing the false version of events. If apologies are in order, it would seem that the apologies from that particular glass house are well overdue as well.

Update (Monday evening): Nicholas Frankovich of NR has issued an apology, but only to his readers:

Early Sunday morning, I posted a “strongly worded” (Rich Lowry’s description) condemnation of the conduct, seen far and wide on video, of a group of high-school students at the conclusion of the March for Life on Friday afternoon. I was preachy and rhetorically excessive, and I regret it. The overheated post I wrote has been taken down. Let this apology stand in its stead, both here on the Corner and in the memory of readers who justifiably objected to my high-handedness.

Does Frankovich still object to the "conduct" of the students? It's tough to say, but his avoidance of the topic suggests he still hasn't come to grips with the real meaning of what he said. I would argue his words were a little more than high-handed. I hope he gives it more thought.

Still, there is a larger apology that needs to happen. That would be from the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School, which still had a denunciation of the students on its website. Here is a screenshot:

Under the bus

As of this evening, the site is currently in maintenance mode, which suggests the Diocese is taking down the comment and replacing it with something else, perhaps something that's a little less, uh, high-handed. As an aside, I don't know how you condemn first and investigate second, unless the Inquisition is back in town. I sent a note to the Diocese asking them to consider retracting this statement. I'll let you know if they respond.