Where do these people come from?

One of the things that surprised me when I started reading Catholic related material on the internet is that there are many more conservative blogs than progressive blogs. And the former often have a nasty decidedly non-Christian tone. One of these is called Mundabor, a pseudonym for the blogger.

I received a little insight into Mr. Mundabor from a recent entry explaining why Rome, unlike London, will never degenerate into rioting. He explains his background:


I grew up in Rome, Italy, in a typical middle-class environment.

Compared to the standards of today, money was certainly not there in great quantity. No one felt “deprived” because he didn’t have luxury trainers, or a smart mobile phone.

Life was very simple, and utterly straightforward. You had people responsible for you (these were your parents), and they were the ones in charge of teaching you order, and discipline, and answering for it to the nearest judge. Most did their job rather well.

My father was on the sterner side of the average (I come from a family with a proud 100% Fascist background, mind; where Law and Order were written very large, rather than being a mere slogan).


So a good Facist Catholic family produces some of today's haughty commentators. Here is an example of Mundabor's writing that illustrates the nasty tone:


I would like to explain to you the madness of the mentality engendered by Vatican II with two examples.

1) Some years ago I bought the “New Jerome Biblical Commentary” directly from Amazon (that is: without reading the introduction, etc.).When the tome arrived, I noticed that it was explicitly said that some of the contributions had been written by non-Cathlics, but their orthodoxy had been checked so there need be no worries.

This stroke me as very odd. Clearly, a non-Catholic is a person who is in error and no amount of ecu-maniacal waffle will ever change a iota in this. Why, therefore, a person who is in error might be asked to write a commentary about the truth is simply beyond me. “Ah, but we have checked!”, says the publisher; which sounds as logical as to say that you have asked the plumber to make a new chair for you, but you have checked that the chair is all right. One also wonders why it was so difficult to ask Catholic authors in the first place, as one assumes that there must still be a good number available. The only possible answer is that in the post Vatican II climate, it is considered bon ton to allow Protestants to explain Christianity to Catholics. I also wonder why the opinion about “orthodoxy” of a person who can even conceive to allow a Protestant to form Catholic consciences should be of any value. I mean, these are people telling me that the plumber is good enough to make me a new chair! Finally, I wonder whether even the texts from Catholic authors are properly orthodox: an editor so concerned with “ecumenism” as to invite Protestant authors might well choose only those among the Catholic authors who are most accepted by Protestants. You see, the one with orthodoxy is a slippery slope: if an editor doesn’t show that orthodoxy is the most important thing to him, he simply loses credibility.