The Illusionists

Mark Shea, making sense:

Back in the day, "conservative Catholics" were (I thought) all about standing with the teaching of the Church against the Progressive Dissenters who wanted to trim out all that stuff that interfered with their sex lives and their politics.

The torture debates cured me of that illusion once and for all. A great deal of what passes for "conservative Catholic" stuff in the public square is really an attempt to co-opt and even contradict the Church (while still selling itself as the "voice of truly true Catholicism" over against those awful leftist dissenters that you should, by all means, go on condemning (and pay no attention to "conservative Catholic" dissent).