How Many Terrible JDs can the Catholic Church Hold?
I don't know what the answer is, but three seems high, right?
“We are going to have to rebuild our image along lines other than those I see here.”
-Ignatius J. Reilly
Ever since the betrayal of Christ by Judas D'Angelo Iscariot, the one holy catholic and apostolic church has suffered at the hands of terrible people named JD. I have used a couple of pieces in the past to mock JD “Julian Dickhole” Long-Garcia, senior editor at America magazine, as he's been writing terrible opinion pieces that constantly call into question Long-Garcia's understanding of Catholicism, America's credibility as an outlet for serious Catholic thinking, my own understanding of language as a communication tool, and the Jesuits’ decision to give Long-Garcia an editor job, presumably through some kind of misunderstanding tied to a radio station call-in contest. Anyways, he’s got another one from last week titled “Are Americans Ready to Forgive Donald Trump?” The piece sucks, it’s bad, I don’t need to belabor it too much, I just interviewed the woman who literally wrote the book on questions like this and why they’re stupid. He’s a bad writer and thinker, he compares Trump’s past decade of violent rhetoric to liberal art installations he doesn’t like, as though those have had the same impact on the world. And he eventually lands here, suggesting that the newly humbled post-assassination-attempt Trump is someone we should consider forgiving:
“The moment I keep coming back to is when Mr. Trump jerked back his right hand on the stage in Pennsylvania and felt his ear. Then he held his bloody fingers before his eyes. Was that the beginning of something? To be clear, this is not about whether Mr. Trump gets my vote. Still, I believe God forgives us and calls us to forgive others—including our political leaders. I don’t believe we can overcome the polarization that divides us and find communion without first learning to forgive each other. The cynicism with which Mr. Trump’s detractors view the former president and his supporters remains a great obstacle. Like any other human being, Mr. Trump can be redeemed. Coming face to face with his own mortality might just be the beginning of his conversion. I pray that it not only softens his heart but also the hearts of the millions who support him—and the millions who don’t.”
It’s not really clear what Long-Garcia is calling for in terms of “forgiveness”. Trump has not changed his rhetoric - he kind of started his convention speech on a more subdued note, but he spent the majority of his very long speech playing the hits - and it’s not clear what anyone should be forgiving him for. He’s certainly not asking for forgiveness! Are we supposed to forgive him for saying the 2020 election was stolen? Because he also said that during his convention speech. Are we forgiving him for calling Mexican immigrants rapists? Because the people at his rally holding up Trump-issued “Mass Deportation Now” signs seem to be fine with it, as does Trump. Sexually assaulting women and bragging about it? Talking about all the cool people at Charlottesville? Having dinner with future Word On Fire contributor Nick Fuentes? All things for which Trump, a man who said during his first presidential campaign that he has never asked God for forgiveness, does not appear to be asking forgiveness? It’s not just that Long-Garcia has a bad opinion, he doesn’t appear to have an opinion at all, he’s just spewing the word “forgiveness” out because he thinks it’s a word he’s supposed to know.
Whatever. A bad Long-Garcia column no longer merits a full piece at G.O.T.H.S., I’d just be saying the same things over and over and over. He’s incapable not just of good thought but of thought. But he’s not the only bad JD we’re stuck with.
JD “Jagoff Dagoff” Flynn, co-founder of The Pillar and the fuzzy blue rectangle in the photograph above, has somehow found a new way to be creepy and weird. During the Tenth National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this past week - which is what Catholics get instead of “Brat Summer” - Flynn was co-moderating a panel discussion on dating for young adult Catholics, as reported by RNS. The article only touches on some of what was discussed during the panel - some of it appears to have been a young woman understandably upset that three guys she dated all ended up joining the priesthood1 - but, specifically, Flynn’s role was the roving mic. He walked around the crowd to solicit questions for the panel and, oh boy, was really feeling himself:
“Flynn seemed fixed on reversing the [single-hood] trend as he roamed the ballroom with a microphone to hear from Catholics in the audience, often hyping their attractive qualities or making quips…At the beginning of the session, Flynn asked the men in the room to raise their left hand and the women in the room to raise their right hand, then prompted those next to each other to hold hands. ‘We have our first couple of the evening,’ Flynn exclaimed, bounding over to [Alison] Vigland and Peter Burke, who discovered they were both from Texas. ‘What we want is for you to be able to meet each other in time to be able to go to (Eucharistic) adoration together tonight,” Flynn said.’”
That kind of seems creepy and weird to me, but again, I wasn’t there, so I will withhold judgment on whether this is all creepy and weird and instead defer to panelist and communications manager for CUA’s The Catholic Project, Sarah Perla:
“Perla advised against asking people on dates to adoration, calling it “creepy and weird” before some in the audience pushed back.”
Ah goddammit. JD Flynn’s most famous work at The Pillar is, of course, harvesting location data from Grindr and using it to out gay priests he doesn’t like, and then suggest that those priests are probably pedophiles, because they’re gay. When I first wrote about that incident back in 2021, I was shocked by the amount of traction that piece got online, but it turns out there are a lot of people in Catholic media who really don’t like this guy, his open homophobia, and his questionable ethics when writing what he called “good, faithful, measured reporting”. And to have this big fuzzy blue rectangle, a rectangle who is married and older than many of the people in the crowd, roaming around the young adult panel commenting on how hot everyone is and shouting “more people need to hold hands, I'm not hard yet!” or whatever, is creepy and weird! It’s creepy and weird! Why is this guy building his career off of investing himself into the kind of sex everyone is having! And how is he not the only Catholic JD in the news this week building his career off of investing himself into the kind of sex everyone is having!
Look, I don’t have a lot of new things to say about Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Catholic convert JD “Judas D’Angelo” Vance; other reporters will do a very good job looking into him and the things he believes in the coming weeks, and it’s also not hard to figure out what he believes because he puts out press releases stating that we should deport 12 million people immediately. I do think it’s very strange that a politician with a national profile didn’t make his Venmo private, a thing that even I, a guy who’s kind of stupid, know how to do, and a thing that John Mulaney made a joke about in a standup special from two years ago. I also think it’s very weird that, based on who Vance followed on Twitter, he has spent a non-zero amount of time fantasizing about what he’d be doing in ancient Roman times and landing on “having sex with the most feminine-looking boys”. I don’t even know how to explain this one so I have to defer to the most recent issue of “Many Such Takes”:
“For those of you lucky enough not to understand this (I hate that I do) there’s this bizarre type of person on Twitter who fantasizes about having sex with attractive young women while pretending that they are actually ancient Roman teenage towel boys. Look, I’m not going to police people’s follows. I follow plenty of people with weird or even “bad” views because they occasionally post something interesting. Or even just…because. I don’t know, I’m not that selective. But also, I’m not running for Vice President. Anyway, arguably following a covid-conscious, pro-Palestine, body-positive socialist account would be more damaging for Vance given his electoral base.”
I don’t really know where this this puts Vance with the Steubenville crowd, referring to the speakers with whom he shared a stage at a 2022 conference decrying the Democrats’ agenda of “normalized pederasty, forced euthanasia, postnatal abortion, persecuting dissident faiths, disqualifying religious traditionalists and political conservatives from banking, property rights and public benefits,” given that he’s getting frequent updates from the “normalized pederasty” Twitter account. I know where it puts Vance among “Catholics named JD,” though: right about average.
I am not sure naming why naming your child JD condemns them to a life of reactionary politics and being a weird gross little freak. The name JD, of course, has always been cursed. JD Salinger became a recluse for the second half of his life, probably because he was ugly or smelled bad. JD Dorian was the name of Zach Braff’s character on Scrubs, and he was easily the worst part of the show. JD is the abbreviation for a law degree, and people with law degrees are assholes. So I am pleading with the Catholic mothers of America, even the future mothers who just met their future husbands at the Eucharistic Congress this past week: you run the risk of having a child who will grow up into an oddly-shaped white dude with a terrible beard and corrosive effects on the public perception of Catholicism. We need to end the curse. If G.O.T.H.S. leaves one thing to the world, I hope it's this demand: you cannot name your sons JD.
Although that streak does - look, I don’t know the woman, but you’re thinking it too - kind of makes me wonder what, exactly, her whole deal was.