The passage I'm quoting here is from Fr. Rutler's book Reflections of a Post-Modernist Catholic. I'm taking out the single sentence which addresses 'theology,' because the passage applies elsewhere in spades.
A mistake, possibly the first mistake, of ideologues is not that they dwell exclusively in the realm of ideas. The opposite is the case: ideologues congregate everywhere but where ideas breathe free. In true gnostic fashion, ideologues call everything an idea except an idea. For one thing, they turn people into ideas of people. If the man is their idea of a man, he can do nothing wrong: his crimes are faux pas; his lies are witty; his stupidity is charmingly rustic. But if the man is not their idea of a man, he can do nothing right: his education is too frail or too fancy; his motives are too blatant or too byzantine; his moustache is too straggly or too stylish; and if he does not act superior, it is because is is inferior.......Intellectual opponents, then, are inhuman enemies of the ineffable idea. There is no point to debate: the plan is to conquer. There was a time when debate was a way to make friends; it has become the opposite. The fiery Edwardian debates followed by a round of spiked punch have become anemic 'dialogues' followed by a round of spiked punches.
By and large, "liberation theology" ideologues are dead, (but not without lingering influence in the corner office of the Vatican.)
But political ideologues? They occupy every square inch of the current White House and acres of other offices in D.C., and what Fr. Rutler has to say about ideologues certainly fits them.
