From Jordan Peterson’s Nonsense, Deliver Us, O Lord

The New Center: A Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

One really shouldn’t get worked up about Jordan Peterson. The Canadian psychologist is more of an entertainer than a serious thinker, and most of us don’t make too much of the philosophical musings of, say, Taylor Swift. Yet even as the anti-woke movement he exemplifies flags along with wokeness itself, Peterson is expanding his influence in religious circles, particularly among a subset of “conservative” and “trad” Catholics. I use scare quotes because these Catholics pine for a 19^th-century account of ecclesiastical authority, even as they chafe under the yoke of the authority ordained above them, namely, the Roman pontiff.

Thus, when Peterson gripes that Pope Francis should focus on “savings souls” instead of “saving the planet” and engaging in worship of “Gaia,” conservative Christians reward him with retweets and praise, not pausing for a second to consider the public claims of their own Church, let alone the demands of filial piety. Think of it as Catholic Twitter’s version of trading a birthright for a mess of potage.