Did Mona Charen Commit Heresy at CPAC When She Condemned White House Sexual Predators?

Rhetoric involves an audience, whom the speaker wants to persuade, and how that audience responds is always important.

Former White House speechwriter and thoroughgoing conservative Mona Charen was booed and heckled when she appeared on a panel at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), “Left Out by the Left,” yesterday. The topic was how the left wing mistreats, ignores, or abuses woman. In a brief, extemporaneous speech during the panel discussion, Charen turned the topic around and said:

Mona Charen in 1986

“I am disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women, and because he happens to have an R after his name, we look the other way; we don’t complain.”

Charen complained further that the Republican Party who supported Roy Moore for the United States Senate even though there were credible accusations that he was a predator.  Charen said: “we cannot claim that we stand for women and put up with that."

Audience members booed and heckled loudly: “Prove it!” “Witch hunt!” That is, they angrily denied that Charen was right.

So, before we go further, let’s put to rest any thought that Charen was wrong. After being accused of dating underage girls, Roy Moore told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he never dated “any girl without the permission of her mother.” Enough said.

Donald Trump’s famous Access Hollywood recording disproved any defense of Trump’s marital or sexual morals.  

Since what Charen said was obviously true, why did the audience boo? To understand that, we must revisit the ancient concept of heresy. In religion, heresy is a belief contrary to official teachings.

Keep these points in mind:

1.       Heresy is not ordinary error. If I say that the Texas sky is never blue, this isn’t heresy. It’s just wrong. If I were to deny that God created the world, this is, in Christianity, a heresy.

2.       A society, group, religion, or social movement can encourage people to believe many things that cannot be proven, or that are just wrong. These beliefs can become dogmas, and to disbelieve them turns into heresy.

3.       Accusations of heresy are used to enforce social conformity. When a church calls someone a heretic, this is to enforce the person’s conformation to standard beliefs.

4.       The usual punishment for heresy is to expel the heretic. A heretical Catholic can be excommunicated, which means to be denied access to the sacraments: “Faithful to the Apostolic teaching and example, the Church, from the very earliest ages, was wont to excommunicate heretics and contumacious persons.”  Expelled heretics might seem less dangerous than heretics who remain in the group.

5.       Different groups, different heresies. Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is a heresy to Catholics, but standard belief in many Protestant churches.

So, first, Charen was right. Second, she said things that were heretical. She was disloyal to the conservative cause as certain audience members understood that cause. Third, she is not likely to receive a CPAC invitation next year. That, I suppose, is something like excommunication. In fact, she needed a security escort to leave the building safely. 

Reinforcing her heresy, Charen later wrote about "this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds, and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability." That, I guess, should complete her expulsion from the conservative movement. 

 

But Charen was right, and there lies the problem. Her beliefs, although true, caused her audience to feel uncomfortable—in psychological terms, she probably created cognitive dissonance in them.  One way for the audience to reduce their cognitive dissonance would be to change their wrong beliefs. But they decided that it was much more straightforward to shout down someone who pointed out their wrong beliefs.

A good way to convince people to conform to standard beliefs is to give them good reasons to do so. Another, less-good way to convince people to conform is to exclude them if they do not. Charen was not wrong, but she was heretical, and heretics are unwelcome. 

However, conservatism is not a religion, and excommunicating people who speak the truth can only lead true believers to falsehood. 

Also see my earlier post about Donald Trump's CPAC speech. Was Charen's main problem that she didn't appeal to true believers? More coming! 

P.S.: Everyone at CPAC knew about Trump's escapades and Moore's personal issues, not to mention Rob Porter's alleged history of spousal abuse, so scheduling a panel about how the left wing treats women was probably a badly timed idea. Ah, hindsight is truly 20-20.

Photo: official White House photo, via Wikimedia Commons.