Agnostic Catholicism

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

1) The talk’s framing: “performative” politics/identity vs. deeper capture/co-option

The speaker argues that in progressive/university/PMC activist spaces, people often treat identity and politics as performative (including “scrambling people’s radar”), but these approaches can still become captured by institutional industries.

He distinguishes between:

• cynical performativity
• feeling-it-out performativity (experiments to see what works)
• performativity as such (e.g., Butler-style)

He claims identity “experimentation” (including gender/queer aesthetics) can be genuinely experienced and yet still be co-opted by broader systems—especially “psychiatric/surgical/pharmaceutical” industries he links to “IMO/DEI” rationalizations.

2) Critique of DEI as a symbolic and social-order project

The speaker discusses a conservative argument (via Mary Harrington/Nina Power’s essay) that modern culture has “lost Christian roots,” and that DEI replaces them with an “undifferentiated blob” logic.

He criticizes the practical effect of “category-checking”: the need to rate/decide how seriously to take someone based on DEI labels.

3) A personal intellectual-to-religious trajectory: from left theory → agnostic Catholicism

He narrates a movement:

• from progressive/left-liberal reductionism and identity-influencing experiments
• toward a more conservative/religious symbolic understanding
• culminating in “agnostic Catholicism”—uncertainty about doctrine while committing to the Church and its worldview/practices.

He emphasizes the conversion is partly philosophical, but also sociological and ritual-based—something he “vibed with” before formal commitment.

4) “Inherent Catholicism” and why burnout-radical-to-Catholic conversions happen

He introduces a distinction:

• Cradle Catholics (raised into Catholic identity)
• Inherent Catholicism (a disposition he claims draws people toward a universal, structured tradition)

He argues that many Marxists who burn out may convert to Catholicism (example mentioned: Kolakowski), because Catholicism offers a long-run, scaled, civilization-level account—unlike transient ideological projects.

5) Catholicism vs Protestantism: institutional authority, ritual world-building, and different “God relationships”

He contrasts:

• Protestants (as he characterizes them): a more “passive/reliance” relationship to God and Scripture interpretation without centralized authority—leading to fragmentation.
• Catholics: a “mysterious” participation in a shared story and presence; centralized authority; capacity to hold mystics and literalists together.

He also argues Catholicism resists modern “individualist epistemology” triggered by print culture (“everyone becomes a little pope”).

6) Doctrine as symbolic-linguistic systems (Lindbeck / socio-linguistic approach)

Using George A. Lindbeck’s framework, he claims doctrine is not mainly:

• propositional (true/false facts to get right), or
• expressive (about how I feel),

but rather socio-linguistic/symbolic: doctrine forms a symbolic order and enables a particular kind of lived world.

He concludes:

• language (e.g., English) creates a “world”
• Christian/Catholic symbolic resources produce a worldview that underwrites secular notions like rights and freedom—often even when people think they’re secular or pagan.

7) Ritual as “worldhood” and social synchronization (Gracie Jiu-Jitsu analogy)

He compares Catholic ritual to shared gym schedules and embodied practices:

• people synchronize through repeated motions (a “team spirit” and shared habitus)
• rejecting rituals (“why are we doing these motions?”) is framed as anti-community

He argues ritual preserves a common wavelength over time and scales across generations.

8) Catholicism and “magic/mysticism” as practiced reality (Sebastian Maly / liturgy-as-baptized witchcraft)

He endorses the idea that liturgy is a form of “baptized witchcraft,” and that Christian mysticism/magic works not as “subjective feeling only,” but as a tradition that shapes reality/experience in ways moderns misunderstand.

9) The conversion story: Ash Wednesday → OCIA → “belief as commitment”

He describes:

• starting as agnostic (not committed to dogmatic belief)
• reading Chesterton and being attracted to populist critiques of liberalism
• doing Ash Wednesday and Lent as an experiment
• meeting people and being invited into OCIA (adult initiation)

He claims the opening into faith depends on philosophical “bracketing” (phenomenological suspension of doubt), after which coincidences begin to feel meaningful.

He reframes:

• belief as commitment (not scientific certainty)
• faith as courage: committing despite “objective reality” pressures that try to gaslight you.

10) Handling guilt, repression, and “sin-nature” without crushing oneself

A question is raised: does agnosticism soften Catholic guilt/repression?

He replies:

• he dislikes guilt as typically practiced
• repression can create “a-social boundaries/free zones” needed for civilization (example: locker rooms/family boundaries)
• he rejects two extremes:
  • self-hatred guilt
  • identity-based absolutism (“that’s your true nature; accept it fully”)

He suggests both excessively guilty and excessively “I’m pure/good” attitudes can function as compensations.

11) Church as a long-term power block against “transhuman castration culture”

He claims the Church is a globally distributed power resisting attempts to “hack nature,” especially narratives tied to contraception/surrogacy/castration-culture.

He credits the Church (and Chesterton) with long-duration resistance, even if not perfect.

12) Community and renewal: not saving souls, but human formation

He ends emphasizing:

• evolving the Church through critique (not dismissing it)
• the future depending on how humans navigate tensions
• the worst outcome being dehumanization leading to violence (he compares historical ideologically atheist regimes and their outcomes)

He closes with the quip that “you’re not in the business of saving souls,” framing his mission as realization and formation rather than priestly salvation-work.

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Methodology / instruction-style content

A) How he conceptualizes “belief” and conversion readiness

• Suspend/philosophically bracket doubt (phenomenological “receptive open mode” rather than scientific judging).
• Reinterpret “belief” as commitment, not just assent:
  • Belief = dedication/commitment to what you treat as true or meaningful.
• Treat faith as courage:
  • commit despite pressures claiming “reason” requires inhuman actions.
• Use ritual participation as embodied learning:
  • enter practices (e.g., Lent/OCIA) before full metaphysical certainty.

B) How doctrine should be interpreted (Lindbeck framework, as applied)

When analyzing doctrine, check whether it functions as:

• propositional belief (truth/falsity)
• expressive belief (existential feeling)
• socio-linguistic/symbolic order (how language and practice structure the world)

He recommends preferring the socio-linguistic reading:

• doctrine shapes the symbolic order
• it enables “world” experiences propositions alone can’t provide.

C) How to relate to Catholic authority vs individualism

• Accept that institutions can be rational and revisable:
  • critics can be correct about particular errors while authority corrects over time.
• Resist the “everyone is a little pope” model:
  • print culture and individual scriptural reading can fragment communities.
• View religion as collective rationality / corporate belief:
  • individual assent can be complex, but commitment to the authority isn’t total abdication of questioning.

D) Social-psychological boundary principle (implied)

• Maintain “repression”/boundaries to preserve “free zones”:
  • don’t treat all instincts as must-be-expressed in public/adjacent contexts.
• Avoid two pathological responses:
  • guilt-as-destruction
  • identity-as-absolute inevitability.

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Speakers / sources mentioned (by role)

Primary speaker in the seminar

• David McCarricker (main lecturer; repeatedly referred to as “David” / “my talk”; hosts the seminar)

Other people present / speakers (named in subtitles)

• Tony Thomas
• Nicholas Vichi
• Bo (first name only)
• Federico Rico (spoke a bit; mentioned alongside “Bo and Nick and Feder Rico”)
• Aramus (referred to as “Mr. Spiel”)
• Nick Gallow
• Jacob (identified as one of the event’s patrons)
• Mark Griswald (identified in the Ash Wednesday/OCIA story)
• Father Len (priest who leads/approves OCIA enrollment)
• Walker (asked/commented about stereotypes; likely a participant)
• Ruiz
• Joshua Walker (raised hand / mentioned in comments; treated as distinct from “Walker” in one spot)
• Barb (named as a Catholic parent who made chili)
• Federico (referenced during a camera/whiteboard moment)
• Matthew Stanley (referenced as a participant/member; injured and missed the event)

Speakers/authors/books/lectures referenced

• Judith Butler (Gender Trouble; “gender police”)
• GK Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
• H. (mentioned as “Haidiger,” likely Martin Heidegger), Being and Time
• George A. Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine)
• Sebastian Maly (Mysticism, Magic and Monasteries)
• Mary Harrington
• Nina Power
• Tom Holland (Dominion)
• Freud (wish fulfillment; repression; Civilization and Its Discontents implied)
• Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Dialectic of the Enlightenment)
• Alistair McIntyre (storytelling animals; Catholic conversion mentioned)
• Jean-François Lyotard? / “Levianos” (likely Levinas)
• Hegel
• Nick Land
• Leszek Kołakowski (Main Currents of Marxism; subtitles spelled “Kilikausski”)
• D. Garner / Daniel Garner and “OG Rose” (mentioned in sub-discussion)
• Peter Rollins (What’s Right podcast)
• bell hooks (beloved community mentioned)
• Paul Verilio (subtitles mention “Paul Verilio”)
• Ivan Illich
• Angela Davis (quoted on the speaker’s shirt)

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Identified meeting/event context / settings

• Theory Underground (TU) and “David McCarricker seminar”
• “TUCON” and “Canon Fest Zero” (final official day; year 2026; at a farm)
• Whiteboard and book stack used for references
• Planned follow-up Q&A later (Monday/Tuesday mentioned)

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Summary (one paragraph)

The seminar argues that modern progressive activism and DEI operate as performative and institutionally captured social systems, and that gender/queer experimentation can be co-opted by medical/industrial structures. Against that background, the speaker describes his personal shift into “agnostic Catholicism,” combining left-to-conservative critique (via Chesterton and post-liberal thinkers) with a Lindbeck-style view of doctrine as socio-linguistic symbolic world-formation, and with a liturgy/mysticism-as-practice lens (Sebastian Maly). He portrays Catholicism as an “inherent” universalist disposition that builds communal “worldhood” through ritual and institutional authority, reframes belief as commitment and faith as courage, and addresses guilt/repression as civilizational boundary-keeping rather than self-destruction—ending with a call for renewal and human formation rather than dehumanizing ideological conflict.

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Speakers / sources list (as requested)

Speakers present (named)

David McCarricker; Tony Thomas; Nicholas Vichi; Bo; Federico Rico; Aramus (“Mr. Spiel”); Nick Gallow; Jacob; Mark Griswald; Father Len; Walker / Joshua Walker; Ruiz; Barb; Matthew Stanley; Daniel Garner; Michelle Garner; Benjamin Studebaker (mentioned); Peter Rollins (mentioned).

Sources/authors referenced (named)

Being and Time (Heidegger); The Nature of Doctrine (George A. Lindbeck); Mysticism, Magic and Monasteries (Sebastian Maly); Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton); Dominion (Tom Holland); Main Currents of Marxism (Leszek Kołakowski); Gender Trouble (Judith Butler); Dialectic of the Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer); Levinas (likely meant by “Levianos”); Hegel; Freud; D. Garner / OG Rose; Alain? (not named clearly); bell hooks; Nick Land; Paul Verilio; Ivan Illich; Angela Davis; Mary Harrington; Nina Power; Martin Heidegger; Jacob (patron).