The Illiberal Liberals and Pope Francis on Freedom of Expression

Bill Maher: When Anger Dresses
Up as Humor it is no less toxic 

I am a fan of The Big Bang Theory and there probably isn’t an episode I haven’t seen at least once, but I still get a bit queasy and want to change the channel when I see Howard do his imitation of Stephen Hawking’s synthesized speech.   Professor Hawking has been on the show and almost certainly doesn’t mind, but I am not sure where the line is on making fun of a person with a disability or a challenge.  Just because the person being mocked doesn’t mind doesn’t make it right. 

I think we have, at least in the United States and at least among those of us who weren’t raised by wolves (or white trash), a social consensus that we don’t make fun of people with disabilities or with what we often call today “special needs.”  To make fun of a person with Down’s Syndrome or with Cerebral Palsy is called bullying.  We don’t do it; we don’t tolerate it.  Similarly the sort of mockery of people for distinctive racial or ethnic features that was the staple of cartoonists such as Thomas Nast or Friz Freleng would not be tolerated today.  Julius Streicher was the Nazi Cartoonist whose anti-Semitic drawings in Der Stürmer helped turn the German people against the Jews in Hitler’s Reich; we recognize the evils to which he made a significant contribution.   One certainly doesn’t denigrate women in today’s responsible press.  Nor is it acceptable to make broad statements or reinforce stereotypes of the LGBTQ community.  But isn’t it great fun to mock people for their religious beliefs? 

There are people who have reacted strenuously to Pope Francis for saying that people should not be mocked for their religious beliefs.  This is seen as an attack on “freedom of expression.”  What many people today do not realize is the difference between “freedom” and “license.”  Freedom recognizes that it carries along with it responsibility.  License is nothing more than the unbridled indulgence of self-willed egotists.  It refuses to be accountable to either objective truth or to the sensitivities and rights of others.  Those who make fun of others for their religious beliefs are simply schoolyard bullies on a larger scale.

Several weeks ago I saw Bill Maher on Conan.  Mr. Maher is one of religion’s most irresponsible critics and produced and starred in Religulous, the 2008 documentary that pretty much tarred all religion with the same choleric brush.  He also is not a nice man.  Anger, no, actually a discretely muffled rage, best described his performance on Conan.   Rage is no foundation for humor.  Anger in any and all forms, the Dalai Lama says, is poison.  And it is.  Nothing more; nothing less.  It destroys people from within like a cancer, spreading out from the gut into the whole person and becoming an obsession that distorts the individual’s power for healthy relationships and eats away their capacity for joy.  Anger or Rage is also highly contagious and spreads like a spiritual cholera from one person to another by even the most casual of contact.  Just look at how the bias against Muslims has spread in our society and in Western Europe, spread to the point where Duke University had to rescind its permission for the Adhān (the Call to Prayer) to be chanted from the chapel bell tower for fear of violence against the University and its campus.   Of course there are those who want to silence the bells in church towers as well or prohibit the display of crosses on the outside of church-owned buildings.  We must be careful because to undermine the freedom of public expression for one religion is potentially to undermine the public expression of any and all religion.

This is not to say that religion must be above criticism.  Rational argument is far different from mockery whether the mockery is in the form of cartoons, films, jokes, literature, or art.  Religion, like every other aspect in our lives, needs to be put under the microscope of free, rational, and responsible critique.  But the Pope is right.  It is no more legitimate to mock the religious beliefs of some or any or all than it is to bully the developmentally challenged, the transgendered, the economically disadvantaged, the ethnic minority, or the physically handicapped.  It is time we grew up and faced our biases rather than make them clever conceits that massage our egos into thinking that we are superior to others who are different from us.    

Faith and Beggorah, Sodom and Gomorrah

To this point gays have not been
allowed to march in the Saint 
Patrick's DayParade in New York. 
Then please  Explain this.

The world is coming to an end.  The New York Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Committee is permitting one gay organization—a gay employee association of NBC which broadcasts the parade—to march in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade up 5^th Avenue under a banner identifying themselves as gay.  And to see how the katholic krazies’ blogosphere lit up like an IRA molotov cocktail y’ad think it was Sodom and Gomorrah right thereon 5^th Avenue.  And of course, it is all Cardinal Dolan’s doing.  You know, Gay-Friendly Cardinal Dolan.  You remember Cardinal Dolan.  He’s the guy in the red dress who called upon Catholics to "be a witness for the truth of marriage in word and action" and confirmed that the Bishop’s Conference wanted the Supreme Court to uphold both DOMA and Proposition 8. He is the fellow who ardently reminded the New York Catholic faithful that “true Christians” should oppose marriage equality for the LGBT community.  He is the fellow that took on Governor Andrew Cuomo over the issue of same sex marriage.  And now he is refusing to turn his back on the Gay community of New York.

The real villain in the story is, of course,  Cardinal Dolan’s mother who taught him to be a gentleman and have good manners.  Thanks to mom and her etiquette he doesn’t spit in people’s faces.  This is a huge disappointment to the wing-nuts who would like to see gays thrown out the front doors and down the steps of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and then burned at the stake for the evil perverts they are.  The fact that the Cardinal is civil to all he meets whether it is President Obama or gays is just more than the scribes and Pharisees can deal with.  “Get rid of the parade and the Al Smith dinner” they cry with hoarse but impassioned voices.

The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is not a religious event.  The first Saint Patrick’s Day parades in the United States were organized by Irish Protestants and were not meant as an expression of religious piety but as a celebration of Irish nationality.  The New York Parade, the largest and most famous in the world, was never from the first parade of Irish Soldiers serving the Crown just before the American Revolution to the present day, a religious procession and, despite passing by the steps of the Cathedral where it is traditionally greeted by the Archbishop of New York, has never had the character of anything other than a civic parade.  So what is the problem? 

The Church says there is no sin, indeed nothing morally wrong, in homosexuality but only in the sexual act between two people of the same sex. (Lest the LGBT community feel singled out, the Church says the same about any sexual act between two people, a man being one and a woman being the other, who are not properly married to each other.)  I am presuming that the parade will not include people having sex with one another if, for no other reason, it’s being televised would break FCC rules.  Should we pretend there are no gay Irish?  Should we pretend that gay people do not exist?  I am sorry, but the Gay community is here to stay and we had might as well make them feel at home—they include your brother, your cousin, your aunt, your nephew, the girl you dated in high-school, the teacher you had a crush on in sophomore year, and quite possibly you yourself, perhaps aware of it; perhaps not.  So whether it is marching next to you next Saint Patrick’s Day or kneeling next to you at Mass next Sunday, or sitting next to you at the Raven’s game, or standing next to you at the metro stop, get used to having Gay People around.  They aren’t going to go away.  And if your mother is half the mother that Cardinal Dolan’s was, you will show good manners.  

Troubled Seas Ahead For The Barque of Peter? cont.

Pope Francis and Ecumenical 

Patriarch Bartholomew meet at 

the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

to pray together

The afternoon Pope Francis was elected I had to go to the airport to pick up an English priest who worked in Rome and whom I had engaged to give a lecture.  The first question he asked as he came through customs was “Did they elect a Pope?”  I answered  “Yes, an Argentine Jesuit who has taken the name Francis.”  Now I have a bit of a reputation for stating the improbable in jest but Father X looked at me in disbelief and it was only when he heard it on the radio on our way back from the airport did he believe it.  An “Argentine Jesuit calling himself Francis” was more than improbable, it was world-shattering.  And indeed many have found their worlds shattered by this Pope and his penchant for new models of the papacy as well as of discipleship.

I have an eye for the signals that one finds in the details. I watch papal ceremonies with a close eye.   I had noticed immediately when the new pope came out on the balcony that he was not wearing the traditional rochet and mozetta.   Hmm, I thought, this is curious.  Pope Benedict was a stickler for protocol and even had reverted to some of the archaic vesture his recent predecessors had abandoned.   And then there was the gesture of asking the crowd to “pray for him” in which he was really asking for them to “bless” him.  This is a different ecclesiology, I thought.   The next day there was a picture of him celebrating Mass for the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel where he had ordered an altar to be placed where he could face the assembly while Pope Benedict had used the old altar, celebrating in the pre-conciliar position of having his back to the congregation.  Hmm, I thought again.  Word began to spread of tension between the new Pope and his Master of Ceremonies, Monsignor Guido Marini, whom Francis inherited from the previous Pope and who was known for retro-style worship.  While time has taught the two men to work together as a team, Francis was not budging on his determination to do things his way which reflected a return to the ‘70’s sort of less elaborate liturgy.  Francis insisted on the plainest of vestments, a definite step away from both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict who favored the most gorgeous of robes.  And then the new Pope decided not to move out of the hotel where he had been living during the conclave, but to commute in an old car to his offices in the Apostolic Palace.  This was all symbolic, but at the least it portended significant change in direction for the Church.  A few savvy souls on the right saw this and began to get very nervous.  They didn’t know what Francis was up to, but they knew he wasn’t Pope Benedict. 

They began to check out his record and discovered as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he was far from enthusiastic about the pre-conciliar liturgy.  Then they found out he was close friends with an Argentine rabbi and had not only co-authored a book with him, but had jointly led services with him.  Pictures emerged of him washing the feet of—gasp!!!—women during the Holy Thursday rituals in Buenos Aires.  The more they investigated the more anxious they became.  This guy was not on the JPII/Benedict team.  There not only was a new sheriff in town, there was a maverick in the papal office. 

The very day Francis was elected, the Restorationist blog Rorate Caeli (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-horror-buenos-aires-journalist.html) launched an attack on him saying:

 Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him.

A sworn enemy of the Traditional Mass, he has only allowed imitations of it in the hands of declared enemies of the ancient liturgy. He has persecuted every single priest who made an effort to wear a cassock, preach with firmness, or that was simply interested in Summorum Pontificum.

Famous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of his addresses and homilies), accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and ambiguous expressions, it cannot be said that his magisterium is heterodox, but rather non-existent for how confusing it is.

His entourage in the Buenos Aires Curia, with the exception of a few clerics, has not been characterized by the virtue of their actions. Several are under grave suspicion of moral misbehavior.

He has not missed any occasion for holding acts in which he lent his Cathedral to Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and even to partisan groups in the name of an impossible and unnecessary interreligious dialogue. He is famous for his meetings with protestants in the Luna Park arena where, together with preacher of the Pontifical House, Raniero Cantalamessa, he was "blessed" by Protestant ministers, in a common act of worship in which he, in practice, accepted the validity of the "powers" of the TV-pastors.

Probably Francis’ first real bombshell was probably his famous “who am I to judge” response when asked about an allegedly gay priest in the Vatican service.  The Pope’s response went viral and while many Catholics were happy for a less disparaging response to the LGBT community, there were those who went into all out alarm on this pastoral softening attitude.  Then in September he said that some Catholics were too “obsessed” with issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and that more emphasis had to be placed on the issues of Social Justice.  Now the fire alarms were ringing among Catholics on the right.  Bad enough that we aren’t locked in on the two great moral questions of our day—abortion and same-sex marriage—but to say that we have to focus instead on the roots of poverty and injustice: that was a double whammy.  All of a sudden Francis’ call when he was elected that we should be a “poor Church for the poor” was beginning to take on some ugly consequences.  In November Rush Limbaugh—not a Catholic—attacked Francis as a “Marxist” for his “radical” ideas about social reorganization to give the poor of the world a better chance at bettering their situation.  Just a month ago or so when the Holy Father received Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, and the heads of various UN economic fora and talked about redistribution of resources, Limbaugh and his Katholic Krazies fans went ballistic all over again about how wrong this Pope gets it. 

The initial attack on the Pope by Rorate Caeli spread as other self-appointed guardians of the “true faith” chimed in with their remarks rejecting the authority of this mad dog of a liberal Jesuit.  

By December one Catholic blogger was writing  (http://throwthebumsoutin2010.blogspot.com/2013/12/pope-francis-effect-upon-catechesis.html)

As many concerned Catholics have expressed, the silly statements from the Pope are damaging to catechists, parents, grandparents and Catholics who are intimately aware that the mission of the Deposit of Faith is to teach the substance that gives every person right judgment about their actions as they relate to the salvation of their soul.

Another Krazy Katholic blog recently opined http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/the-bloggers-the-orks-and-the-uruk-hai/

It is clear enough, what is happening: Francis is paving the way for a full-scale Modernist attack on the Church. He thinks, speaks and act (sic) like a Modernist because he is one of them. It is very clear that to him everything can be changed, if the “Spirit” – that is, himself – says so.

How can we, then, react to this to the best of our ability? My answer is simple: sound the alarm now, strongly and insistently. And do not refrain from exposing the man for what he is: a danger for Catholicism, a sower of confusion, and a buffoon…

Can't you see how Francis becomes bolder with every passing month? When you see huge scandal in the making, do you speak against it or do you think “oh well, the Holy Ghooost is guiding the Chuuuurch for the beeest” like an old Pollyanna?

We can't give this Pope any slack, because he has not deserved any. If anything, he has made very clear there is no monstrosity he would not put into place, if he could. With his blabbering about not closing the door to the “Spirit” he has, once and for all, thrown away the mask. The Modernist machine is now working full steam, and we must not allow this and him to go unpunished – yes, unpunished – because he is the Pope. Yes, he is the Pope. Which is why the situation is so grave, why he is so gravely culpable, and why we must see him as the worst enemy of Catholicism.

Corruptio optimi pessima. Francis is certainly not optimus for any particular virtue of him – which he does not have -, but because of the absolute preeminence of his earthly position. A Pope sabotaging Catholicism every day is what the Germans call GAU, Größter Anzunehmender Unfall or the worst possible (nuclear) catastrophe; and the nuclear plants that gave rise to the expression are very fitting for our situation, because a huge accident is about to happen in the Vatican Power Station, and mad or evil men have taken control of it.

We.must.wake.up.now.

Francis is a popularity addict. His religion is himself first, Socialism second, himself third and fourth, and Christianity nowhere. What to do?

Mock him, ridicule him, let him drown in a sea of laughter and scandal. This is what is most likely, or least unlikely, to stop him or at least put a brake on his devastation. If every day thousands of Catholic blogs were to openly ridicule Francis, this would have two very salutary effects: it would show Francis he is the Kasperle (how fitting) of the sound Catholic world, and it would contribute to cure a large part of the Catholic masses from the Papolatry that has afflicted the Church for so many decades now. In time, the phenomenon would be registered by the mass media. At that point, Francis would have failed, and he would stay there like the old dangerous or evil nincompoop he truly, truly is.

This is not your usual Pope, to which the usual rules of utter deference apply. This here is a new breed of Pope….

We are, as I have already written, at the point that Francis has brought such disrepute to the office, that to criticise the man is the only way to defend the office. Ridicule him, so that the contrast with a decent Papacy and his predecessors may become more evident. Mock him, so that his delirious novelty may be discounted before he even opens his mouth. Make of him a laughing stock, so that you will hit him where he is hurt most effectively: in his boundless vanity.

Another blog that has moved into a position of open hostility towards this papacy is Eponymous Flower (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2014/05/bishop-williamson-holds-forth-on.html)

The crazy words and deeds of Pope Francis are presently driving many believing Catholics towards sedevacantism, which is dangerous. The belief that the Conciliar Popes have not been and are not Popes may begin as an opinion, but all too often one observes that the opinion turns into a dogma and then into a mental steel trap. I think the minds of many sedevacantists shut down because the unprecedented crisis of Vatican II has caused their Catholic minds and hearts an agony which found in sedevacantism a simple solution, and they have no wish to re-open the agony by re-opening the question. So they positively crusade for others to share their simple solution, and in so doing many of them – not all -- end up displaying an arrogance and a bitterness which are no signs or fruits of a true Catholic.

Is Pope Francis driving many believing Catholics towards sede vacantism?  I think that is a pretty gross overstatement, though not nearly as extreme as Mundabor’s rant.  These are the Katholic Krazies and they represent less than 3/1000^ths of a percent of American Catholics (20,000 out of 65 million.)  I think what is more significant, much more significant, is that this same group had been ultra-loyalist during the pontificates of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI and now is in open contempt moving towards rebellion.  The vast majority of American Catholics are more than happy with the direction in which Pope Francis is guiding the Church.  I think the vast majority of American Catholics are also appreciative that this Pope has toned down the rhetoric on same-sex relationships and adopted a more pastoral approach to LGBT Catholics.  No one expects a doctrinal statement on the matter, but Francis has sent strong signals that the human dignity of individuals come before moral strictures, something the Pharisee party in the Church has a tendency to forget.  On the other hand, it does look like there may be a major policy change towards the pastoral treatment of the divorced and remarried.  That could send a significant number of old-line Catholics searching for a new spiritual home. It would be difficult to know where they would go because the Orthodox and even the most morally rigid of so-called Evangelicals have accommodated the divorced and remarried.  Certainly some would go to the Lefebvrists but just because people may not agree with lifting the sacramental penalties for remarriage after divorce doesn’t mean they want—or even would accept—the Latin Mass.  The greater number would most likely be divided between those who would still come to Church grumbling that everything was going to the dogs or those who would stay home on Sunday mornings because everything is going to the dogs.  On the other hand, there would be a considerable number of those who were in “irregular marriages” and abandoned Catholicism for the Episcopal or Lutheran Churches who would return to the Catholic fold.   There would also be a significant number of former Catholics who would stay in the various Protestant congregations which they joined because they had gotten used to women clergy, more welcoming and inclusive congregations, and more flexible worship.  Francis is changing the face of Catholicism, hopefully he is also changing the heart, but I don’t think it will significantly change the number of people in the pews one way or the other.  

Something to Consider cont.

I see that some of my friends among the Katholic Krazies are all in a tizzy about a coming persecution in our secularized culture of Catholics who stay faithful to Church teaching regarding human sexuality.  Janet of Restore DC Catholicism posted a video of Michael Voris who compares complacent Catholics with those Jews who did not take seriously the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism with their program of exterminating the Jewish race.  Voris gives a lot of detail about the German blitzkrieg but is vague about his data for foretelling the threat facing Catholics.  He paints the situation of Catholic schools and health institutions with a broad brush but without giving specific examples.  His agenda is to declare the real threat to the Church is the “Homofacist Hammer”—his term for those who are trying to break the cultural bias against the LGBT population and who see the Catholic Church as the main perpetrator of this prejudice.   

Now I am not saying that just because it is the Katholic Krazies who are screaming doom and gloom from the housetops, that there isn’t something to be concerned about.  Cassandra, the doomsayer of Troy, was as crazy as a *hithouse rat, but her warnings about the large wooden horse the Greeks had left behind was dead on.  I do think that religion—not just Catholicism—is under attack in our western culture.  I mentioned yesterday that if we want to weather the storm of a secular culture that is hostile to religion in the public square we had better take a serious look at the role we play in society.  We cannot afford to cling to political, economic, or even moral power as it has been our abuse of power that got us trapped in this cultural fix.  The high-handed arrogance with which Cardinal Law and other bishops refused to take responsibility for the sex-abuse crisis was an all but fatal misstep for the survival of the Church.  Movies like Doubt, The Magdalene Sisters and Philomena exposed the vicious underbelly of Catholicism and the systemic abuse of power by the Church.  To get out of this snare we need to embrace the role of putting ourselves at the humble service of society rather than trying to force society to conform itself to our values.  In other words, we must regain our credibility by unstinting service to society and then hold up our Christian values as a voluntary choice rather than try to legislate a morality to which all must subscribe.   Jesus never once told us change laws; his commission was for us to change hearts, beginning with our own. 

I have been reading George Weigel’s Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21^st century Church.  I have a bit of a mixed reaction to it and hope to discuss it in future entries.  I would like to look at one quote, however, with which I fully agree. 

The Leonine Revival that reached its fulfillment in John Paul II and Benedict XVI , heirs and authentic interpreters of the Second Vatican Council, is inviting the Catholic Church to Galilee, and then beyond Galilee.  The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life.  Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord.   

We need to refocus our lives as Catholics—individually and collectively—on an encounter with Christ in the Scriptures, in the Church’s Sacramental Life, and in prayer.  I think this is the problem with the Vorises and the Janets and others who want to “restore” Catholicism to the Church of the William O’Connells and Francis Spellmans where a call to a State Governor, or even the White House, from a Cardinal could cause a major policy change.  Those days are over.  We need, even in the face of a hostile secularism with its immense cultural and political clout, to renounce any and all power except the power of the Gospel.  Is this change of direction judicious? Of course not. But it is putting our faith in God and in God’s word.  And of course in this week, more than any other week of the year, we see the model of renouncing power and being vulnerable to our foes as being at the heart of the Gospel we believe and are called to proclaim.  In God and in his Word alone is our hope for salvation. 

Such a change in direction from power to service requires our bishops to reconsider the sort of houses in which they live, the diocesan structures by which they carry out their ministry, the people with whom they socialize, and their vision which they have for the Church in their care.  It also requires the clergy to reconsider the way decisions are made in their parishes, the kind of homilies they preach, the style in which they celebrate the Liturgy and Sacraments, and their own relationship with their parishioners.  It will make the religious consider again what is meant by their vow of poverty, how to fulfill their prophetic vocation, and the sorts of ministry to which they give themselves.  But most of all it will require from the Catholic laity a radical decision to become more involved at the nitty-gritty level in hands on service to the poor and marginalized.  It will require us all—hierarchy, clergy, and laity—to reconsider our response to those whose values are in fundamental divergence from our own.  Will we sit in pious judgment with those who are “pro-choice,” or LGBT, or angry about how they have been hurt by religion, or will we approach others with an honest desire to hear them out and enter into a dialogue towards mutual understanding?  Will we be willing to serve the needs not only of our own, but even of those who have come to hate us and hate the faith to which we are committed?  Will we learn to respect others regardless of whether we agree with them or not?  Will we open the doors of our churches, our schools, our health-care institutions, our social-service institutions, not only to those who share our beliefs and values but to all who come to us in need.  This requires a radical change not only of policy, but of heart.   But isn’t that precisely what God has called us to every since the days of the Prophets?