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.    

Anger, Ritual, and Krazies

Jonathan Edwards

Ritual is a highly complex set of symbols that expresses—both on conscious and less-than-conscious levels our relationship with the Divine, with society, with specific others, and with ourselves.  Anthropologists can tell much about societies from their rituals and much about individuals, not only by their private rituals but also by how they relate to the communal rituals to the various societies to which they belong. 

While we are going to be looking at religious rituals in particular in this posting, ritual goes far beyond the religious.  We stand for the national anthem.  We sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.  We eat roast turkey for Thanksgiving.  Brides wear white for their first wedding.  We blow out candles on a cake and sing happy-birthday to mark another year of age.  When individuals deviate from these rituals, or elaborate on them, or ignore them completely, it tells us some things about them. 

Families have rituals too.  Italian families often have pasta as the first course of Sunday dinner; Portuguese have a fish plate to begin the meal.  Some families go out to breakfast after Sunday Mass, others cook a big breakfast at home.  Some families have a particular grace they say before a meal.  Some parents say night prayers with their children before they go to bed.  Some families keep an Infant of Prague or a statue of the Blessed Mother in a prominent place in their home.  Most families put up a tree at Christmas and have traditional ornaments that are particular to their family.  All these things reflect certain values and ideas, theologies even, about the various families. 

And individuals have rituals.  There are certain prayers they say in the morning or at night.  They may pray the rosary or begin a car trip with a specific prayer.  They may telephone a parent or a sibling at a specific time each week.  They may choose a certain flower for their garden or put a religious statue somewhere in their garden.  There might be a certain song they listen to when lonely or when wanting to remember a loved one.  They may visit a cemetery or go back to a specific place that holds a special memory.  

Many of these rituals which we celebrate we do without reflecting on their meaning but they each, in some way or other, bring us comfort or fulfill some meaning in our lives.  Anthropologists, psychologists, or other social scientists can tell us things about ourselves by the rituals we follow or the approach we take to social rituals.  The father of some friends of mine was raised in a very strict Polish Catholic family but in college became—or claims to have become—an atheist.  Every year on Good Friday he eats a big plate of kielbasa at three in the afternoon.  It is a ritual for him.  He says that it expresses his belief that religion is a bunch of b.s.   It may, but I think it also represents a rebellious anger against his upbringing and his desire to disassimilate himself from the Polish and Catholic heritage in which he was raised.  When I was in college—many, many years ago—I used to attend Sunday night services in the Lutheran Church up the street. It was an informal service and people could request a favorite hymn.  There was one gentleman who every week asked for “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  It wasn’t church if we didn’t sing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  This song carried some specific meaning for him on which his entire relationship with God seemed to depend.  I don’t think that was particularly healthy but then rituals can, and often do, express more about our neuroses than our healthy side, especially when those rituals become compulsive behaviors. 

We wrote in the previous posting about the popularity of an angry God in certain circles.  An angry God reflects the faith of an angry believer.  Our society is riddled with anger, indeed we can talk about the “culture of anger” which is another aspect of what Pope John Paul referred to as the “culture of death.”  How much of our television and our movies are about anger, violence, and vengeance?  We are raising our children on the pornography of violence with video games that are about destruction, violence, and death.  Some people feel a need to have semi-automatic weapons in their homes and the strongest lobby in our country is the N.R.A., an organization that builds a culture of fear directed towards a host of undifferentiated “others” from Hispanic immigrants to the Federal Government to Muslims to unspecified liberals to an invasion force from Canada. 

I refer to the “Katholic Krazies” as a spectrum of wing-nuts from hausfrauen Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes and Janet Baker of Restore DC Catholicism to the genuinely sociopathic minds behind Pope Francis The Destroyer and Mundabor’s Blog to the delusional episcopal wannabes of sedevacantists Daniel Dolan and Mark Pivarunas.  What they have in common is an attraction to an angry god. 

The roots of societal anger—by which I mean those who are angry with society or because of society—are that people feel powerless and disenfranchised.  Often they feel they are not being heard, their opinions are not being respected, they have no influence over the way that the larger society in which they live is running its course.  A sense of powerlessness creates panic and panic can manifest itself in strong anger.  Religious people who feel powerless about the Church—any Church, their Church whichever Church it is—project their anger onto God to validate and make “righteous” their anger.  One can go back to Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” preached at Northampton Massachusetts in 1741.  Edwards had much to be unhappy about.  While Independence was thirty-five years in the future, the colonists were already feeling themselves to be second-class Englishmen, disregarded by the establishment at home in London.  Moreover, Edwards was a “dissenter”—a Congregationalist in a Congregationalist colony but an Anglican empire.  And he could see that even in his colony of Massachusetts Congregationalism was losing ground to Anglicanism on the one side and to Unitarianism on the other.  Indeed, as the Congregationalists lost their grip on control of Massachusetts, the colony—and indeed all the American colonies—were becoming less and less religious as they grew more and more prosperous.  The original Puritan vision for Massachusetts of a commonwealth was fast disappearing as the Boston merchant class grew wealthier and wealthier and the farmers in western Massachusetts (where Northampton is) worked harder and harder just to survive. 

Puritans like Edwards had certain rituals and ritualistic principles to which they clung furiously.  These principles were essentially re-active in as that they were a reaction to the liturgical principles of the Church of England which Puritans thought had not been sufficiently “purified” of Catholic practices.  (In the next several entries on the History of the Anglican Church we are going to see more about this conflict.)  The set prayers of the Anglican Prayer Book were rejected for the extempore prayer of the Puritan preacher.  The Surplice was rejected for the black academic gown.  The communion table was set aside for a dominant pulpit.  Kneeling for communion was replaced by remaining in one’s seat as the bread and cup were passed along to you in your place. 

What about our angry Catholics and how they view ritual?  An angry God needs propitiation to hold back his wrath.  The Mass, therefore, is first and foremost (and for many, exclusively) a sacrifice.  Christ the victim is offered in sacrifice to appease the Divine Wrath.  Day after day the sacrifice is repeated, the Divine Victim is offered again and again, to counter-balance the sinfulness of the world. 

A sacrifice requires a priest who offers the sacrifice on our behalf.  Because he offers it on our behalf, he goes forth from us and ascends the altar to offer his victim.  The place of sacrifice needs separation from the unholy for whom it is offered.  It is to be elevated and walled off.  Only the priest and his assistants can be in the sacred space.  The priest, since he faces God on our behalf, needs to stand between us and God, thus with his back turned towards us.  It also is necessary that he clearly be not one of us.  He must be worthy of the role of intermediary between God and us, as sinless as possible.  Thus he should have nothing to do with sex, which is the primal base of human sinfulness.  He needs to be dressed differently from us to mark that he is consecrated in a way that we are not.  He needs to speak to God in an arcane language and in a whisper we cannot, for the most part, hear.  The sacrifice must be an experience of total otherness if it is to be accepted by God who is wholly Other. 

We can see why the current liturgy is so threatening to those who have a need for their prayer to appease an angry God.  An altar that positions the priest standing in the middle of the congregation, or even with the priest facing the people across it, changes the entire dynamic.  The idea of a community of people, not huddled in fear but relaxed and comfortable and “very much themselves” in the presence of God undermines their entire concept of God as the Divine Reflection of their rage.  For the priest to celebrate the Mass—to offer the Sacrifice—not on their behalf but with them as full, conscious, and active participants requires a drastic theological—as well as psychological and anthropological—shift that is just too much for some.  We look at this in more detail in future postings.  

God's Anger; our Anger

In my most recent posting, I mentioned the pseudo-revelations given to Melanie Calvet, one of the seers of the reported vision of Our Lady at LaSalette in France on September 19, 1846.  I mentioned that the local bishop, Philibert de Bruillard, did a careful investigation of the children and their story and in 1851, after submitting the details of the vision to a commission of distinguished theologians, announced that the children’s stories were most likely true and permitted a cult to Our Lady of La Salette.  Later that same year, Pope Pius IX approved of devotion to Our Lady of LaSalette.  The revelations reported at that time by Melanie Calvet and her fellow seer, Maximin Giraud, are well within the realm of orthodoxy.  The problem is that Melanie seems to have been a very troubled individual and as the years passed she kept adding to the “revelations.”  These additions not only were not approved by Church authorities, but in fact ended up being condemned by  the Holy See.  The condemnations were not without some self-interest on the part of Church authorities as they tended to be increasingly anti-clerical and undermine the authority of the hierarchy. But they also tended to reflect the anti-Semitic and monarchist views of the French political right wing of the late 19^th century.  Nevertheless, they have enjoyed a certain popularity in certain Catholic circles and especially since the Second Vatican Council have been used to “prove” the “disastrous” course the Church has taken with the Council’s program of reform and renewal in the Church. 

It might be interesting to take a bit of a retrospective on the reform of the Church over the last fifty years, but for this posting what I want to consider is the question: why does the apocalyptic view of history which is represented by Calvet’s revelations have such a hold over certain Catholics?

What do I mean by “apocalyptic view of history”?  There is a theme that emerges in Calvet’s alleged revelations that God is angry with the world for its abandonment to sin and, were it not for the Blessed Virgin Mary holding back his divine wrath, would destroy the world.  This theme is by no means limited to Calvet but has been extremely popular in many circles through the 20^th century and still surfaces among certain factions and to advance certain agenda—particularly those of a rigid and unexamined moralist cast that sees not only the world but often the Church in apostasy.  This later idea that the Church is in apostasy is the basis of the sede-vacantist claim that popes since the Second Vatican Council are not legitimate and this claim of the Church falling into apostasy, or the threat of it falling into apostasy, has found a new audience in those alarmed by the direction of the Church under Pope Francis.  I have, in my previous posting, referred to one blog that consistently refers to Melanie Calvet’s ramblings to attack the papacy of Pope Francis.

How can the problem of the Divine Wrath be stated in a way consistent with sound Catholic theology?  Again, I am a historian and not a theologian but the danger in this sort of apocalyptic view of history is the denial of the efficacy of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice.  This view of God, ready and anxious to inflict punishment on the world for its sinfulness, implies that the redeeming sacrifice of Christ at Calvary has not, in fact, been sufficient atonement for human sinfulness and that God’s patience is thus worn out again and he is about to wreak retribution on the world for unatoned sins. On the other hand, we need to take off the rose colored glasses of our post-modern world and acknowledge the serious moral crisis our world is in. 

When I say that our world is in serious moral crisis I am not limiting this to the effects of the sexual revolution as do most of those who are fascinated by the idea of an impending divine punishment.  I do believe, however, that we must reestablish for ourselves a sound standard of private moral behavior.  I do not think this is a simple task.  There are serious moral issues that need to be looked at today and given a thorough moral re-evaluation.  The breakdown of the family threatens the fabric of society itself.  We need to look and see why marriage is no longer a stable institution.  We need to look and examine the consequences of raising children outside the family structure.  What are the consequences of divorce for the raising of children?  Why is commitment seemingly beyond the capacity of so many in our society?  We need to look at contraception and evaluate its effects on the family and on the larger levels of society.  We need to ask ourselves if contraception has broken the link between sexual intimacy and marriage, thus removing commitment from the equation of intimacy.  We need to ask serious questions about whether pre-marital sexual relations trivialize sexual intimacy in such ways that it has negative consequences for the ability of people to seriously bond.  We need to look and see if children can be healthily raised in families by same-sex couples.  We need to look scientifically at same-sex attraction and let our moral understanding of same-sex relationships be shaped by scientific facts beyond cultural prejudices.  These are not simple questions with simplistic answers and they need serious re-thinking from scientific, philosophic, theological and sociological perspectives. But private morality is only one aspect of today’s moral crisis.  We need to look at the pervasiveness of violence in our society—in our entertainment, in the entertainment of our children, in music, film, video games, literature.  We need to look at how our culture addicts so many to anger and its manifestations.  We need to address corporate greed, the disparity of wealth, and the systemization of a permanent under-class.  We need to look at the collapse of political discourse and the factionalization of our society along socio-political lines.  We need to look at the morality of capital punishment, the prison system, and mania for litigation in our society.  We need to look and see why our medical expenses have gotten out of control and put good medical care beyond the ability of the poor and the elderly.  We need to look and see how our economic system is responsible for so much suffering in developing countries.  We need to take responsibility for racism which still thrives in our society.  We need to look at why women do not have equal pay for equal work or why they still have to suffer harassment in corporate and academic life.  We need to look at violence against women and children—and sometimes men. We need to look and see why higher education is not possible for talented young people who do not have the financial resources.  We need to see why child labor is still a common practice in much of our world.  We need to seriously address the issue of human trafficking. 

I could, of course, go on.  But suffice it to say that there is much reason for God to be angry with us if it were compatible for the Divine Nature to be angry in the same way that we are angry.  But in fact, Christ has redeemed the world. God does not wish to destroy the world, but that it be saved—that is, that the redemption paid for by Christ on the Cross be appropriated by each and every human person in a choice to live justly and in charity towards all.  But the image of an angry God is a popular one in certain circles because it justifies the anger of those who believe in an angry God.  Rousseau claimed that “God created man in his own image and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.” Our theology can, if carefully examined, tell us much about our anthropology.  For those who are ruled by anger, nothing is as validating as an angry God.  On the other hand, if God is merciful, we must be merciful.  If God is reconciling, then we must be people who forgive.  If God is compassionate than we must be compassionate.  All of that can be extremely threatening if I am not willing to let go of my anger, if I do not wish to be merciful; if I do not want to let go of my grudges and forgive; if I am unwilling to pay the price that being compassionate will demand.  Unfortunately our theology does not shape our anthropology but we permit our anthropology to shape our theology.  Now, that is something that God could get angry about.  If it were his nature to be angry.   

Of Buddha and the Gospel

The Abbey of Our Lady of

Gethsemane, site of the first

Catholic Buddhist Dialogues

The death of actor/comedian Robin Williams has dominated the news yesterday and today and Hollywood has certainly lost a brilliant artist, but I have to admit that while I admired his incredible range of talent, I was not a fan.  About ten years ago I was with friends when we saw him in a three hour stand-up marathon.  I remember sitting there, roaring with laughter for the first hour until I suddenly realized that his humor was anything but funny.   It was not a good hearted poking fun at our private and social inconsistences but rather rooted in a pool of tremendous and intolerant rage that was striking out against people who saw things differently from him, including religion and especially the Catholic Church.  Now I have no problem with pointing out institutional flaws—including that of the Church—and, in fact, I think humor can be an excellent forum of the precise sort of constructive criticism that keeps us all honest.  What disturbs me is anger—and rage in particular—because anger moves us from rational beings to the sort of hateful firebrands that divide and pit us against one another.  Our mission as Christians is to bring creation together into one in Christ; division undermines this mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.    
In the years after the Second Vatican Council, the Holy See (much to the annoyance of the Katholic Krazies) opened up official dialogue not only with other Christian denominations, but with the other great World Religions.  The Catholic Buddhist Dialogue was entrusted to a panel of Catholic Monks and Nuns—mostly from the Benedictine and Cistercian traditions—who meet with a corresponding group of Buddhist monastics.  Their first meeting was in 1996 at the Cistercian (Trappist) Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky, once home to the famous spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, who through his books and lectures introduced many Catholics, including myself, to Buddhist thought as a sort of lens through which Christians can bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into sharper focus. 
The status of Buddhism as a religion is somewhat questionable.  Buddhism is non-theistic in as that it does not posit the existence of a God.  Neither does it deny the existence of God; the question of God is simply not considered in Buddhist thought.  It might be better described as a philosophy and in particular as a “philosophy of life” as its primary focus is the concern for attaining human happiness.  Much like the tradition of our Catholic mystics, and especially Saint John of the Cross, Buddhism teaches that desire for things—wealth, possessions, relationships, to love and be loved, power, prestige—is the source of all unhappiness.  True happiness is found in no-thing.  As I said, this echoes the insights of Christian mysticism, and indeed, echoes the teachings of Jesus that in order to attain eternal happiness one must leave behind mother and father, spouse and children, houses and wealth—whoever loves these things more than me (Jesus) is not worthy of me.  (Matt 10: 37ff)
Now I want to make it perfectly clear that, while I have always found Buddhist thought to enrich my own spiritual journey, I find Christianity to be greatly richer in what it offers than Buddhism.  Buddhism focuses on the avoidance of suffering whereas Christianity teaches us to embrace suffering—and particularly to embrace the suffering of the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters—and to reach out to alleviate their suffering.  (Buddhism, in its doctrine of compassion also teaches that we should alleviate the suffering of others, but alleviating the suffering of others is subordinate to the avoidance of one’s own suffering, or can be seen as the fruit of having attained a state where one is now beyond the power of suffering because one has attained that freedom from desire, whereas Christianity more encourages us to pro-active in addressing the pain of others.)    I think this explains why Christians have always been somewhat more pro-active in both in building hospitals, schools, orphanages and other charitable institutions as well as working for societal reform to eliminate the root causes of poverty, disease and other conditions that afflict humankind.  That being said, I still think there is much we—Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, secular humanists—can learn from the Buddhist tradition. And one of those things is addressing anger.  
In that first encounter of Catholic and Buddhist representatives at Gethsemane Abbey eighteen years ago, Buddhist scholar Pandith Vajiragnana said:
There is no way in Buddhism that we accept anger as a good thing. Under no circumstance is it accepted as a good thing. Besides anger, at the root of our mind is also selfish love or attachment.
Anger is a tremendous force for evil and despite all our western talk of “righteous anger” or justified anger, I sincerely doubt that anger qua anger can be used to produce any good results.  While a certain measure of social change may be attributed to the anger triggered as a reaction to racism or other injustices, I wonder how lasting change founded in anger can be.  It seems only to give rise to the anger of opposing forces.  The increasing polarization of our society and the rise of such anger-drive  movements as the “Tea Party” with their rabid opposition to immigration reform, their intense personal hatred of President Obama, their fascination with guns and violence, their intransigent refusal for political dialogue and collaboration that keeps bringing our government to standstills is, I believe, a reaction to the social “progress” that has been achieved by anger-drive movements on the left that worked for needed social change but did so from a position of outrage and anger rather than from a deep conviction of building a more open and just society.  I am of an age where I can remember the anger of the riots in 1968, the anger of Stonewall and the anger of burning flags and burning draft-cards.   Pictures of aborted fetuses and pictures of bloody-coat-hangers represent the irrational anger on each side of the abortion debate.   I remember standing at a rally at the US Capitol and hearing Knights of Columbus denounce Cardinal Bernadin in the most angry and derogatory of terms for his call for “Common Ground” and dialogue with those with whom we disagree.  And I think one of the greatest crimes in our history was how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI disguised the non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King and had him portrayed in the media not for the apostle of non-violence he was but as a communist trying to bring our country to revolution.  
We are a society consumed by anger.  How much of our entertainment is anger-driven whether by video games or television or movies or contemporary “music?”  Our societal fascination with guns and the artificial “need” it has created for semi-automatic and automatic weapons is only one more expression of how anger is poisoning our society.   We have countless instances of road-rage, domestic violence, sexual abuse—all anger driven. 
 We cannot deny that anger is in  our makeup.  At that same 1996 meeting at Gethsemane Pandith Vajiragnana said:
People have different temperaments, and one of those temperaments is informed by anger.  Anger is in us all, so we need to recognize it, then, what to do?  The Buddha very clearly said that anger cannot be appeased by anger.  It is to be appeased by love.  So, we must practice love.
So said the Buddha.  So also said Jesus.  As his disciples we must learn to tame our anger as we must tame the other vices that original sin has woven into our character.  We can’t deny our anger—it is most dangerous when we claim it has no power over us.  We must tame it by cultivating the virtue of compassion whereby we try to come to a patient comprehension of the forces that drive those who are different from us, who think differently, who hold different values.  We must not, as Pope Francis likes to remind us, judge others but seek to understand them.  This does not mean that we will let go of our own values and commitments, but rather that we try to bring them into some sort of dialogue.
Mental Health Professionals claim that one of the roots of depression is anger that is not well managed.   Anger, when not given proper outlet, can overwhelm the psyche and turn into depression.  This is perhaps the root of the tragedy that overwhelmed Robin Williams.  It is a great loss.  We need to wake up to the perils of anger and learn to convert our anger into compassion.