Pope Francis and Ecumenical Dialogue

Luther posting the 95
Theses on the Castle
Church Door 

Pope Francis continues to drive the Krazies to the brink of schism.  The current outrage is his apology for the atrocities committed by Catholics against Protestants during the Reformation and his decision to attend a public commemoration of the Reformation at the Lutheran Cathedral in Lund, Sweden, this autumn marking the beginning of the 5^th centennial of the Reformation. 

It is curious that the commemoration marking the beginning of the year long anticipation of Luther’s 1517 posting of the 95 Theses on Wittenberg Castle Church is being held in Sweden and not in Germany.  Presumably the conclusion of the centennial will be held next year in Wittenberg and it is easier for the Pope to go to an event held by the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden rather than the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Germany as the Swedish Church has always maintained much more of its Catholic heritage than the other Lutheran Churches. 

Lund has been a diocese since 1060—originally suffrage to Hamburg—and a Metropolitan Archdiocese from 1104 until the Reformation.  During the Middle Ages it held the primacy of Scandinavia.  During the Reformation the Scandinavian Churches temporarily abolished the distinctions of Archbishop, reducing Lund to a diocese again.  It currently is a diocese suffragen to Uppsala.  The last Catholic Archbishop of Torben Bille who, before he could be consecrated, was arrested and imprisoned by Christian III of Denmark. 

This gets a little complicated here as there are several interlocking historical circles.  Lund at the time of Torben Bille was actually under Danish rule.  Christian’s father, Frederick I, had introduced Lutheranism into Denmark.  Christian’s accession to the throne was initially blocked by the Catholic bishops and nobles who were resisting the Reformation, but after the Count’s War King Christian prevailed in his efforts to make the Church of Denmark Lutheran.  As Lund was in his realm, he was not anxious for a Catholic bishop there and so replaced Bille with Frans Vormordsen.  It was over a century later, in 1658, that Lund was ceded to Sweden. 

As for the Church of Sweden being Lutheran, that is a parallel but separate story.  Sweden, Denmark, and Norway had been united under one crown by Margaret I of Denmark in the 1397 Union of Kalmar.  With the gradual rise of distinct national identities among the Scandinavian peoples in the fifteenth century this Union became more and more fragile.  In the early sixteenth century the Swedes established their independence under the leadership of Gustav Vasa, a truly great monarch.  The problem was that the Archbishop of Uppsala and primate of Sweden, Gustav Trolle, was still loyal to Christian II of Denmark.  The Danish parliament, the Riksdag, petitioned the pope to replace him with Johannes Magnus, a prelate  more to his own liking.  There were four other empty dioceses and Gustav proposed candidates to the pope for these dioceses as well.  The pope rejected Magnus and three of Gustav’s four candidates.  The King installed Magnus without the authorizing papal bull.  The irony is that Magnus turned out to be a loyal Catholic and Gustav was frustrated in his attempts to introduce Lutheranism to Sweden.  He finally sent Magnus to Russia on a diplomatic errand.  Meanwhile, Magnus’ brother went to Rome and explained to the Holy See the situation in Sweden and why Trolle could not be reinstated.  The Holy See ended up having Magnus consecrated as Archbishop of Uppsala but as Gustav Vasa was determined to introduce Lutheranism to his kingdom, the point was moot and Magnus was unable to return to his see and spent the remainder of his life in Rome. 

Why did Gustav Vasa want Sweden to be Lutheran?  Basically it was the same story as the motivation behind Henry VIII.  Both monarchs—as well as several other European Kings and princes—believed that the Church in their realms should be subject to the Crown and not to a foreign prince—the Pope.  This was the time of the rise of nation states and the various kings and princes saw the political power of the Church and were determine to harness it for their own purposes.  In countries such as France, and even more so Spain, where the papacy pretty much gave control over the Church to the Crown there was no problem.  But in Denmark and Sweden and England and Scotland and a variety of German principalities and dukedoms, the practicalities of politics trumped Christian faith.  Of course today too God often get’s the word and self-interest gets the deed. 

Today there is a strong backlash against ecumenism among the right-wing Catholics.  They ignore both the complexities of history and our contemporary world and want no dialogue—much less apologies—with those who differ from their own opinions and views.  They are quite like the wing-nuts that have taken over conservative politics in the United States: it is all or nothing, no dialogue and no compromise.  I will steer away from the political realm—though it interlocks with a certain distorted Christianity—but in the realm of Christianity we cannot afford not to sit down and dialogue with anyone who is willing to enter into sincere and honest dialogue.  The healing of the divisions in Christianity is of paramount importance in a world that on the one flank is confronted by jihadist Islam and on the flank by the rampant secularism of our post-modern world.   Jesus’ final request for us was ut unum sint: that all may be one.  This is not an option: it is a commandment.  We are a long way from being able to fulfill that mandate but it begins with dialogue. 

What In The World Will be Postmodern Catholicism? 2

Notre Dame du Cap in the
heartland of what was once
French and Catholic Canada 

I am spending a vacation week in French Canada—my first return here in almost fifty years.  The area is stamped with its Catholic heritage.  Place names: Sainte Anne, Saint Benoit, Notre Dame du Cap, Saint Sebastian, Sainte Madeleine, l’Ange Guardien, Saint Luc.  Streets are named after saints, bishops, nuns and priests.  Every significant ville has its Couvent des Ursulines, invariably now a museum.  Driving along route 138 north of Quebec the towns are dotted with their charming 18^th century church steeples.   But the Catholic faith—vibrant only a few decades ago—is now all but dead.  This is not only the story in Nouvelle France, but in Old France as well.  And Spain.  And Germany.  Ireland is falling fast into the crevice of a post-Christian banishment of God from the culture.  And we are not far behind.

This is not simply a Catholic problem.  Calvinist Holland and Switzerland, Lutheran Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Anglican England, Baptist Wales, Presbyterian Scotland all find their empty churches turning into discothèques and restaurants and senior centers.  God simply is not relevant to contemporary culture. 

The problem is not, of course, God.  And while contemporary culture may be the challenge, it is not the problem.  The problem is our reluctance to have enough faith to be able to strip away the cultural accretions we have added to our faith over the centuries and shape the essentials to speak the Good News of the Kingdom of God in the language of our Postmodern culture. 

I write of “accretions” and “essentials.”  The Gospel remains the Gospel across the centuries and cultures.   God so love the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  God did not send his son to condemn the world but rather that the world might have live in him.  That message remains ever valid.  The problems are the layers of gilt that we have applied to the lily in God’s name when they really have always been more to our fancy.  We don’t need the gilt.  The Lily is enough the way God made it.  And God has given us a rich heritage that, remodeled to present its best face to our world, can be an invaluable tool for re-evangelizing our Postmodern culture. 

What aspects of our Catholic heritage speak best to the contemporary world?

1.    A sense of mission.  Mission challenges people today.  Many feel a need to make a difference in bettering the world.  For some this may be the challenge of turning back the negative impact we have had on our environment.  For others it may be making a difference in third-world nations.  For still others it might be making a difference in our inner-city public schools.  The campaigns are as varied as are the interests.  One Catholic Church that has been enormously successful in attracting people of all ages and backgrounds is the Church of the Nativity in Burke VA.   A huge part of the glue that binds this community of faith is the passion for the people of Haiti which their late pastor, Father Richard Martin, encouraged.  They have made a huge difference.  The parish’s Operation Starfish has, since 1998, built over 1300 homes along with schools, clinics, sewing co-ops, fishing co-ops, small businesses, and vocational training centers in 10 “Nativity Villages” in Haiti.  Under Father Martin’s leadership and with his drive to make a better world in some very concrete and demonstrable ways, the parish tripled in membership.  This is only one example of how a sense of Mission can energize people and give them a reason to be plugged into Church. 

2.    A sense of community.  The old sitcom Cheers featured a bar “where everyone knows your name.”  The increasing isolation in today’s society is counter-balanced by a longing people have to belong to groups where others know them and they know others.  Really know.  Connect.  So often today people are no more than a cog in the impersonal wheel of life.  Gone are the days when one worked for an employer who knew them and cared about them and their families.  Today people migrate from employer to employer, leaving no impact and forgotten within days after their leaving.  The Church needs to be far more personal.  As Catholics we have maintained the heritage of community over the individualism of Protestantism, but too often community is only a theological concept and not a tangible reality.  I have seen churches that are genuine communities.  Within the last year I attended the funeral of a friend at an impossibly large church in Northern Virginia.  The sanctuary seats over 1200, though the funeral was held in the more intimate “Day Chapel” that holds maybe 200.  I was amazed to see how people rallied around my friend’s husband and children.  The chapel was packed.  There were a full set of volunteer ministers: Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, readers, cantors, servers.  A squad of parishioners prepared and served a lunch for us—all 200—after the Mass.  People milled around, talking to us out-of-towners and welcoming us to their “parish family.”  Given the size of the parish, it is not rare for such funerals to happen three and four times a week but an inclusive community makes this possible.  And I want to highlight inclusive.  I noticed that at this parish there are regular meetings for AA and other 12 step programs including for those with compulsive sexual behaviors.  “And we have gone out of our way to welcome the LGBT community,” the pastor told me when, writing this blog, I called for more information.  There are support groups for the divorced and remarried as well as for singles, widows, and others who need the affirmation of a Christian fellowship.  While many of their neighboring parishes are withering on the vine, this Church (the pastor asked me not to reveal it’s name because of its gay-friendly policy in a people-hostile diocese) is growing steadily. 

3.    A recovery of our mystical tradition.  The fine points of doctrine do not interest most people under sixty today but there is a deep interest in the spiritual journey.  X-Catholics are turning to Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, and New Age gimmicks when we have an incredibly rich and far more sound spiritual heritage in Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola and his Spiritual Excercises, Meister Eckhart, Thomas à Kempis and his Imitation of Christ, Brother Lawrence, Elizabeth of the Trinity, and a host of other spiritual writers.  How many of our clergy or religious today know anything substantial of this heritage?  I have had dinner at Wolfington Hall with the Jesuits at Georgetown University, an experience nonpareil in both gastronomy and lively conversation.  Jesus did figure in the conversations; Ignatius did not.  Pity.  There is a light here not to be hid under a bushel.  For all the academic vigor of the Jesuits, please remember your first and most needed gift is the spiritual tradition of Ignatian Spirituality.  You can educate the best but what we need you to pass on—that which only you can pass on—is that experience of Jesus which Ignatius has revealed.  And you Carmelites—the rigors of your silences and fasts are wasted if you don’t pass on the profound path to heart where Jesus waits that Teresa and John have shown us.  And who hears anything today of Francis de Sales and the Introduction To The Devout Life?   I don’t want a Salesian pastor administrating my parish or a Visitation Nun teaching French—they need to bring out the treasures that belong to the Church and make them available to a world that wants to find meaning in their lives.   I wish I could say that I knew any parish that was doing this, but the popularity of Richard Rohr and Richard Rohlheiser and Joan Chittester and Thomas Keating and the late Thomas Merton and John Main all testify to the powerful draw that the spiritual path has today. 

4.    We need a new path in worship.  The Second Vatican Council called for the Liturgy to be adapted to the cultures it encounters in its outreach to the peoples of Asia, Oceania, Africa, as well as the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia.  We are now encountering a radically shifted culture in the Developed World and we need to be open to adapting our rituals and prayers to that new culture.  I am going to write more on this specific topic in a future posting but suffice it to say that neither a return to the frozen-in-time (which is radically different from “timeless”) farce of liturgical restorationism and the reestablishment of the baroque rite of the 1570 Missal, nor slapping the Band-Aids of “being hip” on the 1970 rite can meet the crisis.  The central core, not of the ritual but of the Mysterium Fidei, can and must remain but we must not be afraid to deconstruct the edifice and from its ancient stones build anew. 

There is an urgency in proclaiming the Gospel in the cultural vernacular.  Saint Paul did it in the first century when he encountered the Greek Culture of the Mediterranean world.  Patrick did it bringing the faith to the Irish as Bonfiace did to the Germans and Ansgar to the Scandinavians.  Matteo Ricci tried to do it to bring the Gospel to the Imperial Court in Beijing and had he not been undermined by the Dominicans and Augustinians who were so locked in the prison of religion that faith was no longer a living reality, China today might be Catholic.  The acculturated Gospel has made the Dancing Church of Africa come alive in faith, has sustained the Vietnamese in their years of limited freedom, and has shifted the center of gravity in the Catholic world from the tired North to the Global South.  It can fan the embers of European and American Christianity in life again.  

Change Hearts, Not Laws.

Ronit Elkabetz in Gett: The Trial

of Viviane Amsalem

Yesterday I heard on the radio an interview with Israeli film directors Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz as they discussed their film, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.  The story is that of an Israeli woman, Viviane Amsalem, who wants a Gett—a rabbinical bill of divorce—from her husband Elisha.  Under Orthodox Jewish Law such a decree of divorce can only be issued if the husband ok’s it and Elisha won’t give Viviane her freedom from their loveless marriage.  What is even worse is that under this Orthodox Jewish system, the woman—Viviane—while practically speaking is the plaintiff seeking the divorce, actually becomes the one on trial in the procedure since the system is predicated on the exclusive right of the man to divorce the wife.  In Israel, despite it’s alleged separation of state and religion and despite the fact that the vast majority of its citizens, while Jews, are secularists, there is no provision for a divorce except that granted by a rabbinical court in accordance with strict Orthodox Jewish procedures.  Thus Viviane has no recourse.  The directors, who are brother and sister to one another, claim that there are currently about 45,000 Jewish women trapped in this situation where their husbands will not grant them their freedom. (While Israeli law has no provisions for secular divorce, Christians and Muslims can get their divorces from ecclesiastical (Christian) or Sharia (Islamic) tribunals as Jews get them from rabbinical courts. 

I am not a moviegoer.  I probably will not see Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.  I also did not see Abderrahmane Sissako’s film, Timbuktu.  Timbuktu tells the story of the people of this ancient city in Mali during its occupation by the radical Islamic group, Ansar Dine, during the 2012 civil war in Mali. Ansar Dine imposed sharia law on the city demanding that women be veiled, stoning adulterers, amputating limbs for various crimes, outlawing sports and recreation activities, and imposing other harsh measures on the local population in the name of religion.

Religion too often is about power and in both the Christian (and post-Christian) West and in the Islamic Mid-East and now in Jewish Israel, religious power has become entangled with civil law.  The Civil Law gives power to religious principles and value.  More and more in a post-Christian society such as our own this residual of religious power over people causes a deep resentment. 

Toothpaste does not go easily back into tubes.  It is unlikely that Christianity will again be the foundation for Western Society.  We need to make peace with that.  Jesus never said that we were to have that kind of power over “the world.”  It is somewhat hard to take off one’s crown, climb down from one’s throne, and drive a taxi to support one’s self, but that is more or less what we, as Church, are called to do. And while it may not be as much fun as were the grand days of the Ancien Regime, it is not a bad strategy for the future.  Nothing will regain credibility for the Church like putting ourselves at the service of all in need.  For all his charismatic personality, Mother Theresa had much more influence over people outside the Church than did Pope John Paul, or even John XXIII in his day. And the mission that Jesus gave us was never to change laws—even laws to protect the unborn or to insure the moral character of marriage—but to change hearts.  The world will not be bettered by changed laws that impose values on people without their assent, but change hearts and you will change everything.  

Science and Religion: Dialogue or Divorce?

Physicist Leonard Mlodinow

Yesterday I wrote about how religion and belief are being pushed to the margins of our culture, out of the public square and away from public discourse—except for ridicule.  This aggressive sort of secularism is a threat to cultural pluralism and indeed to our basic freedoms as religion played a major role in the 20^th century in balancing various forms of political and social tyranny whether it was apartheid in South Africa, American sponsored dictatorships in Latin America, Johnson’s “Great Lie” leading us into war in Vietnam, or totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and the Communist bloc.  I am not naïve about—and will do some entries on—how religion has been used in the past to suppress human rights and freedoms as well.  We need a balanced picture, but we must be careful to nuance our histories accurately so that the broad strokes of ideological rhetoric don’t distract us from what remains a very important question for the future of our society regarding the coming place of religion and the rights of religious believers to practice their faith—whatever that might be—without restrictions.
That being said, I was listening to NPR on my way home from church this morning and Krista Tippett hosted physicist Leonard Mlodinow during her program On Being.  Krista brought up the issue of religious belief because, I gather, Mlodinow co-authored a book with Deepak Chopra entitled: War of the World Views: Where Science and Spirituality Meet—And Do Not.  I would have wished for a more profound author to state the case for Spirituality, but Mlodinow’s remarks were interesting.  Unfortunately my route took me through several tunnels where the radio was “in and out,” but one remark that stuck with me was when Mlodinow referred to religion as being “outside science.”  That is a strange way to regard science.  Science is the study of phenomena and religion is a phenomenon.  It is only “outside science” if scientists push it there and then we must ask them why they have chosen to do that.  Granted “God” most likely can never be examined, much less proved, by science.  Nor, for that matter, is “the soul” a likely subject for science.  “God” or “the soul” are experienced by some as phenomenon but whether they have any objective existence in and of themselves is the very question that separates believers from those who do not believe.  There is a line, probably an unbridgeable gap like that referred to in Luke 16:26 between physics and metaphysics.  After all the word “metaphysics” means “beyond physics.”  But the phenomenon of religious belief is something the existence of which is beyond dispute and which can be studied by scientists.  Why do people believe?  Why do they believe what they believe?  Are they conditioned for belief by their biology?  Are they conditioned for belief by their psychological makeup?  What difference, if any, does religious belief cause in the structure and functioning of the brain of the believer?  Does “prayer” alter the neurological makeup of the believer?  Does religious belief and practice cause physiological changes that predispose the believer to certain ethical choices?  I think there is a lot here for scientists in a number of different disciplines to look at—if, of course, they choose.  Or they—or the universities for which they work and which pay them a salary, or the opinion of their peers, or the pressures and biases of the larger society and its limited interests—could lead them to dismiss these questions as “outside science,” if not as subjects that would only interest the eccentric.    Again, I think that our culture is pushing religion to the margins in the hopes that it will become both invisible and impotent for social influence.  That would be sad. 
In 1972 Sir John Templeton, wealthy American/British philanthropist, established an annual prize to be awarded “for progress towards research or discoveries about spiritual realities.” The honorees include some of the best known humanitarians of the last forty years—Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Aleksandr Solzhenistyn, the Reverend Doctor Billy Graham, and Dame Cicely Saunders.  Winners have also included a variety of scientists, including eleven physicists.  On the other hand, as another example of a secularist who is unwilling to engage the phenomenon of religious belief, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins snarkly said that the Templeton Prize “is usually given to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion.”   Of course it would be fascinating for a person like Dawkins who turned from religious belief to non-belief to allow himself to be studied scientifically as well to ascertain the psychological and possibly physiological determinates of his own evolution from his previous religious faith to his current atheism.  But just as psychologists are usually more anxious to look at the idiosyncrasies of their clients rather than their own, scientists too seem to shy away from self-examination.  Too bad.  The inner world of one’s own psyche is far more fascinating than whatever we find outside ourselves and while we must ask the great questions of the universe, unless we know ourselves and how our own biases shape our perception, whatever knowledge we gain of the world beyond our own inner self is highly suspect.  γνῶθι σεαυτόν

 

Pissed At The Post

I don’t know if you have seen The Book of Mormon, but it has one of the best musical scores that Broadway has seen in years.  That doesn’t negate the fact that at the end of the day it just a foul rant on religious faith set to some really great tunes.  God bless those Mormons.  They took this attack on their beliefs and practices on the chin, pretending it didn’t hurt.  I think they took it too well.  In fact, I think we have all taken it too well because it is not just violence against the faith and intellect of the Latter Day Saints, but a vulgar slur on believers of any stripe.  Readers of this blog will certainly know that I am no religious wing-nut sounding the tocsin against those who are forcing America into godlessness, but “ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City.”  And seventy-six trombones ain’t goin’ to fix it.    
I mentioned the other day in posting that Tom Toles, the political cartoonist for the Washington Post, published a particularly malevolent “cartoon” scorning the canonization of John Paul II.   Now as I said in several previous posts, I think the recent canonization of popes 261 and 264 was ill advised and for a number of reasons.  Maybe I expect too much of an “heroic degree of sanctity,” so sue me, but while each of these popes was truly remarkable from a historical perspective and each was certainly extraordinarily pious, I just don’t see either of them as a Teresa of Avila or an Augustine or a Francis of Assisi.  And in my blog entries I have had some particular criticism of John Paul for his poor handling of the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church—but I also had some particularly good things to say about him for what he had to say and—more important, what he did—for human rights and for his role in bringing down Totalitarianism. 
Now I know that the essence of cartooning is succinctness in caricaturing, but Tole’s cartoon wasn’t succinct, it was vilifying.  Removing a subject from his or her context is not succinctness, it turns the cartoon from a caricature to a lie.  The problem is not Toles, of course, it is The Washington Post.   It’s sad because the Post could be a first-rate paper like the Times.  It used to be.  It has good writers.  It’s “opinion page” most often presents some of the best and most thought-provoking columnists.  It certainly beats out The Dallas Morning News, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Arizona Republic, The Saint Louis Post Dispatch, or the Newark Star Ledger.  But the Post has just gone on the rag about religion these last few years.  Like the South Park crew that wrote The Book of Mormon, the Post just has no respect for people, including its readers, who still have religious views. 
We have lived in a Christian culture for a long time—far longer than any of us can remember.  What I mean by “a Christian culture” is a culture whose myths and stories, whose art and music, whose philosophy and value systems, have been shaped by the Christian religion.  This is nothing new. It goes back to Constantine.  Our “Founding Fathers” who were—for the most part—agnostics, wove this Christian culture (though not the Christian religion) into our national identity.  (Our Founding Mothers, by the way—far wiser than our Founding Fathers—tended to be Unitarians north of the Mason Dixon and Episcopalians south.  And Unitarians in those days were non-Trinitarian Congregationalists, not the sort of “make it up as you go along” quasi religionists of today.  But that is for another time.)  We could afford to have a Christian culture for the last two centuries+ of our nationhood.  Just about all of us were Christians.  And we left enough wiggle room in just how Christian our culture is that Jews didn’t have to feel uncomfortable, at least if they had an open mind.  (An open mind was optional for us Christians since we held all the cards.) 
Much has changed over the last half-century and our culture has for the most part lost that distinctly Christian catch.  Christmas is now “the holidays.” Church bells, if they ring at all, only ring at noon.  Ten Commandments and Christmas crèches no longer stand in public places.  Bible reading is banned in the schools.  And the clergy all know how to offer some vague aspiration that passes for a “prayer” at Memorial Day observances.  The situation is that we are no longer a Christian populace with a relatively small Jewish minority.  It’s not just Jews and Christians in bed together any more. Today we are Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims (lots of Muslims), and Wiccans, and Hindus, and a smattering of anything and everything else.  And we need to make room under our American cultural tent.  We have to become a secular culture.  It is painful, I know; it is like when once you were the rich family in town and then Daddy lost the factory in a poker game and you go to public school now and live in an apartment.  But put on your big-boy pants and get used to it—that is the way it is and the toothpaste doesn’t go back into the tube. 
The thing is that there are two kinds of secularism.  There is the secularism that wants to ban any and all religion from the public square.  That is the sort of secularism that fed the Marxist/Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia.  And there is the sort of secularism that insists on a level playing field for everyone—whatever their belief or non-belief.  That sort of secularism—the level playing field—is something we can live with. It is built not just on tolerance, but on mutual respect.  The former kind—the kind whose ideology provokes the sort of Cartoon Tom Toles published—poses a grave danger to us individually and collectively.
Religion speaks up for human rights in societies where individuals are seen as having less worth than some vague “collective good.” The eugenics of a Margaret Sanger or an Adolph Hitler were both threatened by religion because it stood in the way of their desires to create a world in which their ideals of human perfection could eliminate the flesh and blood realities of individuals with Downs Syndrome, same-sex attraction, or who had Roma or Jewish or African bloodlines.  It was religion that after chafing for four decades under communist totalitarianism brought down the Soviet client-state of Marxist Poland, the first domino to fall in the “evil empire.”  It was the combined efforts of the Churches that eventually cracked the apartheid in South Africa.  The Civil Rights movement in the United States and the anti-war movement of the ’60’s and ‘70’s were led by ministers and rabbis and nuns.  It was religious voices that cried out against the American-client military dictatorships in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Brazil and other countries of Latin America.  Tens of thousands of Protestant Ministers and Catholic priests were imprisoned at Dachau, and Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen for their resistance to National Socialism.  Tens of thousands more would disappear into Siberia or be shot under Stalin.  Priests and ministers played key roles in the resistance movements of World War II and while not nearly enough was done to save the Jews of Europe, nearly all of those “righteous among the nations” who risked—and sometimes gave—their lives sheltering the hunted were religious believers.   Religious faith deserves more respect than either The Book of Mormon or Tom Toles and the Washington Post are willing to give those people who root their lives in a religious belief.  Shame on you Book of Mormon and Shame on you Tom Toles and the Washington Post.