Catholicism: April 2005 Archives

When you study religion at a secular college, you learn to maintain a certain scholarly distance. You learn to avoid making normative claims and judgments. You learn to bracket your own biases and allegiances and interests and faiths in favor of "objectivity". One of my goals for this blog is to practice writing in that balanced but critical voice.

It's taken me a couple days to post anything here about the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope. This is both because I'm struggling to live up to those lofty academic ideals, but also because I'm struggling to find anything to say that doesn't come from a meanspirited ugly place within me. All that "love your enemies" stuff is effing difficult.

Today, I could try to be witty or scholarly or objective. Instead I'm going to be honest. This is really bad news. This is bad news for anyone who care about the plight of the poor, for anyone who cares about the status and role of women in society, for anyone who thinks LGBT people deserve to be treated with human dignity. I am filled with anger and despair and I am not even Catholic. In long-term human costs, the election of Ratzinger will probably be far worse a disaster than 9/11.

from Michaelangelo Singorile's Queer In America (via Atrios):

.... Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protestors and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon, anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church -- everyone around me -- had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called "faggot" in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I'd endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid...

Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted: "He is no man of God!" The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: "He is no man of God -- he is the Devil!" (read the full account)

Bishop Desmond Tutu:

As you know, I have expressed hope for a new pope from Africa or the Third World. A candidate from these parts would have placed on the agenda some burning issues like poverty in this skewed international order that disadvantages the poor. I would have hoped such a candidate (would be concerned with) issues of disease and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

I hope sitting on the papal throne will take off the edges and have an effect on easing his rigidity. A less rigid candidate would have been more likely to lift the ban the Roman Catholic Church has placed on the use of condoms. Everywhere else it is recognised as an effective way to combat the spread of HIV.

National Coalition of American Nuns:

We pray that he will be open to the full partnership and full participation of women in a church that suffers because of the lack of women's creativity and lived experience. We do believe in miracles.

Jurandir Arauj, of the National Conference of Bishops Afro-Brazilian Section:

It seems that he is too conservative. Hopefully the Holy Spirit can help him change!

Though often criticized for being out of step with modernity, John Paul II did make efforts to modernize the delivery, if not the content of his message. Perhaps the most cartoonish example is his 1999 recording Abba Pater which paired selected recordings of his holiness chanting, praying and singing(!) in in five languages with a blend of new-age, world, and electronic music. Here's the title track. (MP3 6.6 mb)

The funniest thing about this recording is that I'm sure that it wouldn't exist if not for the massive success of new age-danceclub-ethnofusion band Enigma, who were based in the hedonistic city of Ibiza and layered dance beats (of the sort popularized in gay clubs) over gregorian chants and synthesized "ethnic" instruments. Their 1990 hit, "Sadeness" was a tribute to the Marquis de Sade and featured a sexy-voiced woman inquiring in French: "Sade, tell me/what is it that you seek? /The rightness of wrong/The virtue of vice?" before segueing into a treatise on the "Principles of Lust". Enigma followed up their multiplatinum hit with Cross of Changes, which featured songs criticizing Catholic conquistadors and that same sexy-voiced woman reciting such un-Christian lyrical gems as "Remember the Shaman, when he used to say: 'Man is the dream of the dolphin'."

Make the beats a touch less sexy and more meditative, and replace the lusty french lady with the Pope, and you have the formula for "Abba Pater", a fascinating artifact of the tangled relationship between institutional religion and pop culture. The official site features more sound samples and a video of the pope accepting a gold record!

I have a big problem with the idea that when someone dies, we should only say nice things about him/her. This is the time when history is written in the minds of a generation. Kids too young to remember all the bad shit that Reagan pulled now think he was a swell guy, the "most popular president in modern history", cuz that's what the MSM kept repeating in the days after his death.

Yet, lately even liberals who are harshly critical of misogyny when it's displayed by, say, Snoop Dogg, think that since it's the dead pope, we should let it slide. To this I say, "Hooey!"

Some people have developed the mistaken notion based on his anti-war and anti-poverty statements that John Paul II was "progressive". These people have forgotten what a progressive pope or a truly progressive catholic looks like. John Paul I was progressive! Perhaps that's why he was (quite possibly) murdered. Being to the left of the Christian Right in America does not make someone "progressive". It makes someone "not completely evil and insane." Hey, isn't the Pope supposed to be the holiest guy on the planet? Shouldn't we hold him to a higher standard than "not completely evil and insane"? Being anti-war and anti-poverty should be a given.

Some people have responded "okay he was bad on sex and gender, but he was good on other stuff, right?" I say, by alienating the women, queers, and liberals, JP2 drove them from the church. Thus, JP2 has ensured that the church will remain strongly conservative for the forseeable future. Remember that women are 51% of the population. Many of the people who would be the Daniel Berrigans and Dorothy Days of today no longer feel they have a place within the catholic church.

Now, this isn't meant to suggest he didn't do a few things right. Sure, he hastened the fall of communism (although his knee-jerk opposition to anything vaguely Marxist-sounding, a product of his youth in Poland, led him to squash the liberation theology movement in Latin America). And he did take a firm stance against capital punishment.

Still from a global/historical perspective, a basic statement against a war that the international community already declared unjust and unnecessary doesn't make someone a wide-eyed liberal loony. It just makes him not completely evil and insane.

Unsurprisingly, the process of Pope selection is extremely political. Of course, since the pope is chosen by God, there's really no reason to think about or discuss the politics behind the scenes, according to a bishop on CNN this weekend. Hmm. If you find this unsatisfying, I invite you to make your voice heard by voting for a new pope in this straw poll. Your options are:

1. Bono. A big part of the Pope's job is uniting various factions. Well, Christians worldwide already love this dude. He's progressive, but he can get people of all political stripes to come together for something good, like AIDS relief in africa. He actually wrote a promotional blurb on the back of one of my bibles! He's already accustomed to wearing silly outfits, making pompous pronouncements, and having crowds of people revering him. Also, if he's the Pope, he'll be too busy to make any more crappy records. Dude hasn't done anything interesting since the Popmart tour.

2. Sister Wendy Beckett. John Paul II spent a lot of time telling catholics what to think about stem cell research, contraception, women as priests, etc.. Funny thing is, American Catholics loved JP2, but had no problem disagreeing with him about almost everything! So if we're going to disregard moral stances anyway, maybe it's time for a pope that'll keep her trap shut about that junk and will instead tell us something useful and interesting, like about Renoir's symbolic use of light and shadow. Sister Wendy is an adorable british nun/self-taught art historian, and my mom highly recommends her public TV shows, which you can get from Netflix.

3. Oprah Winfrey. In the modern marketplace of religions, how will Catholicism be able to compete with Protestant megachurches which offer one-stop spiritual shopping? Through the power of SYNERGY! Okay so her spiritual content tends to be of the superficial self-help therapeutic deist variety. But that's how one gets to be queen of all media.

4. Steve Schroeder. Everyone loves Steve. Steve loves everyone. You know this dude would make such an awesome pope.

5. David Bawden, the pope of Kansas. As documented in Thomas Frank's excellent book What's the Matter With Kansas, David Bawden meticulously studied catholic history and doctrine for years, concluding that the church became heretical with the progressive, modernizing reforms of Vatican II. This is roughly the same position that Opus Dei conservatives like Mel Gibson hold, but Bawden considers them heretics too, because they don't fully reject the current church. In 1990, Bawden decided that the only possible step would be to hold an election. His mother and a couple of his neighbors showed up to vote, and unsurprisingly, Bawden himself was elected and renamed Pope Michael I.

6. 50 Cent. Doesn't need a popemobile; he's been shot nine times! Also, disrespectful to women, just like a real pope.

To vote, leave a comment with your choice. Write-in candidates will be accepted.