Sneering at religion
Garvey, John
OF SEVERAL MINDS JOHK GARVEY SNEERING JIT RELIGION Yes, the 'New Yorker' Of I had no problems at all with Roman Catholic teaching I suppose I would be Catholic, and not a member of the...
...The earlier part of the quote is really interesting, and I wonder where the allegedly razor-sharp New Yorker fact-checkers were...
...Then, in a February 8 article about the earthquakes in Umbria which damaged Assisi, the usually perceptive Jane Kramer writes, Most people I asked about the Vatican's responsibilities to Assisi laughed, because the Vatican's responsibilities, as the Vatican sees them, are usually to its own survival, and have nothing to do with the little disruptions of the here and now...
...As long as choice (the primary virtue, in a society based on consumption) is kept as the truest of all values, and as long as what forms those choices is unexamined—unless and until it threatens the values of the culture—the culture reigns supreme, Caesar is Lord, and the world can go on as it does...
...The Center for Gender Equality is happy that the news isn't all bad—the survey that worries them also reports "that the majority of women accept many of their denomination's religious teachings, but discard others that do not fit with their personal needs and experiences...
...This was revealed pretty clearly in an ad on the op-ed page of the New York Times on February 3. Above photographs of girls from every ethnic group the photographer could lay her hands on, a headline asks, or fairly roars, "can they EXPECT EQUALITY FROM CHURCH AND state...
...The ad was taken out by the Center for Gender Equality, whose president is former Planned Parenthood head Faye Wattleton...
...But to suggest that a serious life involves something deeper and more important than individual choice and our response to felt needs, which can be formed as easily as effective commercials can be written, is profoundly threatening to our kind of culture, and any solid religious tradition will—and should—represent a threat...
...Here we get close to what makes secular people uncomfortable around Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, Evangelical Protestantism, or any other form of religion that makes demands...
...Among other things, it worries that there has been an increase in the percentage of women who favor more restrictions on abortion, and places at the head of its alarms the fact that "the percentage of women who believe politicians should be guided by religious values has increased by more than 40 percent...
...In an embarrassing piece about his mother's love life in the January 18 issue, Jay Mclnerny refers to what he calls "the bullshit of Catholicism...
...ceiling restoration is much more expensive...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS JOHK GARVEY SNEERING JIT RELIGION Yes, the 'New Yorker' Of I had no problems at all with Roman Catholic teaching I suppose I would be Catholic, and not a member of the Orthodox church...
...Some Catholics would say that only Catholicism comes in for this sort of abuse, that it would be unthinkable for someone to refer to "the bullshit of Judaism," for example, and there is some truth to this, but the point could be misleading...
...But some forms of bigotry remain acceptable in any company...
...Commonweal 9 March 12,1999...
...Two examples come from recent issues of the New Yorker, and this is a shame, because after the departure of Tina Brown, who took it so deeply into banality, David Remnick has been making the New Yorker once again into a magazine you want to read...
...I used to hear that last sort of line around people who belonged to a WASP country club in my midwestern home town where Jews, blacks, and Catholics were not welcome...
...Religion, from this point of view, is appropriate so long as it is a simple consumer choice, with the chooser allowed to accept or reject those parts of the tradition that "do not fit with their personal needs and experiences...
...Saint Paul and the Vatican...
...The idea that needs and experiences are inevitably formed Commonweal 8 March 12,1999 by something outside, something larger and more mysterious than the individual, is not only not a considered part of the question—to consider it would be profoundly threatening to our common culture...
...Any religion that begins to tell the truth, or to suggest that as we are, we are not all right, will not leave us at ease, and this is why it is feared or— more cheaply—sneered at...
...The Vatican spends its money and its craft on the institution of its own power—a policy set by Paul in the New Testament...
...And I think it's accurate to say that it is more interested in paying to discipline its dissident priests or to keep Catholics in the third world having babies than it is in restoring a damaged ceiling that somebody else will certainly pay to save...
...In smaller, more sober type, the ad asks, "Will religion and politics be separate in our daughters' world...
...Saint Paul never mentions it in any positive, pro-Vatican context I know of...
...Apart from the fact that Saint Paul had nothing to do with the then (and for many centuries more) nonexistent Vatican, Saint Paul's only marshalling of aid was undertaken for impoverished Christian communities, including the church in Jerusalem—proving the opposite of the point Kramer seems to want to make, if indeed pointmaking and not sneering is what she is about...
...Or antiCatholics accuse Jesuits of doing...
...Evangelical Christians come in for much the same sort of ridicule, and so do Orthodox Jews...
...For that matter, in sheer practical economic terms, it really doesn't cost much to discipline a dissident priest or to encourage babies...
...But I do recognize simple anti-Catholic bigotry when I see it...
...As Jane Kramer might say—given her already careless use of language and fact—whatever...
...We also oppose abortion, and urge a demanding (some would call it counter-cultural) approach to life...
...It is, to say the least, a loaded and weird choice of words, the sort of thing extreme rightwingers accuse Masons and Jews of doing behind closed doors...
...About "craft" I don't know...
...And I love the phrase, "I think it is accurate to say"...preceding this absurd statement...
...I feel almost hurt that Orthodox Christians aren't hit with it, but then Orthodoxy has been called the best-kept secret in America...
...What is really involved here is the perplexity felt by secular people when they meet a way of life which makes demands that don't accord with a secular agenda...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 5
