I have one or two reactions.
It's Easter and time for the annual journalistic display of baffled hostility to
Christianity. On cue the Roman Catholic archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence
Prendergast, pops up with the suggestion that adherents to his church who don't
actually observe its rules should not expect to enjoy all the benefits of
membership. A predictable chorus of howls erupted.
What are these benefits of membership? Padded kneeling thingies? A wasted hour or two every Sunday?
It is especially pitiful to hear politicians say they are obliged to represent
their constituents, not their faith. They wouldn't say that about their economic
beliefs, and you'd think salvation mattered more than stagflation. An honest and
lucid man would surely tell voters he holds certain fundamental beliefs that
entail certain policy positions, and he'd invite only those who share most or
all of those positions to vote for him.
Roman Catholics would then say they oppose abortion on religious grounds and welcome the votes of anyone who, for whatever reason, is also pro-life. Atheists or agnostics would say they don't know what God wants, if anything, but here are their policies; members of some faiths could say they think God is cool with abortion and so are they. In each case there would be no taint of hypocrisy. But anyone who says they know what God wants, they just don't care, is acting like an idiot and should be denied political power on that basis alone.
Again, sensible stuff. I also like the clarity of the atheist or agnostic position (though we'd likely not care what god may or not may not want, since we're pretty sure there's no one there to do the wanting...).
What scandalizes moderns about the church, I think, is not what it believes but
simply that it believes. We are perfectly at ease with Christian clergy who deny
the divinity of Christ or the resurrection, don druid suits and praise shariah
law, or claim they can be at the same time priests and imams. Just as we are
happy to give tenure to academics who proclaim that there is no truth, and give
large fees to artists who insist that their works do not communicate or uplift
and are not meant to. But we are baffled that the Pope is Catholic and if you
don't like it you need to find, or found, another church.
He's not quite right here. It's not that the church believes the particular fairy tales they've hitched their wagon to (if you'll pardon my horribly disfigured metaphor), it's that millions of people accept these fairy tales as true. I'm not baffled that the Pope is Catholic. I'm baffled that ANYONE is Catholic. Or anything, for that matter.
I said this the other night to someone I love very much. How could it possibly be true? How could you accept that? You're smarter than that!
But what do I know?
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