Infidels! Circle the Wagons!

Joan Walsh has a fairly good piece on the Catholic hierarchy's battle against covering birth control in their employees' insurance plans. She's an apostate Catholic from a working-class background -- sort of like me, except that I didn't know I'd been baptized until I was in my forties, so I never consciously abandoned the Great Whore of Babylon, as the Church is affectionately known in serious Protestant circles. She admits that despite her personal break with Catholicism, and her support of Obama, it makes her uncomfortable when "secular" types bash the church, and she wonders where that defensive reaction comes from, even in someone like her, let alone among the still faithful.

There’s a vestigial impulse to circle the wagons and protect our right to practice our persecuted religion (even if it’s no longer persecuted, and many of us don’t practice very much of it anymore). Where does it come from?

Walsh notices what many have missed, that this controversy is not about the religious freedom of ordinary believers, but "the 'freedom' of the Catholic hierarchy to impose rules that even most Catholics don’t live by", and indeed to impose Vatican doctrine on non-Catholics who work for Catholic institutions. She warns about the "many Catholics receptive to GOP blathering about out-of-touch 'elites' who supposedly disrespect their religious freedom" -- well, who's more out of touch than the Catholic hierarchy?

That Catholics, especially the elites, should accuse Obama of persecuting them should surprise no one. It's not a specifically Catholic tactic; even overwhelming majorities (gentiles, Christians, heterosexuals, whites) like to present themselves as endangered species, a pitiful few under siege from the powerful Jewish, secular, homosexual, Negro conspiracies to take over and remodel our society. Anyone who uses this tactic should be called on it, that's all.

I think Walsh gets some details wrong, though. True, as Walsh says, we secularists shouldn't judge all Catholics by the misconduct of the hierarchy; but when the hierarchy demands that they, and not the much greater numbers of the laity, be regarded as the standard for Catholicism, it's perfectly correct to judge the Church by them. Besides, even a more focused critique won't be welcome: focus on the bishops and the Pope (who was personally involved in the coverup of the child abuse scandal), and you'll still be called unfair. And I've often found that lay Catholics (including LGBT ones) who whine about mean outsiders picking on the Church don't hear it when I do distinguish between the elites and the laity; if I say "the Vatican," they hear "all Catholics." (Analogously, when I criticize antigay bigots, many people accusing me of lumping all heterosexuals together. In both cases, it's my critics who are doing the lumping.) I'm still staggered by the person I was debating online, who dismissed the Pope and the College of Cardinals as "marginal figures"; in a monarchical institution like the Church, such people are a numerical minority, but they are anything but marginal.

This is relevant when Walsh complains,

While the child abuse scandal makes most Catholics sick, sometimes even I wince when non-Catholics judge the whole church by the corruption of a comparative (though very powerful) few. I have cousins and uncles and aunts who’ve joined religious orders (though, truthfully, most of them left). I don’t like seeing all of them considered perverts or pedophiles, or people who cover up for predators.

First, it seems to me that a lot of this kind of overgeneralization, when it occurs, comes from Catholics, including lapsed Catholics, not non-Catholics. But again, when I've attacked the Vatican and the Bishops for protecting predator priests, Catholics tend to hear it as an attack on all Catholics -- that "circling the wagons" reflex Walsh mentioned. It's a perfectly natural, human reaction to get defensive in this way, but we shouldn't let it get past us. We who criticize Catholicism, or any sect, should be careful not to lump all its adherents together. Nor should we let Catholic apologists do it.

Bringing the Two Together

Glenn Greenwald writes:

As several people noted in comments, Obama's rationale for threatening to veto an anthrax investigation (investigations would undermine the State's credibility and thus dilute its authority) is very similar to the Catholic Church's explanation for why it concealed reports of so many abusive priests (disclosure would undermine the Church's credibility and thus dilute its authority). See, for instance, here, as well as here (Cardinal Christoph Schönborn: "the appearance of an infallible church was more important than anything else"). That was also the same rationale invoked by Justice Scalia when enjoining the Florida recount during the 2000 election (Scalia: a recount would "irreparably harm" Bush "by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election"). Common to all of these suppression-justifying claims is the notion that preventing the truth from being examined and known is necessary to preserve institutional credibility and power.

I wonder if Richard Dawkins will decide to make a citizen's arrest of Barack Obama? Or George Bush? The scale of the crimes involved in the case of US Presidents is far greater than even Popes.

For more double standards and hypocrisy, see also this one.

Just Say "Nein"!

Voiceover: The year is 1985. Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger is writing a letter cautioning against the laicization, or defrocking, of the Reverend Stephan Kiesle, already convicted of child molestation by a California court. "Consider the good of the Universal Church," he writes. This letter will surface in 2010, fanning the flames of a growing scandal which threatens to reach Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, himself. This unpleasant situation could have been prevented if Cardinal Ratzinger had a Sassy Gay Friend.

[Theme music. The Sassy Gay Friend throws his stole over his shoulder and smirks at the camera.]

[SGF, dressed in a priest's robes, bursts into the Cardinal's chamber.]

SASSY GAY FRIEND: What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?

JOSEPH ALOIS RATZINGER: I am contending mit the enemies of die Kirche.

SGF: Oh, good! That must mean you're going to defrock Kinky Kiesle. It's about time.

JAR: Nein! I am saving a priest from the persecution of the ungodly. The world always seeks to destroy die Kirche by slander.

SGF: Josie, he was convicted of child molestation four years ago! He's been getting into the pants of little kids since the 1970s! He's not being slandered, he's a total sleazebag! And let me give you a blast from the future: he'll be defrocked anyway, and he'll be tried for 13 counts of child molestation in 2002, but thanks to these delaying actions of yours most of them will be thrown out because of the statute of limitations!

JAR: This is the fault of the homosexuals. They've infiltrated die Kirche and are trying to ruin it from within.

SGF: Right, by molesting little girls as well as boys. To throw you off the scent, so to speak. But let me ask you something else, Josie. What do you think of this tasty little number? [SGF shows JAR this photo:]
JAR: What a nice-looking young man! Who is he?

SGF: He's Father Georg Ganswein, and he's going to be your "Private Secretary," nudge nudge wink wink, when you become Pope in twenty years. He's going to stir places in elderly Catholic women that they'd forgotten they had!

JAR: The Pope? I? What are you saying, you strange fellow?

SGF: Oh, never mind. Let's get outa here and go shopping, you stupid bitch. Prada awaits!

[SGF opens the door and JAS exits ahead of him. SGF turns to the camera.]

SGF: She's a stupid bitch.

Going My Way, Little Boy?

Love the hat, Your Holiness, so much that I'm not even going to mention how much you look like Uncle Fester. Oops! I just did. (I see, however, that I'm not the first to notice it. Just sayin'.)

I don't think that the allegations of Ratzinger's complicity with the coverup of priestly abuse are likely to do any serious harm to the Roman Catholic Church, or even just to the Vatican. It apparently has been suggested that Ratzinger should resign or abdicate, as if he were an American politician tainted by scandal. Hah! Who do these people think they're dealing with? Ratzinger doesn't think he owes anything to the world, or to most Catholics, or to anyone. (I doubt his belief in God is more than merely ceremonial.) He's a tough, ruthless ecclesiastical politician, and he comes from a tradition that administers authority to the plebs. The monarchical episcopate does not derive its unjust power from the consent of the governed; claiming to derive it from Heaven merely eliminates any accountability at all, short of armed uprising.

It's not surprising that many Catholics at all levels have gone on the offensive, from the cardinal who (following the pontiff's own lead) dismissed the scandal as "petty gossip" to the Pope's personal preacher who compared it to a pogrom ("collective violence suffered by the Jews", an especially unhappy choice considering the Church's historical role in perpetuating anti-Semitism), right down to this commenter at FAIR's blog:

How about reporting the sex abuses in Yeshivas? How about reporting the sex abuses in Koranic schools? How about reporting the sex abuses in boarding schools? How about reporting about abuses in American Schools? How about reporting the sex abuses and pedophilia in Buddhist countries? How about reporting – over and over and over – the traveling, pedophile, married Western men who travel to Buddhist countries? What a bunch of hypocrites you all are. The Church is pummeled over and over and yet, sexual abuse is rampant in every other denomination – religious or secular – and yet the very FAIR garbage crowd don't give a damn shit about reporting them. When the Hasidic Jews were caught in their organ harvesting scheme, the press ran the story just a couple of days. Had it been the Catholic Church caught in the macabre trade, the press would have had a field day – for days, and days, and days on end…

How about those abuses? I'm perfectly willing to condemn them, and to tangle with anyone who wants to minimize them. As it happens, though, there is a fair amount of news coverage of those "traveling, pedophile, married Western men who travel to Buddhist countries" (none of whom, I'm sure, are Catholics), much coverage and agitation about sexual trafficking. And the Boy Scouts of America, invoked by another commenter, are facing their own very similar day of reckoning as I write. (To enhance my Schadenfreude, the Mormons are evidently being caught in the backwash. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.) It should be getting more media attention, but you can't have everything. Given their antigay and religious policies, they're not going to get any defense from me.

But this writer has a rather skewed view of moral issues. One thing that makes it so irresistible to snap at the Ratzinger's ankles is his hypocrisy. He was Wojtyla's point man in attacking the gay movement in the 1980s and after, ranting about morality and decency. To find that at the same time he was sheltering abusive priests is just too delicious to ignore. (But it wasn't his fault, it was Teh Gay.) And it wasn't just Ratzinger, it was the entire church hierarchy, treating its flock as the enemy, silencing and intimidating parents who complained, shielding abusers and moving them from one diocese to another so that they could find fresh victims. The hypocrisy of Ratzinger on Easter, declaring that "humanity was suffering from a 'profound crisis' and needed 'spiritual and moral conversion'", is not surprising -- I suspect that he really, sincerely can't see what all the fuss is about and doesn't believe that he could have done anything wrong -- but it shouldn't be ignored either. He, and the rest of the Catholic leadership, should be jeered at whenever they try to lecture anyone else on morality until they clean their own house. Katha Pollitt makes this point in a good recent column.

One of Noam Chomsky's basic arguments (similar to Martin Luther King's) is that it's easy to condemn the crimes of official enemies, harder but essential to condemn the crimes of one's own group. Picking on the Pope, as fun as it is, really isn't my job, though as a gay person I'm one of his targets when he can manage it, and I'm entitled to attack him when it suits me. It should be Catholics who take up the pitchforks and torches and demand accountability, and the most hopeful aspect of this resurgent scandal is that they're doing just that. They won't be bought off by multimillion dollar settlements, though they may want damages paid, and they won't be appeased by transparently insincere papal apologies. I don't think the Pope realizes just how much trouble he's in.