Religion

“It’s Ratzinger”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/international/worldspecial2/19cnd-conclave.html, as Benedict XVI. Oh boy.

Rabbi David Saperstein condemns Frist’s telecast in exactly the right terms – as an attack on religious freedom.

The telecast is scheduled to take place on the second night of the Passover holiday, when Jews around the world gather together to celebrate our religious freedom. It was in part for exactly such freedom that we fled Egypt. It was in part for exactly such freedom that so many of us came to this great land. And it is in very large part because of exactly such freedom that we and our neighbors here have built a nation uniquely welcoming to people of faith – of all faiths. We believe Senator Frist knows these things as well. His association with the scheduled telecast is, in a word, shameful.

I can only applaud. Via Atrios

Bill Frist’s telecast in which he appears with a clatter (right collective noun? would clangour be better?) of Republican-friendly fundamentalists to denounce filibusters of conservative judges as an attack on “people of faith” is unsurprisingly getting a lot of play in the left-blogosphere. But it strikes me that both this and the bungled Republican attempt to make political hay from the Terry Schiavo case provide open ground for a strong Democratic counter-attack. There’s good reason to believe that Frist’s move is a sign of weakness rather than of strength. If this Washington Post article is correct, Frist is pushing the nuclear option not because he thinks that this is a good issue for the Republicans, but because he fears that he won’t stand a chance of getting the Republican nomination in 2008 unless he has the religious conservatives on his side. Going to war over the filibuster is a very risky manoeuvre. The Republican party tried to use the Schiavo case to drum up public support in preparation for this fight, but it backfired. They now find themselves in the worst of both worlds – a general public which is suspicious of Republican efforts to rig the judicial system, and a conservative base which is fired up, and demanding that the Republicans ram through conservative judicial nominations to prevent anything like the Schiavo case from happening in future.

The way to fight back against this isn’t to make arguments about the corruption of the political process. This is the deeper problem – but it’s an abstract one, and unlikely to resonate. There’s a much more straightforward case against the Republicans. Their attempt to bend the judiciary to their will is really about building the foundations of a state-imposed religion. It’s an effort to impose religious norms on people’s private and family lives. More precisely: it aims to take complex decisions out of the realm of the family, and make them subject to the rule of judges who are expected to kowtow to the whims of lawmakers, regardless of their constitutional duties. The United States of America was founded by Dissenters, Unitarians and others who had fled from the tyranny of state-sponsored religion in Britain. As a result, one of the core American values is freedom of religion, and the maintenance of an open space in which people can pursue their own faiths and beliefs, free of interference from the state.

Every time that Republican legislators start talking about the attack on people of faith, Democrats should counter by saying that Republicans are trying to forcibly shove a state-sponsored set of religious values down people’s throats, and to prevent people from making their own decisions in the light of their own values and beliefs. They should point again and again to the outrageous statements made by DeLay, Cornyn and others during and after the Schiavo case – and use the Schiavo controversy as an example of the sort of decision that Republicans would like to take out of the hands of families, and hand over to judges. There’s a real argument to be made that it’s the Republicans rather than the Democrats who are attacking “people of faith,” by trying to impose a one-size-fits-all set of religious values through rigging the judicial system. It’s an argument that might even appeal to a few Christian fundamentalists, since they’ve been on the receiving end of similar treatment in the past. As Godfrey Hodgson tells us, the current resurgence of fundamentalism in American politics is in part a reaction against efforts by the state to ban home-schooling in an earlier era. The Democrats (I should note that I’m not a Democrat myself, but am on their side in this fight), should be hammering home this argument again, and again, and again.

I was thinking about Chris’ post on tactical voting and I was struck by the thought: Why hasn’t Labour introduced preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain? Readers will probably be struck by the alternative question, Why should Labour introduce preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain?

My first is that this would be an improvement in democracy, both for individual constituencies and for the country as a whole. Although no voting system is perfect, preferential voting is much more likely to produce an outcome that reflects the views of the majority of voters than is first-past-the-post.

I don’t suppose that an argument like this will cut much ice with the Blair government (or most incumbent governments), so let me move to the second point. Labour would almost certainly benefit from this shift, at the expense of the Tories. It seems pretty clear that Labour would get the bulk of LDP preferences, as well as those of the Greens and minor left parties. The Tories would pick up preferences from UKIP (but this group looks like a flash in the pan) and the far-right (but this is a small group, and there are disadvantages attached to such preferences, especially if, say, the BNP demands preferences in return).

It’s true of course that the biggest benefits would go to the Liberal Democrats, since their supporters would not have to worry about ‘wasted votes’. But even here, there’s a hidden benefit for Labour. Sooner or later, there will be a hung Parliament, and the price of LDP support will be full-scale proportional representation. If Labour introduced preferential voting without being forced to, it would not only cement LDP support but would greatly weaken the case for PR.

The remaining objection is that of additional complexity. This can be overcome, in large measure by adopting the optional preferential system, where voters can indicate as many or as few preferences as they choose.

I’m not sure if this is an occult link with the Zeitgeist, or just a manifestation of the reallocation of attention that leads new parents to notice other people’s babies, but a month ago, I finally got around to ordering “The Strange Death of Liberal England” (George Dangerfield) which arrived at Easter. In the ensuing couple of weeks I’ve seen not one but two uses of the same idea, with both Protestantism and Toryism dying strange deaths. Maybe this is happening all the time and I’ve just started noticing.

There’s been a lot of discussion of the late Pope, including whether he should be given the appellation “Great”. Historically, the honorific ‘Great’, when applied to monarchs, including Popes, has not meant “Good”. Rather it’s been applied to those who’ve been successful in extending their monarchical power. This is certainly true of Leo and Gregory, the popes currently regarded as Great. Although they’re both called saints, neither of seems particularly saintly to me: rather they were hardheaded and successful statesmen.

In this interpretation of the term, it’s hard to claim greatness for John Paul II. Since he was elected in the late 1970s, the church has lost ground throughout the developed world to secularism, and in Latin America to evangelical protestantism. Although there have been some modest gains in Africa and Asia, they’ve largely been in countries where the church had a strong presence dating back to colonial times.

Claims that the number of Catholics has risen greatly under JPII look dubious to me. This BBC file gives the basis of claims that there are more than 1 billion Catholics, and includes claims for more than 90 per cent of the population of Italy, Poland and Spain, based primarily on baptism. I suspect many of these are either nominal or lapsed.

If there has been growth, it’s largely due to natural increase in Catholic countries. To the extent that anti-contraception teaching has kept birth rates high, I suppose the Pope was partly responsible for this, but the same teaching contributed greatly to the collapse of the church in former strongholds like Ireland.

If you wanted to make a case for greatness for JPII it would be one of a fairly successful defensive action in unfavorable times.

In any case, judging by those who’ve been awarded the title by common consent, beginning with Alexander, Greatness is not a quality I admire much [1]. And if we’re going for Goodness, I think John XXIII would be a more appealing candidate.

fn1. Fielding has great fun with this in Jonathan Wild, the story of the infamous ‘Thieftaker-General’, who became the Godfather of early 18th-century London.

Lots of interesting argument about the relationship between religion and the left in the current issue of the Boston Review. I was particularly struck by Lew Daly’s densely argued and provocative article on how Bush’s “faith based initiative” borrows its vision of society from European Christian Democracy, but dumps the Christian and the democratic bits.

This post should probably be called The Pope in Ireland II, following Kieran’s post of a couple of days ago. But I’m not quite ready to finally delete the shreds of a posting I keep re-writing that keeps getting overtaken by other posts and events in the meantime.

Anyway, this morning Slugger O’Toole points to the most beautiful antidote to the dolorous (and, frankly, condescending) blanket coverage of the pope’s death by CNN. Slugger kindly reproduces in full Fintan O’Toole’s superb essay placing JPII’s reign in the context of Hobbes’ description of the papacy as “nothing other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof”.

If, like me, you can’t bear another moment of mock-mourningful journalists raking out endless and unseemly titbits of human interest and pointless kremlinology-like speculations about the next pope, read this. It’s a cracker.

An eye-rolling moment at “Instapundit”:http://instapundit.com/archives/022180.php:

From the comments at Tim Blair’s:
Final score for the 20th century:
Ordinary Poles, 2.
German intellectuals, 0.
Heh.

Right. Some scenes from a life:

1938. Moves to Kracow, enrolls in the Faculty of Philosophy at “Jagellonian University”:http://www.uj.edu.pl/index.en.html.

1939. Joins ‘Studio 38’ experimental theatre group. He would eventually write six plays.

1946. Ordained a priest. Studies at the “Angelicum University.”:http://www.pnac.org/Universities/PUSTAAngelicum.htm.

1947. Receives his doctorate in philosophy. Thesis on “The Problems of Faith in the Works of St John of the Cross.” Returns to Poland to lecture in Philosophy and Social Ethics at Jagellonian University.

1953. Defends second doctorate, titled “Evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler” at the “Catholic University of Lublin”:http://www.kul.lublin.pl/uk/. (Max Scheler was one of those German Intellectuals, by the way.) During this period, publishes poetry in various Polish journals under the pseudonym, “Andrzej Jawien.”

1954. Untenured Professor of Philosophy at Lublin.

1956. Appointed to a the Chair of Moral Theology and Ethics at Lublin.

And so on. Always nice to see Professor Reynolds standing up for the value of the life of the mind.

Kieran’s post on Irish Catholic culture and Matt Yglesias’ recent writings on Archbishop Stepinac reminded me of the controversy surrounding Hubert Butler, whose essay on Stepinac, “The Sub-Prefect should have held his tongue,” is now happily online. Butler was a scion of the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy, a liberal of a thoroughly unconventional sort (sometimes a little reminiscent of Burke), and one of the best essayists of the twentieth century. His collection, The Children of Drancy, is especially fine. Butler also spent a substantial part of his career being ostracized by the community surrounding him, because he deviated from the Catholic consensus that Stepinac was a martyr to religious freedom. The story is recounted in “The Sub-Prefect.” Butler unwittingly began to present his views on Stepinac at a meeting where the Papal Nuncio was present, prompting the Nuncio to walk out. This led to Butler being condemned by local and national politicians for having ‘insulted’ the Church and being driven out of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (which he had founded). If Butler hadn’t had independent means, he would have almost certainly lost his livelihood. It wasn’t a proud moment for Irish Catholicism.

Pope John Paul II came to Ireland in 1979. It was the first time a reigning pontiff had visited the country and the nation went crazy. I was six. My father, my younger brother and my uncle Donal drove to Limerick to see him, along with about 300,000 other people. He faced a similar-sized crowd in Galway, and filled the Phoenix Park in Dublin with nearly a million people, by some estimates. This in a country of about three and a half million people. I went to bed at six o’clock the night before and my father woke me up at midnight. I was put in charge of the torch. We drove up to the Northside to pick up my uncle. Then we hit the road at about half one in the morning, along with most of the rest of Munster. There were helicopters overhead, monitoring the traffic. It was the first time Radio 2 broadcast all the way through the night. It’s sixty five miles from Cork to Limerick. We parked the car a mile or so from the Mass site at about seven o’clock in the morning. Then we got out the deck chairs, settled down and waited for the Pope to arrive.

[click to continue…]

BBC2 broadcast “a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4352171.stm this evening about France’s Islamic headscarf law. It followed a group of young Muslim women about and had them explain their thoughts and feelings about the law and did the same with the teachers in their school. The teachers clearly sincerely believed that the women were the puppets of fundamentalist groups, though this wasn’t the impression given by the film. Rather, their families urged compromise so that they might finish their education. Obviously, much of the impression the viewer gets will have been shaped by the editing decisions of the film-makers. Nevertheless, the message I took was of the profound unwisdom of the measure. The headmaster tried to be pragmatic (by his own lights) and insisted that the law could be complied with if girls wore a bandana in a colour other than black that left the forehead and ears clearly visible. This upset some of the extreme secularist teachers (who saw this as backsliding from pure Republican principle) but didn’t leave the pupils happy either (though they largely complied). But the image that one was left with was of the hapless headteacher stopping the Muslims one by one at the school gate, singling them out, insisting on minor adjustments to their dress (“A bit more ear please!”). Utterly, utterly humiliating for all concerned. And the women themselves, now convinced that they would never be accepted in France. One had ambitions to be a nurse, but the government has now extended the law to medical service. Petty inspection, endless argument about the tiniest details of the garb worn by “those people”: humiliating and counterproductive.

The “True Cross is coming to Tucson!”:http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/56896.php

bq. The [“Relics of the Passion”] exhibit is part of a six-state tour that will take place during Lent. The eight relics include what are believed to be remains from Jesus’ crown of thorns, a piece of exterior wrapping from the Shroud of Turin that some say was Jesus’ burial sheet, and a sliver from the cross used to crucify him. A replica of one of the nails used to hang Christ on the cross also will be part of the display. Though it’s not an actual nail used in the crucifixion, organizers say it’s made from shavings of some nails that were.

bq. “Certainly, if people saw the movie, now it’s time to venerate the relics,” said tour organizer Richard Jeffrey, past state deputy for the Arizona Knights of Columbus …

I wonder how much they’ll be charging people to see them. If it’s cheap enough, I’ll have to go along. The tour is being organized by the “Apostolate For Holy Relics”:http://www.apostolateforholyrelics.com/home.php, an organization based not in the Vatican City, but out of a “Post Office Box in Los Angeles”:http://www.apostolateforholyrelics.com/contact.php. You can save yourself a trip and “see photos of the relics”:http://www.apostolateforholyrelics.com/ahr-projects/passion-tour/relic.php on the AFHP’s website, though mostly you just see the reliquaries of the relics.

I honestly can’t believe it.

Via American Coprophagia. In the midst of a heartfelt Congressional prayer service, Tom DeLay chose this reading, from Matthew 7: 21-27:

21. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

22. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’

23. Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’

24. Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

25. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.

26. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand.

27. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” (my emphasis; I don’t think that DeLay emphasizes any particular passage)

Huh.

Living in a narrow strip hemmed in by the sea and backwaters, only those who were able to climb atop strong houses could manage to survive the tsunami strike. Showing a spot where a house once stood, Susheelan said only an old man of a family of five survived the mortal blow of the sea. The man is now in a relief camp near the place where his kith and kin are buried.

You can watch the service yourself on C-SPAN (it’s the “109th Congressional Prayer Service”). Tom DeLay starts at 12:30. This was not an off-the-cuff joke or unfortunate phrase; these were his prepared remarks, in total.

How would we have reacted to a powerful Arab mullah who appeared on television, on September 20, 2001, to read a passage from the Koran about how the fools who reject Allah will be thrown from their towers? (I seriously doubt that such a passage exists, but you get my point.)

I had to take a break from blogging. I was tired of getting so angry. But when Tom DeLay is one of the most powerful men in the United States, what other response is appropriate?