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.
From the category archives:
Religion
BBC2 broadcast a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary 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!
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, an organization based not in the Vatican City, but out of a Post Office Box in Los Angeles. You can save yourself a trip and see photos of the relics 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)
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?
I’ve been wanting to post some observations on the British government’s proposal to criminalize incitement to religious hatred. The issue may be now be moot, thanks to the departure of David Blunkett, but there were assumptions made in the standard blog critique (SBC) that I wasn’t happy with. There were also considerations omitted that I thought should have been given some weight. Let me stress that I don’t think that this bill should have passed. Nevertheless the arguments in the SBC were seriously defective and/or incomplete.
So what was wrong with the SBC?
Many across the bits of the blogosphere I read have declared themselves simply bowled-over by the latest column from the Observer's Nick Cohen . Cohen is writing, _inter alia_ in opposition to David Blunkett’s deeply flawed proposal to ban incitement to religious hatred, and one passage in particular has been reproduced in full or in part on at least five blogs (Harry's Place ,
Normblog , SIAW , Mick Hartley , Melanie Phillips ) :
bq. MPs didn’t point out that when society decides that people’s religion, rather than their class or gender, is the cultural fact that matters, power inevitably passes to the priests and the devout for whom religion does indeed matter most. To their shame, many on the left have broken with the Enlightenment to perform
this manoeuvre. They have ridden the Islamic wave and agreed to convert one billion people into ‘the Muslims’. A measure of their bad faith is that they would react with horror if this trick was pulled on them, and they were turned into ‘the Christians’ whose authentic representatives were the Archbishop of Canterbury and ‘Dr’ Ian Paisley.
I hope I’m not alone in being considerably less admiring of the passage in question.
I’m trying very hard to imagine what the film version of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is going to be like if The Times is to be believed. According to an article today, the film’s director is cutting all references to God and the church from the script, for fear “of a backlash from the Christian Right in the United States.” Instead, the sinister ‘Authority’ (read horrid amalgam of Calvinism and the Catholic Church) of the novel will be taken as representing any old repressive establishment that you might care to oppose yourself – totalitarian, Marxist or what-have-you. This seems to me (and I suspect to most of Pullman’s readers) to be utterly mad – the entire point of the series is that it’s an extended diatribe against organized religion. Pullman is a vociferous member of the Devil’s party, even if his vague humanistic alternative to Christianity (described in the greatly inferior final volume of the series), is decidedly droopy.
It also says some interesting things about the comparative state of debate over religion in the UK and the US. In the UK, the Anglican establishment seemed to be quite delighted with Pullman’s books – that someone took Christianity seriously enough to attack it was cause for celebration. In the US, in contrast, the movie’s financial backers are clearly terrified of a backlash from fundamentalists who are anything but interested in vigorous debate about the merits and defects of organized Christianity. Anti-semitic movies about the Passion are all very well and good, but pull-no-punches atheism and criticism of organized religion apparently are not. Of course, this may just be nerves on the part of the money people (in fairness, Gibson’s magnum opus got squeamish responses from potential backers too), but it is interesting how little public space there is for the expression of atheistic views in the US. I’m neither religious nor a card-carrying atheist myself (I’d describe myself as a mostly-lapsed Catholic), but it seems to me that it doesn’t do any great service to genuine religious debate if a well argued and intellectually coherent perspective on religion is denied any space in popular culture.
Update: slightly revised following comments.
Pharyngula has a post about how the Texas School Board is trying to exclude not just the mention of evolution from school textbooks, but also references to pollution, global warming, overpopulation, contraception and “married partners” (might include gays). (This kind of thing doesn’t alarm the Dupe, who argues — if “argues” is the right word — that Bush’s victory is a triumph for the forces of secularism.)
Following up John Quiggin’s follow-up to my first post on Silenced and Left Behind-style tribulit generally, a couple quick links and thoughts.
Yusuf Islam — the former singer once known as Cat Stevens — has been banned from the United States . And not just banned, they actually diverted the plane 600 miles to Maine to remove him from it. He’s made some equivocal statements in the past, but more recently has been forthright in his condemnation of terrorism . Perhaps there’s something we don’t know, but, on the surface, this looks like a bad mistake. Ordinary Muslims will be bound to see this as hostility to their religion as such rather than just to extremists and terrorists.
The recent visit to Britain of Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his reception by London mayor Ken Livingstone generated a lot of controversy. I confess that I was a little bit skeptical about some of the claims made about him by his opponents on a “they would say that, wouldn’t they?” basis. His latest declaration calling on Muslims to fight the Americans in Iraq and including civilians as legitimate targets should remove any doubt. Juan Cole — who can read the Arabic sources and is not one of the people who recycles the ravings of Daniel Pipes — is disgusted, and provides a good deal of further background .
Tariq Ramadan has an article in the New York Times responding to the revocation of his visa and to some of the accusations made against him.
According to Scott Martens at A Fistful of Euros , Tariq Ramadan (recently interviewed by OpenDemocracy) who had been appointed to a visiting position at Notre Dame, has been denied a US visa under sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act that were amended by the Patriot Act. Scott comments:
bq. Whether one agrees with Ramadan or not, it is difficult to image an Islamic intellectual figure who is likely to be more acceptable as the other side in an American dialogue with Islam. Thus, the refusal to allow him to enter the US suggests that someone in Homeland Security agrees with the Daniel Pipes standard: Any Muslim who fails to condemn Islam, from its founding to the present and in all its manifestations, must be a fanatic and a threat to the West. …. This is an opportunity for Europeans and Americans to show that at the very least they are capable of exercising better judgement than the Bush administration.
The (London) Times is running a series on Muslims in the UK . Not profound stuff, but a useful antidote to the demonization that prevails in parts of the blogosphere. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that young Muslims have views about sex and alcohol (among other things) that resemble in important respects the views that many young Catholics have about contraception.[1]
fn1. The article is freely accessible from within the UK, but may require registration from elsewhere. My information about whether those attempting to access from elsewhere need to subscribe varies.
In the light of some recent discussions at Butter flies and Wheels, Daily Moiders , Harry's Place, Normblog , and even here, I thought I’d post a link to this OpenDemocracy interview with Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan , which I found of interest.[1] I also see that Norm has just posted some lines from Andre Glucksmann on anti-semitism in France which are sort-of relevant, since a polemic against Glucksmann (among others) raised accusations of anti-semitism against Ramadan, a charge Ramadan rejects in the O-D interview.
fn1. Since these are sensitive times, and readers sometimes think that linking suggests endorsement, let me insist, self-defensively and for the record, that I’m not endorsing, just linking to something interesting.