Once upon a time in America, say fifty or sixty years ago, we youngsters were brought up to believe that it was impolite to bring either religion or politics into conversation.  But once upon that same time, religion wasn’t front and center and rammed down everyone’s throat, either – and now it is.  Yet in isolated pockets there’s still a lingering reticence about bringing up religion as a discussion topic.   Pockets where, if it is raised at all, it has to be more or less mandated as an issue by this or that news event – or else brought up reverently, so as not to offend anyone’s sensibilities.  (Except the sensibilities of godless secular humanists and materialists, that is.)  One pocket of nervous gentility is to be found in our supposedly forthright news media.

Example: in what seems to be the only ardently Christian nation left in the world outside of Africa or the Philippines – the United States of America – we have been hearing pretty much a single party line from the press since Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the new name of the unit that ran the Inquisition), became the new pope, as Benedict XVI.   The media party line: the new pope has an extraordinarily keen intellect.  And that under all his seeming grimness he is all about Love and Reverence for Life.

 
 
This party line is usually leavened with a few instances of his repression of dissent, which are then explained away as a benign and unavoidable side effect of his intellectual rigor in defending the faith from erosion.  A picture of the man emerges as a beacon of analytical intelligence.According to a long article on Benedict XVI in the April 24, 2005, New York Times under the lead byline of Richard Bernstein, hitherto not known as a Roman-Catholic theologian or commentator, Ratzinger is characterized to a large degree by his devotion to “reason.”  “[I]nterviews with some of the dozens of people who worked for Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation [an objective sampling] offered a portrait of a man with a style that mitigated his firmness.  He is collegial, they said, a patient listener with an orderly mind.  He keeps a clean desk.”  Firmness (in actual decisions and decrees affecting the real world of Catholicism and beyond) softened by something local and ephemeral called “style”?  (Precautionary note to all potential mischief-makers: be sure to wear colorful ascots and play the bongos).  His silencing of leading Catholic theologians such as Hans Küng is “mitigated,” then, by a “collegial” style, a clean desk, and an orderly mind, whatever that last item might mean.  “Clean desk” may be this century’s version of “the trains run on time.”“At the Congregation, he was flexible when it came to strategy, but not doctrine, said Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the fourth highest ranking official there.  ‘He used reason, not the reason of the strong, but the strength of reason,’ he said.  ‘He was willing to go with the best idea.’”  What can we suppose the phrase “the reason of the strong” to mean?  Simply that he could have bullied the others, but didn’t?  The inversion that follows is a great rhetorical flourish, but it means nothing much, either, except that Ratzinger tried to use reason – as we would hope all leaders do, at Vatican City or in Washington, wherever.  The monsignor seems to have been writing too many sermons for pious but gullible worshippers.  Note, though, that when it comes to doctrine – much of which was formulated (to use a polite euphemism) by raucous and sometimes violent church councils in the few centuries after Jesus died and again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – Ratzinger is not to be moved.  But he is flexible as to strategy – perhaps a nice way of saying, “The ends justify the means”?But then we have a section of the article with the title “Taking Ideas to Rome.”  Following are some excerpts from that section.  “His disgust at Nazism and his horror of the [1968] student upheaval – shaped by his reading of Saints Augustine and Bonaventure, and of Plato [They always head for Plato when they pine for authoritarian management.] – formed the basis of the thinking he took to the Vatican in 1981: the idea that freedom flows from moral and doctrinal certainty.  [Shades of “1984” and Isaiah Berlin’s dubious “positive freedom” – so beautifully embedded in high-period Communist ideology!  Even Alexander Hamilton would have jumped up from his chair at that little package of sophistry.  This is nonsense, of course – but dangerous nonsense.  Moral certainty would be bad enough, but doctrinal certainty, well, that’s pretty much Oceania’s second slogan, “Freedom Is Slavery.”  That is, if you adhere to our doctrine (which, we  learn below, we must follow even if it is not “infallible,” i.e., even if it may not be correct!), you will find yourself in some rather mysterious state of freedom.  Possibly a delicious fugue-like state of not having to think for yourself.  Something like being back in kindergarten on a beautiful spring day when the teacher is giving you milk and graham crackers and then after the teacher pulls down the blinds  you are going to have some quiet time on the little rug you keep in your very own cubby.  Can anyone in the supposedly modern era in the Western nations who is not a full professor at Bob Smith College seriously subscribe to such a concept?  Is it any wonder why the rumor persists that Pope John XXIII was rubbed out by his own clergy?]  But so important to him [Ratzinger] was protecting the church as a fortress of moral authority that he said theologians must adhere to church teaching even if it is not infallible.  [More nonsense – or worse.  Translation: you will believe and teach and act according to what we tell you, no questions asked – and by the way, what we tell you may be wrong.]  In his ‘Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian’ of 1990, he ruled dissenters must not try to sway public opinion because open criticism hurts the church.  [Another revered old ploy – which we’ve been seeing plenty of again right here in our own USA these days: any criticism gives aid and comfort to the enemy, and must be stifled.  Never mind what the Bill of Rights says.]“But he was also concerned for [That little “for” means, in other words, that he graciously tries to extend his thinking and his fiats to all those sad folks outside the pale who are deprived of the glorious benefits of the Catholic doctrine as he sees it.] the society outside the church.  For instance, during a speech to an anti-abortion convention in 1986, he said legalized abortion implied that ‘It is force that establishes right and thus, inadvertently for the many, the very bases of any authentic democracy are threatened.’”  This mish-mash, even granting that Bernstein and his interns took some liberties here, is from a great intellect of the widely heralded John Paul II period?  This opinion masquerading as some kind of syllogism wouldn’t even pass muster in a first-year English  class at a Mississippi high school.  A failure to restrict behavior, in this case abortion, is a “force” that threatens “authentic” democracy?  Abortion is a force?  And what can “authentic” mean here?  Just how is democracy thus threatened?  Instead, it looks as if Ratzinger-Bernstein’s earlier “freedom flows from moral and doctrinal certainty” is the real threat to democracy.  Talk about apples, oranges, and bicycles.  All this is incomprehensible stuff dished up raw by the Times.  Overall, the statement – despite being embellished with a hopeful “thus,” doesn’t make any sense as a syllogism, either, even for the sake of argument accepting the flaccid terms; Aristotle (whose name was noticeably absent in this article) would laugh, or maybe cry.  But there’s more.“In a book-length interview published in 1985 titled ‘The Ratzinger Report,’ he used a rigorously argued line of reasoning to support a doctrinal position that reverberates outside the church.”  “Rigorously argued”?  Bernstein the world-class theologian and logician again inserts as an opinion, not a reportable or evident fact as we expect in our national press, the American media’s party line on the new pope, to be sure we get it.  “Reverberates outside the church, ”by the way, is a code phrase meaning that certain non-Catholic Christian elements  in the American South and West share this position in some ways.

“He condemned abortion, contraception, homosexual relations, sex without marriage, ‘radical feminism’ and transsexuality.  [Whew!  This guy is big big big on condemning stuff, much more so than Jesus seems to have done, as reported in the three Synoptic Gospels at least.  But did Ratzinger-Bernstein leave out the related category of  masturbation inadvertently, or for space reasons?  And by the way, for the Great Papal Logician, doesn’t a prohibition of sex without marriage include as a sub-category homosexual relations?  Ockham would not approve of the redundancy.]  The wrongness of those ideas all [sic] arise from the separation of sexuality from motherhood and marriage, he said.  That leads to procreation without sexuality [Just a minute!  Don’t Ratzinger-Bernstein mean procreation with sexuality but without motherhood and marriage?  Maybe Bernstein’s team miscopied – but don’t bet on it.  Could just be more not-necessarily-infallible doctrine leading to freedom.] and ‘biological manipulation’ of births that ‘uncouples man from nature,’ he said.”  Hint to the reader: “nature” is a rickety Catholic theological term of art going back to the Middle Ages.  Any sane person outside Vatican City now realizes that man – even allowing for the spiritual quality in our lives and in life – is part of nature and cannot become “uncoupled” from it.

How much of this must we endure before enough folks get their backs up and tell the aggressive religion hawkers – and the pusillanimous, flannel-mouthed media midgets that channel their baloney – how loopy all this religious babble is?  Here, by contrast, is Matthew, a pretty highly valued early Christian writer, circa first century anno Domini, in a translation sponsored by King James I of England, quoting Jesus himself on the subject, as part of what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount, one of the foundations of the Christian faith, predating the calcified accretions of centuries of meddlers with too much time on their hands who have striven to clarify and improve the message of the man after whom this particular religion was named – and turn the message of spirituality and compassion into . . . doctrine:

“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.  Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.  But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and they father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.  But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”

Can you think of any people in our country these days to whom these admonitions might usefully apply?  But no, that particular teaching just doesn’t seem to resonate with many twenty-first-century American Christians.  That old stick-in-the-mud Matthew stuff just doesn’t leave room for having much fun and excitement playing around with the Christian religion.  Doctrine!  Pronouncements!  Mass prayer meetings with press coverage!  Slick movies based on the ravings of hysterical eighteenth-century nuns!  Moral issues for the masses!  The word “God” not in a public school prayer!  Not chiseled on a courthouse wall!  Indignation!  The world was so created 3,000 years ago!  Science is materialism is godlessness!  America is damn well a Christian nation!  Hooray!

 
I believe that there is a spiritual aspect to life that can give great joy in many ways, coupled as it must be – according to the words and acts of Jesus that have come down to us, albeit with lots of spin added along the way – with compassion and charity, with community.  And that there are teachers, Jesus among them, who can and do open us more fully to that aspect.  But spare us the illogical mumbo-jumbo and hypocritical jockeying for position that tries to treat this probably innate religious impulse and spiritual aspect to life as something subject to a sort of religious driver’s license test.  It is annoying to have some cranky German in Rome trying to lay a sort of detailed life-syllabus on us.  And it is annoying to have power-hungry hypocrites here in our country try to order our lives in conformity with dubious religious “doctrines” manufactured across centuries of schisms, double-dealings, compromises, and literary invention.  (And by the way, this former Catholic predicts that if the so-called evangelists in America eventually get their way, they will put the American Roman Catholics as well as Jews out to some far pasture real quick-like.)  Enough of politely keeping quiet when these Poloniuses broadcast their own deliberations as worldwide truths and imperatives.  But this is about more than just religious sectarianism gone sour. . . .

I am a conservative on this.  A real one.  Old-fashioned, as conservatives sort of tend to be (at least Michael Oakeshott seems to think so).  I would like to see us turn back the clock, to 1953, say, when religious beliefs were held personally and observed quietly within well-knit communities.  When tolerance more or less reigned – and my remarks above have very much been about intolerance.  Or to 1957, when our retiring President Dodds gave the baccalaureate address to our class at graduation.  It was titled “Tolerance,” and will be reprinted in its entirety in our 50th Reunion book.  Where the hell did that theme come from?  Was it just something he thought would play well, or did it just come out of the blue, or . . . was he stunningly prescient?