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Posted on 04/13/2002 9:08:11 AM PDT by Notwithstanding
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Scandal brings out the bigots
April 12, 2002 BY ANDREW GREELEY
Anti-Catholicism is as American as apple pie a la mode, chocolate malts, Diet Pepsi and silly nostalgia at the beginning of the baseball season. No Catholic who has to work in the higher media, the upper academy or the New York publishing world has any doubts about its existence. Most American Catholics rarely encounter it in their daily lives, hence they do not take it seriously. Not enough Catholics suffer because of it for there ever to be a serious battle against it. Therefore, anti-Catholicism will persist in American life indefinitely, giving the lie to the claim that Americans have left prejudice and discrimination behind.
It lurks beneath the surface of American culture and raises its ugly head only on occasion--as it now is doing on the sexual abuse crisis. As someone who has denounced child abuse by priests and cover-ups by the hierachy for 16 years, I defend neither. If there has been a new outburst of anti-Catholicism that the country has not seen since the John F. Kennedy election, one must admit candidly that the leadership of the Church has provided much raw material for the Catholic-haters.
The current feeding frenzy goes far beyond the stupidity and arrogance of Catholic leadership. The argument one hears and reads over and over that celibacy is the cause of sexual abuse is a vicious anti-Catholic lie even if it comes from columnists and editorial writers who claim to be Catholic. In an ABC news poll, 6 percent of Catholics and 6 percent of other Americans said that there had been a sex abuse case in their congregation--a finding that shows that the problem is not just celibate or Catholic.
Most child abusers are married men (and in some cases married women). Their abuse results from deep emotional problems. If a priest with these proclivities marries, then he will be a married sex abuser. No clinician disputes that truth. The alleged link between celibacy and sexual abuse is specious.
Is there no historian of anti-Catholic nativism who will rise up and shout that attacks on the celibate priesthood have been an integral part of anti-Catholic bigotry for two centuries? Historically, the bigots insist that the priest is either a slimy character looking for young people or nuns to assault, or is something less than a real man. A few resigned priests in effect make that argument today against those of us who have tried to keep our promise of celibacy. Those who accept the argument as though it were unquestionable truth are de facto anti-Catholics. Somehow, the fact that these loud louts now sleep with a woman seems to constitute prima facie evidence that they are more real men than we are and uniquely qualified to criticize our inadequacies. That too is anti-Catholic bigotry and should be labeled as such.
Moreover, the mode which the media use to report the reaction of Catholics to the abuse and the cover-up--''faithful shaken by abuse charges''--is also anti-Catholic. It assumes, as do most Americans, that Catholics are clinging weakly to a faith and a heritage and a church that can barely survive one more crisis. In fact, Catholics remain Catholic because they like being Catholic. They like their heritage, their communalism, their sacraments, their sense of God's presence in the world, their stories, their images, their rain forest of metaphors. They should give that up because their clergy fail to be what they should be and because some of their leaders are idiots? Gimme a break! Do the bigots really think that Catholics were in the churches on Easter because of the priests? Yet, that is the paradigm that permeates American society and the only one the media seem capable of using.
How about ''Catholics are angry, but not leaving.'' Then, how about a serious discussion of why they're not leaving--as the present paradigm suggests they should. And finally, a discussion of the historic hatred for Catholicism, which has generated such a paradigm.
The tradition of celibacy is part of that heritage--a dispensable part perhaps, but still understandable within the parameters of the heritage. Intelligent discussion about it should begin wth respect for its purposes and accomplishments, not sweeping assumptions about sexual perversion and abnormality. Do Americans really want to do away completely with men like Father Damian or M. Vincent or Father Kino or Joe Bernardin because the self-serving diatribes of a few resigned priests fit so neatly our culture's anti-Catholicism?
E-mail: agreel@aol.com
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SOME Protestants are anti-Catholic, just as SOME Catholics are anti-Protestant. But America is not anti-Catholic per se.
A more accurate way to put it would be: A lot of Americans, particularly in the major media, are anti-Christian.
I sincerely hope the anti-Catholic Causcus here on Free Republic reads each and every sentence of this column VERY slowly and carefully, and ruminates on it a bit.
One merely needs to read the state constitutions of the late 1700's and early 1800's and other laws. This was not at all anti-Christian - but instead was anti-Catholic (anti-Semitic for that matter). In many states non-Catholic Christian churches wer supported by taxes (by the way, no one considered tax support to be "establishment"). In many states, by law Catholics could not have certain jobs.
In the late 1800's there is strong evidence of a lingering anti-catholicsm - as Catholic immigrants arrived, much was made of the need to preserve the protestant hegemony of the USA. This is what drove Catholics to establish so many schools (because public schools included religious activity and by law used purely protestant materials - such as the protestant bible).
In the 1900's we saw, amonf other things, how Kennedy had to go to great lengths to distance himself from his Catholicism in order to get elected. (He had to prove he would not obey the Pope.)
But we also began during the 1900's to see the general anti-Christian sentiment creep into the media and academia.
Anti-Catholicism has always been part and parcel of the USA's heritage. But as secular world views became the norm, we have seen all Christians suffer from the bigotry of secularists. Sadly for Catholics, we find that bigotry of two types still exists against us: the traditional anti-catholicism of protestants AND the newer anti-Catholic bigotry of secularists.
Surely as an ancient world-wide body of one billion people the pro-life, pro-chastity, pro-traditional marriage official doctrines and lobbying of the Catholic Church is seen as enemy number one by the secularists. And some protestants can't help piling on when they see their traditional adversary (the Catholics) being attacked.
I AM GRATEFUL TO KNOW SO MANY PROTESTANT FREEPERS WHO REFUSE TO PILE ON AND WHO REALIZE WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE CULTURAL WAR FOR TRADITIONAL BIBLICAL VALUES. I
SUMMARY POINTS
There are anti-Semitic sites on the Internet and sites that engage in other forms of racism. That has been well documented. Virtually ignored, however, is the abundance of anti-Catholicism that exists on the Internet.
The pervasiveness of anti-Catholicism on the Internet reflects how deeply entrenched, obsessive and normative this prejudice is within contemporary culture. If the Internet is our most contemporary means of communication and information gathering, then anti-Catholicism is entering the new Millenium in a powerful fashion.
The post-Reformation period of the mid 16th and 17th Seventeenth centuries saw a wealth of anti-Catholic published material that would establish the foundation for anti-Catholic historical and cultural assumptions that are now moving to the Internet.
In recent years, with the advent of cable television and a change in the culture of movie making, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of anti-Catholic imagery and rhetoric in popular media. The short-lived television program That’s Life on ABC and movies such as Dogma and Quills evidenced a new willingness to engage in anti-Catholicism in entertainment aimed at a general audience.
By its nature, the Internet is unregulated. It is the dumping ground for the effluvia of Western culture. There is no editing for truth, objectivity, reliability or responsibility on the Internet. With its millions of websites, personal home pages and search portals, it is impossible to monitor or respond in any consistent fashion to its content.
Traditional anti-Catholicism – fundamentalist attacks on the Church as the scriptural "whore of Babylon" – bubbles just below the surface in many areas of our society. This traditional anti-Catholicism created many of the myths of anti-Catholicism that linger within the culture: the Church as solely interested in power; Catholicism as an "alien" religion in America; Catholicism as the enemy of separation of Church and State (as well as the public school system); the Catholic Church as oppressor.
The nature of the Internet leads to a generally more coarse standard even with so-called mainstream Internet sites. Profanity, obscenity and nudity are commonplace while they remain less so in newspapers that are still viewed as "family reading." Of course, that bar has been lowered in recent years in newspapers but it is a standard far higher than "legitimate" sites on the Internet.
Traditional anti-Catholicism laid the foundation for the common secular anti-Catholicism of contemporary culture. Stripped of its theological foundation, it portrays the Church as a medieval relic, the enemy of science and individual freedom. Born in the pseudo-scientism of the 19th Century – with its mix of nationalism, racism and class warfare – it focused on the Church as the enemy of modern thought and progress. Developed during the eugenics, birth control and pro-abortion crusades of the 20th century, it reached its contemporary culmination in various theories of sexual liberation. It is widespread in contemporary thought and sees anti-Catholicism not as a prejudice, but as a tool to be utilized to denigrate Church teaching in the public arena.
The number of sophomoric sites spewing anti-Catholicism and generally anti-Christian views is legion. Run either as one-man shows on personal websites or organized more professionally for profit, these sites are generally witless attempts at satire.
In mind-numbing detail are a host of traditional anti-Catholic cites. From rural churches and personal websites, to sites for fundamentalist publishing houses, the traditional anti-Catholicism that was said to have died with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 thrives on the Internet. A major website is for the Jack Chick Company. Chick does not bother to engage in honest dialogue, or honest argument, over Catholic beliefs. The Chick website, like so many others, peddles bombastic charges against the Church as knowingly teaching false doctrine and purposely sending souls to hell.
Much of the anti-Catholicism on the traditionalist Internet sites is not, for the most part, an attempt to theologically engage Catholicism, a perfectly legitimate and sadly necessary discussion in a divided Christianity. This is simply old-time anti-Catholic nativism that has a primary form of argument that refers to Catholicism as a conscious, knowing Satanic plot to undermine Scripture. Such leaves little room for healthy and honest exchanges.
An army of individual pastors and their local churches have put up sites dedicated to tradition anti-Catholicism. One of the most loathsome is from Pastor Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Phelps has made a name for himself for decidedly homophobic hate speech. Its Internet address is godhatesfags.org. Phelps refers to the Catholic Church as a "fag" church and claims that a third of Catholic priests are actively homosexual, seducing young boys and women.
There are numerous websites by alleged ex-Catholics that engage in evangelization aimed specifically at Catholics. Most use anti-Catholicism as their primary means of attack. Very few rely on a positive presentation of a faith to which they hope to convert Catholics. For the most part, they simply – very simply – attack Catholic beliefs, present a distorted view of Catholic practices, and re-write history from an anti-Catholic perspective.
The common thread running through these "conversion" sites is the viciousness of the attacks on Catholic beliefs and practices. These sites present an image of Catholic beliefs as essentially pagan. They constantly portray the Catholic priesthood as corrupted by sexual deviancy and the Church as a conscious effort to deceive people in order to oppress them.
Anti-Catholicism also finds its way into the Internet’s crazy world of militia groups and radical right-wing zealots. Though much time is spent on these pages with anti-Semitism and racism, Catholicism shares in their vicious attacks.
There are websites from traditionalist Catholic groups that often borrow the language and approach of traditional anti-Catholic sites. Some of these sites represent followers of the late Archbishop Lefebvre and are formally schismatic. Their primary aim is to attack the Church today as being heretical and the Mass as celebrated contrary to traditional Catholic teaching. Their attacks on the Church and its members are vehement, and often raise accusations of "Masonic conspiracies" or satanic infiltration.
From the ex-Catholic left, the attacks on the Internet are mostly from a secular perspective, and usually driven by pro-abortion or a gay agenda. Sites for "recovering Catholics" simply assume that any thinking person will have left the Church, and offer advice often centered on a supposed sexual liberation.
Anti-Catholicism remains an effective tool of America’s elite. In that sense, it is allowed to persist because it remains acceptable. The anti-Catholic bigotry of a Jack Chick is easy to condemn. But anti-Catholicism is not confined solely to those fringes on the Internet. There are any number of strictly secular websites with particular secular agendas that routinely engage in anti-Catholic rhetoric.
Dittos!!!
Clarion Call to Christians in the Freeper Wars: How to Win the Culture War--Who, then, is Our Enemy?
As a spokesmen for the liberals within the Church, I always assumed that Greeley supported the dissenting movements favoring married priests and women priests. This column is a real eye-opener. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this marked a moment of real change for Fr. Greeley? Never underestimate the power of divine grace.
Look at what's been happening. All this coming out about the church is NOT a bad thing, it's a good thing. Once evil is exposed it can be attacked and removed.
= )
Going to Mass now is an honor. The fact that some bigots may be getting their jollies with each sordid revelation only takes them further away from true faith. What we believe has not changed, even though some of our nominal leaders have not lived up to standards one would normally expect. Most Catholics have remained faithful and despise these perverse crimes as well as the coverups making the headlines. Catholicism proper has nothing to do with the homosexual agenda which made these terrible things happen.
Agreed!
I am energized to pray more fervently. I am finding each daily Mass a greater gift from Jesus than the one previous. I want to know the Catechism inside out. But even more than that -- I feel I need to memorize the four Gospels. If we move into a time that is much more anti-Catholic and indeed anti-Christian -- I may need to know them by heart.
Unfortunately, I don't believe they know how to read.
When you're next in Washington, D.C. go look at the Washington Monument. After you have thanked God for George Washington, and, I would suggest, walked up to the Cathedral to him, stood at its base with your palms against the cold stone, and looked up -- it's a great view, then step back and take it in as a whole.
You will note the color of the stone changes about 1/3rd teh way up. If you ask the Park Service, you will be told that this is so because construction stopped just before the Civil War, and when the work was recommenced, the quarry had been excavated to a different stratum, so although the stone is the same, the color is different from that point up.
If you press for more, perhaps, but unlikely, perhaps the Ranger will allow that the construction stoppage was not caused by the Civil War, but by lack of funds and disagreement by the committee that was running the monument. I doubt you will learn anything more from any of the Rangers there.
Actually, what happened is that the Pope sent a stone to be placed in the building in honor of George Washington. It was from the Vatican and was engraved, "Republicae Americanae" (or something like that, my Latin don't work).
That the Pope would have any place in the momument to the great George Washington was greivous and serious to members of a certain political group, the American Party, aka "the Know Nothings." In the middle of the night, around 1854, they raided the construction site, tied up the watchman, nabbed the Pope's stone, broke it into pieces and threw it in the Potomac River.
They next effectively took over the committee and in shock at what had been done to accept the Vatican's gift, shut it down. Those outraged by their acts also shut down support for the project, and so the building remanied a stump for 20+ years.
So when you gaze upon that marvelous building and see the difference in color, remember that built into the monument to the nation's founder is also a monument to the great struggle he championed, the equality and rights of man, and the freedom of religion.
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