Barack Obama isn't the only presidential contender with a prominent bigot among his supporters. John McCain accepted the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who regularly attacks the Catholic Church as "the great whore of Revelation," a "false cult system," and "the anti-Christ." McCain deflected concern about Hagee's bigotry simply by saying he does not endorse all the opinions of people who back him. "He says he has never been anti-Catholic," McCain added, "but I repudiate the words that create that impression."
Like the hatred spewed by Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, Hagee's diatribes are available on videotape, but the mainstream media has barely reacted. The likely reason: reporters, editors and intellectuals aren't much interested in attacks on Catholics. Minorities, women and gays are eligible for sensitive concern. Catholics aren't.
Consider some recent provocations, mostly publicity-free. Comedian Bill Maher said Catholics are schizophrenic for believing that in communion they are "drinking the blood of a 2000-year-old space god." A skit on Utah public radio said Mike Huckabee's family likes "deep-fried body of Christ -- boring holy wafers no more... Mike likes to top his Christ with whipped cream and sprinkles." In Jerry Springer: the Opera, which played for two nights at Carnegie Hall in January, Jesus is an effeminate gay-like character who walks around in a diaper and is hailed as a "hypocrite son of the fascist tyrant on high." The Virgin Mary is introduced as a woman "raped by an angel," and Eve fondles Jesus' genitals.
Bearded guys dressed as nuns are regular feature in gay parades, sometimes accompanied by a swishy Jesus. In painting and sculpture the bashing of Christian symbols is so mainstream that it 's barely noticed. Attacks on the Virgin Mary include Mary coming out of a vagina, Mary encased in a condom, Mary pierced with a phallic pipe, Mary as a bare-breasted Jesus figure presiding at the Last Supper and an Annunciation scene with the Archangel Gabriel giving Mary a coat hanger for an abortion.
Jesus on the cross can be wrought in chocolate ("My Sweet Lord"), as a homosexual sex scene, or on the cover of the New Yorker as the Easter Bunny. Advertisers and movie-makers feel free to mock Catholics too. An ad for Equinox fitness clubs featured young women dressed as nuns sketching a naked man while staring at his crotch. Elizabeth: the Golden Age took many swipes at Catholicism. Writing in the Newark Star-Ledger, critic Stephen Witty wrote that the film "equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monk and glinting crucifixes. There's even a murderous Jesuit...a second cousin to poor pale Silas from the Da Vinci Code."
Off-Broadway has produced many plays about corrupt cardinals and stupid nuns. In most cases these are not real plays, just political screeds by angry gays and feminists lashing out at the church over abortion or gay rights The anti-Catholic play almost writes itself. Just have a gay Jesus or a lesbian Mary have sex with a pope, Judas, or a farm animal, and contract a venereal disease or go to work in an abortion clinic. Nobody in the art world will object. Instead there will be lots of talk about artistic freedom.
The establishment in this country needs to do a bit more thinking about civility and transgression. Believers can expect open and honest argument about their doctrines and social teachings, and frank criticism about poor behavior. But it is not civil or honest to attack a religion by trying to degrade its symbols. The word for this is propaganda.
John Leo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and editor of the Institute's web site on universities, Minding the Campus.
This is part of the "free pass" to which I referred in your and my other discussion on this matter. Religion has largely been off-limits for discussion regarding its reasonableness -- discussion of such matters being considered politically incorrect, or rude, or disrespectful, etc. But the problem with that is that it has been one-sided, and religion has been allowed to infect public political discourse to the point of lowering it to a ridiculously stupid level.
Yes, Catholicism should be kept out of government, as should all religious dogma. The Catholic Church has earned its bad reputation through its historical bloody oppression of free thinkers and entire societies.
As for the idea that Gays or Blacks or Jews in any way are slammed the way Catholicism is, perhaps in Europe c. 1900. But not today. And it was wrong then, and it is wrong today. When people try to validate a wrong they have gone far in taking part in the long, sad history of humanity that every culture, belief, civilization, race, and creed has been party to.
And Catholicism has as much right to speak to politics as anything. The liberalism of yesterday is indeed a dead belief when those who carry its banners speak in terms that even McCarthy would never have imagined. But perhaps its ideals were simply too lofty. For ultimately, all cultures eventually try to divide up between those with stars on their bellies and those without. And many who never grace a church door today believe, apparently, it is due to that glaring star smack in the center of their bellies
He had his finger chewed off. Not bitten off, chewed off. Still he went back to his mission on a second go round and wound up with an ax in his skull.
I know it doesn't match a naked chocolate Jesus, and it was the nudity that was the real problem, even though all we hear about was the chocolate.
Can we get real here? Read the Bible about Sodom, starting with the war they fought and lost. Sort of a 9/11 plus. Read Ezekiel 16 and Isaiah 1 about the sin of Sodom and you'll realize we're out doing them in arrogance and economically and duplicating them in dealing with the stranger in our midst, a la Genesis. When will God check out the cry coming up from our land?
The main thing is that there is nothing visibly Catholic about most of the examples you give. The items being ridiculed are Christian, pure and simple; even a Muslim could take offense at the mocking of Jesus and Mary.
Second, much of the "Catholic-bashing" we've seen from the liberal side is from lapsed Catholics (e.g., the elephant-turd Mary of Brooklyn Museum vs. Rudy Giuliani fame) who are expressing their conflicted feelings about the faith they were raised in. (Bill Maher is half-Catholic.) Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way of sheltering this internal conflict to the confines of the Catholic world.
On the other hand, the Left should bare in mind that Catholic-bashing has been part of the "progressive" spirit, from Cromwell on to the present day. Perhaps the next time a liberal non-Catholic is ready to make a crack about the Church or its hierarchy, s/he should pause and reconsider.
It has taken morally indefensible positions such as opposing condoms in countries were women have no ability to deny sex to their husband or other powerful people.
It has cheapened the institution of marriage by turning a beautiful gift from God into hateful means of excluding people from basic necessities such as health insurance.
Because the Catholic church has used as its justification for these actions their belief in special moral authority based on the bible and certain symbols they put those things into play. Because the Catholic church is asking people to commit suicide because of these symbols by not using condoms we must be able to mercilessly be able to attack these symbols and ridicule them.
I oppose such things as interrupting someone in the practice of their religion, or trying to bother with them on the way to church. But I think that such things as gay people dressing up as nuns is certainly very appropriate.
I am troubled by the difference in the treatment of Catholics and Muslims. I do think I have more tendency to show deference to the Muslim religion than the Catholic religion. I think this arrises out the fact that Catholicism is seen as much more a part of our own culture, familiarity may breed contempt.
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Jesus wasn't catholic.
Of course, they will say that the evil done by a hundred bad men, blots out the accomplishments of millions, this is their proof, their indictment, in full. Is that rational? Isn't that their big thing, rationality? And God bless the nuns, they are the Greatest!
You think maybe that's because minorities, women and gays are being systematically oppressed, whereas the Catholic Church has been a world - wide empire for two millennia? Maybe?
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/22/placa/
The major difference between Hagee and Wright is that Hagee is the buddy of a Republican.
I was raised Catholic, and while I haven't been a church-goer for years, there is still a lot in the Catholic cultural tradition that I value and respect. There's also a lot that I object to. And if you're going to bring your religion to bear in the public sphere, it will be subjected to criticism, some of it thoughtful and respectful, some of it satirical, and some of it mean-spirited. That's life: no one's views enjoy the protection and privilege that you seem to be implying that yours should.
True, it's better than being thrown in prison or enslaved or buggered, but we live in a civilized country here.