Your Spittle is Showing

Inquisition-in-Reverse


Readers of Contra Celsum will well know that we are not members of the Roman Catholic denomination. But we acknowledge a unity with Roman Catholicism grounded upon the great catholic (that is, universal) creeds and confessions. We respect the current Pope, Benedict because he evidently and clearly takes these fundamental Christian beliefs very seriously indeed.

There is much that eventually will need to be debated between the Reformed and Roman Catholicism. As opportunities arise, within the bounds of cordiality, these debates and discussions will no doubt occur. We are glad the sword enforced sectarianism within Western Christendom of former centuries has passed away. We hope it never returns.

The outpouring of venom in some circles in the United Kingdom during the visit of Benedict has been something to see. Clearly there is an animus at work here that goes far beyond disputes and arguments over doctrines and beliefs. Frank Furedi--apparently not a Christian-- in one of his latest posts, analyzes the vituperative opposition.

Crusade against the pope: an Inquisition-in-Reverse

The campaigners against the pope’s visit have more in common with the fanatical Inquisitors of old than with Enlightened liberal humanists.

Frank Furedi

The current display of anti-papal prejudice is not only conformist. Worse than that, it is the kind of conformism that is usually seen amongst children who, under peer pressure, compete to see who can come up with the meanest phrase to castigate the playground scapegoat.

Consider the infantile exchange between anti-papal zealots who were recently asked what they would say to the pope if they met him. ‘Go home to your tinpot Mussolini-concocted principality, and don’t come back’, said the Grand Inquisitor of the new atheist sandbox, Richard Dawkins, who refers to the pope as ‘Mr Ratzinger’ and describes him as the ‘head of the world’s second most evil religion’. Not to be outdone, the journalist Johann Hari imagines that he is a policeman and declares to a pretend pope: ‘I am placing you under arrest for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and for your central role in the systematic cover-up of the rape of children across five continents.’ Francis Wheen would also like to don a policeman’s helmet: ‘You’re nicked’ is what he would say to the pope. Such role-playing is an endearing aspect of childhood; but when grown-ups behave like aggressive four-year-olds, publicly fantasising about throwing spiteful insults at another person, they are simply adopting the immature mannerisms of attention-seeking toddlers.

If all the extravagant accusations thrown at Benedict are true, then it seems he bears responsibility for virtually every evil afflicting the modern world. When he is not busy covering up the deeds of child molesters, he is sabotaging the work of embryonic-stem-cell researchers. He is apparently totalitarian, a manipulative homophobe, an enemy of women.

The promotion material for Peter Tatchell’s tendentious TV programme – titled The Trouble with the Pope and shown on Channel 4 on Monday – informs us that the pope is ‘manipulating and distorting’ the image of Cardinal Newman to ‘serve his own autocratic, homophobic leadership’ (the pope is in Britain primarily to beatify Newman). According to Tatchell’s programme, Benedict’s teachings are also directly responsible for large numbers of unwanted children. The press release tells us that Tatchell heard ‘from a poor Filipino family, headed by Wilma and Ramon, whose following of papal teaching against birth control has resulted in them having more children than they can care for adequately’. Oh, and Benedict also refuses to take a stand against the legacy of Nazism. ‘I am shocked that he has embraced Catholics accused of being soft on Nazism’, says Tatchell. Getting carried away with his melodrama, Tatchell warns: ‘This is a pope to fear.’

Tatchell has indicted the pope on the grounds that he is out of touch with British public opinion, is doctrinaire and believes in traditional conservative values. Consequently, the world would be a better place without him. Back in the seventeenth century, a French Catholic political theorist expressed a similar form of bigoted intolerance by stating: ‘I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong.’ That is more or less the message of the contemporary anti-pope crusade. The principal hallmark of today’s new breed of secular moraliser is unabashed intolerance, and a demand that everyone conform to their zero-tolerance values.

Now, Furedi self-consciously represents that strand of Enlightenment thought which eulogized tolerance. And in this matter he is intellectually sloppy. Those Enlightenment rationalists who argue for tolerance have generally been unwilling to acknowledge that tolerance is not an absolute virtue and it therefore requires limits, qualifications, and restraints. Freedom of speech, after all, which is a derivation of toleration, does not extend to shouting "Fire!" in the crowded theatre.

Moreover, Furedi should understand that the gross intolerance displayed by some against the Pope is a just-so end-game of making tolerance an absolute. An absolutizing of any ideological principle or belief by man results in tyranny. The fact that absolutised toleration becomes profoundly intolerant, whilst ironic, is deja-vu. But at this point in the discussion, Professor Furedi would be confronted with his Unbelief and rejection of the Triune God. God alone can reveal absolute principles without them becoming tyrannical in the sphere of the creature. But we digress.

Historically, religious intolerance was focused on denouncing deviant theological beliefs – for example the heresy of Pelagianism or Tritheism. Of course we still have this form of traditional intolerance today, but we now also have to contend with its younger cousin: intolerance towards religion. Increasingly, religion is indicted for taking its own doctrines too seriously – that is, for being a religion. Today’s opportunistic atheists even take it upon themselves to get stuck into the theological controversies of religions that they actually despise. So critics who claim to hate the pope go out of their way to reassure ordinary, genuine Catholics that they are only targeting Catholic leaders who force their traditional dogma on the church. Emulating the cavalier manner in which Western politicians explain to their Muslim constituents what true Islam means, anti-papal crusaders tell ordinary Catholics that they are on the same side and should all join in the battle against the forces of evil.

But of course, these secular moralisers are not really interested in the intricacies of theological disputes; they merely want to exploit them. Their mission is to call into question the moral integrity of their opponents, by depicting them as a malevolent force that violates the elementary norms of contemporary society. This is not theological criticism – instead the Catholic Church is denounced for the alleged threat that it poses to morality and health. So celibacy is attacked because it is deemed so unnatural that it makes priests suffer profound psychological distress, leading them to countenance suicide or paedophilia. The pope’s criticism of contraception is denounced because it encourages unprotected sex, leading to the spread of AIDS. In other words, Catholicism represents a health problem; it leads to the moral pollution of the innocent.

This, of course, is a variation of the "religion is evil" meme currently run by "new atheists". As always happens, when evil is absolutized and then tagged to a particular individual or institution (as the very incarnation of evil) the spittle flies. But worse, no invective or--eventually--action is deemed too extreme or inappropriate. First the demonisation; then the progrom.

Intolerance has always been fuelled by an irrational and visceral sense of existential disgust, leading to moral disorientation. In line with this, consider the words of the former agony aunt Claire Rayner, as she attempts to describe her feelings for the pope. ‘In all my years as a campaigner I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature’, she says, stripping this personification of evil of any human qualities. It is not really surprising that she casually concludes ‘that the only thing to do is to get rid of him’. The phrase ‘get rid of him’ is not a slip of the tongue, either – from the standpoint of a seemingly hi-tech but actually medieval moral crusade against the pope, getting rid of ‘evil’ is its own justification.

It is almost as if the current anti-pope crusade represents an unconscious mimicking of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition. Inquisitors are not interested in rational argument or a free debate. And the vitriolic invective hurled at the ‘second most evil religion’, as Richard Dawkins describes Catholicism, is similar to the passions of the old fanatical Inquisitors. Like the Spanish Inquisition, anti-religious fanatics are constantly on the lookout for secret conspiracies and plots. Johann Hari condemns the pope for orchestrating an ‘international conspiracy of silence’ in relation to clerical child abuse. And apparently that is only ‘one of Ratzinger’s crimes’. He is also responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa because he says that wearing a condom is a sin.

Furedi goes on to argue that there is a long tradition within Western Europe and within the Roman Catholic church "of fighting against papal authority in the interests of freedom and liberty." He cites the Conciliar Movement as an example. He says, "(T)he conciliar movement’s ‘principle of consent of the governed’ inspired future generations of thinkers to develop and push forward ideas about liberty."

In actual fact, the spittle-flecked declaimers of the Pope, represent the very evils which they claim are intrinsic to Roman Catholicism itself:

It is important to note the fundamental difference between the progressive demand for the institutionalisation of consent and the infantile gestures made by today’s anti-pope crusaders, who are actually demanding conformism. It is perfectly legitimate to criticise church doctrine on a variety of social and moral issues; no institution or individual should claim immunity from questioning and criticism. But adopting the ideology of ‘evil’ to dehumanise an individual and to pathologise his religion represents a form of Inquisition-in-Reverse.

Exactly. But we also note, in concluding, that the extremely perverse reaction provides a perfect underscore to the Pope's identity of a godless militant secularism as the great threat of our day.