‘A whiff of Weimar is in the air’ ~ Gore Vidal
Get it, liberaltine jellyfish?
[So, putting aside the issues of child rape, abortion, pre-marital sex, birth control, etc: for the purposes of this little bit – the Catholic Church is psycho on matters of sex – to the point of destroying themselves – pretty dumb and unfortunate – that.]
E.J. Dionne, the house liberal Catholic at the Washington Post got a little squishy today in recounting Cardinal Ratzinger’s record as JP2’s dogma enforcer. On the surface, it’s not hard to see why. Most American liberals are all about what they think is “freedom” and “choice” – BMW or Prius; cocaine or ecstasy? – they might mumble some here and there about standards and responsibilities. Oh no, that would imply being “judgemental” or “preachy.” Can’t have a core – that would be “reductionist.” We’re rather well into post-post modernism, kids.
Wanna know why it’s “uncool” to be liberal? It’s not even so much due to the phalangists daemonizing y’all – it’s because y’all won’t fight for much of anything – y’all haven’t had any guts for three decades.
Happily, some things seem to be changing a little bit. Harry Reid seems to be getting ticked off – Dean, Byrd, Feingold & Boxer have been enraged for a couple years. Maybe y’all can slap around the stupid Clintonites for us – get them with the program of fighting the “dictatorship of America.”
The point is that even old dinosaurs like Ratzinger are well to the left of almost all liberal Democrats on stuff like: war, poverty, economic exploitation, vacant consumerism, unrugged individualism, tiresome hedonism and endemic selfishness. That’s a pretty friggin’ long list. Now, they don’t support liberation theology as much as I’d like, but at least they talk about the “preferential option for the poor.”
As for individual Catholic priests in places like Latin America – many are heroic. They were massacred in scores by American-backed death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala – 180,000 corpses – by good Judeo-Christian bastards like Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Eliot Abrams, John Negroponte, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz & Richard Perle – killers who would be hanged if the Nrnberg standard were applied to their intentionally evil acts. They were and are being killed by American arms in Columbia under Clinton and – no surprise here – the world’s greatest serial killer at present: George W. Bush.
Ratzinger said this: [Christians – humans, really – today are] “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine… The little ship bearing the thoughts of many Christians has often been shaken… [in the form of ideological forces] from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertarianism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism.” [In our era, he said] “a dictatorship of relativism is being formed.” [Which the faith must oppose.]
Well, good. If you put aside the sex stuff and the Sky Ghost-boosterism – which, ok, you already know to dismiss – the underlying argument is a convincing one. Among rich people, today’s Americans are the worst; the Euros have the Enlightenment tradition to fall back on – they’re “post-Christian” – that’s why their states and people don’t get around to breaking the first commandment all day, every day. That’s because they’re far more culturally advanced than contemporary Americans – this equation was inverted as recently as 1947 – when the west Euros embraced social democracy and we took over their stupid old empires.
What better description of Americans – Evangelical Protestants, first and foremost – ‘libertarianism,’ ‘ radical individualism’ and ‘vague mysticism.’ But it extends well into the lib-left too – so deeply that it might not be immediately obvious to some. This country is the king of selfishness – maybe that explains why we’re the most “religious” and least spiritual society in the West. American religion – like American society – is greedy. It’s all about getting your own “streets of gold,” here and in the hereafter. That’s why so many smart people scoff at real existing – and increasingly fundamentalist and obscurantist American Christianity – it’s morally bankrupt.
It has no answers because it can’t even fathom some pretty basic questions. Questions like:
- How do you advocate economic plunder via crony capitalism and embrace the One who threw the money lenders from the temple? Answer that – tax free, millionaire televangelist politician-preacher man. Answer it!
- Or try: how do you say, as that fat old toad Jerry Falwell did – ‘God is Pro-War’ and claim to embrace the revolutionary, long-haired hippy Prince of Peace?
- And then there’s this: how do bloated, self-righteous upper-middle class Americans – who look so far down on the poor and struggling – how do those jackanapes dare to claim the One who healed the sick, comforted the prostitutes – and was nailed on a cross of gold by the elite – by people just. like. them. How do these delusionals claim Him as their own?
Jesus thought he was dying for the wretched of the earth – he didn’t volunteer for death to have his vision hijacked by the power structure – but that’s what happened. And that is why there’s no reason to believe – turn your back on their piddly little god. God – I neither know nor care whether some old guy with a beard is up there – could be in each of us – you can see immaculateness easily enough – through the windows to the soul.
Most people do religion in this country in one of two ways – it’s like changing channels on the boob tube – jump around, never really reflect on anything. That would be such a downer man, such a buzz kill, bro.
They either go through the motions every once in a while, or every Sunday or they coddle the lowest form of fundamentalist bottom feeding. It’s utterly pathetic – and morally lazy. A small minority take it seriously – I respect them.
Since he’s a defensive, stubborn German – more than a little hedonistic rot in that society too – Ratzinger misses the point that “absolutism” is all over the place too – stuff like Falwell & B-Law and bin Laden. I’ll take relativism over that crowd – but relativism is nothing to brag about. It’s lame and escapist.
Standards in conduct matter – for individuals and states. Who are the greatest relativists? W. Bush is a flagrant liar – his ethics aren’t even “situational” – they’re non-existent. Ratzinger is aware of this – as was JP2. Again, the pope is the least evil world leader.
April 21, 2005
Stephen Bender [send him mail] is a writer based in San Francisco. You can find more of his work at his website.
