Religion and Intolerance

February 6, 2006

Religion and Intolerance

Idea Review

The Need for Moral Relativism

Lorenzo Albacete, a Roman Catholic priest writing in The New York Times, has put forth a fascinating if flawed defense of Pope Benedict XVIth’s encyclical “God is Love”. His commentary correctly states that the resistance of many non-believers to religion centers around the idea of the intolerance of Christianity and other religions. “For them,” Albacete writes:

what makes Christianity potentially dangerous as a source of conflict and intolerance in a pluralistic society is its insistence that faith is reasonable — that is, that it is the source of knowledge about this world and that, therefore, its teaching should apply to all, believers and nonbelievers alike.

We non-believers feel this point acutely. So much of life in the 21st century seems dominated by religion that those of us who are concerned about preserving the democracy of truth are voices crying in the wilderness. Albacete’s point cannot be overemphasized.

The problem comes about when Albacete offers his (Benedict’s) solution to this problem–just ignore it. “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred, this message is both timely and significant,” Benedict writes. “For this reason I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and which we in turn must share with others.”

The article goes on to suggest that the way to respond to these charges is to show that God’s love is truth. The spirit behind such an assertion is noble and well meaning but also ineffective and frankly dangerous, for as long as religions make truth claims their believers will permit themselves all sorts of violent and despicable acts (see my earlier post on the Muhammad cartoons) because they claim to know the truth.

The only way religion can cease being the instigator of violence is to stop being the fount of truth. Only when religions assume a smaller and less important role in our lives will the killing and burning stop. One cannot but believe that it was religion and only religion that allowed the murder of abortion clinic doctors or the horrors of September 11th. The burning of western embassies across the Middle East and the death and destruction in Israel and Palestine are the result of a blind and foolish faith, a conviction that religion equals truth. How ironic that the God that brings comfort to believers should bring so much suffering to the rest of us. Every act of violence committed in the name of religion gives us non-believers a greater determination to harden our hearts to its tyranny.

Perhaps instead of being intolerant of non-believers religions should start being intolerant of the evils that result from belief. How much more effective religions would be if those who feel anger and intolerance directed such anger and intolerance against the source of such intolerance–religion itself. To put it bluntly: why can’t religion put up or shut up? In other words, why can’t religion stop preaching about the sins of others, and start focusing on really making a concrete difference in human lives? Where are those who give up wealth and power for service among the poor? Where are bridges built, the schools renovated, the meals made in silent humility before the wonders of God? What happened to turning the other cheek? Why are those of us skeptical of the claims of religion always drowned in its empty rhetoric?

Religion today is showing itself to be merely an ideology, as full of the arrogance and hypocrisy of other passing fads that grab the mind and give it delusions of grandeur. Why does religion claim so much but do so little? Better I think if religion claimed less, if it had the courage to understand that until it proves itself worthy of the name of truth it is simply one way among others. Since it clearly does much harm it must do relatively more good to be worthy of anything more than disdain.

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Hazlit

Essays

free speech, moral relativism, Religion

5 responses to “Religion and Intolerance”

Father Joe

May 8, 2006

Your post is silly. You seem to suggest that Christian faith is one and the same with oppression and murder. While certainly there have been abuses by believers, the message of the Gospel is the antedote to oppression, war and murder. Communist dictators also renounced religion, and yet this did not prevent the oppression of whole nations and the murder of millions (as under the purges of Stalin and Mao).

You can certainly disagree with the truth claims of the Church; but to relativise the Gospel would be to eradicate faith altogether. That is not the answer. Indeed, it is the corrective of the Gospel that we are to turn the cheek and love our enemies that I doubt your humanism would ever understand.

Toleration does not mean anarchy. Without the guidance of Christian faith, abortion, infanticide, capital punishment, etc. would be sins committed with no or little challenge. Even torture, so often remarked about in films and bigoted histories, was usually more the action of states than of the Church. If you look at the ancient canons, you would see how the Church tried to set limits to abuses in this regard and today, begs a wholesale rejection of such intimidation.

If Christianity and its revelation is true; your rejection of it and the watering down of the message will not make it less true. If it is false, it will pass away of its own accord. Two thousand years of faith attests to its staying power. The Church has sustained and is the mother of Western civilization. The answer to the Islamic threat today is not to reject all religion; but to return to the heart of the Christian kerygma and to practice what has long been preached.

Reply
Father Joe

May 10, 2006

CHARLES CARROLL:

Thanks for your comment to my post. I hope you enjoy vigorous debate. You are of course entitled to your own opinon about what I said, but I remain unconvinced that my post is silly. You will have to do better than that to change my mind.

FATHER JOE:

I have gotten to the age where I am unsure that debate results in much if any fruit. So often it seems to merely make opponents more entrenched in their positions. In retrospect, I am not so sure I was seeking an exchange of polemics as I was merely wanting to offer a corrective, or if less problematical, another perspective to the discussion of religious faith, intolerance and relativism.

CHARLES CARROLL:

My main claim is just exactly what you seem to oppose–you, like so many of your bretheren, seem to believe that religion is more about preaching than about doing. Your ideas about kerygma show this. What happened to the imitation of Christ? If Jesus is so wonderful why don’t true Christians behave like Jesus and drive out the wealthy and live lives of poverty and humility? Don’t you believe that a religion that tells you what to do but does not practice what it preaches is a bit hypocritical?

FATHER JOE:

Yes, I know we see things from opposite polarities, that is why I offered a comment (at the older Blog site). But you would misconstrue my position if you think I hold “preaching” over “doing”. The stress on “doing” has even become a popular challenge on shirts, key rings, hats and what have you: WWJD or WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?. I used to have a poster that said, succinctly, “If Christianity were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I agree with you, there are too many so-called believers who, to use a cliché, “Talk the talk, but do not walk the walk.” It is one of the great scandals of Christianity, including celebrities and politicians to the average Joe in the pews, or more likely asleep in bed on Sunday morning. G. K. Chesterton asserted that the problem was not that Christianity had failed, but that it had yet to be tried. This does not devalue the inherent truthfulness and power of the Christian message; rather, what we observe is that weak and sinful people populate the Church just as they do outside her embrace.

As a Catholic, the whole kerygma of faith is focused upon the revelation and work of Christ. It is not a passive message, but one that demands proclamation, repentance, conversion and active discipleship. The Christian religion is not merely a philosophy or a vague sectarian belief system; it is ultimately based upon the person of Jesus Christ. Every believer is called to imitate Christ in walking with him, even unto the Cross– first, in love and obedience to God and second, but inseparably from the first, to love one’s neighbor. The Church seeks to extend the mercy and salvation of Christ. We need not worry that the grave will consume us. While we are a people who live in hope; nevertheless, eternal life is a gift that brings joy to the true believer in the here-and-now. Like Christ, the true believer is to become a sign of contradiction to a world that places material gain and pleasure over the basic needs of the poor and the pain and oppression that so many suffer. As the late Pope John Paul II said, the Church has a “preferential option” for the poor– the little ones of the world who are so often ignored and/or abused.

I have a library of books that chronicle the lives of saints, men and women who sought to imitate Christ. Sometimes, even non-Christians like Mahatma Gandhi, were moved to imitate elements from Christ’s witness, particularly in loving others and in seeking non-violent ways of dealing with inequality and evil. It is true that we are not all Mother Teresas; but every Christian is called to the same holiness, nonetheless.

Even Jesus did not condemn the rich man who went away empty. All he did was remark about how hard it was for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. And yet, we know that nothing is impossible for God and so we leave the question of individual salvation or damnation to him. People may have possessions; but spiritual poverty means not allowing those things we have to possess us.

There are many bishops and priests who practice what they preach; indeed, I would say this is usually the case. The Popes, while living at the Lateran or St. Peter’s, have very simple apartments and the late Pope’s personal belongings would have fit in one small traveling bag. Compared to many ministers, priests are usually the poor men in any given community. They try to keep their focus on Jesus as their true treasure beyond measure and the pearl of great price.

CHARLES CARROLL:

The essence of your argument then becomes the traditional Christian one–since so many believe in religion it must be right.

FATHER JOE:

Actually, I offered no proofs, either for the existence of God or for the “rightness” of the Catholic religion. I simply stated the obvious, that people of faith posit truthfulness to their confessions and creeds. Even if a majority of Catholics or Christians defected, which is currently the case (at least on some level), this in itself would not nullify any objective truth possessed by the Church. Obviously, theological truth is not the same as either scientific or philosophical truth. You cannot put God under a microscope but it might be possible to reason toward the existence of God. Faith is more difficult still, because while the Church’s endurance and the presence of the miraculous offers some substantiation, it is still reckoned as a divine spiritual gift. Obviously, those given the gift of faith would consider its tenets as genuine. Vatican II’s DECLARATION ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY and ON ECUMENISM represented a true movement of the Church’s mind above the singularity of opinion that was sometimes enforced in a rough and intolerant manner, just as it was pursued throughout civil society in general. Freedom of conscience and freedom of religious expression have become central themes for the Church today, albeit never to the extent of religious relativism or indifferentism.

CHARLES CARROLL:

And you slip from this belief of the rightness of religion into justifying all sorts of immoral actions–war, torture, pedophilia, etc.

FATHER JOE:

It is true that wolves have also entered our ranks, and some of them are very sick, but this does not negate the value of the Church or of her message.

Nothing about immoral actions can ever be justified. It is just that the “rightness of religion” as you coin it, is not exhausted or utterly corrupted by the “wrongness of believers”. We are all sinners. Jesus called sinners to himself. The Church simply does what Jesus did. We fill our churches with sinners. We tell them that they need to repent. They need to make a firm amendment of life. We tell them that conversion is possible– maybe not all at one time– but a lifetime process of metanoia.

If the Church were to embrace radical relativism then she could make no claims at all. She could not even speak out against generally recognized evils because all such judgments would be stripped of any compelling claim to truth. This is already happening among dissenters. Fornication, homosexual acts, contraception, invitro-fertilization, cloning, abortion, partial birth termination, infanticide, forced sterilizations, capital punishment, unlawful war, slavery, the subjugation of the poor, ethnic and racial cleansing, racial and gender discrimination, racial segregation, genocide, euthanasia, etc. You might differ on some of these issues, but radical relativism would strip the Church and believers of any participation in the public forum. We might disagree about what the truth sometimes is; but the solution is not to silence the Church and to blanketly nullify any and all of her claims.

CHARLES CARROLL:

I am not suggesting that Stalin/Mao were not terrible and cruel, but I can’t see that religion is any better than these dictatorships.

FATHER JOE:

Have you ever volunteered at a Church-operated soup kitchen or shelter? Have you ever helped to clean bed-pans at an AIDs hospice run by the Sisters of Charity? Have you given up time to teach retarded children? Do you visit and console the sick and the dying? Would you stop by a nursing home just to play cards or talk with a person who is lonely and afraid? This is where you find the living Church and faith. This has been my life. It is not enough to sit back and judge the Church; if one is to have an intelligent opinion, then the hands must get dirty and the heart must break. Otherwise, we are only viewing false caricatures and chasing shadows.

CHARLES CARROLL:

How to explain the Crusades, the Islamic empire, the problems in the occupied territories, wars in Africa, Darfur, the church pedophila scandal, and George’s war in Iraq apart from a religious impulse? How does religion make better people?

Certainly many abused the Crusades for personal wealth; and yet, others saw it as a necessary move to preserve the Holy Land and the Christians that were still living there. It made possible a century of safe pilgrimage to the holy sites and finally, even in defeat, with the permanent placement of the Franciscans as stewards of the holy sites. I cannot speak of the Islamic empire, and while the Pope has said they worship the same “one God” as Christians and Jews, I would not view their religion as one truly inspired and revealed by God. Consequently, I would be the last one to function as an apologist for Islam and for the abuses of some of its adherents. I wholeheartedly agree that the African conflicts and the holocaust in Darfur are horrendous evils; and yet there are Catholics working for peace in those lands and trying to relieve the suffering. Bishops and others have urged an end to the violence and for assistance from the rest of the world. Indeed, in some cases it seems that the voices of Christians are the loudest in crying for help and an end to the senseless murder and mayhem. People of various religions differed about Iraq and both Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) were strongely opposed to the invasion.

No one in the Church can rationalize or justify the abuse of children. I agree with you about how terrible it is. But no one ever said that Christians are perfect or all holy. There have always been rascals in our ranks. Sinners and hypocrites exist in every organization. Even now, with tightened measures to protect children, can anyone say that there is a foolproof way to insure that it will never happen again? No school or business or church could ever say so. However, without the voice of the Church, how much worse might things be? And yet, as the voice of the Church is rejected, we seem to be returning to the old paganism where defective children were left to die from exposure and where a wealthy elite dominate society and wastefully exhaust its resources.

What if Christianity is replaced in Europe with a fanatical Islam? What happens to the human rights we cherish? Not all religions are the same, despite how you seem to lump them together. Even our definition of a martyr is different. While the terrorists of 9-11 thought that by killing thousands they would earn a place in heaven and have a host of virgins to deflower; the Christian view of a martyr is one who dies forgiving his murderers. There is a difference. Oh, and while we believe there is joy in heaven, the principal reward is to see God.

Does religion make people better? I like to think so, but such is not always the case. Have you ever read a good book about saints? You might find a few cases there. Or, the problem might be the kind of Christians you hang out with. As for myself, I have known self-possessed selfish people who put aside manipulation and violence for cooperation and compassion– all because of the Gospel.

This post looks to much like a debate for my liking, I only wanted to offer my perspective. I do not presume any ability to change your mind on the given topic. It is my sense, however, that while you may not be a believer, and I do not know this for sure, that you may be one of those “people of goodwill” that Pope John XXIII once mentioned– who would be willing to work alongside Christians in creating a world where men and women can live in peace and freedom with each other.

Pax et Bonum,
Father Joe

Postscript– Did you know that back in colonial days, the richest man and a Catholic in the thirteen colonies was CHARLES CARROLL of Maryland. His cousin John became the first Archbishop (Baltimore) in the U.S. Charles Carroll was a close friend of George Wasgington. Indeed, when the colonial congress was bankrupt, Charles Carroll interceded at Washington’s behest at Valley Forge with food and supplies to provide for them during the harsh winter. Washington remarked that had he not done so, the revolution would have ended there. Just a tid-bit about a namesake. Take care!

Reply
Father Joe

May 10, 2006

ADDENDUM

That paragraph from Charles Carroll at the end, “How to explain the Crusades….” should have been immediately followed by my name, FATHER JOE and then “Certainly many abused the Crusades….”

I was in a rush and made the typographical omission. Sorry.

Reply
Cy Quick

May 31, 2006

If the foundation be built on sand the house is not secure. In Genesis Chapter 1 we are expected to believe that a hyper-genius capable of creating sub-atomic matter would curse the Earth with thorns and thistles. Only a moron would fail to see anything wrong with this.

We have the laws of physics. We have cause and effect in a constant flow of particles. We have scratched the surface of knowledge.

Those who are certain that the surmises of ancient men who lacked the microscope and the telescope are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are to be pited, but also feared. They showed no mercy in the hunt for heretics. Sane people cannot afford to allow them any quarter.

I place my hope in China. Our fellow citizens of Earth, the Chinese, have brought in free enterprise. They are working hard at other reforms. Let us hope that they do not weaken on their determination to oppose the cancer of theism.

cyquick.word.press.com

Reply
Luz Kent

January 9, 2009

hi there! good luck

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