…quoting from Jay Leno, “What do Bernard Law and Mark McGwire have in common? — They’re both retired Cardinals.”
Interesting to contrast the current status of this particular branch of organized big-time religion (Catholicism), which has had a 900-year headstart on Islam. Some aspects are ossified, some are radically active, it has had schism upon schism, its spread has reached every conceivable geography.
And while in North America it would not generally be identified with militarism or terrorism, there certainly are places where local governments see the Church as either fomenting or supporting armed rebellion – whether we are speaking of Northern Ireland or some Latin American nations. The Church probably had a supporting role in the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
In heavily Catholic Poland, the Church provided the Solidarnosc labor union and human rights movement the critical sanctuary to hold meetings and network, throughout the anti-Soviet uprising of the 1980s.
In other lands, e.g. Italy and France, the Church is identified with the most conservative, entrenched sectors of society.
And there are still other views: I have little doubt that the various Protestant and Catholic branches of Christianity are fused, in the minds of many a Middle Eastern Muslim, with the militaristic projection of “Western” culture – ironic for a religion with roots no less “Eastern” than Islam. (Just ask any Native American if Christian missionaries came from the east or the west.)
Catholicism in the US has always bred a spectrum of activists, from essentially communist or socialist type champions of the poor, to faith-directed antinuclear and antiviolence organizers, to the “Onward Christian Soldiers” types who are ready to brandish the “just war” stamp of approval at the drop of a hat.
And now, with war-and-peace crises, rampant plagues, famine, and other reports of disaster issuing from every time zone on Earth, what are the 35 million or so Catholics in the US in an uproar over? The home town Church acting like a fortress to shield those within its ranks who prey on children! As one priest in Boston said, it is like something out of the Dark Ages.
Instead of millions of bucks headed out to the streets to fight disease, hunger and poverty, those millions of bucks will go toward making some restitution to the thousands of adults who are suing the Church for crimes against their own childhoods. It’s like a class-action suit against an asbestos manufacturer, where the damage isn’t visible for 20 years after the exposure. If this isn’t VIOLENCE committed under the banner of a religion, I don’t know what is…
More’s the pity!
