The pope recently visited with Nacy Pelosi, and the statement he released shortly thereafter should be a wake up call to moderate theists everywhere. Though the statement was only two paragraphs long, it contained a very clear mandate to judges, jurists and lawmakers to either oppose abortion or be in opposition to official Catholic dictate.
Let’s not make light of this. The pope has directed all Catholics, that is, over one billion people, to legally oppose abortion. This marks a clear break with the traditional Catholic approach to abortion, but more than that, it represents a line in the sand and a clear challenge to liberal theists everywhere. If you read my essay on moderate religion, you have at least heard my argument that moderate theists are directly responsible for the actions of fundamentalists. If you have not read it, please do. It relates directly to this post.
The pope has essentially issued a challenge to liberal Catholics (and liberal theists everywhere) by issuing an ultimatum — either be more conservative, or be wrong. The implications are startling, at least to me. In my life, I’ve known dozens, maybe hundreds of practicing Catholics who have a very liberal view of the world, and wouldn’t think of imposing their views on other people. Now, in order to keep their Catholicism, they must either go against their beliefs or abandon Catholicism for a more liberal version of Christianity, or live as hypocrites.
It seems that in direct contradiction to some of the pope’s recent gestures aimed at living peacefully with other religions (and non-religions), the real agenda is to continue widening the gap and to continue creating divisions.
Will this statement have any real impact in America? I don’t honestly know. I suspect that in the wake of the Bush Religiostupidified Regime’s abject failure to create a Christian Nation, it is a bad idea for the religious right to make any power plays at this time. Right wing fanaticism is not as popular as it was four years ago. I can only hope that the religious moderates in America will have the intestinal fortitude to stand united against divisiveness and religious intolerance.
I’m not holding my breath.
Eh. I’m underwhelmed with concern over this in terms of America’s political climate. The same American Catholics who have been largely ignoring conservative/rightist papal dictates for decades by supporting abortion rights, euthanasia and other rational ethical positions will continue to do so. Such moderate-to-liberal Catholics are hypocrites, yes – but they have seemed pretty comfortable with that cognitive dissonance for a long time, and I see no reason why der Popenfuhrer’s attempts to pull the church back into the Middle Ages should change that much.
Posted by G Felis | February 21, 2009, 11:15 pmI tend to agree that this will have very little impact in America, but to be honest, the worldwide implications scare me. It’s not as if we need another billion religious people pushing us towards fundamentalism.
More than that, I think the ideological implications of this are very scary. Maybe this won’t have an immediate effect, but for the rest of the Popenfuhrer’s reign, he has set the standard: Religious involvement in legal affairs of secular states is not only permissible, but mandated by God himself. Even if it’s just talk, it’s very, very scary talk.
Posted by hambydammit | February 22, 2009, 12:54 amWell, yeah, that’s scary talk – but there is really nothing new in the slightest about such talk from the Catholic Church. John Paul (George Ringo) II was every bit as ideologically conservative and politically pushy as der Popenfuhrer. He perhaps had a greater capacity for basic human empathy – although always limited by the strictures of his rigid ideology and its preconceptions – and he had enormously more charisma than his successor (who is a genuinely creepy Nosferatu-looking dude to boot), but remember that JP II hand-picked and groomed the former Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed him.
What I think is genuinely new and scary is not the Vatican, which has always had too much influence in political affairs around the world, but rather all the other conservative/fundamentalist religio-political forces have started to share and expand that sort of influence: conservative Christians in the U.S. under Bush, falsely-labeled “moderate” Muslims in the U.K. under Blair (and continuing under Brown), and fundamentalist Muslims in the U.N. since Kofi Annan left office.
Posted by G Felis | February 22, 2009, 6:30 amDo you have a link to that statement? I’d like to read the exact phrasing.
Posted by Teleprompter | February 22, 2009, 6:56 pmWell, personally, do not think that simply shrugging-off senator Palpatine’s remarks are currently a very good idea. The scary thing to me is that while most people tend to think of the Vatican as just some fading shadow of it’s former glory, in reality, it’s weathered the passing ages just fine.
Her influence isn’t nearly as large, but she’s still standing tall and proud, and still clearly thinks that she should be calling the shots.
The really bad part? Some individuals – including myself – are relatively sure that we’re on the cusp of a cascade failure of every financial market in the world, and subsequent collapse of every macro nation state. The Vatican is it’s own independent state, and still holds vast reserves of gold.
I’ll give you three guesses as to who just *might* decide to seize the opportunity to step into the vacuum of power?
I wonder if some of might find ourselves strapped to a breaking wheel some time in the future, damning Italy with all the profanity we can dig from our vocabulary for not tossing the Pope out on his ass when they had the chance.
Posted by Kevin R Brown | February 23, 2009, 7:27 amThat exact phrasing is not given. I think this article gives a little better perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/us/19pelosi.html?ref=politics
Here are some key quotation from the article:
In a statement, the Vatican said Benedict “briefly greeted” Ms. Pelosi and her entourage after his weekly public audience and “took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.”
The pope added that all Catholics, “especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society,” should “work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”
It seems pretty clear the pope thinks that it is a Catholic’s duty as a politician to create and support laws that criminalize abortion. It’s not clear what the consequences should be. In the past ignoring papal decree netted one excommunication. It seems like this would be an impossible feat today as most American Catholics would need to be excommunicated for having pre-marital sex.
Posted by MKandefer | February 23, 2009, 8:32 pm