catching up on the news
Sep. 18th, 2010 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccResponding to a rant from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ang_grrr last night I discovered that the reason the UK media is currently alone in Western media in its' quest against Catholics (rather than Muslims) is that Pope Benedict is visiting there.
(I dunno, every time I see the word "Pope" my mental image is still of John Paul II rather than Benedict whatever-number-they're-up-to. Wonder how long that's going to take to re-set.)
I also caught up on the Elizabeth Moon thing, which seriously? Weird. (And kind of bizarrely unfocused as an article actually.) I think Obsidian Wings summed up the reaction to it best (and also gave an interesting account of the first wife of Mohammed, which is worth reading just for itself).
Those two things combined put me in mind of this very interesting article republished on vs the Pomegranate, about the anti-Catholicism in the USA in the 1800s. Catholics, you see, were Teh Evol. They worshipped a man in a frock, not the True God. They had no allegiance to the State, but only to Rome, making them inherently untrustworthy. A lot of them didn't even speak English at home! They were the reason for the calls for and acceptance of the separation between Church and State - give them an inch and suddenly Real True Americans would all be forced to swing incense while worshipping, and bow down to graven idols like the Virgin Mary. And the bastards were completely ungrateful that they were even allowed to build churches and worship:
Most worrisome, Catholics seemed insufficiently grateful for their ability to build churches and worship in a democracy, rights sometimes denied to Protestants and Jews in Catholic countries, notably Italy.
This sounds suspiciously like what Moon was saying (well in the last part of her article at least), and a hell of a lot like what's being said about Saudi Arabia and whether that affects where Manhattan should allow a community centre to be built today.
In the 1840s and 1850s these anxieties about Catholicism in American society turned violent, including mob attacks on priests and churches as well as the formation of a major political party, the American Party, dedicated to combating Catholic influence. This led to novel claims that the US constitution demanded an absolute separation of church and state—claims that stem not from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington but from nineteenth-century politicians, ministers, and editors worried that adherents of a hierarchical Catholicism might destroy the hard-won achievements of American democracy. In 1875, a decade after accepting General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, President Ulysses S. Grant publicly warned that Catholicism might prove as divisive in American society as the Confederacy.
And hello Tea Party.
Yes, I know historical comparisons are inaccurate at best. But it's amazing how much of a sense of deja vu I got reading the vs The Pomegranate article. Still, the end is hopeful:
It took Catholics more than a full century to attain their current level of acceptance and influence, and they made their share of mistakes along the way, occasionally by trying too hard to prove their patriotic bona fides. (Exhibit A: Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose name is now, paradoxically, a synonym for “un-American activities.”) But they earned their place, over the course of many decades, by serving (and dying for) their country, and building their own churches, schools and health care systems alongside public counterparts, which they also frequented and supported with their taxes.
Maybe in 50 years the Park51 centre kerfuffle will seem as quaint and dated as the anti-Catholicism rantings do to me now. I hope so at least.
Meanwhile, American Catholics helped transform parts of their own church that seemed at odds with the American freedoms they had come to cherish. An American Jesuit, John Courtney Murray, was decisive in shaping Dignitatis Humanae (1965)—the Declaration on Religious Liberty, in which the Second Vatican Council endorsed religious freedom for all people. In this sense, the American acceptance and encouragement of Catholic parishes and schools once seen as threatening, reshaped an international religious institution. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington once commented on how ironic it was that the papacy had become the greatest global champion of religious freedom in the final quarter of the twentieth century.
And meanwhile Muslims everywhere find ways to accomodate their faith with their lives in the 21st century. As do Christians come to that, and probably most other faiths as well. Despite what the Amish or the Wahabists, or any of the other fundamentalist mobs who want to go back to an imaginary past where everything was perfect and exactly like it says in The Book think, the majority of faithful want to live in the time that they're in and their faith and means of expressing their faith will adapt with them and their times. (And God knows the majority of fundamentalists have no problems using mobile phones, medical advances etc which have occurred post-Book.)
But going back to where I started: Read about Khadījah bint Khuwaylid. The first believer. A business woman. A woman who married a younger man, and, what's more, proposed to him.
Seriously, she sounds positively modern.
ang_grrr last night I discovered that the reason the UK media is currently alone in Western media in its' quest against Catholics (rather than Muslims) is that Pope Benedict is visiting there. (I dunno, every time I see the word "Pope" my mental image is still of John Paul II rather than Benedict whatever-number-they're-up-to. Wonder how long that's going to take to re-set.)
I also caught up on the Elizabeth Moon thing, which seriously? Weird. (And kind of bizarrely unfocused as an article actually.) I think Obsidian Wings summed up the reaction to it best (and also gave an interesting account of the first wife of Mohammed, which is worth reading just for itself).
Those two things combined put me in mind of this very interesting article republished on vs the Pomegranate, about the anti-Catholicism in the USA in the 1800s. Catholics, you see, were Teh Evol. They worshipped a man in a frock, not the True God. They had no allegiance to the State, but only to Rome, making them inherently untrustworthy. A lot of them didn't even speak English at home! They were the reason for the calls for and acceptance of the separation between Church and State - give them an inch and suddenly Real True Americans would all be forced to swing incense while worshipping, and bow down to graven idols like the Virgin Mary. And the bastards were completely ungrateful that they were even allowed to build churches and worship:
Most worrisome, Catholics seemed insufficiently grateful for their ability to build churches and worship in a democracy, rights sometimes denied to Protestants and Jews in Catholic countries, notably Italy.
This sounds suspiciously like what Moon was saying (well in the last part of her article at least), and a hell of a lot like what's being said about Saudi Arabia and whether that affects where Manhattan should allow a community centre to be built today.
In the 1840s and 1850s these anxieties about Catholicism in American society turned violent, including mob attacks on priests and churches as well as the formation of a major political party, the American Party, dedicated to combating Catholic influence. This led to novel claims that the US constitution demanded an absolute separation of church and state—claims that stem not from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington but from nineteenth-century politicians, ministers, and editors worried that adherents of a hierarchical Catholicism might destroy the hard-won achievements of American democracy. In 1875, a decade after accepting General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, President Ulysses S. Grant publicly warned that Catholicism might prove as divisive in American society as the Confederacy.
And hello Tea Party.
Yes, I know historical comparisons are inaccurate at best. But it's amazing how much of a sense of deja vu I got reading the vs The Pomegranate article. Still, the end is hopeful:
It took Catholics more than a full century to attain their current level of acceptance and influence, and they made their share of mistakes along the way, occasionally by trying too hard to prove their patriotic bona fides. (Exhibit A: Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose name is now, paradoxically, a synonym for “un-American activities.”) But they earned their place, over the course of many decades, by serving (and dying for) their country, and building their own churches, schools and health care systems alongside public counterparts, which they also frequented and supported with their taxes.
Maybe in 50 years the Park51 centre kerfuffle will seem as quaint and dated as the anti-Catholicism rantings do to me now. I hope so at least.
Meanwhile, American Catholics helped transform parts of their own church that seemed at odds with the American freedoms they had come to cherish. An American Jesuit, John Courtney Murray, was decisive in shaping Dignitatis Humanae (1965)—the Declaration on Religious Liberty, in which the Second Vatican Council endorsed religious freedom for all people. In this sense, the American acceptance and encouragement of Catholic parishes and schools once seen as threatening, reshaped an international religious institution. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington once commented on how ironic it was that the papacy had become the greatest global champion of religious freedom in the final quarter of the twentieth century.
And meanwhile Muslims everywhere find ways to accomodate their faith with their lives in the 21st century. As do Christians come to that, and probably most other faiths as well. Despite what the Amish or the Wahabists, or any of the other fundamentalist mobs who want to go back to an imaginary past where everything was perfect and exactly like it says in The Book think, the majority of faithful want to live in the time that they're in and their faith and means of expressing their faith will adapt with them and their times. (And God knows the majority of fundamentalists have no problems using mobile phones, medical advances etc which have occurred post-Book.)
But going back to where I started: Read about Khadījah bint Khuwaylid. The first believer. A business woman. A woman who married a younger man, and, what's more, proposed to him.
Seriously, she sounds positively modern.
