Am I the only one to notice that religions across the world have been even more of a nuisance—and, in a distressing number of cases, far more than a nuisance—than usual lately? At this point, it is hardly worth noting how Buddhists (yes, Buddhists) in Myanmar continue to persecute the Muslim Rohingya or how Israelis and Palestinians have resumed being at each other’s throats. (Our side isn’t doing so well either, as the purportedly secular French launch ever more irrational restrictions on the religious practices of Muslims in their midst.) But in the United States, we are facing outbreaks by both Catholics and Protestants against their perceived enemies that do not bode well for peace and stability in a nation theoretically founded upon the principle of religious diversity.
This past spring there was a brief kerfuffle whereby some Catholic bishops—who appear to have become considerably more extreme than their own laity—sought to deny communion to President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other supporters of abortion rights (all Democrats, as it happens). The movement quickly collapsed but left a bad taste in a great many people’s mouths.
Why, it was asked, were these bishops so obsessed with abortion and not with other apparently severe “sins” against their faith, such as support for the death penalty (which might rope in nearly the entire Republican party) or birth control? Surely it cannot be politics that motivated these bishops—that would be a most uncharitable assumption. And even they must be aware that 98 percent of Catholic women have used some form of “artificial” birth control (which is to say, not the rhythm method) at some point in their lives, so banishing them to the outer darkness would, at a minimum, be imprudent.
It does no good to note that there is quite literally nothing specifically about abortion in the text of the Bible—for, of course, it is the Pope’s “infallibility” that governs Catholic belief on any given issue. What he says goes. Decades ago, William F. Buckley ridiculed those poor Protestants who have “no magisterium to pronounce conclusions by which the faithful are bound.” Catholicism is, in short, the perfect religion for those who wish to relieve themselves of the burden of thinking.
The infallibility doctrine has some amusing aspects. It was not until 1822 that the Catholic Church acknowledged the heliocentric theory. This was exactly 279 years after Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was published. Imagine yourself a Catholic in the year 1822. One day you are obliged to believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth; the next day you are obliged to believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun—not because of any new evidence that has come to light but because a guy in a funny hat tells you to!
Catholic leaders seem to have forgotten that they themselves have a lot to answer for. I’m not referring merely to the pedophilia scandal, dreadful as that is; the derelictions of the church go way beyond this. When we hear of the barbarous conditions of the Catholic-run homes for “unwed mothers” in Ireland or the horrific fate of Indigenous children in Canada in schools mostly run by Catholics, we see what unbending religious dogma combined with political and social power gets you—not to mention the toxic mix of racism and religious prejudice that has generated untold death and misery for centuries.
Lest I be accused of anti-Catholic bias, let me now relate some ludicrous shenanigans on the other side of the aisle. It appears that the leaders of evangelical Protestant sects are only now becoming alarmed by the increasing number of their adherents who are latching on to the insane QAnon conspiracy theory, which tells of how Satan-worshipping pedophiles (of the Democratic persuasion) will be rounded up and, presumably, executed by a kind of messiah figure—none other than our former president. I imagine he will not be much inclined to come to the rescue riding on a white horse; a motorized golf cart seems to be his preferred manner of locomotion.
Difficult as it is to imagine anyone believing this foul-mouthed, orange-haired serial adulterer and inveterate liar to be a messiah, we must (unpleasant as the task may be) try to get into the mindset of these fear-consumed folk. Unlike some of Mr. Trump’s predecessors in the Oval Office, who merely solicited the votes of evangelicals without doing anything for them, the Donald actually did things—chiefly in the realm of the judiciary system. In essence, he was a useful idiot (in every sense of the term) to foster their cause. In any case, what other saviors do these petrified pietists have? One by one their sanctified leaders have suffered humiliating scandals, and their movement is faced with terminal irrelevance from declining membership and repeated defeats in the culture wars. It’s bad enough that you can’t set fire to the legions of heretics and infidels all around you; now you can’t even express prejudice against gay and transgender people. What’s the world coming to?
The heady days of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and The 700 Club are long gone. Evangelicals can no longer disregard poll after poll showing that the Nones (atheists, agnostics, secularists, and those ineffable “spiritual but not religious” folks) are by increasing margins a plurality in this nation. It is small comfort that you have gents such as Rod Dreher (The Benedict Option) telling them that their only recourse is to retreat into exclusive little communities and wait for the apocalypse that will in some unspecified manner overwhelm what Dreher tactfully calls “barbarian peoples” (that would be us). That apocalypse had better hurry up and get here; a significant proportion of evangelicals are getting on in years, with not a lot of time left to lord it over us on this earth. As for what happens in the afterlife—well, I’ll leave it to them to fantasize on that prospect.
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