Believing Too Little and Believing Too Much (Plus: Surprise! Pope Benedict Doesn’t Hate Gays)

By
Omri Ceren
– March 25, 2007Posted in: Jewish Politics, World News

We’ve been hearing a little bit about the belief gap again. The idea is that what separates political groups groups today is not what the believe, but the degree to which they genuinely commit to their believes. We’ve talked about this before in the context of Pope Benedict. The reason he causes so much consternation – even though he’s incredibly thoughtful and soft-spoken – is because multiculturalists in the West have a genuine problem wrapping their minds around really believing an ideology.

So you get gorgeous works of intellectual rigor like this:

Benedict has hardly retreated from the culture wars. To the contrary, he teaches that the “Truth” (with a capital T) is accessible to the Christian and found within the bosom of Catholicism. There is no love of ambiguity in Ratzinger’s heart, nor will there be in his teachings as Pope. In the 1990s, he was shocked by some of the theological ruminations he heard from bishops, especially those from Asia, which he thought obscured the distinctiveness of Catholicism’s claims.

Oh the horror! As if the leader of world Catholicism should doubt either the existence of divine truth or that Catholicism has some sort of special relationship to it. What – exactly – is the Catholic Pope supposed to believe? That Catholicism isn’t somehow special? Wouldn’t that lack something in the way of, you know, Catholicism? (we’ll pass on the the “capital T Truth” phrase, but suffice to say that it’s an almost certain admission, albeit unintentional, of having spent too many hours in the echo chamber of humanities seminars)

The rest of the article is about how Pope Benedict’s hatred of homosexuality has been not so much exaggerated as totally, totally. The Vatican’s statements on homosexuality have been very carefully designed not to exclude homosexuals:

Benedict’s approach can be seen in last autumn’s Vatican document banning most gays from seminary and ordination. The text came from one of the Vatican’s dicastries, or departments, and it was rendered as a “prudential judgment,” not as a doctrinal claim. Indeed, there was almost no theology in the document. Nonetheless, it echoed many of the right wing’s fears about the effects of homosexuality on culture and suggested there was a link between homosexuality and the recent clerical pedophilia crisis, a line that Weigel and Neuhaus have pushed for years. But Benedict did not issue the document in his own name, nor even approve it “in forma specifica.” He merely ordered its publication. Thus, the text carries more weight than, say, the guidebook to the Vatican museums, but many bishops have felt free to interpret the text in a way that guts it of its clear intent. And Benedict has said not a word about these more liberal interpretations. Benedict’s unwillingness to crack down on homosexuality has caused consternation across the right.

Here’s where the author makes a critical mistake – one that’s pretty clearly the result of sloppy pop academic theory. He thinks that this is evidence that Benedict is softening towards doctrine – that this somehow makes him less of a “strict” believe. Exactly the opposite is going on.

The very essence of healthy religious ideology is having people make very strict doctrinal statements livable through creative nudge-nudge wink-wink interpretation. Think of Judaism’s elaborate laws for carrying on Shabbat, which are doctrinally and textually sound but seem to contradict plainer interpretations. The danger, here, is in believing too much – in not being able to establish a certain distance between you and your beliefs. Down that road lie honor killings, the destruction of ancient rock statues, and fanatical war.

So how are we to distinguish between the multicultural excess – not “really believing” – and the fanaticist problem – believing “too much”. This is a tension that has to be handled on a case by case basis: what is the excess in any particular situation?

But that doesn’t mean we can’t describe or judge certain sensibilities. The attitude of chic disaffection is just pathetic. The sneering blue state disdain for “those people who fly flags” or “those saps who put up yellow ribbons” is a large reason why it will take Democrats a generation to make inroads into the South. Some things – patriotism, freedom, civilization – should be taken seriously.

But the nudge-nudge wink-wink of religious loopholes is a totally different dynamic. Religious Catholics who find ways not to implement the Vatican’s understated anti-gay statements are doing so based on the strictest Catholic exegesis. Orthodox Jews who avail themselves of loopholes in Shabbat law do so based on the strictest Talmudic readings. This is not disbelief or irony – it happens totally within the highest standards of Orthodoxy (and is again totally different from reform Jews or liberal Catholics who just ignore doctrine, telling themselves it’s the name of “higher” values like free thought or love). The reasons that people give themselves for their own beliefs and actions actually do matter.

References:
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic – Confused? We’ll Translate: He Believes in God [MR]
* BENEDICT THE ECUMENICAL. [TNR]

Previously:
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic – So Catholic That He Actually Thinks Catholicism Is True
* Bankrupt in the marketplace of ideas?
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic – The Imbecility of Interfaith Dialogue

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