Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Slippery Slope, Church of England Edition
MR published a series of over 40 posts about Pope Benedict XVI's speech and the ensuing anti-Papal riots. These posts included an extensive unpacking of the speech itself, as well as criticism of academic and media reactions to the controversy. 39 of those posts are categorized and indexed here.
We know what you're thinking. You're thinking that we're being hysterical, and that there's no reason why people can't have as much leeway as they want in deciding their faith for themselves. Well, it might surprise you to learn that you're wrong and we're right. Again, religions are social institutions. There's a give and take with individuals, but too much permissiveness and they get stretched too thin - and then they snap. Before last week, we would have been hard-pressed to convince you of the practical viability of this theory - it's coherent and robust analysis, but it's difficult to really imagine it playing out.
And that's how you get statements like the New York Times line that we just will not drop because it is just. that. stupid: "a doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue". Because they understand very little about the lived realities of religious communities, their tensions and practices, they don't really see why you need everyone to have a 'uniform Catholic identity' just to have Catholicism. And they'd undoubtedly find our explanation a little shrill and pedantic [stop nodding please - it hurts our feelings].
At some point, the idea that the way to save a crumbling Christian Europe is to make everyone more Christian stopped being self-evident. We have no idea when this happened, but we have pretty good theories on what the consequences will be. Of course, theories are really beside the point ever since the Church of England decided to run a clinic on how to make your religion die:
A priest with the Church of England who converted to Hinduism has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. The Rev David Hart's diocese renewed his license this summer even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda and daily blesses a congregation of Hindus with fire previously offered up to Nagar, the snake god. He also "recites Gayatri Mantram with the same devotion with which he celebrates the Eucharist", according to The Hindu, India's national newspaper. The Hindu this week pictures him offering prayers to an idol of the elephant god Ganesh in front of his house. However, he still believes he is fit to celebrate as an Anglican priest and plans to do so when he returns to Britain.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when the tension between individual and social norms break down, and permissiveness is the rule of the day. Of course he recited pagan chants while celebrating the Eucharist - he believes both. How can he possibly believe both? Because he 'feels' it (trust us - it is not because he has discovered a rigorous way to merge Hinduism with Catholicism... no, we don't have to check - just take our word for it). It's so rare that you get photographic evidence of an ostensible Judeo-Christian holy man actually violating two of the Ten Commandments at the same time. We close this post having realized that yet again, our best efforts to come up with an absurdly unrealistic example of Leftist "multicultural tolerance" and "interfaith dialogue" are shipwrecked on the shoals of their real-life mind-boggling stupidity.
