As to the issue of hate, perhaps what is missing is the historical context. During the potato famine a huge proportion of the population of Ireland starved to death, needlessly, and relief was refused because it would just lead to more of these people with wierd beliefs. Irish Catholics were starved to death like you would drown unwanted kittens. When I was growing up, my dad would tell me that when his dad went down to the shipyards to look for work, there never was any until all of the Protestant lads who showed up had been hired. People in Ulster to this day are still killing each other over this stuff.
In the particular paragraph I picked out of Nelda's essay the things that bother me most and make me say that "hate language" is not such a stretch
are the tone of the language and all those images of violence. Destruction and taking down the idols. Who is going to do this, hmm? And if Catholics say "over our dead bodies" will they oblige?
This whole hysteria over statues is very disturbing to me. They are traditional, part of the way the faith is practiced. It is no more reasonable to harp on them than it is to ask an orthodox Jew to justify wearing a skullcap or to tell him that it's ok to eat pork now because "those days are over" and hey we know now what God *really* meant.
But. Since the question has arisen. After thinking about it it seems that yeah, Catholics make a distinction between "worship" and "pray" and Protestants do not. So let's start with some definitions.
worship - acknowledge as God
pray - talk to or ask favors of some holy entity
idol - a false god
offensive - things that are wrong and not easily ignored
Thus Janet Jackson's breast was not offensive -- it was easily ignored. (Nor am I sure that there is anything wrong with it, but that is another story) The religious beliefs of others are not offensive, because I do not concern myself with them and they are thus easily ignored. When people repeatedly try to bring me into some "true" church despite my polite refusal, they do begin to offend however.
True church. That is one of my favorites. A Catholic would ask how any church could be "the" true Christian church but the one founded by Peter?
And yes, I grant you all of its abuses over the centuries. I am not going to defend it. All of the Protestant reformist sects had a distinct point. When the Pope is selling indulgences, he is hardly the voice of God any more. But America is America even if it elects a bad president, and all of the evil and cruelty do not change the fact that the Church has always had a core tradition to which its adherents remained faithful. Having a point doesn't make the Protestants the "true Church." I can see no basis for that claim but massive arrogance. If anyone "fell away" from the true Church it was the Protestants.
Sure, it is possible that this writer was just saying we all need to come back to our spirituality at times. But why then make a point of bringing this up in a laundry list of "things I don't like about Catholics"?
So anyway. I have now been asked why I find the religious beliefs of others offensive. Here is the bottom line:
I don't.
I don't care if you believe in the Great Pumpkin. What bothers me is when you insist that *I* do. I know otherwise, and most of the time I don't bother to argue. But since we are talking about this, really. Where do people get off telling me what I believe, and then telling me I am wrong, not about the nature of God -- those disagreements are to be expected -- but in the way I describe the religion I was taught as a child? Why should I have to repeatedly explain to the same people that this is not the case? This "Catholics worship statues" thing is a particularly ingrained belief in some people, and I can't say that I understand the reason for that, unless it gives their sect an "other" to be the bad guy.
It has been suggested that some people think it is a sin to pray to anything or anyone but God. I suspect that these people are not making a distinction between praying and worshipping. I furthermore rather suspect that many people do in fact pray to Lady Luck, or to the weather gods, or to something of the kind. But, you know, I really don't care. All I can say is that if not it must be very lonely. And pedestrian.
"How do you suggest, in such circumstances, the fact of those brief exceptional lives that stand in every culture and time, very nearly the only justification for the human enterprise at all? who, if the truth were known, stood and stand with every man who seeks his own soul? who across the foul currents of blood and power, said their simple no; and often died for it? The absence of saints is among the greatest of losses to the consciousness of a whole culture; one way of putting our disarray."
(Berrigan, Daniel; The Dark Night of Resistance; Bantam Books 1972 p 35)
But I forget, there is that personal relationship with Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Umm. Who has nothing better to do than worry about whether I get my feet wet or whether I hit the number. Yeah. Talk about trivializing the unnameable.
Yes, I am mocking someone else's God now, very true. I am mocking the God of those who confuse mine with a clay idol, and insist on doing so when they are told otherwise. In the black and white simplicity of their worldview there is apparently no room for the concept that their religion can be wrong in some ways even if possibly right in others. That is why I think that this myth is so persistent -- many of the Protestant denominations teach it, and their teachings do not seem to allow for shades of grey. So when their adherents are told that their church has taught them somthing wrong, they simply reject the statement, because otherwise they would have to contemplate a church which is both right and wrong, and it is easier not to do so.
Why do they care what Catholics do anyway?
They should just leave Catholics alone. Notice that this is the first time in this thread that I have said that anyone "should" do anything. And meanwhile, hey, if Protestants want to worship a bearded guy in the sky, who am I to quarrel with this if it helps them? Whatever floats their boat.
It is also suggested that I seem to agree with the Catholic Church, give or take a few positions. Nuh-uh. I have used the word "we" several times so this confusion is understandable. But I choose, here especially, to remain an outsider.
I am a strange apologist for the Catholic church. If this were fourteen-something, there is no question in my mind that the Catholic Church would burn me at the stake. It is a patriarchal institution run by a bunch of evil old bastards and its gynophobic nature will never encompass a mouthy wench like me.
But yes, it is a very effective organization of evil old bastards. Not only that, but the best of them do sometimes talk to God, in my opinion. And "it is a great and good thing, dignum et justum, when one's life is so impregnated with the values of a tradition...as to be able to wrestle with the demons of his own (and others') lifetime." (ibid p. 155) My idea of God is almost straight out of Catholic teaching. I may refuse to belong to the institution, but perhaps I am one of the believers. And so I say to all the Neldas:
We are treated as impostors and yet speak the truth
As despised, and yet honored
As dying, and behold we live.
>
> Dana and I have been carrying this discussion offline, and she
> suggested I push it back live:
>
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