From today's Guardian:

In a speech at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the pope also praised Britain for its role in fighting Nazi Germany and forging the postwar consensus, but warned again of the dangers of what he termed aggressive secularism.

The pope said that even in his own lifetime, Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

Driving home a point that is expected to be central to his four-day visit, Benedict went on: As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny'.

The quote was from his own encyclical on social and economic issues, Caritas in Veritate, published last year.

In what might be regarded as a less than warm endorsement, the pope noted that the UK strove to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms.

His choice of words echoes controversial comments made yesterday by a senior Vatican adviser who claimed Britain discriminated against Christians, and likened arriving in multicultural Britain to visiting a third-world country.

Apparently, Benedict internalized the values that he encountered during his brief participation in the Hitler Youth than has ever been publicly acknowledged. Within the British context, and, perhaps, to a lesser degree in the American one as well, multiculturalism is primarily identified with the social acceptance of Muslims. His condescending remarks about the cultural diversity of British society, as well as those of his advisor, Cardinal Kasper, are thinly concealed expressions of racism and Islamophobia. They are providing spiritual sanction for those in Europe and the US who perceive Muslims as a threat that must be denied the civil liberties granted to the rest of the populace. Beyond this, Benedict and Kasper are suggesting that Europe has been spiritually degraded by the immigration of non-whites from around the world in recent decades. As Benedict ages, and becomes even more cantankerous, we can anticipate even more baldly bigoted statements from him.

Benedict's remarks about aggressive secularism should be equally alarming. In them, we see echoes of the Nazi condemnation of the Weimar Republic. Nazis described the republic as a cesspool of decadence, fouled by the activities of avant garde artists, Jews, Communists and sexual deviants. He perceives similar perils in atheism, feminism, publicly accepted homosexuality and, in substitution of Judaism, Islam. His Freudian slip of exhorting Britain to fight secularism with the zeal that it displayed against the Nazis makes the association explicit. Of course, the notion that there has been an exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life is preposterous, yet another example of how some intolerant Christians describe themselves as victims of oppression if not permitted to impose social norms on everyone else.

Labels: Christian Fundamentalism, Europe, Islam, Pope Benedict XVI, Racism, Religion, United Kingdom

After his death, people, when asked to describe the essential characteristics of Pope Benedict, will emphasize his dishonesty:

The Vatican played down Pope Benedict's teenage membership of the Hitler Youth Tuesday after it was highlighted by Jewish critics of remarks he made about the Holocaust during his continuing visit to Israel.

An official spokesman withdrew an initial statement that the German-born pope had "never, never, never" been in the Hitler Youth after reporters pointed out that Benedict himself had said he was -- in a 1996 book on the then cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger.

Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, revised his statement to say that the pope had been signed up against his will and did not take an active part in the Nazi Youth movement.

"He was enrolled involuntarily into the Hitler Youth but he had no active participation," Lombardi said. "The Hitler Youth is not a significant experience in his life because he was not an active participant. It was just something that was done."

You'd think that the Vatican would have figured out how to deal with this by now, after all, the notion that resistance to Nazis was impossible, as asserted by Benedict's brother, has never been very persuasive:

There is absolutely no reason to think that Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is now or has ever been secretly a Nazi. Nothing he has ever said or done even remotely suggests the slightest sympathy with any of the basic Nazi ideas or goals. Any claim that he is a Nazi is implausible at best. However, that is not the end of the story.

While Ratzinger was not a Nazi in the past and Benedict XVI is not a Nazi now, there is more than enough reason to question his handling of his past. It appears that he hasn’t been honest with others — and probably not honest with himself — about what he did and what he could have done.

It’s simply not true that resistance was impossible at the time. Difficult, yes; dangerous, yes. But not impossible. John Paul II participated in anti-Nazi theater performances in Poland, yet there is no evidence of Joseph Ratzinger even doing this much.

Ratzinger may have done more than many others to resist, but he also did far less that some. It’s certainly understandable that he wouldn’t have had the courage to do more and, were he any average person, that would be the end of the story. But he isn’t an average person, is he? He’s the pope, a person who is supposed to be the successor of Peter, head of the Christian Church, and symbol of unity for all Christendom.

You don’t have to be morally perfect to hold such a position, but it’s not unreasonable to expect such a person to have come to terms with their moral failings, even the moral failings that occurred in youth when we don’t usually expect a great deal. It was an understandable mistake or failing not to do more against the Nazis, but still a failing that he hasn’t come to terms with — it sounds rather like he is in denial. In a sense, he has yet to repent; yet he was still considered the best of all the candidates for the papacy.

Through the selection of Benedict, the Church highlighted obedience to authority instead of a willingness to challenge injustice. Someone like Benedict, someone who acquiesced to the power of those bent upon the most horrific atrocities, was considered a superior candidate for Pope than someone who had displayed a willingness to confront it at great personal risk.

Not surprisingly, Benedict, despite his professed opposition to the war in Iraq, received Bush at the Vatican, taking him on an unprecendented tour of the Vatican Gardens. By making deference to authority a primary consideration in the selection of a Pope, the Church now finds itself embroiled in one embarassment after another, embarrassments frequently associated, as here, with a deliberate misrepresentation of the historical record. Or even worse, attempts to show the Church off to advantage by playing upon bigotry against the practitioners of other religions.

Labels: Israel, Neoconservatives, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion

Pope Benedict XVI is traveling through Africa, and, as one might expect, hypocrisy and insensitivity are accompanying him on his journey:

Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse, setting off criticism Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent where some 22 million people are living with HIV.

Benedict's first statement on an issue that has divided even Catholic clergy working with AIDS patients came hours before he arrived in Cameroon's capital -- greeted by thousands of flag-waving faithful who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in red dirt fields and jammed downtown streets for a glimpse of the pontiff's motorcade.

In his four years as pope, Benedict had never directly addressed condom use, although his position is not new. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, often said that sexual abstinence -- not condoms -- was the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.

''You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms,'' the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. ''On the contrary, it increases the problem.''

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease, as he answered questions submitted in advance by reporters traveling on the plane. His response was presumably also prepared in advance.

As noted elsewhere in the article, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide in 2007 were in sub-Saharan Africa, where some 22 million people are infected with HIV -- accounting for two-thirds of the world's infections.

I could go on and on about this, but that really says it all. People are dying because of this nonsense, dying in large numbers, and it is an ongoing outrage. There should be protests directed against the Church exponentially larger than those ignited by the sexual molestation scandals.

Labels: Africa, AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Sexuality

From Reuters:

Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

So, it seems that, when it comes to environmental issues and homophobia, the Pope and Rick Warren on the same page. Note also that Rick Warren has also been invited to give the keynote address at the Annual Martin Luther King Commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on January 19th. One can only imagine what the gay and lesbian community in Atlanta, and for that matter, elsewhere, feel about this voluntary legimization of one of the most notorious homophobes in this country .

Indeed, it is one of the most bizarre consequences of Obama's election, an emerging coalition of African Americans, descendants of the civil rights legacy of King, with fundamentalists, identified primarily for their bigotry towards gays and lesbians and hostility to reproductive rights. Interestingly, conservative Catholics remain in the background. Gaius observes that E. J. Dionne interprets it as an effort to generate fundamentalist support for a progressive economic program, but he remains dubious, as do I, and for good reason. Obama is, after all, a banker's president, as reflected by his moderate to conservative economic appointments.

Obama may achieve some short term tactical successes, but, in the longer term, it will be catastrophic. Beyond instigating conflict between African Americans and proponents of gay rights, such a coalition will crash into a brick wall of demography. Americans under the age of 40 are increasingly supportive of gay rights, more and more so as their age declines, and, consistent with such a stance, reject religious fundamentalism as well. Just as Southern Democrats branded the Democratic Party as a racist one for decades, Obama is in the process of staining the Democratic Party with homophobia.

There may be a compelling necessity for such an alliance. If Obama is going to implement economic policies primarily for the benefit of the financial elite, then, he requires something other than class interest to sustain his coalition. Conservative religious and social values, in other words. Hence, he has already displayed his willingness to use gays and lesbians, and their supporters, as foils to buttress his support in Middle America. But, in the end, as Tariq Ali often says in relation to some other superficially alluring, but ultimately impractical enterprise, it can only end badly.

Hat tips to Eli over at Left I on the News and Gaius at Undemocracy in America.

Labels: Homophobia, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion

Apparently, the Pope isn't going to let over a million dead Iraqis and millions of Iraqi refugees get in the way of good relations with his ideological soul mate:

Pope Benedict gave George W. Bush an unprecedented welcome in the tranquility of the Vatican Gardens on Friday before the U.S. president resumed his campaign to rally European support for sanctions against Iran.

Under tight security, Bush was driven from the bustle of Rome into the idyllic setting. As birds chirped, the two entered a restored medieval tower and held 30 minutes of private talks.

"Such an honor, such an honor," Bush said to the pope.

After the meeting in the tower, they stood on a terrace to take in the view of 44 hectares (108 acres) of manicured gardens, buildings, ancient walls and St Peter's Basilica that make up Vatican City.

Bush asked: "How big is it?" A Vatican aide responded: "Not quite as big as Texas." Bush then said: "Yes but more important ... this is spectacular."

The talks in the tower, walk in the gardens and a performance by the Sistine Choir as the two sat on wooden lawn chairs were a break with normal protocol.

It was the first time a meeting with a head of state at the Vatican was not held in the pope's private study and was meant to repay Bush for the warm White House lawn reception the pope got in April on his 81st birthday.

Perhaps, there is nothing ideological about the visit at all. Could it be, as the last sentence of the quoted article suggests, that the Pope is just vain?

Doubtful. Instead, the honors underscore a profound personal and political affinity between the two men. Clearly, the Church's reactionary struggles against reproductive rights and gay rights, basically the notion that individuals possess the capability of making their own sexual decisions without recourse to the heavy handed autocratic morality of the Church, take precedence over the horrors of the occupation of Iraq.

One wonders if this visit will result in another embarassing black eye for this Pope and the Church. As the article states, the Pope provided this unique honor to Bush during the course of his travels through Europe to solicit support for sanctions against Iran. The global media is full of stories about the prospect of an impending attack upon Iran to be launched by either the US or the Israelis. And, yet . . there is Bush, trading pleasantries with Benedict as they walk through the Vatican Gardens. So much for the doctrine of papal infallibility.

Labels: Neoconservatives, Occupation of Iraq, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, War with Iran

The mendacious Pope, at it again:

Pope Benedict XVI said in a statement on Tuesday that abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage are threats to world peace, on the same level as nuclear arms proliferation, environmental pollution and economic inequality.

In a 15-page message for the World Day of Peace, which will be observed Jan. 1, the pope links sexual and medical ethics to international relations and presents the nuclear family as the "first and indispensable teacher of peace" and the "primary agency of peace."

"Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of new life ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace," the pope writes.

This is an important statement that clearly sets forth the Vatican's priorities: dissent from Church doctrine on abortion, birth control and same sex marriage are transgressions that require progressive levels of discipline, but Catholic policymakers involved in nuclear arms proliferation and warfare are merely given the religious equivalent of verbal warnings. The apparent equivalency of the statement is revealed to be false by day to day Church administrative practice.

Or, to put it more bluntly, the references to nuclear arms proliferation, environmental pollution and economic inequality are just window dressing. After all, when has this Pope, or any major Vatican figure, taken Bush and Blair to task personally for invading Iraq and killing hundreds of thousands of people? Right, the Church just permitted Blair to convert to Catholicism.

On its face, the statement is comical, like most Vatican pronouncements on these subjects. The notion that the nuclear family is the "first and indispensable teacher of peace" has been historically disproved on too many occasions to count. Racism, religious intolerance, homophobia and anti-semitism, with their attendant expressions of violence, have been communicated to successive generations through the nuclear family celebrated by Benedict. Indeed, the purported necessity of protecting the family has often been invoked as a justification for them.

Furthermore, the family has been the centerpiece of consumption within capitalist societies. Modern advertising highlights appeals to familial concerns, such as personal safety, the education and comfort of children and social status, as a means of encouraging modes of consumption that are injurious to the environment, with an accompanying disinterest in the overall well being of society. One of the infrequently recognized aspects of neoliberalism has been its success in encouraging people to limit their social concerns to their immediate family.

Just as Stalinists and Maoists celebrated the rarely, if ever, found socialist man as the linchpin of their new egalitarian societies, Benedict exalts an idea of the family that has no relationship to the real world. His specific reference to same sex marriage as a threat to peace is troubling, as it suggests that violence and discriminatory behavior directed against them, while not publicly praiseworthy, should be considered the inevitable consequence of its proliferation. Gays and lesbians, acutely aware of their marginal societal status do not often act out violently, but people hostile to them do.

Labels: Iraq War, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion

Fortunately, I'm a secular leftist, enabling me to avoid having to rationalize, or otherwise engage, these sorts of embarassments:

Protestant churches yesterday reacted with dismay to a new declaration approved by Pope Benedict XVI insisting they were mere "ecclesial communities" and their ministers effectively phonies with no right to give communion.

Benedict issued this pronouncement just days after removing restrictions on the use of the traditional Catholic mass:

Jewish leaders and community groups criticised Pope Benedict XVI strongly yesterday after the head of the Roman Catholic Church formally removed restrictions on celebrating an old form of the Latin mass which includes prayers calling for the Jews to 'be delivered from their darkness' and converted to Catholicism.

All in a week's work for a Pope that has already denied the history of the Church's brutalities in the Americas, and sought to conceal the Church's practice of using violence to convert people in the Middle Ages by attributing it solely to Islam.

Labels: Pope Benedict XVI, Religion

Like most religions, the Catholic Church has an ambivalent relationship with its history. Some priests and parishoners have faith precisely because of the Church's failings, because they see themselves, their personal inadequacies and their attempts to overcome them writ large within the Church itself, while others consider faith so fragile that it is necessary to deliberately falsify the Church's past to create a sanitized image that does not unduly trouble the masses.

Unfortunately, it is becoming quite obvious that Pope Benedict XVI falls within the latter category. Last September, as described here, Benedict absurdly suggested, quite deliberately, that Catholicism, unlike Islam, has not relied upon violence and forced confessions to propagate the faith. He was engaged in the sinister enterprise of scapegoating Islam for the conduct of his Church, aligning himself with a neoconservative vision of the world. He was rightly condemned for it, and found himself subjected to the humiliation of having to apologize for his remarks several times.

Given that Benedict taught as a professor at three prominent German universities in the 1960s and 1970s, it strains credulity to believe that he is unaware of the Church's history of violence in Europe and the Middle East during medieval times. We would have to believe that, despite such an education, he remains ignorant of episodes like the forced conversion and expulsion of Muslims from Spain in the late 15th and early 16th centuries in order to assert that he is currently expressing such views sincerely.

Last week, Benedict traveled to South America, where he made a number of public appearances in Brazil. Again, as with his remarks about Islam, he revealed that he is especially troubled by the Church's history of violence and exploitation, and perceives an urgency about falsifying the record for the preservation of the faith. In this instance, the subject was, quite predictably, the Church's atrocious treatment of the continent's indigeneous people.

Here is Benedict's perspective:

Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.

Is it really necessary, at this point, to document the atrocities perpetrated in the Americas by the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Church since the time of Columbus, Cortez, De Soto and Pizarro? If so, go here for one example, or consider Benjamin Dangl's description of the the looting of the mineral wealth of Potosi in Bolivia by the Spanish in his recent book, The Price of Fire, wealth obtained through the mining of silver by slave labor, wealth that the Church gratefully received to build numerous ornate churches there among the impoverished.

In effect, Benedict has pulled back the curtain, and exposed the Eurocentrism at the heart of his Catholic vision. The indigenous peoples of the world should be grateful to have been brought along the paths of the Gospel, no matter how ruthlessly it was achieved, and, indeed, in order to aspire to the privilege they must suppress their own experience through a sort of collective amnesia. Accordingly, it is no surprise to discover that Benedict invoked an illusory narrative of benign Catholic modernization in the Americas to confront another Eurocentric social philosophy, Marxism. One gets the impression that, for Benedict, indigenous culture is an inpenetrable void.

Benedict's willingness to blithely erase the suffering of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from the historical record raises troubling questions in light of his own personal background. In 1943, at the age of 14, he joined the Hitler Youth, although, the BBC reassures us, he was not an enthusiastic member.

Even if we take this at face value, one wonders, did his youthful willingness to participate in the rituals of Nazism suggest an indifference to mass brutality when it was directed towards non-Christians? Did he perceive the Jews of Germany, like the indigenous peoples of the Americas, as outside the faith, and therefore, at the mercy of vicious historical processes beyond the protection of the Christian God? Did he, and does he, and one hesitates to say something so horrible, believe that the catastrophes that befell the Jews of Europe and the indigenous people of the Americas was partially the result of their persistence in rejecting the gospel?

Labels: Pope Benedict XVI, Religion

With the furor over the Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks about Islam, it is worth examining his speech for what he did not say:

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."

One need not have the education and intelligence of Tariq Ali to identify the omissions of one of the most profoundly ignorant public statements in recent memory:

The reaction in the Muslim world was predictable, but depressingly insufficient. Islamic civilization cannot be reduced to the power of the sword. It was the vital bridge between the Ancient world and the European Renaissance. It was the Catholic Church that declared War on Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Mass expulsions, killings, forced conversions and a vicious Inquisition to police the cleansed Europe and the reformist Protestant enemy.

The fury against 'heretics' led to the burning of Cathar villages in Southern France. Jews and Protestants alike were granted refuge by the Ottoman Empire, a refuge they would have been denied had Istanbul remained Constantinople. 'Slaves, obey your human masters.For Christ is the real master you serve' said Paul (Colossians 3: 22-24) in establishing a collaborationist tradition which fell on its knees before wealth and power and which reached its apogee during the Second World War where the leadership of the Church collaborated with fascism and did not speak up against the judeocide or the butchery on the Eastern Front. Islam does not need pacifist lessons from this Church.

Violence was and is not the prerogative of any single religion as the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestine demonstrates. During the Cold War the Vatican, with rare exceptions, supported the imperial wars. Both sides were blessed during the First and Second World wars; the US Cardinal Spellman was a leading warrior in the battles to destroy Communism during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The Vatican later punished the liberation theologists and peasant-priests in Latin America. Some were excommunicated.

So, after engaging in the laborious task of hacking through the underbrush of the language of Vatican pseudo-scholarship (strangely enough, eerily reminiscent, in its own way, of the purported dialectical analyses of Russian and Chinese Communist Party figures in the 1950s and 1960s), and discovering the avoidance of the most commonly known aspects of the history of the Pope's own church, it is evident that he is implicitly expressing one of the great historical fictions, namely, that Islam is singularly responsible for the legitimization of religiously inspired violence.

We must speak candidly here: the Pope's emphasis upon Islam as the progenitor of religious violence is as credible as the astronomy of Aristotle, and as offensive as claims of racial intellectual superiority and Holocaust denial. As Ali so bluntly observes, Islam needs no pacifist lessons from this Church. But why has the Pope embraced the deliberate distortion of history in a way that is so transparent? To what end?

Imperialism is the magic interpretative key to the discovery of the answers, as suggested by Ali's article. Through imperialism, the Catholic Church spread its faith all around the world at the point of swords held by the soldiers of Spain, Portugal and France. It is rarely recognized that the old adage, the sun never sets on the British Empire, first applied to the Catholic Church. Priests enriched themselves upon the slave labor of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with Father Junipero Serra being one of the most notorious examples.

Hence, the Pope sought to exploit the violence of Islamic fundamentalism as a means of trying to more effectively suppress the more odious aspects of the Church's own conduct. He was promoting a mythology of Catholicism as a religion that has inspired billions to spiritually identify themselves with it non-violently. Under this Pope, the Church cannot acknowledge the history of Western imperialism without condemning itself.

All of this should have a familiar ring, especially to Americans. It is the same propaganda exercise utilized by the neo-conservatives to justify the invasion of Iraq and the purported war on terror. An emphasis upon Islamic terrorism facilitates that concealment of the much greater evils of American foreign policy over the last 200 years just as it also effectively distracts from the Church's even longer association with imperial conquest and cultural destruction. It transforms the violence and coercion of American policy into the rhetoric of democracy, free trade and free association, just as the brutal proselytization of the Church is described as the liberating, divine discovery of faith by the individual.

Pope Benedict XVI has not yet joined his fellow neo-conservatives, and openly supported the violence of the present by reference to the violence of the past, but he came dangerously close to doing so in Germany, an accidental geographical symbolism of the most frightening kind, and his remarks may foreshadow even greater conflagrations just over the horizon.

Labels: Neoconservatives, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion