I suppose it was more than ten years ago that the waiters at the café I was managing started telling me about “Raves.” These were all-night, drug-infested parties where the music was loud and, to my Bach-attuned ears, obnoxious, the incidences of copulation or near-copulation many, and the over-doses not uncommon. They were called “Raves” because the kids were so high they were raving mad. I thought of these raves when I read Bill Donohue’s screed in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” columns yesterday.
Here is how he begins: “There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside.” Nihilists. Sabotage. Beat down. All of it finishing with that dark, McCarthyite fear of traitors working “from the inside.” This is raving mad.
I am sure that what struck most people about Donohue’s column, which is evidently recapitulation of themes from a book he is promoting, was his relentless indictment of “secularists.” He writes, “Yesterday's radicals wanted to tear down the economic structure of capitalism and replace it with socialism, and eventually communism. Today's radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place. In that regard, these moral anarchists are an even bigger menace than the Marxists who came before them.” He equates gay activists with the Marquis de Sade and claims their primary motivation is a “pathological hatred of Christianity.” He complains that Hollywood no longer makes pro-Christian movies except, of course, Mel Gibson who got “run out of town.” (Not, of course, because of the movie but because during an arrest he unloaded, on tape, a catalogue of anti-Semitic tropes that would have done Father Coughlin proud.) Donohue says of the ACLU: “Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution.” And on and on. Nothing new here except the even higher decibel levels of paranoia cum nostalgia that has long been Donohue’s calling card.
I think much of this is unfair. I do not see anyone who wants to “annihilate American culture” although the titans of Wall Street did a pretty good job of crippling it. I think the ACLU is misguided but I think they are sincere in their very different reading of the First Amendment, and I see why reading a few columns by Donohue would convince many to write a check to the ACLU. He says that pro-life Catholics are not welcome in the Democratic Party but I have not been shown the door and, much more importantly, neither has Sen. Bob Casey.
But, what is really problematic with Donohue’s screed is not his caricature of contemporary culture but his caricature of Catholicism, although it is worth noting that Cardinal Francis George, in his new book The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture, makes the point that following the Master, we must love the culture we seek to evangelize. Donohue’s words are the words of a Puritan not a Catholic. We Catholics have confidence that we bring Christ to the world and to the culture, that in our encounters with the lost and the poor we find a privileged place for the operation of grace, we have, in a word, hope. Donohue’s dark vision neither sees any hope nor encourages any hope.
I was having a conversation with Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete the other day about an event being sponsored by Crossroads Cultural Center tonight in New York to present Cardinal George’s book. I encourage anyone in the NYC area to attend. At one point in our conversation, Msgr. Albacete said that one of the problems with our culture today is that we have lost the “taste for life” and that the Church must find a way to rekindle that taste if we want to invite people to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord,” that is, if we want to evangelize. Catholics are not Puritans. Cardinal George grasps the fact. Pope Benedict grasps that fact. Alas, Bill Donohue is too busy being angry to even notice it.
As far as sexual morality, it exists not for God but for people, because God loves people and because He is intrensically happy regardless of our moral behavior. When the Catholic hierarchy creates dogma that ignores this fact, the people in the pews are right to ignore it. Secularism is good here, since it prevents violence on the part of religious authorities to enforce their idealistic and wrongheaded views.
Bill Donohue seems to discount that the President of the United States started his career as a Catholic Charities employee and the Vice President and the Speaker of the House are Catholics and Democrats. Six Justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic - the last of which was appointed by the current Democratic President. Of course he has his own version of who is or is not Catholic. He is not entitled to an opinion on this, however.
Finally, it is the liberals in the Church and public life (and the voting booth for Obama) who see economics as the solution to abortion. We are begining to win the day - starting with health care reform and the raising of wages for the least among us. Don't count out our ability to increase the number of liberals once our economic agenda gets done. By the way, it is false to alledge that abortion and ideology are linked - many conservatives resort to abortion when their children end up pregnant, or when they cannot afford yet another child. Indeed, given the economic status of many conservatives, the Democratic economic proposals may not actually help our cause - however we are not so callous as to have political motivations for doing good.
God is intrinsically happy regardless of our moral behaviour.When Hitler slaughtered six million of His own God did not bat an eyelid so blissfully happy was He.
When the scandals of sexual abuse enraged American Catholics who considered the torment of the children God merely thought to Himself "Lighten up guys".When the Bombs dropped on Iraq and left so many wounded and wreaked havoc on that nation Our Lord was giddily tutting at all those who were not so intrinsically happy.
The next time a woman finds her husband cheating and goes crazy the husband should just respond" why dont you act in a more Godly way?".I am going to finish this message now to go and beat up some old people and whilst doing so I will meditate on the serene face of My Saviour.
There is some room for debate as to whether expanding health care for the working poor will expand abortion. I will grant it that it will be easier to pay for one - however for 75% of families, it will be part of a scenario where abortion will no longer be seen as economically necessary. Frankly, abortion is so cheap in a clinic setting that not having insurance is a detail.