Month: May 2005

Maybe it’s the cold medication talking (I’m taking a sick day), but Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle and I actually agree on something: that local alt-weekly newspaper eye’s latest editorial is cheap Catholic-baiting.

The

editorial starts with that typical

unresolved-rebelling-against-my-parents annoyance with the media

coverage of the Pope’s funeral and turns to challenge the figures on

the number of Catholics in the world:

But we imagine

you did see something or other of the funeral of John Paul II and the

induction of his successor in recent weeks, and that’s because there

are putatively 1.1 billion Catholics around the world. That’s one-sixth

of the world’s population. Closer to home, Statistics Canada figures

that almost half of our population — 12.8 million — is Catholic.

Which means papal doings would be of great interest and importance.

Ditto various Catholic issues, like abortion and birth control and

same-sex marriage. When priests and bishops speak, politicians and the

media tend to watch and listen.

But if they shifted their eyes

from the pulpit to the pews, they’d see something at least as

interesting as anything being said. They’d notice there’s almost no one

there. If they did a little digging, they’d also figure out that those

numbers — 1.1 billion, 12.8 million — are bogus.

This

is bold talk coming from a free alt-weekly dumped all over town that

probably boasts about the size of their readership when selling

advertising space.

However, that’s not the main thrust of their

article, which is “You’re probably not really Catholic, because you

probably do not buy into the tenets of the Resurrection and Ascension

or of Transfiguration. And since you don’t, we’ll show you how to

resign your membership in the Church.” Presumably after which we’d all

move to something more fitting with the eye editorial board’s aesthetic and political criteria.

Would eye ever publish an editorial telling people to waltz into a Passover seder and challenge the veracity of the ten plagues that were visted upon Egypt

in order to make the Pharoah let the Hebrews go? Would they suggest you

walk up to a Jewish friend, pat them on the back and say in a

condescending tone of voice: “Chosen people? You go on thinking that, honey…”?

I

would like to think that they wouldn’t and I consider that a good

thing. Of course, given the strange tendency of some progressives to

wander into anti-semitic territory, we may yet see such an editorial.

However,

if you really want to go after the religion that’s cool to practice,

try BCB — Big City Buddhism. Don’t get me wrong, I have no quarrel

with Buddhism, but I do with the people who practice it more as a fashion than as a set of beliefs, philosophy or approach to life. Such people exist, which is why one of the names in the McSweeney’s article, Proposed Indian Names for Certain White People

is “Thinks of Self as Buddhist”. Are you really a Buddhist if you don’t

buy into reincarnation — that His Holiness the Dalai Lama isn’t

version 14.0 of the same person? Would eye call you a

bogus believer if you don’t completely buy into the concept of karma, a

cosmic arbitration force/credit plan that guarantees that the good or

ill that you put into the universe will be reacted upon like Newton’s Third Law?

Probably not.

What rubs me most raw about this editorial is something that eye

would typically be against, and that is, the taking away of a group’s

self-definition and replacing it with an outsider’s one. It’s just

another strain of what they would typically decry: Orientalism, cultural appropriation or even the argument that I’m not really a Canadian.

I may not agree with all the policies of my religion’s official office,

but that doesn’t give you the right to make the call as to whether I’m

truly a member or not.

Only I get to do that, bucko.