Why is it?

First off, I'd like to start by begging Grim's forgiveness and indulgence.  I'm now FAR afield from why he granted me permission to post to his Hall in the first place.  A gracious host, he, and I am loathe to abuse that trust.

But I've been thinking (a dangerous prospect in the best of times); why is it that the media, and most especially the non-Catholic media, feels it is qualified to determine what the head of the Roman Catholic Church should or should not support as Church doctrine?  I suppose a lot of it is human nature.  We want people to believe as we do, and the choosing of a new Pope IS international news, so they feel they should comment on it.  By why is it that it seems to be Popes who get this scrutiny?

I can't even name the current Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church from memory, and I have no idea when was the last time they chose a new Patriarch.  But I CAN say, I don't recall any hand wringing about "will the new Patriarch support gay marriage?"  Likewise, I do not know who is the current Shia Grand Ayatollah.  The last one I recall was Ayatollah Khomeini, and he's been dead for decades.  Did anyone question the new Grand Ayatollah's stance on contraception?  No?  I can't recall any such discussion.  The current Dali Lama?  Anyone know his name?  His position on euthanasia?  I suppose I could look all this up, but it's actually irrelevant.  I know Pope Francis I's stance on gay marriage, contraception, and euthanasia.  The press won't let me not know it at this point.

But yet, none of these other religions led by a single figure receive this kind of scrutiny.  Why?  Is it just because there are 1.2 billion Catholics?  Is it because neither the Greek Orthodox Church, Shia Islam, nor Tibetan Buddhism are significantly represented in the US population?  I am honestly curious.

31 comments:

Grim said...

Mike:

First of all, you've misunderstood your warrant. You are welcome to post here at any time, on any subject you want to bring before the company of the Hall.

I may have granted you posting rights because you had a particular post in mind, but I certainly welcome -- indeed, encourage -- all of you with posting rights to bring forward whatever you would like to discuss with the company.

Second, I think you are partially right when you say that the Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members -- to put it another way, it is the largest non-governmental organization in the world. But that is a secondary reason at best.

The real reason is that the Roman Catholic Church stands at the very heart of the pre-modern Western tradition. Since the French Revolution, and carrying through Marxism and modern leftism, the Church is the great enemy because it is the living source of the Old Way. It is the stronghold and last bastion of everything the revolutionaries ever wanted to overthrow.

As long as the Church stands, their work is undone. There remains a great city of men and women who have considered and rejected their entire program.

The only similar religious authority that gets anything like this kind of attention is the Archbishop of Canterbury. But that church has largely bended its knee to secular opinions. Islam has not, but in addition to its lack of a formal leader, its members are not part of the Western tradition the elite are trying to invert -- to 'deconstruct,' as they say -- to destroy and remake in their image.

If you were an academic, you would say that the Church was the enemy of the modern world, and that the modern world will not be satisfied until it is broken to heel or vanished from the earth. But I won't say that, because words like "modern" and "progress" are words that are unfairly positive. The Church is very often right just where the world has gone wrong.

alethiophile said...

It's also true that the Catholic Church was Christianity, for the majority of its history still, and Christianity is deeply entangled with Western thought. Catholicism is in the DNA of the cultural tradition most of us spring from; it claims an antiquity quite possibly unsurpassed by any organization that still exists in recognizable form; and it represents, to one degree or another, a huge proportion of the world's population. There are good reasons for it to be considered significant above other religious organizations, whether you like it or don't.

MikeD said...

While I accept, and indeed expect a philosophical Marxist to think in those terms (the Great Enemy who stands athwart The Cause), I seriously wonder about individual reporters like Sally Quinn. Frankly, I fear it gives Ms. Quinn far too much credit with regard to philosophy and study to believe that she thinks in thinks in those terms. It may be unkind, but I don't really know that she puts much thought into those statements of hers at all.

After all, he point was that the Catholic Church faces irrelevancy if it doesn't change its stances on scripture to be more in line with her preferences. The idea that a 1.2 BILLION member religion is becoming "irrelevant" barely qualifies as even laughable. It's ludicrous. The SINGLE largest religious organization on the planet, and it's becoming irrelevant because they're mean to groups she supports? Really? 1.2 billion people say you're wrong, Ms. Quinn, but thanks for playing.

E Hines said...

I think there's another aspect to this, in addition to the points above, and it flows from an essential aspect of Christianity and Judaism--which heritage all those (Western) critics of the Pope (whether as head of a church or as head of a State) share, regardless of their degree of actual...religiosity.

That is our freedom of conscience and our free will. Moreover, we have a somewhat long political heritage of questioning authority, which is potentiated, if not made possible outright, by those two freedoms.

Why not similar criticism of Protestant leadership, of the Greek (or Russian) Orthodox? There is similar criticism, at least regarding the Baptist groups, but the others (including Baptists) simply aren't big enough deals on the political or politically social stages to be worth the effort.

Criticism of anyone bigger, or apparently more important than us, is part of the human condition. Our Judeo-Christian heritage simply makes it possible for us to give voice to that nature.

Eric Hines

MikeD said...

I intentionally left out most of the Protestant religions, because most (with the noted exception of the Anglicans) don't have a unified head of the faith. And while I know Anglicans all eventually answer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I'm not so sure that the Episcopalians do. So I was not prepared to say that it was an apples to apples comparison.

Cass said...

One of my other very-likely-unfunny jokes about the Episcopal church is that an Episcopalian is a Catholic with authority issues :p

RonF said...

So here's a quote from a transcript of a discussion on CNN. One Chris Cuomo delivered himself of this question:

"Where is Pope Francis on the issues that matter most, issues about contraception, women priests?"

What universe does Mr. Cuomo inhabit that he would think that these issues are the ones that matter most to the Pope or the Catholic Church?

Grim said...

I seriously wonder about individual reporters like Sally Quinn. Frankly, I fear it gives Ms. Quinn far too much credit...

Oh, I don't know. Everyone has a philosophy. They just often don't know what it is, or where it came from, or what precisely it stands on. Thus they cannot question it, and can't quite even see that a philosophy of life is there: but you can't operate without one.

Eric Blair said...

What Grim said: The problem is, these "journalists" have been stewing in some version of the 60's counter-culture/leftist orthodoxy/kulturkampf for so long that they can't see the forest for the trees any longer.

Tom said...

Anti-Catholicism has been at the heart of Progressive belief since the 18th century, at least. Everything I've read about this says Grimm is right, including the bit about people not knowing the provenance of their own philosophy.

Dad29 said...

since the 18th century

Actually, since the Lutheran Revolution--although one could make the case that Gnosticism is father of Progressivism--in which case, the disease goes back to the 2nd Century or so.

Tom said...

Interesting. Sure, anti-Catholicism comes out of the Reformation, but I haven't followed Progressivism back that far.

What's the possible connection to Gnosticism?

Texan99 said...

Right from the start, there were movements to morph the faith into a general mishmash of we're-all-one-Spirit pantheism or some other trendy thing. There's scarcely anything you've ever heard of as a core tenet of Christianity that wasn't attempted to be ditched by some splinter group or another, Arians, Gnostics, you name it. You can hear echoes of many of the old fights in the wording of the Nicene Creed, such as "begotten not made, of one being with the Father."

Miss Ladybug said...

The Catholic Church revised some of the language of the Mass witin the last year to year and a half or so. That included changes to the Nicene Creed. I still have problems with them... Anyhow, it is now "begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father". Finally looked it up: "of the same substance".

Miss Ladybug said...

By problems, I mean I am still so used to the old wording, I make mistakes when the fiance & I go to Mass together.

Grim said...

The issue with the old language ("one in Being with the Father") is that everything that exists has its being from God, according to Catholic theology: God is existence, i.e., his essence existence. (The argument for this is Aristotle's, via Aquinas: the good is what everything desires, and the one thing that all desire is to continue to exist. Likewise, insofar as you desire any other good, you desire it actually, that is, you desire for it to exist. Thus, existence is goodness. Since God is the Good, he must also be existence itself: and thus, everything that in any sense exists is created and sustained by God.)

Thus, everything that exists is one in Being with the Father, because there is no other source of Being. The Second Vatican revision of the creed in English thus turned out to be vacuous.

"Consubstantial" is from the Latin more or less directly, and makes a different claim. It claims that the Son is of the divine substance, which is not true of just everything you meet. Substances have this character in Aristotelian philosophy: they reproduce themselves. Thus, the word means something like 'kind of life.'

Thus the new phrase specifies that Jesus really is divine, and not (as the Arians held) a kind of half-god, nor just a man (i.e., substantially human).

Texan99 said...

They still might have said "of one substance with the Father," if they were aiming at comprehensibility. Do we not think that everything that exists has its substance from God, as well?

It's funny that we still struggle over wording to tamp down the Arian heresy, which will never die even though its name changes. Anyway, no matter what we do with the phrase "of one being with the Father," there's still the "true God from true God" language to give Arians pause.

Grim said...

Well, they could have given you Aristotle's original Greek, "homoousious." That is more directly translated to English as "the same in essence."

douglas said...

"...I don't really know that she puts much thought into those statements of hers at all.

After all, he point was that the Catholic Church faces irrelevancy if it doesn't change its stances on scripture to be more in line with her preferences."


I'd suspect that there is a healthy does of the standard secular focus on self as center at work here. I suppose she might argue that it's in line with the American ideal of self-determination and individual freedom. I'd reckon the difference is in the fact that one is only regulated by ones own views and the other is rooted in a responsibility to society at the same time it demands of the social structure to allow independence of thought and action- well, that and the basis of the American ideology as rooted in the one true God, which they'd like to dispense with.

Texan99 said...

For the purpose of guiding my faith, I'm incapable of distinguishing between "being," "substance," and "essence." I can be happy with any of them.

Grim said...

Ah, but there's an important difference. "Being" is the question, "Is it?" Essence or substance is the question, "What is it?" Surprisingly, it turns out that you can answer the second question without being sure about the first, and vice versa. For example, we can say exactly what a unicorn is. It's not as easy to say that a unicorn exists. (It does, in a sense; and in another sense, it doesn't.)

Nobody who was going to swear to the creed was questioning whether God is, or whether Jesus is. But just what they are has been the subject of much debate.

Texan99 said...

I'm afraid that kind of approach means nothing at all to me. You can see why there's no use my reading some sorts of philosophy.

Grim said...

By the way:

Do we not think that everything that exists has its substance from God, as well?

You're thinking of "substance" as something like "material." Here "substance" is not something you have, but something of which you are an example. Humanity is a substance; dog is a substance. The proof is that they naturally make more things of that kind.

So, in answer to your question, all substances have their being from God. But not all beings share the divine substance: we can only make more men and women, not more Gods.

Remember, you asked!

Grim said...

I'm afraid that kind of approach means nothing at all to me.

It means more than you might think. Take a mundane example: let's say the President were to propose a restrictive law based on a catastrophic terrorist attack he claimed to fear.

This is a good essence/existence question. We have in front of us a very clear description of what kind of thing we're trying to avoid, but that's a question of essence. Before we agree to a restrictive law, we need also to settle the question of existence. That is, just how possible is it that such an attack might really occur?

If we fail to make the distinction between essence and existence, we might well be persuaded by a vivid description of a thing that can't really happen at all.

Grim said...

There's a good example of that in Herodotus, actually. It came about that one of the Greek cities was persuaded to surrender themselves to a foreign tyrant because he played a clever trick on them. He found an extremely tall and beautiful woman in another city, and had her dress up in armor and sit on a very high horse. Then they went together to the city, where he claimed that Athena herself had escorted him personally to take rulership of the town.

Here, as with unicorns, essence is clear but existence is not. I take it as both interesting and important that Christianity has the opposite problem. There are good reasons to believe in God, including direct experience of the divine. But the question of essence has proven very hard for us.

That suggests that, rather than being fooled by a vivid description, we are engaged with a real existent -- one that is hard to describe.

Texan99 said...

As a way of sorting out verbally the problem that has been torturing religious apologists for two thousand years -- "How are the Father and Son different, and how the same" -- it just doesn't do anything for me. Plugging different words into that spot in the Nicene creed doesn't advance my understanding. I take it as one of the many things Christ didn't apparently think we needed to be able to be pin down at that level of detail or abstraction, since He tended to address it only metaphorically, and kept insisting on drawing our attention to other things.

I reject the Arian heresy to the extent it portrays Christ as just a guy, though a really charismatic one who had a strong sense of the dramatic and a way with words. But I can be completely in tune with another believer who considers the Father and Son the same being, or substance, or essence, or inherentness, or incarnation, or Emanuel, or whatever. I never was into the details or definitions of Trinitarian mysteries. So the Holy Spirit "proceeds" from the Father and the Son, and the Son is God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made. Works for me.

Grim said...

The Arian heresy classically portrays Jesus as not just a guy, but as a figure like Hercules. He's half god, and half man. You can see why that would be easy for many in the ancient world who were converts to Christianity from some pagan faith: they already had a ready mental category for characters of that type. As the 'son of the sky God' borne by a mortal woman, as Hercules was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, of course Jesus would have some special powers and capacities. He would be especially heroic and worthy of emulation. He would fit right into the easy pagan model, a figure like Athena (or the unicorn).

It's important that it's hard. It's not easy. It may, in fact, not be possible for humanity given our limited access to the order of reason.

But that's good. If it were easy, it would probably not be true.

Texan99 said...

Yes, a Hercules kind of hero -- a superhero in a long line of similar heroes, but with a somewhat better pedigree. Missing the point completely! The modern version is less romantic, but the same kind of mistake: looking for something precedented, less shattering.

Dad29 said...

What's the possible connection to Gnosticism?

Depending on how one defines the terms.....

"...is the dualistic belief that the material world should be shunned and the spiritual world should be embraced. ..." (Wiki)

The Progressives, on the other hand, are typically atheists, or 'practical' atheists--that is, to them, the spiritual world is non-existent and the material world is all-in-all.

Given that difference (yes, it's a major one), they share an important similarity: they are convinced that they, alone, are worthy of ruling b/c of their unique insights and 'wisdom.'

MikeD said...

One of the earliest schisms in the Church was not the Reformation, but indeed the very controversy which led to the Nicene Creed. The debate was whether Jesus was fully God, or man and God. The Coptic Church held that he was fully divine and in no way tainted by human frailty. The Roman Church held that this trivialized his sacrifice and the whole meaning of Christianity in general. Thus the first Schism. Or at least, that's my understanding of the issue. So while the Arian Heresy is another problem with essence over existence, it was not the first.

Texan99 said...

We do seem inclined to insist that He must be one or the other, don't we? It's a real brain-twister for Him to be both, fully. In reading the Bible I always pay close attention to any claims He makes about Himself directly. He says very little, preferring to concentrate on God and our duty. But then there's "I am the Resurrection and the Life . . . ."