The Gadfly: A Tradition of Discrimination?

By Dennis Stillings
Contributing Writer

Disclosure:
I am not a Catholic, nor have I ever had a serious inclination to become one. That said, I wish to respond to the column by Ed Raymond that appeared in the IBC of 10/27/11.

My remarks will be largely of a general nature, since the content of Mr. Raymond’s column is so full of distortions and examples of aggressive ignorance (of a sort that mentally and physically revolts me) that dealing with it at all almost requires that one place blobs of Vicks Vapor Rub under each nostril—as if one were doing a post-mortem on the remains of a six-week-old summer drowning victim.

Mr. Raymond’s column places him squarely within the tradition of hate literature.

Since the beginning of history—and no doubt long before—hatred directed at minorities has been characterized by accusations of child abuse and sexual perversion in all its variations: Christians accused Jews of such in medieval times (indeed, to this day, in peasant populations); it was the same during the witch-hunts of the Early Renaissance, and—in more recent times—the Nazis made much the same accusations against the Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and Russians.

But it was Mr. Raymond’s preoccupation with sex and, in particular, pornography that gave me a real feeling of déjà vu. One of the famous figures at the time of the French Revolution—one feature of which was the murdering of hundreds of priests and nuns—was the Marquis de Sade (from whose contributions we have inherited the terms “sadist” and “sadism”). De Sade’s “philosophical” fiction was filled with tales of priests and nuns cavorting in ways that cannot be described here. He hated the Church, as did his fellows, and expressed this hatred in much the same manner as Mr. Raymond.

A century or so later, the KKK carried on the hate tradition with the publication of “Anti-Papist” books and pamphlets, again spinning scurrilous yarns of obscenities involving Catholic clergy.

I have read a few of these publications and, believe me, little distinguishes them from Mr. Raymond’s column other than that the writing is better.

Particulars

Mr. Raymond’s comparison of Roman Catholic leaders with porn moviemakers is bad taste at its worst. Indeed, his own preoccupation with sex bespeaks a lack of personal experience other than technical. Sex? Maybe. Love? Doubtful. Sex has been a basic drive of the human race since it came into being, taking second place only to the quest for food and water.

Americans are known throughout the world for their preoccupation with sex. Clergy of all denominations have succumbed to the almost demonic urges of sexuality. Its presence within the context of religion exists worldwide.

According to a survey by the Washington Post, less than 1.5 percent of the estimated 60,000 of the Catholic clergy have been accused of child sexual abuse. The New York Times came up with 1.8 percent of all priests ordained from 1950 to 2001 accused of child sexual abuse.  Thomas Kane, in his book “Priests are People Too”, estimates that between 1 and 1.5 percent of priests have had charges made against them. As of 2004, the Associated Press estimated two-thirds of 1 percent of priests had charges pending against them.

Sexual molestation among Protestant clergy—where celibacy is not an issue—is of a broader nature.

“In a 1984 survey, 38.6 percent of Protestant ministers reported sexual contact with a church member, and 76 percent knew of another minister who had had sexual intercourse with a parishioner. In the same year, a Fuller Seminary survey of 1,200 ministers found that 20 percent of theologically “conservative” pastors admitted to some sexual contact outside of marriage with a church member. The figure jumped to over 40 percent for “moderates”; 50 percent of “liberal” pastors confessed to similar behavior.”

“In the spring of 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was receiving unprecedented attention, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources. The conclusion: ‘Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.’”

Sexual molestation in the schools has gotten considerable attention in recent years—academia, of course, being a notorious venue for sexual harassment.

While I can provide solid references for the above statements, we see little in the way of supporting material for Mr. Raymond’s extraordinary claims. I would speculate that he has to hand one or two anti-Catholic polemical works from which he retails his venom. Whatever might these be?

Mr. Raymond’s bald-faced and unsupported claims regarding Jose Maria Escriva and Opus Dei are also made without reference. Various authors assert that “Escriva was staunchly non-political, and detested dictatorships.”

As to alleged “misogyny”— half of the leadership positions in Opus Dei are held by women, and they supervise men. That Opus Dei started out all-male in 1928 might be expected in a male culture such as Spain, but that was beginning to be corrected already in 1930.

Mr. Raymond makes much of the cilice—apparently taking as his source from The Da Vinci Code. It can be fairly said that anyone who uses The Da Vinci Code as an information resource is already disqualified as a serious commentator.

In reality, the cilice is a small, light metal chain that is slightly uncomfortable to wear. No bleeding is produced. Opus Dei members mostly torture themselves by practicing “corporal mortifications” such as “sleeping without a pillow or sleeping on the floor, fasting or remaining silent for certain hours during the day.”

But enough bother with Mr. Raymond’s distortions. I hesitate to call them “lies” only because the evidence for simple bigoted ignorance is so overwhelming.

The interested reader might do well to start by reading the Wikipedia entry on “Opus Dei,” checking the references which are given, and proceed from there.

The Church and Science

Another incidence of ignorance is Mr. Raymond’s wholly outdated view of the relationship of the Church to science. As they say, the winners get to write the history, and the falsehoods generated by other third-rate scientists during the 18th century live on. The one-sided story about Galileo has been significantly revised by the noted historian of science Paul Feyerabend. The Church’s support of science has been a topic much discussed in recent years, and the conclusions have been that, indeed, the Church was very far from being anti-Science. In fact, some cathedrals were designed to also function as observatories.

According to a Wikipedia entry, “[A]pproximately sixteen lists of censured theses were issued by the University of Paris [under the Bishops of Paris] during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of these lists of propositions were put together into systematic collections of prohibited articles. Of these, the Condemnations of 1277 are considered particularly important by historians as they allowed scholars to break from the restrictions of Aristotelian science. This had positive effects on the development of science, with some historians going so far as to claim that they represented the beginnings of modern science.” One could go on and on, but then I am not Mr. Raymond.

Conclusion

Catholic practices and the relationship of the Vatican to science have to be understood in the context of Church doctrine, not by the standards of Mr. Raymond. All major religions have prescriptions and proscriptions with regard to abortion and some to contraception. If the brave Mr. Raymond wishes to produce another column in the style and manner of this one—that I would consider worth reading—might he next take on Islam and Sharia Law. No? I thought so.  The best that can be said for Mr. Raymond is that, as a collector of cultural clichés he is something of a man of accomplishment. He might also, someday, claim prominence in the widespread and durable tradition of anti-Catholic hate literature. He has dragged into public view a form of polemic usually found in or near the cesspools of human thought. Excuse me now, I have to go wash this Vicks off my nose.

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