Despite having more Roman Catholics than any other state in the country, no Pope has ever visited Rhode Island. In September Pope Francis will be the fourth Pope to visit the United States in what will be the tenth papal visit to our shores.
The first Pope to visit the United States, or even the Western Hemisphere, was Paul VI in 1965. He limited his visit to New York. He met with President Lyndon Johnson, spoke before the United Nations, held a mass at Yankee Stadium and visited the New York World’s Fair, cramming a lot into a 14 hour visit.
Pope John Paul II , 14 years later, made his first of seven visits to the United States. This Pope visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Des Moines, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Miami, Columbia, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Denver, Newark, Brooklyn, Baltimore and St. Louis over 20 years of visits.
Benedict XVI was the last Pope to visit the United States, arriving in Washington and visiting New York in 2008.
In Rhode Island, Catholics make up about 44 percent of the population, the highest in the nation. But if Rhode Island Catholics want to catch a glimpse of their spiritual leader, they need to travel to where he is. That’s why the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence is leading a pilgrimage of 400 faithful to Philadelphia, where the Pope is speaking before the World Meeting of Families.
Pope Francis, while being true to his predecessors on the subjects of reproductive rights and homosexuality, (he’s against both) has nonetheless upset conservative Catholics in the United States with his stance on the environment and capitalism (which he has compared to “the devil’s dung.”)
Quoted in Politico, Sam Clovis, a Catholic and political activist who’s run for US Senate and state treasurer in Iowa said, “In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles.”
Meanwhile, Republican Catholics running for president, such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum are all trying to differentiate between what their Catholic faith compels them to believe and what are merely the opinions of Pope Francis. The same politicians who once said to Catholics in support of LGBTQ and reproductive rights that such positions were impossible to square with true Catholicism are now facing the same criticism themselves on the issues of economic and environmental justice.
Locally, we are seeing similar reactions to Pope Francis. Conservative Catholic blogger Justin Katz wrote a piece last month for the ProJo in which he asked, “What’s the deal with Pope Francis?” Katz is examining Catholic theology as a way of navigating the difficult questions Francis poses to conservative Catholics.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese has publicly proclaimed his disappointment with Pope Francis, saying “…he hasn’t, at least that I’m aware of, said much about unborn children, about abortion, and many people have noticed that.” Tobin, who publicly switched his political party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, has received a fair amount of criticism for this and other remarks about his boss.
Even Bernard Healey, the Catholic priest who lobbies the RI General Assembly on behalf of the Providence Catholic Diocese, has dinged Pope Francis, beginning testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 25th with a guilty smile, saying, “I would quote Pope Francis, who is widely quoted in the media. You probably missed this quote, they normally miss the ones that I agree with,” implying that he disagrees with much of what Pope Francis has been saying.
Nationally, 54 percent of Catholics support same-sex marriage. 66 percent think abortion is at least sometimes justified. 69 percent support contraception. Given such numbers, it seems the Catholic Church is out of step with American Catholics on the political left as well as the right.
Yet here in Rhode Island the Catholic Church exerts formidable political power. The governor, speaker of the House and Senate president are all at least nominally Catholic, as are many members of the General Assembly. Tobin has his own part time lobbyist working our part time legislature. Politically speaking, the Roman Catholic Church is a power player here in Rhode Island and that means that in order to understand our state, we have to understand the dynamics of political Catholicism.
And to do that, you have to understand the Pope.
Since Pope Francis isn’t coming to Rhode Island, RI Future is going to the Pope. To do that, we’re running a GoFundMe campaign to secure the $1000 I’ll need to cover train travel, food, lodging and other expenses. Over the course of five days, from September 23-27, I’ll be in Washington DC, New York City and Philadelphia, covering the Pope’s visit in my unique way.
This will be very different coverage. Readers of this blog know that I am an outspoken atheist, progressive and democratic socialist. I won’t just be covering the Pope, I’ll be covering the people I meet. There will be protesters, critics and supporters. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I expect my coverage to be unlike anything I’ve done before as well.
Consider donating, and let’s see what I can pull off.
Indiana and ArkansasChampions of religious law
Determined that the scriptures say
“You won’t be served if you are gay”
Rhode Island has religion too
Our common sense shapes what we do
“You’ll never get served if you’re rude
Or have a lousy attitude”
Indiana and Arkansas
Are family states where Ma or Pa
Want neighbors to be just like them
No handsome women or pretty men
Rhode Island’s more a people state
The mixing is what makes it great
Freedom to live and love and play
No matter what the scriptures say
The Rhode Island Coalition of Reason (RICoR) launches today with six RIPTA bus ads and a large billboard in North Kingston that says, “Godless? So are we.”
RICoR is a new organization comprised of seven non-theistic (atheist and agnostic) groups in the state, including the Atheist Humanist Society of Connecticut and Rhode Island, Camp Quest New England, Humanists of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Atheist Society, Rhode Island Skeptics, Secular Coalition for Rhode Island and Secular URI.
When asked about the response of the press to the new signs, Tony Houston, the local director of RICoR, said, “It shouldn’t be news that there are atheists. This isn’t about attracting attention. I think we’d all just prefer to live in a world where we could retire the word ‘atheist.’ The fact that there’s a story tells us that there’s work to be done.”
Houston added: “Non-theistic people are your family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers. We may not believe in a deity or the supernatural, but we are compassionate, ethical members of this community. We would like to encourage local atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, skeptics, secularists and humanists to stand up and be counted. If you are a Rhode Island nonbeliever, know that you are not alone.”
“The point of our national awareness campaign is to reach out to the millions of humanists, atheists and agnostics living in the United States,” explained Dr. Jason Heap, national coordinator of United CoR, the national group sponsoring the ads. “Non-theists sometimes don’t realize there’s a community for them because they’re inundated with theistic messages at every turn. So we hope our effort will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren’t alone.”
“Being visible is important to us,” Heap concluded, “because, in our society, non-theistic people often don’t know many like themselves.
UnitedCoR has sponsored similar billboards, bus ads or Internet campaigns in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
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Providence mayoral candidate Jorge Elorza was a law professor at Roger Williams University when he wrote his 2010 University of Pittsburgh Law Review article “Secularism and the Constitution: Can Government Be Too Secular?” In this legal paper Elorza claims, “science has disconfirmed the claim that the theist God has the power to violate the laws of physics” and that in a public school setting, “teaching that the theist God does not exist would not violate any of the underlying values” of the religious clause of the first amendment. In other words, it might be permissible, says Elorza, for public schools to teach that certain kinds of gods do not exist.
In his paper Elorza demonstrates a good deal of knowledge about the so-called new atheism, quoting extensively from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, but he also mines popular works of science, such as Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. This is all part of an effort to “engage the literature from various scientific disciplines and reveal the extent to which religious claims have been successfully debunked by science.”
Elorza claims that there “are four views of God that cover the entire spectrum: the theist, deist, atheist, and what I call the memist view.” The deist position is that God is a creator who set the universe in motion and currently plays no active role in the universe. This means, says Elorza, that there is no “scientific” difference between being an atheist (one who denies the existence of god) and being a deist. “…the disagreement between deists and atheists is of no consequence,” say Elorza.
A theist god, however, is more problematic. “The theist believes,” says Elorza, “that God is not only the spark that gave birth to the universe but that He has also intervened in the natural world and has violated the laws of physics since the point of creation.” This is the god that Elorza maintains cannot exist, and is disproved by science.
The last kind of god Elorza discusses is “memist.” “Based on the concept of the meme,” says Elorza, “the memist God resides entirely in the minds of its adherents.” For a definition of this kind of god, Elorza turns to The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, and James’ definition of the divine, “…the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” The memist god, it seems, is the god in our head, and this is the one kind of god that is unquestionable real, because it is located within our minds, as a concept. “While the existence of both the deist and theist God can be called into question, the memist God most certainly exists!” declares Elorza.
Elorza seems to be arguing for the legal status of methodological naturalism, (a term he does not use in his paper) which is a requirement when engaging with the scientific method. Methodological naturalism is the assumption that miracles will not happen when scientists engage in experimentation, because science is the study natural laws, and miracles are by their supernatural nature violations. Differentiating between a theistic and atheistic world “is possible because a world with a theist God is fundamentally different than a world without one. In particular, a world without a theist God is one where natural phenomena may be understood as a gradual process over time. However, a world with a theist God that violates the laws of physics produces a world with ‘ontological discontinuities.’”
Still, Elorza’s ultimate conclusion is that the elimination of the theist god from secular society and laws does not diminish religious protections. “While the memist God would have all of the powers to prescribe a moral code as would the theist God, religious groups might object to the memist God on the grounds that it does not have a divine source. Since it is contained entirely in the human mind, it may be believed that its stature is comparatively diminished in relation to either the deist or theist God. However, I argue that even though it does not have a divine origin, religious adherents should take solace in the fact that this should not diminish its level of constitutional protection.”
In other words, even though science can show where your belief in god has come from, and even though there is no good reason to believe in your god, your belief is constitutionally protected.
Now this all sounds very much like the kind of paper an atheist might write. But when confronted about this paper by Ted Nesi during a televised debate with Democratic primary challenger Michael Solomon, Elorza backtracked. (.)
Ted Nesi: You wrote in a 2010 law review article that, quote, the evidence shows that it’s overwhelmingly unlikely that the theist God exists. Therefore, you wrote, it’s Constitutional to teach in public schools that, apparently, the God of Christianity and Judaism does not exist. Why do you believe that, and would you seek to implement that in the Providence public schools?
Providence Mayoral Candidate Jorge Elorza: No, absolutely not….This is a 60 sixty page article, and it’s a special definition of what the theist God means. Effectively, I wrote this article because there are a number of quote-unquote angry atheists arguing that since evolution has proved true…God doesn’t exist. And I wrote this article to combat them and say that look, you might be right on this small slice, but everything else that God entails remains intact…I don’t seek to have this be taught in the public schools. This is a hypothetical that I laid out over 60 pages in an academic article.
TN: But you did write it’s unlikely that the theist God exists…Do you believe that yourself, or are you saying this is what those scientists believe?
JE: As narrowly defined, within that article, then yes, I believe that. But that’s a very special definition. There is so much more to what God entails.
Why did Elorza mischaracterize his paper? “I wrote this article because there are a number of quote-unquote angry atheists arguing that since evolution has proved true…God doesn’t exist.” Yet the only kind of God that Elorza allows in his piece is one that exists in human minds, one without any external reality or divinity. Bringing up the “angry atheists” comes off as a dodge, and an insult to atheists. The only people Elorza mentions as being angry in his paper are theistic parents. “…in order to teach, over the objections of angry parents, that the theist God does not exist, the issue must be a well-settled scientific principle.”
The truth is that being an atheist is seen as a career killer for politicians seeking public office. The American Humanist Association’s Maggie Ardiente claims that 24 members of Congress have privately admitted to be atheists. However, if these politicians are outed, they will deny being atheists. Pew has pointed out that atheists are near the bottom (with Muslims) of the popularity poll with voters.
With public attitudes like these, it makes sense that Elorza might want to distance himself from his paper, which is a shame, because the paper really does argue for the kinds of religious and conscience protections the first amendment guarantees.
If Elorza is elected mayor of Providence, he would be the the highest ranking openly atheist elected official in the country.
But of course, he would first have to be open about his atheism.
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Leaders of a variety of religious traditions gathered Tuesday, July 15 in Manning Chapel at Brown University to reflect upon the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine in recent weeks. Organizer Marty Cooper, of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, called the event an opportunity to “honor the sanctity of life with a moment of reflection.”
Prayers and songs were offered. Swami Yogatmananda, of the Vendanta Society of Rhode Island, declared that escalating violence worldwide is not because of religion as religion does not condone violence. Bishop Nicholas Knisely, of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island, prayed that God would soften the hearts of the leaders on all sides of the conflict.
Actual political solutions to the crisis were not discussed, the speakers seemed more interested in spiritual consensus than in declaring sides in the war. The Israeli/Palestine conflict being rooted deeply in religion, the ability of religious leaders, especially leaders so far removed geographically from the conflict, to affect events seems awfully limited, but perhaps similar calls for peace can be made worldwide and can ultimately ease tensions.
That a message of this sort should emanate from Rhode Island, the birthplace of religious liberty, is appropriate. Here, we settled our religious differences by accepting separation of church and state and establishing a neutral, secular state that respects all religious and nonreligious traditions equally. Those pushing for more religion in their government need only look to the Middle East to see the dangers of such mixing.
Below please find the full video of all the speakers.
Reverend Dr. Donald Anderson, Executive Minister, RI State Council of Churches
Sister Mary Reilly, RSM
Rabbi Barry Dolinger, Congregation Beth Shalom, Providence
Imam Farid Ansari, Council for Muslim Advancement
Father John Kiley, Senior Priest, Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence
Swami Yogatmananda, Vendanta Society of Rhode Island
Rabbi Elan Babchuck, Temple Emanu-El
Bishop Nicolas Knisely, The Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island
Cantor Judith Seplowin, Temple Beth-El, Providence
Marty Cooper, Community Relations Council, Jewish Alliance of Greater RI
Cantor Judith Seplowin, Temple Beth-El, Providence
Reverend Dr. Donald Anderson, Executive Minister, RI State Council of Churches
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is having their annual General assembly in Providence this weekend, and today around noon they held a rally outside the Renaissance Hotel near the State House to support worker’s rights to a fair and just living wage, and to demonstrate against the draconian and anti-democratic tactics used by state officials to stop hotel workers from raising the minimum wage in Providence. Well over two hundred people made the trek from the Convention Center, where the UUA GA is being held, to the empty lot outside the Renaissance to chant, hear speeches and sing for economic and social justice.
Pastor Santiago Rodriguez, of the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church located between the Providence Place Mall and the Renaissance Hotel, emceed the event, introducing speakers and leading the crowd in chants of “Show Your Love to the Workers” and “Fair Wages.”
Also speaking was local legend Yilenny Ferreras, hotel worker and one of the four hunger strikers who shamed the Rhode Island legislature into making a small gesture of raising the minimum wage in the state to $9. Her speeches are full of fire, and her story resonated with the crowd.
Reverend James Ford of the First Unitarian Church in Providence and Reverend Ellen Quaadgras of the Westminster Unitarian Church in East Greenwich spoke next. It was under the leadership of Ford that the UUA General assembly made the difficult decision to boycott the 850 rooms they had originally asked for at the Renaissance. Given the hotel’s refusal to fairly engage with its employees over union and salary, plus its loss of LGBTQ friendly TAG Approved status, it would have been hypocritical to do any less. Still, 850 rooms were a lot to make up for, and the UUA GA had to scramble to find adequate lodging for all their attendees.
Speaking next was B Doubour, a fast food worker at Wendy’s who spoke of the difficulty she has paying bills and supporting her kids on the minimum wages the company pays.
Lauren Jacobs, National Organizing Director for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United spoke next, reminding the audience that the real minimum wage in Rhode Island is not $8, it’s $2.89. That’s what tipped workers in Rhode Island are entitled to. Often, their checks from the company they work for are for $0 after taxes are taken out. “Do you know what they call a worker who works for free?” Jacobs asked. “A slave!” answered the crowd.
The Rev. Amy Carol Webb, Musician and Minister at River of Grass UU Congregation in Ft. Lauderdale then lead the crowd in a song.
Rabbi Jonathan Klein, Executive Director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice in Los Angeles spoke next about the need for organizing around social justice issues. He hopes Rhode Islanders can get past difference is race, class and union divides to work together for a fair living wage for everyone.
Donald Anderson, of the RI Council of Churches, told the crowd that his group fully supported the efforts of workers in Rhode Island to earn a living wage.
After the speakers were finished Jesse Strecker, Executive Director of Rhode Island Jobs With Justice asked the crowd to follow Pastor Santiago Rodriguez into the hotel to speak with Renaissance Hotel Manager Angelo DePeri about an employee who faces termination due to their involvement with the unionization effort. As the crowd moved from the field to the parking lot, Providence Police and hotel security intercepted telling the leaders that the hotel, a public building receiving over a million dollars in tax breaks from the City of Providence every year, was not letting anyone from the crowd inside. In fact, DePeri was not interested in meeting even one person from the crowd as a representative.
The fact is, good and moral people want fair wages for all workers. The battle for economic justice has begun.
All pictures and video above are available for use under the Creative Commons license. Please use them far and wide.
(cc) 2014 Steve Ahlquist
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Luis A. Vargas, the new Director of Strategic Initiatives for the RI GOP has been tasked with “spearheading” the new initiative, “‘Oportunidad para Todos,’ aimed at reaching out to Rhode Island’s Hispanic population.”
It is difficult for the GOP to make significant inroads with the Hispanic population, as the conservative, anti-immigration policies mostly favored by that party tend to alienate potential voters. So what can a young, conservative pre-law Roger Williams University student highlight about the Republican Party that might appeal to Hispanic voters?
Religion, of course.
This seems like a good bet, because the GOP has benefited in the past from the crass exploitation of religious values, courting voters on divisive social issues such as reproductive and LGBTQ rights even as they ignore the deeper issues of economic and political injustice. Part of this strategy has always involved denying certain historical truths about United States history, one of the biggest being:
This was in response to the Humanists of Rhode Island’s announcement of the Day of Reason. Think about this for a moment. This guy wants to be a lawyer, but he does not understand one of the essential building blocks upon which our country was founded. As legal scholar Garret Epps wrote in the Atlantic:
The words “separation of church and state” are not in the text; the idea of separation is. Article VI provides that all state and federal officials “shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause… provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”–meaning that not only no church but no “religion” could be made the official faith of the United States. Finally the Free Exercise Clause provides that Congress shall not make laws “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. (These prohibitions were extended to state governments by the Fourteenth Amendment, whose framers in 1866 wanted to make sure that the states maintained free, democratic systems instead of the old antebellum slave oligarchies that spawned the Civil War.)
More insultingly, Vargas goes to a University that is named for the man who first coined the phrase! More from Epps:
In 1644, the American theologian Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist congregation in the British New World, coined the phrase to signify the protection that the church needed in order to prevent misuse and corruption by political leaders: “The church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type and the church of the Christians under the New Testament in the antitype were both separate from the world; and when they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness.”
As to Vargas’s second contention, that “our government isn’t secular,” that’s equally ridiculous. If our nation isn’t secular, then it must be religious. If it is religious, then what religion is it? No fair saying “Christian” because Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a label for a set containing many different beliefs all of which are considered to be inspired by Jesus. This set includes Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Congregationalists and many more, perhaps too numerous to count.
The reason all these contesting Christianities can get along (and get along with members of other religions and yes, get along with those of us who have no religion) is that we live in a country that grants no favor to one form of religion at the expense of another. All these different forms of belief and non-belief exist within a secular framework, our government.
If, as Vargas maintains, our government is not truly secular, then it is malfunctioning. That’s where groups like the Humanists of Rhode Island and the ACLU come in. We fight for freedom of conscience, religious liberty, and a secular world in which all are free to believe as their conscience dictates.
This is not the end of Vargas’s foolish pronouncements. He also denies that our country is a democracy, preferring to call it a Constitutional Republic instead. Of course, the word democracy is not in conflict with the ideas of a Constitution or a Republic, but Vargas doesn’t care about things like facts. When pressed, Vargas presents a strict definition of democracy as “one person one vote” and makes up a brand new term to describe our government. We are not a democracy, we are “an accommodating republic.”
Got it. If you can’t win on the merits try to blind ’em with bullshit.
It’s often said that you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Hopefully, as Vargas continues his education, he’ll gather more facts and revise his opinions.
One final point:
Pandering to religion isn’t the sure bet it once was. A new Pew Poll reveals that 18% of Hispanics are religiously unaffiliated. The Catholic Church is hemorrhaging Hispanic numbers at a rate that suggests that in the very near future most Hispanics will not be Catholic, even if most Catholics are Hispanic. In light of such polls the GOP might think about crafting policies that benefit potential voters rather than pander to their religious biases, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. It’s much easier to hire someone like Luis Vargas, who wears his religious bigotry on his sleeve as he tweets out such beauties as:
Vargas is obviously a great, forward thinking addition to the RI GOP team.
A few days ago the Supreme Court gave a thumbs up to government sanctioned Christian prayers taking place before secular government meetings. For nonbelievers and believers alike, this was a disappointing decision.
To many millions of people, prayer is an important part of their lives. It can be a meditative and calming practice, and a direct path to accessing the mind and grace of a God. It can be a deeply moving process of extreme intimacy and importance.
Ceremonial prayer, by contrast, has long been acknowledged as religiously meaningless. As Justice Kennedy says in his decision,
Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be under stood by precepts far beyond the authority of government to alter or define and that willing participation in civic affairs can be consistent with a brief acknowledgment of their belief in a higher power, always with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs. The prayer in this case has a permissible ceremonial purpose. It is not an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Such prayers are not attempts to secure the favor of a God, they are merely acknowledgments of the fact that some people can’t perform ordinary tasks without first rooting themselves in the mythology of their ancestors. If the prayers were true attempts to contact a God, then they would run afoul of the Supreme Court decision. The prayers, in the context of government meetings, must be ceremonial, or they become illegal.
This state of affairs poses the true believer an ethical dilemma. When participating in the prayer, the true believer must go through all the motions of prayer without actually engaging in real prayer. They must, in effect, pretend to be praying, because the kind of prayer permitted by law must be ceremonial by nature. (Now, this is doubly confusing from an atheist perspective, because prayer is viewed as attempted communication with an imaginary being. The law now mandates that believers pretend to attempt communication with an imaginary being, which just seems a step too far.)
People of many religious faiths might take exception to the idea that they must, for secular purposes, play-act elements of their faith in a secular public forum. Some take their religion very seriously, and to perform prayer cermonially may violate their conscience. These people, when confronted with such a dilemma, might pray for real, not just pretend to. In such cases, even though it will be impossible to prove or to demonstrate, the First Amendment will be violated, according to the Supreme Court.
Some people of faith will therefore have an impossible decision: They can either betray their God by falsely praying or betray their country by truly praying, an impossible conundrum the concept of separating church and state was invented to avoid. The First Amendment was born out of a desire to protect the conscience of American citizens. In this respect, Greece versus Galloway was a very unfortunate decision for religious believers.
Atheists and Humanists by comparison, won’t have it that bad. Would we have preferred to have ceremonial prayer simply done away with? Certainly. We do not want to feel pressured to violate our consciences by pretending to pray. We don’t like the idea that when we show up at a legislative hearing to plead our case that we can immediately be marked as outsiders because we refuse to participate in the prayer.
A different outcome in Greece v. Galloway would have protected the consciences of the nonreligious and religious alike, but Kennedy’s decision contains the interesting caveat that ceremonial prayer must always be done “with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs.” The decision also mandates that the prayers do not “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.” Finally, local governments must make “reasonable efforts to identify all of the congregations located within its borders” and welcome an invocation by anyone who wishes to give one, regardless of their faith.
This means that the State of Rhode Island, as well as all its cities and towns, must open their ceremonial prayer process to “all of the congregations located within its borders” and this includes, for purposes of the law, nonbelievers. Already the American Humanist Association has started a registry for people certified to do secular invocations. Humanists and atheists across the country are signing up, ready to enter town halls and other legislative bodies with the intention of offering ceremonial platitudes that do not “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.”
We already have at least two Humanists/atheists ready to deliver ceremonial invocations in Rhode Island, and we’ll have many more lined up soon.
May heaven help those who try to stop us.*
*not an actual prayer
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Adherents and non-adherents alike manage to ignore a major contradiction at the heart of modern Catholicism: The church functions as a patriarchal medieval organization within and alongside our secular social democracy. Unlike protestant churches that democratically decide on organizational structure and call or dismiss pastors as needed, Catholics have their leaders thrust upon them without their say or consent. Certainly the laity have a voice within the church, but that voice is only consul, and the final word rests always and exclusively with the hierarchy.
For the most part people politely ignore the odder aspects of modern Catholicism. We tend to put out of our minds the images we have seen of powerful community and business leaders, as well as elected Senators and Representatives, genuflecting before robed bishops and cardinals to deferentially kiss their rings. We dismiss this submissive medievalism as simply an expression of cultural identity, like the Scottish kilt or Canadian politeness. Only occasionally are we confronted with the full force of the true anti-democratic, anti-Enlightenment values espoused by the Catholic hierarchy, and even then we only seem to really get it when there are kids involved.
When Father Rocky Hoffman took the stage at Prout School as part of a Relevant Radio program to answer kid’s questions about Catholic doctrine, medievalism clashed with our modern values as regards our children’s wellbeing. Catholic teachings around divorce, adoption and LGBTQ issues openly clashed with the real world sensibilities of Catholic parents who do not agree with the totality of the Church’s teachings. Perhaps even more put out by Father Hoffman’s appearance were those non-Catholic parents who send their kids to Catholic schools for reasons that are not religious. Catholic teachings, it turns out, are not as innocuous as they were lead to believe.
Hoffman explained the current church teachings on such things as divorce and homosexuality. It turns out, surprise! that the conservative Catholic Church is against these things. They are also opposed to woman being ordained as priests, birth control, abortion under any circumstance, and masturbation.
A lot is being made of the fact that Hoffman is a member of Opus Dei, the secretive ultra-conservative branch of the Church featured as villains in Dan Brown potboilers, complete with Albino assassins and personal torture devices. Though it would be convenient to say that Hoffman is an extremist and that his views are far to the right of what the church believes, the truth is that Hoffman’s views are only extreme when compared to those of modern Americans. His answers to students seem doctrinally correct. As one Catholic blogger noted, “Another ‘c’atholic High School blows up when they hear the truth about Catholic teaching.”
The real truth, however, is that most Catholics are better than the teachings of their church and better than the views that are expressed by the Catholic hierarchy. Most Catholics are accepting of their LGBTQ brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They know that prejudice and ignorance have destroyed families and ruined lives. Most Catholics not only believe that birth control should be legal and available, well over 95% of Catholics have used it. Most Catholics also believe that abortion is a decision best left to the woman dealing with pregnancy.
I understand when Catholics with more traditional mindsets dispute the validity of Catholics who deviate from the church’s official teachings. I sometimes hear such people referred to as CINOs (Catholics in Name Only). I prefer to call such people Cultural Catholics. They usually have deep family histories in and appreciation for the trappings of the Catholic Church. They attend mass every Easter, and mark important life events, such as birth through baptism, coming of age through confirmation, the beginning of a family through weddings, and the end of life through funerals via the traditions and liturgy of the church.
Cultural Catholics might openly dispute the entire mythology of the church. They may doubt the divinity or even the existence of Jesus, and they may well be atheists. It might be difficult for those who, like me, left Catholicism long ago to understand why those who dispute the church’s teachings and reason for existence continue to support their local Catholic Church financially and socially. Likely, there is no one reason, but a stew of the following by no means exhaustive list: the concerns of immediate and extended family, a sense of tradition, a sense of hewing to public perceptions and shared community and experience.
On the other side are the more traditional and conservative Catholics who have no problem with the church’s teachings and would prefer those who only attend mass sporadically and do not really agree with some of Catholicism’s social teachings to either get with the program or get out.
Caught in the middle of these two extremes are the cafeteria Catholics who muddle through, picking and choosing what they want and leaving the rest. This works for some, but for others this situation becomes impossible when it involves children. Few parents want to raise their children as anti-LGBTQ bigots. Few people want to throw away a lifelong friendship because a friend or family member is engaged in an LGBTQ relationship or lifestyle. Few of us want our children to be bullied, or become bullies.
So when Rocky Hoffman brought his doctrinally sound message that LGBTQ people are sinful and that divorce destroys not only a family but the love of a parent for a child, he is attacking a set of values that run deeper than those the church wants to represent. These are the values that link us to our family and friends in ways that are deeper than any relationship to some distant God. These values are humanistic: the love of a parent for a child, the bond between friends that cannot be broken based on how we pursue our sexual attractions, and our commitment to having the right amount of children for our family, properly spacing pregnancies and limiting the total number of children we seek to have.
Deep down, when it really counts, the vast majority of us are better than our church, better than our faith and better than our Gods. It sometimes takes an event like the one at Prout to make us realize that.
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Carolyn Rafaelian, founder of the jewelry company Alex & Ani, an almost unique Rhode Island business success story, was interviewed by Mark Oppenheimer of the New York Times recently about her company and her astounding success.
Those moderately familiar with Alex & Ani’s jewelry line are aware of the pseudo-religious “new age” veneer the company puts on its products, and Oppenheimer wonders if the company is a “capitalist success story” or a “worldwide church,” before quickly declaring the answer to be “both.”
The core philosophy of Rafaelian’s church is monstrous and anti-human. Alex & Ani profits from selling a worldview based on fear and superstition, one that especially targets the gullible and ignorant. Worse, the company puts forth the idea that everyone deserves what they get, a sort of new-age Calvinism/prosperity gospel in which those who have good lives are reaping the benefits of the positive energy they put forth, and those who are struggling are the recipients of the life lessons needed to turn their sorry lives around.
Oppenheimer links Alex & Ani’s philosophy to Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” a 2006 book that highlights the importance of the “Law of Attraction” which says “if you put out good energy, good things will come back to you.” Oppenheimer explores this idea in the following exchange with Rafaelian:
On the flip side, the law of attraction implies that people are responsible for the bad things that befall them: put out bad energy, get back bad energy. Ms. Rafaelian said she does not believe that people bring tragedy on themselves. But when I proposed the hypothetical case of, say, a woman who had been raped multiple times, her reply suggested that if the woman was not to blame, somehow her energy was.
“That poor person may have to experience some horrific things until they learn something on such a subconscious level that they can elevate from that place, and they won’t have to deal with that experience again,” she said. “When these things happen over and over to the same people, they have to have their own space to remember their true beautiful self and say, ‘Physically and emotionally, this isn’t for me anymore.’ ”
Some people, it seems, need to be repeatedly raped before they learn the valuable life lessons they need. Hold on a second, I have to throw up…
Okay, I’m back. I submit that no decent person can truly believe this twaddle whose mind is not completely overtaken with trite platitudes, theological nonsense and class privilege. Rafaelian’s statements to Oppenheimer are obscene, monstrous, anti-human and nauseating.
The idea that people are always and ultimately responsible for their lot in life should be immediately recognizable as idiocy. Were all the passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 putting bad energy out into the universe? Are the children being treated at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in need of valuable life lessons? How many homeless people need to say “physically and emotionally, this isn’t for me anymore” before than can secure safe living spaces?
The philosophical ideas of Alex & Ani are narcissistic nonsense that insults the dignity of those who are leading impossibly difficult lives. Further, selling jewelry under the claim that “they hold vibration of pure energy, healing love” and that before being sold “every product has been blessed by my priests, it has been blessed by my shaman friends, protected from radio frequency, from radioactivity” may not be illegal, but it is certainly morally reprehensible. These claims are bullshit, and every penny that supports such bullshit does so at the expense of those the money spent could have helped.
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