Of Bob Jones U., American Culture and Anti-Catholicism
By Peter Steinfels
It is really quite impressive, all this outrage about the anti-Catholic views of Bob Jones University. Until campaign workers for Senator John McCain began alerting Michigan's Roman Catholics three weeks ago, it is questionable whether there were enough Roman Catholics upset by anything emanating from Bob Jones University to fill an old-fashioned confessional.
In fact, opposing anti-Catholicism in the United States by denouncing Bob Jones is about as relevant to today's reality as combating medical errors by condemning leeches and snake oil. The Catholic Church takes more nasty hits weekly on cable television than yearly from Bob Jones.
The solicitude of the Democrats for Catholic sensibilities is especially remarkable. Fears that the party's unqualified support for abortion rights might drive away Catholic voters in a big way have so far proved groundless, to the dismay of Catholic bishops and other anti-abortion leaders. But now the party has gone further: its leading candidates for the presidency are dueling to prove who is pro-choicer than whom, as if having ever held any reservations whatsoever on the topic of abortion were evidence of not being a worthy Democrat.
This is a standard -- dare one say litmus test? -- that would disqualify virtually any Catholic Democrat, including such liberal abortion rights stalwarts as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who voted to ban what opponents term partial-birth abortions, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who, a year before Roe v. Wade made abortion generally legal, declared that "legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life." Such life, he added, "even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized -- the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old."
It doesn't take much traveling in Catholic circles to encounter once politically active Catholic Democrats, liberals not at all drawn to the Republican Party, who feel they have become pariahs in their own party's ranks. Consequently some no longer vote, or no longer vote for national Democrats. They no longer send contributions to the party. They no longer stir up campaign fervor among those they influence.
Nobody knows how many such Catholics there are. But it is reasonable to guess they outnumber Catholics worked up about Bob Jones University.
Yes, anti-Catholic animus rooted in the theological polemics of the 16th-century Reformation still exists in the United States. But the anti-Catholic animus rooted in the political polemics of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the cultural polemics of 19th-century American nativism have long since taken over all the traditional themes: The church is an authoritarian monolith; its doctrines are hopelessly premodern; its rites are colorful but mindless; its sexual standards are unnatural, repressive and hypocritical; its congregations are anti-Semitic and racist; its priests are harsh and predatory; its grip on the minds of believers is numbing.
These themes still ring in some fundamentalist pulpits. But they are far more apt to be interjected into the more adult sitcoms and late-night comedy, and to be reflected in films, editorials, art, fiction and memoirs considered enlightened and liberating.
If the best-selling anti-Catholic tract of the 19th century, "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk," was a forgery promoted by Protestant clergymen, the best-selling anti-Catholic tracts of the 20th century, treating Catholicism and communism as parallel threats to American liberty, were the 1950's books by a liberal, Paul Blanshard, that first appeared in a left-wing weekly, The Nation.
There is often an astonishing lack of awareness about stereotypes of Catholicism, nicely captured at a Washington social event. A woman with an impressive track record in liberal, humanitarian causes was singing the praises of her daughter-in-law. "She's a Catholic, you know," the woman said, "but she's a thinking Catholic."
Can one imagine that woman saying of someone, "She's an African-American, you know, but she's an educated African-American"?
"Thinking," or an equivalent term like "independent," is usually a code word. It refers to a Catholic who disagrees with church teachings on abortion, contraception, ordination of women, etc., regardless of how much or how little actual thinking or independence has gone into the disagreement.
"Thinking" Catholics do not include those who have read and listened to conflicting opinions, struggled with pros and cons and finally concluded that church teaching on one or more of these neuralgic topics is right.
It is difficult to know how much to make of this. American culture, after all, is a maelstrom of prejudices and stereotypes, some of them expressed only in private, some allowed in the mass media, some relished (while others are reprobated) among the well-educated.
Muslims, Italians, Latinos, gays, blacks, women, atheists, even Protestant bluebloods can justifiably complain about some of the ways they are popularly portrayed. Indeed, if rebuking Bob Jones University is a low-cost way to oppose anti-Catholicism, the reason is that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are farther down in the national pecking order of prejudices than Catholics.
A few of these stereotypes can be lethal; most are merely corrosive. The constant pitter-patter of gibes, jokes and sneers about Catholicism on television, in films, in celebrity interviews, in university and alternative newspapers probably makes it harder for some impressionable adolescents and young adults to avow their beliefs and ultimately to maintain them.
Anti-Catholic animus is not keeping Catholics out of board rooms or country clubs, however, although it may complicate the careers of those in academic life, journalism or some professional fields who don't make sure they are seen as "thinking" Catholics.
Anti-Catholicism would be a worthy subject for study and debate, freed, one hopes, from the manipulative politics of victimhood.
But the place to begin is not Bob Jones University.
[end]
Carl
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