I posted The Guardian review of Massimo Faggioli’s The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis on social media, The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis review – pontiff who wants walls to tumble down
It is an excellent review of an excellent book. Of course, I agree with the analysis, and of course others of certain persuasions will dislike the content. I quoted from the article:
‘Massimo Faggioli’s important study of the current pope shows why he has focused on the marginalised in society and religious life.’
That focus of those discarded and excluded in society is something that a motley collection of conservatives, reactionaries, bigots, apologists and overt class warriors on the part of the iniquitous social order that lies behind such marginalisation loathe. And it is something they target and attack for explicitly political reasons.
Let me introduce Massimo Faggioli. Massimo Faggioli is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, a renowned historian of the Church, and a contributing writer to Commonweal magazine. I have heard him described as the American left’s favourite theologian. He is a FB friend of mine. I was pleased to see that Massimo he had visited my page to acknowledge his appreciation of his book. I should have known that the book and my association with Faggioli would have been a red rag to the reactionary bull, and so it proved. Pope Francis may have inspired hope among millions throughout the world, the millions discarded by this wretched 'neoliberal' order, but it is for that very reason that the reactionary apologists and attack dogs of that order positively loathe him.
Pope Francis is a target within the Catholic Church, where traditionalists are actively working to see off his very different vision of the future for Catholicism. The previous Pope, Benedict, had battened down the hatches in a spirit of no surrender in face of the storms of secularisation and relativism blowing beyond the Vatican’s gates. I challenge those very forces myself. But there different ways of meeting the challenge. And there are different ways of seeing the world outside. I quoted from the article:
‘To the consternation of his many critics, Francis has thrown open the windows of the Vatican and let some air in. Massimo Faggioli’s fascinating short book, The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis, tries to explain why. A prominent theologian, Faggioli portrays Francis as a pope fit for the era of globalisation and its discontents. The guiding spirit of this pontificate, he argues, is the conviction that barriers and borders across territory – and in the mind – must be reimagined. For Francis, Faggioli writes: “The border is never just a limes (in Latin, rigid frontier), but also always limen (in Latin, threshold). The liminality of Francis’s pontificate lies in his re-interpretation of the borders ... No boundary can claim to exclude ‘the other’, since the boundary, by definition, implies ‘the other.' The border by limiting, also relates.”
That's quite a sophisticated argument and distinction, quite beyond the intellect of many of those quick to raise objections on social media. It establishes an excellent point. I refrained from quoting the next passage in the article, since it spelled out clearly what that rather academic argument means in practice. It soon became apparent that reactionaries monitoring my activity read the article, and saw themselves as being in the line of fire. Or maybe they know fine well what Pope Francis stands for, and despise it. The article spelled it out:
‘The language is theoretical but in the age of Trump, Putin and Orbán, when the cult of the nationalist strongman has returned with vengeance to secular politics, it describes a vision that resonates far beyond the Catholic Church.’
That reference to Trump would have been sufficient to have set these reactionaries on the warpath. Bear in mind that on social media I suffer their endless equation of Bernie Sanders with Stalin and socialism with Stalinism in silence. Not because I don't find their views offensive, but simply because I find them and their arguments too stupid to waste a minute of my time on. They are playing to their own galleries, the semi-clever manipulating the stupid and the gullible and the fearful. It is not worthy of my time. It would be a full-time job to challenge every lie and stupidity.
These people are hard political operators, referring to politics in the divisive sense of winners and losers, us and them. They are in the business of cultivating the political herd in their favour, and breaking up any hint of solidarity and consensus forming against them elsewhere. Their intent is acidic. They are in the business of aggressively defending and promoting the cult of Trump. I was immediately targeted by Trump apologists and supporters, erstwhile libertarians who fulminate against each, any, and every form of ‘government’ that serves to defend and advance the common social and environmental welfare. These are the same people who have no compunction whatsoever in breaking their supposedly sacred principle of methodological individualism to aggressively defend and promote militarism, religious nationalism, and corporate welfare. They are reactionaries, hypocrites, and class warriors in other words, the people who press religion into the service of political ideology, even as they peddle hard the apolitical line that ‘my kingdom is not of this Earth.’ In fine, they seek to take the teeth out of social issues, pacify the public, and depoliticize a highly political world around an iniquitous status quo, leaving the rich and powerful free to do as they please in this fallen world. These characters are Trump supporters and apologists who peddle a theopolitical fundamentalism that is borderline fascism. These people think Bernie Sanders is Joseph Stalin. There is no doubt that in the face of a real socialism, these people would cross the threshold into full-blown fascism willingly. They have supported every military aggression on the part of the US and make their celebration of the virtues of militarism plain. They are far from the values of the Prince of Peace.
The next passage from The Guardian review makes it clear why such reactionaries would target the Pope, Faggioli, and myself:
‘As the first non-European pontiff in modern times, Francis announced himself in Rome as having come from “the end of the Earth”. Since arriving at Catholicism’s European HQ, he has devolved power away from the Vatican to national bishops’ conferences and local parishes, and made it his mission to champion the rights of the peripheral and excluded in both secular and religious life.’
The reactionaries practise a politics which divides people within unequal societies, and actively seek to preserve existing arrangements and relations so that the marginalized and excluded remain precisely that - marginalized and excluded. These are the people who are now claiming the success of Trump’s strategy in dealing with coronavirus. They spin facts and figures any which way they choose. They are beyond reason and beyond reach. They don’t so much turn a blind eye to what this crisis is revealing about the depths of poverty and inequality in the US as put their jaundiced spin on the crisis by claims to the effect that the facts are manipulated or misleading, that people are dying of things other than Covid-19 and would have died anyway, and that the USA is really doing better than any other country in the world, whatever the figures say. It all depends on how you read the figures. They say. And they proceed to tell their supporters just how to read them. It is all very reassuring, especially at a time when reality has found the liars, incompetents, and idiots out. The unclaimed bodies in the mass graves in New York are of no concern to them, of course. They are the detritus of American society, the losers, the weak, people of no money and hence no account. They were unclaimed and unrecognized in life, and so they are in death. They had no dignity in life, and so they have none in death. Apologists for the USA being the biggest and best nation in the world can spin their disgrace and dishonour any way they like. There are higher standards. The Pope is speaking up for the worth and dignity of all such people, in all countries, and is inspiring others to act to change society to bring such people in from the margins. He therefore draws the aggressive political assault of reactionaries, the people who want society preserved in all its iniquity. Such people do not see themselves as reactionaries, of course. Instead they continue to argue that the social order they defend has issued in a material largess which has benefited all, and that those on the margins and those excluded are where they are through their own personal failures and inadequacies, not through the fault of the system. To put it in grandiloquent terms, the commit the local-global fallacy. They see, of course, that in a society of winners and losers some will win and some will lose. Rather than address the structural conditions of that division, they generalize that since some win all could win, if only the poor were as diligent, energetic, hard-working, talented, intelligent ... as they are .... It is a self-serving, self-justifying logic. And pure bunkum. It outrages the rich to be challenged on this. Because basically, deep down, they know the critics are right and know themselves to be lying, to others but most of all to themselves. They are fearful and insecure, and turn very nasty at the merest hint of an alternative worldview.
And that's how people with alternative voices, giving a voice to the voiceless, end up as targets.
I have, over the years, been open to exchange and dialogue with people of all persuasions in religion and politics, theists and atheists, people on the left and the right. I affirm possibilities of mutual learning in a condition of mutual respect. I have sufficient confidence in the strengths of my own arguments and positions to be able to maintain dialogue with people of contrary views, so long as views are expressed in an atmosphere of genuine exchange. I have issued warnings time and again that as soon as I get wind of people who wish merely to 'score points' and ‘own’ opponents, I will give them short shrift. Such people close down dialogue and short-circuit the learning process. I do not do zero-sum politics. And here is where collision is inevitable, because between those seeking to preserve an iniquitous social order and those seeking to transform it there can be no compromise. The reactionaries see the threat posed by those extolling the virtues of Pope Francis’ liminal papacy, and move quickly to counter, negate, and nullify.
I have no doubt that my detractors here saw the reference to Trump in the context of ‘the cult of the nationalist strongman,’ which sounds very close to fascism, and, as fully paid up members of the cult, decided to strike back hard in defence of their favourite religio-nationalist strongman. For all that they cite Jesus' claim that 'my kingdom is not of this Earth,' they are very keen on a religious nationalism behind the banner of America First. That Trump doesn’t give two hoots about religion is of no importance. This is hardball politics, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with notions of living the gospel. The humility they espouse is not for them and the rich, it is for the poor in coming to know and accept their place in an iniquitous social order. Trump and the hard-right Christians share a mutual loathing for socialists, trade unionists, liberals, democrats, eco-socialists, feminists, eco-feminists, Chinese, Germans, French, Europeans, people of colour, people of other religions, humanists, atheists, Catholics, Roman Catholics, Romans, vegetarians, vegans, bearded sandal wearers, and just for emphasis, socialists and trade unionists, Guardian readers, CNN, anyone who watches anything other than Fox, people with brain cells and a conscience, people who believe there is such a thing as society, intellectuals, workers, working class intellectuals, middle class. Put bluntly, they are a seething resentful mob who loathe and fear everyone but their own stupid kind. And they work hard to keep their kind stupid. I noted one as being so stupid as to share a meme claiming all manner of bad things about Bernie Sanders, little realizing that the meme was attached to a fact-checking article which exposed the lies and stupidities that the right were spreading about Sanders. People of pictures and slogans. I note, too, how their leaders are happy to let them peddle such nonsense. In fact I have caught the leaders doing the same, as with the claim that Bernie Sanders was leader of the Socialist Workers Party. They peddle known lies that are easily checked and refuted. That's the measure of them.
Pope Francis horrifies this crowd for many reasons. One of many triggers in this article may well have been the reference to 'globalization' and the commitment to breaking down borders as against the growing cult of nationalist strongmen. Here is one offending passage from the article:
‘Where Benedict sought a fortress church, Francis hopes to see walls and fortifications of all kinds – physical, doctrinal and spiritual – come tumbling down. In dealing with the migration crisis, or the status of gay people and divorced Catholics in the church, the emphasis has been on the rights and dignity of those deemed outside the boundaries of legitimacy or respectability. Compassion and mercy, key liminal virtues, have replaced judgment and orthodoxy in a new hierarchy of values.’
This issues a direct challenge to those who are firmly behind Trump and his wall. They want walls to go up the world over. These are the America First people, the people who insist on an aggressive trade policy against all countries. Perhaps the world would be a better place if it could wall all these people up in their own small world. They are so talented, intelligent, diligent, and energetic that they could no doubt thrive on their own, with no need to keep ransacking other parts of the world and exploiting others' labour. I'd like to see them try and go it alone.
I had several altercations with these characters over Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement in 2017. These people don't change. It is still the same aggressive assertion of American interests first and foremost, by which is meant the interests of the American rich and powerful, and to hell with all other Americans who don't toe the line. So I spring the nationalist trap of saying America First should be America Alone, which would be to abandon too many decent Americans who are certainly on the right side in all of this degeneracy of US politics. There are other options.
Here is another passage which would have served to enrage US religious nationalists:
‘As the migration crisis turned into a culture war in which Christianity was mobilised on behalf of white nationalism in countries such as Italy, Hungary and Poland, Francis washed the feet of a young Muslim prisoner on Maundy Thursday, visited the island of Lampedusa to highlight the predicament of migrants perishing in the Mediterranean, and transported 12 Syrian families to the Vatican, after visiting refugee camps in Greece. Faggioli quotes Francis in Lesbos in 2016, where he told local Catholics: “Europe is the homeland of human rights and whoever set foot on European soil ought to sense this.”
Heavens! The reference to ‘white nationalism’ alone would have struck the rawest of raw nerves. These people are white nationalists who flirt very closely with white supremacy. In the least, their soft peddling of white supremacist outrages contrasts markedly with the vitriol they pour on anyone on the left, which includes even ‘moderate’ figures like Obama. These people have a special fear and hatred of Islam and feel that Islam is bent on taking over the world. They don’t like migrants or prisoners, either. Or refugees for that matter. In fact, for all that they claim to be Christians, they really don’t like anybody much at all apart from people with money, people who worship money, and people who know their place and express gratitude for the money they receive by way of the charity of the rich. What really must have sent the American hard-right into apoplexies of rage about this passage, though, is that quote from Pope Francis that “Europe is the homeland of human rights.” Whether or not that claim is accurate – I argue that natural rights are grounded in natural law, and is God-given – it is a direct challenge to these American nationalists who claim America is the homeland of such rights. The sources the Founding Fathers drew on were European, get over it.
The most interesting part of the quote, though, is not the ownership claims when it comes to rights but the practical implications of acting upon those rights. If the notion of human rights means anything at all, then it means something substantially and particularly for migrants and refugees, for the marginalised and the excluded, every bit as much as it does for the rest of us. In an iniquitous, divided society, that is a principle with radical transformative potential.
I was countered by suggestions that the Pope is a hypocrite. The person who made that charge seems to have objected to this passage:
‘Pastoral care counts for more here than doctrinal purity. Faggioli quotes Francis from his letter to bishops, Evangelii Gaudium, in which he states: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” The swift decision to move out of the splendour of the Apostolic Palace – where Popes normally reside – into a modest Roman guest house for clergy, was an early signal of intent.’
The objection of hypocrisy is pressed home with the demand that the Pope effectively give the wealth of the Church away to the poor. They know that they are making a demand that cannot be realized, without the Church thereby abolishing itself. It is odd to see that demand coming from Christians, because it is a charge that normally comes from atheists and humanists. It is a charge that has been rebutted many times. It is basically a call upon the Catholic Church to dissolve itself or face the charge of hypocrisy. I have heard this charge many times before from atheists and humanists. It is a basically stupid argument based on an almost complete institutional and economic illiteracy. I have no intention of rebutting it. You can find many rebuttals if you need one. Basically, it is poor economics and shows no understanding of how institutions operate. The Catholic Church uses its assets to generate wealth which it then in turn redistributes in its social and environmental programmes. Of international organisations, the Catholic Church is second only to the United Nations in its expenditure on social and educational programmes around the globe. If it lacked those assets, it would no longer generate those resources.
People who indulge in such cheap debating points reveal themselves as politically motivated operators, rather unpleasant company. They are sophists happy to destroy standards of good and bad, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, all the more that they and their kind can prosper. Pity the world where such people gain the upper hand. In themselves, they are rather pathetic. The fact is that the people making these charges are not interested in such arguments, they simply want to exploit the power of a stupid argument to check clever folk and influence stupid people. They exploit the power of caricature. The charge has an immediate effect, which is why it is advanced so regularly. Fine. That allows me to take full measure of the kind of persons I am dealing with, cheap, nasty, tawdry little ingrates deficient in moral and intellectual worth, but politically dangerous and destructive. I will make this observation. For all that many such people claim to be Christians, they employ the arguments and tactics of militant atheists. I have speculated in the past that many on the libertarian right have seen the social and transformative power of religion and, despite having no religious sensibility and commitment, have moved to colonize religious space in order to ward off the left. In other words, they are not genuinely religious and spiritual people, but see the power of religion and its political uses, and are concerned to appropriate its space and divert it to political ends. My point is more subtle than the familiar observation that many use religion to conform people to the status quo. That observation has led the Left to abandon religion to the right, and here we see the deleterious effects. I go further to argue that some have identified the possibilities of the Left throwing off its atheism to see the emancipatory egalitarian potentialities of religion in the social and political sphere. I for one have long seen that the emancipatory project of the Left depends upon transcendent standards. The Left have been slow on this, with many still wedded to the simplistic Enlightenment division of science vs religion. They have no doubt been put off, too, by the religious right. I argue that putting the worlds of fact and value together is key to restoring the connection between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought,’ inspiring and motivating human agents in the transformation of the world from a position within the heart of that world. Religion, in fine, possesses a socially emancipatory and transformative message, as when Gerrard Winstanley referred to turning the world upside down in 1649. The fact remains that the only time that England has had a political revolution was in the seventeenth century, when it was led by people inspired by true religion. I long ago speculated that this toxic breed of right-wing libertarians have identified the radical potentiality of religion and have moved into the religious space in order to neuter it, not merely render it safe for the status quo, but to make it toxic for social radicals and progressives. As a result, the Left come to be deprived, and deprive themselves, of a powerful motivational force for change. Some of these religious leaders are not religious people at all, they are atheists practising politics. They are, more accurately, practical atheists, however much they overtly espouse Christianity. Hence there is no paradox at all as to why so many of them worship Ayn Rand. Many commentators declare themselves baffled as to how people who claim to be Christian could be so influenced by Ayn Rand. Rand didn’t just despise socialism, she also held religion in total contempt. And yet the Christian hard right worship her. This attachment has nothing to do with real religion, and everything to do with the reassurance her work brings that socialism is impossible. She is the philosopher of choice for people who don’t read. (And if that sounds dismissive, I shall add that there are far better critiques of socialism around, such as Von Mises and Hayek. I don’t care for either, but they know how to construct an argument and reason. Rand is unimaginative dreck).
I want now to continue with the article.
‘The backlash from traditionalists has been furious and concerted.’ It most certainly has. I was quickly on the receiving end, not from Catholic traditionalists but of erstwhile Protestants who espouse a libertarianism in religion and politics, which means they move quickly to counter each, any, and every assertion of commonality, apart from religious nationalism. These people are against what they call ‘legalism.’ The love of God tells us all what to do. And it is remarkable how they always seem to know what it is that God is saying. Convenient, that. We don’t need laws to regulate behaviour, a view which comes with the not inconvenient justification of free market economics in social and environmental areas. Property should be free, too. Such people practise a rank hypocrisy when it comes to religion, claiming that Jesus didn’t do politics, since ‘my kingdom is not of this Earth,’ whilst at the same time saying that Jesus in the Gospel outlines a basically capitalist economy. Well, the Old and New Testament both offer prescriptions for the ethical ordering of a viable economy, including the cancellation of debts with the Jubilee. The books argue for a viable economy based upon ethical ordering for the social good. It sounds nothing like modern capitalism. 'Modern capitalism is absolutely irreligious,' argued Keynes. Keynes was wrong. Capital is the new god, the new idol. Capitalism overthrew the old religion and established itself as the new bewitchment.
Catholic traditionalists have been fighting Pope Francis from the start:
‘Arch conservatives such as the American cardinal Raymond Burke have taken the grave step of accusing the pope of being in error on matters of church teaching relating to marriage, divorce and communion. After a synod last November on the future of the Amazon, Francis was accused of encouraging idolatry and pantheism by allowing indigenous fertility figures to be exhibited in the Vatican gardens. His passionate advocacy for migrants has led critics to suggest the papacy is turning the Catholic Church into a kind of NGO. Vitriolic language and open disloyalty of this kind have not been shown towards a pontiff for centuries.’
For me, such traditionalists would prefer to see the Church destroyed than become a vehicle that actually practises what it preaches to the greater good of all people. I see the same poison at work in politics, too.
As a form of response, Faggioli picks out Francis’s words during a homily delivered to cardinals in 2015: “Compassion leads Jesus to concrete action: he reinstates the marginalised!”
This homily of 2015 preached that the way of the Church is that of mercy and inclusion. In the homily that Pope Francis pronounced before the members of the College of Cardinals, he commented on the passage from the Gospel which narrated the healing of the leper – marginalized, despised and abandoned for being “impure.” Francis insisted that the cardinals – and people generally - follow the merciful example of Jesus. He thus stated that the way of the Church is “not only to welcome and reinstate with evangelical courage all those who knock at our door, but to go out and seek, fearlessly and without prejudice, those who are distant, freely sharing what we ourselves freely received”. I quote:
'Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean…': Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said: 'I do choose. Be made clean!'. The compassion of Jesus! That com-passion which made him draw near to every person in pain! Jesus does not hold back; instead, he gets involved in people’s pain and their need for the simple reason that he knows and wants to show com-passion, because he has a heart unashamed to have 'compassion'.
“'Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter'. This means that Jesus not only healed the leper but also took upon himself the marginalisation enjoined by the law of Moses. Jesus is unafraid to risk sharing in the suffering of others; he pays the price of it in full.
Here is the line that Faggioli quotes, and which is cited in the article:
“Compassion leads Jesus to concrete action: he reinstates the marginalised! These are the three key concepts that the Church proposes in today’s liturgy of the word: the compassion of Jesus in the face of marginalisation and his desire to reinstate.
“Marginalisation: Moses, in his legislation regarding lepers, says that they are to be kept alone and apart from the community for the duration of their illness. He declares them: 'unclean!'.
“Imagine how much suffering and shame lepers must have felt: physically, socially, psychologically and spiritually! They are not only victims of disease, but they feel guilty about it, punished for their sins! Theirs is a living death; they are like someone whose father has spat in his face.
“In addition, lepers inspire fear, contempt and loathing, and so they are abandoned by their families, shunned by other persons, cast out by society. Indeed, society rejects them and forces them to live apart from the healthy. It excludes them. So much so that if a healthy person approached a leper, he would be punished severely, and often be treated as a leper himself.
“True, the purpose of this rule was 'to safeguard the healthy', 'to protect the righteous', and, in order to guard them from any risk, to eliminate the 'peril' by treating the diseased person harshly. As the high priest Caiaphas exclaimed: 'It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed'.
Through reinstatement, Jesus disturbs those content with present arrangement, those afraid of those who seek change for the benefit of others.
Reinstatement: Jesus revolutionises and upsets that fearful, narrow and prejudiced mentality. He does not abolish the law of Moses, but rather brings it to fulfilment. He does so by stating, for example, that the law of retaliation is counterproductive, that God is not pleased by a Sabbath observance which demeans or condemns a man. He does so by refusing to condemn the sinful woman, but saves her from the blind zeal of those prepared to stone her ruthlessly in the belief that they were applying the law of Moses. Jesus also revolutionises consciences in the Sermon on the Mount, opening new horizons for humanity and fully revealing God’s 'logic'. The logic of love, based not on fear but on freedom and charity, on healthy zeal and the saving will of God. For 'God our Saviour desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth'. 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice'.
“Jesus, the new Moses, wanted to heal the leper. He wanted to touch him and restore him to the community without being 'hemmed in' by prejudice, conformity to the prevailing mindset or worry about becoming infected. Jesus responds immediately to the leper’s plea, without waiting to study the situation and all its possible consequences! For Jesus, what matters above all is reaching out to save those far off, healing the wounds of the sick, restoring everyone to God’s family! And this is scandalous to some people!
“Jesus is not afraid of this kind of scandal! He does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalised even by a work of healing, scandalised before any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual limits, by any caress or sign of tenderness which does not fit into their usual thinking and their ritual purity. He wanted to reinstate the outcast, to save those outside the camp.’
The logic of Jesus is, indeed, scandalous to representatives of and apologists for an iniquitous society divided between rich and poor, between the haves and the have-nots. This is the kind of lesson that demands nothing less than a revolution in human affairs. Jesus is not afraid of this kind of scandal, and neither, it seems, is Pope Francis. And nor am I. Others are, though. In fact, they are very afraid. Jesus wanted to reinstate the outcast and save those who are outside the camp. The reactionaries want to build walls so as to reinstate boundaries and keep people outside their exclusive camp. That they do this in the name of Jesus is an abomination that desolate.
‘There are two ways of thinking and of having faith,’ Pope Francis continues in the homily: ‘we can fear to lose the saved and we can want to save the lost.’ We stand at the crossroads of these two ways of thinking. On the one hand, there is the thinking that ‘would remove the danger by casting out the diseased person,’ and on the other hand there is ‘the thinking of God, who in his mercy embraces and accepts by reinstating him and turning evil into good, condemnation into salvation and exclusion into proclamation.’ This is the difference between casting off and reinstating. Here, Pope Francis returns to his central theme of being the Pope who comes from the ‘ends of the Earth.’
‘Saint Paul, following the Lord’s command to bring the Gospel message to the ends of the earth, caused scandal and met powerful resistance and great hostility, especially from those who demanded unconditional obedience to the Mosaic law ..’
The Church’s way is the way of mercy and reinstatement.
‘This does not mean underestimating the dangers of letting wolves into the fold, but welcoming the repentant prodigal son; healing the wounds of sin with courage and determination; rolling up our sleeves and not standing by and watching passively the suffering of the world.’
This is an injunction to ‘pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart.’
Pope Francis returns to the marginalized and the excluded, those on the outside:
‘The way of the Church is precisely to leave her four walls behind and to go out in search of those who are distant, those essentially on the 'outskirts' of life.’
That assault on the walls and closed borders that serve to keep the excluded outside is sufficient to make Pope Francis and all who agree with him the target for aggressive political assault. And I mean ‘political’ assault. For all that the aggressors couch their language in religious terminology and cite Jesus’ name, their motivations are transparently political and focused exclusively on maintaining the iniquitous order of this world. And their words and actions are ugly and aggressive. Their animosity is based not merely upon hatred, but most of all on fear and insecurity. It is the fear and insecurity that breeds the hatred. Such people are incapable of seeing politics as anything other than a zero-sum game in which the gains of others are secured at their expense. Jesus affirms another way entirely. As Pope Francis argues in the homily:
“In healing the leper, Jesus does not harm the healthy. Rather, he frees them from fear. He does not endanger them, but gives them a brother. He does not devalue the law but instead values those for whom God gave the law. Indeed, Jesus frees the healthy from the temptation of the 'older brother', the burden of envy and the grumbling of the labourers who bore 'the burden of the day and the heat.’”
Here is a healthy virus!
‘In a word: charity cannot be neutral, antiseptic, indifferent, lukewarm or impartial! Charity is infectious, it excites, it risks and it engages! For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous!’
I know these people to favour the charity of the rich – and to solicit the eternal gratitude of the poor, who remain quiescent in their subordinate position as a result – over the ‘theft’ of taxation through the repressive apparatus of government. They believe very much in rewards being merited by good character. They draw the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. They believe socialism is about the unmeritorious helping themselves to ‘free stuff.’ On the day I buried my father I saw one of this crowd post a meme which said that ‘a socialist is someone who wants everything you have apart from your job.’ I nearly commented but let it go. My father was a socialist who not only worked his entire life, worked in a damned hard job and received a chronic lung condition as his reward. But I had no need to justify myself to such people. They can indulge whatever foul stupidity they like in their own space. When they encroach on mine, I fight back and hard and recommend that people do the same. At the same time, it is worth emphasing just how radical the ethic espoused by Jesus Christ actually is. Jesus is not looking at the terms of contract, and is going much further than reciprocity. Jesus’ gift is unmerited, unconditional, and gratuitous. The hard-right Christians who condemn socialists for the belief in ‘free goods’ miss their target by a wide mark – it is Jesus who believes in such things!
Pope Francis urged the cardinals ‘not only to welcome and reinstate with evangelical courage all those who knock at our door, but to go out and seek, fearlessly and without prejudice, those who are distant, freely sharing what we ourselves freely received.’ He proceeded to demand a ‘total openness to serving others.’
Pope Francis’ words would no doubt scandalize, not to say terrify, those Christians of hard right political persuasion who are concerned to build walls and enforce borders. Pope Francis concluded his homily with this stirring call to arms:
“Dear new Cardinals, my brothers, as we look to Jesus and our Mother, I urge you to serve the Church in such a way that Christians – edified by our witness – will not be tempted to turn to Jesus without turning to the outcast, to become a closed caste with nothing authentically ecclesial about it. I urge you to serve Jesus crucified in every person who is marginalised, for whatever reason; to see the Lord in every excluded person who is hungry, thirsty, naked; to see the Lord present even in those who have lost their faith, or turned away from the practice of their faith, or say that they are atheists; to see the Lord who is imprisoned, sick, unemployed, persecuted; to see the Lord in the leper – whether in body or soul – who encounters discrimination! We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalised! May we always have before us the image of St. Francis, who was unafraid to embrace the leper and to accept every kind of outcast. Truly, dear brothers, the Gospel of the marginalised is where our credibility is at stake, is discovered and is revealed!”
Francis at the Mass with new cardinals: the way of the Church is that of mercy and inclusion, Vatican City, 15 February 2015
None of this was in the Guardian review of Faggioli’s book, but the values being affirmed in both that book and the review were loud and clear, and are everything which religious traditionalists and political reactionaries loathe, fear, and fight with a vengeance. The review concludes with this passage:
‘In an era of polarisation, division and culture wars, Faggioli believes this passion for those who find themselves on the wrong side of a border makes Francis’s papacy a pivotal one for the age. As walls go up around the world, and the times become increasingly fearful and insular, it is hard to disagree. Academic in style, the Liminal Papacy is not an easy read, but it is an important one.’
Is it the fact that the liberal and humanist and normally anti-religious Guardian could give such a positive review that served to light the political fire? Maybe , maybe not. The Pope’s message is incendiary enough. There are reactionaries out there working hard to entrench and extend this polarisation and division and exploit it to political ends. Pope Francis’ passion for those who find themselves on the wrong side of these manufactured and manipulated borders makes him a beacon of hope for some and a threat to be checked and destroyed by others. I found myself confronted by those out to check and destroy. I have been confronted by the same crowd before, people whom I call ‘nono’s,’ by which I mean people who set out to negate, obscure, nullify, and obstruct. I have tangled with them on climate change. More fool those who argue with them. They are currently operating the same modus operandi on coronavirus. I know these people and have monitored their reaction to coronavirus. I have written on them in other posts. They have gone from at first denying the threat to downplaying it. They took the deaths recorded in Italy and France not as a warning of the threat that this virus constituted to all nations but as a warning to Americans about the failures of socialism and socialized medicine. That is precisely how they reacted to the impact of coronavirus in Europe. Instead of a natural sympathy with respect to the death and illness of so many, their minds were first and foremost on making political capital. They continued in this vein for weeks. They went from there to all-out resistance against government encroachment, only finally ending worship in church on account of what God told them (I swear I am not making this up) and not in response to government order. In other words, they knew fine well the threat was real and that the government was right, but couldn’t bring themselves to say so. So they continue with that age-old indulgence of making God responsible for the stupidity of humans with a dog in the fight. Even now, they are complaining about the ‘government’ arresting pastors for putting on religious services, claiming this amounts to religious repression. No it doesn't. The pastors being arrested for holding religious services in church are not being persecuted for their religion. They are being arrested on account of being a public menace, their activities threatening their own health and the health of others. Such libertarians do not preserve and enhance individual freedom and well-being at all. On the contrary, they threaten those very things by infection, illness, and death. The neglect they show with respect to the safety of people is not an act of faith, it is an act of wilfully blind ideological and political choice. And an act of death-dealing stupidity. Such behaviour is the very antithesis of Jesus’ behaviour and is the very thing that Jesus railed against. But sense when did any of these characters pay attention to any Jesus other than the one of their own fancy?
There’s not much more to be said, really. Other than to record the account of the exchange in question. For the sake of posterity, you understand. It’s a kind of high-class revenge porn. You only need to visit the social media accounts of these people to see how ugly and hypocritical they are. I leave them alone to wallow in their worlds, I have no interest in countering their bigotry, prejudice, and stupidity. I do monitor, though. There is no question that they find my views abhorrent. I express myself with Olympian disdain when it comes to those who equate ‘government’ as such with socialism. The fact that I know my stuff makes me someone not merely to hate but to fear. At any time, I could visit their pages and expose the nonsense they peddle for being the nonsense it is. I did it once, and found myself ambushed on my own page. I leave them be, I have no interest in persuading them of the error of their ways, they are hopeless cases. Frankly, you have more chance of persuading an orc. I develop my own views in my own space. I have been on the warpath recently against the response of both US and UK governments to coronavirus. Both governments are complicit and culpable, and I have detailed how much. This crowd went from denying and downplaying the threat to claiming that ‘nobody’ saw it coming and ‘all media’ downplayed the threat. The lying is barefaced. They know damn well they are lying. They are simply out to keep spinning facts and events so as to reassure the herd they groom and thus ensure that their kind of politics remains in the box seat. This is why I question whether they do actually believe in God. They know they are lying and do it anyway. There is no transcendent check on their behaviour. They are practical atheists. Dante reserved the lowest rung in Hell for those who knew better, knew they were acting sinfully, but acted all the same. These people don't care. The only Hell they believe in is the Hell their actions make on Earth, a Hell suffered by others, not them. They manipulate and mislead people, and in getting it badly wrong on coronavirus they are responsible for who knows how many thousands of deaths. And then they lie to deny their culpability. I have been detailing this in the recent week, and that clearly has unnerved them. That’s the context.
On Easter Sunday I post a good review in The Guardian of Massimo Fagglioli’s book on Pope Francis. It's an important book. I like the work of Faggioli. I had just said to a friend that Massimo Fagglioli has been described as the Left’s theologian of choice. I can't remember who said that. He is a fine writer, theologian, and historian of the Church and I am honoured to have him as a friend. He came over to my page and made his appreciation of my comments clear. In no time, members of the American hard theo-political right came to spread their poison and vitriol with nasty and abusive comments about the Pope, about the Catholic Church, and by implication about Catholics. We are all hypocrites who believe in show and spectacle and do nothing at all in practice. It's an old claim made about the Scholastics, of course - theologians of the the Church that built the Cathedrals, that built civilization, in fact. It is errant nonsense and I sent them packing in short order. But not until I blasted back with some choice language.
First comment up was a cheap shot: “I’ll believe it when he sells just half the art in the Vatican and helps the Italian people. Photo opportunities are not helping.”
It is difficult to know how to respond to that charge for the very reason it is difficult to know precisely to what that comment was referring to. There is no engagement with the article, let alone Faggioli's the book. It is basically someone taking the opportunity to hurl abuse, not merely against Pope Francis and the Church but against Faggioli. I have no doubt this character had seen that I had tagged Faggioli, and that Faggioli had acknowledged my review positively. He will have seen the connection between us, and instead of respecting it, chose to abuse it. On Easter Sunday, that is an act that is beneath contempt, not least on the part of a religious leader. As for the actual content of the words, it is basically just a cheap bigoted shot against Pope Francis and all he represents. It is a rehash of the hoary old charge that if the Church cares so much for the poor, why doesn't it give its wealth away to the poor. Kids stuff, in other words, and not the kind of thing one expects from a religious leader of any worth and substance.
What is revealing about the criticism is the reference to Pope Francis indulging in ‘photo opportunities.’ I had been jesting above with a friend about the photograph which accompanied the article. The photograph is of the Pope kissing someone's feet. A friend had declared, in jest, that it is not a good example of social distancing! The photograph was of Pope Francis washing the feet of the inmates of a prison in Rome on Maundy Thursday in 2018. This is the photograph accompanying this post. Note, that this was in 2018, and is a photograph of a quite traditional practice. This character, out of sheer blind hatred and bigotry, jumped to all the wrong conclusions. Instead of simply checking the facts. He saw the image and immediately charged the Pope with exploiting photo opportunities. He clearly thought that this was an image of the Pope in the midst of coronavirus. That's an error, and a grievous one. To speak frankly, these people have the remarkable quality of possessing a stupidity that is mountainish but exceeded by their political bigotry. There is nothing in the article or the book about coronavirus. This abuse, I must emphasize, comes from someone who has denied and downplayed the threat from the coronavirus from the very first, someone who even now is still obsessing over government encroachment. This is someone who is in no position to give lectures as to what is helping in the fight against coronavirus. This is someone who, rather than express sympathy and compassion for the Italian people, was quick to argue that Italy's tragedy shows the deficiencies of socialized medicine, warning that this is what awaits America if it votes for the socialism of Bernie Sanders. I don't doubt that he puts out such crude and simplistic messages for the consumption of his followers. It doesn't do to overcomplicate the message. Do I really need to degrade myself by pointing out what kind of character does a thing like that? I shall be charitable and just call such people stupid, on account of seeing the photograph and thinking that it was the Pope kissing feet now, in the midst of coronavirus, and on account of thinking it had anything to do with coronavirus. I have no idea why that mistake could have been made. The post above was of Andrea Bocelli's forthcoming concert, alone, in an empty Milan cathedral. The image of the Pope in the midst of a gathering people kissing feet is most certainly not a coronavirus image. Even now, I get the impression that some people don't quite grasp how serious this is. I could put it down to ignorance.
But there is an ugly side to this. This character clearly saw my friendship with the author of the book, Massimo Faggioli; he saw that the author is a highly respected and influential writer on religion, a professor, theologian, and historian; most of all, he saw this Faggioli’s views, my views, and those of Pope Francis are not merely cogent and correct, but the diametric opposite of the tawdry views that he and his motley crew of hard right fruitloops espouse. And so, on the holiest day in the Christian calendar he moved in with a nasty and vitriolic attack on the Pope, on the Catholic Church, and by extension on Catholics like me. This is a man who is a religious leader in a position of authority, someone with the power to influence others, for good or ill. I ask you, what kind of religious leader does a thing like that on the holiest day in the Christian calendar? Not one blessed with much by way of a religious sensibility, I would suggest. The kind of leader who stokes up anger and conflict, and then feeds off the division. These people set people to quarreling, stir up anger with extreme and unpleasant statements, and then feed on the fear, anger and misery. Such leaders are not leaders at all, they are guttersnipe. Because they speak out of bigotry and prejudice. And because their motivations are political, using religion as a vehicle to peddle a particular pernicious zero-sum brand of politics. One character mistook a photograph from 2018 as a current photograph for the reason that people who speak out of prejudice never let the facts get in the way of a sneer or a slight motivated by prejudice. He loathes the Pope, pure and simple. He loathes the Catholic Church, pure and simple. He loathes Catholics, too, evidently. His peevish comments are motivated by a hatred of Pope Francis’ message on peace and justice. They are also motivated by sheer jealousy. I would say a spiritual jealousy, given the depth of conviction and devotion Catholics show, but I have never had the impression spirituality counts for much in that part of the world. It’s a competitive world where numbers count, the bigger the better. The Catholics have the numbers, and mobilize them. Better music and better art and architecture, too. And not for sale. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
That’s not the nicest of language to be using on Easter Sunday, but godless money-worshipping idolaters pretending to be religious leaders and proselytising their fake Jesus for capitalist consumption really do drag you into the cesspit to have you slug it out on their tawdry terms. I should just denounce them as the Antichrist. People are noticing the connection: 'This new translation of The Bible where Jesus throws the elderly to the plague by Easter to save the money changers seems to be missing the original spirit of the text.'
Cut such people out and you are able to rise to the spiritual high ground again. But the episode is highly instructive. That attempt to cause trouble and disturb the connection I have with Massimo Faggioli was plainly malicious, and was launched from the nastiest end of politics. It has no place in religion. When it does turn up in religion it invariably causes conflict, anger, and hatred. It is the kind of intervention that has caused religious hatreds and wars for centuries, eventually persuading human beings that the world would be better off without religion. The people who do this do this for political reasons. That they are religious leaders is a dereliction. Such an intervention denotes the complete absence of spirituality. I have no doubt that he saw Faggioli and instead of being impressed at the quality of his work, resented his name and reputation and saw the opportunity to be a ‘player’ in a big pool with the heavyweights, if only to shout rude words before being ushered away. It is all rather sad, really, conjuring up images of spotty, rather inadequate little herberts nurturing their inferiority complexes in the backwaters. Some people just don’t have what it takes to be morally and intellectually credible, but take some kind of pleasure in abusing those who do. It must make for a certain private sadness, to know that when it comes to the intellectual and moral virtues you just haven’t got what it takes. And it must breed resentment to see that others have. But the Catholic Church offers possibilities for redemption, so long as you have the nerve and the honesty to express contrition. I stand by Pope Francis’ words on the marginalized and excluded. I see nothing wrong here. Over to those who do.
Assessing incidents like this, one would feel entirely justified in condemning such a person as a fraud and a phoney, a charlatan who uses religion and Jesus’ name to peddle a narrow and nasty line in politics. I speculated long ago that such there are such characters in the world, those who are only interested in religion for its social and political uses in defending and advancing certain very worldly interests. I could describe such a person as an atheist, but that fails to express the quality I am identifying precisely. Many atheists are open, honest, generous, and life-affirming, and don’t see the necessity of God to be any those things. I know many such atheists and they are fine people. This character isn’t one of them. He's a political operator, and such people do untold damage to Christianity. They make Christianity toxic and turn people off and away in droves. I'm built of sterner stuff, and have received a strong religious grounding. Such characters are annoying, but they are not impressive, merely ephemeral.
The charge that the Pope is shallow is a nasty one, though. That is a charge against all Catholics who participate in these rituals of the Church. There is a weight, a depth, and a solemnity to these rituals. To dismiss these as 'photo opportunities' shows an intrinsic lack of depth and weight, and a spiritual lack. Coming from a religious leader, it is a serious one. That is the kind of language that sows the seeds of religious hatred and creates religious wars. It indicates precisely why humanists and atheists say the world would be much better without religion. I wonder what kind of religious leader would engage in such behaviour. It doesn't strike me as remotely spiritual. It is mean and peevish and nasty. And it is motivated by a hatred of all that Pope Francis stands for. The motivation is political, of course. And when politics gets mixed with religion, the results are invariably to disturb the civil peace. It is a gift to humanists and atheists. If these be religious leaders, then I am with the humanists and atheists every time. The whole episode confirms my view that some people would prefer to destroy an idea, a movement, or an institution rather than see it go in a direction they are opposed to.
Either way, I made short work of them. They embarrassed themselves and gave me the opportunity to expatiate further on their immense faults here. But the denunciation offered is instructive. Behind that accusation is a view that the Pope is shallow. I had posted several articles and videos on and from Pope Francis, including the very moving Urbi et Orbi. All that the Pope has done has been a great help and a great service. The Pope has struck the right note throughout. And that clearly has angered the bigots on the conservative right. And now they decided to strike. And got it wrong. In fact, they got it so completely wrong that they embarrassed themselves.
As for the rest, the demand that the Pope flog off the wealth of the Church and give it to the poor if he cares so much about them is one that we have heard countless times before. It is a demand made by teenaged lefties before they grow up. Student politics. It sits very uneasily on the shoulders of rich Republicans, for the very reason it is the very thing they accuse socialists of wanting to do to them! In other words, it isn’t a serious point, it is a mere charge of hypocrisy.
My immediate response was to say ‘And that is just the right tone to strike on Easter Sunday, isn't it, pastor ..' I hoped to shame the character into remembering what day it was. The intervention was odious.
I then asked to whom the art is to be sold? To you and your rich friends, of course. And we know how much rich Republicans love the poor, don't we. They demonize them and blame them for their poverty. Even the working poor. This same character condemned those struggling to get by on the minimum wage by asking how diligent they were in their studies. He then treated us to the story of his rise from minimum wage to the superstar he is now.
One minute I was settling down to a nice traditional Easter peace with memories of my recently deceased father, planning on one last Easter together, and the next minute I am confronted by reactionaries on the warpath. It usually irritates me but this time I relished it. Because they showed themselves up for what they are. They exposed themselves in their true colours. I have their measure. They have nothing to offer. They are mean-spirited rather than generous, uncultured and uninteresting. It is the sheer dull mediocrity of them that impresses most. They are so predictable it is boring.
I know why they came calling, of course. I have been calling out the complicity of the US and UK governments in the coronavirus crisis. Yes, I know it originated in China, and I know fine well the Chinese government was wretched in its denial and lethargy when it could have been checked from the first. I’ll damn them to Hades too. But the rest of the world did get a warning, and the US and the UK got the longest advance warning of all. Instead there was delay and prevarication. From the first there has been ideological aversion to the use of government in checking this threat. I have linked this with the weakening of the public realm and the dividing of society after decades of neoliberalism and deregulation. The libertarians don't like to hear it.
But it is more than that. These people love a straight fight between the faithful capitalists and the godless socialists. I don’t make it easy for them. I am steeped in faith and the Church, and I know my stuff. This makes me a difficult opponent for them. They frequently condemn those who maintain that Jesus was a socialist, and repeat the ‘my kingdom is not of this Earth’ line to uphold an apolitical Jesus. I hold God as transcendent, setting a standard to conform to in politics. I have never once asserted that Jesus was a socialist. I have heard these people espousing the apolitical Jesus say that Jesus advocated a capitalist economy. I can check the political misuse of religion. I recently overtly condemned the mixing of religion and politics, saying that it leads to bad religion and bad politics. Remarks such as this have put me on the radar.
Pope Francis terrifies the life out of these people. It's not just the things that he says that they loathe and fear. Most of all it is the hope he inspires for a world that is so much better than the mean and narrow world of zero-sum politics that these people espouse; they worry that the people they browbeat and marginalize and leave to rot, the people they deprive of hope and possibility for a better world, may come to be inspired by the Pope’s message and take action to throw the free-riders out of the public realm.
To the objectors I say ‘tough’! To the people who say that the Pope should sell off the assets of the Church and give the money away to the poor I say ‘hypocrites!’ Because you don't actually believe in appropriating wealth and distributing it the people at all. Anything but, in fact. You frequently caricature socialism as entailing a wealth grab of precisely this kind, going on to point out its economic illiteracy. It’s an impossible demand raised simply to accuse the Pope of hypocrisy and thereby take the radical sting out of the message. It is pure negation, an act of destruction. Because the last thing these characters believe in is the use of wealth for the benefit of those in need. They attack that very principle in politics constantly. I recently challenged a meme that one of these people shared on social media. Again, the context is one of denying and downplaying the coronavirus threat. When it hit and hit big in the US, these people never once admitted that their political opponents were right and that their ideological opposition to government is culpable in making this crisis much worse. Instead, they continued the sniping against Democrats and others lending a hand. The meme said this:
‘Hey celebs, we don’t want to be sung to. We want you to use a million or two of your money and order ventilators, masks, and gloves from the manufacturers then denote them to a hospital. Or pay for the salaries of an entire staff at a bar, restaurant, or daycare.’ That came from one of this crowd of hardcore hard-right reactionaries. The same one that caricatured socialism as the workless helping themselves to the wealth of others. And other such drivel. It’s an ugly world, in other words. Whenever I am in contact with it I feel the need to shower.
I told them straight not to try any of this cheap populism with me, implying that this wealth appropriation and distribution is something that they believe should be done as a matter of political principle. I know for a fact they believe the very opposite. I know for a fact they caricature socialism as precisely this kind of illicit appropriation. That is not socialism. Socialism is about the transformation of social relations. These people frequently denounce taxation as theft and portray socialism in precisely those terms. Of course, the moralism of the demand is their get-out clause here. They know fine well that people will not succumb to moral bullying and hand over their wealth in this way. They issue that demand because they know it to be impossible. That allows them to portray ‘the left’ – people who disagree with them – as hypocrites. They reduce everyone to the narrow selfish interest they espouse. They seek to maintain the competitive market relations that ensure people have to put their self-interest first. They have no idea that it is these relations which set egoism and altruism in false opposition. Their views are toxic, acidic, and seek to infect and dissolve every common cause and solidaristic bond that people seek to put together. That is the point of raising impossible demands. The charges are duplicitous, because they don’t believe in appropriating and distributing wealth at all. They are aggressive defenders of accumulated wealth – their own. They constantly delegitimize the role of government in taxing and spending for the social and environmental good.
These people are apologists for Trump, as they have been apologists for every hard right politician over the years. In fact, they are more than apologists. Their political motivations are transparent. The same characters have in the past gone through my friends list to harass and harangue them and counter their views, philosophers, environmentalists, eco-designers, activists, the lot. It is my own fault for being generous and allowing them to hang around. I have put my friends and colleagues in danger as a result of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, they are part of that hard-right network that has seen how progressives are building an electronic grassroots and has determined to intervene in it, spread rancour, sap energies, and break it up. My friends were all smart enough to identify the threat immediately and delete all comments and block. And now I do the same. After sending a few choice words back. I like to tell people what I think of them.
Pope Francis does far more than photo opportunities, and these people know it fine well. That's why they come on the attack, and on Easter Sunday, of all days. Does that sound like the actions of a spiritual leader? If my priest ever dreamed of doing such a thing he would be on his knees saying Hail Mary’s for the next decade. But this is the way that these people operate. They do it in other areas, relentlessly targeting those doing good work on the planet. It’s hardball politics pure and simple.
That they strike an abusive and aggressive tone on Easter Sunday reveals everything about the political motivations that are hidden behind a thin religious veneer. I say hidden. In truth, those motivations are scarcely concealed. These people are leaders and followers in a political pulpit and do immense damage to Christianity. They render Christianity toxic and turn people off in droves. They equate 'government' with 'socialism' and take every opportunity to harangue those working to make the world a better place. And that is why they turned up with cheap shots against the Pope on Easter Sunday. The Pope has given real leadership, on coronavirus and on other issues, and that's what these people bitterly resent. He is a true spiritual leader and they are mere idolators wallowing in what Pope Francis calls ‘the filth of civilization.’ These are the people who make God’s good Earth filthy. These characters do not give a good spiritual lead. Like many on the 'Christian' hard-right, they have misled people from the first, on this crisis as on others. They spin every event politically. They are overwhelmingly this-worldly, making reference to God’s eternal kingdom only in an attempt to depoliticize issues of social justice in the temporal realm. And they will do this to their ignoble end. And they will take the rest of us down with them, too, if we are cowardly enough to let them.
I have heard these people say many times that Jesus argued for a capitalist economy. I simply ignored the assertions. I knew them not to be ignorant, and hence capable of correction, but to be expressions of a willful ideological commitment, and hence beyond fact and reason. I don’t waste time in fruitless debate. We can hope that such people may come, one day, to learn the error of their ways. But that is not what they are about. They don’t even learn by hard experience. The harder the lessons delivered by reality, the harder they spin to maintain the fictions that were instrumental in bringing about chaos, crash, and crisis. This may be a fairly bleak and hopeless conclusion, but such people are beyond intellectual and moral reach. The truth is that they engage not to dialogue but to target those who think differently so as to check and undermine them, sap their energies and undermine their hope. I maintain a policy of eliminating such people first whiff of them causing trouble, and advise others to do the same.
I responded bluntly that I am involved in a Church that does far more than photo opportunities. And you know it! I said, you resent it, but most of all you fear it. I am normally reasonable, giving people the opportunity to correct themselves. But I know this crowd and know them to see such generosity as weakness. So I didn’t mince my words. I made it clear that I know these people to have denied and downplayed this virus from the very first, obsessing over 'government' encroachment, by which they mean the use of government as an agency for social and environmental welfare. And you and your toxic ideology have been caught out, I said. I pressed the charges even further. You are culpable and have the deaths of many thousands on your hands. Own it! You won't, though. Because you lack the guts. For redemption there is a need for contrition. You and your ilk are self-righteous bigots practising a particularly toxic mix of religion in the service of political ideology. I pity the America that is under the sway of the likes of you.
The words are heated and intemperate and don’t show me in good light at all. But that is what people like this seek to bring about, they seek to provoke and draw anger and create a bear pit in which truth and values are swamped. My friends who are trained in communication are wise in recommending that you refuse to engage, identify those out to cause trouble, and simply remove them without comment. Of course those removed go away claiming that ‘the left’ refuses to debate. No it doesn’t. It just doesn’t offer itself as an audience for trolls, and doesn’t make its space available to trolls.
The cheap shot on the wealth of the Catholic Church is a typical charge that comes from the more stupid trolling end of atheism and humanism. It is remarkable to hear it coming from the mouths of the American wealthy, Republican apologists for the rich and powerful in the US. We could extend the principle to all concentrations of wealth, and get into some very interesting political waters. The hard-right don’t want to go there, though. These are the people that want the weak to go to the wall. I can’t quite buy the idea that this coronavirus debacle in the US and the UK is a case of eugenics, whatever the dalliance with herd immunity. I put it down to negligence and incompetence as a result of libertarian ideology. But I still see how some can see and want to take the opportunity to eliminate some of the ‘useless eaters’ from society. The love of Ayn Rand among the Christian hard-right is revealing. Rand thought religion an "affront to reason." She worshiped the 'I.' And so do these people. There has always been a social ethic at the heart of Catholicism, and the Pope is giving expression to it. The objection of the hard-right is not to wealth at all. They worship wealth! They are idolators! Wealth is a proof of success, the hallmark of those who are the winners in life. Those without money are losers with no rights or entitlements to a decent quality of life. These people are virulent anti-socialists. And I mean virulent. They hate socialism, by which they mean any collective purpose for the social and environmental good. If I was to argue that the expropriators be expropriators, would they be in agreement? Of course they wouldn’t! They have spent the past few years warning people of the dangers of Bernie Sanders and socialism. They frequently distort evidence to portray Sanders in the worst possible terms. I could have wasted hours each day checking the foul propaganda that these people spew out. For instance, these people shared a meme on social media that falsely states that Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was a Socialist Workers Party “leader” who opposed American policies during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The meme goes on to say, “Is this what Democrat voters stand for? Bernie Sanders for President? Maybe in Iran. Not in the US.”
I expect this kind of low-level political knockabout from the worthless end of the political cesspit. You can find examples from the left and right all over social media. I stay well clear of it. I was surprised to see how many in positions of leadership and authority were sharing the meme, though. When it comes to social media, I tend to judge people in terms of how trustworthy their judgement is. There are people of all persuasions whose moral and intellectual judgement I respect. When I see people sharing demonstrably false information like this I lose all respect. Sanders was not a member – let alone a leader – of the Socialist Workers Party. These claims and others are simply false. People who spread this kind of information are either political bigots who are too stupid to know better or they are political bigots who do know better, but spread lies anyway in order to groom the stupid. Either way, I don’t want to know such people. Well, these are the people who are the anti-Pope Francis crowd. I don’t take their cheap shots and I sent them packing.
These people think Bernie Sanders is Stalin. And then they have the temerity to come on my page with the pretence of being interested in wealth distribution for the social good! I know for a fact that they don't believe in such a thing and are just using their sudden and unexpected conversion to socialist principles as a populist line to check contrary positions they deem a threat to their selfishness and greed. Basically, they just want to call socialists hypocrites. It's along the lines of those who point to critics of society and say you are taking part in it (cue list of things that critics participate in in society). That stupid.
I will openly call the bluff of such people and argue for the radical restructuring of power and resources in favour of all. And I will turn their nasty insinuations of hypocrisy right back at them. And I will thoroughly reject the way that they politicize and weaponize Christianity. I believe in the thoroughgoing socialisation of all wealth and argue for the socialisation of relations of power for the good of all. Will you join me in that call? In the cause of helping all people, you understand, as well as all other beings and bodies on this, what Pope Francis calls 'our common home'? No, of course you won't. Because you don’t believe in it at all. You ask the Pope to do it simply as an attempt to check the inclusive social ethic he espouses. Because you are not inclusive. On the contrary, you seek to build walls to divide people and enforce borders and boundaries to exclude people. You feel no compassion for those in need. You are on the side of the ‘winners,’ and fear and loathe those who argue that human beings live in society and that all have claims and entitlements to be shared between each and all. You and your ilk have sought systematically to disable government for the attainment of such common ends, whether in terms of social welfare or environmental protection. Your religion is a front for greed and selfishness, and is merely a self-validating ideology of winners seeking the licence to predate on losers. You hate the social ethic of the Church.
I could go through how the Church uses wealth for humanitarian and educational purposes across the Earth. It is second only to the UN in the resources it commits here. But you don't like the UN, either. Or 'globalism.’ Or any collective institution or purpose that serves as a constraint on the anarchy of the rich and powerful and operates as an agency of the social and environmental good. That’s the dividing line. There is no debate or dialogue here, merely an endless yes/no that saps the energy. It's like arguing with an orc.
At this point in the exchange I was aware that my words could seem ill-tempered to those who have no idea of the protagonists who were party to this ugly incident. I did make some cheap shots. As when I cited the argument I have heard one of them make to the effect that Christianity is the best religion in the world because it is the biggest, with 1.4 billion adherents. I pointed out that 1.2 billion of these are Catholics, whose leader you have just abused. I also reminded him that he frequently puts other religions down, as when denouncing the caste system in Hinduism, or indulging a nice piece of Christian anti-semitism in denouncing the 'legalism' of Judaism. The least said about the views these characters express on Islam the better. This is not good company to be in, and I let fly. To those observing on the outside, this may not have reflected well on me. So I added the comment that if people think my words harsh, then I invite them to visit the pages of those involved. Those pages contain some ugly views. Apology and denial, and vicious, lie-infested, assaults on political opponents. Nancy Pelosi is compared to a virus. Both leaders and 'flock' share this ugliness. One who spent weeks claiming Italy shows the failures of socialized healthcare can be found saying with respect to coronavirus that we should ‘let it take its course.’ When people were warning of this virus weeks ago, these people openly abused and ridiculed them. Unless they have been wise enough to delete those posts, they will still be there. The people on the receiving end of the abuse will know the truth. I have their names. The same people were boasting of "only 21" deaths in the USA until very recently, claiming that the USA will avoid this crisis by social distancing and good personal hygiene alone, with no need for government intervention. They then spent eternities arguing over constitutional matters with respect to the right of worship. There was an obsessive assault on the power of government. Instead of expressing sympathy for Italy and France, these people took the opportunity to attack the failures of socialism and the inadequacies of socialised healthcare. They seized upon the deaths of Italians will glee. And they are still singing hymns of praise to greed. It's one of the seven deadly sins, and deadly it most certainly is proving.
Frankly, I felt sullied being in the company of this crowd on Easter Sunday. They are an ugly, repulsive bunch. If this really is the face of Christianity, then I would turn atheist immediately. These people do the work of Antichrist.
I ended my blast with this:
You have been caught out. Own your mess!
I'll not thank you for your attempt to poison this holy day. You do it deliberately. I pray that the people in your community receive better guidance in the future. Your political pulpit is toxic. As for the Pope not helping, then try this (and see how it compares to your Trump apologetics):
Doctors and nurses on the front line have become symbols of sacrifice, but priests and nuns have also joined the fight, often at great risk."
I'll leave you with this observation, though. The Guardian is typically antipathetic to religion, considering it borderline stupidity and superstition at best. Many of those espousing Christianity act to prove the worth of that dismissal. This is an example of a fruitful exchange and interchange which augurs well for the future. So in you come, I said, in an attempt to break up emerging solidarities around themes and values you plainly despise. There's no future in your brand of religion as sanctioning the remediable iniquities of this highly political world, your constant 'my kingdom is not of this world' line is a plain attempt to take the politics out of the political world. That religion is a useful doctrine for them that already hath, and want nothing from politics other than it leave them alone and cost them little. The rest of us can go to hell on Earth, conformed to an iniquitous temporal realm and be contented with the promise of a reward in the Heaven beyond. It's a hoary old myth, and thankfully people don't buy it like they used to. If Christianity offers people seeking redress with respect to remediable social ills, then they will rightly turn away and embrace an ethics and politics. A Christianity that has nothing to say on matters of most concern to people is simply irrelevant and will be discarded.
And then I deleted the whole ugly exchange as an abomination on the holiest day in the Christian calendar. I was celebrating it as the holiest day. Imagine my surprise and disgust at being accosted and abused by a supposed religious leader, then. An exchange like this was the last thing I had on my mind. What kind of religious leader causes trouble like this on the holiest day in the Christian calendar? Not a very good one. It doesn’t strike me as spiritual at all. There are some people in leadership positions within Christianity who are not religious leaders at all. They occupy political pulpits as people who exploit the religious needs and yearnings of people for political ends. It is ugly to be abused in such a way. Such a thing has turned many people away from religion in the past. It doesn’t turn me away, for the very reason I know such people to be irreligious, fakes who are practising politics under the cover of religion.
Anyhow. I unfriended and unblocked a few, and sent a few more toxic miscreants packing, too. I am slowly but surely winnowing out my friends list. I don’t need people who make no contribution - and learn nothing - hanging around. It is also clear that some go through friends’ lists and connections to harass and harangue others for political reasons. I have no doubt some here saw that Massimo Faggioli was a friend, checked who he was, if they didn’t know already, saw how much of an influential figure he is and how much of a threat he constitutes to the rabid right like them, and then decided to cause trouble, for me and for him. This is all about breaking up connections that people forge between themselves. It is all about atomizing the opposition. The threat to me is this, as a result of interventions and exchange like this, my own contacts will start to see me as toxic for bringing along a thoroughly noxious bunch of people who spread rancour and nastiness. I can keep much better company than this.
The fact is, as a Christian I was set to spend a quiet day alone in peaceful observance of the holiest day in the Christian calendar. The plan was to have a last Easter with my father. I have a box of chocolates that he bought at Christmas, shortly before he died. I was to open them and enjoy some warm memories of the times we spent here. I was looking forward to watching Andrea Bocelli, that fine Catholic gentleman, live from Milan at 6pm. Instead, I got mugged by guttersnipes. I carried on as normal. The Pope, Andrea Bocelli, my dad, and I are of a far finer quality than the two-bit pugs who infect religion with their political hatred and bigotry. And I moved them on without even once calling them trolls!