NY Times asks: Are Muslims the new Catholics?

The politically correct New York Times ran an unusual op-ed piece on Monday, contributed by Doug Saunders, writing from Toronto. Mr Saunders draws a strong analogy between contemporary "concerns" about Islam and the Islamization of the West, on the one hand, and 20th-century American anti-Catholicism on the other.

He makes the point that as late as 1950, American Freedom and Catholic Power sold nearly a quarter of a million copies in the USA, and was on the Times best-seller list for weeks. earlier feelings of anger and to anti-Catholic sentiments of earlier generations.

"The view that members of a religious minority are not to be trusted — that they are predisposed to extremism, disloyalty and violence; resist assimilation; reproduce at alarming rates, and are theologically compelled to impose their backward religious laws on their adopted home — is not new.... From the 19th century on, distrust, violence and, eventually, immigration restrictions were aimed at waves of Roman Catholic immigrants."


Mr Saunders continues: "Many Americans shunned such views, but some liberals did not. Mr. Blanshard’s book was endorsed by the likes of John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, and respected scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset, Reinhold Niebuhr and Sidney Hook debated Catholics’ supposed propensity toward authoritarianism."

The point Mr Saunders overlooks -- thus rendering his argument specious -- is that the moral and social values espoused by Catholics are virtually identical to the Protestant Christian values on which America was founded and built.

Muslims, however, follow a false prophet and seek to impose on Western society a culture which is backward, barbaric, and alien to our way of life. If we think the Islamists are predisposed to extremism, disloyalty and violence; resist assimilation; reproduce at alarming rates, and are theologically compelled to impose their backward religious laws on their adopted home — we do so with good reason.

Further reading on WWW: "How can we be silent in the face of Islamization of our country?" This post has been in the top five on Walt's "hits list" for weeks now.

The solution to the problems of Northern Ireland

Tomorrow is July 12th, "the Glorious 12th", on which the anti-Catholic bigots of the Loyal Orange Lodge celebrate the triumph of King Billy of Orange (he's the one on the white horse) over the Catholic King James II in Ireland 220 years ago. Ireland has never been the same since and Britain still occupies the northern part, which they call Ulster.

The fight over Ulster has continued for about a century since the days of Michael Collins (see the movie!), in spite of peace initiatives by Bill Clinton and others. But Michael Moore, in his book Stupid White Men, proposes a solution, which Walt heartily endorses.

Convert the Protestants of Northern Ireland to Catholicism!

Moore reckons that if just 2.5% of the Protestants of Ulster convert, that would create a Catholic majority. End of problem. And getting that 2.5% to switch should be easy, according to Moore. Just show them the following benefits of being a Roman Catholic.

One guy in charge -- the Pope. There are several thousand Protestant sects. Some are run by committee, some by an elected chair, others simply run like a food co-op, with no one calling the shots. Going Catholic means having a leader for life, someone unafraid of making a decision, giving the faithful a fixed set of rules and boundaries that give one’s life order and clarity. And after the Pope dies, no messy elections -- a couple hundred guys wearing red gather in a room, vote, and a puff of white smoke out of the chimney tells everyone the decision has been made. No campaign speeches, no pandering to the electorate, no recounts.

More sex. Catholics, as we all know, have more babies, and so, you know, that means only one thing -- more sex! Sorry, but in the Catholic Church you can’t get the babies without the sex. And who couldn’t use a little extra sex these days? I’m telling you, let those Protestant Orangemen know they’re going to be getting some, and watch how fast they end those silly parades.

More days off. The Catholic church has six official Holy Days. In countries where the majority of citizens practice Catholicism, these are fully paid days off from work and schooldays off for the kids. Can you name one Protestant Holy Day -- not counting the day the Eddie Bauer Christmas catalog comes out? I didn’t think so.

Free alcohol. You go to Mass every day, you get a free drink of wine. True, you must accept that you’re drinking the Blood of Christ, but hey, you can do that! How many times have you told people the gin and tonic you are nursing is "just water"? Have a little faith!

Catholic girls. See above.

A guaranteed spot in Heaven at the right hand of God Himself! It’s all there in the Bible -- Jesus made Peter the head of the Church, and then he made it clear that only members of the "one true Catholic Church" get past the velvet rope at the pearly gates. So you can continue your allegiance to the Queen and then burn in hell for eternity -- or you can get on the "A list" and enjoy Forever with a first class seat.

AIDS, Africa and Catholicism

Agent 17 sent me, for comment, an article by an ex-priest, James Carroll, in which he claims that Africa's Catholic bishops are ignoring "Catholicism’s greatest failing—the AIDS crisis ravaging their continent". Here's my answer.

What we have here is a clash of cultures, philosophy and dogma. The writer has rejected the faith he swore he fidelity to and has become not just not Catholic but anti-Catholic.

He is speaking from a purely secular, humanitarian point of view. It makes sense to someone holding that philosophy to intervene by whatever means to save the noble savages, the poor benighted Africans, from themselves. After all, they are people "just like us".

Except that they're not. Africans have a different culture from Europeans and westerners. That cannot be denied. And it accounts for the rapid and continuing spread of HIV/AIDs on the Dark Continent.

The Africans have never been particularly impressed by the Christian values of chastity or monogamy. Polygamy is practised even today in the so-called Christianized parts of Africa south of the Sahara. Yes, even among supposedly educated and "civilized" people.

And prostitution and casual sex continue as they always have, the only difference being that some people -- probably not the majority -- use condoms. (This is in marked difference to my experience in east Asia. There is lots of casual sex there too, but virtually everyone uses condoms. As a result the incidence of HIV/AIDs is significantly lower.)

The Church's stand on matters sexual, against which the writer inveighs (one wonders why he left the church in the first place) goes directly against the norms of African culture. The Church preaches (and Catholics occasionally practise) no sex outside of marriage, and only one marriage partner. Sure it's an ideal, more honoured in the breach than the observance even here "at home", but it is nevertheless a worthy ideal.

The Church has had some success in the past in imposing its values. They remain, however, foreign values to large numbers of Africans, perhaps the majority. That is why nothing the Church does or doesn't do is ultimately going to make a great deal of difference. So how the Church's continuing to insist on a moral answer, rather than a medical answer to the plague of HIV/AIDs can constitute a scandal is a mystery to me. It is a jejune argument.

As a footnote, I should say that I have referred to the Church in reference to the Catholic Church, since that's the Church whose approach is being called into question here. However, the fundamentalist Protestant sects, especially in the USA, hold the same beliefs and preach the same remedies -- abstinence, continence and monogamy.

The Economist last week reported that in large swaths of America outside the Liberal northeast, this is the main thrust of campaigns to reduce sexually transmitted disease and teenage pregnancy. In the USA it works, to a greater extent, because the culture there has its roots in the Puritanism of the early settlers, the Mayflower gang. But Puritanism came to Africa with the Protestant missionaries only in the 19th century ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume") and it never took.

To sum up, the Church's approach to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDs in Africa may be unrealistic -- Africans will always be Africans -- but it is not wrong.