Proving that shoddy religious journalism is not an American phenomenon, the Times of London has decided to tell us that the "Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible."
"THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true," the article begins. Yes, it's true: Wisdom really isn't a woman, and she doesn't have teeth "like a flock of sheep that are even shorn." Also, when Jesus said we should be like serpents, he didn't expect us to grow scaly skins.
The article continues:
The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.There is an excellent, disinterested summary of the Galileo slander here, written by a non-Catholic. Somebody else can look up the Pius X quotation, but when I read it a few years ago, I remember that he was condemning the use of literary theories as the sole way to interpret scriptural truth. The Holy Father's condemnation fell thus not on those who wished to place the Bible in its historical context, or apply textual scholarship to the Bible (which is absurd on its face -- source criticism was invented to disintangle the early versions of scripture.)
"The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US," Ruth Gledhill writes. The "rise of the religious Right" has been proceeding for three decades in America, so it's nice of Ms. Gledhill to notice. Religion has played a starring role on the national stage since long before this country's birth; the question is not why religion is a political factor now, but why it was so dormant for so long.
Gledhill and the Times can run such stories, even though their audience is largely right-of-center, because to British elites, believing Christians are freaks of nature. Nevermind that the Evangelical movement was started by the Brits, including the indominable Wesleys, today that movement is populated by otherworldly dolts who long to bring back the rack and the Iron Maiden (excellent!).
When I was in London last month, the BBC ran some footage of a couple dozen earnest-looking folks who gathered on the Supreme Court steps to pray for a good incoming justice on the court. Not my thing, really, and they did look a tad goofy, but so what? Anybody who works in downtown D.C. knows that there are always a few people demonstrating for this or that; nobody pays that much attention unless the demonstration is blocking traffic, in which case the demonstrators are courting murder.
But to illustrate their theme of the benighted fools who dare to pray in public, the BBC was so pleased with this footage that they were still playing it several days later. Were they aware that about a third of the American public identifies itself as Evangelical? And that means there are more Evangelicals than, say, viewers of network evening news programs?
It's unfair to single out our British cousins, who are, after all, guided by the same constellation of class-based prejudices and hatreds as our American elite media. Such as the Washington Post: "Strong Grounding in the Church Could Be a Clue to Miers's Priorities," its headline blared Wednesday. Did they run an article called "Work as ACLU Lawyer May Indicate Future Rulings" when Ruth Bader Ginsberg was nominated?
As the headline indicates, the article attempts to rat out Harriet Miers for attending a church where they believe in the reality of Christ's sacrifice, if you can imagine. They even seem to think that the Gospel says something about how humans ought to live their lives -- "There are antiabortion pamphlets inside the church and literature opposing premarital sex," the Post helpfully reports.
About ten years ago, Christopher Hitchens wrote a terribly unfair book about Mother Theresa, intending it as a hatchet job. His main theme -- apart from the transparently absurd charge that she was a publicity-seeking fraud -- was that secularists shouldn't be taken in by Mother Theresa's corporal works of mercy. No, that tiny Albanian nun did not do these things because of an Enlightenment-inspired ethos, but because she thought she was bringing souls to heaven. Hitchens' book was wrong, but at least he bothered to take his subject seriously. The same cannot be said of practically any mainstream journalist writing about religion today.
