This Week in God

September 16, 2006

First up from the God machine this week is a big-and-getting-bigger religious dispute between one of the world’s preeminent spiritual leaders and one of the world’s biggest religions.

It started this week when Pope Benedict XVI began a lecture in Germany by quoting a 14th-century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, and a Persian scholar. Benedict quoted the emperor as saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” For some reason, Muslims seem to have taken offense.

A medieval reference in an academic lecture by Pope Benedict XVI unleashed a wave of denunciations, outrage and frustration across the Muslim world Friday, with officials in Turkey and Pakistan condemning the pontiff, Islamic activist groups organizing protests and a leading religious figure in Lebanon demanding that he personally apologize. […]

“We ask him to offer a personal apology — not through his officials — to Muslims for this false reading” of Islam, said Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world’s leading Shiite Muslim clerics, who lives in Beirut.

The Vatican has noted in response that Benedict neither endorsed nor denounced the “evil and inhuman” analysis, but simply referenced them as a kick-off point for a discussion of faith and reason. Muslim leaders throughout the Middle East didn’t find that particularly persuasive.

“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world,” Salih Kapusuz, the deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-inspired party, told state media. “It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.”

It’s hard to know if this controversy will rise to the Danish-cartoon level, but it’s unlikely to fade away anytime soon.

Next up is an update on a This Week in God story we’ve been following for a long while — the plight of the family of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, who died in Afghanistan, and whose Wiccan faith has run into official resistance from Pentagon leaders. This week, the family made a little progress.

The widow of a Nevada soldier killed in Afghanistan a year ago won state approval Wednesday to place a Wiccan religious symbol on his memorial plaque, something the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had refused.

“I’m just in shock,” Roberta Stewart said from her home in Fernley, about 30 miles east of Reno. “I’m honored and ecstatic. I’ve been waiting a year for this.”

Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart, 34, was killed in Afghanistan on Sept. 25 when the Nevada Army National Guard helicopter he was in was shot down. He was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does not recognize and so prohibits on veterans’ headstones in national cemeteries.

The new development came Wednesday when state veterans officials said they had received a legal opinion from the Nevada attorney general’s office that concluded federal officials have no authority over state cemeteries. As a result, they intend to have a contractor make a plaque with the Wiccan pentacle — a circle around a five-pointed star — to be added to the Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Fernley.

No word yet on whether the VA will follow the state of Nevada’s common-sense perspective.

And in our third story this week, “blue laws,” which mandate businesses close or alter commercial practices on Sundays, may have been common in previous generations, but public demand and appreciation for church-state separation have led to these laws being widely repealed or ignored. Surprisingly enough, a couple of scholars are suggesting there’s an actual, measurable effect from the change.

While bars, cheap hotels and similar places of questionable repute may remain America’s favorite spots to sin, two economists say that giving people an extra day to shop at the mall also contributes significantly to wicked behavior — particularly among people who are the most religious.

Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Daniel M. Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame discovered the malevolent Mall Effect by studying what happened when states and counties repeal “blue laws.” Those statutes prohibit the sale on Sunday of certain nonessential items, such as appliances, furniture and jewelry, typically sold in shopping malls, as well as liquor and cigarettes.

Gruber and Hungerman found that when states eliminated blue laws, church attendance declined while drinking and drug use increased significantly among young adults. Even more striking, the biggest change in bad behavior mostly occurred among those who frequently attended religious services, they report in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “The Church vs. the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?”

The trick of it, I suppose, is understanding why all these religious folks, who were going to church on Sundays, can’t get all their sinning done Monday through Saturday.

“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world”

There is so much irony in this statement. It is beautiful and succinct, but when a non-Christian has a better grip on the meaning of the true meaning of Christianity than the Pope… Perhaps this guy should take Benedict’s place.

There is also a lot of dark irony in the Pope’s comments about spreading faith through the sword. First of all, the Islamic faith specifically prohibits conversion through violence if the religion has a written text. Secondly, what about the long history of violence sanctioned and carried out by the Church itself, both before during and after the Reformation? Not just through war and wiping out entire Christian sects that didn’t come up to code, but torture and meddling in politics. And of course there are the myriad other shameful points in the history of the church including the recently revealed game of Hide the Child Rapist. Isn’t there something in the Bible about the plank in one’s own eye and the mote in someone else’s? Guess the Pope missed that bit.

I don’t care if he says he was “just talking.” Regardless of the state of world affairs it was hugely inappropriate and unecessary. If he had read out exerpts from a similar dispute with a Jewish scholar he would get the same response: Shut the f__k up! He has no right to be surprised, he damn well better apologize.

  • The trick of it, I suppose, is understanding why all these religious folks, who were going to church on Sundays, can’t get all their sinning done Monday through Saturday.

    Somethings are more fun when know you shouldn’t be doing them.

  • “…He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world…”

    I believe this was the main criticism leveled at Pope Ratzi when he was first elevated last year. The guy has managed to undo (ar at least to attempt to undo) every progressive thing the Catholic Church has done since Vatican II. Amazingly, he was a big supporter of the reforms until he was confronted with “radicalism” as a professor in Germany and went running for the halls of authoritarianism, where such affronts to civility were not allowed. He’s already introduced Intelligent Design into the Church’s view on evolution (they used to say there was no conflict between Darwinism and religion). He probably believes in a heliocentric universe and wishes he could reinstitute Galileo’s guilt. When he was head of the Inquisition he went after every reformer he could lay hands on, and practically ran his old comrade Hans Kung completely out of the church.

    But then, why would anyone find any of this surprising, since the basis of the Catholic Church is to put a Christian overlay on all the old religions (Aphrodite becomes Mary, etc., etc.) after it sinned by sleeping with Constantine and getting Real Power here in this world?

    This guy is easily the least pope I have seen in 50 years of being aware that popes exist.

    (And, Dajafi, before you leap in with another of your ignorant and uninformed comments about my religious and social bigotries, all that comes from my good Catholic friends, including She Who Must Be Obeyed.)

  • “Even more striking, the biggest change in bad behavior mostly occurred among those who frequently attended religious services.”

    So going to church causes sin? I knew there was a reason I rarely attend Mass!

    Anyway, cue the panty knotting and gibbering from the radical Christofascists. We’ll see how long it will take before some half-wit preacher starts waving this study about and some non-wit member of his flock uses it as an excuse to burn down a Target.

  • “He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world”

    Kinda ironic for an Islamic to scold someone about reform. That’s exactly what Islam is in need of, a reformation or two or three.

  • I wonder how many of the people buried in military cemeteries would be upset that they are spending eternity in the friggin’ army? My army years seemed like an eternity anyway.

  • If a sin happens in the forest and there’s no blue-nose there to witness it, is it a sin?

    For most Americans the Mall is a house of worship, Almighty Consumerism.

  • I don’t like the Pope, but some righties have a point when they ask, “Where is the rioting in the streets and massive outrage when a believer actually acts out the belief that Islam is a religion of force by committing suicide bombings and other violent acts?” Riot over a cartoon or a quote and not over an overt act of betraying their own religion?

    I don’t like religion and I’m not inclined to want to be more sensitive to a religion whose followers have committed acts of violence against civilians in the name of that religion be it Christianity or Islam.

  • They’re all medieval. On balance, all religions cause much more harm than good. Why anyone takes any of them seriously is beyond me.

    When I contemplate man’s place in the cosmos, religion doesn’t enter the picture. Either I die the same death as the sow bug (nothingness), or I share an unknown/unknowable future on some other plane … with that sow bug and every other living thing. I guess I’d prefer the latter, even though I can have no idea what it might involve — seems a shame to just waste all this organization/information — but there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. Unlike that old time religion, Ockham’s Razor and the Second Law of Thermodynamics are good enough for me. I don’t feel the need for an adult version of the “invisible friend”, and I’d be happy to be left behind by the Rapture and enjoy this sinful, joyous world, free from the meddling of all those superstitious idiots of whatever persuasion.

  • What’s Pope-a-dope supposed to apologize for? What meaning would his apology have? He said what he believes and meant it as a slam on the competition. It’s meaningless babble for Ratzi to say what’s on his mind and then back off to hide behind some virtual apology. The guy writes his own stuff. Nobody told him to just read what was on the teleprompter. He’s got his own brand to promote and he was doing some marketing. Knock down the other guys. Make ’em look bad. Ratzi’s as wiggy as Shrubweh. And like Shrubweh, he hates and distrusts everything that doesn’t look just exactly like he does.

  • burro said, “Shrubweh”

    Ha Ha! I like it. And like Yahwehm, who was an assistant god of El’s, Shrubweh reached his level of catastrophic incompetence. Up the organization indeed!

    A moment of silence for Ann Richards who dubbed Jr, the Shrub.

  • Dale, I lived in the Texas Hill Country for a few years and I would occasionally go in to Austin to see a U.T. Lady Longhorns basketball game with some friends of mine who get season tickets every year. I don’t know how many games they went to, but at almost every home game I attended, Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan would be watching together from the sidelines. There was no big deal about it, but it offered reassurance that all hope wasn’t lost just to be able to look down and see those two strong, battle hardened, intelligent, accomplished and no B.S. women laughing and involved in the game and feeling the protective respect of the crowd for them, even without overt acknowledgement of their presence. They were loved. And now they are greatly missed.

    A moment of silence for Ann Richards. Absolutely….

  • Given Vatican’s own history of rather bloody “conversions”, the quote seems more like a gratuitous slam at Islam than a harmles intro into a message about peace and love for God. As for:

    “The Vatican has noted in response that Benedict neither endorsed nor denounced the “evil and inhuman” analysis,”

    that’s a rather disingenuous excuse. If he’s indifferent to it why mention it at all?

  • The Gruber-Hungermen Study perfectly illustrate why certain religious people wants a strict code that governs every realm of our lives, for they do not have the self-control to do otherwise.

    The pope’s behavior is lamentable but not surprising. His goal is to purge the curch so that only a third remains, which are the “true believers” So tolerance is certainly not high on Benedict XVI’s agenda.

    I find it that the Pentagon would deny the wiccans their symbol. After all it is the pent-agon, and the wiccan symbol is the pent-acle

  • “The Vatican has noted in response that Benedict neither endorsed nor denounced the “evil and inhuman” analysis,”

    that’s a rather disingenuous excuse. If he’s indifferent to it why mention it at all?
    [libra]

    The Vatican is taking one right from the ReShrublican play book:

    -Make an inflammatory statement and when people shout, look surprised and say “Aw shucks, ya’ll know I didn’t mean it.”
    -If people don’t shut up, say the offended people obviously “Hate Catholics (or Christians),”
    -Finally, hint that the offended parties are a pack of terrorists.

    Oh, and of course point to the bad behaviour of a few members of the group as “proof,” that the original remarks were true after all.

    Gag.

  • What liberals in this country really need to do though is stop sticking up for Muslim violence. A lot of it is not based in the kind of disputes about which reasonable people could disagree– it really is pre-Lockeian, “my-religion-is-better-than-yours” type stuff, and that kind of thing just inevitably has to go, no matter what their religion is. It’s what liberals in America would disagree with about the worst of the Fundamentalists in this country, but taken to the worst level. If you wouldn’t like it here, don’t make excuses for it over there. Granted, the kind of thing we say every day may be true, that right wing interests will point to particular things and use it as justification to take things too far or to say things that aren’t true. But it’s liberals who lose credibility when we don’t say “a religion demanding violent intolerance of other religions is wrong” even while we say everything else we’re saying. This Muslim extremism thing is a thing that’s got to be overcome.

  • “He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages.” Salih Kapusuz, the deputy leader of Turkish Islamic-inspired party.

    And who said the Rethuglicans were the only ones oblivious to irony? I swear, those who don’t recognize it are always the best at coming up with it. Add this Turkish turkey to the list of all time greats.

  • I get a little tired – OK, more than a little – when Muslims cry and whine about the Crusades. Am I the only one who recalls that the regions now known as Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and all of Northern Africa were Christian before the Islamic invaders swept in converting by the sword and destroying the remains of Roman culture there?

    And Swan is right. Why in the world do we feel obligated to defend people who want to behave like it’s the 6th century in the 21st? It’s one of the loony things liberals think they HAVE to believe, like being anti-nuclear, thinking Mumia isn’t a cop killer, and fondly assuming that even Ted Bundy can reform.

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