Saturday, February 11, 2006
Cartoons
The cartoon uproar is a rare example of an issue that has two clearlydefined sides, both of which are 100 percent defensible, and for whichthere is very little or no middle ground on which to basereconciliation or peace talks. These are the kinds of issues that mustbecome explosive and violent, drenched in not only real blood, butalso the figurative cultural blood of misunderstanding. Once suchblack/white issues explode, they become the stuff from which wars arefought because the only solution, really, is to kill everybody on theother side.One can look down from an ivory tower and understand both sides, butthe occupant of the tower will be hard put to offer ways for the twosides to extend the a long, long olive branch.
And then along comes Pres. Bush with the official U.S. statement,weakly attempting to bridge the Manichean divide by finding agreementwith both sides, and in doing so, takes neither side, confirming hisown deep scorn for free speech and at the same time exposing his deepfear of the other side's fundamentalism.
In hindsight, one could see the divisions coming and widening with theparallel rise of religious fundamentalism and secular liberalism.
In the midst of the entire furor is Pope Benedict's first encyclicalon the nature of God's love, which went a bit unnoticed, in myopinion. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associatedwith vengeance or even a duty of hatred, this message is both timelyand significant," he says. "For this reason I wish in my firstencyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and whichwe in turn must share with others."
The Christian church has volumes of experience and oceans of spilledblood over just the issues that the Danish and other newspapers andoutraged Muslims are experiencing right now, as if it would be thefirst time, yes, deja vu all over again. The Roman Empire prideditself on it religious pluralism and welcomed Christianity as anotherspiritual option, but not as a source of "truth." Determining truthwas the bailiwick of philosophy. Christianity would have none of it;i.e., an equal place among the many in the pantheon of religionsadding to the technicolor of the Empire's many cultures wasunthinkable because Chrisitianity proclaimed itself as the only way totruth. All religions by definition claim absolute truth, and in doingso, create many, many enemies of absolute truth to be eliminated, sonothing has changed through the millenia but the name of the religion.Back to the pope, this Benedict, seemingly understanding--whyshouldn't he?--this inevitable outcome of intolerance, gives us anencyclical that God is love, and that love and truth are inseparable.
This way of looking at God understandably does not play well in Europethese days because Europe over the last decades has become so secular.I can't vouch for this, but there is a hypothesis/theory amongEuropean philosophers these days that classical European civilizationis being threatened by the directly-proportional weakening of itsChristian/Jewish roots out of which that civilization blossomed andflourished. If this is so, then those countries with newspapers andwestern societies now standing on the pedestal of free speech byprinting and re-printing the cartoons depicting the undepictable areactually not standing on the pedestal of free speech at all; rather,they are simply clueless about religion—the result of which willproduce, perhaps, the great Manichean divide of our new century.
And then along comes Pres. Bush with the official U.S. statement,weakly attempting to bridge the Manichean divide by finding agreementwith both sides, and in doing so, takes neither side, confirming hisown deep scorn for free speech and at the same time exposing his deepfear of the other side's fundamentalism.
In hindsight, one could see the divisions coming and widening with theparallel rise of religious fundamentalism and secular liberalism.
In the midst of the entire furor is Pope Benedict's first encyclicalon the nature of God's love, which went a bit unnoticed, in myopinion. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associatedwith vengeance or even a duty of hatred, this message is both timelyand significant," he says. "For this reason I wish in my firstencyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and whichwe in turn must share with others."
The Christian church has volumes of experience and oceans of spilledblood over just the issues that the Danish and other newspapers andoutraged Muslims are experiencing right now, as if it would be thefirst time, yes, deja vu all over again. The Roman Empire prideditself on it religious pluralism and welcomed Christianity as anotherspiritual option, but not as a source of "truth." Determining truthwas the bailiwick of philosophy. Christianity would have none of it;i.e., an equal place among the many in the pantheon of religionsadding to the technicolor of the Empire's many cultures wasunthinkable because Chrisitianity proclaimed itself as the only way totruth. All religions by definition claim absolute truth, and in doingso, create many, many enemies of absolute truth to be eliminated, sonothing has changed through the millenia but the name of the religion.Back to the pope, this Benedict, seemingly understanding--whyshouldn't he?--this inevitable outcome of intolerance, gives us anencyclical that God is love, and that love and truth are inseparable.
This way of looking at God understandably does not play well in Europethese days because Europe over the last decades has become so secular.I can't vouch for this, but there is a hypothesis/theory amongEuropean philosophers these days that classical European civilizationis being threatened by the directly-proportional weakening of itsChristian/Jewish roots out of which that civilization blossomed andflourished. If this is so, then those countries with newspapers andwestern societies now standing on the pedestal of free speech byprinting and re-printing the cartoons depicting the undepictable areactually not standing on the pedestal of free speech at all; rather,they are simply clueless about religion—the result of which willproduce, perhaps, the great Manichean divide of our new century.
