Bernard Keane’s confessional: it’s tricky being an atheist
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It’s a bit tricky being an atheist sometimes. The mere act of pointing out that some Christians believe not in an historical figure - the eminently sensible philosopher known as Jesus Christ - but in a myth about said Jesus coming back from the dead, and have a thing about eating real flesh and drinking real blood, has elicited considerable hostility from a number of Crikey readers. One of them emailed me to tell me I was dead — not in a threatening sense, but in a philosophico-spiritual sense. I found it hard to argue, especially after a Home Happy Hour spent yelling at the kids to do their homework while cooking dinner. Several complainants suggested I wouldn’t dare say such offensive things about Islam. Au contraire. Islam is about the only religion that makes Catholicism look enlightened in its attitude toward women. But, here’s the thing: oddly enough, we don’t shower tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on Islamic celebrations in which over a hundred thousand young Muslims are invited to come to Australia. In fact, I can just see The Telegraph headlines if a World Muslim Youth Day were held in Australia, complete with Government support. And that’s a fairly fundamental point. Catholicism is a major institutional religion, with significant economic as well as political power. Islam, however much it is demonised, ain’t. And no matter how it is justified or spun, and whether it’s in micro, regarding the WYD, or in macro, with the tax-exempt status enjoyed by all religions, the fact remains that in an ostensibly secular nation, massive resources are directed toward religious institutions despite the profound damage inflicted by such institutions via their attitudes toward women, gays and lesbians and children. Moreover, the conflict of interest when politicians who are religious — like Morris Iemma — make decisions in favour of religious organisations is never discussed. This is not to suggest nothing but evil springs from the activities of the religious. For example, the Catholic Church, in which I was raised, has a relatively strong tradition of social justice, something almost entirely absent from the rather more fashionable happy-clappy churches like Hillsong, which seem more like lifestyle and self-help companies for aspirational dimwits than spiritual gatherings. The best email I received was from a Queenslander who has been to the two previous World Youth Days and offered his perspective on the event. It’s enough to reinvigorate one’s faith in youth — Catholic, atheist or otherwise:
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31 Comments
Tim Wallace: Dear me, your rabid Catholicism has taken a battering; has it not?
1.Didn’t you notice that that I didn’t claim to know which wretched pope it was. I merely said than he turned away from the poor bloody Jews during WWII. I don’t give a stuff if there are Jews who were Nazi supporters. That is their problem.
2.Your asinine inference that “my one is bigger than your’s” beggars belief.
3.If you had any chance to say something positive about the stone-age mysticism which is your religion. You blew it. Reason is a much superior tool than aggression.
4.Why do people like you assume that the rest of us are illiterate? My best subject at uni was the history of WWII and I have bookshelves full of this subject.
5. Why are you so unbelievably hostile? Haven’t you made any converts lately?
6. You sound like a 15 YO crusader with Richard the Lionheart’s slaughter machine and if your comment is any guide you wont make it to the first hack of a of an infidel’s sword.
I must say I share very similar background and views on Catholicism with you Bernard. Except I have found no compelling evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ apart from tampered ancient texts, which must surely be discredited as propaganda by now. It was Russell’s History of Western Philosophy which first alerted me to the similarity between a lot of the more benign doctrine of the church and ancient Greek philosophy. My attitude now is to leave religions alone to their own whacky devices, as long as taxpayers money is not employed for their benefit, and as long as they steer clear of “educating” the young in the idiocy known as Intelligent Design. The targeting of the young for brainwashing to take things on faith is despicable, whether it be Catholicism or the Hitler Youth.
World Youth Day was an initiative of the late Pope John Paul 2 ( Karol Wotilya ). As a young man Wotilya had lived under Nazi occupation in his native Poland, and while commencing his studies for the priesthood, had helped underground Polish Theatre stage plays and other theatre performances to keep alive polish culture as well as helping move Jews to safe houses.He became a cardinal living under the Communists and dealing with them. Wotilya saw the two great criminal regimes of the 2oth century, one atheistic in theory, both in practice.
The millions of youth who journeyed to hear him didnt come because he was going to tell them how bad the world is. They already knew that. It’s not rocket science! They came because he was telling them that with their love, channeled through the heart of Christ, they could make a wonderful difference. He reminded them that the battle between good and evil begins in every human heart and that if they wanted to change the world..
Tim Wallace: You have friends?
If the Pope can be invited to bring an embalmed “blessed” almost Saint, will other Heads of State be similarly favoured, perhaps the President of Egypt with a mummy, or Somare with some shrunken heads?
I agree with sentiments of both Bernard and Michael. If only it was as simple to leave religions alone to their wacky devices as Michael suggest. Trouble is their wacky devices extend into all walks of life, encouraging social divisions and discouraging intelligent inquiry.
John James: How do you arrive at the colossal and astonishing conclusion that people who don’t believe as you wish them to are, ipso facto, socialists? Am I to assume that all of the people who hang onto far right wing shibboleths, and outdated and unbelievable concepts such as Jesus being the son of God, are members of the DLP? (Hi Bob Santamaria, have you knackered hell as effectively as you tried to knacker Australia?)This is offensive to any semi-intelligent being. To assume that God takes the form of a human is bad enough. To credit him with fathering a son. (“No, no; it was God who did it!”). Is repulsive, condescending and a denigration of all that can be good in a human being.
they had to change themselves, and they would need God’s help to do that. That is why the great social reformers are the saints, the Vincent de Pauls, the Teresas of Calcutta, the Mary Mackillops, and the John Paul 2s. So profound was the change Wotilya brought that the KGB, through their Bulgarian surrogates, tried to assassinate him . Atheism, in its official form, collapsed, the Berlin wall came down and true freedom began to get some oxygen. Atheism had nothing to offer, Bernard. Nothing ‘tricky’ about it!
As an atheist, one of over 30% of the population, I get fed up with religionists assuming that they hold the moral high ground and their assumption that they are somehow the keepers of a flame which non-Christians can’t access. Also, it makes for grim reading to know that the religious community hates non-Christians more than it loves the religion which binds them.
Thank you for an excellent article.
Tom: maybe you should just start your own religion. It’s been done before with various degrees of success. You will probably still have a problem with sexual abuse, though, since the proportion of Catholic clergy accused of sexual deviancy is no greater than that of other denominations that permit married clergy. However, you could fix the whole problem by not just promoting contraception but making it mandatory, given most most sexual abuse occurs within families, and it would certainly solve the vexed issue of anthropocentric carbon emissions.
Nice to see you’ve tempered your position, Bernard, but suggesting you elicited “considerable hostility” for the “mere act of pointing out that some Christians believe not in an historical figure - the eminently sensible philosopher known as Jesus Christ” indicates you’re partial to bit of historical revisionism of your own. Possibly what people took issue with was the totalitarianism inherent in a statement like “the men who run the world’s premier institution of misogyny and paedophilia should never have been allowed to hold their medievalist frolic in public in the first place”. The description of “zombie messiahs” might also have been regarded as deliberately insulting and an incitement to vilification. You might also note that the comments relying the most on hostile insults and historical mistruths (the pope being a nazi sympathiser, for example) were those supporting you. If you can’t accurately report your own words, how much faith should we put in how you report other things?
If there is one thing that Bernard Keane can be relied on in his articles, it is his consistency in being long on assertion and short in fact.
I think George Pell is doing the devil’s work myself and I’ve written to him and called his office to make this very point at least a year back. And I think they squirmed a little too at the directness. God is not anti science in my world view - how could s/he be if it’s their own creation? Best scientists tell us dangerous climate change is a reality. Yet Pell strongly implies he knows better. Well he’s entitled to his democratic view like anyone else. But he goes further. He uses his Sunday column and any time he’s asked to actively undermine and attack these honest and sincere and expert people.That’s human ignorance and quite some arrogance in my judgement. Ergo the Devil. And yes I was an alter boy and I’ve had a bit of look at the Vatican and the catacombs. No. 8 of 9 kids. Born and bred. My sin of pride I suppose is that I think I can smell the devil in him. There it is, I think I do. I’m not on this forsaken ecological kick for the perks. God knows I’m not.
dying cursing the Roman occupiers and all authority ( The Left love that image), there is the Jesus ‘having it off’ wwith Mary Magdalene ( the feminists are great defenders of this Mary Magdalene ), there is Jesus ‘high’ on some form of psycogenic mushroomsand,and there is the Jesus who says “yes” to everyone, especially the liberals, because he doesn’t want to be ‘judgemental’. None of these images bear the slightest resemblance to the Jesus that appears in the Gospels( or Mary Magdalene for that matter ) but the Left/liberals are never going to allow the facts to get in the way of ideology.
One more thing, Venise: by your count you must regard most Jews as Nazi sympathisers also. It’s a terrible, despicable slur that you deploy to advance your ideological position, attributing the gravest crimes to those you disagree without a modicum of research. And while I make no assessment about where you stand with relation to the moral high ground, let me venture that you seem to have the intellectual low ground well and truly occupied. You wanna go another round? I’d love to know your position on the Priory of Sion, for instance.
Paraphrasing Monty Python: Mr Keane is free, but he’s a little bit conciliatory. Come on Bernard, let slip the dogs of war and don’t let the religious loonies soften you up.
A bumper sticker that may be of interest to Crikey readers:
DON’T PRAY IN MY SCHOOL AND I WON’T THINK IN YOUR CHURCH.
Available from all good Victorian Trades Hall Council bookshops.
Well yes, venise, I’m frothing at the mouth, can’t you see? No, I don’t assume everyone else is illiterate, and virtually all of my friends are agnostics with whom i have engaging and friendly discussions, hence the reason they are friends. But I don’t have much time for people who venture the most serious slurs without checking their facts. For not suffering fools gladly I must confess my weakness. If your best subject at uni was the history of WWII it’s kinda surprising you can’t actually name the pope you accuse of being a nazi sympathizer, and no doubt I might be regarded as uncharitable for saying so but it does indicate a paucity of scholarship on your part and that, perhaps, you don’t know what you’re talking about. As for your bookshelves, well, who knows, yours may be bigger than mine. But I also have a library card; and I also know how to google.
As Bob Dylan would say, you must think I’m unlearned, that I’m too young to speak out of turn … but where organised Catholicism went wrong was to think Jesus wants us to suffer like him. It’s a deep misconception. Good yes, suffer no 1. how could mere humanity even attempt to resemble a man - god? The idea is impertinent and preposterous 2. by the church’s own teaching He suffered a terrible death for us, in our place. In other words no need for an encore, or reprise, it’s been done. Time to let go of the masochism folks on a journey down a dead end street. First reform - get rid of the perverse vow of celibacy ie allow married priests. 2nd reform - allow female priests. 3rd reform - promote contraception everywhere. The church is and remains hopelessly neurotic about all this basic commonsense. One gets the distinct feeling that just like Latin mass, once it is replaced everyone in the organisation will blink and go derr, why didn’t we do this already. Answer - pride.
Poor Bernard: firstly failed public servant, now failed Catholic. Failed altar boy also? You have seriously failed me in your fact free attack on the Catholic church, leading me to question how much faith I can have in your “reports” on the government and public service. Perhaps a weekend retreat with the Redemptorist Fathers might help?
Arsehat.
One of the better articles I have read on WYD.
Well done!
Maybe because he’s taken his life long vow of chastity he’s got some neurosis that seeks revenge on all the breeders, or worse the recreational sex practices of folks enjoying their own bodies, so he’s comfortable that we all cook irrespective and the saved go to heaven, but we do indeed cook all 6-9 billion. You have to remember that the hyper Catholics believe sincerely in truth/holiness through suffering. To suffer a comparable crucifiction in mimicry. It’s a perverse perspective really and surely not ever what Jesus would have wanted. Truly it’s become a cult of original sin. You have to have soaked in it to really know what a house of cards it is and I mean religiously, theologically, spiritually on Pell’s own terms. That’s Pell’s recipe for the future. Some spiritual leader. I don’t think so. He’s a false prophet. It takes alot of guts to stand up to this kind of emotional bullying from the tradition so I have respect for Keane here though I’m not an atheist.
With all due respect, John, I’m not sure you’re helping your case.
Tim Wallace: “historical mis-truths (the pope being a Nazi sympathizer, for example…”) I think the pope concerned was called Pius XXIII, or something; if you have done as much WWII research as your comment suggests you will know that the man looked the other way when it came to the holocaust. For evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing. On this count alone he was a Nazi sympathizer; not that any pontiff could be described as being good.
err by the by, JP II may have experienced totalitarian Nazism and Communism but as hyper Catholic Santamaria here was fond of saying (and some are fond of airbrushing?) the 20C had another dictatorial force ‘perhaps more insidious and dangerous than communism’ … And Bob Santa was referring to … corporate capitalism. So that makes 3 great evils of the 20C really. And yes given what we know of the handshake of the CIA with oppressive multinationals to destroy democracy and grind South and Central Americans into poverty, Santamaria, a faithful servant of the Church and instigator of The Movement here (and the ALP Split of the 1950ies) was surely right. How ironic. Even more ironic that the Catholic church itself is a monolithic corporation of sorts doing business with an ALP largely annexed by … corporate capitalism judging by the front page story in the SMH last Saturday! Amen!
As British wartime leader Winston Churchmouse (or whatever his name was) said to American prime minister Theodore Roosevelt (or something like that), um, oh forget it…
Gosh Venice, “or something” indeed. I’ll wager I’ve done more research since I can actually name the pope (Piux XII). You could start by reading “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: Pope Pius XII and His Secret War Against Nazi Germany”, by Rabbi Robert G. Dalin (rabbis not usually being known for defending anti-semites). You can ponder why those who thanked Pius XII for his efforts to save Jews include: Chaim Weizmann (Israel’s first president), Moshe Sharett (Israel’s second prime minister) and Isaac Herzog (Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi). Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide credits Pius XII with helping to save the lives of 700,000 to 860,000 Jews. Finally, note John Cornwall’s backdown in 2004: “I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war…” Sorry, Venise, but you seem adept at believing whatever you want unsupported by facts.
lol. Is this your usual style of argumentation?
Bravo, JJ. We’d been debating until now whether you’re a pisstake of a far-right wingnut or the real thing. This shows you’re definitely a pisstake - but an absolutely inspired one. I especially love the “Pope JPII as Mel Brooks in TO BE OR NOT TO BE” spiel in #3. Outstanding!
It is said that living with ex-smokers can be tough but reasoning with ex-catholics is a nightmare! What one confronts is the usual left-liberal misunderstanding of freedom but admixed with some wacky theology. Bernard’s contributions to Crikey are testimony in point and this article is the ‘piece de resistance’. In the past few weeks we have seen a defence of the killing of unborn children, sodomy/lesbianism and , by implication, bestiality or whatever sexual practice takes your fancy, walk-in/walk-out marriage, all, of course, founded on that great liberal icon of ‘personal autonomy’. You can f*ck virtually anything that moves, provided, of course that you have consent! ( Two barks from ‘woof’ is regarded as a “yes “).
In this final article we are treated to a brief outline of who Jesus is. We are told he is a ” philosopher”, and this fits neatly with some of the other popular theories doing the rounds of the liberal establishment. There is the Jesus as revolutionary,