It’s all Catholophobia, surely

Nov 30th, 2009 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Libby Purves suggests that the Catholic church’s response to its own recent history has been due to its own perspective that the reporting (she quotes a reporter for the Boston Globe) “is fuelled by anti-Catholicism and shyster lawyers hustling to tap the deep pockets of the church.” And maybe it is, she says. But.

But such an attitude is not a dignified response to clamorous hysteria. It is self-protective, paranoid arrogance; the canker that threatens all religions and ideologies. We recognise it all too well from history, and from modern fundamentalism in Christianity and Islam. Once you are convinced that you alone hold the truth — whether your god is Amun-Ra or Marx — you slough off self-doubt and self-examination. You build rich hierarchies of obedience, surround them with impressive ritual and illogical rules, and then circle the wagons to protect your artificial structure.

And you do that so thoroughly and with such fervor that you can even manage to justify (to yourself) protecting perpetrators while threatening victims – even though the perps are grown men and the victims are children.

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