Wandering Mind

Got some dear old friends from the Year Gimmel mad at me on FB for defending Catholics who I have ample personal reason to admire, irrespective of what I think of their individual doctrines and loyalties.  Absolutely true that many doctrines created at the highest hierarchical tiers generated considerable misery to innocent people.  Deicide claims persisted within my early lifetime.  Expulsions, exploitations, anti-Semitic expression in the guise of art, and plundering all got the justification of their version of Ratzon HaShem, Hebrew for the Will of God.  While there were victims, as there are victims of their gyn dogmas now, they also got their measure of internal retribution for these misdeeds.  While still the most populous identifiable sect, their monopoly ended centuries ago as Reformation defectors in large numbers were lost to Church control forever.  Parishes today have pretty wide open departure gates as those born into their religion pass through in response to adverse consequences of their doctrinal positions or repugnant behavior of their own clergy who they are first starting to toss under the bus and let the civil authorities prosecute.  There are no more Catholic theocracies outside the Vatican City State.  And as much as certain Protestant groups want to set agendas, particularly in the USA, there really aren't any Protestant national theocracies, even though the Queen of England nominally rules the Anglican church.  There once were, all long gone.

But unlike some militant Protestant sects that have absorbed a Win-Lose paradigm to their lenses, or sometimes even opt for Lose-Lose over Win-Win lest they offer you some benefit, the Catholics really have not done that.  We enjoy today polyphonic music including masses by the great composers of history, levels of art and architecture that remain destinations to see as visitors from all over the world seek their glimpse.  In America, we have eminent medical, educational, and humanitarian efforts that would not exist without Church inspiration.  For a few weeks each year, American streets and front yards appear more festive, people become more courteous than they were the previous month, people assign some of their earnings to make other people a little happier via gifts selected with them as individuals in mind, and people toss a little extra cash into the kettles while Santa hints that people ought to focus on generosity.  All this running simultaneously with what is still mass worship to the Gimme Deity and persistence of some pretty shabby treatment of targeted individuals and groups.

As I detach from my Jewish loyalty one incident at a time, creating expanding lists of Rabbis who have benefited from what is basically title inflation bestowed too often by Rabbinical Junior College, and watch for minyanim that now rarely assemble in time for the formal call to worship, the free market of religion has moved the way of other free markets.  While Social Media can and does hijack my attention, some insomnia gave my mind a chance to wander through what is religion for.  Christopher Hitchens in his God is Not Great certainly offers ample evidence that world has been poisoned in some form by most.  As American loyalty to religion and its litmus tests literally jeopardize the safety of large numbers of women and large numbers of folks outside the common sexual identifications, does vilifying people, which religions, mine and others, do as part of scripture if not practice, really serve the purpose of the communal identification that the clergy do their best to discipline?

I think not.  We also create communal norms which for Jews is limitation of diet, setting aside specific days to recapture sanctity that had lapsed while coping with the world, learning from our forebears, what they got right that we need to maintain and where we need to get better religion to reduce harm.  Our doctrines really haven't done very well.  Many of our communal norms have done exceptionally well.  There are more worthy Jewish non-profits than I can support.  Some of the modern sages continue to add elegance to our experience.  Confucian culture norms stress discipline and consistency.  It is the authoritarian religions or divisions that have poisoned the world, but where they prevail, outside Islam, it is not for very long.  

As my friends of yore ganged up on me for admiring people who I knew deserved to be admired, the shameful outcomes of religious edicts, which still exist today, are offset by the subsidiary institutions which made the world better for a lot of people.