Pardons and Millstones (cont.).

Last week, in my Pardons and Millstones post, I commented on our common humanity. I’d like to expand the point. 

  Although only American evangelists with stomachs for brains take Genesis literally, the doctrine of original sin has put its finger on a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: the conflict between reason and desire. At its most trivial it's reflected in my continuing to smoke though I know it may well give me an agonising death. As Swift said, people are not rational animals, but animals capable of reason. We are not houynhynms but yahoos and if we try to deny this fundamental truth we'll end up as crazy as Gulliver at the end of his travels. Unlike other eastern cults, Christianity stresses we've bodies as well as souls: Gulliver craps. So beautiful though Milton's description of  paradise undeniably is:

    So hand in hand they passd, the lovliest pair
    That ever since in loves imbraces met,
    ADAM the goodliest man of men since borne
    His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters EVE.
    Under a tuft of shade that on a green
    Stood whispering soft, by a fresh Fountain side
    They sat them down, and after no more toil
    Of thir sweet Gardning labour then suffic'd
    To recommend coole ZEPHYR, and made ease
    More easie, wholsom thirst and appetite
    More grateful, to thir Supper Fruits they fell,
    Nectarine Fruits which the compliant boughes
    Yeilded them, side-long as they sat recline
    On the soft downie Bank damaskt with flours:
    The savourie pulp they chew, and in the rinde
    Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream;
    Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
    Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems
    Fair couple, linkt in happie nuptial League,
    Alone as they. About them frisking playd
    All Beasts of th' Earth, since wilde, and of all chase
    In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den;
    Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw
    Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards
    Gambold before them, th' unwieldy Elephant
    To make them mirth us'd all his might, & wreathd
    His Lithe Proboscis; 

it's only after the Fall that you feel you’re in the company of human beings rather than some impossibly noble extraterrestial beings dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter:

    Why comes not Death,
    Said hee, with one thrice acceptable stroke
    To end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word,
    Justice Divine not hast'n to be just?
    But Death comes not at call, Justice Divine
    Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries.
    O Woods, O Fountains, Hillocks, Dales and Bowrs,
    VVith other echo farr I taught your Shades
    To answer, and resound farr other Song.
    VVhom thus afflicted when sad EVE beheld,
    Desolate where she sate, approaching nigh,
    Soft words to his fierce passion she assay'd:
    But her with stern regard he thus repell'd.
    Out of my sight, thou Serpent,

And this is why once we've unfrocked and imprisoned the paedophile priests - which we unquestionably should - and the Pope's resigned - which, given that he seems to be the Goons’ Professor Moriarty inhabiting Kung Fu Panda’s body, would be a relief for us all - we shouldn’t then make the mistake of thinking the Church is still not fit for purpose. Unlike the smugly superior Hitchens and Dawkins, its founder knew that human beings are intrinsically weak and fallible, not weak and fallible as the result of priestly machinations. That an institution composed of the unswervingly righteous is about as likely as an altruistic banker or a self-effacing blogger. So, while, in the words of Swift’s self-composed epitaph, savage indignation should lacerate our hearts at the wickedness we Yahoos can descend to, we must avoid Orwell’s comforting delusion that our job is to watch out for the pigs trying to take over and ruin noble ideals. We are those pigs. The enemy is inside each one of us. The best you can do is to recognise the fact and, in Auden’s words, ‘love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart.’ 

  Whilst I would agree with the existentialists that a man is the sum of his actions - after all the notion is merely an elaboration, some might say an obfuscation, of the catholic doctrine that faith without works is dead -  I think institutions need to be viewed differently. An institution’s values have a life independent of its members’ behaviour. For example, I deplore the recent tendency to suggest there’s a moral equivalence between National Socialism and Communism. Yes, Hitler and Stalin were both megalomaniac bastards who were responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people. But, and it’s a crucial ‘but’, Stalin perverted a noble ideal - from each according to his ability, to each according to his need - whilst Hitler put into practice the core ideals of nazism: all non-northern europeans are racially inferior, Jews are evil and should be exterminated, and the same goes for gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally disabled. Stalin was in bad faith, Hitler was true to his beliefs. Beliefs repugnant to all but members of the BNP and their fellow-travellers amongst the euro-sceptics. Devoid of talent, charm, and in most cases basic literacy, these sad individuals valorise the only attributes they possess: occasional patches of white skin peeping between the tattoos, and a British passport. In contradistinction, the Church’s fundamental values are sound, although its members’ behaviour is often not. 

  Pullman, and those who’ve climbed aboard that particular coach, would disagree. They contrast the ‘real’ Jesus, who embodies a set of values corresponding pretty closely to those of the average Guardian reader, with the false Christ set up by the Roman church and worshipped by its deluded followers. Which is really just another way of saying, ‘I’ve decided which bits of the New Testament account of the guy fit in with my personal ideals: all the other bits were obviously made up by superstitious peasants and/or proto-Catholic power-freaks’. The problem is that while it’s perfectly reasonable to say: ‘I like certain aspects of the man’s teachings, but others - e.g.  ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father except by me - suggest a megalomaniac (or God) and repulse me, the Pullman position isn’t. True, it has a long history: Voltaire, and before him a line of protestant ‘reformers’ and  mediæval heretics stretching back to New Testament times. But they all betray a monstrous arrogance: ‘I’ve discovered the truth which everyone else has been too stupid or corrupt to notice, and now I’m going to remake the Church in my image.’ And immediately another insightful person jumps up interjecting: ‘No, your ideas are completely wrong. But I’ve got the answer!’ Unfortunately Pullman doesn’t tell us who was behind tricking Peter and the rest of the disciples  - no doubt with the kind of con-trick we’re familiar with from Jonathan Creek - into believing their dead leader had dropped in for tea. If we apply the cui bono test we’ve got a problem. The occupying Roman authorities? Hardly. The Jewish religious authorities? You must be kidding. The Catholic Church? A protestant would say the organisation wasn’t around at the time, a catholic would point out that the first pope got himself crucified: hardly a smart move for a con-man. So although the early christians may well have been deluded in thinking Jesus was the Christ it wasn’t as the result of a conspiracy, but merely from believing what their leader claimed about himself. 

   There are several intellectually respectable positions to hold on catholicism. One can say that it’s the organisation founded by Christ for humans, not Martians, and run by humans with all their failings. Alternatively one can say that it’s a tyrannical institution which feeds off human fears and weaknesses. Finally, there’s the via media: it’s an organisation which has done some good things, inspiring great architecture and music and helping the poor and the sick; has done even more bad things, burning heretics alive heads a long list; but in the end is pretty irrelevant in this day and age (cliché intended). What you can’t say, and retain your intellectual credibility, is that the Church is some alien body which twisted the teachings of some simple right-on guy for its own nefarious purposes.

   But, I hear you cry: What about its fabulous wealth! Didn’t Christ tell his followers to sell all they had and give it to the poor? Yes, and he also rebuked his disciples when Mary Magdalene poured precious ointment over his head and they complained: ‘To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.’ Jesus replied,  ‘Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you.’ Again he was stressing that we’re bodies as well as souls. As humans we not only feel things with our minds but give them physical expression. It would be a pretty odd parent who didn’t kiss his children or give them presents on the grounds that the only thing which matters is the way you feel. So building beautiful churches and filling them with precious objects was an entirely natural expression of people’s devotion to their imaginary friend. In the middle ages it went side-by-side with the founding of innumerable charitable institutions. And, alas, side-by side-with the luxurious life-style of the higher clergy. For, if the poor are always with us so is ‘the robber rich man’ always ready to exploit any opportunity that presents itself. Bishoprics were either divvied out amongst themselves by aristocratic families or used by the king to reward his senior civil servants. Just as today the tax-payer or company shareholders have to support the outrageous greed of Sir Fred Goodwin and his like. 

  So denounce the wickedness done by individual catholics, remember that as a human being you have the potential to act as vilely yourself, and resist subscribing to Dan Brown’s or - for the more literate amongst you - Philip Pullman’s fantasies.