After a dalliance with Catholicism in the mid-naughts, Anne Rice has decided to move on. As described by the Baltimore Sun’s religious blog (and what would H.L. Mencken think about that idea?) “Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.” It quotes Rice thusly:
In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.
In response, the Anchoress writes:
Rice’s angry frustration with what she (and, let’s face it, many others) perceive to be a sort of Institution of No is interesting. She refuses to be “anti-gay,” but the church teaches that indeed we must not be anti-gay, that homosexual inclinations are not sinful in themselves, but that all are called to chastity, whether gay or straight.
So, what she is refusing is not so much church teaching, which she incorrectly represents, but the worldly distortion of church teaching both as it is misunderstood and too-often practiced. I do not know how anyone could read the USCCB’s pastoral letter, Always Our Children and then make a credible argument that the church is “anti-gay.”
But then, I do not know how anyone can read Humanae Vitae and credibly call the church anti-feminist or anti-humanist.
I do not know how anyone can read Pope John Paul II’s exhaustive teachings on the Theology of the Body and credibly declare the church to be reactionary on issues of sexuality or womanhood.
I do not know how anyone can read Gaudium et Spes and credibly argue that the church is out of touch with the Human Person or Society.
I do not know how anyone can read Fides et ratio and credibly argue that the church does not hold human reason in esteem.
I do not know how anyone can look at the Vatican supporting and funding Stem Cell Research, or the even the briefest list of religiously-inclined scientists and researchers and credibly argue that Christianity is “anti-science.”
Anne Rice wants to do the Life-in-Christ on her own, while saying “Yes” to the worldly world and its values. She seems not to realize that far from being an Institution of No, the church is a giant and eternal urging toward “Yes,”, that being a “yes” toward God–whose ways are not our ways, and who draws all to Himself, in the fullness of time–rather than a “yes” to ourselves.
It sounds very much like Rice is repeating what Norman Podhoretz describes in his book last year, Why are Jews Liberals, as this Wall Street Journal excerpt highlights:
As with these old political and economic questions, so with the newer issues being fought out in the culture wars today. On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.
Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of “Jewish values.” But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. After all, it is they who are most familiar with the Jewish religious tradition and who shape their lives around its commandments.
Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law. To cite just a few examples: Jewish law permits abortion only to protect the life of the mother; it forbids sex between men; and it prohibits suicide (except when the only alternatives are forced conversion or incest).
The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right. And to the dogmas and commandments of this religion they give the kind of steadfast devotion their forefathers gave to the religion of the Hebrew Bible. For many, moving to the right is invested with much the same horror their forefathers felt about conversion to Christianity.
All this applies most fully to Jews who are Jewish only in an ethnic sense. Indeed, many such secular Jews, when asked how they would define “a good Jew,” reply that it is equivalent to being a good liberal.
But avowed secularists are not the only Jews who confuse Judaism with liberalism; so do many non-Orthodox Jews who practice this or that traditional observance. It is not for nothing that a cruel wag has described the Reform movement—the largest of the religious denominations within the American Jewish community—as “the Democratic Party with holidays thrown in,” and the services in a Reform temple as “the Democratic Party at prayer.”
In both Rice’s case regarding Catholicism, and what Podhoretz describes above regarding Judaism, both involve a choice between competing dogmas. It’s not entirely surprising that “Progressivism,” a century old European-inspired dogma, where seemingly everything is permitted, but in fact with a remarkably codified rulebook all its own (this fellow in particular has really codified the rulebook!), wins out over the more timeless worldview.
To call Reform Judaism “The Democratic Party at prayer” is to play off of the chestnut that the Anglican Church is the Tory Party at prayer. Podhoretz knows that, and if anyone can help me since I am drawing a blank on who first came up with the line they would have my gratitude. Remember that the aphorism actually proves that clever as such an association may be to a raconteur it is of low predictive value. The current Anglican Church is well to the left of even the current, liberal by American standards, Conservatives in the UK. There is no reason to assume that Jews as a community could not also shift positions in this case to the Right or respond to a leftward drift on the part of the Democrats. Institutions change, it is more interesting to study why they change at different rates. The FDR coalition of Jews, Blacks, Catholics, and Socialists, has endured to a remarkable degree for over 75 years. It has survived despite having been proven to be false in its theoretical assumptions and ineffective in delivering the services promised. The loyalty to the party has united urban Blacks and unionized Jewish schoolteachers, White steel workers and Latino immigrants, Multi-millionaire capitalists or trust fund babies and unskilled clerical workers or semi-skilled advocacy agents. In most cases the real interests of these groups diverge. For over three generations they have ignored those interests and serially focused on the image of Herbert Hoover and the Rethuglicans coming to steal their birthdays.
The ultimate personification of the current Democratic Party is Anthony Weiner, who represents middle class Jews and poor blacks while getting married to Hillary Clinton’s Saudi Arabian girlfriend. This contraption cannot continue to run simply on inertia. When groups bolt they may do so suddenly and en masse, as many of their great-grandparents did in the other direction.
In the end, the question is not whether the teachings of the Catholic Church conform to the popular morality of a particular time, but whether the God of the Catholic Church, or any other God for that matter, actually exists. In the unlikely event that any of the contradictory claims of Islam, Christianity, or any of the other religions regarding the existence of these super-beings happens to be true, the issues in this article all become moot. However, given the lack of evidence that such beings are real, as pointed out by the likes of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens in our own day, using many of the same reasons given by Jean Meslier more than two and a half centuries ago, it seems to me most unlikely that they do. A consequence of this as far as Ms. Rice is concerned is that it leaves her and her pop morality out on a limb. H. L. Mencken had it right when it comes to religion, but he probably would have been the last one to be surprised by the Sun’s religious blog.
“[Rice declared’ In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.”
Nice display of “Golden Corral religiosity” by Ann Rice, huh? If Little Annie Fanny opened up a restaurant, it could only be a buffet, couldn’t it?
Memo for Ann Rice: Imagine two civilizations clashing in a life-or-death struggle. One side has a cynical, pick-and-choose approach toward morals and theology. The other fiercely adheres to a core set of beliefs codified through time and experience.
Question of the Day: Who do you think will ultimately win the war?
Carla Tortelli to Sam Malone in Cheers:
“It ain’t a religion for wimps!”
Happy St. Ignatius of Loyola Feast Day! (not a wimp!)
Yes The Anchoress is correct about some of the things Ms. Rice objects to.
But I have gotten into trouble about some of this before, because I think Ms. Rice is also correct: objecting to what is being said in many an RC Church, and sometimes preached from the pulpit. Even dogma – which Papal statements seldom are – is misrepresented. One example which I have elsewhere been upbraided for mentioning: the RC “Immaculate Conception” dogma concerns the birth of Mary, not Jesus. Nor is suicide automatically a sin unless be committed out of existing despair, which word is defined in dogma roughly as “having lost hope of God’s forgiveness.” I doubt such points are made widely…