What the Vatican will allow us to say
A priest who works for something called ‘the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’ doesn’t like the way secularists use the word ‘tolerance’. He says that ‘neutrality toward world views cannot be truly tolerant and respectful’ – which could be because he is inflating ‘tolerant’ to mean ‘respectful’ and ‘respectful’ to mean ‘obedient’ or ‘groveling’ or ‘slavish.’
When secularized citizens act in their role as citizens, they must [not] deny in principle that religious images of the world have the potential to express truth.
Ah yes – you’d like that, wouldn’t you. You’d like us to stop – when acting in our role as citizens, which presumably means doing anything at all public, such as writing for magazines or on blogs – pointing out that there is no reason to believe that ‘religious images of the world’ have anything to do with ‘expressing’ truth. You’d like us to pretend that the Catholic ‘image of the world’ is just as reasonable as any other ‘image of the world’ – despite its long-established refusal to check its world-image against the real thing and its long-established habit of building up its world image out of authority and tradition and selected bits of a very old book and its long-established contentment with just asserting things about the world and human beings and ‘God.’ Of course you would like that, because then you could go on asserting things and laying down the law without any interference from people who think you don’t know what you claim to know. But you don’t get to have that. You get to have a huge amount of power and influence and authority, and money as well; you don’t get to have universal submission. Suck it up.
I guess when you make shit up for a couple thousand years then trying to control others seems to be the right way to go. Guess what, Vatican lunatics, the rational, sane world no longer accepts your nonsense.
“In principle potential”. Well, maybe, but what principle exactly?
Consistent with the principles of thermodynamics, goats have the potential to be our sovereign masters. What have we learned from this thought-experiment except groundless suspicion of goats?
…secular political cultures must encourage unbelievers to grasp the same point…
Oh, they must, must they? Fine, go ahead. Encourage me.
Currently the RC church is touring around the UK a piece of bling which may or may not contain a fragment of cadaver. If you go see it you get a special offer of a ‘get out of purgatory free’ plenary indulgence. I don’t know if you can also get tour jackets.
Should my ‘secular political structure’ encourage me to grasp that this expresses a truth? I suppose in a sense it does, but the truth it expresses is not, I suspect, what the Pontifical Council had in mind. The truth it expresses to me is that, contra what the strident New Theists such as Armstrong assert, religion has not strayed far from sympathetic magic and appeasing Old Nobodaddy. It ain’t Armstrong’s god that has believers queuing around the block.
Now I’ll happily tolerate this, albeit with a sardonic expression, just as I do druids at Stonehenge or any other eccentricity which causes no immediate and apparent harm. But asking me to respect it? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.
Interesting that only donors get to comment on that site.
“just as I do druids at Stonehenge or any other eccentricity which causes no immediate and apparent harm.”
Of course, druids don’t have the kind of power to interfere with legislation and regulations that the various Real churches do, and tours of magic bling are one way the Catholic church shores up and spreads its power, so magic bling tours do at least do eventual and subtle harm – so we have every reason to be vocally and overtly disrespectful about magic bling tours and many other aspects of the Catholic church. I tolerate all that in the sense that I don’t advocate for laws against it – but not in any other sense.
Just expanding the point a little, not disagreeing with it!
I didn’t notice that only donors can comment. Interesting indeed…
eventual and subtle harm
Quite. We recognise that it ain’t healthy, but tolerate it in the sense of not demanding it be stopped. The church tends not to reciprocate. Certainly bling tours are a prime case for ‘point and laugh’, even my nominally catholic friends tend to roll their eyes at this sort of thing.
On the other hand, I have attended several blessings of the fishing fleets in small harbour towns in Northumberland and Scotland and found them quite moving. I’m happy with being overtly disrespectful of relics and that kind of assertive magical nonsense, but sometimes a simple traditional service among decent folk with a perilous calling can be something I would not feel comfortable mocking. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that it constituted a truth, but it is not trivial.
Yes…that’s different.
If you mean that in the same way as saying that a stopped clock has the potential of showing the correct time in principle, then sure.
Oh, please, Mr. Priest–does anyone say that religious images can’t express truth? Nobody, not even the Dread Pirate Dawkins, says that! What he says, sensibly, is that they’re no more likely to express truth than a non-religious image.