The most definitive statement I can make regarding Jon Huer’s most recent guest column is that I am not sure I understand it. (“Founders and popularizers,” Gazette, Nov. 28). Perhaps it is another example of what a long-ago professor said to my freshman class in college to the effect that what we say has little meaning until it is received and interpreted by another. So let me explain how I interpreted the column in a manner that piqued my interest and made me want to respond.
Mr. Huer, whose columns I enjoy very much, “…wonders how Christianity has become so institutionalized that its founder, Jesus … is almost an afterthought while the popularizer (who) represents the same idea (perpetuates an) … institutional version (which is) so compromised … that the original form is hardly detectable in the popularized version.”
I believe that Mr. Huer was saying that the pure thoughts of an innovator, or great thinker (i.e. the founder) are too often distorted through various mechanisms when they are marketed to a greater audience by popularizers.
While I suspect that Mr. Huer was a bit unfair in his focus on the popes of the Catholic Church as popularizers, I agree with him that there are many shameful episodes that are deserving of condemnation, especially when papal decisions appear to have been made in order to appease earthly princes rather than as a means to proclaim the gospel to all nations. We should keep in mind, however, that both Catholics and Protestants — in fact all organized religions — share responsibility for allowing greed to override imperatives to care for the poor, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Manifest destiny for example gave Spain and Portugal license to exploit the Americas and parts of Africa and Western Europe, and gave white settlers in America permission to commit the ethnic cleansing (genocide) of Native Americans, and offered cover to “good Christian people” who prospered from the inhumanity of slavery. Perhaps I can coin the acronym CINO’s, for Christian (or Compassionate) in name only.
It is not my intention to usurp the canvass that was masterfully painted by Mr. Huer, but what I saw in his work were pathways to exploring as the ancient writers did — through allegory, metaphor and myth — the hostility popularizers have toward abstract thought, their disdain for liberal arts, their mockery of religion and their self-imposed exile from spirituality. For example, I recall a movie scene in which as a young school child Walt Disney drew a face on a flower, only to have his paper ripped from his desk by a teacher who declared “Walter, flowers don’t have faces.” (Cut to “Fantasia.”)
In much the same way, organized religion has discouraged independent thought. They teach that humans are sinners whose salvation is through submission to the orthodoxy dictated by popularizers, which are not limited to church leaders but also include high school counselors, college admissions officers, employers, the protocols of meritocracy, the vision in which all things and people are fungible, and even those who are satisfied with our flawed attempts to have a viable system for ensuring justice.
My beautiful immigrant grandmother lived within the embrace of her personal God, who filled her with overflowing kindness, generosity and grace. Yet, grandma had no idea there was such a thing as dogma. She lived her faith with little concern about how theologians defined transubstantiation. In fact, as grandma never read the huge family Bible she kept on her coffee table, I doubt she ever heard about synoptic gospels, epistles, or about the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible. She did, however, know that eating wheat on St. Lucy’s Day prevented blindness; having one’s throat blessed on St. Blaise Day kept us healthy; and she on at least one occasion took me along when she visited the neighborhood Strega to obtain a minor exorcism for my sister. The sin she feared most was falling asleep before she finished her nightly recitation of the rosary, finding peace when the priest told her that angels would complete the rosary on her behalf, so there was no sin. She believed that. And I recall with great affection that as she lay on her death bed in semi-consciousness, she continuously made the sign of the cross. That was the faith I learned to admire and love. In what she did, how she lived her life and the love with which she rescued me in ways that defy explanation, is what inspires me to this day to be a person of faith.
I believe we each must seek our own path knowing that the Christmas miracle is that a dark-skinned Jewish man, who came from an impoverished village called Nazareth, freed God from the Ark and from the Tabernacle to come to dwell within every person, by insisting that we not mindlessly enforce the letter of the law, but that we compassionately follow the spirit of the law. And the way we welcome God into the world is to love each other unconditionally. We must reject the evil of human behavior while at the same time loving each other. We are called to love God and our neighbor, to live the beatitudes as proclaimed by Isaiah 56:1-6 and reiterated in Matthew 5:3-10. In other words, seek justice and reject greed. Let God’s wisdom be born in the manger of our hearts.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Salaam.
Jim Palermo lives in Southampton.