I had my first experience with godless comfort when a woman at my job lost her father. I found her in the break room crying uncontrollably, the pain seeping from every inch of her. Embracing her, I encouraged her to express her feelings–her confusion, her anger, her sorrow. I held her in silence as she sobbed for several minutes.

If it had been an earlier time, I would have prayed for her. I would have “rebuked the devil” and begged God for his grace and mercy, for his protection over the soul of my co-worker’s father. I would’ve prayed that she find peace and comfort in her bereavement, letting her know she would surely see her father again.

But I couldn’t do any of that. Having admitted to myself a few weeks earlier that I was an atheist and humanist, I would have been lying if I’d told her I’d pray.

We’re all going to lose loved ones and witness others’ losses, no matter our beliefs. Last week’s devastating movie-theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., reminded us of that discomforting fact. But sadly, we live in a society in which some believe these terrible things not only happen for a good reason but can be soothed with divine intervention. I can’t recall the amount of prayers that flooded my Facebook wall. Supplications to God were everywhere–on blogs, on major news sites, on television. Some even suggested that although God didn’t stop the massacre because he was upset with our demands for a secular nation, he can surely comfort the bereaved and injured. Makes perfect sense.

What, however, do the now 19 percent of us who have no religious affiliation say to grieving human beings when we don’t believe a prayer will work? Insisting our thoughts are with someone is considerate, but there’s no real emotion in that. We’re not really thinking in tragedies–we’re feeling. We feel outraged. We feel violated. We feel sad. And we know a few nods toward the sky won’t change any of that.

I believe the simplest way for humanists to express sincere sympathy, remorse, or grief is to act. That’s what I did when my co-worker was grieving: After I listened to her, I bought her a beautiful white vase of flowers. Was that going to bring her father back? No. Was she going to jump for joy? Of course not. But the small gift was my way of showing her I cared.

A prayer might be psychologically soothing, but it won’t help. Neither will the radio-like waves of positive thoughts we hope to transmit to grieving minds and hearts. All we can do for the people of Aurora and for those around us is to act. We can express our human feelings first, then help where we can. If we’re able, we can send money for medical expenses or funeral costs. We can sit with those near us who are in pain. Even if it’s through technology, we can be there for each other, human to human. When we’re at our lowest, that connection is all we can be certain is real.

Although I’m a happy humanist, I must admit that there are certain things I miss about church. I miss gathering with friends and family, swaying to the band, and feeling inspired. I also miss going out to eat afterwards, but I can do that anytime.

So, I’m delighted to hear that the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers is offering “alternatives to church” programs during summer training at U.S. military academies. Nonbelievers and skeptics in the armed forces will now have a place to ask questions, connect with like-minded people, and reduce stress in their lives.

But of course, not everyone’s pleased, including former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt. When asked about the campaign, he said:

I think it’s sad how atheists are using a government forum and resources to openly recruit Christian cadets into atheism or secular humanism. What should Christian parents think, when their 18-year-old son or daughter is promised donuts, but gets a lecture about ‘letting go of God’ and proselytizing into rejecting their parents’ faith? Atheists define themselves by what they are against (God), not by any good they stand for. But the Bible says ‘the fool says in his heart, there is no God.’

I’m not going to get into the Bible-as-evidence part. We all know how that goes. What irritates me more is the idea that military humanists and atheists are trying to “recruit” new members. Freethinking requires no baptism process, no special prayer to confess, and no strict set of guidelines to follow. If a cadet attends the meeting and realizes he or she isn’t interested in giving up God, no one will condemn said cadet to hell.

Chaplain James Klingenschmitt has a point that atheists “define themselves by what they are against” (though I wouldn’t call a lack of belief being “against” something), but he doesn’t seem to realize that many atheists take their nonbelief a step further–into humanism. Humanists do define themselves by the “good they stand for.” Atheism says nothing about a person’s morals. Humanism does. And it seems to me that the MAAF is just trying to provide a place for humanists to congregate, a place that provides social interaction akin to the church but free of the supernatural stuff. No harm there.

In the meantime, I’m still looking for such a place in my civilian life.  I’d have no problem waking up on Sunday to hear a good (secular) message, interact with friends, and eat afterwards. Best of all, I won’t have to pray for forgiveness if I decide to sleep in instead.

For many African Americans, to deny the Christian doctrine is to reject one’s heritage. Some consider not only leaving the church but professing unbelief in its core principles heresy of the highest order. Our ancestors, believers argue, endured years of slavery only because of their faith in God. If it weren’t for the church, they say, the Civil Rights movement never would have happened.

But the skeptics, lifelong nonbelievers, and recent deconverts at the African Americans for Humanism meetup in Washington, D.C., on June 23 weren’t afraid to think otherwise. Fred Edwords’ article, “The Hidden Hues of Humanism,” published in the March/April 2012 Humanist magazine informed a frank, sometimes serious, often funny discussion about the reasons blacks adhere to stifling religiosity and fear rational philosophies.

A BBC reporter working on a radio show about black nonbelievers had to ensure that everyone was comfortable with the possibility of being “outed” as an atheist. That’s how serious the issue of nonbelief is for African Americans: You could lose your “black” card if you’re cavalier about rejecting Grandma’s God.

Why is it so difficult to get blacks on board with humanism? As Edwords noted, some humanist principles appear out of tune with the black experience: “Self-sufficiency and ultimate human agency,” he wrote, “may be perceived as demoralizing if not dangerously radical.” The group agreed. When you believe you’re not strong enough to fight your own battles, that you owe praise and gratitude to someone else for the work you do, it’s difficult to take responsibility for yourself–especially when you’re economically disadvantaged. The economic disparity between blacks and whites provides little reason to forgo the promise of heavenly wealth.

Ernest Parker of AAH brought up another roadblock to humanism for blacks: the assumption that one must worship something. Who or what do you worship if not God? If you profess to humanism, must you worship imperfect humans? Of course not, but some people don’t see it that way. Many blacks are taught from childhood to worship, to lift their hands in submission to God and his son. Long after slavery’s end, that serving-the-master mentality prevails. Where do you direct that energy if not to the Almighty above?

The church also gives African Americans something humanists still have not been able to: a place to go. Day care, potlucks, job training—the black church has provided these services for decades, and if lower-income blacks decide to eschew their faith for reason, they’d be giving up a powerful community resource. They’d also be leaving a formidable social network, as one newly atheist attendee felt isolated from her mostly Christian friends.

Despite the overt materialism and scandal in some megachurches—many of which exploit their lower-income members—believers continue to flock to this “safe” space, giving their last and joining hands with others in hopes of receiving God’s best. Unless humanists can provide the same sense of hope and solidarity, the church and all its dogma will remain attractive.

Certainly, humanism has a long way to go in terms of attracting black adherents. In a city booming with churches large and small, those in attendance at the meeting couldn’t fill one pew. The church has the resources and the power to discourage independent thought and encourage God-dependency in the black community.

But while the black humanist voice is relatively small, it won’t be silenced. Thanks to growing groups such as African Americans for Humanism and other local and national organizations, black nonbelievers are emerging from the depths of isolation and exposing the ills of blind faith. They’re showing the world that, yes, you can be proud of your African heritage and be a humanist. Each dent these groups make in the boulder of black religiosity is a step toward reason, equality, and dignity for all.

I’m no public relations maven, but it seems to me that if I were in charge of PR for the Catholic Church I would take a dim view of one of the articles published recently on the Vatican’s Zenit website, in connection with the beatification of Pope John Paul II. It quotes a Father Deselaers as saying that “Auschwitz was the school of holiness of John Paul II, which was immediately perceived by the people, because here Wojtyła understood totally what ‘faith’ means for the man of today.” In fact, my strategy would be that the further under the rug we can sweep the whole history of Catholic-Jewish relations in Poland, especially the part played by John Paul II, the better.

Minorities tend to be treated worse in places where they are numerous than in places where they are scarce. In early 20^th century America, for example, segregation was much more of an issue in the south, where there were lots of black people, than in the north, where there were not. Due to a variety of historical reasons, Poland wound up with the greatest concentration of Jews in early 20^th century Europe – and the greatest level of popular anti-Semitism, fueled by the teaching of the Church.

This phenomenon expressed itself shortly after the end of World War I, when Poland returned to independent nationhood after over a century of partition status. To celebrate, Poles began butchering Jews all over the country. Eighty were killed in Vilna, 70 more in Lvov, and in the province where the future Pope was born, 500 were slaughtered. The killers were egged on by a letter from the Polish bishops: “The real goal of bolshevism is the conquest of the whole world. The race that directs it came to dominate it through their gold and their banks. Today the ancestral imperialist impulse that flows through its veins drives it to crush the people under the yoke of its domination.” Every Pole knew just which race the bishops were referring to.

Author David Kertzer explores in detail how Pope Benedict XV asked his man on the scene, Msgr. Achille Ratti, to report back to him on what was going on in Europe’s newest Catholic-dominated country. Ratti’s answer: nothing was going on at all. “The Jews there are incredibly numerous (approximately three hundred thousand!) and they could not be more detested. But they are not being bothered, much less persecuted.” This was despite the fact that:

One of the most evil and strongest influences that is felt here, perhaps the strongest and the most evil, is that of the Jews. Not only do they differ visibly from Poles owing to their racial characteristics (shortness of stature, large nose, prominent ears, bags under their eyes, etc.) … They differ also because of their religion and the strong consciousness and pretension they have of forming a separate nationality. … It is certain that the Jews constitute a major cause of weakness in the Polish state. Having the banks, the press, and many important offices in their hands, and backed by their international organization, they seek the formation of a Judaic Poland.

Two years later, Ratti was crowned Pope Pius XI, and spent his pontificate encouraging the spread of anti-Semitic dictatorships in places like Poland, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Spain.

In 1923, a frustrated Father Jozef Kruszynski wrote “If the world is to be rid of the Jewish scourge, it would be necessary to exterminate them, down to the last one.” Was he just an out-of-control wing nut? Maybe. If so, why was he two years later named head of the Catholic University of Lublin? Read the rest of this entry &raquo

In my last post we saw how William Jennings Bryan’s campaign for an anti-evolution amendment to the federal Constitution led to the 1925 prosecution of high school teacher John Scopes.

Bryan immediately volunteered his services to the prosecution, even though he had little experience as a litigator. “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death,” said Bryan. “If evolution wins in Dayton, Christianity goes – not suddenly of course, but gradually – for the two cannot stand together. … In an open fight the truth will triumph.”

The prospect of an “open fight” enticed Clarence Darrow, a confirmed agnostic, to volunteer for the defense. As Darrow put it, “Scopes isn’t on trial; civilization is on trial. The prosecution is opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in the Middle Ages. No man’s belief will be safe if they win.”

Zealots of every stripe descended on Dayton, as did hundreds of representatives of the international press. There was no question that Scopes had taught his students Darwinian evolution – he proudly admitted it. But Darrow had a couple of tricks up his sleeve. First, he thought he could exploit an inconsistency in the wording of the statute, which prohibited teaching “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The first part of the sentence, at least, made it a crime to teach against the Bible – but many theologians, disagreeing with Bryan, found no necessary contradiction between evolution and the text of Genesis. Darrow lined up theologian expert witnesses to testify to that point. Depending on how you interpret the word “and,” that might have sufficed. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

By a vote of 70-28, the Tennessee House of Representatives has approved a bill to protect teachers who choose to teach creationism, rather than evolution, in their public school classrooms. The State of Tennessee, which pays their salaries, would no longer be able to enforce standards for the teaching of evolution, as it currently does. Instead, science curriculum would become a free-for-all. Studies already show that 13% of high school biology teachers advocate creationism in their classrooms, and that a large majority avoid talking about evolution altogether, because it would get them in hot water with the local God experts. If this bill takes hold–it’s already been introduced in seven states–expect those numbers to skyrocket.

Proponents of the Tennessee bill disingenuously say they are simply trying to promote academic freedom. Evolution is just an unproven “theory,” they say, and other “theories” like that contained in the book of Genesis should be taught as well. In fact, evolution is a “theory” in the same sense that gravity is a “theory”: a coherent group of principles used to explain a class of phenomena. Like evolution, gravity hasn’t been conclusively proven in every case, and Isaac Newton was roundly condemned by the God experts of his day. I can only suggest that those who prefer divine revelation to observable fact should try stepping off a rooftop sometime. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

The Christian press generated enough energy last week to power a small city, gloating over a 5-4 Supreme Court decision allowing the continuance of an Arizona program to subsidize parochial schools through tax credits. The Christian Post, for example, chortled that “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that dollar-for-dollar income tax credits for donations to private religious schools are constitutional.”

Either these Christians are too dumb too read (which I don’t think is the case), or they are deliberately misleading the public. For the Supreme Court most emphatically did not rule the Arizona religious subsidy program constitutional. The Court did something even worse: it said it didn’t give a damn whether the program was constitutional or not, because no mere taxpayer has the right to challenge it in court.

For many decades, there has been no question that direct government appropriations to fund religious education in parochial schools violate the First Amendment rule that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In 1997, politicians in Arizona, anxious to curry favor with the minority who decline to send their children to public schools, tried a different way to skin the same cat. Instead of paying money directly to the schools, they would give taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit, up to $500, for contributions to “scholarship funds” that in turn pay the money over to private schools – including those specializing in teaching children that I deserve to burn in hell because I don’t worship Jesus Christ. In some years, as much as 92% of the scholarship funds were paid to religious schools.

Shell Game

What exactly is the difference between this funding method and the more direct method of state appropriation? The state of Arizona is out exactly the same amount of money either way. The God experts receive exactly the same amount of money either way. The answer is, there isn’t any difference. This isn’t rocket science. Every level of government, including the state government of Arizona, views “tax expenditures” exactly the same way it views direct appropriations, because they achieve exactly the same result.
Read the rest of this entry &raquo

United News reported last week that hundreds of Hindu God experts converged on New Delhi to press their demand for a law prohibiting the killing of cows in India. Not only would domestic production of beef be banned, but its importation as well. They submitted a petition to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and vowed to step up their campaign at another rally scheduled for Monday, followed by a nationwide protest campaign. The agitation coincides with the formation of a new political party, the “National Spiritual People’s Party,” whose flag shows a raised fist, and whose platform attacks secularism.

Hindu anti-beef agitation has a long and sorry history. There is conflicting evidence about the treatment of cows in ancient times, but after the Muslim occupation Hindu God experts became more fastidious about cow protection, as a way of asserting moral superiority over their grubby conquerors. Conversely, Indian Muslims placed a great emphasis on their Baqra Īd celebration, at which an animal (often a cow) is slaughtered to commemorate the sacrifice of Abraham, as a way of thumbing their noses at the Hindus.

In 1881, a Hindu treatise called Ocean of Mercy to the Cow generated widespread agitation over the issue. The following year a charitable foundation was established to feed India’s wandering cows, then numbering in the hundreds of millions, because so many of these “beloved” animals were allowed to die of starvation. No corresponding effort was made on behalf of India’s millions of impoverished humans.

Activists sought a declaration from India’s British rulers that the cow was a “sacred animal” that could not lawfully be killed, but the high court rejected that petition, which would certainly have caused trouble among the 25% of Indians who were Muslim. By 1893, mass demonstrations against cow-killing resulted in rioting from Bombay to Rangoon; 107 humans died in the argument over saving cows.

In the 20^th century, the cow cause was taken up by no less a God expert than Mohandas Gandhi himself. In 1920, he told a crowd of Hindus that ‘I would not regard him a Hindu, who is not prepared to give his life to save a cow. Cow-protection is dearer to me than life itself. Were it the duty of a Muslim to kill a cow, as it is his to do his prayer of repentance, I would have told him, ‘I should have to fight with you also.’” Fighting with Muslims over cows is exactly what Hindus proceeded to do. More rioting broke out in 1924; over a hundred died at Kohat, and 4,000 had to be evacuated from the town.

Why cows?

When you see a cow, is “holy” the first thought that comes to mind? When I see a cow, my first thought is “Watch where you step.” To Gandhi, though, “The cow is a poem of pity. One reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the mother to millions of Indian mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God. The ancient seer, whoever he was, began with the cow. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more forcible because it is speechless.”

Why did the unnamed “ancient seer” hone in on cows? Why not sheep? Or trout? Or cabbage? They’re all lower orders of creation, too, and equally speechless. No logical explanation; just more purple prose:

The central fact of Hinduism however is cow-protection. Cow-protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution. It takes the human being beyond his species. A cow to me means the entire sub-human world. Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives … Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God … Cow-protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world …

Cow protection to me is definitely more than mere protection of the cow. The cow is merely a type for all that lives. Cow protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf. Man becomes then not the lord master of all creation but he is a servant. The cow to me is a sermon on pity. …

The cow is the purest type of sub-human life. She pleads before us on behalf of the whole of the sub-human species for justice to it at the hands of man, the first among all that lives. She seems to speak to us through her eyes: ‘you are not appointed over us to kill us and eat our flesh or otherwise ill-treat us, but to be our friend and guardian.’ …

I worship it, and I shall defend its worship against the whole world …

I will not kill a cow for saving a human life, be it ever so precious.

Cow agitation, nurtured by “Great Soul” Gandhi at every turn, was a critical factor leading to the split-up of India and Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, used to explain succinctly his objection to living in a Hindu-majority state: “The cows I want to eat, the Hindu stops me from killing. Every time a Hindu shakes hands with me, he has to wash his hands.” In 1939, Jinnah’s Muslim League published a report entitled Muslim Sufferings under Congress Rule, listing in grim detail more than 100 reports from Bihar, the United Provinces, and the Central Provinces of Muslims who were violently attacked, killed, or looted between July 1937 and August 1939, mostly due to their insufficient sympathy for cows. The very next year, the Muslim League adopted its “Pakistan Resolution,” demanding a separate homeland upon Indian independence. When partition came, a million humans died as a result.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the agnostic Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s greatest leader. As mayor of Allahabad in 1923, he flatly rejected demands to ban cow slaughter in his city. As prime minister he did the same thing, upholding the rights of India’s non-Hindus against the oppression of the majority. When religious political parties were formed to unseat him, he methodically crushed them at the ballot box – even in what was then a largely illiterate India, the broad resonance of humanist values of “live and let live” could overwhelm the shrill cries of the God expert zealots. Unfortunately, those who followed Nehru in Indian government, including his own descendants, lacked his courage and common sense. India is drifting steadily toward God expert dominance, and was recently named as the second-worst country in the world in terms of hostility to religious minorities. The renewed demands for a ban on beef are one more step down that road.

I haven’t the slightest problem with anyone who chooses, for reasons of health, compassion, ecological consciousness, or even religion, not to kill cows or consume beef. Or pork. Or shrimp. Or alcohol. More power to them, because that leaves more for me. I don’t have a problem if they try to enourage others to follow their lead, as loudly as they want. When someone wants to pass a law preventing me from consuming these things, though, that’s a cow of a different color. These people are nuts, and the sooner the shield of political correctness is worn down so that respect for “holy men” pumping intolerant gibberish disappears, the better. Break out the grill and let the barbecue season begin!

Luis Granados

This just in: the Jews aren’t to blame for killing Jesus after all. Whew! I bet they’re relieved.

A new book by Pope Benedict XVI, just in time for Lent, does a “scientific” analysis of the Gospels and concludes that despite the pretty plain meaning of verses like “Then answered all the people, and said, ‘His blood be on us, and on our children,’” it was actually just a few politicians who were to blame. He wanders pretty far, though, when he claims that “read in the light of faith … these words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation.” In other words, “in the light of faith,” words mean whatever the Pope wants them to mean, and not what they really mean.

At bottom, of course, the Pope is right: it is absurd to blame “the Jews” as a whole, much less their descendants, for any particular death. What’s interesting is why this blame arose in the first place.

As best we can piece together from 1^st and 2^nd century writings, there probably was a fellow named Jesus, who came to lead a somewhat puritanical sect within Judaism that is sometimes called the “Essenes.” John the Baptist was a leader of this group before he was killed. After Jesus was killed too, his brother James took over, but he was killed as well, to be followed by Jesus’ great-nephew Simeon, who was also killed – this was not a desirable job. Sometimes known as “Jewish Christians,” sometimes known as “Ebionites” (meaning the “poor ones”), this little sect lasted for hundreds of years. In fact, when Muhammad married his first wife in the 7^th century, the ceremony was performed by an Ebionite.

Ebionites did not believe Jesus was divine in any way, but believed that he was the prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy. They followed the 613 commandments of Jewish law rigorously, adding other rules such as vegetarianism, teetotaling, baptism in place of temple sacrifice, and refusal to take oaths. Our knowledge of Ebionite practices is the best guide we have to what Jesus actually preached.

The religion of Jesus would have ultimately faded as quietly as the religion of Mani had it not been for an odd duck named Paul. Paul began his career as a muscle-man for the Jewish high priests, the richest politicians in Roman Palestine, who did not like their authority being challenged by the Essenes or any other upstart sects. He persecuted them, and was responsible for at least one murder (and probably many more); at some point he switched sides, though, and sought to join them. The Ebionites claimed this was because the high priest declined to give Paul his daughter in marriage, but this might be just sour grapes. Anyway, James and the rest of the Ebionite leadership in Jerusalem had no use for their “reformed” persecutor, and at one point even tried to kill him. Now hated by both sides, Paul did the smart thing – he hit the road.

There were substantial Jewish communities all over the eastern Mediterranean, who were denied the opportunity to be fully Jews because they were so far away from the official temple. According to the official Jewish God experts, only sacrifices performed there (proceeds from which went into their own pockets) really counted with God. Moreover, there was another large group of near-Jews, sometimes called the “God-fearers,” who liked the idea of an ethical monotheism but who couldn’t quite bring themselves around to the whole Jewish law – circumcision, in particular, was a real stumbling block. So when Paul came waltzing into town, proclaiming “Good news, straight from Jerusalem! No more circumcision! You can even eat shrimp!”, he started raking in money and converts.

When word trickled back to Jerusalem about the lies Paul was spreading, the Ebionite leadership went ballistic. To think that a fellow who had never actually seen or spoken to Jesus should be profiting by such a perversion of his teaching was more than they could bear. They even went so far as to send out “truth squads” to the cities Paul had visited, correcting the misimpressions he had left. The epistle of John even appears to refer to Paul as the anti-Christ. After many years Paul returned to Jerusalem for a showdown, but it did not pan out. In fact, a riot erupted, in which Paul would very likely have been killed, but for the intervention of Roman troops. He was then shipped off to Rome for a trial, but the Acts of the Apostles ends before he got there (if he ever did).

This occurred in the 50s AD. Paul’s little colonies would probably have faded away, but for the great Jewish rebellion of 70-74 AD. This uprising was incomprehensible to most of the Roman world – why would anyone want to rebel against such a peaceful, prosperous, tolerant Empire? The fact that it dragged on so long and cost so much Roman treasure and blood only made things worse. Suddenly, being Jewish became very unfashionable; just as suddenly, the ability of Paul’s followers to say “Oh, we’re not Jews – the Jews actually hate us” became a precious commodity.

So valuable, in fact, that all sorts of anti-Jewish propaganda began working its way into the Gospels, which were written after the Jewish rebellion, and edited extensively before attaining the form they have today. Not only were Jews blamed for killing Jesus, but they were depicted as being ignorant louts who could not understand what he was saying. Mark has them calling Jesus a blasphemer and plotting to kill him from the get-go; he is especially vitriolic about Jesus’ family, who were then leading the Ebionites. He has family members say of Jesus that “He is out of his mind,” while having Jesus in turn disown his mother and brothers; when told they are waiting for him outside, he replies that his real mother and brothers are his followers, not his kin. Later, Mark has Jesus whine about being “without honor … among his own kin, and in his own house.”

Mark has little use for the Jewish apostles outside the family, either. He shows them terrified by a windstorm, failing to understand the miracle of the loaves “because their heart was hardened,” failing to understand parables, confusing Jesus with John the Baptist and Elijah, unable to perform a routine exorcism, disputing among themselves who should be the greatest and seeking preferential treatment, being mean to women and children, and utterly falling apart at Jesus’ hour of need in Gethsemane: “And they all forsook him, and fled. “ In the earliest known versions of Mark, Jesus does not even bother appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, but only appears to the women at the tomb.

It all smacks of a disinformation campaign to discredit Jesus’ initial band of Jewish followers, with the coup de grâce canard that “the Jews” killed Jesus. At the same time, the New Testament sucks up to the Roman victors; it is a Roman centurion who exclaims that “Truly this man was the Son of God!”, and it is Paul himself who tells his Roman readers that “the powers that be are ordained of God.”

The Pope is certainly correct that it was the Roman governor, not the Jews, who executed a troublemaker for calling himself a king. While he’s at it, though, how about giving us a “scientific” analysis of why the religion invented by Paul, who never saw or heard Jesus, is a more accurate rendition of “Christianity” than the religion practiced by those who did?

Luis Granados

The Jesuits are bankrupt again. At least, some of them are. Is there any chance that the current bankruptcy will have as devastating a consequence for the entire order as the first time this happened, almost 250 years ago?

Two weeks ago, thirty-seven lawsuits totaling about $3.1 million were filed in a Portland, Oregon bankruptcy court against organizations affiliated with the Jesuit province covering the northwestern United States. Two years earlier, that province had filed for bankruptcy, claiming assets of approximately $4.8 million and liabilities of nearly $62 million, after having paid out some $25 million in settlement of sex abuse lawsuits since 2001. The current round of lawsuits seeks to recover payments made by the province to various affiliated organizations shortly before the bankruptcy filing. The plaintiffs aren’t necessarily alleging that these payments were fraudulently hiding assets from creditors, but our laws do permit the recovery of even some above-board pre-bankruptcy payments, and the plaintiffs naturally want to leave no stone unturned.

The critical question here is, who exactly are “the Jesuits”? Consider Spokane’s Gonzaga University, an asset-rich organization that is run by the Jesuits of the northwestern province. Its advertising for decades has proclaimed it to be a Jesuit institution; now that there’s money on the line, it quite vociferously asserts that it is not really “owned” by the Jesuits at all. As one plaintiff’s attorney put it:

The Gonzaga argument about it’s not really part of the Oregon Province is like Pontiac arguing it’s not really part of General Motors. Yeah, it may be a separate corporation, but it functions as part and parcel of the same organization.

Ultimately a court will decide just how separate Gonzaga University and a number of other Jesuit outfits (such as a $7 million retreat for priests at Hayden Lake, Idaho) really are from “the Jesuits” who have the $62 million liability. My completely uninformed guess is that the sharp lawyers who set up the intricate web of connected corporations will be found to have done their jobs competently, and that the losers will be the people who are owed the $62 million. They will end up with only a few cents on the dollar, and most of the Jesuit empire will roll along unscathed. But no matter how badly things turn out in this case, they won’t be as catastrophic as the first time the “Who are ‘the Jesuits’?” issue arose, in 1764 France.

The “Company of Jesus” had been established by Ignatius Loyola in 1534 as an elite, ultra-disciplined corps of counter-revolutionaries with a single mission: support the Pope, God’s mouthpiece on earth, in his struggles against Protestant heretics. Education of the upper classes was an early mission; cementing relationships with the future rulers they tutored, Jesuits worked their way into the position of “confessors” – priests who heard the sins of kings, forgave them on God’s behalf, and whispered in their ears what God wanted them to do. They developed a reputation for laxity on matters of morality, overlooking the sexual foibles of the powerful who did their political bidding. Father Benzi, for example, wrote that “It is only a slight offense to feel the breasts of a nun.”

Though Jesuits didn’t use “the end justifies the means” as a mantra, they may as well have. One Jesuit document noted that “Actions intrinsically evil, and directly contrary to the divine laws, may be innocently performed by those who have so much power over their own minds as to join, even ideally, a good end to the wicked action contemplated.” Loyola himself wrote that: “We must see black as white, if the Church says so.” Political assassination became a favorite Jesuit technique; the king of France and the Stadholder of Holland fell to Jesuit conspiracies, and the Queen of England nearly did as well.

Jesuits were also encouraged to lie, whenever doing so would advance their cause. For example, “A man may lawfully say he did not kill Peter, meaning privately another man of that name, or that he did not do it before he was born.” Enterprising Spanish Jesuits busied themselves in fabricating ancient documents and relics to make Spain’s Catholic heritage appear far more embedded in its culture than it really was. When the Pope in 1680 ordered the Jesuits to stop teaching this doctrine, the Superior General chose not to communicate the Pope’s decree to his subordinates.

Loyola had prescribed vows of poverty for his followers, but after the Pope gave the Company the right to engage in banking and commerce it grew immensely wealthy, with its fingers in commercial enterprises around the globe. In 1760, a Jesuit slave-trading business on the island of Martinique became unable to pay its bills. Angry creditors back in Marseilles did not appreciate being offered satisfaction in the form of a Mass to be said on their behalf rather than cash; they filed a lawsuit against the Company itself, claiming it was a single entity, responsible for the bills of each of its subsidiaries – exactly the argument of today’s plaintiffs in Oregon. Though the Jesuits argued that their Martinique representative was acting beyond his authority, and that anyway they were doing God’s work and should be considered above petty commercial law, they lost. They then committed the colossal blunder of appealing the verdict to the Parliament of Paris, even though they knew it to be sympathetic to a Church faction that Jesuits had been persecuting for decades.

The Parliament of Paris proceeded to launch a thorough investigation of the hitherto secret governing documents of the entire order, to determine just how independent the Martinique operation really was. Revelation after revelation piled up, not only about Jesuit business operations but about their disdain for government officials who did not carry out God’s will as they saw it. The ultimate outcome was a shocker. After Parliament confirmed every claim of the Marseilles merchants, a special council concluded that for promoting “a doctrine authorizing robbery, lying, perjury, impurity – all passions and crimes; inculcating homicide, parricide, and regicide; overturning religion, in order to substitute in her stead superstition; and thereby sanctioning magic, blasphemy, irreligion, and idolatry,” the Jesuit order must be banned from France. Its schools would be closed, its wealth nationalized.

When their hearts resumed beating, French Jesuits assured themselves that the very Catholic king would never allow this order to stand. As indeed he would not have – but for the fact that precisely at this time, Voltaire was bombarding Paris with letters, pamphlets and books about the horrendous evil the clergy had committed in Toulouse in the Jean Calas case (about which I’ll be writing more in October), and getting the opinion-makers of Europe to join in his campaign. Although the Company actually had little or no direct involvement with the events in Toulouse, it drowned in the tsunami of Voltaire’s abuse, which proved that it was possible for common sense to prevail over even the most powerful of God experts. A visiting German princess wrote that “At Paris, among the clergy or laity, I do not believe there are a hundred persons who hold the true faith.”

The king let the dissolution order stand.

Voltaire expressed his views on the Jesuit plight in his Treatise on Tolerance:

In like manner, if these latter have been found to teach the most reprehensible doctrines, and if their institution appears contrary to the laws of the kingdom, it becomes necessary to abolish their society, and of Jesuits to make them useful citizens; which, in fact, so far from being an oppression upon them, as has been pretended, is a real good done for them; for where is the great oppression of being obliged to wear a short coat instead of a long gown, or to be free instead of being slave? In time of peace whole regiments are broken without complaining. Why, then, should the Jesuits make such an outcry, when they are broken for the sake of peace?

Other countries soon followed suit; in 1773, Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Company of Jesus altogether. It was only reconstituted in 1814, after the forces of reaction had dismantled revolutionary France.

So no matter what happens in Oregon, it won’t hold a candle to 1764. By a sublime irony, though, there is one more connection between the time when Toulouse brought down the entire order, and the current siege. Most of the $62 million in Jesuit liabilities arose from sex abuse verdicts and settlements, the chief villain of which was a Jesuit priest who began raping boys in 1950 and continued doing so until 1970, despite attention being drawn to his activities by a pistol-wielding parent. Instead of having him arrested, the Jesuits simply moved him from spot to spot; he wound up at Jesuit-run Seattle University, where after his death a lectureship in philosophy was established in his name. The name? Father Toulouse.

Luis Granados