Posted on 06/08/2006 9:48:30 AM PDT by Diago
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Regina who?
Well might you ask. Here is a clue:
(1) Regina Brett is a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and a Catholic.
Here is another clue, which seems to be, but is not, in conflict with the first:
(2) The Cleveland Plain Dealer is a liberal, secularist, and anti-Catholic newspaper.
The clues are reconciled in the answer: Brett is the PD’s token Catholic, the kind of Catholic it likes: liberal, feminist, pro-abortion, and pro-gay agenda. She flaunts her Catholicism because it gives her the standing to criticize the Church for not being liberal enough and to lecture it on how it can make itself better. These two purposes are related, of course. Brett’s advice to the Church includes approving the killing of babies, ordaining women, doing away with celibacy, and blessing the living arrangements of homosexuals as “marriages.” Her Catholicism is merely an adjunct to the really important faith in her life: her political and cultural liberalism.
Ms. Brett recently saw The DaVinci Code.
She commented on it approvingly in her column (5/21/06) entitled: “DaVinci Code Won’t Weaken Faith.” The use of the future tense indicates that she is talking about all Christians everywhere. Which is quite a conclusion, based as it is—as it can be---only on her own reaction to the movie. She summarizes that reaction by saying: “The movie didn't attack my faith. It made it stronger.”
(That short sentence exemplifies Brett’s writing, and the lack of thought that she puts into it. If she had written: “The movie didn’t weaken my faith, it made it stronger,” her point would have been made and her writing would have been sharper, because “weaken” and “strengthen” are opposed to each other. To contrast “attack” and “strengthen” is not impressive because the terms are not contraries. The movie could have made her faith stronger by attacking it. But this probably never occurred to her.)
The review tells you a little about the movie; it tells you a lot more about Brett’s faith, her Modernist, liberal, ecumenical faith. The kind of faith that says to its believers: “I’m OK, You’re OK, because we’re all going to heaven anyway.” A faith that, in some ways, is not Catholic at all.
Brett presents her credentials:
That (her fascination with the “mystics and the mystery” of Catholicism) led me to pursue a master's degree in religious studies at John Carroll University…
I don’t know when Brett attended John Carroll University (JCU). It was no doubt after I received my bachelor’s degree there in 1963. The university has changed drastically since my day, as have the Jesuits who run the place. JCU has become infamous for its Modernist and liberal Catholicism. It provides its more mischievous students with information about nearby abortuaries; it sponsors gay groups and activities, and proudly allowed the pornographic “Vagina Monologues” to be performed on campus
Brett doesn’t say she has a master’s degree; she says only that she pursued it. But whatever she learned at JCU, it wasn’t Catholicism. “It’s getting harder and harder,” Brett begins, “to be a true Christian.” What does “true” mean? She tells us by contrasting “true” with. I guess, non-true Christians:
True Christians get lumped together these days with mean-spirited, intolerant folks who are anti-gay, anti-Hollywood, anti-fun, anti-compassion. Tell some conservatives (that you believe in Jesus), and they embrace you as a kindred spirit who has memorized all four Gospels but forgot the greatest commandment of all when it comes to gays or guys on Death Row. (As an aside: the “has memorized” should be balanced by a “has forgotten.”)
The “mean-spirited” (how the liberals love to use that one!) and the “intolerant’ of the first sentence are the same people as the “conservatives” of the second. Brett doesn’t wield a pen; she wields a branding iron. Her style of argumentation consists of calling the opposition names, and then smirking in self-satisfaction. She feels no need to explain either the names or her use of them by giving us examples.
Notice, too, the smug self-satisfaction displayed by Brett. She is the Pharisee in the temple, beating her breast and crying, “Thank God I am not like these mean-spirited sinners!”
The excerpt from Brett displays her thoughtlessness. She hasn’t noticed the effect of (1) branding her opponents with all those “anti’s” while (2) distancing “true” Christians (including, of course, herself) from the “mean-spirited and intolerant” But doing so brands herself. If the “mean-spirited” are bad because they believe all those bad things, then, logically, “true” Christians are good because they believe the opposite. The type of Christians Brett approves of are pro-gay, pro-Hollywood, pro-fun, and pro-compassion. To Brett and other “true” Christians, therefore: sodomy is fun; Hollywood is being compassionate when it spreads pornography, violence, and blasphemy; Hollywood is pro-gay; and sodomites are compassionate (but fun-filled) people when they spread disease by their unnatural acts.
When Ms. Brett does attempt to think, she gets it wrong. She belittles the conservatives who have forgotten “the greatest commandment of all when it comes to gays or guys on Death Row.” This is a plea to apply the commandment to Love our neighbor as ourselves to sodomites and serial killers. But loving our neighbor is not the greatest commandment of all. It is the second commandment. The first and greatest is to love God with our whole mind, our whole hearts, and our whole souls. (Matthew 22:36-40). This is a minor point, to be sure, but if one is going to lecture others on how to be non-mean-spirited, one should do one’s homework.
Brett tells us that she matriculated at JCU:
where I discovered that when it comes to Christians, there's no one-size-fits-all. There never was, even among the original followers: Thomas the doubter, Peter the liar, Paul the persecutor.
The difficulty in reading Brett is that you often have to guess at her meaning. What is the referent of “it”? To what is she referring when she uses the word “there” in “there’s no one-size fits-all?” Does that word have the same meaning when she uses it again in the second sentence quoted?
Does she mean that Christians come in all different sizes? That would be profound, no doubt. But let’s assume she is deeper than that.
Maybe Brett means that, when it comes to Christianity, there is no one-size-fits-all. Is she saying that Christianity differs from person to person? That person “A,” who believes abortion is the murder of innocent babies, and person “B,” who believes that the fetus is a glob of tissue that may be removed and thrown away any time until birth, are both Christians? Or consider person “C,” who believes that racism is forbidden by Christianity as a violation of Christ’s commandment to Love Thy Neighbor; and person “D,” who believes Christ’s commandment was valid only for His own time and place, and besides, He couldn’t have been thinking of modern America when He said that? Are both “C” and “D” Christians? If so, Brett reduces Christianity to nothing because she wants it to mean everything. If this is her meaning, it conflicts with the line from DaVinci she quotes later in her piece: "The only thing that matters is what you believe."
But there is another possibility. Brett uses three famous “sinners” to illustrate her contention that “when it comes to Christians, there's no one-size-fits-all.” Maybe she is saying, in her cute, muddled style of writing, that Christianity is full of sinners (as indeed it is) and that its members commit every conceivable sin (as indeed they do), and that the “tent” is big enough to cover everybody. (This would make logical her approval of: “It only matters what you believe.”) The very next line, after citing the sins of Thomas, Peter, and Paul, is: “So what kind of Christian goes to see The DaVinci Code?” Brett may be using the “no one-size-fits-all” metaphor to say that it doesn’t matter how you sin, or how often; you can still be a good Christian.
Well, not quite. Brett is missing one of the important points of Christianity, and especially of Catholicism. Christianity is about more than each of us being a sinner. It is, in part, about ceasing to be a sinner. Each of Brett’s “originals” was a sinner; each stopped his sinning and reformed his life when he became a Christian. Each of them did what Christ told the woman caught in adultery to do: “Go and sin no more.” We don’t honor Peter, Paul, and Thomas because they were sinners; we honor them because they are saints.
Paul was a persecutor, but at a certain point he stopped persecuting Christians. He didn’t go around killing Christians while preaching and spreading the Gospel, as some “true” Christians in our day preach a liberal Christianity while killing, aiding the killing, or supporting the killing of innocent children.
Peter lied about knowing Jesus, but repented, cried bitter tears of self-recrimination, and was forgiven.
As for Thomas, is doubting a sin? Doubt indicates a lack of faith, or a weak faith, but I (though not a student of religious studies like Brett) am not aware that doubt is, in itself, a sin. Although it can be: if one remains in a state of doubt because one is lazy or wishes to continue a sinful “lifestyle,” then doubt is sinful. But Thomas didn’t do that. Thomas reached out, touched, and believed.
What Thomas, Paul, and Peter had in common was not their sins. What they had in common was repenting their sins, changing their “lifestyles,” and thus becoming Christians. What they had in common was their striving for salvation. That, and not their sins, is what made them Christians.
Brett continues her theological speculations:
Protesters are upset that the movie questions the divinity of Jesus. I don’t believe it did that. If anything, it expanded his humanity.
How does it do that? Brett doesn’t tell us; she is content with a variation of: “You say ‘toe-may-toes,’ I say ‘toe-mah-toes.” But the movie tells us: Jesus got married and fathered children. That’s a very human thing to do. The idea of Jesus being physically intimate with Mary Magdalene does expand His humanity, but it does so at the expense of His divinity. It reduces His divinity to the divinity the ancient Greeks assigned to their gods, those super-humans who had a sex life, fathered children, plotted against each other out of jealousy, and laughed at us humans.
What does Brett think about the movie’s allegations? She sidesteps them with what she no doubt considers to be a clever move:
What if there are living descendants of Jesus Christ? That last one is easy. Of course there are living descendants, called Christians.
But Brett’s type of Catholicism is revealed most succinctly at the end of her piece, when she writes:
As the main character (of the movie) says near the end, "The only thing that matters is what you believe."
That statement is pure Protestantism. Footnote it to Luther: “Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”
Brett probably doesn’t know that the movie’s hero is speaking as Luther spoke. Even if she does know, it probably wouldn’t make any difference.
The movie strengthened Brett’s faith, because Brett’s faith is not Catholicism.
It’s liberalism.
Copyright 2006 James F. Csank All Rights Reserved
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