Da Vinci Code? Opus Dei? Secular Humanist?

I’ll leave it to Biblical scholars to sort out the textual contradictions and ambiguities that surround the Da Vinci Code fiction. I agree with Ian McKellen that the Bible should add a "This is only a fiction" disclaimer, with folks walking on water and other "mysterious" events. It’s time we stopped giving Evangelical Christians a free pass on the credibilities and incredulities of their allegedly sacred texts.

One benign effect of the Islamic revolution now threatening the West is that it reminds us how similar old-time Christianity was to the current Islamic fanatics. I mean, secular humanists never burned people for their beliefs. (And don’t give me the chopped logic of Communists and Fascists as secular humanists. That is the fatuous myth that Benedict XVI now propagates in his zeal to retrieve Europe from its secular beliefs.)

It took Europe centuries to civilize itself away from religions that killed to "protect" their beliefs. When we abhor the madness of an Afghan convert to Christianity being threatened with death for his new beliefs, we tend to forget that that was the universal Catholic response before the Reformation; and the Protestant’s as well after that transformation. Only the Enlightenment shrove Christians of all persuasions of their lethal beliefs.

And recidivism is always possible as when we see Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson speculate how God is punishing America for its ‘sins’ of homosexuality. If anything, God should be punishing America for Bush’s glib and all too showy religious incantations in support of his political base. Karl Rovian cynicism is not theologically admirable. To question Max Cleland’s patriotism is truly diabolical.

But secular humanists reserve the right to condemn what they regard as religious recidivism, such as Opus Dei’s sick masochism of self-flagellation and wearing a metal girdle that gives great pain to the leg it encircles— offered up for the Poor Souls, as the nuns used to tell me—i.e., sinners who are literally burning in Purgatory for their ethical failings on earth. (The really unlucky ones, who didn’t get to Confession on time, would burn eternally, ending up in Hell.)

Can you really believe and worship a God who would be such a sadist? Not me. Catholic theologians have lately hustled by saying the hellfire was only metaphorical. Absence of God’s love is what really burned, they now glibly reason.

And the masochistic nonsense that characterizes Opus Dei makes me suspect that a Maria Magdalen/Jesus liaison isn’t beyond belief. For Opus Dei’s masochism is deeply involved in the Church’s fear of sexual liberty and pleasure. Only God knows what the earliest Christians believed as they painfully transformed their Jewish traditions into new faiths. But we know now that celibacy is an adolescent affront to the God-given pleasures of sex. Talk about unnatural! Whipping away carnal temptations? The recent pedophile scandals reveal how sick these apostles of self-punishment really are.

And when Pope Pius IX finally got around to declaring himself infallible, what kind of doctrines did he proclaim? The Immaculate Conception! God may have been generous enough to share in our humanity, but He would only do it if his mother were immaculately conceived, without taint from the original sin of Adam and Eve. This sort of selective conception is deception, if you ask me. If He were generous enough to give his only begotten Son to suffer and die (more masochism) to save mankind from its sins, why would he want his mother to be less than human?

Of course, the folks at Opus Dei enjoy the right in free societies to believe whatever cockamamie theories they want to and to get off on punishing their bodies. But secular humanists have the right to think them recidivist nuts. There’s enough untreated misery in the world without their multiplying it in their callow search for sainthood.

And we secular humanists reserve the right to honor and emulate our own heroes. Not pious prattlers, but plain folks who try to relieve the misery of their fellows, Catholics like Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers. Let Benedict XVI prance around in his royal robes, talking humility all the while. Let him study again how evilly his Church has behaved over the ages, how corrupt in its pursuit of the real evils of masochism and celibacy. Talk about False Gods!

Incidentally I think Jesus would have made one heck of a father, small "f." His ethical teachings convince me of that. And Mary Magdalene would have made a fine mother. The more I think of them, the more they seem to be a great First Couple. Kids would be lucky to have had such parents. But try to explain to a celibate / celebrity Pope about what it takes to make a great parent. It takes much more than a so-called Holy Father.