I wasn't going to write anything about the outrage of Catholic crackpot Bill Donohue and the sewer that is his organization, the Catholic League, with respect to their position on the movie, The Golden Compass. A lot has been said here on dKos on this subject already, and sometimes it's better to not to flog an issue, giving the crackpot more publicity. But a chance meeting on Friday prompted me to put some thoughts down. In short, I began asking myself the question, how did a douchemook (to steal a phrase from oyster) like Donohue become the public face of Catholicism today?
This past Friday, I had the pleasure of participating in a book signing at Loyola University's bookstore with two other New Orleans authors. I was signing copies of my streetcar book, Dedra Johnson was signing her novel, Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, and Earl Higgins was signing his book, The Joy of Y'at Catholicism. I'd been wanting to buy both books, so it was great to get them signed. I also had a great chat with Mr. Higgins, who is a 1955 grad of Jesuit High School and is eminently qualified to write about being Catholic in one of the most Catholic cities in the country. We shared some memories and stories in that way that New Orleanians do when chatting for a while, particularly about our respective educations.
One thing that comes through from all the stories you hear about successful people like Earl Higgins when they talk about their Catholic education is that they were taught critical thinking. In New Orleans, catlick high schools aren't where kids who get kicked out of other schools end up; they're the backbone of the city's education infrastructure. The teachers at these schools are usually top-notch, and are given a lot of latitude in terms of how they conduct their classes. Whether it's the nuns at Dominican, the priests at Jesuit High, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart at Brother Martin, or the Josephites at St. Augustine, these teachers are the antithesis of the hate-filled Donohue and his league of neo-facists.
Some of these teachers are even (gasp) damn liburls. Some are not, of course, but either way, they're critical thinkers.
Take Brother Maurus Bordelon, SC, my physics teacher. Here's a man who would start on the left side of the classroom and write down formulas and examples of planetary motion on the blackboard until he got to the other side of the room. Then he'd turn back to the board, look over what he put down there, then turn back to the class and say something like, "Now, if there ever was proof that there is a God, it's right here!"
Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy isn't going to shake faith like that. Watching "The Goden Compass" for a couple of hours in the theater isn't going to obliterate the examples of faith that these teachers are. Still, the public face of American Catholics is this mook who thinks Hollywood is all about Jews and anal sex.
Priests used to be the public face of the church, but the Holy Pole changed all that in the first couple of years of his papacy. John Paul II's hatred for communism and anything that comes close to it that he began a serious purge of high-profile liberals. The easiest way for him to nip the rise of "liberation theology" in the bud was to forbid priests from holding political office. That spread to the United States as well, so that now, the only time you see a catlick priest on the teevee these days is when he's in the dock for buggering little boys, or when one of the good ol' boys in management gets on to explain why they ignored the guy who buggers little boys for so many years.
For all that Donohue makes a jackass of himself on MSNBC and CNN, for all that management screwups lead to massive legal judgements against dioceses, the church does a lot of good work. In New Orleans, Catholic Charities is the largest nonprofit provider of aid and assistance in the city. Catholics in New Orleans are able to look past the fact that their archdiocese is run by a guy who came to the city one step ahead of the law in Boston. Catholic Charities currently has an active role in the issue of housing for the working poor in New Orleans. Providence Community Housing has been tasked with the redevelopment of the Lafitte Housing Project, and they regularly affirm that all pre-storm residents of Lafitte will be welcomed back.
Still, what we see on the boobtoob is Donohue, foaming at the mouth about a movie where one of the main characters is an armored polar bear. It would be easy to simply blame that on "the media," who are always willing to put a nutball on the screen in the hopes that s/he generates ratings. In the case of the church, however, management has shot themselves in the foot once again. Mooks like Donohue came on the scene to fill the vacuum left when priests were pulled from public life.
So, while I'll see Donohue on the screen and get pissed off, at least I can relax that he's not the be-all and end-all of the catlick church. He may be spewing his particular brand of drivel, but there's still the librarian who was pleased when my 13-year old checked out The Golden Compass. There's the English teacher who approved his reading the book for class. They're critical thinkers, not camera-whores.