The crude critics of faith

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/10/24/the-crude-critics-of-faith/

The recently leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign confirm what most political observers have long known: that the liberal establishment is contemptuous of faith, tolerates no dissent, and views Roman Catholicism as a particularly ferocious enemy.  Given the left’s enthusiastic embrace of big government, this is hardly surprising.

Organized religion provides the most effective bulwark against the modern liberal agenda and traditional faith is the last institutional safeguard against the unmitigated tyranny of the behemoth state.  For secular liberals, people of faith represent an obstacle to progress – an impediment to the instant gratification that political solutions can supposedly provide.

The left’s utter contempt for Catholicism is evident in its dismissal of Vatican social policy as “medieval” and “anti-progressive.”  Liberalism (now progressivism) regards other Christian denominations, as well as Orthodox Judaism, with similar disdain.  At the altar of Progress, where the political left sacrifices its soul in exchange for the prospect of temporal salvation, Catholicism and other traditional religion is scorned and ridiculed.

Meanwhile, the archpriests of secular liberalism preach salvation through politics, but fail to see the destructive nature inherent in any philosophy that views the state as the highest arbiter of justice and the fount of human rights.  Convinced that politics is the answer to every problem, secular liberals cannot fathom that politics is often the cause of widespread discord and social unrest, or that their faith in government could possibly be the cause of substantial suffering.  Progressives would rather blame traditional religion for the world’s problems rather than look critically at the dangerous fundamentalism that spiritualizes their own personal convictions and policy preferences.

Related: Email leaks raise questions about Clinton staffers’ respect for practicing Catholics

Moreover, what the apologists of secularism fail to understand is that in the place of traditional religion they seek to erect a faith premised entirely upon the abstract goodness of human nature and the perfectibility of the political community (i.e. the state).  The revolutionaries of eighteenth century France thought they could construct a spiritualized society of brotherhood and equality, but in the end, the guillotine lay at the end of their utopian vistas.

In the twentieth century, Soviet communism sought to erect a peaceful society free of class differences and material want, but as a result, nearly 100 million people died in gulags and death camps.

In contrast, traditional religion sets its gaze beyond the mundane order and focuses our attention beyond the trappings of this world.  To the non-believer, and particularly the adherents of political faiths, such belief is anathema.

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For instance, liberal think-tanker John Halpin at the Center for American Progress, in an email to Hillary Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, asserted that some of the most powerful aspects of the conservative movement are Catholic.  In Halpin’s narrow worldview, Catholicism is merely a form of political theory that can be reduced to a right-wing ideology of sorts.  He continued that this a “bastardization of the faith.”  What Halpin demonstrates through such ignorant comments is that he has no understanding of Catholicism or the fact that the very faith that gave birth to Western civilization transcends day-to-day politicking.  Christianity is bigger than any political theory or any election.  Religion shapes culture more than any political movement or ephemeral ideology.

But to Halpin, Palmieri, and other spiritualist liberals, faith in anything beyond the power of the state is tantamount to heresy.  Anything standing in the way of the liberal ideal of Progress is to be considered unsophisticated, uncivilized, barbaric, or even “medieval.”

By way of further example, Sandy Newman of the of liberal think-tank Voices for Progress, writing in an email to Clinton surrogate John Podesta, argued that “there needs to be a Catholic Spring in which Catholics themselves demand the end of the Middle Ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality.”  Newman then asks Podesta how to go about starting a Catholic revolution, and Podesta responds that Kathleen Kennedy Townshend would be a starting point.  Let me translate: (1) by democracy Newman means progressive political-theology and (2) her reference to “respect for gender equality” is merely code for unrestricted abortion rights.

Moving beyond the linguistic gymnastics that shrouds honest ideas in perpetual darkness, it is clear that Mrs. Clinton’s senior advisors and other prominent members of the liberal establishment see Catholicism as being commensurate with the Islamic Brotherhood and the Taliban.  Mrs. Townshend, whose father (Robert Kennedy) made Catholicism a centerpiece of his political career should disavow Podesta’s inference of her willingness to subvert the faith, but such a rebuke is unlikely.

Adding Catholics to the “basket of deplorables,” Podesta bragged that left wing organizations with the word Catholic in their names have already begun the process of undermining the faith.  To Podesta and other spiritualized leftists, Catholics are merely another voting block who need to either convert to the Neopaganism of political progressivism or be routed from polite society.

By characterizing people of faith as “backwards,” the liberal leadership reveal their true colors as intolerant peddlers of a secular theology that admits no dissent.  They ridicule religion but in the same breath seek to erect their own political idols and worship new ideological gods.  To that end, we should recall the stern warning of T.S. Eliot: “if you will not have God (and he is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

Glen A. Sproviero is a commercial litigator in New York. Read his previous columns here.