Daffey Thoughts
Carl Olson unpacks some problems with the statement Pope Francis made about religion and violence and those rascally fundamentalists. Blaming fundamentalists today is a little like making fun of gay people back in the 60s and 70s. You could do that with impunity in the day. Today, you can do the same with fundamentalists by mocking them, making fun, insulting, blaming, calling them evil and violent. As I tell my boys, every age and every culture needs its ‘them’, those folks who nobody likes or particularly cares about and considers to be the cause of all the problems in the world. In our day and age, it’s the dreaded Fundamentalist. And for bonus points, you don’t even have to define the term ‘fundamentalist’ to do it!
I’ve posted before on Pope Francis’ statements and the gradual shift from when even liberals distinguished between a ‘fundamentalist’ and a terrorist. The big difference now is that liberals are willing to admit there are fundamentalists! Ha!
Anyway, all kidding aside, there were certainly problems with what Pope Francis said and how he said it. The biggest, beyond just fundamentalist digging, was the idea that real religion isn’t violent. I’m not sure if anyone, including most religious believers, buy that. You’d have to redefine the terms to such a degree that words would no longer matter. Or, you’d be stuck with some variation of ‘any problem with religion is because of them over there.’ Which, if you think about it, is only a couple half steps away from ‘thank you God, that you didn’t make me like those fundamentalists over there who are the real problem with the Faith.’
At the end of the day, religion has all kinds of problems. And the biggest one is me. Any message that suggests otherwise might tickle our fancies and possibly make inroads into modern sensitivities, but also goes a long way toward moving us from the core point of the Faith, and that’s me reconciling with God because of what I have done. Not because of what they did over there.
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