Why the Left Hates the Church
By John Zmirak
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 29, 2003

One of the most surprising aspects of the contemporary Left is its
inveterate hostility to the Catholic Church around the world. You'd
think that a political tendency whose ostensible purpose is the
betterment of the poor would look with favor on the single largest
provider on earth of private charity, health care, free education and
housing for the needy. Looking back into history, it was the early
Christian Church—driven by the Old Testament's reverence for human
life—which eventually moved Romans to stop abandoning unwanted infants
to die, sexually exploiting slaves, and forcing young girls to marry
against their will. (If you read the stories of the Church's earliest
martyrs, a surprising number were young women killed at their fathers'
behest for refusing to marry the man he'd chosen for them—a liberty
unheard of in Roman society until the advent of the Church).

One could understand how in the 18th and 19th centuries classical
liberals might be suspicious of a Church that at the time allied
itself to autocratic monarchies; but those monarchies are gone, even
as the Church has reclaimed at Vatican II her own ancient insights
into religious liberty and the rights of individuals vis-à-vis the
State—renouncing all the illiberal practices that darkened the
Church's name in the Middle Ages and thereafter. (It's important to
note that Leftists long overlooked, lied about, or minimized far more
oppressive practices in their own favored Marxist utopias—as they
still do whitewash horrendous abuses in Cuba and even the Islamic
world.)

So why do leftists hate the Church? In part, because they don't really
care about the poor. If they did, they'd support school choice, the
Second Amendment, strict law enforcement in urban neighborhoods, and a
restriction of mass immigration that savagely undercuts the wages of
the native working class—to mention just a few policies the Left
opposes with all the demagoguery it can muster.

No, the contemporary Left knows that fighting poverty isn't a sexy
issue anymore—that the suburban bourgeoisie which stuffs its coffers
has pretty much given up on uplifting impoverished Americans, and
retreated behind the walls of its gated communities. Instead, the Left
has focused on issues which really appeal to its privileged
constituency—namely, preserving and extending the sexual libertinism
that became respectable in the 1960s. "Progressives" who'd never drop
a dime in a beggar's cup can be counted on to help keep abortion legal
up through the ninth month—lest inconvenient pregnancies interrupt
their daughters' sojourns through Barnard, Bard, or Oberlin.

Likewise, modern liberals can be relied upon to support the assault by
unelected judges on the most basic unit of society: the nuclear
family, cemented by marriage. The divorce laws promoted by feminists
in the name of "gender equality" have rendered marriage itself an
unenforceable contract, and stripped stay-at-home mothers of their
rights to alimony, significant child support, and other legal
protections they once enjoyed—in the bad old days of "paternalism."

Now "progressives" want to drive one more stake through the heart of
marriage—by expanding its definition to include homosexual
relationships. An institution which primarily exists to protect
mothers and their children from casual neglect and abandonment will
now—if the Left has its way—be diluted still further, to the point of
meaninglessness. As the heroic Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) rightly
pointed out, once homosexual relationships are given the positive
sanction of law, there is absolutely no legal or constitutional basis
for prohibiting polygamy. (Within the next 20 years, count on Moslems
and dissident Mormons to file a successful legal case in this regard.)

I'd go further and suggest that within our lifetime, sado-masochist
"slave contracts" will become legally enforceable. (Perhaps the 13th
Amendment will block this; but when did Supreme Court justices ever
let the words of the Constitution stand in the way of "progress?")

A Case in Point

Meet ***** Blow. Yes, that's his real name. If you haven't heard of
Richard "*****" Blow, you're obviously not a collector of Kennedy
memorabilia—of which he is a prime specimen, likely to appear any day
on Ebay. You see, Blow served as intellectual valet to the late John
F. Kennedy, Jr. at George magazine.

Now Blow's clutching the Kennedys' soiled mantle as part of the Left's
ongoing assault on the Church. In a trite piece on the silly Web site
TomPaine.com, Blow echoes comments by Rep. Patrick Kennedy condemning
the Vatican for presuming to address the issue of same-sex unions. It
did so in a recent document instructing believers about the Church's
teaching on the subject, and their duties as Catholic citizens. Blow
is shocked, shocked to discover that the neither the pope nor his
staff have abandoned the Church's 2,000 year-old tradition (5,000 if
you count the Old Testament) that homosexual intercourse contradicts
the will of God. So do a lot of things, and the Church has never been
shy about naming them: Premarital sex, adultery, auto-eroticism,
lying, stealing, cheating, and just about everything else that keeps
soft-core cable TV in plotlines.

Blow evinces mock outrage that the Church would presume to tell her
followers that their beliefs—about ultimate reality, good and evil,
and the purpose of the universe—ought to guide how they vote. I wonder
if Blow would have been similarly outraged when Church leaders got out
front in the fight against segregation—as Abp. Rummel of New Orleans
did in the early 60s, excommunicating a leading white Louisiana
populist for his position on race. Or when black reverends pass the
hat in church for donations to their presidential campaigns, use
church buses to carry voters to the polls, or church conferences as
platforms for Democratic candidates—whose positions on most social
issues are starkly incompatible with those morally conservative
churches' teachings. Of course not. To ask the question is to answer
it.

Blow reaches back into his former patrons' long tradition of craven
political opportunism—the "patriotic" Joe Kennedy sucked up to Hitler,
the "liberal" John and Bobby to Joseph McCarthy—to dig up one of John
Kennedy's most disgraceful moments, and hold it up as a model for the
future. Few people remember the depth and passion of anti-Catholic
paranoia that once held sway in this country, as evinced in the
fevered works of now-forgotten alarmist Paul Blanshard (who was
forever pointing to papal documents dealing mainly with the
administration of the Papal States, to warn of the danger of a coming
Catholic theocracy in America).

But fear and loathing of Catholics was still alive and kicking in
1960, and presidential candidate John F. Kennedy appeased it by making
a speech to Protestant ministers in Houston. In it, JFK promised never
to allow what he advertised as his deepest personal beliefs—when he
was campaigning with priests and nuns in Boston—to influence his
official actions "directly or indirectly." None of those reverends
would have expected a Protestant candidate to make such a public
renunciation of his faith—in fact, they would surely have denounced
him if he had. The intertwining of faith, ethics, and politics has a
long and honorable tradition in this country, going all the way back
to the Puritan, Quaker, and Anglican colonies that predate our
founding. While the Constitution clearly and rightly forbids any
attempt to erect an Established church, not a word of it suggests that
religious values cannot influence one's opinions on public policy;
indeed, the movements that set out to free slaves, abolish
segregation, or promote human rights worldwide are unimaginable
without the strong religious motivations that drove most of their
leaders. No honest person questions the patriotism of Jewish citizens
who try to promote the ongoing alliance between the U.S. and Israel,
or Protestants who ask the U.S. to safeguard Christians from
persecution in Sudan or Indonesia.

But because Kennedy was a Catholic—and for no other reason—he had to
go much further, to stand before a hostile audience and effectively
renounce his faith, or at least its role in forming his conscience.
(Proposed U.S. Appeals Court Justice William Pryor is currently being
subjected to a similar religious test.) Kennedy's craven surrender—and
for all its high-flown Pierre Salinger rhetoric, that is precisely
what it was—helped Kennedy carry the South.

This ugly moment in which bigotry reigned triumphant inspires Blow
with nostalgia—and he holds it up as a standard which should be
applied to every Catholic in public life (and presumably in the voting
booth). Stooping even lower, Blow points to the genuine abuses which
occurred in Boston and other dioceses to suggest that the Vatican has
no moral credibility to speak on sexual morality ever again, since it
has "become a church of bigotry and buggery." Thanks, *****.

Noting that close to a thousand abuse accusations were found in
Boston, Blow conceals a crucial fact: that this total accounts for
some 60 years, with many of the charges unproven (and by now
unproveable). If one looked at the records of a similar large
institution with a lofty mission--say, the Boston Police Department--I
wonder how many unproven accusations of brutality or corruption one
could find. However many turned up, would that mean that Boston police
could never again enforce the law? That the city of Boston itself
should stop issuing laws, since it had lost all legal credibility?
Blow would not hold any other institution but the Catholic Church to
such a standard. Here again, Catholics are singled out for "special"
treatment. Among Irish Catholics, this should bring back fond memories
of the Penal Laws that once forbade their ancestors to vote, inherit
property, or attend universities until the early 19th century—and the
still-standing British law that forbids Catholics, and only Catholics,
from inheriting the throne.

With breathtaking gall, Blow presumes to pass judgment on the
consciences of American Catholics, praising them for their "tradition
of picking and choosing which elements of church dogma they choose to
believe." Try to imagine a member of any other religion publicly
congratulating Jews for disregarding the Kosher laws, or Mormons for
getting drunk, or Moslems for worshiping idols, to get some idea of
the dim-witted arrogance entailed in this statement. Even as ***** Blow
and other Leftists pat American Catholics on the head, they're really
kicking us in the *****. And I, for one, am in no mood to turn the other
cheek.