In today’s Globe and Mail, I saw the headline for an article (same report here since The Globe’s archives are moneywalled) which read: “Vatican denounces ‘health-fiend’ madness’, with the sub-heading, “Rejecting society’s costly quest for cures, Rome says Pope’s suffering is to be admired”.

I didn’t read the article, since I felt no need. This has been the Vatican’s position on their increasingly incapacitated leader for years … the Pope wants to promote an acceptance of life as it is, rather than run from all of it’s problems. His illness is likened to the Christ’s willingness to be tortured to save the souls of humanity. It also follows in the Pope’s desire for a ‘culture of life‘ which is one that accepts the disabled and the infirm instead of a political debate on euthanasia, which he’s argued, is nothing more than the healthy desiring to eliminate and hide from things that make them uncomfortable. Those of us familiar with the arguments from the poverty-lobby know what he’s talking about here. Treat human beings as human beings no matter what their circumstance.

Unfortunately, this dismissal on medicine is too much inline with Neitzsche’s analysis of Christianity as a religion of slaves, which is quite literally was in the beginning. The Church becomes an apologist for social injustice, promoting the idea that life isn’t fair and you’d better get used to it, and better yet, find metaphorical meaning in your state of injustice.

It could be argued that the default setting of a human being is that of a religious animal – that spirituality plays a big part of our lives, since the mind naturally looks for meaning in the world, through it’s pattern recognition engine. That’s what psychology has given us, a sensible explanation for our spiritual beliefs. It doesn’t detract from them in anyway, to know how it works, and for me it encourages a healthy attitude toward spirituality as part of a balanced psychology. But we understand there’s a profound difference between spirituality and being religious. Religion has come to be seen by many as a way to keep the ignorant in line – that’s been argued for centuries now. It is a secular position. It seems to follow that if people are prone to religiosity to express their spirituality by default, education almost always eliminates that desire, and makes people in some cases atheists, but in most cases, appreciative of a secular division between religion and state. Pierre Trudeau was an ardent Catholic, but he knew better to be one in public. The USA has not been so fortunate yet, as their presidents turn going to Church into photo ops, to court the votes of their citizens who have gone through their dismal school system. That gimmick alone is probably why they refuse to reform their schools, since then their politicking would get a lot more difficult than simply showing up for photo ops and giving simplistic campaign speeches.

Martin Luther’s Reformation came about because by 16th Century, the Church, which had nurtured education, had become a nest of secular, and in some cases, atheistic individuals (which they wouldn’t have admitted, but it’s fair to say they were cynical). They were making money selling absolutions and enjoying the comforts of a high social standing. They were the CEO’s of their day, disengaged, uncaring, and doing everything they could to maintain their privileged status quo. Even after the Reformation, the Church remained corrupt, so that by the 18th Century, (in France anyway) it was a target of disdain by the Encyclopediaists and Volatire, and in the 20th Century seems to have been a haven for homosexuals well versed in the ideals of Greek Love (not so much pedophiles, but a love for pubescent teenage boys, see this Slate article for more). So, anyway, the point is that the priesthood has often been corrupted by scandal, whether sexual or idealistic. Heretics and perverts, for 2000 years, but still able to nurture culture and thought during the long fall of the Roman Empire.

As a religion of slaves, the Church is an apologist for social injustice. It propagates that injustice even today, with it’s refusal to admit condoms are a good thing. Abortion is something else entirely – as something that celebrates life, as a spiritual exercise, there’s no way it can ever condone abortion. As President Clinton said of abortion, ‘it should be safe, legal and rare’. People who turn abortion into a factor of dehumanization, and go so far as to want to kill abortionists, are clearly more on the Devil’s side than God’s. But religious opposition to abortion encourages us, and reminds us, to treat human beings as human beings no matter what their circumstance. The fact that there’s a difference between a collection of cells and a baby is what allows those of us who support abortion rights to sleep at night.

The prevalence of abortion as a convenience and form of birth control because women aren’t able to face the prospect of being a mother so young, nor being a single mom, especially under conditions of poverty, is a measure of how unjust and how unfavorable our society is toward life. So when the Pope, or even President Bush, talks about nurturing a ‘culture of life’ rather than one of death, I am sympathetic.

Writing from the perspective of the 26th Century, Richard Morgan, in Altered Carbon, describes Catholics this way:

‘Catholics,’ said Ortega, lip curling, ‘Old-time religious sect.’ […] ‘Kovacs, I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and half-thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organization in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practice birth control, for Christ’s sake, and they’ve stood against every significant medical advance of the last five centuries. Practically the only thing you can say in their favor is that this d.h.f thing has stopped them from spreading with the rest of humanity’.

The d.h.f thing is the central premise of the novel, that in the future you can digitize a human’s mind and transfer it from body to body, enabling practical immortality as long as the chip at the base of your skull is not destroyed. In the novel, Catholics have taken the stance that you can’t digitize a soul, and so this is all very immoral and forbidden, even though the rest of society as reformed itself around this reality, which has actually led to a retrogression, since, removing death means it is no longer an effective motivator, nor is it terrifying, so torture – the infliction of memorable pain – is now much more common and necessary, and culture stagnates because memory is so long.

The Vatican can denounce health fiend madness all it wants, and keep propping up their chief invalid, but their philosophical justifications for the most part aren’t helping anybody. It is quite probable that by the 2500s, Richard Morgan’s dialogue will be spoken in actuality by somebody, since Catholicism has too often used it’s philosophers to try and pin down the injustice of the status quo. When I wrote the other day that just because certain problems have been around since Roman times does not so much mean they are timeless as they’re indications that we’re very good procrastinators, it does occur to me now that the procrastination has been helped because the Vatican keeps feeding society’s leaders with excuses not to do anything. And hence, ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end’.

Dear Pope,

Timothy