 |
| Toxic potion |
Thoughts on Rome-to-America religious toxicity ─ Elfriede
Harth
Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Not Human
Rights in Roman Catholic monarchy
“…Since the institutional Church lost secular political
power and Canon law is no longer valid except within the Church, the Pope has
invoked Human Rights as a means to defend certain specific moral rules and
impose them on the whole society,” Elfriede Harth writes in “Human rights in the Roman Catholic Church and
reconciliation.”
“This is questionable,” she says, “because the genuine sense
of Human Rights is the defense of the individual from the oppression of the
State.
The Pope’s stance would lobby the
state to enact laws that feel oppressive to some segments of society. This is particularly
visible with legislation on divorce, homosexuality, contraception and abortion
where individual rights are bluntly denied in the name of Human Rights; and a
relentless effort is made to impose on a whole society the particular
philosophical or ethical conception of a small segment of it.…
“We have a long way to go before we can claim a Church of
Human Rights. …”
Reconciliation imperative
 |
| Inordinate, Unchecked Power Established Church |
“…[R]econciliation means building up a Church on the basis
of Human Rights. Our Church has to reconcile itself as an institution with the
religion it stands for. And this religion is rooted in Human Rights. That means
that this Church has to be built on the principles of Liberty, Equality and
Solidarity.
“…The democratic Church we need is not a community that its
members visit like a museum or a supermarket, where they satisfy themselves as
consumers with certain religious needs. It is a place where each person in her
or his specificity and diversity feels called and wanted and needed; where all
voices are welcomed and heard, where democratic forms of leadership and
authority unfold.
“Of course, it will be quite different from the obsolete
monarchic model that we know.…
I dream of the day when I can go to
visit the Vatican palaces as I now go for a walk to the Castle of Versailles.
It would certainly be a magnificent tourist attraction but its form of
governance would be a thing of the past.
That will be the day when we are
true to our call to be a church of Human Rights and Reconciliation.
U.S. Fundamentalism (another toxic formula)
Elfriede Harth’s 2004 paper “America’s Mission of Saving the
World from Satan: Christian Fundamentalism in the USA” focused on an active fundamentalism
she called “the more spectacular one.”
|
P
|
rotestants forged a concept of ‘fundamentalism’ in the early
nineteenth century wherein they considered themselves “to be returning to the
roots of a Christian faith believed to have been lost to view.”
 |
| Televangelists |
“Society and ‘the world’ were considered corrupt, evil and
godless: a threat to salvation. In an extreme way, the Bible became the center
of life ─ and was taken literally,” Harth writes.
There are presently two main types of active Christian
fundamentalists in the United States: televangelists and Christian militias.
|
A
|
merica’s contemporary Christian fundamentalists “aim for
de-institutionalization. They have a critical attitude to all forms of
‘establishment’ which they consider corrupt and infected by the forces of evil…..
Fundamentalists have a profound
mistrust of, even an aversion to traditional churches and religious
denominations, the State, the United Nations system, the Federal Reserve
system, the CIA, the FBI, the military-industrial complex, universities,
traditional media, and so on.
 |
| Extremists |
U.S. fundamentalists perceive
reality in Manichean terms [religious/philosophical dualism],
conceptualizing events in terms of ‘good and evil’; and have a
preference for conspiracy theories.
They interpret structural realities
as the result of demoniac forces conspiring to combat ‘Christian America’ and
dominate the world.
Manichean worldviews [holding to religious or philosophical dualism: “good v. evil”] have a
negative impact on women since they shape gender relations according to a
system of irreconcilable antagonisms, the female one being always negative,
valueless and deficient.
American fundamentalists are
profoundly convinced that they have been chosen to accomplish a specific
historical mission, and that their nation, America, has a special role to play
in ‘God’s’ salvation plan.
They are super-patriots and see
themselves as incarnating the ‘real’ American identity. … [Woman’s] only or at
least main function is the responsibility to reproduce [their kind], both
biologically and ideologically.
 |
| Supremacist rally |
Their “kind” v. “deviants”
“… Christian
fundamentalists in the USA are anti-intellectual and anti-rationalist. An
emotional and personal experience of God is at the core of their religiosity. While
mostly keen on using modern technology, they reject skepticism, relativism, and
critical questioning of all views ─ including their own.
“Fundamentalists have a profoundly patriarchal worldview.
They believe in the ‘One,’ the only legitimate model for human beings; and this
‘One’ is white, male, adult, heterosexual, healthy, in the prime of life; has a
good job, is economically successful and Protestant.
“All other forms of the human condition are considered
deviations from the One. Those who do not meet the criteria are, by definition,
inferior beings; and their inferiority increases the fewer of the criteria they
meet. Racism, sexism and anti-feminism are consequently further characteristics
of U.S. Christian fundamentalism.
 |
| 1995 Oklahoma City bombing |
Tribalism, isolationism, paranoia, violence
‘Christian identity’ as expression of violent Christian
fundamentalism
“With the terrorist attack on a Federal building in Oklahoma
City, [the United States] and the world discovered, to their great perplexity,
the existence of a fundamentalist Christian sect called ‘Christian Identity.’
It has some 50,000 members, most of whom are also members of the militia that
carried out the attack.”
[Note: On April 19, 1995, an
American detonated a bomb in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that left 168 people dead,
more than 500 wounded and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building greatly damaged.]
“This sect is based on a pre-millenarian and conspiratorial
worldview and believes that the Anglo-Saxon race is the descendant of the lost tribes of
Israel and their destiny is to play a central role in ‘God’s’ salvation plan,” Elfriede
Harth writes.
 |
Apocalypse
|
Britannica note: Messianic and millenarian myths: The hope of a new world surges up from
time to time in many civilizations. These cults and movements center on
prophetic leaders, often emphasize the return of the dead at the renewal to
come, and are convinced of a catastrophic end of the present world. In many
cases, the culture hero is expected to return and lead believers in battle
against the evil forces.
“Under the influence of racial theories of the 1930s time,
what started as ‘Anglo-Israel-ism’ mutated into ‘Christian Identity,’ a sect whose
traits included openly expressed and profound anti-Semitism and anti-Black
racism. The militias are composed of men thirty to fifty years of age who feel
themselves threatened by a monolithic State.
“They tend to isolate themselves from the rest of the world and,
in forms of survival training, prepare themselves for the day when Christ will
return and they will have to fight ‘evil.’”
 |
| Militia Survivalists |
Members tend toward paranoia. Weapons are hoarded. Violence is
glorified.
The existence of anachronistic monarchies, religions coalitions
and paranoid militias, Elfriede Harth says, works to “undermine the authority
of a democratic system which operates through public discourse and finding consensus”;
and in this toxic mix, “women are the first to pay the price.”
Sources and notes
Catholics for Choice European Representative Elfriede Harth
“Human rights in the Roman Catholic Church and
reconciliation” Address given at the International Federation of Married
Catholic Priests held July 28-Aug. 1, 1999 by Elfriede Harth, in National
Catholic Reporter, August 13, 1999, http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/documents/Harth.htm
http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/international/CFCPresentationtotheEuropeanParliament.asp
“America’s Mission of Saving the World from Satan: Christian
Fundamentalism in the USA,” by Elfriede Harth, Warning Signs of Fundamentalism,
WLUML-WSF-1h-final.indd Sec6:37 09/12/2004 11:08:04, http://www.wluml.org/sites/wluml.org/files/import/english/pubs/pdf/wsf/04.pdf
See also:
Benedict XVI Era Ends - Can Catholic Church Embrace Change?
Guest: Elfriede Harth, Catholics for Choice
The Agenda, February 26, 2013, In this edition: The Catholic
church looks to the future, Switzerland votes on regulating executive bonuses
and women fight for rights in Arab spring countries. http://www.dw.de/agenda-talk-show-2013-02-26/e-16580694-9798
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