Religion and Politics: Joanna Brooks on Mormons, Sarah Posner on Gingrich and Catholics

Two good new politics-and-religion postings at Religion Dispatches today: 

First, Joanna Brooks talks about how the increasing availability of information online allows more and more Mormons--especially Mormon youth--to come to terms with their tradition's real history and mixed bag of teachings and legacies.  Writing as an insider who knows how things work in LDS culture, she notes that most Mormon young people are introduced to Mormon history and religious practice through a  "highly orthodox, literal approach to Church doctrine and scripture."

This teaching process is controlled from on high by Mormon officials in the exceedingly top-down, authoritarian (and decidedly all-male and heterosexist) structure of the LDS church.  But, increasingly, young people raised in this environment are able to access information (e.g., about Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy) online that the official approach to Mormon catechetics has sought to scrub from the record as young people are taught Mormon doctrine and history.

This is resulting in a perceptible movement in which a growing number of Mormons are now distancing themselves from the church.  Brooks thinks that the current election cycle, with a Mormon candidate contending for the White House, gives Mormons a chance to engage their tradition and its teaching more honestly, and opens the door for the possibility of dialogue with disaffected Mormons.

And, of course, in everything I've written in those paragraphs to summarize what this particular Mormon scholar says about her Mormon tradition, I'm thinking as well of my Catholic tradition, which has a similarly mixed bag of untenable teachings (e.g., its outrageously wrong and widely repudiated teaching about contraception) and historical practices.  And which is also organized in an authoritarian, top-down (and decidedly all-male and heterosexist) way.  And whose authoritarian hierarchical leaders have done everything possible in recent years to fashion a catechesis for young Catholics that is "highly orthodox" and literal, and which scrubs from the information base offered to young Catholics large swathes of information that might develop critical thinking skills on their part--so that they could engage the mixed bag of the tradition as adults critically aware of the nuances, the highs and lows, of a doctrinal and historical heritage that is anything but unambiguously good.

Within the Catholic church, too, there's a very strong movement among younger (and many other) Catholics to walk away from a church whose current leaders seem to present to us only the demonic face of our church.  I am feeling that urge with increasing intensity during a presidential election cycle in which the pastoral leaders of my church are lying about the contraceptive guidelines recently endorsed by the current administration, and who have had letters read in parishes throughout the country deliberately (and dishonestly) conflating abortion and contraception, and stating that the Obama administration has just required Catholics to pay for abortions through their taxes.

As I've shown in previous postings, this grand, malicious lie begins with His Excellency Timothy Dolan as leader of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  As it's being told, Catholic scholars who know better--and should therefore do better--are helping Dolan and the bishops fan the flames of artificially engineered Catholic outrage, and this may well have an effect on the 2012 elections.

It may help to assure the election of some of the most anti-life political leaders around, as Catholics are pushed to vote for these leaders with outrageous and entirely misleading insinuations that they're pro-life.  I'm watching my church's top leaders and its intellectual and media arbiters, in other words, play nasty, cynical political games these days, and I have just about had it with the misrepresentation of what my tradition really believes and promotes, in its core values.

And with the way in which the centrist intellectual-and-media commentariat is mesmerized by the far right, while it refuses to acknowledge the presence of any brother and sister Catholics outside the center-right paradigm in the room.  I've just about had it with the easy (and eminently uncatholic) willingness of the centrist intellectual-and-media commentariat to write the large majority of their fellow Catholics out of the official conversation of the church in the public square.  And with the dishonesty and downright lying about who practices contraception and who doesn't.

We all, we adult members of faith communities with ambiguous, complex legacies and polyvalent doctrinal systems, have the challenge of finding ways to engage our ambiguous, complex legacies and polyvalent doctrinal systems as adults aware of their nuances.  And as adults who know how to sort through the complexity and affirm what is life-giving and healthy within our tradition, and critique/repudiate the rest.

Or we may choose simply to walk away, if we come to the judgment that our tradition is so completely dominated by unscrupulous leaders and a set of craven, morally empty thinkers in its intellectual class that it has become religiously and morally bankrupt, and walking away from the unsavory mess is our better option.  And that is, in my view, an understandable and defensible response, and may well be the only option left for many of us who have tried to hang on by our fingernails, when His Excellency the USCCB president tells an outrageous and exceedingly malicious lie to affect the political process, and the intellectual class of the institution not only refuses to challenge the lie, but helps it to be told--to their great discredit.

And the second piece that catches my eye at Religion Dispatches today goes hand in hand with the first: this is Sarah Posner's report from Florida about Mr. Gingrich's attempt to use religion as a weapon in his campaign.  Posner had already reported yesterday that the "pro-life" Mr. Gingrich is assisting His Excellency Archbishop Dolan and Dolan's brother bishops in telling the grand lie that the president has just approved HHS guidelines which require Catholics to pay for abortions through their tax dollars.

And as she reports today, she has interviewed a number of Catholics in Florida who insist this is precisely what they heard in the anti-Obama political letters read in their parish churches this past Sunday--and who are outraged that the Obama administration is forcing Catholics to pay for abortions.  But then there's this interesting tidbit of information buried in Posner's report: even with the bishops' cynical, draconian nationwide anti-Obama politicking right as the Florida primary took place, Gingrich the "pro-life" Catholic did not win the Catholic vote among Republican Catholics in Florida.

Romney the Mormon won the Catholic vote--56% to Gingrich's 30%.  And this makes me wonder if I've been right all along when I've maintained that most Catholics determined to vote Republican in the coming elections had already made up their minds to do so prior to the bishops' ugly political maneuvering over the HHS guidelines.

It may turn out that the bishops and their loud and self-important intellectual-and-media commentariat spokespersons don't speak for "us Catholics" quite so much as they imagine they do.  (But, of course, the primary game-plan of their episcopal excellencies and their supporters is to get a Republican--any Republican--into office.  Since they suspect, and the suspicion is well-grounded, that Republicans are more apt to give their episcopal excellencies religious exemptions to ignore non-discrimination laws in the name of "religious freedom" than Democrats are.  It's all about their "right" to discriminate, and not about the human rights of any of those against whom they claim the "right" to discriminate in God's name.  Sadly and shockingly.)