Dinner with Moriarty

Dear Moriarty:

Thanks for having us over, and for your gracious hosting.

Of course, the trip ended on a down tone. I would like to make clear, from my perspective exactly why, in hopes that this will improve our friendship in the future. The essential problem was the rather strong, and, it seemed to me, emotional attack on Catholicism on Saturday evening. What especially stays in mind is you shouting "Just kill the pope!" This was not the first time I have seen this; exactly the same thing happened when I visited you last time, and it soured that visit too.

I'd really like to thrash this out with you, by email, so the shouting cannot interfere.

Any Catholic who has spent any time in North America is pretty familiar with the charges that came up Saturday night; it is fairly insulting to suppose we have not considered them already. But let's review, with comments. Then you can pick up any of the points you like for further email discussion.

1. Catholic teaching on birth control is unreasonable since the world is overpopulated.

Answer: the world is not overpopulated. This is a popular myth.

2. The Catholic Church is rich.

Answer: this too is a popular myth; not by any generally-accepted method of accounting.

3. The Catholic Church should sell everything it owns and give the money to the poor.

This holds only if you already do not believe there is any value in a church. Why doesn’t the Red Cross do the same thing?

4. The Catholic Church discriminates against women.

In what way? I think it would be a lot easier to argue that modern feminism discriminates against women.

5. Religion causes wars.

This is about as meaningful as arguing that "music causes wars."

6. The issue of iconography also came up, indirectly, in that you praised Islam for its lack of icons.

This is an old Protestant complaint against Catholicism. While I respect traditions that do not believe in iconography, to reject icons is to reject art. Art is the language of the soul.


Abbot