Recently the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, issued a sort of white paper on the widening class divide. Without irony, the head of the Catholic church, which funded armies to massacre heretics, sea voyages to conquer new worlds, and chattel slavery, is alarmed at poverty and human suffering as perpetuated by the market system.
Not to be outdone, the head of the Anglican community, the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams - which broke from Rome in the 16th century so an English king could divorce his Spanish wife - spoke more recently against the profiteers of the free market. He said this current economic catastrophe required a moral response.
A few millenia ago, a Jewish religious sect maneuvered its ways into the halls of power and has moved hand in hand, arm in arm, sword to sword into a bloody history of pillage, conquest, imperialism, oppression, the ineptly termed "slave trade" (nothing traded, and no merchandise: just neighbors) ever since. That Jewish sect is Christianity, whose titular prophet never said a word in support of such imperial crimes. Thankfully, he lived and died a Jew, an intellect, a working-class revolutionary. He did not have a born-again moment, and left that beautiful ancient religion untainted.
The unwritten Christian story finds its analog in the story of the rich and famous. When Korean-American Margaret Cho wanted to break that glass ceiling and be a superstar, she found TV network handlers criticizing her weight, changing her biography, and assigning her to Asian Coaching. Drink, drugs, and abuse followed. Similarly, for Christian dogma to "make it", like any aspiring superstar, it had to find the right producers and share their values and explicitly support its missions.
The producers were the potentates and emperors, not the constituency of Jesus.
I remember before the first Gulf War, the head of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II, blessed the British troops sent out not to liberate death camps but rather to make them.
Despite the horrific crimes, over which your public school textbooks have glossed with frescoes, many of the Christian faithful have sought to manifest its role in humanity, and have been rebuked.
Has the Pope forgotten about the liberation theologists, who all over Latin America at the height of US assault on their economies, creating huge swathes of poor and mass graves, fought in Jesus' name to bring social justice? Those priests and nuns of the Catholic church were strongly rebuked. Once on the tarmac at the Managua airport, Pope John Paul infamously rebuked a liberation cleric for getting involved with the poor.
When Prince Charles said he wanted to be, as king, defender of many Faiths, Williams rebuked him, since to the archbishop of Canterbury there is only apparently one faith. More irony: the kingly title "Defender of the Faith" was bestowed on Henry VIII for defending the Catholic Church from the heretic Martin Luther.
Anglicans and Catholics may make up 58% of the globe's Christians, but 58% of a thimble-full of water won't satiate a rat.
We in the West continue to live in a shrinking glass bowl. The USA may very well be in the very center of this little bowl. We are all unaware and uncaring of what goes on beyond the bowl, those dark corners, Bush dared to call them. This has precipitated the moral degeneration of the Christian Ethic and made it a relic, like the pyramids. Neither Alice nor Dorothy mistook the fantasy land into which they had been plunged, but the western world lost its reality check long ago.
Williams asks for a moral response. Here's one:
"Human rights are very often spoken of, but we must also speak of humanity's rights. Why should some people go barefoot, so that others may travel in expensive cars? Why should some people live only thirty-five years, so that others may live seventy? Why should some people be miserably poor, so that others be exaggeratedly rich?
"I speak on behalf of the children of the world who don't even have a piece of bread. I speak on behalf of the sick who lack medicine. I speak on behalf of those who have been denied the right to life and to human dignity.
"Some countries are on the sea, others are not. Some have energy resources, others do not. Some possess abundant land on which to produce food, others do not. Some are so glutted with machinery and factories that even the air cannot be breathed because of the poisoned atmosphere. And others have only their own emaciated arms with which to earn their daily bread.
"In short, some countries possess abundant resources, others have nothing. What is their fate? To starve? To be eternally poor? Why then civilization? Why then the conscience of man? Why then the United Nations? Why then the world?
"You cannot speak of peace on behalf of tens of millions of human beings all over the world who are starving to death or dying of curable diseases. You cannot speak of peace on behalf of 900 million illiterates. The exploitation of the poor countries by the rich must cease.
"...Enough of the illusion that the problems of the world can be solved by nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the hungry, the sick, and the ignorant, but bombs cannot kill hunger, disease, and ignorance. Nor can bombs kill the righteous rebellion of the peoples .... Let us say farewell to arms, and let us in a civilized manner dedicate ourselves to the most pressing problems of our times. This is the responsibility, this is the most sacred duty of the statesmen of all the world. Moreover, this is the basic premise for human survival."
Fidel Castro to the United Nations General Assembly, Oct 1979
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