The Pope walks into a bar...
The Pope visited Canada recently and scared the hell out of me (no pun intended). His visit attracted 200,000 rabid young Christians to snog and party and proselytize. It was a cause for world news and dominated headlines for days with articles written by fawning, obsequious reporters, acting like they had found the inside track to salvation. They didn’t ask the questions I wanted them to ask such as “Aren’t mass meetings of faith always a little creepy in the way the group dynamic reinforces blind devotion and sublimates dissent?” and “Does anyone really believe that an 82-year-old man with advanced Parkinson’s is an enthralling public speaker?”

On the other hand, I have a bit of a fondness for Catholics. I especially like the Spanish catholic culture, or the idea of it anyways, of it being colourful and gaudy and fascinated by blood and gore and buildings that reach to the sky and statues that cry--Masses in Latin, esoteric priesthoods, and drinking blood out of wine glasses. It seems sufficiently pagan and dirty and I like that. Even the obsession with sex is slightly, well, sexy. So in the end, I found the whole Papal visit and associated hoopla, while a little creepy, no more offensive than the spiraled out of control church picnic that it was.

However, some people, including some I wouldn’t have expected, were a little more taken aback about the event. Normal, sane, liberal-leaning people would fervently denounce the Catholic Church and bemoan the Pope’s influence on the world. Except for birth control (about which I agree the Catholic Church is just being stupid about), most of the Catholic bashers were having theological problems with Catholicism rather than practical ones: "How come the pope has all the power?" "Why is the Church so rich?" "Why can't people interpret religion for themselves?" etc. These are all problems that Luther had with the Pope, and I can't really see getting all worked up about 500-year-old religious debates.

However, most people I talked to weren’t particularly conscious of the theological aspects of their criticism and talked about the Catholic Church as if it was some malevolent multi-national corporation with the Pope as CEO/dictator for life. The influence of Protestantism has clearly grown so large in this culture that it’s difficult to distinguish secular policy with religious argument. For instance, if you disagree with the notion of papal infallibility that means that you probably shouldn’t become a Catholic. It doesn’t mean that the Catholics should change what they believe. The whole idea of a religion is that it presents a correct view of the world and if some of those things sound ridiculous to you, or you don’t like them—well, too bad. The idea that an individual can choose what and how to believe is peculiarly Protestant (not secular) and frankly doesn’t make that much sense to me.

It wasn’t that long ago that Catholic kids in North America were beaten up for walking through a Protestant neighbourhood (and vice versa). The underlying message of many of the Catholic-bashers was an attempt to convert Catholics to a kind of modern touchy-feely Protestantism. Proselytizing scares me. Proselytizing when the proselytizer doesn’t even realize it is even scarier.