A bit of Anti-Catholicism, with a Side of Republican Politics
Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, gave a sermon (no date given) denouncing the Catholic Church as the Babylonian mystery religion:
It is the usual mash-up of Reformation and 19th century nativist anti-Catholicism, though I love the mistranslation of “Pontifex Maximus” as “Keeper of the Bridge” between Man and Satan.
A southern Baptist pastor dabbling in anti-Catholicism is not news. However, in this case, Dr. Jeffress is identified as Rick Perry’s pastor. I am not going to hold Perry responsible for his pastor’s remarks, but it will be interesting to see if and how he responds. Will the media pick up on this? Will he distance himself as Obama did from the Rev. Wright? Should Perry distance himself?
Update: It is not clear if Dr. Jeffress is actually Perry’s pastor. He was so identified on the CathNewsUSA mailing list where I got the video, but a subsequent search cannot confirm this. He is, however, a very public supporter of Perry, including having introduced him at the Values Voter Summit earlier this year. Also, it appears that Perry has already attempted to distance himself from this quote. As posted on the website Right Wing Watch, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is quoted as saying:
Last night, I discussed the flap over Rev. Robert Jeffress with Chris Matthews on “Hardball.” While I made it clear that the anti-Catholic comments made by Jeffress must be roundly condemned, I also stated that I was not blaming Gov. Rick Perry for what the pastor said. One of the reasons I said this was because I was assured by my friend, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, that Perry would never countenance any scurrilous remarks about the Catholic Church.
When I got home, I received a phone call from Gov. Perry. Catholic activist Deal Hudson, who has a history of forging good relationships between Catholics and evangelicals, intervened in this matter and arranged for the phone call. Perry and I spoke candidly about the Jeffress incident, and about religion, in general. He spoke sincerely: nothing that Jeffress said about Catholicism represents his views.
I very much appreciate Gov. Perry’s interest in getting this issue behind him in a responsible manner. He succeeded. Case closed.
Are you sure that Jeffress is Perry’s pastor? I hadn’t seen that in the news.
See update above.
I’m quite sure that Perry won’t dismiss this. First, he probably agrees with it. But, second (and in terms of politics, more importantly), in order to denounce it, he would need to refute it. And in order to refute it, he would need to undertake an in-depth historical and doctrinal argument that would hold very few interested listeners. I don’t think Perry is equipped to do so, even if it made political sense to try.
I would certainly be interested to see an in-depth, scholarly, point-by-point refutation of it here, however–if anybody would like to attempt one.
JUst fo rthe record, while Rev. Jeffries has been identified as Perry’s pastor, and the two are close, Perry is a member of the United Methodist Church but generally attends Lake Hils Church, an unaffiliated Protestant congregation.
Thanks for the clarification, Kurt.
What an ignorant nut. As humorous as the guy seems in his quirky misreadings of just about everything he says, there is something much better to be heard from the types for entertainment. Namely, when they are forced to explain how the very “inerrant’ Bible” they claim was the result of political and ecclesial wranglings of the very same “mystery cult” they are excoriating. It is that kind of push-comes-to-shove intellectual justification that is really telling. Then it is time to cherry-pick. Certain people in the past were guided, and kept the faith, and the rest not. The ones who chose the books of the NT just happen to be the right ones. The details they adduce to “prove” their belief don’t matter, because they always ignore most of history. It devolves to some sort of prissy selectivity. Somehow they got it just right with the Bible, even thought they got everything else wrong, in their view.
Wow! How many millions of pages have been created to parse and refute these matters?? A gazillion, maybe. What is more interesting is the precise American- historical angle on the matter. When through political wrangling and popular enthusiasms the notion of a “Christian Republic” arose roughly about the 1830′s it went in tandem with another terrible attribute. Namely, the utter rejection of the need to justify anything intellectually. This is a detail which seems lost as a perspective for history. Even in polities much more autocratic than this country ever was, the notion that one had to justify the actions of the ruling notions was great. That doesn’t mean it was well done. And that point explains why most of the billions of pages produced by intellectual flacks of all kinds for kings and petty rulers have been completely forgotten. What is worth remembering is that there was a felt need to produce it. It shows a kind of accountability to the populace, at least potentially or in attenuated form. Strangely in this country with the notion of the Christian Republic the utterly bizarre technique of asserting something and never feeling any real need to explain it (somewhere) arose as a real option. It started around the 1830′s and has never left. I have never seen a clear explanations of why it worked then and continues to work. Herman Cain is just the latest embodiment of the technique. He believes such-and-such will work, and his LACK of felt need to explain is– mirabile dictu — considered a virtue. It is worth emphasizing again that this lack of felt need is something relatively new.
Since I have never seen a convincing explanation, I will hazard a guess of the cultural evolution of the notion. On some half-articulated level Christian believers felt threatened by the critical attitude of science in the 19th Century. Of course this was an old story building for a few centuries. But it was only then that the paradoxical state of being critical-yet-supportive of religious discourse arose as a definite possible trope in the broader population. It is clear then that the most conservative would choose a reaction of emphasizing the assertion of ANY belief without the need of justification. For the very notion of being critica-yet-supportive would seem threatening . What a disaster this tendency has been for the country founded with some of the greatest intellectual ideas in human history. This nut Jeffress’ ideas are just the latest iteration of it. We have yet reached a worse point now. Now intellectuals themselves (!!) are employing the strategem cleverly in their prose. It is there as a signal to the like-minded. This is surely the post-intellectual age, even though there are plenty of intellectuals around. All one can do is buck the trend. Deep down nuts like Jeffress hate the Catholic Church not for its beliefs, but because it has a resonance with intellectual complexity. Many Catholic intellectuals sadly seem to be responding to all this by fighting fire with fire. Trying to create their own repertoire of simple ahistorical assertions cast in intellectual form. Proving again that healthy balance is not the same as seeking the nadir where extremes meet.
Anyone else thinking that Donohue was not at all interested in going after this? Since when does Donohue let anyone get away with a private assurance and not a full public denouncement? Would he let a Democrat get away this easy?
Brett,
If you are talking about the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue here I have another idea. Since the Pope’s Regensburg address, where he specifically claimed Greek philosophy as a part of the Catholic revelation experience, there has been, I am sure, a PR fear amongst some apologists. How do they counter just this sort of claim about “mystery cults” when the Pope is invoking the importance of pagan philosophers?? Big PR problem. To understand the Pope’s point you need to understand a fair amount of philosophy. Good luck with that in the era of JCTV, In a sound-bit culture, that one is a big PR loser for the Catholic church. So Donahue is staying away.
I’ve read Mr. Donohue’s Catholic League “close the case” on several instances like this one – when the person of interest contacts him or publicly apologizes or clarifies, or fires the offending individual, etc. The US history of things like this is fascinating, if depressing.
Thanks Bruce. I could be wrong, of course. I was working on impression alone. Anyone know of a “liberal” who got off the hook just for private contact with Donohue?
Brett, Dunno, but you looking at the website there are hundreds of instances allover the map. I’m confident you could find a “liberal” with a case closed status from contacting Donohue.
And it is so much easier to just brand Jeffries as “an ignorant nut” than it is to undertake a thorough and intellectually valid refutation of what he says. As an ignorant nut and a religious bigot, he can be dismissed out of hand; and what is sauce for the goose becomes (once again) sauce for the gander.
By the way, all Protestants, to the extent that they even know what “Protestant” implies, are anti-Catholic by definition.
Ah, the sweet mother’s milk of my anti-Catholic, dispensationlist youth. Much of this crapola comes from the 1962 book, Roman Catholicism, by Loraine Boettner. Roman Catholicism is perhaps the worst researched and reasoned book on Catholicism ever written, and yet it is a standard text for intellectual heavyweights like Dr. Jeffress, Dr. Jimmy Swaggart, and Dr. John Hagee.
This excerpt from a review of Roman Catholicism at Catholic Answers will give you a sense of the side-splitting absurdity of the book. It’s a stand-in for all the ridiculous claims of fundie anti-Catholics:
I have no reason to want to defend Jeffress (or Beottner) but I easily found online the chapter in Roman Catholicism where Boettner says “when he is speaking ex catherdra, that is, seated in the papal chair.” Nowhere, however, was I able to find the place where Boettner “then points out that what is venerated as Peter’s chair…”, etc. It would be good, when making such an accusation to produce the actual words of the writer being accused, with proper citation. This looks spurious to me, frankly.
P. 36 of Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism. However, it is clear from the text in Keating’s book that he is imputing to Boettner an argument that may or may not be implicit in the text.
I had never heard the “keeper of the bridge” line, and I am a serious student of anti-Catholicism in America. It appears in a book by the Moody Bible Institute from 1966, which can be found at
http://www.walvoord.com/book/export/html/341
But it must be older than this.
Here’s where the “bridge” notion appears in Boettner: http://www.americanpresbyterianchurch.org/section_ii1.htm
Not quite the bridge between God and Satan, but the evolution is clear.
I easily found the book on an approving anti-Catholic website. The bit about the physical chair appears in a footnote in Chapter XI, which is devoted to infallibility. The footnote is a direct commentary on the use of the term, “ex cathedra.”
It would be good when refuting an accusation to be thorough. Here’s the link: http://www.americanpresbyterianchurch.org/section_iii1.htm
Thank you, Mark, for your investigations and additional citations. I find it interesting to note, however, that while lack of footnotes is cited above as one of the things damning the scholarly integrity of Boettner’s book, it is a footnote that here condemns him. Moreover, it is a footnote that does not accompanying the same text where I found it (i.e. a link to excerpts of Boettner’s writings on Wikipedia.) I also find it strange that this putative website of the “American Presbyterian Church” spells Boettner’s first name with two “r’s”, whereas you spelled it correctly above with only one. Odd that they spelled their anti-Catholic champion’s name wrong.
As for the footnote, if it is valid and accurate, it would seem to suggest that the Church itself was hopeful to prove that this was, indeed, a first century antique. Why else would they have had it dated? It is not Protestants who set a high value on relics, or endow them with supernatural effects.
Deep down nuts like Jeffress hate the Catholic Church not for its beliefs, but because it has a resonance with intellectual complexity.
Let’s not forget that much of anti-Catholicism has nothing to do with philosophy, theology or thought, but with irrational and ethnic bigotry. Brown skinned Hispanics, olive skinned Italians, monkeyish Irish washing up on our shores (or coming across the Rio Grande).
I know I am going to get reamed for saying this, but have you noticed that it is in Texas were Episcopalians coming into communion with the Catholic Church have been most dedicated to setting up Anglican Use parishes while where Catholics are mostly non-Hispanic white suburbanites, they happily merge into existing Catholic congregations?
Kurt–What you say about anti-Catholic sentiment in this country is certainly and undeniably true. But, we must not forget that there was a little thing called The Reformation that took place in Europe between Catholics and dissidents (later Protestants) who were of precisely the same ethnic stock. That northern Europe became largely Protestant while southern Europe remained largely Catholic can’t be overlooked when considering the history of religiously tainted ethnic intolerance in this country. I think, for instance, that there was already an ethnic bias against the Irish amongst the Brits prior to either group coming over here, and probably before the Reformation, for that matter. It doesn’t go away just because it’s had a boat ride.
Kurt,
You wrote: “Let’s not forget that much of anti-Catholicism has nothing to do with philosophy, theology or thought, but with irrational and ethnic bigotry. Brown skinned Hispanics, olive skinned Italians, monkeyish Irish washing up on our shores (or coming across the Rio Grande).”
As someone who is regularly accused of being “anti-Catholic” in online venues less informed than this one, I beg to differ with you. Respectfully, with the necessary nod to all the real, verifiable ethnic prejudice that existed and still does (you nailed it Texas, AND Arizona I would add), it really is about thought in the end. Look, I have a basketful of criticism to deliver with my welcome wagon to any rigid Catholic apologist, but the cultural facts are the cultural facts. Even with all the bad liturgical music and bad vestments, still the Catholic church is one of the few places where the flight from philosophical meaning is being resisted. Again, not very well lately I would say, but still they are doing something. How do you think the oligarchs managed to swindle all of us??? It wasn’t by encouraging critical thought that is for sure. It was accomplished in a society that flushed critical thought and replaced it (recently) with mania about “bias” which ain’t the same thing. There is the real prejudice. Critical thought tells us it is wrong to judge people on superfluous criteria. People like Jeffress don’t want to have to think at all. And, by the way, one of the ways to know this is that he repeats all the canards about pagans– the history tells us the ancient culture was mostly NOT about mystery cults. More broadly, I happen to think that most of what floats around human minds is utterly irrational about 97% of the time, including my own by the way. That is where we all need a little poverty of spirit, in the humility to admit that sort of thing. . Beliefs per se are never a hindrance to anyone; it is only what they do with them that matters. I realize I am be very elliptical here, but I can’t help it with this complex matter. Bigotry at its source — especially in the American context — always puts on airs and puts lipstick on the pig. Evangelicals don’t like Catholics because of their impressive intellectual tradition which is a threat to their simplicities. A threat to their lipstick.
Another side problem with your theory is that the Catholic church did not have a terribly fine history with dark skinned human beings in the American south. So that sort of prejudice is not a characteristic of those in the “anti” position with the Catholic Church alone. Check out Bishop Verot’s unpleasant career, as a for instance. .
All I could find about Bishop Verot’s career was this http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15363b.htm
If you have any more information or link, I would appreciate them. Thank you.