On Not Reading Slavoj Zizek

I’ve never actually read anything substantial by Žižek, which is of course essential before dismissing him entirely. I admit it’s even possible that his critics have taken him out of context (O beloved zizekian word!) in order to make him appear a “reckless” intellectual. Adam Kirsch’s well-known attack on the controversial counterculture guru (in the New Republic)  seems strangely to have disappeared from the internet. All links to the article – including my own –  lead to a “page not found” page. Is the zizekian secret police out to erase Adam Kirsch from existence?

Thankfully, Dissent has a brand-new skewering of Žižek by Alan Johnson. And The Magnificent Slavoj has ardent defenders as well. But you’ll have to subscribe to read it, because Dissent is not the NY Times.

How the Local Parish Celebrated Halloween

DSCF0953
Plenty of saints to go around

The Next Wall to Fall?

Who will break down the wall around Vatican City?

Good Work! Now Shut Up and Stop Complaining

Madeleine Johnson has a must-read interview with Roger Abravanel, author of the book Meritocracy: Four Concerte Proposals for How to Take Talent Seriously and Make Our Country a Richer and More Just Place (available in Italian):

One statistic in struck me: 68 percent of Italians think their culture is superior to others, compared with 47 percent of Americans and 32 percent of French.

It’s amazing. It my next book I contrast this with the life skills survey. Ten years ago, scientists from ETS [Educational Testing Service] and OECD decided to redefine literacy to beyond just reading. Literacy is what you need to understand, to think and elaborate documents, and problem solve – all essential for training people for jobs and citizens for life. Without life skills, the public is uneducated; people can’t perform jobs and citizens aren’t informed.

They studied five democracies: Italy, the U.S., Norway, Switzerland, Bermuda and Nuevo León, which is the poorest state of Mexico. In Italy they examined both north and south and ran tests in four categories with five levels of difficulty.

I just saw the results because of working with [Education Minister] Gelmini. It’s appalling. Eighty percent of Italians are illiterate by these standards. A literate country should be around level 3. Norway has 75 percent above level 3. The U.S. and Switzerland has 50 percent above. Italy has 20 percent and Nuevo León is at 19.

A long and winding road, you might say.

 

 

 

Go to Hell! We’ll Never Take Down Our Crucifixes!

Italy’s getting scary again.

Ignazio La Russa, who has no degree in science and is therefore unworthy of having views on religion, went off his nut on Italian tv the other evening. The debate over the EU court’s judgement that crucifixes in public classrooms are a bad idea is off and running. Berlusconi has said that Italy will defy the court and the EU, and that no crosses are coming off the walls of any classrooms.

His position was backed up by the homophobic, conservative Catholic politician Rocco Buttiglione. Buttiglione’s brilliant solution to the problem of religious symbols contaminating public spaces is apparently to multiply them. The more, the merrier, he said. Just don’t take down them crosses! Perhaps my mezuzah proposal wasn’t too radical, after all.

Even if you don’t understand a word of Italian, you can grasp the meaning of what La Russa is getting at here. He calls Piergiorgio Odifreddi, a well-known mathematician and one of Italy’s only public atheists, a man without a degree (!) who “puts up and takes down crucifixes as if they were bath towels.” He then castigates the show’s host for not standing up for the dignity of the cross, telling him he is beyond absolution for his sin of silence.

Of course, he’s no Christian integralist, an afterthought he throws in as a final consolation. In case you thought maybe he got off on the wrong foot. “They (the EU?) can go to hell! Well never take down our crosses!!”

“Atheist Piece of S*%t!”

Corriere della Sera ran a story today on the family whose case went up to the European court in Strasbourg, resulting in a ruling unfavorable to the Vatican, yet quite favorable to all Italian passport-holders.

Sami, whose parents are at the helm of the controversy, told the Italian daily that at one point during the proceedings (which began in 2002 – seven years ago!) he was surrounded by his classmates and beaten up to the tune of “Atheist piece of s*%t!”  Mighty Christian of them, eh?

So much for those “universal values” of Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone. The crucifix, even at the scholasic level, encourages irrepressible division between Catholic students and those who don’t wish to see a crucified Jesus every time they turn their heads in class. Archbishop Bertone made a hilarious comment that the EU was going to take away Italy’s dearest symbols (crucifix) and replace them with Halloween pumpkins. To appreciate Bertone’s sense of humor, it’s worth noting that Halloween is not a recognized holiday by the Catholic church. It’s even considered spooky.

If they refuse to take down the crosses, I think we should begin a campaign to put up mezuzahs on every doorpost in every public structure in Italy. It’s only fair, after all, as the Jewish people have been here since before Jesus was, well…circumcised.

Why Are We Still Arguing About This?

Today the European court made an important ruling against the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools, saying that “the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms.” Right. But the Vatican doesn’t see it that way. In fact, they (and most Italian politicians who either believe this hooey or don’t have the balls to stick up for their country against the bishops) are even trying to twist the crucifix into a universal, non-denominational “cultural” symbol. As Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini puts it:

”In our country nobody wants to impose the Catholic religion, let alone with a crucifix, but it is not by eliminating the traditions of individual countries that a united Europe is built.”

The Bishops’ Conference added:

”The multiple significance of the crucifix, which is not just a religious symbol but a cultural sign, has been either ignored or overlooked.”

Don’t be fooled. Europe is no more united by the crucifix than the United States are by the Ten Commandments. In fact, if anything unites the countries of the Euopean Union, it is a collective desire to get beyond the stifling, warring factionalism of inter-Christian warfare. The Catholic church imposed itself on Europe (and much of the rest of the Christianized world) largely through religious war and political domination, extirpating all other religious denominations except for Judaism, which was left to suffer beneath the heel of the Church as a “living witness” to Christ. Ghettoized, expelled, forced to convert, stripped of their rights and property, they were prepared for the slaughter of crusades, pogroms and – given enough time – the unprecedented carnage of the Shoah. This is the legacy of the Christianization of Europe and the universal values of the Catholic church.

It’s time Europe left them behind for good, making Christianity just another one of the many competing religious and non-religious identities on the continent. Everyone has the right to choose a religion and practice it, believe in it and love it. But no one has the right to impose that religion (yes, Christianity is a religion) on anyone else. Italy is a secular country, born in strict opposition to the totalitarian dogma of the late 19th century church (infallibility, et al). Under Mussolini, the church was given new life as a de facto state religion. The Italian constitution has upheld these agreements to this day.

The time has come for them to be abrogated in the name of humanism and a pluralistic, secular Italian state with freedom of religion for all and privilege for none.

Italian Really Is Another Language

If you really want to get a feel for the Italian language in all of its richness and diversity, watch this brilliant routine by Enrico Brignano. He’s one of Italy’s best “showmen”, as they’re called here, meaning he can do just about anything on stage short of smashing watermelons with an oversized hammer.

Before You Buy on Amazon

Pharyngula pointed me to this video. Apparently, Amazon is unable to distinguish between Darwin’s Origin of Species and a creationist rewrite of it. Because the book is in the public domain, what Ray Comfort has done is legal. Meyers points out that one can fiddle with the King James Bible legally, too. But, before you purchase Darwin’s book (or any book for that matter), check which edition you’re buying!

 

 

The Year of Living Jesusly

There is a new book out by Rev. Ed Dobson, who tried to live like Jesus for a year. Apparently the question WWJD was unanswerable, so he decided to take the matter into his own hands. Of course the good Rev. is following in the wake of A.J. Jacobs’s Year of Living Biblically and Benyamin Cohen’s My Jesus Year, both wholehearted attempts (well, not exactly) to come to grips with the “reality” of the Bible and/or its most famous son in the twenty-first century. I read Jacobs’s book, which was at times funny, insightful and gratifying – enough so that I feel I can skip the other two and any others that might crop up in their wake.

Anyway, this book has some pretty poorly researched marketing. Read on: “Live one year as Jesus lived. Eat as Jesus ate. Pray as Jesus prayed. Observe the sabbath as Jesus observed. Attend the Jewish festivals as Jesus attended. Read the Gospels every week.”

Read the Gospels? Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t the whole point of the Gospels that, by the time they were written, Jesus was already dead? Or does Jesus read them in heaven? If so, I hope he’s learned Greek by now.

Well, I’m saving up my energy for my first book, My Year of Impersonating Muhammad. I hope nobody’s thought of that one yet. It should be a wild romp!