mary_j_59 | A question (concerning prejudice):

I am trying to be very careful and exact in what I say here. I have no intention of offending anyone, but I do think this is important.

What would you think if a friend of yours said this:
"I hate Judaism! I really hate Judaism! I can't tell you how angry it makes me."

Think a bit. Now, substitute for "Judaism" the phrase "the Catholic Church." Do the above sentences suddenly become okay in your mind? If so, why?

The Catholic Church is not monolithic. Granted, when people say things like this, they usually mean the hierarchy, but even that is not monolithic. And the core meaning of "the Catholic church"?

It's me, and people like me. The body of Christ in the lay men and women practicing the faith, day to day. So, if it's okay to say "I hate the Catholic church", is it equally okay to say you hate Catholics? Where does this lead?

Now, I'm not saying you can't be angry at the Church. I'm certainly not saying you can't be angry at the hierarchy! Unfortunately, many people have good cause to be angry at the hierarchy. I often am, and I'm a practicing Catholic. What I'm trying to say is: please be careful about throwing around that word "hate" and directing it at groups of your fellow human beings. Hate, directed at groups, can lead to dreadful places. It's okay to be angry; it's not okay to hate.

On my mind because I actually heard a friend say these things recently, and because tomorrow is Nakba day/Israeli Independence day. The Nakba arose directly from the dreadful persecution of the Jews in the twentieth century; people who had suffered so much quite naturally wanted a place of safety. And their suffering arose from hatred; the hatred preached by the Nazis. The Nazis, I believe, are ultimately responsible for the suffering of both Jews and Palestinians. Because they not only preached, but acted out, hatred. Hatred kills. It killed tens of millions, in the twentieth century alone.

So please don't think it's ever right to say "I hate" about any group of your fellow human beings! It isn't just talk. Words are powerful. And it can take generations to recover from the suffering those words can cause.

Also on my mind because I was in Belfast a week ago, and saw the peace walls. That was a powerful and disturbing experience. Then I came back to the U.S., and heard a friend say, "I hate the Catholic Church". I did not know how to respond to her. I'm trying to respond now.

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Thanks for writing this, Mary. It's such an important thing to remember.

Sorry! The previous commenter was me; I forgot to change from the "anonymous" login.

Thanks for reading and responding! The thing about the peace walls - well, there were two things, actually. The walls on the Protestant side were full of violent imagery, and the people - both Protestant and Catholic - actually want the walls to stay up. That latter fact was somehow very disturbing to me.

I am later going to post the tribute to C.S. Lewis we saw in East Belfast, where he came from. Very cool!

I've been thinking about maps and map making and boundaries, recently, and it occurs to me that the grid we place on the world is not actually symbolic at all, or rather, it only appears symbolic and is, in fact, merely the disguised imaginary. I mean this in the Lacanian sense. It is ego centric, self-defining, and borrows whatever it can get its hands on from the agencies of power.

Thanks for your comment - though I'm not entirely sure I understand it! However, having driven across a few state lines lately, I couldn't help noticing (1) that the differences are sometimes obvious, but (2) they are obvious because we make them obvious. One state will grade its roads better, but won't do anything to improve the identical road across the (completely fictitious) state line, and so on.

Of course, there are natural boundaries, too. There are rivers, mountain ranges, differences in landscape - but then the question becomes: why do human beings see these as boundaries? Why do we persist in defining our in-group by defining out-groups? Because I do think we all do it. It seems part of being human, and being social animals.

But the point of my post was simpler than this. We all define ourselves as members of various groups. Well and good. We can do so without hating members of other groups. Our memberships can be positive, not negative.

At least, I hope they can be! This is what I've been taught, and what I believe. If it isn't so, we are all lost.

I thought I'd responded to you earlier, but livejournal seems to have eaten my reponse! Briefly-

I'm not at all sure I understand you. But I do understand if you're saying that boundaries are a mental construct. I often drive between states, and the differences in the roads, etc., can be obvious - but only because we humans choose to make them so. True, there are natural boundaries such as rivers, mountains, and so on. But why do we see these things as boundaries to territory, rather than simply as rivers and mountains?

It seems there's something in us humans that persists in defining in-groups and out-groups. All our best and truest philosophies have taught us that this is a false way of looking at the world, but it takes so long to learn!

Anyway, that's what I took from your comment, in so far as I understood it. Am I on the right track?

The mental construct is the end result, yes, but I was thinking about map making and boundary definition as pre-linguistic, in a way, and that cartography itself has always dealt with imaginary spaces, perhaps, and projection. Were directions scratched out in the dirt as language was first being wrought? Were the first words related to cartography, and was map diagramming water or food sources, or potential enemies, the first multi-media presentation?

I'm suggesting that our very sense of self is bound up with cartography and associated symbolism, as soon as we start the process toward being individuals, and that is why retrograde appeals to this imaginary realm are so powerful.

This is a sad thing to log on and read! I don't know what things are like in the US, but in Britain critics of religion seem increasingly to use crude and harsh language - indeed, a few even feel that it is important to make sure religious people know that you think that they are stupid and delusional, in the hope that this will make them give up their faith. Jews are not exempt from this - one of my colleagues has married a Jewish man, and been made welcome at the local synagogue; another colleague expressed his approval, saying that he was glad that the rabbi was 'less disgustingly racist than these people usually are'. I think that your response is very measured. I'm glad you said it - it needed to be said.

I realize that I am assuming that your friend was one of these aggressive atheists. If she was a Protestant, then I apologize unreservedly for what she said. I hope you know that we do not all think like that!

And I'd love to know what you thought of Belfast (and, indeed, why you went there). I've never been there myself, but have had a number of friends from there over the years. It seems to produce strong-minded individualistic people with the courage of their convictions and a healthily independent attitude to what people say - Lewis would be a good example, I suppose. I also like the accent, although I realize that this puts me in a minority!

No, my friend is a fallen-away Catholic, and the sad thing is, people like her often have good cause to be angry at the Church. But what you say about your friend makes me glad I don't live in Britain! Isn't that sad? I love England, and would love to visit Scotland again, but people need to understand that atheism isn't the answer to religious intolerance and bigotry. A doctrinaire, bigoted atheist can be just as hateful as a doctrinaire, bigoted Catholic or Muslim or Jew. I really think the first thing any religion should teach us is that God is far greater than our comprehension, and that we'd better be very careful and humble if we presume to speak in His/Her name.

End of lecture! As to the Belfast post, I hope to get to it next week, now that livejournal is back online. Really, the chief reason I wanted to go there was C.S. Lewis! I told my aunt, "I'd like to do a literary pilgrimage." I also wanted to see the Giant's causeway, of course. :)

speaking of Lewis, a colleague just put his Letters to Children in my hand. I think I'll enjoy that!

Thanks again for your comment; good to hear from you.

I think I am making things seem worse than they are! Atheists this aggressive are very much in a minority even in Britain - I notice them more because I find their comments alarming, and they are probably also more numerous among smart-Alec Oxbridge types. This particular colleague is actually a perfectly nice young man (when you are not talking about religion) but he has a worrying over-confidence in the rightness of his own opinions, and a tendency to overstate things, and make absurd comparisons. So he is perhaps not a very good example! And there certainly seem to be aggressive atheists in the US too (judging by the books they write). But they are certainly a concern!

Oh, gosh, Anne, I think I may be making things seem worse than they are, too! Heaven knows we've got plenty of militant atheists here in the U.S., and these people seem to be getting louder and louder. They don't seem to understand that intolerance is intolerance, no matter who is practising it. Strange! I do think this attitude is commoner among educated young people, especially, perhaps, on the net. On a couple of discussion boards, I've come across kids asserting that religion is the cause of all evils in the world, and that Christianity (of whatever stripe) is the most evil of religions. Both of which are highly debatable propositions, to put it mildly! But I haven't found it helpful to argue with these people. They are convinced they are right, and nothing that you can say to them alters their opinions.

Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting! It's always good to hear from you.

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