On the use and abuse of Faith

by Gamini Seneviratne

"I believe it because it is absurd" (credo quia absurdum est) became the basis on which the Christian Church sought to get over the problems posed for it by rational inquiry. That saying came to mind when I read the amusing article by R. M. B. Senanayake, a senior colleague who took early retirement from the service to pursue his interests in religion and commerce: "Free to Choose or Bound to Tradition?" (The Island, 31st May, 2006).

Freedom of conscience

Among the range of subjects on which he offers his views / makes assertions are 'the freedom of conscience' (denied to Catholics in this country), 'the freedom of the newspapers' (as long as one controls them), the anti-conversion bill, the likelihood of abuse of the law, when there is one, on unethical conversions, the right of anybody to criticise the President (who is, under the present constitution, above the law).

He makes no specific reference though to the film of 'The Da Vinci Code' (on which a piece by me was published in the Sunday Observer last month) but the President's intervention in the matter is relevant to RMB's assertions.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference in the Philippines, which has a much larger Roman Catholic constituency than here, made its appeal to the duly authorised body in the matter, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board.

The Catholic Bishops here addressed the President, - and not the duly authorised body, the Public Performances Board. One wonders why? Perhaps they 'believed' that the President has among his advisers an authority on the biography of Jesus and on the art of the Italian Renaissance.

Reason and science

And RMB expatiates on matters of reason and science, freedom and tradition. He seems to claim that 'reason' and 'science', if not quite the basis of the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), are at least associated with them positively. By the kind of sleight of hand known as 'jesuitical casuistry', he attempts to dismiss the supremely rational basis of Buddhist thought as being 'traditional', - as opposed to the 'enlightenment' that he assumes marks 'modern' systems, such as those of the RCC, of managing (mostly damaging) life on earth.

The casuistry is evident in his references to the Buddha and to the caste system and to Galileo, to the protestant movement, so called, to Arnold Toynbee (a fundamentalist Roman Catholic in his later years), and to Nehru, as also to a 30-year war in Europe for control of territory, conducted behind a fa‡ade of religiosity. We all know that European colonialism employed the spread of Christianity as its raison d'etre as did American expansionism (as it does even today).

He also presents the myth making and superstitions promoted by the RCC as representing 'a clash of ideas', and 'conversions', under whatever form of duress, as being an outcome of the struggle of 'freedom versus tradition'. In the same idiom of confrontation he declares that, "The contest is between a free plural society and a monolithic ethno-religious identity".

There are many such 'ethno-religious identities': 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant', 'Islamic Arab/Pakistani/Indonesian/Maldivian' etc., 'Irish/Italian/Filipino Catholic', 'Hindu Indian' and so on. What R. M. B. Senanayake targets here is clearly the 'Sinhala Buddhist'.

Well, his use of the word 'contest' is quite in line with the pugnaciousness that has been associated with the RCC throughout its history. It is hardly necessary to ask him what his own 'identity' is: it seems to have been determined for him by the RCC at birth and it would be prudent for him to stay within the words and concepts he has been equipped to understand by his mentors.

Scientific revolution

He speaks of a 'scientific revolution' as though that had been initiated by or was at least a spin-off from the enlightenment brought about in Europe by Christianity. One would think that it is impossible that RMB is ignorant of the RCC's crusades against 'modern science'. Coming to the present day, how would GM plants, much less the cloning of humans, sit with the 'orthodox' or 'traditional' claims of the RCC?

RMB's acquaintance with history seems too remote to be remedied in a newspaper article (he'd have to take an extensive course in that multi-dimensional subject area). He asserts, for instance, that 'The Industrial Revolution' "has lifted millions from poverty to a standard of living that even the ancient kings did not enjoy" - though the stark opposite of that is much closer to the truth. He has long been an advocate of what is now referred to as the neo-conservative ideology.

Its primary features are an untrammelled freedom to appropriate other people's resources, their labour, their land, water, minerals, their traditional knowledge, their science, their arts and artefacts etc. The notion of 'Rational Selfishness', (given 'ism' status as 'Objectivism' following the rantings of Ayn Rand), is old hat for the RCC; it has many more centuries of experience in that rationale for looting than any other corporation, public or private.

RMB's assumptions, though even less informed, are quite in line with those of Max Weber, whose 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' may have been required reading for him at some point. Weber claimed that while some areas of knowledge had been developed in India, in China, and in the Arab world, TRUE science in all branches of learning, - in physics, mathematics, chemistry, architecture, art and music - was developed in Europe on the foundations laid in Greece.

Analytical essays, by Susantha Goonethilake and other scholars, which detail the foundations of 'European science' in Asia, are widely known and accepted in the West. As an index to the scale of Weber's prejudice/ignorance, it is well to remember that he was writing long after Marx, who had, over time, begun to overcome his euro-centrism.

Neither the RCC nor the Neo-Cons possess a 'theory' to support their demand for power to pursue their thirst for the expansion of their constituencies and the dividends that follow. Or for developing their capacity to influence public policy or to destroy or damage the social (not the 'intellectual', the RCC being helpless in that matter, as RMB's writings demonstrate) bases of life valued by people who follow the thinking of the Buddha, the tenets set out in the Upanishads and the Gita, by Jesus of Nazareth, by Mahomed and other teachers, less known, among the peoples of Africa, America and Australasia.

RMB refers to the freedom that newspapers are entitled to - he puts them on par with the State or above it. I am sure he knows, quite precisely, the degree of control that Christian organisations, particularly the RCC, have once again acquired over our newspapers and other mass media especially over the past ten years: with a patron like Chandrika Kumaratunga, Executive President, to back the RCC, anything was possible.

The RCC's resistance to all forms of intellectual inquiry continues to date. The story of Galileo and of the instruments of torture employed against him is well known, but the greater irony is that of the burning down of the great libraries which housed the works of Aristotle - from whom Thomas Aquinas, the theologian whose work the RCC has used for its own purposes, drew his fundamental premises.

Scientific development

How RMB would define the outcome of 'scientific development' is not clear. As capitalism reaches its highest state of development, as it becomes emptied of all ethical restraint, as the physical base of all life on earth is eroded ever more rapaciously, (all those features are quite evident now), how do ordinary people respond? Many people who live in industrial societies, the supposed beneficiaries of 'science', turn for succour to 'traditional' societies and to the philosophies that have guided their modes of living.

Those numbers are in the millions but are as yet a small fraction of the people who have let themselves become bereft of companionship with the earth and with those who live in it, except maybe a cat, a dog, parrot or budgerigar. Or, as has happened to the vast majority who have been turned into 'couch-potatoes', they continue to deaden themselves into oblivion thanks to the sounds and sights associated with sports, talk-shows, soaps and other such 'trivial pursuits'.

It is part of the latter 'market' that 'evangelists' are tapping now, and it poses the most immediate threat to the economic base of the 'established Christian churches', especially the Roman Catholic, an old hand at promoting 'faith' as an opiate that stops people thinking while fattening its coffers.

Status of women

A footnote here on RMB's notion of 'freedom' in practice, - he's got quite hot about the status of women in India, and should look elsewhere too. In Australia, as is true of much of this world, that neglected genius of song, Judy Small, put it succinctly thus:

"All they taught you who to be Was Mothers, Daughters, Wives"

In Ireland, the sad show-piece of the Roman Catholic system, "Everybody was afraid of Dr. Sherwood. My mother was afraid of him at meetings of the Pax Romana because he had a way of glaring at women members when they spoke. Dr. Sherwood, it seemed, didn't like women speaking" - Colin Toibin commenting on the report by Francis Murphy, retired judge of the Supreme Court of Ireland, on the abuse of seminarians by priests: 'The Dangers of a Priestly Education', London Review of Books, December, 2005. "Dr. Sherwood was evil", writes Toibin (whom the priests had left alone though he himself was gay).

Sherwood had been replaced by Dr. Michael Ledwith, "of whom it had been whispered that he would one day be a great prince of the Church. Ledwith had served three full terms on the International Theological Commission, the group of 30 theologians who advise the Pope".

Following allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour with a young man, 13 at the time, Ledwith had made a private 'out-of-court' settlement, resigned suddenly as President of Maymooth College, Ireland's main seminary, and emigrated to America. In a revealing aside (cf. the principal element in 'The Da Vinci Code'), Toibin reports (of the abusers): "They had believed that their homosexuality was a vocation of the priesthood. Whereas, other boys, as religious as they were, could not become priests because they were attracted to girls, these men had no such problem".

Toibin comments wryly that "because the priest in each parish is automatically manager of the local primary schools" (of the 3200 primary schools in the state, 3000 are still managed by Catholic priests), - "this gave many of them golden opportunities to take students out of school for special lessons".