You gotta hand it to Joan Chittister. Amid the worldwide furor about a Danish cartoon of Muhammad, a 60-year-old Catholic priest, Andrea Santoro, is killed by a Muslim in Turkey just for representing Christianity, and is accordingly acclaimed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar of Rome, as a martyr. So, what is her reaction? Does she finally take the occasion to applaud the Catholic hierarchy? Of course not—save to applaud another cleric's caution about Santoro's cause for beatification. The martyr bit isn't PC, after all. Temptation against the PC norm must be resisted. Such is true fortitude in spiritual combat.Instead, she says:
From where I stand, this does not seem the time to elevate the present political situation to the level of religious warfare by incorrectly declaring our own dead, like those of Islamic fundamentalists, to be "martyrs." All we need is to trigger another century of Crusades by beginning a competition of martyrs. It's time to watch our language. This obscure little article may be all the warning we get.Geez, we wouldn't want to begin a martyr competition now, would we? That would just make things worse. And anyhow Fr. Santoro wasn't really a martyr; he was just the victim of a nutjob caught up in "tensions" generated by—the West, of course. It's really our fault, you see. No martyrdom here, except perhaps to our own boorish insensitivity.
The only orthodoxy Chittister does not question is that of the secular political Left. I have pointed out her true theological colors in an article published elsewhere. She is institutionally Catholic, of course, and why shouldn't she be? She was raised Catholic and became a nun; she has good reason to remain both, because the Church, in Rosemary Radford Reuther's words, is "where the copy machines are." But theologically, she is not Catholic. It remains a mystery to me why the hierarchy does not make that clear, as it has done in the case of other nuns such as Jeannine Gramick. Perhaps they just don't want to make a martyr out of somebody as ubiquitous as Chittister. After all, if they took action, she would certainly pose as one.
Although I appreciate Sister Chittister's concern for calming the tensions between the religious communities, I would kindly request the sister to acquire knowledge of that what she wishes to speak about. I say so because she is making claims which are clearly factually false, and not merely errors of interpretation.
ReplyDeleteFirst, she claims the Turkish state does not discriminate officially against Christian organizations. That is patently false. The remaining Greek Orthodox communities can inform any reader who cares to listen of the financial and discriminatory regulatory restrictions they confront. I know that the German Christians in Antolya have not been able to register their church as a religious institution. One need not mention Saudi Arabia--even in moderate Malaysia Christians face a panapoly of government imposed discriminatory regulations restricting their
rights to construct churches, conduct missionary activities (i.e., prohibition to convert Muslims) and the like.
Second, it appears from her arguments that she would like to understand Islam's approach to Christians and Jews merely based on a few Quranic verses. Here she ironically makes a mistake which actually puts her in the camp of fundamentalist Wahabis, who would largely bypass the role of Islamic scholars in interpreting the Quran. And alarmingly, these interpretations often have very hostile approaches towards the people of the book. Yes freedom to worship is granted the "People of the Book": but they should not ring their church bells; they should wear identifying yellow waistbands; they should be pushed to the side of the road and suffer other humiliations.
Third, she would like to divert the correct understanding of the recent martyrdom of Father Santoro to the status of a murder conducted by a disturbed youth. This would hold some sort of cognitive force were it an isolated event. But this was only one of many incidents set against a backdrop of violence against Christian men and women of the cloth. Witness this report "ISTANBUL: A group of Turkish youths threatened to kill a Catholic friar, grabbing him by the throat and shouting "God is Greatest," just days after a Catholic priest was shot dead in Turkey, the friar said Friday. Martin Kmetec, a Franciscan friar from Slovenia, opened the door of his house on Thursday to find seven or eight angry men in their 20s."
But perhaps I am worng. Perhaps they were suffering from the same mental disturbance as the youth who martyred Father Santoro. But then I hope that she will charitably grant me the point that the name of this illness is ' Islamism'.
Best,
Michaelk
Thanks, Michael. Very well put!
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