The Last Acceptable Prejudice?
by Matthew A. C. Newsome
This article was originally submitted to the editors of the Asheville
(NC) Citizen-Times. It was in reaction to a guest commentary
by Richard Reboulet that appeared on their OpEd page a few days after Christmas.
This article was very anti-Catholic, and contained many factual errors
regarding Church history and doctrine. You can read my initial response,
that was published a month later, by clicking
here. This more recent article will not likely be published by
the Citizen-Times because, as one of their editors told me, "We
are trying to put the Reboulet debacle to rest." I certainly can't
blame him for that. However, I think this sort of incident is just
a symptom of a larger problem, which is why I wrote the following article.
Looking at the policies of the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper, one reads that they “will provide a public forum for diverse people and views.” One assumes that this is the only reason that the anti-Catholic ravings of Richard Reboulet made it into print. After all, he was published on the opinion page, and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
However, the paper’s ethical policies also claim that they are committed to “seeking and reporting the truth in a truthful way” and that they “will hold factual information in opinion columns and editorials to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.” Mr. Reboulet’s writings are in such blatant violation of those standards that it could only be assumed that anti-Catholicism is still a widely acceptable form of prejudice in the media.
Mr. Reboulet is no stranger to the readers of the Citizen-Times. His letter to the editor published on Dec. 7, 2001, when stem-cell research was being discussed in the media, proclaimed that the Pope does not know “what life is or what [he is] talking about.” But his guest commentary on Dec. 28 revealed new depths to his anti-Catholicism, claiming that the Church’s teaching on contraception has led to the “misery of millions” and that the Catholic belief in transubstantiation (the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) has led to “devastating consequences even to this day.” While this may be his opinion, he offers absolutely no evidence for his claims.
Imagine picking up your daily newspaper and reading that the Islamic practice of praying five times daily has led to the “misery of millions.” Or that the Baptist belief in salvation by faith alone has led to “devastating consequences.” No, our politically correct media would never allow such a slander -- and most certainly not if race were involved. If one were to slander African-Americans, or Hispanics, the ACLU would be all over it. So why is anti-Catholicism still tolerated?
Much of it has to do with the anti-Catholic heritage of a lot of the Protestant churches. Protestants, after all, are named for the very fact that they were protesting against something – the Catholic Church. And America is a more or less Protestant country. This helps one understand, if not justify, a lot of anti-Catholic opinion when it comes to theology and moral issues. Baptists, for example, certainly believe different things than Catholics. It is to be expected. But what bothers me -- and what should bother any thinking individual -- is the extent to which Catholic belief is actively misrepresented, and church history, if not falsified as was the case with Mr. Reboulet, is completely ignored. And the media (and their reading public) allow it.
Lest you think I am only reacting to one editorial in the Citizen-Times, let me bring to your attention the writings of Karl Keating, the leading lay Catholic apologist in our country today. His book, entitled Catholicism and Fundamentalism, deals extensively with the work of various anti-Catholic groups. In his research he finds the same historical errors repeated in the writings of many anti-Catholics – blatant errors that would never be tolerated among academic historians but which are repeated in “religious” texts without question. He has traced most of it back to one book, Roman Catholicism, by Loraine Boettner, published in 1962. In this book, Boettner gives a history of the Catholic Church that is gladly accepted by most non-Catholics, when in fact it is mostly misconstrued or just made up whole cloth.
For example, he writes that in 1229, at the council of Valencia, the Bible was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. If one were to actually visit a library and do a little research on this topic, several things would become apparent. First, the Index of Forbidden books was not established until 1543, so how could a book be added to it in 1229? Second, there was never a church council held in Valencia -- not in 1229 or any other year. And third, in 1229 Valencia was held by the Islamic Moors, so it was not even Catholic territory.
This is but one example of many errors of this type. There are any number books in print with false information that are not taken seriously by the mainstream public. But what bothers me is that you find these lies and errors repeated in nearly every anti-Catholic book, tract, web page, and sermon. And they are believed without question.
I visited Jerry Falwell’s official web site recently. On it he claims that the seven deutero-canonical books (called “Apocrypha”) were never recognized by the Church Fathers or any early authority. He claims they were added by the Catholic Church in 1546 (another falsehood one can trace back to Boettner’s book). Now, Falwell may really believe this to be true, but one would hope that he knew better. He claims to be an expert on the Bible. The books in question, along with the rest of the Biblical canon, were recognized by the early Church Fathers at the council of Hippo in 393 AD, again at the council of Carthage in 397 AD, and ratified by Pope Innocent in 405 AD. In fact, all Christians universally recognized these books until the Protestant Reformation. Any good history of the Bible will tell you this. Yet the anti-Catholics claim the exact opposite to be true. This would never be acceptable in even high school history classes, so why is it preached from the pulpit? And more to the point, why is it in our newspapers?
Periodically in the media, one will hear about the Catholic Church during the Third Reich. The story will tell of how Pope Pius XII was either soft on Nazism or that he was actually in cahoots with Hitler. He is even sometimes called “Hitler’s Pope.” A recent example is the book A Moral Reckoning: The Catholic Church During the Holocaust and After, by Daniel J. Goldhagen. The New Republic is to publish a 27,000-word excerpt from his book, in response to the imminent canonization of Pius XII, whom their publisher, Martin Peretz, calls an “evil man.” Goldhagen’s charge is that the Catholic Church, throughout history, has been anti-Semitic, and nurtured the hatred of Jews that would lead to the Holocaust. He claims that anti-Semitism is “integral” to Catholic doctrine, theology and liturgy.
These accounts are normally silent about the many papal writings denouncing Nazism, the unrelenting Nazi smear campaign against Pius XII, the fact that a large number of Jews were given refuge in the Vatican, and that Catholics were condemned to the concentration camps along with Jews (Poland, an almost entirely Catholic country, suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis). The New York Times detailed much of the Church’s stance against Nazism during the WWII period. At that time, they called Pius “a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent.” Now that same paper has adopted the stance that he stood idly by while millions of Jews were murdered -- a stance refuted by the paper’s own archives.
Jewish leaders did not, at the time, complain about Catholic anti-Semitism. In fact, at the end of the war, Jewish leaders thanked Pius XII for all of his efforts to help them! The World Jewish Congress made a large cash donation to the Vatican. The chief rabbi of Rome even converted to Catholicism and took Pius’ baptismal name of Eugenio in his honor. No one then accused the Church of being Nazi sympathizers. And it is an insult that people are now. It ranks right along side those who tell us that the Holocaust never happened, that it was all a hoax. The only difference is that people espousing one view are dismissed as bigoted crackpots, while people espousing the other have major portions of their books published in The New Republic.
The only explanation is that anti-Catholic bias is still alive and well. You see evidence for it every day. On January 22, 2002, the 29th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, one might expect a newspaper to run feature stories on how things in America have changed since then, and editorials with both the pro-life and pro-choice sides represented. Certainly the massive pro-life march in Washington, D.C., should be considered newsworthy. People from all over America were there, Catholic, Protestant, and non-Christian alike. The President even addressed the gathering.
Instead, on Jan. 22, the Asheville Citizen-Times ran a front-page story about how, 29 years later, Catholic hospitals still will not allow abortions on their premises. Recognizing that the staff there may have religious issues with performing abortions themselves, the article suggests that doctors and nurses should be required to tell the patient that killing her child is still an option, and refer her to a doctor who will do it for her.
I could not help but think, when I read this, that if someone were trying to force an all Jewish boarding school to serve pork chops in their cafeteria (in case a Gentile were to want to eat there), then the media would be up in arms against it (and rightly so). But a Catholic hospital that will not perform abortions? How dare they!
It is fashionable to be anti-Catholic now because the Catholic Church runs counter to our modern culture. It is fearless in speaking out against abortion, contraception, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, pornography, divorce, and a host of other things that our modern culture holds near and dear. (Things that we are being taught to “tolerate” by the media, by the way). It requires discipline from its faithful, and we modern people do not like being told what to do. We like to be our own boss. We like to be freewheeling. It is all about me, me, me. This makes the Catholic Church a very easy target.
Things change with the times. Before the 1930’s every Christian sect universally taught that contraception was wrong. Before Roe v. Wade, it was illegal to kill your unborn child. Anglicans did not ordain women until the feminist pressure became too great. Now many Protestant churches are allowing homosexual marriages, something unthinkable a generation ago.
Depending on how you vote, you may or may not view this as progress. But it is a fact that among all this social change the Catholic Church has remained constant. I applaud her for that. Religion should be constant. Objective truth is true no matter what the social climate is like. If I am going to put my faith in something, I do not want it to be subject to the popular whims of society. I want to know that what I believe in is timeless, unchanging. And so I applaud the Catholic Church for being such a bulwark of truth. And you may condemn her for that. It would seem that the media does.
Just look again at the Citizen-Times. Since September 11, the media has been telling us over and over again that we need to be tolerant of Islam. Reporters bend over backwards to avoid offending their Muslim audience when they report on events in Afghanistan. No major paper would dream of running an anti-Muslim piece during the height of Ramadan, the most holy time of the year for Muslims.
But on Dec. 28, right during the Christmas season, the Citizen-Times ran Mr. Reboulet’s little rant against the Catholic Church. Mr. Reboulet does not agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching on transubstantiation and he thought he would express that opinion in the pages of the local newspaper. And the editors of that newspaper gladly published it. To their credit, they have since published at least three other guest commentaries from people defending the Catholic Church, including mine.
When they ran my response to his editorial, the editors were kind enough to make mention of my Catholic Apologetics web page at albanach.org/apologetics [now located at turrisfortis.com]. I was rewarded the next day with an e-mail from Richard Reboulet himself. I wrote him back, welcoming the opportunity to discuss the Catholic Church with him. We only corresponded a few times, each of his letters growing more insulting and irrational.
But even after only three letters, it soon came out that transubstantiation is not his only bugaboo. You see, Mr. Reboulet holds the opinion that the Catholic Church’s teachings are not based on either the Bible or Sacred Tradition, but are based entirely on the works of the pagan Aristotle. The Bible, he claims, was actually put together by Ptolemy III, who was having a competition with another Greek leader to see who could collect the most Jewish folk tales. What is more, he is convinced that Christianity only survived because of Paul, a wandering homosexual who came to Greece in search of a place where his gay lifestyle would be accepted.
Mr. Reboulet believes that homosexual people are evolutionarily superior to “straights” and that is why gay people are so much more talented. His belief is that homosexuals are created in the true image of God, who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, involved in an eternal homosexual (and incestuous) love affair. Most bothersome of all, I also learned that he is busy writing more anti-Catholic commentaries for the Citizen-Times. And based on that paper’s track record, they may very well be published.
On February 3, Bob Gabordi of the Asheville Citizen-Times justified the publication of Mr. Reboulet’s bigotry by saying that, “at the base of our belief structure is a philosophy that says all viewpoints should be heard . . .. Newspapers are democracy's welcome center. Our message is, ‘Come aboard. All voices are welcome here.’” That certainly sounds good, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to provide a forum for discussion. But when you come down to it, no one really objects to the fact that Mr. Reboulet disagrees with Catholic doctrine. There are a lot of people who do not agree with Catholic doctrine. They are called Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and so on.
People object to the slanderous tone, historical errors, and misrepresentation of Catholic beliefs. The Citizen-Times may claim “all voices are welcome here” but I cannot imagine them using that excuse to justify an anti-Semitic or a white supremacist piece (or even an anti-homosexual piece).
Richard Reboulet is entitled to his opinion. He can believe anything he wants. We will ignore the fact that his commentary was so full of errors that it violated the Citizen-Times’ own ethical policies regarding the standard of factual information in their opinion columns. We can let all of that slide.
The one thing I want to know is this. Why is his work being published at all? Is it newsworthy? The Asheville Citizen-Times thinks it is. Do you?
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