“Ecrasez L’infame”

     Thus goes the motto of Voltaire – “Wipe out the infamous thing [Christianity, viewed as merely a superstition]!” – the battle cry of the perennial project of those who hate the Christian faith, and the Catholic Church in particular.  Their efforts these days reach fresh intensity before and during the seasons of Christmas and Easter.  With impeccable timing, they launch their attacks just as Christians are turning their thoughts to the Incarnation and the Resurrection.   Their labors are not limited to screeds and diatribes – articles purporting to be scholarly – but also include “works of art” whose only motivation seems to be to denigrate Christianity (and perhaps to make a name for an “artist” in spite of an obvious lack of talent and craftsmanship). 

      In the April 2007 issue of Chronicles, in the article, “Ecrasez L’infame:  The Persistence of Christophobia,” Tom Piatak notes the singularity of this hatred toward religion:  that it is essentially anti-Christian:

      Imagine a magazine that argued that the central symbol of Judaism was inextricably bound up with monstrous evil, claimed Judaism’s holy writings were lies, criticized what Jews believe and demanded they change their beliefs, attacked Judaism’s most important holidays, asserted that Judaism was directly responsible for one the most horrific slaughters in history – and declared that anyone who questioned Judaism’s responsibility for that great crime was a liar or a bigot.  An impartial observer would be forced to conclude that such a magazine harbored an animus against Judaism.

      It is difficult to imagine such a magazine even existing in the United States, much less garnering any respect or prominence.  If one substitutes Christianity for Judaism in the preceding paragraph, however, he will have to admit that there are magazines that publish all those arguments.  Indeed, they are among our most prominent and respected journals of opinion:  the New Republic (the fountainhead of neoliberalism) and Commentary (the fountainhead of neoconservatism). 

      One has to wonder when such “prominent and respected journals of opinion” stoop so low as to feature articles by the likes of Daniel Goldhagen, whose publisher in Germany was ordered by a German court to remove one of his anti-Catholic books from store shelves due to a slanderous misrepresentation of a cardinal.  But that is minor compared to his repeated and unsubstantiated calumnies against Pope Pius XII, whom he labeled a “Nazi collaborator.”  Goldhagen, so sure of himself and so inflated in ego by his hatred of the Catholic Church, argues by assertion, by repeating myths, by misusing photographs, and finally by magisterially declaring that anyone who disagrees with him is a liar and a bigot.  This sort of “scholar” The New Republic takes seriously, but academic reviewers have been “less kind to Goldhagen,” notes Rabbi David G. Dalin in his article, “History as Bigotry:  Daniel Goldhagen Slanders the Catholic Church,” “and the reviews have generally run from lukewarm to outraged. In the Sunday Times, the British historian Michael Burleigh [author of the excellent study, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War] held his nose long enough to brand [Goldhagen’s] book ‘vile’ and ‘a strip cartoon view of European history’."  Yet it is still referenced as an historical authority.

      Goldhagen’s hackwork against Pope Pius XII is only one of many attacks on the Catholic Church that Piatak mentions in his article.  The list is very long.  The difficulty for Catholics is obvious:  in a culture of sound-bites and of a steady stream of propaganda, it is so very easy to assert something in the media, but it is much more laborious to refute it.  That is, all the excitement is in “learning” that a pope revered by Catholics was a collaborator with the Nazis; but few, very few Americans will bother with reading the scholarly, and convincing refutations.  James Cameron’s “discovery” of the bones of Jesus, the ludicrous claims of The DaVinci Code, the Catholic responsibility for the holocaust, the Washington Post’s Harold Meyersohn’s assertion about “the Catholic Church’s inimitable backwardness,” Goldhagen’s preposterous claims that Pius XII was “systematically spreading hatred and bigotry” against Jews and approved “Nazified race laws,” the presentation of the “gnostic gospels” as authentic as the canonical Gospels, and on and on – all of this has been rebutted, and for the most part, the rebuttals remain unread. 

      Still Christians stumble over things like these, and their faith is shaken, or they become dismayed or angry at the Church.  But they seldom ask themselves why they should ever trust a Dan Brown novel over and above the Gospels themselves and the overwhelming consensus of real historians, especially in the light of Dan Brown’s visceral anti-Catholicism.  Numerous Christians were troubled over James Cameron’s “discovery” of the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, but they don’t ask themselves why it is they should trust a Hollywood film director over and above the first-hand witness and testimony of someone like St. John the Evangelist, St. Matthew, St. Mark or St. Paul, or the overwhelming consensus of archeologists for that matter.  Cameron, for all his talents as a director, couldn’t even get many basic facts right in his most famous film about the sinking of the Titanic, including a vicious depiction of a Catholic priest, whose real character and life-sacrificing valor were often testified to by many of the actual, historical survivors of that tragedy.

      It is difficult, in a way, to understand this prevalent animus against the Church that motivates so many to such low and dishonest tactics.  It is difficult too to try to comprehend why Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is singled out for such discreditable attacks.  But Christ Himself, I believe, gave us the ultimate answer:  “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”  There is more than a little Christophobia popping up around us these days, and it has to do with the Church’s allegiance to Christ’s teachings (in spite of the failings of many of His followers); the world does not like many of these teachings, and it was the world that crucified Him.