The excoriation begins

Less than 24 hours after Benedict XVI's election to the Holy See, critics began to strip him of his skin. Whether it be the life-long Catholic who served me lunch yesterday, or members of my family, or Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Pope Benedict is not really God's man for the job. He's more likely the devil's.

Representative of this are comments by the likes of Boston's Mike Barnicle, who yesterday during his radio talk show chided the Church for lacking the "transparency" of an American election. This morning on Imus in the Morning, Tim Russert suggested that American Catholics wanted a Pope that would preach the "gospel as presented in the Sermon on the Mount", emphasizing the care of the poor and one's neighbors; and not a Pope like Benedict, who's caught up in divisive issues, "like abortion", and homosexuality. And Maureen Dowd (it's hard to believe she's won the Pulitzer Prize) implies this morning in her column that Benedict is little more than the Inquistion with new letterhead.

That Barnicle (and most Americans) miss the paradox of freedom is understandable, largely because Americans have come to view democracy in profoundly stupid terms. The paradox, of course, is that for freedom to thrive, there must be things that are not free; there must be darkness if we want transparency. For example, if the Oval Office in the White House was to be truly open to the people, one would discover quite quickly that America was no longer open to anyone. Similarly, if the Constitution were a transparent and elastic document, open to the revision of all truly free people who claim to have a voice in such matters, Americans would awake tomorrow morning to a world where the Constitution suddenly turned invisible. The paradox of freedom is just that: that something must be afixed - permanently - for freedom to exist at all.

If my meaning is yet not clear, think of it this way. The only reason we have an open society is because there are some things that are not open, like the Oval Office. The moment the Oval Office becomes transparently open to all is the very same moment the open society would close, close in tyranny, chaos or both.

That Barnicle believes the Catholic Church should be as transparent as an American election reveals that he understands neither the Church nor elections. For there is secrecy at the heart of every American election. Imagine if, in the interest of the pop idols "transparency" and "full disclosure", every citizen voted under public scrutiny. That Barnicle suggests this is clear, as is the result of such "clarity": voting as we know it and the freedom voter secrecy provides would cease.

Transparency at the level that needs to be obscure breeds death to freedom.

Russert's remarks are just plain foolish, suggesting that abortion is not related to caring for either the poor or one's neighbors. He would pit those who advocate a social gospel against those, such as Benedict, who advocate a total Gospel, one that deals with the social dimensions of the world in light of the personal, moral life of each individual; a gospel that rebukes the heresies that destroy those individuals' souls and the societies such individuals create.

But Russert's remarks also reveal that the Americans to which he refers would prefer a Pope that would do what "most Americans" want for him to do, which is to submit to democracy.

And Dowd, whose work reads less like a reasoned argument and more like verbal gas pains, is simply absurd. She bemoans the fact that the Church is a heirarchy and not a democracy like the New York Times (wait a minute, the NYT is not a democracy either. Well, perhaps I misrepresent her feelings about her employer, which, come to think of it, would not be a member of the free press if everyone, from the crankpot on the loading dock to Ms. Dowd herself - each equal in Dowd's small world - had control over that press. But I digress.)

That the Church is a heirarchy angers Americans - particularly Dowd - for no other reason than that Americans believe that "anyone can make it to the the top" (although there is no top in a democracy, is there? See how confused this all gets?). What Ms. Dowd really believes is that she, and her other infallible cohorts, should be allowed to elect and create a Pope who's in their own image. It's a sort of spiritual nepotism, where one elects and supports one's ideological clone.

Of course, if there is a God at all, agnostics and theists alike must submit that equality is a myth, and that heirarchy is at the very core of Being. But that sort of reasoning is just too Papal.

Here's a fun physics question for Messrs. Barnicle, Russert and Ms. Dowd. When a car freely travels down the highway, what part of it is not free to move at all all? The answer strikes directly at the heart of the role of the Papacy.

If there is nothing fixed in human life, nothing moves in human life.

Pope Benedict XVI, particularly his office, is precisely that still point where the rubber meets the road. Without that traction, one is not free to move, skidding helter-skelter or just spinning in the same tired rut.

Watch over the coming weeks whether it is the "Papists" or the press who convene the Inquisition.

Contratimes

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