Why I Love Religion: Jesus

By now, you've all seen it: the Youtube sensation, "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus". But for those of you who might have been living under a rock, I've added the video to this post. Here are my objections, in brief.

The mistake here is to put off sin, individual and collective, on "religion", that is to say, the institutional Church. This of course feeds into the popular notion that one can have "faith without religion". But for a human being, an "embodied spirit" to use Aquinas' phrase, faith without religion is not only imprudent; it is simply impossible. Faith is a matter of the heart, indeed, but that faith is lived out in the practical, the particular, the nitty-gritty of human communities. And this we call religion.

Regarding the critique of "religion", framed in rhyming couplets and a groovy beat, there can be no doubt that individuals within the Church are frequently unkind, incompetent, and stupid. The sins of the Church, from the Crusades to the child sexual abuse scandal, have been rehearsed over and over again, and repeatedly invoked to refute the claims of the Church. Now I make no excuse for these things; they are deplorable. But to say that the Church's claims are untrue because individuals within it have done bad things is simply fallacious. If I kick you in the shin and say the earth is round, it is fallacious to say the earth is flat because I kicked you in the shin.

Perhaps more to the point, faith without religion was not what Christ desired for His Church. Scripture is quite clear here: Jesus chose twelve apostles, with Peter at the head, whom He sent out with the commission to teach and baptize, "making disciples of all nations" (Mat 28:19-20). He gave these men the Holy Spirit to "guide [them] into all the truth" (Jhn 16:13) and told them, "Whoever receives you, receives me" (Mat 10:40). So according to Jesus' own words, there is no getting to Him but through the Church that He Himself built, upon the Rock of Peter (cf. Mat 16:18-19).

Judging Jo Pa

One hears it often, even from those who aren't especially religious: "Judge not." If we we're honest with ourselves, what we usually mean when we appeal to this divine command is, "Don't judge me," while simultaneously permitting ourselves to judge others, often with a vengeance. We expect everyone else to be lenient with ourselves, but we are ruthlessly strict with them. Of course, this attitude is precisely the opposite of what Christ meant when He said:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? (Matthew 7:1-3)

So I was not particularly surprised when the nation (with the exception of Penn State devotees) came with their torches and pitchforks to Joe Paterno's door. By now, everyone who has not been living under a rock is nauseatingly familiar with the details of the case: Paterno's defensive coordinator and sometime-philanthropist Jerry Sandusky has been accused of child sex abuse and several Penn State officials charged with covering it up. An inappropriate encounter in a shower, a janitor too timid to tell the police what he had seen. A sordid affair indeed.

And then the bombshell: under mounting media pressure the Penn State Board of Directors voted unanimously to fire Paterno as head coach, refusing to let him retire at the end of the season, as he had proposed. And so the career of one of the longest serving and, arguably, best loved coaches in college football ends in a cloud of ignominy, with no reference to Jo Pa's complete innocence under the civil law, and rather mitigated guilt under the moral law. After all, he did not personally witness any abuse. He reported his second-hand information to his superiors in the University who told him, "Sit tight, we'll handle it."

Not that any of these considerations matters to the angry mob. They're mad. They hardly understand why they're mad but, damn it, they're mad! We might call this immediate, unconsidered reaction of outrage--as a priest friend of mine has--the "Nancy Grace Syndrome". It seems, sadly, that righteous indignation has become something of a national pastime. Surely there are other, more moderate views out there. I refer the reader to Father Robert Barron's Word on Fire Blog for just such a view. But they are not in the majority.

Quite frankly, I wonder very much whether, were I in Jo Pa's position, I would have acted differently. But this at least is clear: if I am to be judged according to the standard with which I judge others, I opt for leniency.