(no subject)

[opusculus]

So I was reading through the latest Anne Rice thing (short version: Anne Rice leaves Catholicism because she can't agree with its leaders), and the thing that really bugged me about the responses to it is that when ranting about her experience with Christianity, she's being criticized for not acknowledging liberal Christianity.

There's two things that bug me about this. The first, and easiest: Dude, you're allowed to dump a religion because you can't handle the gaps between their morality and yours. You're even allowed to dump all organized religion, if that's what you want. If, in your exploration of Catholicism, you have consistently found its leaders to be bigoted, narrow-minded assholes, you're allowed to refuse to associate with it, without having to explore every last liberal church out there as an alternative. If Catholicism is the only religion she's interested in, and she can't agree with it, that's her business.

Two, it bothers me at a very fundamental level when people who identify as Christians tell you that you basically have to pick and choose what you believe from the beliefs your religion tells you are true. I mean, yes, you have to. The Bible was written by countless authors over countless centuries and has multiple translations, and trying to take everything in it as a guide to how you live your life is flat-out impossible. I suspect it would be impossible even if you eliminated the Old Testament as a source entirely, though to be fair, I haven't actually gone through it to look. Catholicism (as far as I'm aware) takes the Church rather than the Bible as as its ultimate canon, but that's even more confusing, since there's arguments and internal power struggles still going on in it and it still changes, while the Bible at least is stable (unless you count new translations and new arguments, but you know. Details.) Plus there's all the outside beliefs, like the whole Satan's rebellion thing that's made it into most of Christianity but you'll never find in the Bible. Trying to boil this down to some kind of core teachings is always going to be a messy task, and no two people are ever going to agree.

One of the big factors in me becoming an atheist is that my mind just doesn't work that way. If you have to approach God the right way, making the basis of the religion that messy and self-contradictory seems...cruel. I can't wrap my head around taking something as fundamental as your beliefs and picking and choosing from what you supposedly regard as the one truth, dictated on high by the God who created the world and continues to guide the people in it. Either he dictated it, at which point, why are you arguing with him and only listening to some of it? Or he didn't, at which point, why are you claiming you regard it as such? I seriously don't get it, and I never have. I suppose my problem with religion in a lot of ways boils down to the fact that its claims are so big that it's impossible for me to take it piecemeal. It's all or nothing, and religion just doesn't strike me as having enough solid ground underneath its grand claims for my answer to ever be all.

And yes, I am totally claiming Anne Rice as my Catholic in my religion-influenced vampire works collection. Or I would if I had ever managed to finish Interview with a Vampire, at least. Man, Anne Rice's prose was purple even when she had an editor. I hate to think of what it's like without one.

Comments

[inarticulate]

Dude, you're allowed to dump a religion because you can't handle the gaps between their morality and yours. You're even allowed to dump all organized religion, if that's what you want.

Yes, this. You're definitely allowed to keep the spirituality, too, and her decision should be entirely hers.

On the other hand, I do think there are a lot of liberal Christians out there who are less annoyed with Anne Rice specifically and more annoyed with… not getting acknowledged in general. I have mixed feelings on that, but it is really frustrating to hear the repeated subtext of "you're not really [identification] because you don't believe x, y, or z," and that's what Anne Rice is saying with her "I refuse to be anti-[xyz]" diatribe when she claims that being Christian… is being anti-those things. And that's just not true to plenty of other people who do identify as Christian, so in that sense, she's making it not just about her decision, but also about other people's belief systems, which brings hurt feelings.

Or, I should edit to add, it's also not about Anne Rice, but about the fact that the huge public face of Christianity is the anti-[xyz]. Which is why every time something like this comes up, there's a huge protest of "you can still be [x] and a Christian!"

That's how I understand it, at least.

This is my only icon even vaguely related to Christianity, and I could not resist. I have a terrible sense of humor.

[opusculus]

That makes a lot of sense, actually. My reading of that rant was honestly that she just needed an editor (LOL ANNE RICE), since her Christianity didn't require her to believe that, so in theory no one else's should, but yeah, in retrospect I can definitely see why that subtext would grate on a liberal Christian. I wish they'd focus their irritation with that on the religious leaders who are the ones most responsible for claiming that Christianity is incompatible with xyz beliefs rather than a poorly written rant, but I can see where they're coming from now.

Well, I snerked! XD Whose eyeballs are those anyway?

[inarticulate]

Oh, yeah, she definitely needed that editor; I don't think she was actually saying that those things made someone non-Christian so much as expressing herself in a really, really unclear way. Which… seems pretty typical. OH, ANNE RICE :'D What you said up there about Christianity and picking and choosing strikes me as a pretty likely explanation for why she decided what she did.

Her own, I believe-- wiki tells me they were taken out with a fork.

[opusculus]

Someday Anne Rice will figure out that far from not needing an editor, she really needs one even for her blog posts. But today is not that day!

SOMEHOW THAT MAKES ME REALLY CRINGE. Though at least it's not a spork. Sporks are so perfectly shaped for eyeball removal that they make me cringe a little more at the thought. My priorities are awesome what

[branchandroot]

*snorts* Yeah, I gotta say, however good an idea papal infallibility may have seemed at the time, in an age where the majority of your adherents are literate and moderately educated, and a hunk of them lives in the land of "you and what army", it's rather a drawback. When your own clergy has to say to their parishioners "no, we just kind of ignore that bit", you've got problems.

[opusculus]

Yeah, I just can't help but think that that detracts from the whole "we've got the answers" bit that religion's supposed to do. You know, just a tad.

[mommy]

I popped over from the link in your lj post since I generally prefer dw. This is qable.

It makes sense for Rice to look at her own beliefs, look at what she was being told to believe, and make a choice (or multiple choices). It's no one's choice but hers as to which religious views she holds, or if she holds any at all. It's also her choice to affiliate or not affiliate with a given religious organization. It's definitely a personal issue and I don't really understand how it's anyone else's business but her own, so the part where it got wanked in the first place confuses me. Maybe I'm weird.

My complaint with the comments was that many commenters seemed to believe that Rice announcing her religious views was somehow directly related to her wanting people to buy her books, and that this was something to mock. Really, people?

[opusculus]

I kinda see the logic? But it's really bad logic that revolves around "OH IT'S ANNE RICE BEING DRAMATIC AGAIN. IT MUST BE FUNNY BE ANNE RICE COULD NEVER HAVE A DECENT REASON TO BE DRAMATIC." Which. No.

Yeeaaaah that really bugged me to. I'm pretty sure that Anne Rice did not have a religious crisis in order to ride Stephanie Meyer's coattails guilt-free! SOMEHOW I JUST DON'T FIND THAT PLAUSIBLE.

[soc_puppet]

Having read, like, nothing related to this whole mess, I'm going to add my two cents as a Lapsed (lapsing?) Catholic.

Pretty much any time anything related to Christianity, particularly about being a "good" Christian/Catholic, comes up, I am bombarded with Catholic Guilt. Why aren't I going to church? If I am going to church, why aren't I going to the right church? Why am I getting pissed every time the priest goes off on a conservative rant during the homily (which happens a lot with our most recent priest) instead of accepting everything this wiser, older man, who has been trained in the Ways Of The Church, says? Why do I disagree with the pope, who is our ultimate authority, since God doesn't usually see fit to talk to us directly any other way? Why do I doubt? Why do I not dedicate all of my talents at least partially to the church (since that is ostensibly why I even have them in the first place)? Why do I insist on living with luxuries like television, the internet, a place to sleep every night, three square meals a day, the ability to go to the doctor when I need to, while there are people out there suffering because I don't give these things up?

And that's not even going into the horrible institutionalized misogyny, homophobia, etc, and how can I even disagree with all of that and still count myself as a good Catholic. *sigh*

I've also heard the flinching whenever Christianity/Christian themes are brought up is pretty common among Lapsed Catholics, so it's not just me; it could well be her, too. Which could contribute to her not wanting to go into a different sect of Christianity.

Blah blah, I talk too much!

[opusculus]

That makes a lot of sense to me. My mother was a very anti-organized-religion ex-Mormon, and one of the lessons I learned from that is that the religion you were raised with as a kid continues to bother you even after you've left it. Considering Catholic's association with guilt, it doesn't really surprise me that talk of how to be a good Christian brings up the old guilt trips.

[soc_puppet]

"the religion you were raised with as a kid continues to bother you even after you've left it"

Yes, that exactly. I mean, I'm still capable of, say, listening to Christian rock; it's just, as soon as I'm aware that it is Christian rock, I have to change the channel lickety-split and pretend I wasn't listening to it, and especially that I wasn't getting anything from it.

Anyway, for basically that reason, I can understand why it would be hard for a Lapsed Catholic to get into any other sect of Christianity, regardless of how liberal it is.