Taki Magazine

The Audacity of Pope

by Richard Spencer on October 28, 2009

I’ll grant Tom that Richard Dawkins (who’s made time between writing hysterical liberal op-eds to compose a 500-page tome on recent advances in evolutionary research) might be motivated by a residual Anglican prejudice against the Catholic Church. This prejudice also has a historical foundation: there was something about that Spanish Armada that made Elizabeth and her subjects suspect that, yes, foreign papists really were trying to take over their country. I guess what makes me dubious about a lot of contemporary Catholic trads is that I sense they want to have it both ways with the history and character of their church. Putting aside the issue of whether a Darwinian outlook might actually re-enforce many values and commitments Tom and I share, I think it’s safe to say that Richard Dawkins represents the very height of scientific, leftish modernity: there’s the atheism, the rejection of the past as mystical obfuscation, a little polymorphic sexuality thrown in, the dreams of a more rational global society in the future, the whole lot. Thus, why exactly would Catholic traditionalists get bent out of shape if this man dislikes their church and faith? Shouldn’t they expect him to do so? Shouldn’t this re-enforce the idea that their church is still on the right path—and still relevant? Shouldn’t the right response be, “There he goes again…” Doesn’t the church have a proud tradition of standing athwart history (or at least modernity) and yelling “stop!” Didn’t popes oppose the secularizing ideology of a great many nation-states, including England and America? Aren’t these aspects of the church some of the major reasons people become traditionalist Catholics?

Just this afternoon (providence perhaps?), I received an email about a fascinating anti-Darwin conference that shall take place in Rome in November:

Scientific Conference Refuting Evolution Theory to be held in Rome, Italy

In Response to Pope Benedict XVI’s Call for Both Sides to be Heard

ROME, ITALY –  The 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” in November 2009 will be the occasion for a unique conference at Pope Pius V University in Rome presenting a scientific refutation of evolution theory. 

The conference, “The Impossibility of Evolution” will be held on November 9 in the auditorium of St. Pius V University (Via Cristoforo Colombo, No. 200) beginning at 9:30 a.m.

 
I have nothing against the holding of this conference; indeed, many of the participants are impressively credentialed. But the existence of such an event makes me think that it’d be more intellectually consistent for Catholic trads to view eternal damnation-bound Dawkins as a mortal foe, and not expect him to address the pope with proper salutations and refrain from saying ugly things about the church. 

In many ways, this discussion reminds me of some of the nostalgic reveries penned by prominent Catholic paleos about the Habsburgs and their empire, usually with Kaisers Franz Josef and Karl I depicted as saintly Christian rulers. There is, of course a great deal of truth to such portrayals, the later having made well-intentioned efforts to end the blood-letting of the Great War. But the House of Habsburg only became benign, warm, and fuzzy in its late, decadent period when the Old World was collapsing all around it. Three hundred years early, Habsburg rulers showed little compunction in ordering the slaughter of their Saxon Protestant enemies (my ancestors, by the way). I’m sure Genghis Khan, too, was a dear old chap on his death bed.

I don’t write any of this because I hold some excessively longstanding historical grudge—I don’t. To the contrary, I’ve always had a deep admiration for the glorious contributions to the arts the church patronized during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation. I guess I just respect and admire the church more when it’s in a bold, aggressive, “pagan” mood, and less when its leaders demand universal tolerance and cry victimization.

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