Does God exist?

I don't like translating my own writings, so I won't subject you to a translation of my review of ¿Dios existe?, whose core is a public debate between then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the atheist Italian philosopher Paolo Flores d’Arcais (which, as far as I know, hasn't been published in English). The book in fact doesn't deal a lot with that ancient, ever-present topic, but has more to do with the mode of the affirmation of God by the believers and how it relates to the grounding of moral principles and the law.

Deep stuff, especially for one (like me) who has never studied philosophy. I'm missing most of the references that the author takes for granted... But I think I'm getting it, mostly. This guy Flores d’Arcais has some very clear ideas and he knows how to convey them. This unlike Michel Onfray, who's fascinating but excessively florid and elliptical (I just finished a book by him about the Cynics, by the way), and very, very unlike the one contemporary atheist philosopher I've read within the Anglo-Saxon materialist tradition, Daniel Dennett. Popular English-language atheistic thought is, understandably, almost completely devoted to refuting Protestant fundamentalism and creationism, on one hand, and denouncing the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism on the other — and it all seems a bit shallow and pointless after a while. I've been overexposed to that lately (I'm still trying to finish Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which has very engaging ideas on the origin of design). So for me Onfray and Flores d’Arcais are a door into a different world of thought.

I'll leave you with something to get an idea of what Flores d’Arcais thinks about religion in the public sphere, his Eleven Theses Against Habermas. The condition he sets for a pluralistic democracy are echoed in the arguments he presents in the book — namely, that all of us, believers of all faiths and nonbelievers alike, must renounce to claim that we have reasonable, unassailably objective grounds for our principles, because such a thing does not and cannot exist.

Weekend miscellanea

Picture, web and blog updates...

After I posted a couple of portraits using a simulation of the film technique known as split toning, I was asked to write a tutorial, an idea I'd had for some time. So I went back to my website (which I'd neglected) and wrote this split toning tutorial for the GIMP (in Spanish). I need to expand it to cover other uses of split toning... and I need another tutorial for cross processing.

Last Saturday I went with the Rosarigasinos to the Flag Memorial. We took the elevator and went up to the top of the tower to take pictures of the city. It was just a while before sunset, and there was a noticeable amount of smoke from the island fires in the air, so I got interesting results.

I joined a couple of atheist groups on Flickr, which somehow I had overlooked all this time. How do you picture atheism? Well, while some groups emphasize criticism of religion (or blasphemy), there's one called "Atheists who love photographing churches" (exactly my niche!), and another one called "The Happy Atheist" where you're supposed to show positive, cheerful images — nothing offensive, especially to religion, and no proselytizing; just a celebration of (godless) life.

We had an interesting conversation/debate among several of the Rosarigasinos after the Flag Memorial session. When DrGEN comes we always end up talking about atheism and religion, and that day we'd had some harmless photo fun at the foot of the Memorial, which has a stone cross on a wall and the usual dedications to God and Mary and so on by some archbishop or general. That was in part why I looked for atheist groups on Flickr. Well, the discussion went along the lines of denouncing religion in the public sphere vs. tolerating the need for people to cling to their unsubstantiated beliefs, and it got rather heated, but Marisa and I had to leave early. We had a friend of mine's birthday party at his house in Funes.

Alerta Religión (my blog about the evils of religion and faith) is taking off slowly, with peaks every now and then. I'm at 10 daily visits on average today, which isn't much, but I've been found by the search engine spiders already, and I'm writing mostly for myself anyway.

On Sunday it rained like crazy, so most of the fires on the islands were finally extinguished and the smoke went away. It made for good photos, but it also caused traffic accidents. I started a group on Flickr to collect smoky pictures of the city, and some of the results were impressive. Check it out at Humo sobre Rosario ("Smoke over Rosario").

And that's it for today.

What, vacations again?

Folks, I'm going to Córdoba for the long weekend, so you won't be hearing from me until next Wednesday (at least). I leave this evening at 2 AM, and should be arriving in Córdoba at 8:30.

On principle, I oppose the commemoration of the Easter weekend, a religious holiday, as a public national holiday. But this is a minor issue, really, and I don't mind taking advantage of it for a short trip. What else am I going to do, stay home and medidate on my sins while I watch the two hours of torture of The Passion of the Christ? I'd rather relax somewhere else.

Monday, March 24, is the Day of Memory: the 32nd anniversary of the last coup d'état. This is a serious holiday. Right after Easter, no less!

Córdoba City was founded by Jesuits, and the shadow of the Church are everywhere. Two years ago I went to this same city on Easter weekend, and saw the swarms of priests, monks and nuns in old-style garb, and the flocks of the faithful, going about the imposing building of the Cathedral at the time of mass. This is the seat of the oldest diocese in the country, the same Cathedral where people heard the sermons of Cardinal Raúl Primatesta, Primate of Argentina at the time of the coup, who blessed the military, made a list of domiciles of Catholic teachers and workers available to military intelligence, and delivered "Marxist" priests (who worked with the poor) into the hands of the terrorist state. So it will be interesting to see what events are planned in Córdoba, and whether the two celebrations — the myth of death and resurrection, the true story of hopelessness and ruin of a whole country — interact and influence each other.

Besides Córdoba City, where Marisa and I are going to be greeted by a group of local photographers, I'll be visiting Alta Gracia, the childhood home of Ernesto Che Guevara, and Quebrada del Condorito National Park, where we're told you can have condors fly within reach of your hand.

I'm off now. See you next week!

Out with the old

You may or may not remember Antonio Baseotto, the last bishop of the institution that grouped the military chaplains. Baseotto, an anti-Semitic, pro-dictatorship right-wing fanatic, used to enjoy a juicy wage paid by the State. Argentina not only pays salaries to the Catholic Church hierarchy, but in addition, Baseotto was deemed to have a job of spiritual assistance to the troops. Long story short, he said something he shouldn't and was fired by the Argentine State, but the Vatican refused to acknowledge the dismissal.

From that moment on, the relationship between Argentina and the Church deteriorated. The very idea of the Military Vicariate was questioned. It was created during the dictatorship of 1957 through a Concordat (the same kind of treaty that saved the Pope from being expelled from his lands by Mussolini, or the one that preserved the privileges of the Church during Germany's Third Reich). It means discrimination in favour of the Roman Catholic Church. It imposes religion on the troops. It's a financial burden for the state, too.

So these days, Congress is deciding what to do with this link to medieval times, and from the looks of it, it's going to be a big no, even though not everyone agrees. Some say spiritual support is absolutely needed by the troops; some say that's OK but they can go to their regular church if they do need it; others say it's OK to have a chaplain in the war front, but not in peaceful times like these.

What I think is, there's a lot of politics here, but aside from that, a lot of confusion, fostered by religion and by our culture. "Spiritual" doesn't mean "religious". In my experience, very religious people are often less, not more, spiritually advanced than the rest. They cling to their little god and their small-minded prejudices under the guise of dogma, and they don't see the big picture. They have a twisted, one-sided view of the world and of human nature. That's for starters.

Secondly, and this is obvious, having a Roman Catholic chaplain in a country where many people aren't Catholics is discrimination, plain and simple. If a soldier really needs spiritual assistance from a religious "professional", we must suppose he needs someone who shares his same religion. One can hardly expect a Jewish soldier to be consoled by references to a Jesus Christ who welcomes heroic soldiers in the heavens. (If you heard somewhere that Argentina is a Catholic country, now hear this. Most Catholics in Argentina are only nominally so. Catholicism is in retreat. Even the Church acknowledges that most baptized people only go to church once or twice a year, or on special occasions such as weddings.)

Third, you might believe that the State, which puts the soldier in a position where he may be killed for his country at any time, should make sure that he gets spiritual assistance, by paying religious institutions to provide priests, rabbis, or whatever, just as it provides for other needs. This is debatable, but consider it from the other side. Religious institutions who are granted the right to embed their preachers into the Armed Forces, like those who work in prisons and asylums, are given a prime opportunity to evangelize and indoctrinate — they get to the people when they're the most vulnerable, the most permeable to suggestion. Why should we pay religions to indoctrinate our soldiers?

I'd pay if soldiers got real help. But since I don't believe that praying with the troops or sprinkling them with "holy" water is of any value, I won't pay. Let the religious institutions fight for their place, and support themselves. By paying bishops and chaplains, we're in effect supporting the Church with a tithe we didn't sign up for.

It's already preposterous to treat this tiny piece of land inside Rome as if it were a country, worthy of consideration and respect from the rest of the nations. If it weren't for historical and cultural reasons, the Pope would be shunned by the leaders of most civilized nations as what he is — the top of the hierarchy of a theocratic dictatorship, with views ranging from the bizarre to the outright dangerous, and an undue, and bad influence, on pressing world matters (such as the prevention of the spread of AIDS).

The Concordat gives the Vatican some powers that no country has on the soil of other sovereign country, and privileges that no sectarian group should enjoy in a modern society. So I say to Congress, end this ridiculous thing already!

See No Holy

And now for some good news... The powers that be in Argentina finally seem willing to end the unjustified existence of a shameful institution and, in the process, remind other powers that be that we can't always be treated like fools.

This is most unusual news, one that hasn't exploded onto the headlines but trickled slowly onto less visible places, but by now the matter is like a thick stain.

(You have no idea how difficult it is to write like that. Enough.) Some time ago, former Minister of Justice Alberto Iribarne was proposed as ambassador to the Vatican (or, as they humbly prefer to call themlseves, the Holy See). The normal diplomatic procedure is to let the other country know the name of the ambassador, and ask for its placet, that is, it's official OK. If the other country says nothing for a while, it's understood that they won't OK the proposed candidate, so he or she is silently withdrawn, and replaced in due time with another one, hopefully more acceptable.

Iribarne, so they say, has all the credentials to become an ambassador anywhere... except he's divorced, and currently lives with a woman he isn't married to. The moral censors of the Vatican couldn't let this pass. A man who lives in sin! I mean, you can let child abusers work there, and admit war-mongering murderers like George W. Bush through the gates, but — a man whose sexual union with a woman hasn't been ritually blessed by a Catholic priest? No way.

Yet this wouldn't've become a public issue if it weren't by a mysterious leak to the press. Somebody somehow got the news and published it, and there was a wave of outrage from Argentina, and a counter-wave of supposedly hurt feelings from the Vatican. From our side came support for Iribarne, one of the very few politicians that can be said to have earned the respect of most of his colleagues. Some also noted that, by the Vatican's strict rules, a quarter of all adult Argentine citizens would be considered unfit to talk to the Church as representatives of their country, simply because they didn't repeat the bunch of predigested nonsensical promises that the priest forces couples to utter before the altar.

Adding insult to injury, apparently, the Vatican proposed that Iribarne could be accepted after all, but only if his... how do you call that... let's say female mate... did not ever accompany him in official diplomatic ceremonies. That is, if Iribarne acted like a pious single man, or a widower. Iribarne flatly refused, saying he wouldn't dare impose such indignity on his companion. That's a man, girls.

Argentina isn't going to cut off diplomatic relations with the Vatican — that, sadly, would be unthinkable — but neither is it going to appoint another candidate for the embassy. The post will be left vacant for a couple of years, and a minor official will be left there ad interim. This turns out to be, actually, much ado about nothing, because most diplomatic relations between Argentina and Popeland is conducted through the Papal Nuncio.

What this did serve for was to decide, indirectly, the fate of an institution much younger than the Vatican, much younger than the ludicrous idea that a tiny piece of land with a theocratic dictatorship led by non-elected high priest should be considered, and treated as, a country. I'm speaking of the end of the Military Vicariate. But that's news for another day.

Crimes of the Church

I wanted to write about something that was news only a week ago, and something that wasn't news anymore, though it should be. The former is the life sentence for Christian von Wernich; the latter is the lack of punishment of Edgardo Storni. They have in common the fact that they're both priests, that as such they've lived off the state (i.e. us) for decades, that they've both committed horrible crimes, and that the Church, being aware of that, has refused to condemn them in the strongest terms.

Von Wernich's crimes were far more horrible (complicity in multiple instances of kidnapping, torture and homicide), and justice has come to him at last, with a delay of thirty years. He was sentenced to a life term for his collaboration with the last dictatorship's murderers. He masqueraded as a faithful chaplain, trying to convince prisoners to confess, and providing theological support for the program of extermination carried out by the military. In his trial he expressed no regrets and he compared himself to Christ.

The top of the Catholic Church stalled long until he was sentenced, and then released a brief note saying "they were moved to pain" by von Wernich's deeds, committed "under his personal responsibility", and speaking against "hatred and resentment" (in Churchspeak, that means the victims' insistence on pursuing justice). The note didn't even hint at the well-oiled relation between the dictators and the Catholic hierarchy, and didn't show any pain for the victims, which included not only guerrilla members but also young activists and pregnant women. The bishop overseeing von Wernich didn't immediately do anything; he said he'll wait a bit — so von Wernich is still technically allowed to confess, celebrate mass, and serve as any good loyal priest.

Storni's crimes were of a wholly different nature and comparatively minor (he only sexually abused a young seminarist) but the rot runs as deep. Storni was the Archbishop of Santa Fe. When the scandal broke out, a priest called José Guntern, sent him a private letter where he told the archbishop he knew about two other instances of sexual abuse, urging Storni to confess and repent. Storni sent for 85-year-old Guntern and had his proxies sit him down before a recantation and a public notary. Guntern signed, but then filed an accusation against Storni. That came to nowhere.

Storni was first sent to Rome, he resigned as Archbishop, and then the Church gave him a nice private home in a secluded spot in Córdoba for his trouble. He's still waiting for his sentence on the abuse case, but in the meantime, the Church arranged for him to receive the retirement pension that bishops are entitled to by a law dictated during the dictatorship — over 7,000 pesos per month. The arrangement was illegal, since it's for disabled bishops over the customary retirement age of 75, and Storni is a healthy 71-year-old. The money comes from the 16.6 million pesos that the state pays the Catholic Church each year, a relic from colonial times that somehow slipped into the Constitution and that nobody has ever challenged.

Two villas miseria

This is a followup on yesterday's post about the Toba tribe and how they came from Chaco to Rosario.

I live 10 blocks from a railway track around which a large Toba settlement grew in the 1990s. If you're wondering why they put it there, it's because the areas on the side of the rails have been jurisdictional "no man's land" for a long time, since the railway system started to decline. When the stations were shut down, the state-owned companies that ran them stopped caring about keeping people away from the tracks. The municipal and provincial government couldn't take care of them either.

Nowadays, with many trains transporting cereal and other types of cargo from the interior to the ports, the situation is a bit different. Private companies keep their land from being occupied. However, the rest of the former railway property is managed by the national state through an office called ONABE, which is powerless to stop people from taking residence beside the tracks.

So these Toba came, I don't remember when exactly — surely in the 1990s, but also before. Then a government housing programme built homes for them in a different part of the city and they moved there. But the settlement, though much reduced, is still there. A couple of years ago, after many requests, the provincial government built a police post near it, because people were scared of walking or driving along the street and being stuck right beside the villa miseria, on the level crossing, when a train had to pass.

I myself have never had a problem with the people of the villa. They've been there for ages and they're mostly decent fellows who happen to be very poor. But I still know better than to walk past the villa when it's dark, because if I'm robbed there, the thief can easily run into the villa and nobody there's going to tell on him.

There's another settlement, about 8 blocks in a different direction, where a Catholic nun started a "mission". It was built too near the Ludueña Stream, in a floodable area, without proper streets or sanitation. Nevertheless, word-of-mouth (especially along extended families) reached Chaco and the "mission" attracted more settlers. The lands around the Ludueña are another preferred place for villas, because until recently nobody has wanted them. The public works needed to make them safe are only being done now.

The "mission" was a bad idea, the grandiose scheme of an attention-hungry woman to become the benefactor and spiritual leader of the poor. María Jordán had charisma; she talked to politicians and the media and got donations, which her collaborators in good faith distributed following her will. She organized a couple of fund-raising events, got benefactors to pay trips for her, and even (I was told) a car and an apartment (to better conduct her charity work, of course).

She did do some missionary work in the villa: she enshrined a Virgin Mary whom she called "Mary the Mother of Hope", and even had stamps printed — the Mother of Hope looking suspiciously like her inventor. I don't know what became of that; the poorer segments of the population are nowadays overwhelmingly attracted to other sects, usually very active evangelical ones that get funds from the United States, and local upstarts.

She had no idea how to run the place. I don't know how many poor people came from Chaco to live in her ridiculous mission, but they were a major problem — they were quite literally refugees, and the city wasn't prepared to receive them. In my experience, religious initiatives tend to rely on good intentions alone (cf Mother Teresa's "Come Here To Die As We Pray For You" shelter franchise), and this was no exception.

Jordán was soon eclipsed by the exotic miracle healer Father Ignacio Peries, but she still appears now and then in the news, invariably referred to as "Sister María Jordán", and wearing a habit... even though she was forced to leave her order years ago, when she refused to obey her superiors and stop her lone "missionary" adventure.

I know all of this because I worked for this self-centered woman for six months (don't ask), and I saw other people being trapped by her deceivingly charming manners. The last time I heard of her was on the occasion of an art exhibition by the controversial León Ferrari, when she said publicly that, if she had the money, she'd buy up Ferrari's works and burn them all. Yeah, that'll help the poor and sick.

Catholics and evangelicals and the power of words

If you remember, yesterday I was talking about a conversation I had with a friend, about language. The same day, after that, I also got to talk with a friend about the poverty of language, specifically in religious discourse. It was quite an interesting chat, so I thought I could share some of it.

My friend has the perception that evangelical preachers (in Argentina, and especially TV and radio preachers) have lowered the level of discourse to a crude minimum, and people sadly respond to it because they, too, have had their vocabularies shrunk, and their thought (and their ability for abstraction) as well. What he means is, you turn on the radio or the TV and you find pastors basically selling Jesus as a miracle product, or preying on the vulnerable without any kind of subtlety. We're talking of "ARE YOU IN PAIN? COME TO JESUS AND HEAL!" in big block letters across the screen, literally or figuratively.

My own contention is that the preachers are giving the people exactly what they want (a wind-up machine called Jesus who provides you with money and health and a comfortable house once you know the magic words) and that people might have a smaller vocabulary but do not necessarily have less ability to think and reason; that is, the preacher's speech is so plain, and so lacking in spirituality, and so incoherent at times, that you only need a basic command of language to see through the scam. That is, I don't believe that exposure to grossly simplistic religious language can be used to bring down your ability to think about deep spiritual matters, unless of course you accept that degraded language on your own volition and then become accustomed to it, which is what most people do.

On the other hand, my friend said, Catholic priests were still using "higher" language at times: less concrete, more superficially spiritual, possibly popular but not vulgar. I contended this was as bad as the evangelicals, only more weaselly. "Jesus will give you financial stability if you receive him and praise him in the assembly" is straightforward; "God takes care of all His children" is almost completely empty, although being empty it allows for the hearer to fill it with meaning, and is only useful for the hearer once completed with the warning that, in order to be a good child of God, you must go to church every Sunday.

I had the feeling that my friend was either not conveying his ideas wholly, or he lacked experience in a Catholic community, because if you've had that you know that most people in church are just there to gossip about their neighbours, and not to hear the priest using spiritual or abstract language. Moreover, they'd go straight to the evangelical preacher if they weren't culturally accustomed to being Catholics in an overwhelmingly Catholic country.

The real difference between those sects is the level of commitment they require. In order to be a Catholic you have to do... well, nothing. If you want to be an active Catholic, you're only required to attend church and sit there. It's all a social community experience, no more. You may get something spiritual out of the priest's rambling, but you can safely ignore it and believe yourself to be OK most of the time. Catholic spirituality is based on suffering, self-abasement and mortification, but understandably they don't insist on those things too much; they remain safely in the abstract plane. On the other hand, evangelicals (in line with Weber's analysis of protestantism, I believe) see suffering and poverty as an indication that you're doing something wrong, and so try to correct it, actively. They call on you and insist that you have to turn around your life, through the use of Jesus, and if you dare tell them that you're fine, they tell you, emphatically, that you're not. You're filthy. You're addicted to money, sex, Internet porn, alcohol, dancing and parties, and all sorts of foul social intercourse with the unsaved — mundane stuff that you've got to get rid of.

The Evangelicals are proactive — they're in the minority and they need to make you suffer so they can save you. They'll dig up whatever is rotting inside you and show it to you, and describe the feeling and the smell graphically to you. The Catholics are in the majority, and they'd rather keep their ninety-nine sheep happily in the fold than go out of their way to look for the missing hundredth. They do the sensible thing, as expected from an old well-established sect. I can't guess what will happen to those two.

My friend is actually preparing a thesis about the exercise of power through language, and this is part of it, so I'll keep you updated.

Tolerance and respect

Daniel, from San Luis, tells me he's not going to read this blog anymore because as a Catholic he feels I'm intolerant and disrespectful, based on my earlier post entitled "Monsignor my ass". I'm taking the opportunity to expand on that issue. (By the way, Daniel, I do publish comments like yours, which articulately disagree with what I think. What I don't allow is gratuitious insults and xenophobic rubbish, like she did.)

First, what is intolerance? Intolerance is saying, "I don't like what you think/say/do, so I'm going to discriminate you, or punish you, in some way." I can't do that with the archbishop. I believe he represents an evil organization, and I think many of the beliefs he holds are detrimental to human wellbeing. All I can do about it is criticize him, using the means at my disposal, one of which is ridicule. Any sensible member of any religion knows there are billions of people in the world who consider his or her religious beliefs false, ridiculous, absurd, or even supernaturally harmful. This doesn't mean those people are intolerant. I would have coffee or dinner with the archbishop any time and I'm sure we could get along fine, just as I get along with people of the most diverse beliefs in my daily life, as long as the archbishop refrains from telling me I'm going to hell because I'm a filthy unrepentant atheist.

Then, what is respect? More importantly, why do religious beliefs and to what extent do they deserve respect? (H. L. Mencken famously said, " We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.") My idea of this is that respect is for people, not for ideas. You respect a person when you talk to them using the proper words and not insults, acknowledging their opinions, and accepting that they have different ideas even if you don't like them. Ideas are not people! They can't feel pain when attacked! If you bring to a table the idea that it's OK to burn people alive to punish them for heresy, or that Jews are an inferior race, or that women should be locked up in their homes and be content with being loyal sexual objects for their husbands, your idea will be called horrible things, torn to pieces and exposed as discriminatory, barbaric, medieval, and utterly damnable. But if you're dealing with tolerant subjects, they'll attack your idea, not you. You will be attacked or forcefully restrained or expelled only if you actually try to enforce your idea.

I respect archbishop José Luis Mollaghan. I don't respect his religion, and I shouldn't, because it's been the source of a lot of suffering and continues to be, in my opinion, a force against positive change and even for death in many parts of the world. Above that, it's a religion whose leaders treat me and many of my compatriots as second-class people, and if they were in power, they'd most surely also make me a second-class citizen. I don't like the fact that the Vatican has a spokesman telling me and my compatriots that being a good Argentinian and a patriot is somehow linked to being a faithful Catholic. I don't like how assumes he speaks for all of us and in behalf of all of us. I find the whole Christian theology thing a huge lump of incoherent nonsense.

So that's my personal opinion, and you can disagree or not, but you can't take away my right to say it in this public, but explicitly personal, account of my life. If archbishop Mollaghan has a blog, a personal webpage, a diary, or a self-edited paper, he's also free to voice his beliefs there — but I say he shouldn't be allowed to do it in a public patriotic holiday, as if he were an authority that represents us, the people. We didn't elect him, it was some old guy in the Vatican who did. He's not monsignor, "my lord", to me. He has enough influence to be quoted in independent media, and he has his own place as well — let him speak in church.

Monsignor my ass

The guy you see on the picture is called José Luis Mollaghan. Now ask yourself (and reply to yourself, of course), what makes it different from you, me or anyone else on this planet? I mean, besides the fact that he's wearing a weird purple hat and speaking on a microphone very close to the top authorities of Argentina.

Well, this guy Mollaghan is called an archbishop, a word which etymology tells us means "chief overseer", or maybe "top-grade supervisor". He's in charge of checking on the local community of Catholics, an arduous job for which he was appointed by the Pope himself. The Pope is in charge of checking on us all, and I mean all the world, since he's the vicar of Christ, and he must not let us sin — since Christ was nailed to a cross 2000 years ago precisely to save us from sin, and apparently we didn't pay attention.

The Pope was found to be OK for this demanding job by an assembly of other notable Catholics called cardinals, in turn appointed by a previous Pope, under the inspiration of someone or something called the Holy Spirit, an invisible, inaudible, inodorous... thing which is one part of the three that make up the entity known as the Holy Trinity, aka the Roman Catholic God, or just "God". Who created the universe and loves us all, forever and ever, and will not let us be tortured in a lake of fire as long as we go to Mass every Sunday, et cetera.

Now it makes sense that the archbishop sits next to the president and tells us what to do, right?

If you, like me, think all of the above is farfetched, absurd and outrageously ridiculous, you'll answer "no". But then you'll be in the minority.

You're also supposed to address Mr. Mollaghan as "Monsignor", that is, "my lord" (or "milord"). Sorry, I thought all titles of nobility in Argentina had been abolished in 1813. This seems unfair to secular nobles.

Mollaghan gave a speech to the troops amassed on the celebration of Flag Day, before anyone else, even the governor or the Commander-in-Chief (that would be the President). The speech had little to do with the occasion; Flag Day was only an easy plug for a religious rant about how Argentina is a Catholic country, how the Virgin Mary wants us all to worship her 24/7, and how it should always be illegal to prefer a poor woman's life over a handful of barely differentiated cells. The authorities (a Socialist mayor, a left-leaning Peronist governor who professes to be a great friend of Fidel Castro, and other officials of a country supposedly governed by a secular Constitution) listened attently and (I guess) tried to ignore a group of women with a green banner set up before the stand who demanded free access to their reproductive rights. I was exposed to religious indoctrination and to this kind of oblivious, matter-of-factly intolerance for such a long time, this shouldn't bother me by now, but it did.

So Monsignor got to advertise his beliefs from a privileged spot during a public secular holiday, and nobody said a thing. But wait: the princes of the Church have other advantages over their secular counterparts: they get paid by the state (a bishop gets 70% of the salary of a federal judge) and their titles and other entitlements are not subject to the legal framework of Argentina — they're in fact representatives of another country, the Vatican, the only modern theocracy in the Western hemisphere, by virtue of a Concordat... signed between the Holy See and the dictatorial (i.e. illegal) government of Juan Carlos Onganía, in 1966.

Heavenly real estate offers

The Catholic Church has always (or at least since the 4th century) excelled at realpolitik. John Paul II was a master at this; even as he expressed the most exclusionary statements and signed documents re-affirming the most reactionary and absurd dogmas, he received and prayed with leaders of many countries and was popular with followers of every faith — people who, according to anything but the most liberal interpretation of Catholic doctrine, were (are) most certainly doomed to burn in hell forever (most world leaders should be there anyway, but that's not what I'm getting at).

John Paul's death brought Joseph Ratzinger aka Benedict XVI to the throne of the last remaining theocratic state on Earth (except possibly Iran). There were some uninformed ones who thought the Church would do a U-turn in many respects, as Benedict was pictured as extremely conservative and completely devoid of charisma, an ivory-tower theologian. Well, he is indeed all of those things, but in his time directing the Holy Office, he was also "John Paul's bulldog".

Those who bought the public image of JP as a worldly man, close to the common man, open and ecumenical, do not know or fail to recall that Ratzinger was the actual author of many of the things that John Paul signed and released; conversely, when Ratzinger caused an outrage with the publication of a document that said that all religions except Catholicism were "gravely deficient", many seemed surprised at this blow against JP's ecumenical efforts, forgetting that anything published by Ratzinger must be approved by the Pope. It's apparent that at certain times Wojtyla and Ratzinger were playing "good cop, bad cop" with the faithful; Wojtyla used Ratzinger as a channel for unadulterated medieval Catholic thought while he himself kept a more amicable public profile, distributing hugs and kisses to all those damn heathens and heretics and making the masses roar in approval at a profusion of new saints.

After an initial timidity and some stuttering public appearances where
Ratzinger's uncharismaticness and a humourously sinister profile were thoroughly exposed, the Pope took shelter again in his tower and started to produce. If he's good at something, he's definitely good as a theologian, or so the experts say.

The latest output of the pontifical mind were the definitive shutdown of limbo, where newborn children who died without baptism were previously destined to stay (they'll be redirected to heaven from now), and the complementary re-opening of hell, which John Paul II had previously closed down.

This is all so deliciously bizarre and so exquisitely irrelevant that I had to mention it. It doesn't have to do with Rosario, Argentina, or any of my usual topics... indeed, it has nothing to do with anything on the face of the Earth except the fears of a handful of fanatics and possibly the future history of mythology. For 99% of the Catholic Church (the lay people and most of the priests and nuns) these metaphysical moves will be meaningless, as they don't relate at all with the actual human condition that they have to deal with every day.

In places as fucked up as Argentina, in particular, the Church can't afford wasting time on the details. When Benedict XVI said it'd be nice to sing mass in Latin, the local hierarchy stayed silent, while those in the know laughed sotto voce, thinking of how a Latin mass with the priest facing away from the attendants would throw the few remaining practising Catholics into the arms of the evangelicals. The priests overseeing private Catholic schools are too busy charging huge fees to educate the children of the rich to remind them that they, too, can go to Benedict's real hell place. The ones in charge of soup kitchens, who feed poor kids every day, would mostly feel it rather useless to tell their neighbourhood's undernourished teenage mothers that their children will go directly to heaven when they die of starvation or of some easily avoided disease.

Surprisingly... or not, the media have reflected profusely on Herr Ratzinger's supernatural real estate announcements. Listening to the radio today, there was a brief, light discussion about this, and dozens of people called to give the half-baked inarticulations that make up 90% of mediatic content. Half-baked, yet these comments showed at least a passing interest. Must be true that there are ultimate questions that all human beings feel drawn to, no matter their place of birth, culture, age or education; and that must be why the Church doesn't pay too much attention.

Oh no, the local Church is working in the real world. Some are doing more or less what Scripture says they should do, most just going through the motions, and the rest... are doing politics.

Religion in Rosario: Ignacio Peries

Father Ignacio is one my pet peeves... one of those I spoke about in my last post. Ignacio is a middle-aged Catholic priest originally from Sri Lanka (his full name is Ignacio Peries Kurukulasuriya). He has a beard and bright eyes on a dark complexion, and he speaks Spanish with a monotone accent, all of which contributes to a "magnetic" quality of his among the gullible masses. He supposedly has healing powers, or at the very least the power to look at sick people and tell them what disease or problem afflicts them, or what they should do about it. As his fame increased, his followers mounted a bureaucratic structure around him, with secretaries giving out thousands of numbers to see the man one month in advance. The little church of the Nativity of the Lord in a poor barrio of Rosario was turned into a place of pilgrimage to see Padre Ignacio and try to get a touch, a glance, a word from him.

Ignacio has among his devotees a couple of members of the local media, and rubs elbows with the best of the best of the local aristocracy — Catholic businessmen, politicians, public opinion shapers — from whom he gets juicy donations. You won't find negative references to Ignacio Peries in the press, though you can dig up a lot anecdotical evidence if you ask around. The guy undoubtedly has a short-term positive effect on many people, but other than that, what has he done?

After gaining fame, in 1998, Ignacio was appointed to lead the Crusade of the Holy Spirit, seemingly a long-term operation aimed at building his own seminary, funded by high-priced lunch meetings with Rosario's VIP class. That year he got donations for US$500,000, which he used to buy a 30,000 m² estate and build a house for the seminarists. He did help other projects, such as schools and healthcare centers, but neither the Crusade nor the normal activities of the parish include the use of Ignacio's enormous popularity to do anything truly significant but reinforce his image.

On Crucifixion Friday every year, Ignacio leads a Via Crucis that gathers thousands (150,000 people); buses have to be re-routed, the neighbourhood is invaded by pilgrims who leave a trail of trash behind them, and local TV channels cancel other programmes to broadcast the event, as Ignacio's media and politics friends scramble to appear in the picture.

As per usual policies of the church, Ignacio should have been assigned to another parish years ago, but two archbishops have so far tolerated him, even as many local priests, off the record, abhor his sensationalist exposure. It's a common occurrence to hear people speaking of a problem and how Ignacio is surely going to help if only they manage to get a word with him or show him a photo of a loved one — which makes me cringe.

The guy has all the mannerisms of a fake guru, and the same kind of followers: people whose only trouble is how to spend their time and imagine they have all sorts of problems; people who need reassurance from a higher power; and (the saddest part) people who are truly very ill, or have relatives who are very ill. Some claim Ignacio can guess what's troubling you without so much as a quick look, or even at a distance, and that he's been able to diagnose medical conditions then confirmed by doctors. Others get vague advice: "We must wait and pray", "Have faith", "Everything's gonna be OK".

Quite naturally, and as it happens with diviners all around the world, Ignacio's foretelling works at random but only his successes are recorded and exalted. To his credit, I'm told he always tells supplicants not to abandon proper medical assistance and treatment. Some undoubtedly are beyond that possibility by the time they look for supernatural healing. It just goes against my instincts and my intellectual stance to accept that, maybe, those people might profit from abandoning reason and devoting themselves to wishful thinking while they die.

It's quite possible that Ignacio actually believes he has a God-given power and a mandate to heal and comfort. What I find uncomfortable is the mass phenomenon, not the man. The politicians' and media people's attempts to appear next to Ignacio is comprehensible (their livelihood depends on subservience to the public opinion) but disgusting nonetheless. That the Church looks the other way to avoid harming one of its few sources of popular prestige in the area is also natural, and equally disgusting.

Religion in Argentina

Given the exposure I got after the YouTube censorship issue (involving the deletion of a video and a user account because the author listed Qur'an verses about hell and the treatment of nonbelievers), I thought I might give you a view on religion in my environment. Most of my readers are American or European, so they might be confused about the state of religious faith and supernatural beliefs in Argentina.

A more formal overview can be found in the Wikipedia article about religion in Argentina. I pride myself on being objective when I say so; I may not be that objective in this case, but I won't claim that anyway. My perception is coloured by the local perspective and by my personal history — like everyone's.

Well, religion is tricky and Argentina is a mixed country. The central areas (meaning the most populated, the more economically productive and wealthy) are generally more progressive than the peripheric ones, especially the provinces of the northwest. This is repeated in the local scale as well. In our province, Rosario is markedly more progressive than Santa Fe City.

What do I mean by progressive? A few examples should illustrate. Common people accept homosexuality, freely available contraception, teenage sex, unmarried cohabitation, nudity and obscenity on TV as a matter of fact; those are not matters of moral outrage or long-standing politically charged issues. A minority of conservatives (mostly aging Catholics) occasionally protest; tiny groups of fundamentalists do their thing sometimes. At the same time, political incorrectness is rampant. The very same people who accept their gay neighbours giggle and make silly jokes about gays for everyone to hear. The black immigrant selling merchandise in the street is a curiosity and prompts similar jokes, but is not discriminated and nobody would condone that. Anti-semitism, racism and blind ethnocentrism are as common as unobtrusive (in general). Prejudice is everywhere but doesn't affect public policy and is easily surpassed by common sense; it's caused more by ignorance than by malice, since the Argentine urban dweller lacks sophistication and exposure to the variety of the real world.

The Argentine citizen believes in God, prays to a stamp of the Virgin Mary, makes vows to pagan popular saints, wears a red wristband to divert envy, reads the horoscope, waits in line to see a Catholic priest with healing powers, kisses the statues of Catholic saints for luck, goes to a doctor who recommends a chiropractor who recommends a reiki master, and believes in eternal heaven and in reencarnation at the same time. He or she goes to Mass every now and then, picks and chooses from Catholic doctrine, pays respect to priests and then calls priests liars and thieves, trusts the Church over the media but doesn't feel the Church has any authority. Couples have all the sex they want using contraceptives and then solemnly promise the priest they'll keep Catholic doctrine (i.e. they'll breed like happy rabbits in Eden) and raise their kids in chastity. Duplicity? Confusion? Just regular human behaviour, I'd say — incoherent, illogical, and just right for modern life.

The downside is that real issues, such as the constant meddling of the Catholic Church in lawmaking, go unnoticed. The Church knows it can't rally the masses, so it works on the high places. Politicians are often rich, and the rich are often conservative Catholics, well-connected and influential. The upside (there's an upside!) is that fundamentalists are not well-received in public, and they're usually called what they are: bigots and fanatics, even if they're also archbishops.

My problem is with the middle ground..., the ridiculous superstitions and popular religious characters that I have to put up with. I have a few pet peeves I'll be letting you know about soon enough.

The Christ in the Picture

I'm not one to engage in criticism of religious beliefs in the personal level (not anymore); I do breach the subject when it comes to religion intruding in my private life or in public policy, for example. I'm sincerely baffled about this, though, so that's why. It's about the story of my co-worker and her lovely granddaughter. My co-worker (let's call her Ms. A) is convinced that her 15-month-old granddaughter (I'll call her Little N) has come to know Jesus instinctively and in spite of her parents' lack of belief. As far as I can tell, her father (Ms. A's son) is not very religious, and her mother is agnostic.

Little N has developed a fixation with a picture of Jesus. During a visit, grandma saw the poor thing's eyes intently fixed on the image, and she told Little N who that man was, and taught her a children's prayer. Little N can barely say "Jesus" but she does stare happily at the picture, and she waves and smiles at it whenever she toddles past it. So far, so good, a little religious indoctrination. Only now Ms. A is convinced that her granddaughter really sees something in the picture, that she recognizes Jesus. My other co-workers, women in their 50s mostly, agree that Little N must be seeing something we spoiled adults cannot see. The girl's parents decided not to baptize her, so this must be Little N's way of "asking for baptism". It's "really incredible, but then children know". One of these women, speaking from a fairly typical, incoherently sincretic view, opines that the baby "doesn't see that picture (of Jesus) as we do, but she sees the energy". They also believe that Little N "might bridge the separation between their parents and God".

They kept on this line of discussion, turning then into the individual stories of their children's loss of religious practice. Most people in Argentina are Catholics that have never practiced; many of us attend church only as long as our parents take us, or when forced for some other reason, until we become teenagers or a bit longer. Then, it's only weddings, First Communions, baptisms, and even more rarely, on Easter Sunday and the like. Will this be the future of Little N? Will she turn into a skeptic at an early age? Will she become a prophet of the Christ in the Picture?

I didn't open my mouth during the discussion and definitely closed my ears to the last part I've just revisited, since time and experience have taught me that nothing good comes from discussing religion. I've been an atheist and a skeptic since 21; I lost years of my life coping with the progressive loss of the hollow faith I was raised in, and revisiting my arguments for people who've never bothered to examine their own beliefs would be a waste of time. I only wish Little N is given the space and the education that she will need to think about it and to reach her own conclussions in time.