On the whole and for the most part, I do my best not to get involved in debates and disputes, especially in Internet land. One of the quirks of being an INTP is that I tend to like building my own sand castles rather than knocking other people’s down. Also I usually find debate unhelpful, as (ahem) most people don’t bother questioning their own presuppositions, and my own influences and predilections are strange enough that they don’t scan well for others. Who wants to talk about the economic and theological roots of the gay marriage debate when you can just slander the opposition? So usually if I read something I strongly disagree with I’ll just roll my eyes, sigh at the state of modern thought, and get back to what I’m doing. Once in a while I tweet a link with a one sentence take down of an offending article. So it was with great surprise that I realized today that I wanted to write a response to something somebody else wrote on the Internet. The article in question is a blog post over at the Sundance Now website, written by Michael Atkinson. I’m going to do my best to explain, as fairly and non-attackingly as possible, why I found this article so ignorant, poorly thought out, and irresponsible.
To be fair, the post may not strike you as particularly outrageous. In it Atkinson suggests that horror movies should stay away from Catholic themes in their approach to the supernatural. That’s perfectly fine – I have no hat in this ring, not being a big horror fan myself – and there may be some merit to his claims about this distance making for better horror storytelling. But the opinions he expresses about Catholicism along the way betray an utter lack of the knowledge and theology of the Catholic Church. Even that would be tolerable if Atkinson didn’t so clearly have an axe to grind with the vision of the church he’s set up in his mind.
Let me briefly put my cards out on the table, in case this attracts attention beyond my usual limited sphere of influence. For starters yes, I am a Christian. I am not a Catholic, though large parts of my worldview have been influenced by Catholicism (or at least by particular Catholics). However, I’m not a big fan of sweeping things under the carpet, either. I advocate criticizing the church when such criticisms apply. With particular reference to Catholicism, Lord knows that church has had its fair share of scandals, both recent and more ancient. These range from unfortunate-but-overblown (The Crusades) to downright reprehensible (the pedophilia scandals, from which the church may never fully recover). Catholicism needs strong critics, from without but especially from within, if it wants to remain vibrant in coming years. BUT I am also not a fan of straw man arguments, and Catholicism in particular seems to draw a lot of them. Sacrificing accuracy for rhetoric has lead to a lot of misrepresentation of the Catholic Church. Perhaps that is why this article riled me – not because it was remarkable but because it was rather unremarkable in presenting the same tired cliches about Catholicism.
Atkinson’s narrative about the Catholic church strikes me as an odd mixture of typical anti-Christian rhetoric, torn perhaps from the tiresome pages of the New Atheists, mixed with bits of “common knowledge” half-remembered from high school, and perhaps a dash of Monty Python and the Holy Grail thrown in for good measure. He also seems divorced from any real grasp of the shape of Western history over the past millennium. He asserts that Catholicism’s view of the supernatural – boiled down, his version is essentially “God versus the Devil” warfare – is an “ideological fable that has wreaked holy hell on Western civilization for 600 years.” First off, it’s a little unclear from context which 600 years he’s referring to. Does he mean the Middle Ages? In which case it spans much more than 600 years and covers so many areas and ideologies that to speak of the Middle Ages at all is a bit misleading. It seems more likely that he is referring to the period from about 1400 to the present. But this is an odd choice indeed for the vision of Catholicism he wishes to present – a grim steamroller oppressing people with statecraft and malicious intent, locked in “medievalism” (that he uses that term as a pejorative tells you just about all you need to know). Why focus on the time when Catholicism was experiencing its greatest upheaval and change? The 1300s to the 1500s saw discord, disagreement, and turmoil within the church, leading into the time of the Reformation. Since then, the influence and scope of the Catholic Church has, roughly speaking, been in steady decline. At points in that time period the Church has attempted to “flex its muscles” so to speak, usually unsuccessfully, but it has also been an agent for many positive changes: an advocate for workers, minorities and the poor, among others.
He accuses the church of “medieval barbarity and institutional oppression.” Medieval barbarity is just about the most misleading term one could use to describe the actual Middle Ages. I guess it means nothing that the Church was in fact the great stabilizing influence in the Middle Ages? That monasteries preserved knowledge and books from those (pagan) barbarians Atkinson seems to think lurked around every corner? That, far from having a monopoly over people’s lives, the medieval Church struggled in the face of numerous power hungry secular leaders? He seems obsessed with the Church’s supposed obsession with the supernatural. Does he realize that “witch hunts” did not emerge in full force until after the Reformation, and took place primarily in Protestant regions?
What we have in this article is yet another bland regurgitation of “facts” that everybody knows. The Church hated science and tried to repress it. People’s lives were ruled by superstition. It was a time of great despair. Otherwise why call it the Dark Ages, right? Well, the reason we call it the Dark Ages to this day is that some people during the late medieval period decided to do some branding for what they saw as a revival of certain types of learning and writing, and wanted to diminish the work that had come before them. Slick, but not really accurate.
Was there “superstition” (we have yet to do the work of tackling what Atkinson means by this) during the Middle Ages? No doubt, just as there is superstition to this day. What, you have a better word for the blind belief people of the last century have had for charismatic leaders, the supposedly benign reign of science, or the vague feel-goodery of the New Age movement? The Middle Ages had some superstition, sure, but it also produced some of the greatest minds of all time: Aquinas, Anselm, Duns Scotus – all working within the purview of the Church. The truth is that we should resist making sweeping generalizations about any time period. Each “age of man” is replete with its own struggles and victories. Let’s deal in particulars and leave the absolutes for the Sith Lords, please.
We haven’t even touched the straw man that is Atkinson’s conception of Catholic theology of evil. Let’s take one example. He asserts that “We have grown so far beyond requiring our very human evil deeds and thoughts to be the work of a horned anti-Lord…you have to wonder how and why this simplistic metaphysical strategy persists as it does.” Umm… no? Check me if I’m wrong here, but this bears almost no resemblance to any Catholic theology of evil I’m aware of. “The Devil made me do it” is a popular slogan, but it’s just that – there’s no truth underneath. Catholic theology has always squarely emphasized human agency in sin. And referring to Satan as a horned anti-Lord? Wrong theologically (Satan is most definitely not an equal-opposite of God, or anything remotely close to one) and just plain cartoonish. He also engages in a perplexing attempt to make Catholic theology sound childish and simplistic, which it most certainly is not. Phrases like “More than that, it’s reductive, as it converts the unearthly into sanctimony” and comparisons to Oscar the Grouch might sound good but they do little to illustrate the subtle nuanced nature of Church doctrine. Worst of all, he seems to place this supposed supernatural opposition at the center of Catholic cosmology. “The more any modern story that hinges on the God-vs.-Satan dichotomy to explain the cosmos and of the existence in human history of good and evil seems simply idiotic.”
This last sentence illustrates a major problem with Atkinson’s piece. He assumes that the vision of Catholicism presented in modern horror films lines up, more or less, with the barbarism he finds endemic to medieval thought. Why would anyone assume this? Hollywood is pretty notorious for getting things wrong, from literary adaptations to historical events. Yet horror films – generally made as low budget affairs – are supposed to come stocked with priests and scholars to ensure authenticity? Again, I don’t claim to be an expert in the supernatural horror genre, but what I’ve seen has not impressed me in terms of its theological accuracy. [One of the most egregious I have seen is the guilty pleasure film Constantine. When Keanu Reeves' acting is one of the more convincing parts of your movie, let's just say you're in trouble.] Indeed horror films seem to acknowledge this themselves, hence the trope of the renegade priest who operates outside the accepted bounds of the Church. These movies may take one basic assumption (yes, the Catholic Church affirms the existence of angels and demons) then launches off from that one premise into all sorts of wackiness. These films espouse a Catholic understanding of the world in the same way that this guy is a rapper.
Look, I don’t think you have to be well versed theologically to be a good film critic (though hey, it doesn’t hurt). But if you are writing a piece that deals explicitly with something complex like Catholic theology and Church history, it might behoove you to do a little research instead of relying on stereotypes and misinformation. I would not dare write a piece on, say, Hinduism and film without first doing some major research. That’s what especially galls me about Atkinson’s piece; he assumes he does not need to do research because everyone knows about the Catholic Church. Clearly that is not the case, as he himself proves.
Underlying Atkinson’s shoddy work is a pretty sublime cocktail of derision and condescension towards any conception of the supernatural beyond the most vague and ethereal. He refers to Christian beliefs as children’s stories, and wonders how anyone can believe them. That, ultimately, is the real issue – Atkinson can’t be bothered with research about belief because he can’t be bothered with belief, period. To him it is another bogeyman to be brushed aside in the march of progress (ah progress, the greatest modern myth of them all). That his position does no justice to the fairly nuanced views of the Catholic Church regarding the blending of science and faith does not stop him from making sweeping pronouncements. I’m not sure how he accounts for the abundance of dithering, moronic Catholics who have somehow blundered into being some of the greatest minds of the past century, from scientists to authors of various stripes to the most prophetic voice in the technological age. Maybe there’s something to this deep magic after all? Just don’t tell Atkinson; after all, it’s much nicer to cling to fantasies than confront reality.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
