Just for the record, Mexicans are not all savages

Kurt_and_Hunter

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Mon Mar-30-09 12:53 PM
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Just for the record, Mexicans are not all savages

Edited on Mon Mar-30-09 01:11 PM by Kurt_and_Hunter

Something noteworthy in many takes on Guadalupe-gate (the Catholic News Service hit piece about how Hillary asked who painted a painting that is claimed to have been miraculously created) is the assumption that catholics in general and Mexicans in particular are more-or-less like on the level of a tribe in an Indiana Jones movie who will freak out if you fail to recognize their ju-ju fetish.

Mexico has a deserved reputation as host to one of the more primitive regional iterations of Catholicism but even the most stereotypical miracle cultist does not expect foreigners outside their faith to be coincident with them on all points of faith.

A diplomat would never want to mock or dismiss a religious tradition gratuitously but there is nothing shocking in someone asking a question in ignorance of the particulars of your faith.

Most people have some level of sophistication, even if they are not highly educated. The curators of miracle sites are quite used to curious questions, just as Mormons are quite used to curious questions and meet them with something other than offense that anyone could be a non-Mormon.

There are "miraculously preserved" corpses is American Catholic churches... I saw one in Pittsburgh when I was a kid. (Raised Catholic) If someone asks how Father whats-him-name was embalmed to look so good the priest would say, "He wasn't embalmed at all. Isn't it wonderous?" The priest would not be offended that you did not aprehend the miracle a priori.

The outrage was primarily predicated on the idea that Mexicans would be offended. Why? Seriously... why would they? Consider what a pack of morons Mexican Catholics would have to be to be outraged. Almost nodody is THAT thin-skinned about religious diversity.

In my experience people genrally embrace polite questions about their faith. I you are a Christian and someone asked you what Jesus did later in life after the resurrection you would say, "He ascended to heaven. He wasn't around on Earth very long after the resurrection." You wouldn't be offended by the concept that someone else might not have precisely the same beliefs and knowledge you do.

So why must we assume that Mexican Catholics are incappable of a level of sophitication we take for granted in ourselves?

Yes, it seems she should have known the story of the painting. But she didn't say, "No, really... spare me the primitive gibberish and tell me who actually painted the thing." (That would be offensive, and intentionally so.)

And, irony heaped on irony, Secretary Clinton has, in fact, done more to offend religion in 60 days than most Secretaries of State have in their whole career and nobody was the least bit poutraged about it.

Every call for womens rights around the world is deeply provocative and dismissive of real, serious, major religion and tradition. Every time she suggests that women should enjoy the status afforded them by post-Enlightenment ethics (a status never offered them by any traditional religion) it is a dagger to the heart of religious influence in secular society.