Mr. Antidisestablishmentarianism?

And to think I was mocked for memorizing this word. Well who’s laughing now!

Establishmentarian = One who wants to make a State Religion.

Antiestablishmentarian = One who is against the creation of a State Religion.

Antidisestablishmentarian = Someone opposes the elimination or “dis-stablishment” of a State Religion.

The repository of all wisdom -- George Will -- tells us this morning that Pope was the great Delegitimator of Governments. Which is about two syllables too long to be a really effective superhero name, but we’ll let that pass.

Then Mr. Will explained (slowly, because we’re stupid) that in America we have a society where authority flows upward. In the Catholic Church authority flows downward. Then he got a trifle Eliotish and slung around poesy like “the Dust of individuals” and the “Atomization of modern life” and moaned that our rampant individualism and free-choice-ism left us bereft of content and meaning.

Except, I assume, for baseball.

But where basedballs ends, is where the Church begins. Swinging into action and imposing/inflicting meaning on my trivial life, in its inimitable and, apparently, admirable top-down, hierarchical kinda way.

WTF?

Substitute authoritarian Secular-State worship for authoritarian God-State worship and did George Will just make the argument for Stalinism?

Well no, driftglass, ‘cause, the history of Communism is based on the idea that the individual needs to serve the State whereas the Church...

Um, ok, see, it is important that the Pope have absolute authority over his subjects, for their own good. Whereas Commies...

Alright, what I really meant was, institutions that are subject to the wishes of the masses are inherently unstable...

Something something, Cult of Personality.

Something something, liquidation of heretics.

Something something, Maximum Leader for Life.

Oh...shut up, driftglass.

I’m very glad that the Pope fought the Nazis and came out swinging against the Communists. He deserves nothing but praise for those things, but to hear apologists for authoritarianism croon over the fall of the Soviet Union, and then turn around and praise the trans-temporal wonderfulness of the Church – the direct lineal descendent of Imperial Rome and the Mother of all One Party, One State, non-self correcting, Totalitarian ideologies – is to laugh.

Why aren’t the Frocked Child Rapists in prison? Why was there a cover up lasting decades? Why the bribery? Why was this criminal buggery of little boys allowed to beggar parish after parish? Why was the full, moral weight of the Church used to cripple children and intimidate their parents into silence?

Because the Church said so, that’s why. And then the evil, secular world postively forced them to take action. And they they stalled like petulant children for years until the words "schism" and "prosecution" started to be tossed by the rank and file...and only then, at the point of a sword, did they "come to Jesus".

Pack as many flowery adjectives around it as you wish, the Church treats women and children and sex and power the way it does because it is answerable to no one. Not us wee “dusty” individuals, “atomized”and caroming meaninglessly around in our empty lives, that’s for sure.

If the Catholic Church had the infrastructure in place it would be running your life and mine in its rigid, doctrinal way tomorrow, just like it ran much of the Earth for over a thousand years, using the same tactics and undergirded by the same sense of absolute righteous purpose as any Leninist ever did.

Just because it’s been defanged does not mean it can be decontextualized right out of its own history, dogma and snappy red dresses. It is what it is, and the argument from Mr. Will seems to be, Hegemonic Authoritarianism is a bad thing...except when it’s not.

In other news, WalMart just denounced the predatory, anti-competitive, low-road practices of K-Mart.

Back to you George.