Mallon's Media Watch

Posted 12:16 AM by John Mallon | link

NYT op-ed and Mallon Response, Unpublished by NYT...

August 15, 2003

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Believe It, or Not
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Today marks the Roman Catholics' Feast of the Assumption, honoring the moment that they believe God brought the Virgin Mary into Heaven. So here's a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).

So this day is an opportunity to look at perhaps the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith. Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)

The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.

My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way:

"God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God's intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God's choice."

The Virgin Mary is an interesting prism through which to examine America's emphasis on faith because most Biblical scholars regard the evidence for the Virgin Birth, and for Mary's assumption into Heaven (which was proclaimed as Catholic dogma only in 1950), as so shaky that it pretty much has to be a leap of faith. As the Catholic theologian Hans Küng puts it in "On Being a Christian," the Virgin Birth is a "collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary" narratives, an echo of virgin birth myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world.

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Yale historian and theologian, says in his book "Mary Through the Centuries" that the earliest references to Mary (like Mark's gospel, the first to be written, or Paul's letter to the Galatians) don't mention anything unusual about the conception of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke do say Mary was a virgin, but internal evidence suggests that that part of Luke, in particular, may have been added later by someone else (it is written, for example, in a different kind of Greek than the rest of that gospel).

Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

I'm not denigrating anyone's beliefs. And I don't pretend to know why America is so much more infused with religious faith than the rest of the world. But I do think that we're in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.

But mostly, I'm troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. I worry partly because of the time I've spent with self-satisfied and unquestioning mullahs and imams, for the Islamic world is in crisis today in large part because of a similar drift away from a rich intellectual tradition and toward the mystical. The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.

Mallon replies:

Op-Ed Submission for the New York Times

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Believe to Understand
By John Mallon

It is difficult to discern the point of Nicholas Kristof's op-ed, "Believe it, or Not" (August 15), but he appears to be working from a false presupposition that there is a conflict between intellect and belief. The Catholic tradition has never held to this false dichotomy. In fact, the Western intellectual tradition, including the development of the university, is largely the result of Catholicism. Many of the finest minds in the Western tradition like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine believed in the Virgin Birth. The Church strongly rejects any such imbalance between the "heart" and "head." The Creator designed them to work together.

Furthermore, the Church's greatest mystics are also the Church's greatest intellectuals: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola...

Clearly, there are gaping holes in Kristof's epistemology. He fails to recognize that faith is a mode of knowing. Love is a mode of knowing. Science is not the only way we know things. St. Augustine said "I do not see in order to believe, I believe in order to see." Like belief, love opens our eyes to realms of understanding previously hidden from us. True belief awakens curiosity and wonder, and prompts questions, not smug self-satisfaction. The problem for religion today is not honest questioning but closed-minded hostility to the answers it provides.

If Kristof only permits that which can be seen and touched into the field of evidence he will have a truncated view of reality, at least when he presumes to write about religion. He is free to believe or not believe, but if he critiques religion in terms of unbelief the conclusion will be less than the full picture. Catholicism should be critiqued on its own terms to have any validity.

Science can only measure phenomena in the material realm. By creed, Catholics believe in the "seen and the unseen." For example, you cannot see love, but who would deny it exists? You can see the results of love, and even feel love, but you cannot scientifically measure it. The same is true of God.

The Virgin Birth defies the natural order of things, but that is what miracles do. Miracles occur or they don't, and the results of opinion polls have no affect on their existence. If something is, in fact, true, then lack of belief in that truth does not make it false. Truth is not contingent on belief. It is simply true in its own right.

Contrary to Kristof's apparent conclusions, the current decline in the Western intellectual and religious tradition is due more to lack of belief than belief.

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Mallon is Contributing Editor for Inside the Vatican magazine, and a political consultant on Catholic issues.

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