Some Catholic and Other Religions’ Practices Ought to be Required to Advertise as “Entertainment?”
(posted by Mona)
Should Catholics asked to stick $1 in the church box before lighting a holy candle in offering for their prayers be met with mandatory signs that the church is making the wicks available only as “entertainment?” A new law in the UK requires fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to so describe their services upfront, and as that first link shows James Randi’s Swift site not only approves, but thinks the same should apply to various religionists. Indeed, in a more recent post, Randi’s site declares:
All the miracles claimed, promised, cited, and offered by religions of all varieties, should be similarly challenged…[by such a law]
The UK does not have a First Amendment. The religion clauses in ours could make such a law damned difficult to impose.
Thoughts?
August 5th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Religious believers generally find fulfillment or even therapeutic value in rituals. I don’t think that these things can be accurately characterized as entertainment, at least not for a significant majority of those who engage in the rituals. Mandatory labeling as such seems like needless and frequently insulting interference in a very personal and (usually) voluntary affair.
Now, if somebody promises a very specific physical result in return for payment, I guess one can make a case for fraud. But not all religious, psychic, or similar rituals are undertaken with that expectation. It’s generally much more a personal thing.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Thoreau emailed me after he had a software sanfu here, and said this would be his comment:
August 5th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Thanks, Mona.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Hmm, let’s see…The average church service features lavish costumes, overly dramatic music, open flame, audience participation, and a lot of tales told in purple prose. Certain denominations promote dancing. The audience dress to the nines to attend.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Um, what?
I’m anathema to most churches, but I doubt many have costumes or open flames more than 6-8 times per year. And who is the audience?
August 6th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Priests wear costumes rather than street clothes, sacred-flame candles burn on the altar during performances — or rather, services — and the congregation fills the audience role quite nicely.
August 6th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
That varies from denomination to denomination and congregation to congregation. But how can one extreme define the average? Even one extreme of several?
August 6th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
The thing is, many mediums and clairvoyants sincerely believe they have a “gift.” And Catholic priests really believe (or are supposed to) that when they recite the correct words over wafers and a cup of vino, that they are creating the body and blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The collection plate is passed at these liturgies where bread and wine become god.
So, if a medium should have to advertise as an “entertainer,” by parity of reasoning, why not the Catholic Church?
Yet we have a 1st Am. If the Church should not have to advertise itself as entertainment, why should the medium? And in the UK, why not the Catholics and Anglicans there?
August 7th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Mona,
As perhaps one of the few regular (and faithful) anarcho-papist readers of this blog, I must say that I found this particular post neither humorous nor insightful, but simply a banal and predictable grasping at a not-very-fitting occasion to take a few cheap shots at the Church.
Since I find it hard to believe that anyone could mount anything like a defense of the proposed British law even as applied to its original “targets,” I suppose I don’t see the point of trying to show how, based on the same “rationale,” said law’s field of operation ought to be even wider.
In fairness, I can cook up a few hypotheticals in which the selling of love potions, the hawking of guaranteed miracles, etc., could rise to the level of legally-cognizable fraud* and would therefore give rise to liability in damages and/or injunctive relief, etc.; however, it requires either an extremely low view of the public and its ability to look out for itself in these matters, or else a rabid ideological commitment to a militant sort of atheism to think that it would be a good idea to impose a mandatory “This is Entertainment” announcement in connection with the expression of statements, ideas, or beliefs that are insufficiently secular and/or scientific to meet with Mr. Dawkins’s approval.
Finally, I think the general tenor of your post and the comments that followed reflects neglect of the essentially dramaturgical character of almost all social reality, and the inescapable fact that that reality is always already mediated to us by language and imagination. Because of this, it is a mistake to think once you strip away all of the masks and roles that you will then discover the real fact of the matter lurks beneath.
Regards,
Araglin
* Even here, though, I’m not sure that there’s any adequate, neutral procedure available for determining if or whether particular claims (e.g. the existence and activity of angels or elves; the real [but not fully masterable or mechanically-reproducible] power of prayer, liturgy, and relics; the intervention of the miraculous in human history, the perichoretic dance of the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity in their enternal hypostases, the creation of the cosmos ex nihilo, etc.) are true or false (which would be necessary, since falsehood is an indispensable element of fraud).
August 7th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Dear Mona,
Please accept my apology for my haste in firing off my previous comment. I think failed therein to properly acknowledge the possibility that you were making a slippery slope or reductio ad absurdum argument against the British law (by trying to show that there’s no bright line demarcating the difference between the crazy stuff that this law wants to target, and the claims and practices of long-established religions), rather than even tentatively considering endorsing it.
Cheers,
Araglin
August 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Araglin: Your second construal of my intentions is correct. I enjoy James Randi and his debunking activities, but I do not think it should be illegal to be a medium, and see no neutral way to proscribe some claims to supernatural activities where $$ is involved, but not others.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Thanks, Mona! I’m not aware of James Randi, but I have seen Penn and Teller. Is that close?
August 7th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Penn and Teller are close pals of Randi’s and help him raise funds.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Well, here’s one difference I can see: A fortune-teller is generally charging a fee for a service — you give money in exchange for having your fortune supposedly told. If you don’t have the money, you don’t get your cards read.
A Catholic Mass doesn’t involve the same direct exchange. You’re asked to contribute, but you don’t have to, much the way that some museums have a voluntary donation admission system. Or at least I think that’s how it works. I’m not a Christian, and have never attended a mass.
I know that in a Jewish service, you pay for a seat, much like attending a theatrical performance. You can buy a year-round seat, like season tickets at a sports stadium. There’s some singing, and occasional horn playing, but generally no costumes or alleged miracles.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:59 am
What Araglin said.