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April 16, 2006
Who deleted the rest of the commandments?
This morning's edition of Meet The Press was about religion in America. Which of course was a nod to today being Easter Sunday.
One exchange on religion and politics really stuck out to me as I watched the program. Sister Chittister (who also wrote the seminal Is Kerry a good Catholic?) responded to a question by Russert:
MR. RUSSERT: Sister Joan, do you agree with Jon Meacham that Democrats have lost their way in terms of their ability to articulate spiritual and religious issues? And should the Democrats adopt the Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes, as a way of connecting with the American voter?
SISTER CHITTISTER: Well, the Beatitudes are my standard of life. I happen to agree with both Jon (Meacham, managing editor, Newsweek magazine, and author, "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation") and, and Rabbi Lerner (author, "The Left Hand Of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right"). I, I think that what is happened is, yes, the Democrats have lost an, an aura of spiritual awareness, no doubt about that. At the same time, I don’t see the religious right as any more religious. They have, indeed, chosen a few of these new scientific issues (abortion, stem cell research, etc.), and they are defining that as religion. I’m saying, who deleted the rest of the commandments? How is it that you can do—that, that, that, that you can simply absorb corporate greed, political greed? That, that you can sit by and say nothing about a doctrine of preemptive war that is already been proven wrong before it, it’s even, even become old? How, how can you do those things and not find that moral?
Sister Chittister asks a profoundly important question here. Who deleted the rest of the Ten Commandments? The religious right pick out one (thou shalt not kill), put a hypocritical spin on it (more about that later) and virtually ignore the rest of the Commandments.
In Christian theology it is uniformly accepted that Jesus' Two Great Commandments (Matthew 22:37-40) sum up the Ten Commandments, with the greatest commandment, Love God, summing up the first four of the ten commandments and the second one, love your neighbor, summing up the remaining six of the ten commandments. Jesus then went on to say that "all of the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
So how do the religious right justify singling out one commandment, removing it from it's context, and then smacking folks over the head with it?
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism and a leading member of the religious right (who promptly attempted to highjack Pope John Paul II's Ecclesia in America) attempts to rebut Sister Chittister by citing a technicality:
REV. NEUHAUS: But, you know, Sister, capital punishment and abortion are not at the same level of teaching weight.
To which Sister Chittister agreed, but questioned why. Why aren't they given the same weight?
SISTER CHITTISTER: Because either, either life is of value or it’s not of value. Are we saying get them all born, but you can kill them anytime afterwards and it won’t mean as much? I doubt that.
Neuhaus had no answer. Which underscores the hypocrisy of the religious right. They're more than happy to pontificate about moral issues as long as nobody asks any inconvenient questions. Especially questions which reveal the patent hypocrisy of the religious right, as Sister Chittister's question did.
Posted by Kevin at April 16, 2006 11:46 AM
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