mathoda.com

Under the laws promulgated by the Catholic church, excommunication for abortion, violence against the pope and consecrating a bishop without authorization is automatic without an action or proclamation by a church official, because it is deemed so serious that no verdict or judgment is required. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the head of a group that proposes family-related policy for the Catholic church, said in an interview with the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana that stem cell researchers who destroy an embryo should be automatically excommunicated (see NY Times article).

Excommunication is a bar from participating in the church’s communal life, including loss of access to the liturgy, religious ceremonies such as receiving the Eucharist or other sacraments (see wikipedia article). Since the Eucharist is the means by which Catholics unite with god and with each other, excommunication seems to be not just a barrier on uniting with other Catholics, but also with uniting with god.

Belief in god and belief that god has particular attributes is a powerful, fascinating idea that creates significant meaning for many people.

Yet believing in excommunication is different then believing in god. A belief in excommunication is a belief that others have the power to say whether you have the right to unite with the god you believe in. For the threat of excommunication to hold any power other than damage to reputation, the believer must believe in not just god, but in the power of others to stand between the believer and god.

(Shunning a person, requiring that all people of a faith avoid all contact with them, is a threat of a slightly different nature than excommunication. Many faiths have made use of shunning. See this wikipedia article)

Amartya Sen (a man with rather interesting ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen) has written a very interesting article.

A few excerpts:

The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness.

… The difficulty with the clash of civilizations thesis begins with the presumption of the unique relevance of a singular classification. Indeed, the question “Do civilizations clash?” is founded on the presumption that humanity can be pre-eminently classified into distinct and discrete civilizations, and that the relations between different human beings can somehow be seen, without serious loss of understanding, in terms of relations between different civilizations.

… Increasing reliance on religion-based classification of the people of the world also tends to make the Western response to global terrorism and conflict peculiarly ham-handed. Respect for “other people” is shown by praising their religious books, rather than by taking note of the many-sided involvements and achievements, in nonreligious as well as religious fields, of different people in a globally interactive world. In confronting what is called “Islamic terrorism” in the muddled vocabulary of contemporary global politics, the intellectual force of Western policy is aimed quite substantially at trying to define or redefine Islam.

… Even the frantic Western search for “the moderate Muslim” confounds moderation in political beliefs with moderateness of religious faith. A person can have strong religious faith “Islamic or any other” along with tolerant politics. Emperor Saladin, who fought valiantly for Islam in the Crusades in the 12^th century, could offer, without any contradiction, an honored place in his Egyptian royal court to Maimonides as that distinguished Jewish philosopher fled an intolerant Europe.

The entire article can be found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2138731?nav=nw

Due to some unfunny cartoons and the violence that followed their dissemination there has been much discussion lately about whether freedom of speech conflicts with one of the world’s most widely held systems of belief. That religion, which holds mankind is most righteous when it submits itself before God, subsuming self ego in service to something far greater, also appears to hold that drawings of God’s prophets should not be made for fear this could lead to idolatry.

Idolatry is defined by dictionary.com as (a) a worship of idols, or (b) blind or excessive devotion to something. The concern appears to be that symbols are powerful. The symbol may be elevated in place of God, and mankind may end up submitting before the symbol, rather then God.

What then to make of people rioting because they are angered their symbol, or their right not to have a symbol made, has been tarnished? Wouldn’t the real way to not be idolatrous be to recognize the message of God’s prophets, but avoid giving any symbol, in this case a cartoon, more meaning than it should have?

There is a very human desire to live in a world where certain things do not exist: child pornography and murder being just two examples. However it strikes me that many of us, and not just those worshipping under any particular belief, hold symbols so sacred that any defamation of them (such as the burning of our flag) is an attack not just on the symbol, but felt personally by us as well. We have so associated ourselves with the symbol that an attack on them is an attack on our person, on our ego.

Symbols are thus used to unite groups to action, to drive them towards a certain fate. Soldiers, and civilians too, have chosen to die to protect a flag, and have been counted heroic for it. Yet symbols are in the end inanimate, and unfeeling. Is it righteous to give them such importance? And in doing so, do we all become idolatrous?

Update: In Yemen, Mohammed al-Asaadi the editor of the now no longer published English language newspaper Yemen Observer, has been thrown in jail for insulting prophet Mohammed.  The act that led to the criminal charges?  Running an article denouncing the Danish cartoons, accompanied by the cartoons which had an X run through them.  He was recently interviewed in jail by Newsweek:

Do you regret now the decision to run the cartoons, however censored, given the climate?  There are plenty of religious fanatics in Yemen, even if they’re a minority.

We had a meeting to discuss this before we published them, so it wasn’t an accident.  And we felt that these cartoons had already been shown on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya [satellite TV] and millions of Muslims had seen them.  And I personally believe these cartoons should be published.  If we make it unlawful to look at them, we give them an importance they don’t deserve, as if there’s something holy or special about them. We should be able to discuss them openly, which is what we did.

For more of the interview, click here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11414568/