* Catholic dissent

Topics: Democracy
22 Jan 1995

From: "DG Ervan Darnell"


This is just a quick note on the psychology of Democracy. One of the pieces
on "60 Minutes" tonight was about movements within the Catholic church to
liberalize some of its positions. One speaker rattled off a long list of
opinion surveys that basically showed that Catholics do not give a flip what
the Pope says and hold typical American opinions regardless (e.g. 90%
pro-birth control). At the end of this list was a comment that is "unfair
and unjust" that the presumed majority of liberal Catholics be forced to
endure papal dictates. Well, duh, you'd think if you got fed-up with
superstition and mysticism, you would just chuck the whole thing instead of
trying to rationalize it (or at least just slide over to a different version
of the same thing, e.g. Episcopalianism), oh well.

My main point though is this notion that Democracy is the do-all and
end-all. Why? The Catholic Church is selling a product and part of that
product is credibility. If they make it too liberal there is nothing left
to attract people (evidence: the rise of Fundy churches in the 80's as a
response to liberal Protestantism). If they make it too harsh, it will
scare off too many people even though it stands for something. The Pope and
his board of directors are just trying to strike the right balance.
Ultimately, that will produce the most religious satisfaction (however
perverse a product that may be).

Don't buy it if you don't want it. Why should you get to change an
organization just because you join it? Should a thousand Dems be allowed to
storm the next LP convention and rewrite the platform to be Das Kapital?
No, of course not. Should everyone who buys Colgate get to vote that the
the next production run must be purple? No, it's just silly. Obligatory
democracy, for enterprises where people freely have the choice to buy the
product or not, is neither right in principle, because it denies freedom,
nor useful in practice, because it let's the people who know the least and
have the wrong motives run the show.



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