humor

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Friday Five: Clergy abuse scandal, Buttigieg at church, politics of communion, N.T. Wright

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It’s a big number. A really big number. As in, $4 billion.

As part of its “The Reckoning” series, The Associated Press reported this week that a surge of new abuse claims threatens the Catholic Church like never before — “with potentially more than 5,000 new cases and payouts topping $4 billion.”

Meanwhile, AP reporters and other experts examined the state of the clergy abuse crisis in a Facebook Live panel discussion. Watch it here.

Now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Pete Buttigieg keeps making major headlines in the Democratic presidential race.

We highlighted his visit to a black church in the South on Sunday, asking a question that news stories mostly ignored: “Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?” The New York Times later followed up with another story on Buttigieg and black voters. Still, the key question we raised remained unexplored.


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Might even 'Trump's Court Artist' (per The Atlantic) have a sense of humor?

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Here’s a tug of the LeBlanc beret for Jennifer A. Greenhill for “Trump’s Court Artist” in The Atlantic. Being described as a court anything to President Trump qualifies as apostasy among his snarkiest critics. Consider, for example, historian John Fea’s frequent designation of “court evangelical” on his weblog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

Greenhill, professor of art history at the University of Southern California, concentrates her remarks largely on McNaughton’s full-barreled support of Donald Trump and his pointed depictions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, even Woodrow Wilson.

I have lived through the past several years without realizing that McNaughton does so much to provoke the cultural left, including art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine. Saltz, as Greenhill mentions, called one McNaughton painting (of a glowering President Obama holding a burning Constitution) “bad academic derivative realism,” “typical propaganda art, drop-dead obvious in message” and “visually dead as a doornail.” (Props to the TV affiliate CBS DC for seeking his thoughts.)

Greenhill too quickly moves on from McNaughton being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (his attending Brigham Young University is one clue). This is the one church that teaches the most exalted perspective on the nation’s founding.


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Just for fun: A look at journalism word games and RIP for The Weekly Standard

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The Religion Guy Memo usually explores religion beat issues, tips of the trade, or stories and sources worth consideration.

But this non-religious item, just for fun, regards word games that journalists enjoy, including a farewell to a verbally clever magazine, The Weekly Standard. Actually, come to think of it, the Standard was a news-and-commentary magazine often paid close attention to religious and cultural trends.

The New Yorker’s obituary proclaimed the Standard to be America’s “most influential, and often the most interesting” conservative periodical. (Yes, The Guy also consumes ample liberal journalism.)

Most coverage blamed the weekly’s demise on its consistent criticisms of President Donald Trump. True, former editor William Kristol was an outspoken #NeverTrump voice. However, it’s more accurate to say TWS was favorable when the president backed its longstanding conservative or hawkish or Republican principles, and hostile on the numerous occasions when he did not.

Politics aside, The Guy hails the magazine’s original reporting alongside the usual thumbsucking, stylish authors, and its Lincoln-esque exploitation of humor, a cherished commodity amid drearily earnest and self-important political journalism.

We’ll miss the back page Parody and occasional Not A Parody, pungent Ramirez cartoons, devilish caricatures on the cover, and the continual ribbing of liberal cant, including squibs up front in The Scrapbook, e.g. the immortal “Articles We Tried Not to Read,” and “Sentences We Didn’t Finish.”

TWS should not vanish without also noting the astute cultural coverage, for instance a Dec. 24 disquisition on the word “schadenfreude.” The Dec. 10 edition served up this gem, an amusing 10-page history of proper word usage per the popular “American Heritage Dictionary” and its advisory panel. Author David Skinner was a panel member before the publisher abolished it “without ceremony” last February.

Back in 1961, elitists were aghast when the unbuttoned third edition of “Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged” radically reduced “slang” labels and abolished “colloquial.”


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Question for comics, counselors and clerics: Where does guilt come from?

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WINNIE’S QUESTION:

Where does guilt come from?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This topic was referred to The Guy after it emerged during discussions at a monthly lunch group consisting of a liberal Catholic, a liberal Protestant, a Unitarian and an evangelical.

Guilt interwoven with religion is a continual theme for humor. The late entertainer Robin Williams, for instance, used to say he was an Episcopalian because it’s “Catholic light. All the pageantry, half the guilt.” Jews themselves continually joke about Jewish guilt.

In 21st Century America, guilt ain’t what it used to be -- on the surface. It is often portrayed as a needless, even damaging, burden. Or consider a memorable moment at a 2015 “pro-family” rally in Iowa. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said, quite candidly, “I’m not sure I have ever asked God’s forgiveness.” No guilt-ridden soul there.

Both high and low culture promote moral relativism by which age-old rules that were officially upheld  if sometimes violated are now eradicated. And yet socio-cultural liberals who cherish such freedom will readily turn absolutist against, say, guns or global warming or #MeToo misconduct. Polls continue to show high opprobrium against adultery. Think of the careers recently wrecked by sexual sin in these supposedly unbuttoned times.

Is guilt disappearing as religion is moved from the center of cultural influence in the West? Quite the opposite, contends University of Oklahoma historian Wilfred M. McClay. His 2017 Hedgehog Review essay “The Strange Persistence of Guilt” said intellectuals expected guilt to fade with secularization but instead it “has grown, even metastasized, into an ever more powerful and pervasive element” of life. We cannot “banish guilt merely by denying its reality,” he wrote. Secularization makes matters worse because so many can no longer rely on Jewish and Christian forms of absolution that make guilt bearable.

Psychological experts indicate guilt is essential to the very definition of what it means to be human.


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'Book of Mormon' opens in Salt Lake City to a sold-out crowd and fair coverage by AP

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My wife and I saw "The Book of Mormon" musical when it came to Oklahoma City last year.

I had heard songs on the soundtrack and read news stories about the production, so I was curious.

I laughed a lot and squirmed a lot, too: Going in, I probably was naive. I'm one who tends to avoid even R-rated movies, so the extreme crudeness — language, sex objects, etc. — caught me off guard.

"The Book of Mormon" is back in the headlines this week, which is no surprise given where it's being staged.

The Associated Press reports:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The biting satirical musical that mocks Mormons received a rousing reception Tuesday in its first-ever showing in the heart of Mormonlandia, kicking off a sold-out, two-week run at a Salt Lake City theater.
The audience cheered wildly as the Tony Award-winning "The Book of Mormon" began, with the show's gleefully naive missionaries singing in front of a backdrop of the Salt Lake City skyline and Mormon temple that resembles the real one just two blocks away.
They laughed loudly as the jokes played out, many touching on Mormon lingo and culture that is intimately familiar in Utah. Some of the most raucous applause came during a scene when an African character sings, "Salt Lake City, the most perfect place on Earth." At the conclusion, attendees at the Capitol Theater crowd gave the actors a standing ovation.
Despite the jokes and jabs that create a caricature of Mormon beliefs, there were no protests outside and no mass walkouts during opening night. The playbill did include three advertisements from the Mormon church, including a picture of a smiling man with the words, "You've seen the play, now read the book."


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