If we needed more evidence that the religious right’s nincompoops are profoundly dangerous, here you go.
It seems they are right here in Minnesota, intimidating weak-kneed school administrators into preventing the introduction of the idea of evolution in Montecello.
St. Paul author Lisa Westberg Peters has written a book for children called “Our Family Tree” which explains evolution in a juvenile, yet scientific, sort of way. Although she was scheduled to speak at a Montecello elementary school about writing, rather than evolution, the school administrators asked her to make sure she stuck just to writing and leave off mention of evolution. When she refused, Peters’ visit to the school was cancelled.
Brad Sanderson, principal at the elementary school, was quoted in the Strib as saying, “It’s a cute book. There’s nothing wrong with it. We just don’t need that kind of debate.” Yup, the last thing we’d want in a school is a debate, especially when there’s religious clap trap to be crammed down the throats of our children.
Now, in fairness to Principal Skinner–I mean Sanderson–he’s probably afraid of the pitchfork and torch crowd that could undoubtedly be whipped up in Montecello if a public school were to actually teach science instead of dogma and were actually to stand up for the American values of free speech and enlightened education instead of the censorious crap dished out in the name of God.
In other religious news, as if the Catholics needed more problems, Pope Ratzinger has opened up a can of Inquisition whup-ass on the intellectual organ of the American church, the Jesuit magazine America. The editor of America, Father Thomas Reese, S.J. was fired on the orders of Ratzinger because the magazine provided a forum for discussion of church positions on controversial issues such as denying communion to John Kerry or use of condoms in AIDS-riddled Africa.
I was told recently by a man who knows that Ratzinger’s election was greeted with less than wild enthusiasm by the Benedictine monks at St. Johns. It must have been particulary galling to them when the head of the Inquisition took the name of the founder of their order–the order which over the centuries has taken primary responsibility for the preservation of western intellectual history.
Alongside this formidable Benedictine tradition stand the Jesuits, who are the church’s foremost educators and intellectuals today, and who run Boston College, Georgetown, Fordham, Creighton and many other first rate universities throughout America and the world. Both orders are steeped in their vows of obedience, but to the Benedictines and Jesuits I know (and I’ve known a lot of Jesuits in particular) that obedience usually takes the form of obedience to their own tradition of intellectual inquiry and open mindedness. It was a sad day for a lot of Catholics when Ratzinger was elected Pope. I’m afraid it will be even sadder for the many thoughful men of God whose intellectual lives will be proscribed by this maledictory Benedict.
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