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In my February, 2003, column, I wrote about a pervasive form of anti-Catholicism shaped primarily by 19th century intellectuals, but which is still very much alive today.
I proposed that for these writers, “Christianity did not make sense …. Christianity was not just irrelevant, it was dangerous to man’s welfare … because what Christianity said about human nature was wrong and therefore a barrier to human progress.
One of those I cited for promoting these views was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
I wrote that such men “insisted that Christianity is not the truth that sets man free. To the contrary, it is what keeps him enslaved.” The French scholar Paul Ricœur described Nietzsche as one of the “Masters of Suspicion” for the way in which he cast doubt not on Christianity’s view of God, but upon its view of man and his freedom.
Those familiar with The Da Vinci Code will immediately see the same approach in its plot: Catholicism’s “great secret” is that it totally misunderstands the nature of human sexuality and, therefore, also misunderstands the nature and dignity of women. Catholics who are committed to the Church’s way of life and rise to levels of authority within it therefore supposedly suffer from the distorting effects of this misunderstanding of human nature.
Readers of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), will find great insight about this problem. The pope writes, “According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned” the “love between man and woman” that the ancient Greeks called eros.
The pope continues, “Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: Doesn’t the Church with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life?”
The pope refutes this contention, saying that it was really the ancient Greeks who distorted human love by presenting in religious rituals “a warped and destructive form of it” that “actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it.”
He continues, “the prostitutes in the (pagan Greek) temple, who had to bestow divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing ‘divine madness’: far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in ‘ecstasy’ towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man.”
By ending these destructive practices, Christianity, according to the pope, does not “reject” or “poison” human love, but, to the contrary, “heals it and restores its true grandeur.”
Recently, I addressed an international conference in Rome sponsored by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, entitled “The Legacy of John Paul II on Marriage and Family: To Love Human Love.” Bringing together scholars from around the world, the conference was financially supported by the Knights of Columbus, as is the institute itself.
Pope Benedict also addressed the meeting and remarked: “The great challenge of the New Evangelization, which John Paul II proposed with so much drive, needs to be supported with a profound authentic reflection on human love, as this love is a privileged way that God has chosen to reveal himself to the world, and in this love calls it to communion in the Trinitarian life.”
Tragically, The Da Vinci Code has added to the great confusion already affecting many in our society, set adrift as it is by the exploitation of human love. As Catholics we can be grateful that we continue to have in these matters a steady and reliable guide. Our Lord once called Peter, the first pope, “the rock.” We now have one more reason to hold firmly to Peter’s successor.
Vivat Jesus!
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