09-18-2006

POPE BENDICT IS RIGHT: CHRISTIANITY IS SUPERIOR

Rene Girard, a prominent Roman Catholic conservative and author of the seminal book "Violence and the Sacred," is an emeritus professor of anthropology at Stanford University. His more recent books include "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" and "I See Satan Fall Like Lightning." This interview was conducted by Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels earlier this year. It is particularly relevant in shining some light on the controversial comments by Pope Benedict on violence and Islam in Germany last week.

By Rene Girard

Global Viewpoint: When Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) said a few years ago that Christianity was a superior religion, he caused controversy. In 1990, in the encyclical “Redemptoris Missio,” Pope John Paul II said the same thing.

It should not be surprising that believers would affirm their faith as the true one. Perhaps it is a mark of the very relativist dominance Pope Benedict condemns that this is somehow controversial?

Girard: Why would you be a Christian if you didn’t believe in Christ? Paradoxically, we have become so ethnocentric in our relativism that we feel it is only OK for others — not us — to think their religion is superior! We are the only ones with no centrism.

GV: Is Christianity superior to other religions?

Girard: Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology, in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to “forgive them for they know not what they do.” He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated.

This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Christianity. This is what is unique about Christianity. And this uniqueness is true.

GV: Leszek Kolakowski, the Marxist humanist philosopher who late in life wrote “The Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture,” made a distinction between “pluralistic tolerance” — the respect for other beliefs — and “indifferent tolerance,” which refuses to believe there can be any superior Truth. One can be opposed, as you and Ratzinger are, to value indifference, but must that imply a kind of theocratic intolerance?

Girard: That would be foolish. Christians cannot turn others into scapegoats in the name of the innocent victim! You don’t have to approve of Charlemagne converting the Saxons by force or the Crusades to be a good Christian. Ratzinger is not for that.

GV: Unlike his predecessor, who was seen as ecumenical, Benedict is seen as a sectarian who will not reach out to other religions. Don’t such strong views against relativism limit an ecumenical approach?

Girard: I did not find the famous Assisi meeting scandalous — when John Paul invited other religious leaders for dialogue and kissed the Koran — as some conservatives did. I see no conflict between Benedict strongly affirming his Christian beliefs in the presence of others who believe as strongly in their own faiths. No one should imagine that ecumenism means giving up your belief in the superiority of your faith.

(c) 2006 Global Viewpoint
Distributed by Tribune Media Services, INC. (Distributed 9/7/06)