Opinion: <i>New Republic</i> takes on God, loses
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You’ll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Even the cosmos-bestriding New Republic magazine is finding that out with today’s one-two punch of irreligion, which has Damon Linker taking down presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in a cover story that charges the outgoing Massachusetts governor with the crime of aggravated Mormonism; meanwhile TNR god-emperor Martin Peretz takes to the OpEd page of the newly downsized Wall Street Journal with a, um, non-traditionally structured column (available to paid subscribers here) that manages to avoid mentioning that Saddam Hussein’s executionors were cheering for the man now generally seen as America’s most important enemy in Iraq but does manage to spread barrels of bile on anybody who expressed any squeamishness at the execution--with a special dose of gall of bitterroot reserved for the Roman Catholic Church. As any number of challengers have found before, the deity’s speed, reach, agility, good chin, and powerful long-range jabs easily overmatch all comers. The curious result: Catholic League honcho Bill Donohue for once comes off looking like the most reasonable person in the discussion--surely a sign of the End Times.
Here’s a sample of Wild Bill’s takedown:
“Damon Linker doesn’t want Mitt Romney to be president, and that’s because Romney is purportedly pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. Moreover, Romney’s religion, Mormonism, has too many certitudes for Linker to swallow... Most Americans agree to disagree about matters religious, but this is obviously virgin territory for Linker; he would rather cast aspersions. “Peretz disagrees with a Vatican official, Cardinal Renato Martino, who objected to the execution of Saddam. That’s fine, but what is troubling is his substitution of derision for reason. He derides Martino’s comment that we must protect life from ‘conception until natural death,’ saying, ‘are we supposed to imagine that Saddam is an innocent unborn fetus in his mother’s womb?’ Which makes me wonder: Will Peretz join the Right to Life March later this month? He then asks, ‘Does Cardinal Martino have no conception of the dimension of the tyrant’s crimes?’ To which it must be asked: Does Peretz have no conception of what a principled position entails?... “The New Republic is scared to death about religion, save, of course, for religion lite. This latest twin shot shows how unnerved it has become. Ironically, for a magazine worried about certitude, it speaks with the most infallible voice this side of the academy.”
Funnin’ aside, the religion lite line is, I think, valid. Better to take a stance of out-of-the-closet opposition to religious belief than that of TNR, which seems to hold that all belief is fine and quaint, until somebody actually starts believing in it. The Catholic Church is big enough to take the abuse; the Church of Latter Day Saints has endured enough abuse, repression, and murder in its history that singling out Romney’s faith borders on the creepy. Can it be a mere coincidence that Romney’s successor as the Bay State’s chief executive is the Deval?