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February 14, 2002

"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" - Chuck Williams

This was written by a friend of mine, Chuck Williams.

I'm writing this (October, 1999) after a long couple weeks for a Catholic guy. First I heard from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and then I heard from Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Maybe it's just fatigue, but in the end, I can't get too worked up about Jesse. I'm a Catholic guy, and my governor thinks I'm a dolt: so what? Every politician thinks I'm a dolt. I'd rather have a governor who bellows that religion is for fools than a slippery president who parades around with a Bible. Besides, I'm used to the fact that if you ask Jesse a question, you're likely to get an answer, however wrongheaded.

That's in stark contrast to the board at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which hasn't come anywhere close to answering any of the questions that interest me about their funding fight with Mayor Giuliani.

I've always understood that art must be challenging and that the First Amendment protects it, so the more the board pontificates about that, the more I just sagely nod my head. But meanwhile, what I really want to know are other things. Things like, what is it about pee and dung that gets the New York art crowd in such a happy tizzy? And why do they only pee and dung on things Catholic?

The first question probably has a cool avant-garde answer. I just don't know what it is.

Maybe that's because I'm a parent. I can't understand how any parent could see anything sensational in pee and dung. Your youngest kids are always dropping toys and other weird stuff in the toilet just to see what it looks like. And there's a friend who tells the story of walking into her kid's bedroom and finding he'd painted the wall with his own excrement. When she walked in on him, he was just beaming, pleased as punch. On the other hand, he was eight months old, or something like that. So even though I'm familiar with the concept of putting things in pee and getting artistic with dung, I still don't know what the deal is when it's a bunch of grownups who are getting off on it.

But even if I was smart enough to grasp the avant-gardishness of all this pee and dung, that still wouldn't answer my second question. I'd still be wondering how come it's always got to be Catholic stuff that's put in the pee and under the dung. My friend's kid used excrement as his medium and a wall as his canvas, and I can respect that. It makes some kind of sense in a pre-toddler kind of way. But if that's the fun spirit, you'd think the artistic community could at least do an occasional Jewish sculpture in dung, or place some non-Catholic stuff, like a Koran or something like that, in one of their big old bottles of pee. But no. It's always got to be Catholic stuff.

So I have to wonder. The artist and the board surely know that, since it's always Catholic stuff that's getting peed and dunged on, after a while some Catholics are likely to get the idea that all this Pissing on Christ and Dunging on the Holy Virgin is intended to insult their religion.

Look, I agree that everyone has a First Amendment right to Piss on Christ and Dung on the Holy Virgin to their hearts' content.

All I'm saying is that it does raise the question of why. Well, it does to some of us Catholics, anyway. And it's not a particularly shallow question, I don't think. I mean, if you know that what you're doing will insult somebody and you go ahead and do it anyway, it seems to me you'd expect that one or two of those somebodies might eventually demand an explanation.

But as far as I can tell, the museum's answer to that and every other reasonable question has been, "Shut up."

And then, even if the "why" is answered, even if the museum board or some brainy critic can explain how the artist has an avant-garde reason for insulting my religion (I'm not saying he doesn't), and even if he has a solid First Amendment right to insult my religion (and I'm saying he does), why must the board's supporters act shocked and appalled when I then say well, OK, but I still don't think you should use the government to force Catholics to pay the board to insult us. And it is brute force we're talking about here: if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.

The appropriate answer to would-be censors is to say, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." Or just don't read it, or just don't listen to it. The reason that retort doesn't work here is that the Catholic guy isn't complaining that anybody's forcing Catholics to look at Dung on the Virgin. He's complaining that Catholics are being forced to pay for it. He's saying, go ahead and Dung on the Virgin anywhere you like. Just do it on your own dime, or on your fellow Catholic-bashers' dime. Just don't do it on the taxpayers' dime.

But to the wine and cheese crowd on the museum board, them are fighting words. OK, I admit I don't understand that reaction. But I'd still just shrug my shoulders if the board didn't go on to add farce to insult by assuming the ridiculous pose of a courageous little community being set upon by the heavy hand of the establishment.

That's just too silly to go unremarked. Because it's as clear as a jar of pee that it's the Catholic guy who's being stomped and insulted here — and by people who make more money in a day than he does in a week. The museum board members are wealthy, powerful, socially and politically connected, and like lots of this country, and certainly much of the media, not too fond of the Catholic Church. They're the establishment, if anyone is, not the Catholic Church, with whatever pitiful, tenuous hold it may still have on 1999 American culture.

I mean, like another friend of mine once said, if you want to be counterculture, be a Catholic.

So here's what I'm saying. Picture the wine and cheese crowd gathering at some Brooklyn Museum of Art benefit. Then quick cut to somebody, anybody, in 1999 New York, who still gets up early to go to church, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary and pray. Which depicts a smug and intolerant establishment?

Well, if you picked the devout Catholic on his knees before the Virgin, you're not alone. But I still don't get it.

"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" by Chuck Williams, guest commentary in the St. Paul Legal Ledger, Oct. 19, 1999

Posted at February 14, 2002 08:42 PM | Categories: Catholicism

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