The Big Picture and the Closeup

This is a frontal attack on the Mormon faith structure, accomplished mainly by harping on things about it that seem ridiculous. And when the missionaries, the vectors of this rendered-ridiculous faith, are set loose in a country where their earnest but clueless activities endanger the population (putting villagers at risk of being shot in the head or subjected to female circumcision), I’m sorry, it’s about as affectionate as Christopher Durang’s takedowns of Catholicism.

Perhaps a lot of us sing loudly of feelings that are not quite our own, assert kinships and allegiances we do not exactly feel, try to feel familiar and comfortable in places where we are not thoroughly welcomed.

Catholic turf should not be the bishops’ to rule in the first place. The hospitals and the universities were built with the funds and the blood, sweat and tears of generations of all Catholic believers, and should by all rights belong to all of their successors, the entire body of the faithful. Instead of acting like the in-title-only trustees of these institutions, accountable to those who built them and their successors, the hierarchy behave like the equitable owners. And if you think these would-be owners are in favor of religious freedom for the rest of us in the Catholic fold, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.