ViL writes: Whisper it Softly

Apropos to Guy Fawkes’ Night tomorrow – in The Times a couple of days ago, in a discussion about opposition in the US to Alito’s nomination, it said one of the relevant points was that “whisper it softly” if he got through, that would mean 5 out of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court would be Catholic. Elsewhere I’ve seen it mentioned that it would mean the total would include 5 Catholics (including Thomas, a convert) and 2 Jews – and presumably 2 Protestants? One factoid I’ve seen put the Protestant population of the USA at 49%, but I find that a little hard to believe given that elsewhere I’ve seen the Born Again (and presumably Protestant) population at 42%. On a reasonably broad interpretation of Protestant it’s got to be far higher, I think my French-authored Larousse Pocket Encyclopedia (in which the Rwandan genocide was a minor fracas) puts the Protestant population of the USA at about 80%.

Hmm… let’s check the CIA World Factbook on the USA:

“Religions:
Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)”

OK, I strongly suspect the great bulk of the Nones are of Protestant ethnicity – while a non-practicing Jew is still 100% Jewish and lapsed Catholics still self-identify as Catholic, it seems in the nature of Protestantism that people think it’s a faith you can leave behind. I’m not so sure (more on that later). Anyway, if you add the Nones and the Mormons you get 64%, the other defined faiths are 26% and there’s 10% other, some of whom will be ethnically Buddhist, Hindu and Shinto but I suspect most of them are of Protestant origin, too.

The thing is, where I’m from, Protestant isn’t really a religion, it’s an ethnicity. Where the CIA factbook uses the US census data that is based on self-classification, the Northern Ireland census asks you to list “what other people would classify you as”. I suspect this may be a more accurate way to get to the crux of it. In Northern Ireland, being Protestant or Catholic means certain values, certain ways of thinking, quite apart from your opinion on transubstantiation and indeed any belief in divinity at all.

To some extent I think this may be true in the USA also. I’ve seen a comment on one blog which opined that the reason the Supreme Court was mostly Catholic and Jewish was due to Protestant anti-intellectualism – Protestants are typified by George W Bush, either dumb hicks or dumb hick wannabes, aggressively opposed to high-falutin’ Edumacation, glorying in their own stupidity. By contrast (in this blogger’s view) Cathlolic and Jewish thought is subtle and nuanced, appropriate for the interpretation of complex legal texts.

Hmm. It’s true that in Northern Ireland and Scotland, Law tends to be a Catholic dominated profession. In Scotland, politics also, which has not been traditionally split along sectarian lines in the manner of NI, has also been disproportinately Catholic. OTOH (hard) Science and Engineering have traditionally been largely Protestant dominated in both nations. The sciences may lack the ‘subtlety’ of Law, but they do require a fair bit of thinking (I hear).

I think the (ethnic) Protestant problem is not that we can’t think, but that we have trouble holding two apparently mutually contradictory thoughts in our head at the same time. In science this can be a strength – while no theory may be 100% right, scientific progress requires recognition that theory A can be ‘more right’ (or rather, ‘less wrong’) than theory B. I think in religion it can be a weakness, giving rise to the Fundamentalist worldview – either the Bible is right or Evolution is right; ergo Evolution is wrong. And law? Well, I was at a talk recently where it was suggested that one of the requirements of law was its unknowable, mysterious nature – its sacred nature. So maybe law is more like religion than it is like science, in which case a panel of jurists with a Catholic majority may be better placed to interpret it.

OTOH, the atavistic part of me that thrills to the sound of The Sash can’t help but see this as a win for the other side.

Vol-in-Law

Tags:SCOTUS, Politics, Supreme Court, , Alito, religion

Terror circa 1605

I was going to title this post “Hey Kids, let’s blow up Parliament!” but then I thought I might fall foul of the new Terrorism Act which has provisions against glorifying terrorism (I think, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s in this law which passed by 1 vote without doing some homework).

The funny thing is the UK parliament has a whole host of events and exhibits on right now which you could argue are glorifying terrorism*. Of course, this particular act of terrorism happened 400 years ago tomorrow, and didn’t work out too well for the terrorists. They weren’t too bright.

Four hundred years ago, Guy Fawkes and his cabal of Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up Parliament by renting a cellar underneath Parliament (somebody didn’t do their security risk assessment very well) and packing it with gunpowder. They were going to wait until the King was visiting a packed legislative house, light the fuse, and then run like hell! (Well, actually they were supposed to be slow fuses and Fawkes planned to leave by boat)

The conspirators were found out when Lord Monteagle, a prominent Catholic, was sent a letter warning him not to attend the special session of Parliament. Somebody did some nosing around and they found 36 kegs of gunpowder in the coal cellar.

I won’t go into all the details – you can find them in this fact sheet (link to a pdf file) – but it was straight out of a Hollywood movie (or as they would have said at the time a Shakespeare play). Guy Fawkes was tortured and gave up some information (but not much – you torture advocates). Other conspirators, including the main man in the plot – Robert Catesby – were tracked down and some were killed and some captured at a shoot out in the West Midlands.

This event has captured my imagination from my youth – I believe it must have been covered in a book that VolMom used to read to me called The Life and Times of John Smith (which I can’t find a link to – shame, it’s a great book). But of course, growing up in Tennessee, I wasn’t aware of all the attendant ceremony, celebration and commemoration of the busting up of The Gunpowder Plot. These are popularly celebrated through “penny for the guy” and “bonfire night”.

I first moved over to the UK in late October and soon after I began noticing children lying on rags, some of them stuffed or bunched up and asking for money. I was very disturbed by this, I thought “What kind of country have I come to that homeless children are begging in the streets?” I finally said something to the Vol-in-Law who just started laughing and explained that it was the “Penny for the Guy**” – kids traditionally made an effigy of Guy Fawkes and then hung around asking passers by for money (kind of like trick-or-treating for cash). This effigy was then traditionally burned on the night of 5 November on the bonfire to celebrate Protestant dominion over the “Papist plot”.

Many families light bonfires and set off fireworks on the evening of 5th of November and some local authorities have fairly big fireworks nights and lay on special events.

The popularity of Bonfire night has begun to wane, some say it’s due to the increasing popularity of Halloween (and the “Americanisation of Britain”) and some say it’s because the holiday is now perceived as too anti-Catholic. I don’t know, but here’s another tradition of the night, chanting this:

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…

I’m really excited this year and I hope to be able to drag the Vol-in-Law up to the Houses of Parliament tomorrow to take part in some of the fun activities.

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*They would probably argue that they were glorifying the disruption of the plot and capture of the conspirators, but there are always a group of people in the England who try to rehabilitate the reputation of the conspirators or at least explain or justify their actions. See this website -which treads this line carefully.

**By the way, if you just give them a penny, the kids look at you askance. They expect your donation to be to the value of a penny in 1605 apparently and if you give them less than 50 pence (about 80 cents) they can get pretty surly.

Tags: Guy Fawkes, Gunpowder plot, Terrorism, London