Belief is best in moderation. Very religious people make us uncomfortable. You can’t reason with them and they cause trouble. I remember a woman at the Gregorian mass in Le Thoronet. I first noticed her outside the church. She had a pleasant face and was wearing a fabulous coat patterned with bold, green zig-zags. I admired it as she walked in front of me in the communion line and wondered where she’d bought it. Then it came her turn to receive the host. To my astonishment, the coat knelt down on the stone floor in front of the priest and the woman stuck out her tongue. I honestly couldn’t peel my eyebrows from the barrel vaulting. What a show. I’m suspicious of dramatic gestures like this. They smack of fanaticism and that worries me. Bad things happen when people get overzealous. She should’ve stopped with the coat.
So spare a thought for the Cathers. I’ve been thinking about them since we visited the Languedoc in France. They were the victims of overzealous belief. The Cathars were christians but had an eccentric variation on the doctrine from Rome. They weren’t really hurting anybody but threatened the authority of the Catholic church and were declared heretics. Today they’d be called pentacostals or something like that.
Pope Innocent III called for a crusade against the Cathers. Here’s how it worked. An Inquisitor would set up shop in a town and the people had a few days to come in and recant. Anybody who didn’t show was guilty of heresy and prosecuted. At the trial, the guilty Cather was quizzed on fine points of religious doctrine. Torture was used to help his memory. The unrepentant in this round were sentenced to death, and not a good death. They did hair-raising things to these people. The Cathers were burnt on pyres, boiled in oil, skewered with pikes and even sawn in half with a tree saw. How ingeniously evil. After a hundred years of tireless effort, the Cathers were largely exterminated.
People must have felt things more strongly back then. The Inquisitors were cruel fanatics and there’s no reasoning with them. However, I wish I could’ve saved the Cathers. You know how you sometimes wish you could pop back to a historical event and shout, “Don’t go to the theatre” or “Get out of Germany” or “Buy the first edition Harry Potter book.” I would’ve advised the Cathers, “Fib!” A little white lie would’ve saved a lot of lives. Although there seems something noble about dying for your beliefs, it was really a bit pointless in the end.
Luckily, few of us have beliefs we’d kill or die for today. We have opinions. I think elephants should not be in zoos, a christmas turkey must be brined and Hellmann’s is a seriously superior mayonnaise. I also support the recycling effort and always separate my glass from the plastic and paper. Nobody can get too upset about that. It’s unlikely a fanatic will force me to put an alkaline battery in the household rubbish or flay me alive. Opinions are safe that way.
Some claim that global warming is a belief. I am convinced by the evidence that it is occurring but there are fanatical deniers. What if they got in power? I’m not saying they will but let’s imagine they do. Imagine they call for a crusade against global warming believers. I’m interrogated by an inquisitor on the influence of the El Nino effect on temperature rise – while roasting over a bed of burning coals. What should I do in this scenario? Renounce! You should do the same. Admit the polar ice caps are not melting and grab a latte on the way out. Nobody gets hurt.
We can’t rewrite history but can try to learn it’s lessons. A recent survey in the US found that young people associate the words homophobic and intolerance with religion. Religion without tolerance is fanaticism and that worries me. Belief is better in moderation.
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