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BY REV. WILLIAM ALBERTS

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But, to everyone’s endangerment, political and faith leaders alike are redefining and thus shrinking the moral universe to accommodate their self-interests. Their selective morality is especially seen in today’s presidential campaign.

For many white evangelical Christians, morality takes a back seat to belief. Jesus is recorded as teaching, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25: 36), and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 39). Yet a high majority of evangelicals and their leaders have had no problem supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, despite his denigration of women, Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, black persons and even a disabled reporter. In fact, a number of evangelical Christian leaders have formed a Faith Advisory Council to help guide Trump’s presidential campaign, and evangelical ministers are repeatedly photographed surrounding him and laying their hands on him in prayer. It is about their religious beliefs, not his immoral behavior.

Numerous white evangelical Christian leaders have an unwavering faith in Donald Trump. Recently, a video showed an “aroused” Trump boasting about being a compulsive sexual predator, who is “automatically attracted to beautiful . . . I just start kissing them . . . It’s like a magnet . . . I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star . . . you can do anything” to them, including, “grab them by the pussy.” (“US election: Full transcript of Donald Trump’s obscene videotape”, BBC News, Oct. 8, 2016)

Ironically, in the second presidential debate, shortly before the video surfaced, Donald Trump told Hillary Clinton that, as president, he would have a special prosecutor investigate her misuse of emails when Secretary of State, and said to her, “You’d be in jail.” Actually, Trump’s self-reported sexual assaults on women indicate he should be prosecuted, and jailed if found guilty – and, when released, be registered as a sex offender – for the protection of unsuspecting women.

While the leaked videotape has led some white evangelical Christian supporters to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s campaign, many others still support him, believing that he will “make America great again” — to their Biblical liking. Typical is Ralph Reed, leader of Trump’s religious advisory board and founder and chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. The father of two daughters, Reed was reported as being “disappointed by” Trump’s “ ‘Inappropriate’ comments.” But Reed said, “I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their [evangelical voters] hierarchy of their concerns.” He stated that, “people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal.” (“ ‘Still the best candidate’: Some evangelicals still back Trump despite lewd video,” By Sarah Pulliam Bailey, The Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2016)

For Ralph Reed and many other evangelical Christian leaders and their flocks, it is the authority of their selective Biblical beliefs. The Bible says, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1: 27) Therefore, these evangelical leaders believe that unborn American children are more worthy of protection than already born Muslim children and adults – who are protected, by “the Iran nuclear deal,” from another falsely-based, Iraqi-type, pre-emptive U.S. invasion.

The aim of evangelical Christian leaders is not just to protect the unborn, but to proselytize those already born, especially Muslims. Thus a reported “87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported” the George W. Bush Administration’s illegal pre-emptive invasion of defenseless Iraq — certain evangelical leaders even “claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims.” (“Wayward Christian Soldiers, By Charles Marsh, The New York Times, Jan. 20, 2006)

In the wake of that devastating criminal war, certain evangelical groups, like Muslim-hating Rev. Franklin Graham and his Samaritan’s Purse organization, flocked to Iraq to join the “humanitarian effort,” with the motivation to harvest for Jesus the Muslims fortunate enough to survive the slaughter. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said of this obscenely immoral reality: “Franklin Graham obviously thinks it is a war against Islam. . . . This is a guy who gave the invocation at President Bush’s inauguration and believes Islam is a wicked faith. And,“ Hooper questioned, “he’s going into Iraq in the wake of an invading army and convert people to Christianity? Nothing good is coming from that.” (“Group to Aid, Proselytize in Postwar Iraq,” By Deborah Caldwell, ABC News, March 27, 2003)

Nothing good came out of that worst war crime of the 21^st century. It merely provided another tragic example of the fact that “American exceptionalism” and belief that Jesus is “the savior of the world” are two sides of the same imperialistic coin.

For many evangelical Christians, it is about belief, not behavior. It is about Psalm 139: “For you created my innermost being: you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (verses 13, 14) It is about, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18: 25) And Jesus is reported as saying to Pharisees, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female. . . . For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?” (Matthew 19: 4, 5)

Abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage are all an “abomination.” It is one’s birth that counts, Not the circumstances surrounding pregnancy and birth. Nor the individual’s “innermost being” after birth. Especially not one’s “innermost being” leading one to “leave father and mother and be joined” in love to one’s same-sex partner.

Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence is a classic example of the Biblically-shrunken moral universe of many evangelical Christians. In his debate with Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, Pence said, “For me the sanctity of life proceeds out of the belief . . . where God says before you were formed in the womb, I knew you and so . . . I sought to stand with great compassion for the sanctity of life.” (“The most important exchanges of the vice presidential debate, annotated,” LA Times, Oct. 4, 2016)

“The sanctity of life” before a child is born. As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence signed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” that, as reported, “would have allowed businesses to refuse service to LGBT customers, for example, by citing their religious beliefs.”   That legislation cost Indiana dearly in lost revenue from the boycott of celebrities and conventions that cancelled their planned appearances and meetings in the state. Documented is Pence’s consistent opposition to “marriage equality,” his opposition to “protecting LGBT employees,” and his refusal to support “LGBT-inclusive hate-crimes legislation.” (”Donald Trump Clearly Didn’t ‘Ask the Gays’ About Mike Pence,” By Advocate.com Editors/Authors, advocate.com, July 15, 2016) For Pence, “the sanctity of life” ends at birth.

It is about belief in the inerrancy of The Bible – which then becomes the epicenter of the moral universe for word-for-word- Bible-believing Christians. Here one finds certainty and authority, which allow one to seek to convert other persons to one’s true beliefs, rather than engage with them, and the truths they live by, as equals. Thus for such Bible-believing Christians, it is not about loving your neighbor as yourself as Jesus taught, but wanting your neighbor to be like yourself. The Bible allows them to act out their need to gain power over and control other persons – and allay their own innermost anxieties and doubts.

The Bible is often used by people to avoid understanding why they behave as they do. Forgiveness covers a multitude of sins, and while liberating one from conscious guilt, may provide little self-insight into one’s behavior.   Unquestioning belief in “the “Word of God” allows those with anti-introspective tendencies to dismiss scientifically-based psychological knowledge of human development and behavior that contradicts the Source of their authority. This belief allows them to dumb down their God to accommodate their cultural conditioning and rationalizations.

Again, the words of Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence are revealing. After Donald Trump gave a brief automatic apology for his sexually abusive behavior toward women in that videotape, Pence used words of faith to make Trump’s compulsive criminal behavior disappear. “ ‘We all fall short of the glory of God,’ “ Pence said, “and praised Trump for his ‘humility’ in asking forgiveness.” Pence continued, “It takes a big man to know when he is wrong and to admit it and to have the humility to apologize and be transparent and be vulnerable with people. . . . Donald Trump last night showed that he is a big man.” (“Pence: Trump showed ‘humility’ with apology,” By Jessie Hellmann, TheHill, Oct. 10, 2016)

In a New Hampshire campaign speech, which was greatly lauded by mainstream media, Michelle Obama said entirely different words regarding Donald Trump’s lewd video boasts about sexually assaulting women. While effectively denouncing Trump’s self-professed criminal behavior toward women, she took the occasion to declare that the epicenter of the moral universe is America and that Hillary Clinton possesses the moral compass. “Shaken to my core” by Trump’s “lewd comments,” Mrs. Obama emphasized that, “the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls.” Then, referring to Trump, she said, “We have a candidate for President of the United States who . . . last week . . . [was] actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. . . . The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect.   The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman.” (“Read Michelle Obama’s Speech Condemning Donald Trump’s Comments About Women,” By Katie Reilly, motto.time.com, Oct. 13, 2016)

Michelle Obama then pivoted to Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, saying, “I believe with all my heart that Hillary Clinton will be that president . . . who truly cares about us and our children.“ Thus, she said, “If we let Hillary’s opponent win this election . . . we won’t be just setting a bad example for our kids, but for our entire world. Because, “she added, “ for so long America has been a model for countries across the globe, pushing them to educate their girls, insisting they give more rights to their women.” She called America “the greatest nation on earth,” and also stated, “We have the power to show our children that America’s greatness comes from recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of all our people.” (Ibid)

“The measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls.” How about: the measure of any society is also how it treats the women and girls in other societies? That measure goes to the heart of The Golden Rule and the epicenter of the moral universe. And with that inclusiveness as the measure, Hillary Clinton fails miserably.

If “the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls,” Iraq was measuring up comparably well. Under Saddam Hussein’s rule, Iraq’s education system was reported to be “top notch and female literacy rates were the highest in the region.” In fact, “education was a major priority for Saddam Hussein’s regime, so much so that in 1982 Iraq received . . . the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) award for eradicating illiteracy.” Furthermore, “Women were integral to Iraq’s economy and held high positions in both the private and public sectors, thanks in large part to labor and employment laws that guaranteed equal pay, six months fully paid maternity leave and protection from sexual harassment . . . conditions enjoyed by working women in Iraq rival[ing] those of working women in the United States.” (“Was Life for Iraqi Women Better Under Saddam?,” By Rania Khalek, muftah.org, March 19, 2013) Also reported, “Iraq had one of the best national health care systems in the Middle East. . . . and the Iraqi people enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East.” (“Living Conditions in Iraq: A Criminal Tragedy,” by Ghali Hassan, globalresearch.ca, June 3, 2005)

Then came the devastating U.S.-controlled UN economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children under five years of age. Following those murderous sanctions, the George W. Bush administration, with the support of then Senator Hillary Clinton, launched an illegal, falsely-based pre-emptive was against defenseless Iraq. That unnecessary criminal war killed over a million Iraqi civilians, left some two million Iraqi women widowed, and an estimated five million girls and boys orphaned. (“Was life for Iraqi Women Better Under Saddam?,” Ibid) And loved ones are grieving for almost 5,000 American troops killed and over 100,000 wounded in body and mind.

In response to this carnage, Hillary Clinton said her vote for the invasion of Iraq was a “mistake” – as she announced her candidacy for president in the 2016 campaign. And with her candidacy, she cites her “lifelong commitment to fighting for children and families,” saying, “I’ve spent my life fighting for children, families and our country and I’m not stopping now.” (“Documentary Style Ad Features Hillary Clinton’s Lifelong Record Fighting for Children and Families, hillaryclinton.com) With her presidential campaign supported by American Iraq war hawks, nothing may stop her from continuing to destroy “children and families” in other societies. (See, “Neocon War Hawks Want Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump. No Surprise – They’ve Always Backed Her,” By Branko Marcetic, inthesetimes.com, March 23, 2016)

It is the same story with Libya. If “the measure of a society is how it treats its women and girls,” Libya excelled. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Garikai Chengu, “Gaddafi’s Libya was Africa’s most prosperous democracy.” Concerning women, Chengu writes “The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Mr. Gaddafi profusely [for] women’s rights.” They included “the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property” and “equal pay for equal work.” Plus, “Libyan working mothers enjoyed a range of benefits including cash bonuses for children, free day care, free health care centers and retirement at 55.” Education was a human right and it was free for all Libyans. And “health care was a human right.” (“Gaddafi’s Libya was Africa’s Most Prosperous Democracy,” Foreign Policy Journal, Jan. 12, 2013)

Dr. Chengu states that “prior to Colonel Gaddafi, King Idris let Standard Oil essentially write Libya’s petroleum laws. Mr. Gaddafi put an end to all of that.” He deposited the “money from oil proceeds . . . directly into every Libyan citizen’s bank account.” Chengu muses: “One wonders if Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum will continue this practice under the new democratic Libya?” He also asks: “With regard to health care, education and economic justice, is America in any position to export democracy to Libya or should America have taken a leaf out of Libya’s book?” He then adds this commentary: “Therefore, isn’t it ironic that America supposedly bombarded Libya to spread democracy, but increasingly education in America is becoming a privilege, not a right, and ultimately a debt sentence.” (Ibid)

Col. Gaddafi himself looked at the invasion and plunder of Iraq, and saw the handwriting on America’s imperialistic wall. He wrote, “They want to do to Libya what they did to Iraq and what they are itching to do to Iran. They want to take back the oil that was nationalized by these countries’ revolutions.” And, “They want to re-establish military bases that were shut down by the revolutions and to install client regimes that will subordinate the country’s wealth and labor to imperialistic corporate interests. All else is lies and deception.” (“Facts about Libya under Gaddafi that you probably did not know about!,” By mystory2323, ireport.cnn.com, Nov. 21, 2012)

The rights and prosperity enjoyed by woman and girls – and everyone else – in Libya was enough to threaten any capitalistic society. Col. Gaddafi had to go. And, as reported, Hillary Clinton played a key role in his overthrow and death.

In his article, “Benghazi Won’t Stick to Hillary Clinton, But the Disastrous Libyan Intervention Should,” foreign policy journalist Joel Gillin writes that, as Secretary of State, she helped to convince President Obama that a “humanitarian intervention” — in the form of military force was needed ”to stop the imminent slaughter of civilians in Benghazi” – the intervention opposed by Robert Gates, then Secretary of Defense, “and other top national security officials.” Gillin states that “no solid evidence existed to back up Clinton’s statements of the impending bloodbath in Benghazi.” (New Republic, May 27, 2015) (See also, “Even Critics understate how catastrophically bad the Hillary Clinton-led NATO bombing of Libya was,” By Ben Norton, salon.com, Mar. 2, 2016)

In his article, “Who said Gaddafi had to go?,” Hugh Roberts, professor of North African History, wrote that the decision “was to declare Gaddafi guilty in advance of a massacre of defenseless civilians and instigate a process of destroying his regime and him (and his family) by way of punishment of a crime he was yet to commit, and actually unlikely to commit, and to persist with this process despite his repeated offers to suspend military action.” Ironically, Roberts states, it was the U.S.-led NATO forces that committed a “blood bath” against the Libyan people, not Muammar Gaddafi. Possibly 25,000 Libyans were killed, “many thousands injured and hundreds of thousands . . . displaced.” (London Review of Books, Nov. 17, 2011) How many of those victims were women and girls?

Afterwards, Secretary of State Clinton appeared on television, and in response to the news of the toppling of Col. Gaddafi’s government and his brutal death, she laughed and chuckled, “We came, we saw, and he died!” (“See Flashback 2011: Hillary Clinton Laughs About Killing Muammar Gaddafi: ‘We Came, We Saw, He Died!’,” realclearpolitics.com, Posted June 19, 2015) That shocking television scene provides insight into her circumscribed morality.

“The measure of a society is how it treats its women and girls.” Tell that to the Palestinian people. Hillary Clinton repeatedly says that “women’s rights are human rights.” But in her mind, that does not apply to Palestinian women and girls.

In an article, “Hillary Clinton Is No Feminist: Just Look at Her Stance on Palestine,” Nadia Elia, Diaspora Palestinian writer and political commentator, quotes “a young Palestinian student, Layali Awwad,” who, in a letter to Clinton, wrote, “When you choose to speak about my homeland, not once do you mention Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinian women and children.” Elia continues, “In 2014, Clinton again expressed full support for Israel as it was engaging in a massive military assault on Gaza,” whereas “even the mainstream US media, while otherwise supportive of Israel, repeatedly commented on the disproportionate number of women and children killed by Israeli fire.” And when a journalist asked Clinton “about the bombing of a UN school where homeless civilians had taken shelter, she began with her formulaic ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ reply.” Elia states that, “fifteen people were killed in that bombing and more than 100 injured, but to her ‘women and children’ were merely a complication.” (commondreams.com, Aug. 8, 2016)

To Hillary Clinton, “the measure of how a society treats its women and children” does not apply to how the occupying Israeli power treats Palestinian women and children. Nada Elia sums up Clinton’s moral blind spot this way: “We can go back to every instance of Israel violating international law and the human rights of Palestinians and Clinton will invariably be on the side of the oppressor, the illegal occupier, the racist regime. This is not what feminism is about.” Elia then says, “Feminism is not only concerned with women and children, but also seeks to eliminate various systems of structural violence. And,” she states, “while the examples above are from Palestine, we can look elsewhere, around the globe to see how detrimental her hawkish political interventions have proven, from Pakistan to Libya, Honduras and beyond.” (Ibid)

There is also the Clinton campaign’s demonizing of President Putin, and linking him as favoring Donald Trump’s candidacy. And the campaign’s attempt to deflect the revelation of Hillary Clinton’s dishonesty, revealed in her emails, leaked by WikiLeaks: by alleging, without documented proof, that the emails were hacked by the Russians to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump’s campaign. Echoes of McCarthyism and the “Communist scare?” Never mind that the emails reveal a two-faced Clinton, telling bankers in private, who paid her around $225,000 for a speech, that they can count on her, and saying to voters in public what she believes they want to hear.

Donald Trump’s crime is his compulsion to sexually assault individual women. If he obtains the power of the presidency, his delusions of grandeur, paranoia, distortion of reality and impulsiveness would be boundlessly destructive. Hillary Clinton’s crime is her compulsion to militarily assault whole countries. As president, she would continue America’s imperialistic global war on terrorism, with countless more women and girls at risk.

In 2005, the United Methodist News Service reported that a delegation of five United Methodist Bishops paid a “pastoral visit” to President George W. Bush at the White House. They “presented Bush, a fellow United Methodist, with a Bible signed by the Council of Bishops, and they shared a moment of prayer with him.” Their “pastoral visit” also included “telling the president . . . they shared his commitment to building a better world.” (“United Methodist bishops meet with president, open door to future,” by Tim Tanton, archives.gcah.org, May 3, 2005) Bush continued his devastating criminal war against Iraq. Later, United Methodist leaders built him a monument (The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum) on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

If Hillary Clinton, a United Methodist, is elected president, beware of a delegation of proud United Methodist Bishops, with Bible in hand, visiting her at the White House. For many United Methodist leaders, the epicenter of the universe is power, not morality.

The election is rigged, but not in the way Donald Trump repeatedly charges. It is rigged by the Democratic and Republican parties, and the corporate media, to limit our choices to their two immoral presidential candidates. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton is worthy of one’s vote.

The moral universe encircles all women and girls, and all men and boys – everywhere.

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REMEMBER: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

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=By= Gaither Stewart (Rome)

 

The worldwide influence of the Roman Catholic Church emanates from the Holy See,which is the Church’s central government headed by the Pope and physically located within the territory of the Vatican State inside the city of Rome with a population of 821. The Holy See has diplomatic relations with world nations which maintain two separate embassies in Rome: one to Italy and one to the Holy See. Now why the hell, one wonders, should Argentina or the USA, China or Gabon maintain diplomatic relations with a church? Likewise the Holy See has its embassies around the world, the nunciatures, while from day to day the Roman Church insists on meddling in Italy’s and world affairs. Today the Roman Catholic is effectively blocking new legislationon on same sex marriages and concommitant rights in Italy and other countries. One of the first demonstrative acts of each new pope is a triumphant cortege through the streets of “Italy”, just across the Tiber River from the Vatican.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne Sunday morning in the residential wasteland of Queens, New York, a friend I only thought I knew cited a famous quote of T.S. Eliot, words, my friend said, that had changed his life. As we lumbered through the barren streets of a non-descript neighborhood of non-descript houses and miniscule front yards of dry yellow grass, he suddenly took my arm and apropos of nothing pronounced:

“The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

To the two young men walking through dismal Queens, both inebriated with the hubris of youth and morning vodka, two doubters unmindful of even the possibility of God and the debate raging about it, those words spoken in the suburban desert rang humbling, menacing and earth-shaking. Silence followed. Neither of us commented.

In the many years since that day in Queens I have never seen the Eliot play performed, and of the film of the same name I recall chiefly the scenes of debauchery of two young friends of 12^th century England, one a King, the other his Chancellor and future Archbishop of Canterbury.. Still, the text of Murder in the Cathedral is enduring and lives apart from the performance of play or film as befits the artistic work of a Nobel writer (1948).

At home in Rome I occasionally I pull down from the shelf the azure and deep red Faber & Faber edition of the book, anxiously awaiting the lines I first heard on that hot Queens street. Now, in these spring-like winter days I by chance saw a documentary film on the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket and as a Rome resident I follow Pope Francis’ bid for more temporal power, often with the 12^th century Archbishop, Thomas Becket, in mind.

Living in Catholic Rome and in the proximity of the Islamic world makes you constantly aware of the age-old persisting power struggle between state and church. The Roman Catholic Church seems to see temporal power as the chief aim of its ministry on earth while an analogous dichotomy between state and religion exists on the Islamic side of the Mediterranean Sea.

In any case, I find that Eliot’s play is an auspicious start for a look at the classical power struggle. The individual’s opposition to authority as was that of Thomas Becket, is even more pertinent in today’s globalization than it was in Eliot’s time in the 1930s when fascism was rising in Europe. Although Thomas Becket’s internal struggles are the essence of the play, the of secular vs. religious power continues to plague mankind. Those two struggles are the subject of this essay.

 

                                PART ONE

The Events

In 1163, the two friends, Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury and the English King, Henry II (1133-1189), quarreled over the respective power roles of the English Church and Henry’s state in change. So stormy did the dispute become that Becket escaped to France to rally support for the Church against the pressures of the State of Henry II. Seven years later, after an apparent reconciliation with his old friend, Becket returned to England only to be murdered in his Canterbury cathedral by four of Henry’s knights.

 

His assassination nearly a millennium ago reminds us of the political murder in modern times of the Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar of a chapel in El Salvador in 1980. Like Becket’s early relationship with the King Henry, Oscar Romero was at first considered an ally of the ruling oligarchy of El Salvador in the grip of US imperialism. However, after he was named Archbishop in 1977, mounting repression, attacks on the clergy, murders of priests and the misery of the poor changed his views. Romero became a spokesman for the poor and the Liberation Theology so despised by reactionary governments on the one hand and by the popes of Rome on the other. Oscar Romero boycotted the new President’s inauguration on July 1, 1977, denying him the blessing of the Catholic Church, declared the election invalid and outlined in a sermon a moral justification for mutiny against state power.

As Thomas had intimated 800 years earlier, Romero said: “If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom.”. Though he is already called San Romero in El Salvador, a saint-martyr for the faith, the Roman Church still rejects his sanctification because it would be the same as approving the radical pro-poor movement, Liberation Theology, which during the Cold War (and still today) was seen by political power as a Marxist Trojan horse that would allow communism into South America. The complex procedure for Romero’s canonization only began in 1997, twenty years after his murder. Still not a Church saint, Romero was merely beatified as a sop to the “people” by Pope Francis on May 23, 2015.
In the England of Henry II, the Crown and the Church were at war for supremacy. Thomas Becket was weaker and had to die. His was a martyr’s death. Three years later he was canonized and pilgrims flocked to his tomb, including a repentant Henry II himself, in search of epiphany.

The reality was less a story of martyrdom of Becket than it was a story of a political assassination, relevant in all times. While Romero’s assassination was in the name of capitalist imperialism, Thomas was murdered by the State of King Henry II in order to supplant Church law with the King’s State courts, to introduce trial by jury and constitutional and legal reforms. His assassination was a case of the wrong thing though for the right reason.

Eliot’s play is thus not just about the murder of Thomas Becket. It is also about standing up for what is right in the face of the temptations of power on the one hand and glory on the other. Henry expected Thomas to allow him to exploit his friendship and his church title in order to abuse the power of the Church for the benefit of the State. Thomas refused—a courageous display of not giving into state power’s pressures. Here, Thomas did the right thing for the wrong personal reasons. Somewhere within this narrow interpretation of Eliot’s intention, apparently lay my drunken friend’s epiphany which he claimed changed his life. And who can smirk and presume that he exaggerated that hot morning in Queens?

As a matter of political approach—and unlike T.S. Eliot in his play—I am more interested here in the social aims of King Henry II than in the qualms of conscience of Archbishop Thomas Becket.

In our daily lives many of us do not yet have someone as powerful as Henry II breathing down our necks. But we do face moral challenges. How to say No! at the risk of being different?  Join the majority or dare to remain independent?  Display your intelligence or be “cool” all-American and act dumb?

As Oscar Romero showed, power struggles are not all the same. But the issues in this play are disturbingly real and perilously relevant to today’s world: man’s nearly meaningless place in the conflicts of this era of authoritarian military-industrial power combined confusedly with the churches of philistine fundamentalism, God-is-on-our-side hypocrisy dominating human affairs.

On the first level, Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is a play in verse about the dangers of temptations on the way to sainthood or to political power. Thomas Becket resisted several temptations coupled with cajolery and threat. He is offered a return to political power alongside King Henry while at the same time he is accused of disloyalty to the nation and his ecclesiastical office and threatened physically. He is tempted with a return to his halcyon youth with his friend Henry, and the concomitant danger of being forgotten by history.

While Thomas if lured by a return to political power, he also tempted by the glory of sainthood for all eternity. He is offered both the glory of martyrdom and earthly pleasure, both of which he sees as human weaknesses. Not wanting to be “compromised”, he declines the temptation of earthly power. But like Islamic shahids today he allows himself to become God’s instrument and succumbs to the temptation of eternal glory—his fatal weakness: he allows his pride to lead him to a martyr’s death at the hands of power’s executioners: “the right deed for the wrong reason.”

Maybe he did not really seek death but his fate did not permit him to act otherwise. To the tempters he responds with these famous words:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain;

       Temptation shall not come in this kind again.

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

One may justly reject the idea that the martyrdom as a religious heretic of Giordano Bruno in Rome or that of Sophie Scholl as a political dissident in Nazi Munich really contributes much to some greater good because man can live a moral life, full of good deeds, without God, and without ultimate sacrifices to a greater good. As Dostoevsky writes: …harmony …is not worth the tears of that one tortured child.

                                PART TWO

Temporal Power

The temporal power of the Roman Catholic Church refers to the political and governmental activities of the Church as distinguished from its spiritual mission. power.

The Popes of Rome named themselves God’s vicars on earth. The former Papal States in Italy achieved the status of a country with relations with other countries. When on Christmas day in the year 800 the Pope crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the Roman Church gained power over the entire Holy Roman Empire. Church and State were one.

In our times, though officialy separated, Church and State are again often one. Distant from its religious doctrine and its pastoral mission, the Church’s temporal bent is one of its worst aspects which the Church explains is an unavoidable bridge that must be crossed in order to disseminate the Christian faith: earthly power is considered necessary to spread the doctrine of Jesus Christ. In any case, over and over again religions have shown that they have no capacity for temporal power.

We see the proof in practice today in the exercise of power in the USA under the sway of a mystical sort of Americanistic religious persuasion bordering on voodooism infected with the disease of false religion.

As Henry II had done before him, Napoleon abolished the Church’s temporal power and in his conquests dissolved the Papal States as natural rivals for power. Temporal power was then restored to the Church by the Congress of Vienna of 1815 when Napoleonic laws were abolished.

Back in power, the reactionary Church returned to the destruction of modern improvements and reforms, forcing society back to medieval days, for example in Italy banning vaccination against smallpox which then devasted peoples in Papal lands. The Jews were again locked in the Rome ghetto, while the Church’s historic neglect of the environment made of Latium—except for rich Papal estates—the most godforsaken part of Italy.

Finally, in the nineteenth century the new Italian Republic which united the diverse states of the peninsula declared an end to the Papal States. Formally, the Church’s temporal power ended in 1929 with a treaty, the Concordat, between the Vatican State and Italy, according to which the papacy was to have no more political interests in Italy and the rest of the world.

But the meddling of the Roman Catholic Church in temporal affairs has never ended. Its continues to be worldwide. The popes and their bishops pressure temporal society on a wide spectrum of civil issues such as marriage and the role of the family, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage and all progressive legislation. Internationally, the Pope makes statements in favor of peace but carefully refrains from serious criticism of the United States from where come substantial funds to pay for the huge Church bureaucracy. In ethics, the Church line is the “defense of life” in all its aspects, except for capital punishment.

Faith and Politics

Before shifting my point of view to Henry, a few words about Eliot’s faith and a guess at his reasons for writing this powerful text, the second and underlying level of his play. The question is germane. Though Eliot embraced Christianity, the more I get to know him the more I wonder if he really believed. Did he believe in what he wrote here and in his Notes Toward A Definition of Culture? In his play, King Henry only hovers in the background as the representation of Thomas’ past of pleasure, his present of contrast and threat, and the mysterious future. Thomas Becket stands on center stage as if the writer. T.S. Eliot were searching in the Archbishop’s psyche for answers about his own faith—the temptations, doubts and hesitations Eliot the super but uncertain intellectual felt about his faith and his choices.

Among spiritual thinkers and seekers, Eliot returns often to Dante and Shakespeare. Dante, whose universe is dominated by Satan and whose Hell has much more to do with Church and secular politics than religion. Eliot must have known what Thomas-Eliot would say if only he had faith. If only he lived in a world of faith. In the voice of Thomas Becket in the end seeking to purify his motives for accepting martyrdom, Eliot says it: “I have had a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper, And I would no longer be denied.”

Yes, most certainly the writer had his doubts. Not as Dostoevsky, yet, a tremor. A clairvoyant glimpse toward the future. I believe Eliot wanted to believe but I do not believe he even believed he believed. Born to an age of avant-garde thought defined by its rejection of faith in God, Eliot did made faith respectable. Yet his faith seems to have been based on hope. And it was largely aesthetic, prompting Harold Bloom’s remark that T.S. Eliot aspired to the triple identity he claimed of royalist, Christian, and classicist “with considerable bad faith.” In Notes Toward the Definition of Culture written after World War II, Eliot wrote of religion in the USSR some lines pertinent today, especially the last phrase:

“From the official Russian point of view there are two objections to religion: first, religion is apt to provide another loyalty than that claimed by the State; and second, there are several religions in the world still firmly maintained by many believers.”

Or, he might have added, the concomitant danger of conformity of the State to religion as is the case in puritan America.

You can encounter super believers anywhere, those supercilious religious people-bigots who feel superior, convinced that God sustains their actions. The result is their assurance that the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan are holy and that war crimes are just. In their view the just war is a religious war. And in fact, religion is at the heart of many of history’s wars. As a rule, the fundamentalist Fascist State uses religion as a tool to manipulate people. The organized religions through which Power works become malleable tools for perpetrating the crime of wars of conquest. This is not necessarily the fault of the religious impulse in human beings. It is the fault of organized religion itself which today justifies the odious slogans in the USA of “our way of life” and “they (the others) hate our freedoms.” It is the way the self-proclaimed vicars of Christ exploit organized religion.

If not for Eliot’s own religious hang-up, his play Murder In the Cathedral could have centered on politics, not morality and the spiritual instinct. Instead, for a great part the play is seen from an individual religious point of view.

In that sense the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury was of less importance for us than the assassination of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador. Thomas’ was in fact more a rogue killing by soldiers who thought they were carrying out what their King wanted done. Maybe Becket died from an act of stupidity—which was most certainly not the case of the murder of Oscar Romero. State power knew exactly what it was doing.

Still, because of the temporal power of the Catholic Church in the England of Henry II, murdering an archbishop was a dangerous act. Not so for the perpetrators in the El Salvador of our times where the hierarchy of the Roman Church stood on the side of brutal imperialist-capitalist power. To Eliot and the modern reader, Thomas’ murder was of much less importance than the democratic belief that not even the king is above the law. For that reason, I believe, Eliot centered the play on Becket’s motives for sainthood, not on his resistance nor on Henry’s potential quest for redemption, and who knows? perhaps the King really hoped for an epiphany. Though the play was written at the time of the rising of Fascism and Nazism in Europe and can be understood also as an individual’s opposition to authority as in the Sophocles play Antigone, Becket’s internal struggle over his opposition to Henry II is in my reading secondary.

Having come into conflict with secular authority, the Archbishop is visited by a succession of tempters urging him alternately to avoid conflict and give in to the King, or, to seek martyrdom. While three priests consider the rise of temporal power, Becket instead reflects on the inevitability of martyrdom, which, though he embraces it, he also interprets it as a sign of his own fatal weakness. Eliot’s Becket thus becomes a Christ figure whose role is the martyr, reflecting the writer’s own quest for faith—aesthetic or genuine, who knows? In any case, Eliot’s Becket is led step by step to provoke violence against himself and to submit to it. Self-murder or suicide? Or martyrdom of both suffering and the resulting glory?

 

Henry II, Great Grandson of the Norman Conqueror

Though the King never appears in Eliot’s play, his shadow is a powerful presence, his power fills Thomas’s past and present. “O Henry, O my King” he laments, while the chorus chants: “The King rules.” Yet though a shadow, the King is human. And state power is real. The priests declaim: “But as for our King, that is another matter.” Or: “Had the King been greater, or had he been weaker Things had perhaps been different for Thomas.”

Though the author T.S. Eliot leaves little room for partisanship, I began to side with the shadow which is King Henry. In real life the King’s struggles against a strong-willed wife and unruly sons and his relationship with his friend Thomas Becket detract from his accomplishments and lasting influence on Anglo-Saxon judicial systems. Eliot however did not favor the King role at all which the Tempter notes when he offers Thomas eternal glory after a martyr’s death:

“When King is dead, there’s another king,

And one more king is another reign.

King is forgotten, when another shall come:

Saint and martyr rule from the tomb.”

Henry II improved the affairs of his kingdom, reaching from Scotland to the Pyrenées. Though he failed to subject the Church to his courts, his judicial reforms endured. His centralized system of justice and modern court procedures replaced the old trial by ordeal. He initiated the concept of “common law” administered by royal courts, thus encroaching on feudal courts and on the jurisdiction of Church courts. He decreed that priests should be tried in royal courts, not in Becket’s ecclesiastical courts.

Henry’s aim was the overthrow of the feudal system, unknowingly to him paving the way for the role of the bourgeoisie and capitalism and making him an active link in Marx’s historical dialectic. To achieve that he had to control the Church by combining under the crown of England both State and Church. Neither Becket nor the faith could stand in his way. He did not eliminate the Church; he absorbed it and used it. For the same reasons modern political leaders of West and East use religion, wrapping themselves in religious language and religious issues—our Christian values, our Christian heritage and God is on our side.

Now, a leap ahead of five centuries to the English Revolution and the three civil wars beginning in 1642. Henry II could not know what he was setting in motion and would have been horrified at the results. For the most radical achievements of the English bourgeois revolution were the temporary abolition and permanent weakening of the monarchy, confiscation of both Church and aristocratic estates. Though not a working-class movement with a revolutionary theory, the English Revolution declared the monarchy “unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety and public interest of the people.” Henry’s impulse resulted centuries later in the execution of the King, a redefinition of the English monarchy and the “dangerous and useless” House of Lords, and the proclamation of a republic.

That is not to say that those 17^th century men were particularly foresighted. Still, until recent times western men could see our problems in secular terms because our ancestors had put an end to the use of the Church as a persecuting instrument of political masters.

As long as the power of his state was weak, as Henry II understood, the Church could tell people what to believe and how to behave, as do Roman popes today. For behind the threats and censures of the Church, all the terrors of hell fire are real for its unfree believers-subjects. Under Church control as in El Salvador social and political conflicts become also religious conflicts.

In 17^th century England the haute bourgeoisie was terrified of the revolutionary torrent it had let loose. It needed a reformed monarchy responsive to its interests, to check the flow of popular feeling. It also needed the Church of England. The fear then was today’s fear: that the people will rise in revolt in mighty numbers against the rotten capitalist order, which as Marx predicted is indeed rapidly hanging itself with its own rope. As according to Marx religion is the “opium of the people” and is the close and inalienable ally of political power.

A second lesson of the historically under-rated English Revolution was the Revolution’s need for organization. People must choose sides. To decide, they must know what they are fighting for. They learned that freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are the first freedoms to fight for. The ruling bourgeoisie needed the people … yet it feared them. Therefore it kept also the monarchy as a check against too much democracy. The condition of the petty bourgeoisie of 17^th century England was similar to that of the former middle class in the USA today, where what was once the middle class, filled with all its false consciousness, is dependent on the corrupt system, dominated and rocked to sleep by the blandishments and rewards given them by the minute upper class.

Therefore, in order to change things, the urgent need for a movement of the lower classes—and an informed and educated class to lead the way—both liberated from the binds of religious fundamentalists in the pay of the system.

Civilizations and cultures have meanwhile gone their own ways, some helped along the way, some hindered. Revolution to revolution, social progress and social setbacks. Who knows if civilization has really peaked and its time is up? While we battle for survival, the question of social evolution remains open. The State-Church equation is different today. The issue is raw power itself, Power in which religion is so enmeshed as to be one and the same with the disastrous results before us.

As Thomas Becket says to the tempter suggesting a return to his past of power and glory, “singing at nightfall, whispering in chambers”:

“We do not know very much of the future

Except that from generation to generation

The same things happen again and again.

Men learn little from others’ experience.

The same time returns. Sever

The cord, shed the scale. Only

The fool, fixed in his folly, may think

He can turn the wheel on which he turns.”

 

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Senior Editor Gaither Stewart, based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was just published by Punto Press.

 

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