Violence lies at the heart of religion. A rather startling statement, no? What could I possibly mean by it? In his Good Friday homily Fr Cantalamessa drew on René Girard’s thought and emboldened by this I shall do the same for this article. I am putting forward tentative suggestions and I hope I shall do justice to Girard.
This article is the third in the series dealing with anti-Semitism. Girard argues that there is an inevitability to violence; but that in Christ God has opened up a new way of being to us, a non-violent way of being.
My exploration has been given added impetus by the vicious and unreasoning attacks on Pope Benedict XVI before and during his state visit to Great Britain.
Geoffrey Robertson, Stephen Fry and a host of celebrities have vented their collective spleen and launched bilious criticisms of the Holy Father. I think, in Girard’s terms, the Pope is a scapegoat. His detractors find unity in focusing their rage on him.
I had the ill-fortune to turn on Radio National while Fran Kelly was giving Geoffrey Robertson the opportunity to assail the Church and the Pontiff.
His arguments were patently ridiculous and anyone with a passing knowledge of the situation or canon law would have found them risible.
So how could an apparently intelligent man spout such rubbish? Is he just a bigot blinded by his unreasoning enmity? Perhaps. I think Girard may give us a insight into the scapegoating which is at work.
Girard is something of the darling of acadaemia at present, but it is interesting that at times when his thought is transposed the Catholic key is lost. Girard was a lapsed Catholic; he re-embraced his faith because of two intertwined discoveries. The first was of the nexus between violence and religion. The second was that the nexus was exposed and overcome in the Gospel.
Human beings and imitation
We, human beings, learn through imitation. We desire in imitation. This insight goes back to Aristotle, but Girard develops it.
Think of the way in which children develop. They want to do things because they see their parents, their older siblings doing it.
They insist on trying to use cutlery because they want to be like the adults; the adults have to suffer this process because it is part of how little humans learn and grow.
We learn what to desire from others. Something becomes desirable to us because it is desirable to others. We may reject this instinctively because we like to think of ourselves as independently knowing and willing subjects, but I would suggest that critical self-reflexion would show us the truth of this dynamic. Think of the myriad magazines which tell us what is desirable.
Imitation gives rise to conflict and violence.
The dynamic of desire is integral to human development. However, our desiring leads us from wanting to have what the other has, to being what the other is. We compare ourselves, we model ourselves. We group ourselves with others who share our outlook. However, what happens when two people or groupings desire the same thing? In a world with limited resources, possibilities and opportunities for fulfilment, conflict arises.
Conflict resolves through violence
The tensions which arise and grow between people or in a society because of imitative desire find an outlet in a scapegoat – a person who is or group of persons who are vulnerable and who becomes the focus for built up antagonism. The crowd becomes a mob and takes out its rage on its victim. Have you noticed the odd behaviour of mobs and how ordinary people can be caught up in a contagion of violence? Equilibrium returns once the victim is punished or even killed though it is but a temporary peace.
If this seems outlandish think on this: Have you noticed that the uncomfortable silence/feeling which can exist between two people in conflict can be overcome by picking on a third person? The discomfort disappears in the shared outrage at the third person.
Scapegoating
For the ancient mind, the return of peace seemed to point to the fact that the victim was the cause of the disequilibrium and tension in the first place; perhaps the victim had displeased the gods.
The killing of the victim which brought about peace becomes a religious act, a holy act; it is celebrated as a sacrifice which appeased the gods who had been punishing the city.
Pre-modern religions are ways of institutionalising violence and scapegoating – the sacrificial victim lies at the heart of these religions.
They are ways of hiding and controlling the cycle of desire and violence.
Ancient religions were effective insofar as the dynamism which lay at the heart of them was hidden. Once we realise that the victim is innocent, the death of the victim cannot achieve anything. And how does society find a release for the tensions which will inevitably arise? People did not realise that they were caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle. Even if they could have realised they were there was nothing they could have done about it.
Our modern societies are still caught up in this cycle of desire and violence. We find more subtle ways of scapegoating.
The Scriptures expose the mechanism of violence
Does this mean that the Christian message is also caught up in this dynamic of violence?
For Girard the Scriptures – starting with the Old Testament – expose the cycle of desire and violence. For example, Abraham learns that God does not want the sacrifice of Isaac.
But it is in Jesus Christ that God strips the scapegoating mechanism bare and enables us to be free of it.
In Jesus we see that the victim is provided by God and not by ourselves. Jesus is the victim, the scapegoat, whom God vindicates in the Resurrection. The victim stands before us and his innocence is evident.
He stands before us bearing the wounds of violence and scapegoating. The mechanism which led to his death is exposed. And once the mechanism is exposed it loses its power, its hold on us. But will this not lead to aggravating cycles of violence?
Jesus leads us out of imitative violence
Jesus not only exposes the mechanism, He leads us in a new way. Jesus focuses our desire, our imitative function on Himself and on his Father in heaven. And we find slowly that we no longer have to compete with others for our fulfilment. God is big enough to fulfil us all: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (Matt. 5.44-5).
So now what?
Seen in this light, the sacrifice of Christ contains a formidable message for today’s world. It cries out to the world that violence is an archaic residue, a regression to primitive stages and surmounted by human history and – if it is a question of believers – a culpable and scandalous delay in becoming aware of the leap in quality operated by Christ.
It reminds also that violence is losing. In almost all ancient myths the victim is the defeated and the executioner the victor. Jesus changed the sign of victory.
He inaugurated a new kind of victory that does not consist in making victims, but in making himself victim. (Raniero Cantalamessa, Good Friday homily, 2010)
The concern for the victim, for the weak, for the loser does not arise from some humanistic impulse. It arises because of the Cross of Christ.
Without the Cross of Christ, the loser, the victim were not our concern; we used to think that they were victims because they deserved it or the gods willed it.
In the Cross we see that God does not will violence, even holy violence, and that victimhood is not the result of divine displeasure. God cares for the victim. And so we learn slowly to do the same.
As Cantalamessa says violence by Christians is a sign that they have failed to realise that violence is laid bare in Christ; violence is never holy; it is de-sanctified, de-sacralised in the Cross.
Coda
In light of this I would suggest that Geoffrey Robertson, Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett et al are operating out of an ancient and vicious paradigm. They are scapegoating the Church and the Holy Father. They do not realise it, but their actions are religious; the violence of their actions and words are the same ‘holy violence’ pre-modern and non-Christian religions have used through the millennia. They are the voices of the mob, its high priests. Ironic, is it not?