Our (Incoherent) Post-Modern Condition

The Catholic Thing

By Randall Smith.
I heard a story recently from a Catholic father who invited his atheist friend to dinner with his family. Before dinner, the family always says a prayer. After dinner, the man's atheist friend complained that they had prayed while he was there.
I had to laugh because I begin my classes with a prayer, and what I tell my non-Christian students is that I assume they will act the way they would act if they were invited to a friend's home for dinner who was Jewish or Muslim. I assume they would bow their heads respectfully until their friend and his family had finished their prayer, and then they would go about the business of having dinner and a pleasant conversation. (I sometimes add the advice my mother would have given: "And eat what's put in front of you!")
I imagine that this atheist likely thought of himself as very "liberal" and "open-minded" as opposed to the Catholic family who were "close-minded" and "oppressive." And yet, they didn't insist that he pray, but he insisted that they not pray. So who was close-minded and oppressive?
I wonder how this man would have responded if someone asked him, "If you were at the house of a Jewish or Muslim or Hindu family, would you insist that they not pray in front of you?" I can't be sure, but I suspect the answer might be: "No, of course not! This is the United States. We don't discriminate against religious minorities."
Are Catholics not a "religious minority"? I think if you look up the statistics, you'll find they are - and have been for a long time with a long history of being discriminated against everywhere in the English-speaking world. So, perhaps we should put companies on notice: If you don't hire the same percentage of dedicated Catholics to match the percentage of Catholics in the United States (something like 23 percent), then we will sue you for discrimination.
Okay, so that's not going to happen. I'm not sure why, but it's not. So the question to ask is: "Is there just something about Catholics and other serious Christians that makes them odious to so many?" I was once interviewed by a television news reporter the day after a shooting at a Christian church by some crazy guy. I suspected she would ask me whether Christians were being targeted, and I was ready to say, "Look, it's early. We don't know his motivations. Let's wait and see."
But her first question was: "Is there something about Christians that brings about this sort of violence?" Huh? This seemed to me like asking: "Is there something about women that brings about rape?" But I couldn't say that. I've survived three hurricanes in Houston unscathed, but nothing would have saved me from the angry winds that would have blown if they had put that on the news. The other comment that came into my head was, "Are you out of your dammed mind?" But that didn't seem entirely diplomatic either.
The post-modern French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard famously asserted that our "post-modern condition" is characterized by "incredulity towards metanarratives." People are dubious about "big stories," he said, like the "myth of progress." Not only do I think Lyotard was wrong about that, I think it would be more accurate to say that our "post-modern condition" is characterized by modern people's complete domination by metanarratives.
Everyone has a little story they tell themselves about history and culture that justifies their behavior. The history of the world is the history of an abusive patriarchy. Or the history of the world is the history of class struggle. The history of the United States is the history of white supremacy. Progress in history depends upon science and technology replacing Christian faith.
If you believe history is the story of progress, but only when the good guys overcome the bad guys, then clearly, if you want to help bring "progress," you need to crush the bad guys who keep getting in its way. For those who assumed that Christianity was going to be supplanted by Enlightenment re...