We Would Make Our God Too Small

When I read about the caricature of Catholicism represented by William Donohue, president of the so-called Catholic League, in the controversy over the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, I have increased sympathy with our brothers and sisters in Islam who have seen their faith hijacked by their own brand of extremists.

Granted, Catholic extremists no longer behead their apostates and enemies as some Taliban and Islamists still reportedly do — and, as we once did, let us not forget.  Instead, in this kinder, gentler version of Christian elimination, they disenfranchise, marginalize, and, when the official hierarchy gets involved, excommunicate them.  Same result, except they still have their heads — a considerable advantage, to be sure.

What sparked this is the brouhaha over the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington called “A Fire in My Belly.”  In case you missed it, the exhibit didn’t make the news until a couple of weeks ago when a four-minute excerpt was removed from the larger exhibit because of an 11-second segment depicting a crucified Christ with ants crawling on him.  The excerpt was deleted because of objections from conservative Christians, with William Donohue leading the charge.

By the way, it is helpful to know that the Catholic League, headed by Donohue, is a “right-wing publicity mill, with no official or financial connection to the Catholic Church,” as Frank Rich helpfully pointed out in his Dec. 12 NYT column (“Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian”).  Still, I don’t recall a member of the official Catholic Church hierarchy, meaning bishops and above, ever repudiating the League’s excesses either, and they have had ample opportunity. For example, Donohue is the one, as Frank Rich again points out in this same column, who defended Mel Gibson against anti-Semitism for his movie “The Passion of the Christ,” by declaring that “Hollywood is controlled by Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.”

Donohue’s surface objection to the National Portrait Gallery was that the depiction of Christ represented anti-Christian hate speech.  As I have heard “A Fire in My Belly” explained, it was certainly not that, but rather a spiritual message with the depiction of the suffering Christ as identifying himself with the suffering of humanity in all its forms, including AIDS victims.  The exhibit’s artist and filmmaker was David Wojnarowicz, who was raised Catholic and died of AIDS in 1992.

As it turned out, Donohue’s real objection, which apparently surfaced later in his explanation, was the exhibit’s depiction of “pornographic depictions of gay men.”  Donohue has had a long history of demonizing gays, going so far as to say the Church doesn’t have a pedophilia problem; it has a homosexuality problem.

Unfortunately, homophobia is still a politically and socially acceptable form of bigotry in this country, as the debate over repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” still agonizingly reminds us.  From a political perspective, it is sadly understandable: Pusillanimity is what one expects from politicians.  But, from a Christian perspective, it doesn’t make sense at all unless one stakes a belief in a God whose loving embrace does not include gay men and women, and that would indeed make our God way too small.

Gerald E. Lavey