Unlearning is learning too

Organiser,2005 Issues > April 17, 05


India That is Bharat
Unlearning is learning too
Satiricus

THE tragedy with Satiricus is that he is not a two-footed Christian human being, but a four-footed non-Christian animal. That, alas, was the terrible truth brought home to him by the Hon'ble Shibu Soren the other day.

One function that Shri Soren attended during his one-week tenure as Chief Minister of Jharkhand was the plenary assembly of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India. Praising the role of the church in the development of tribals, he said, ?Pehle adivasi char paya they. church ne unko do paya banaya (Earlier, tribals were four-footed, the church has made them two-footed).?

See? Satiricus is also a tribal, as he belongs to the tribe of nefarious, non-Christian pen-pushers. So now his sole salvation lies in being humanised by Christianity. But for that Satiricus must first unlearn the history of Christianity. According to this history, in the eyes of orthodox Christianity all (four-footed) animals were the agents of the devil. This made this four-footed pen-pushing predator, by name Satiricus, an agent of devilish journalism. So the question now is how to humanise him, how to bring him into the fold of two-footed humanity. What does Christian history say?

History says for the great glory of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, cats and other assorted four-footed agents of the devil were either butchered or burnt alive at the stake. Instant humanisation, wot? So it would not be surprising if an erstwhile Chief Minister in secular India calls Hindu Satiricus an animal, and calls upon the church to either butcher him or burn him, whichever is convenient and/or civilised. But before the torch-bearers of Christian humanity put him to the torch, Satiricus would not help wondering?what exactly is the difference between four-footed non-Christian animals and two-footed Christian beasts? Oh well, for that he will first have to know the difference between history and Christian history.

There are communal cusses who say history is history and truth is truth, and never the twain shall meet.

Unfortunately there are communal cusses who say history is history and truth is truth, and never the twain shall meet in the church. But then, why should the church need the truth when it has history? In fact, why else should the Apocrypha be there in the Bible? On the one hand, the Apocrypha are accepted as sacred writings in the Greek and Latin Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, while on the other hand, apocryphal means invented, false. Does that in turn mean the Bible truth has falsehood at its core? Does that, again, mean the history of Christianity is all apocryphal, an exercise in invention? And in that case, was Dan Brown telling the truth or telling Christian history in his blockbuster whodunnit, The Da Vinci Code, which was on sale even in the bookshop at the hospital were the Pope was recently treated?

Apparently these questions bothered not only this Hindu ignoramus but even the leading lights of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome itself. For they thought about it for full two years after the novel came out, and have finally concluded that, to quote Cardinal Bertone, ?There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true.? So he told the Vatican radio, ?Don't buy and don't read that novel.?

And who is Cardinal Bertone? The newspapers have described him as ?once a top dogma enforcer in Vatican City?. Well, now, being a journalist, Satiricus is admittedly illiterate, but does not ?dogma enforcer? sound very much like ?thought police?? But of course, that cannot be so. For how can a dogma dear to the advanced, civilised West be in need of a police enforcer? Still it does seem the blessed Bertone has a problem. For it cannot be without reason that he fears the ?very real risk? that ?many? people would believe the ?fables? in the novel. The question here, at least for this non-Christian nitwit, is: Why would many people find a Christian fable as believable as Christian history unless the difference between the two was the same as between Tweedle-dum and Tweedledee?

In fact, why can't Prince Jesus marrying prostitute Mary Magdalene be one gospel truth if Jesus, a carpenter's son ?emancipating? the fallen Mary Magdalene, can be another gospel truth? Why can't the two truths be equally truthful?

We Hindus ignoramuses are taught by our seers and sages that Truth is one, but the wise describe it variously. But what are Christians taught? Satiricus was impressed to see that they are taught that there are not just two truths, there are two hundred truths! For originally there was a plethora of Christian gospels, from which a Bishop named Irenaeus compiled the first bit of biblical writings that resemble today's New Testament around a.d. 180. At the end of the 4th century a.d., another Bishop by name Athanasius prepared another, similar list, and got it certified by the church councils of Hippo and Carthage. By proscribing and burning, repeat, burning any other (biblical) writings, the Catholic Church eventually gave the impression that this Bible and its four gospels represented the only original Christianity. And yet, as late as a.d. 450, a church leader by name Theodore of Cyrrhus said there were at least 200 different gospels circulating in his own diocese. With such a divine double century of gospel truths to delight the devout, it was natural for even the Catholic Encyclopaedia to now admit that the ?idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning.... has no foundation in history.?

So there! If the New Testament and the old history don't match, what is poor Dan Brown to do? If he finds that the four in-fashion gospel truths can't make a thrilling novel, why can't he choose from the remaining 196 out-of-fashion gospel truths? Can he be blamed if he finds Christian history a variety store of fabulous fables?