In search of a sense of community

Growing up I went to Roman Catholic services regularly until I was a teenager.  My entire family was either Catholic or Lutheran, and many were relatively devout.  Still, generational tradition and growing up in communities that were mostly, if not entirely, Christian were still not enough to keep me as part of the fold.  Much of this was due to a gradual realization that I just didn’t believe a lot of what was taught, or at least not as much as I was supposed to.  But then I moved to New York and realized something else had been missing: a strong sense of community.

On Saturday night, I was invited to a “latke luau.”  The seeming incongruence of a Hawaiian-themed party (in a New York December) and a gathering to eat the traditional potato pancake of Chanukkah is nothing new for this particular group of friends.  Social events and irreverent twists on the traditional occur regularly among an extended group of close friends and acquaintances.  When I first spent time with this group, it was as the (gentile) girlfriend of a  Jewish guy and I was astonished at how close this particular group of friends were.  They all knew each other, regularly saw each other, had dinners at each other’s apartments, invited the same subgroups of the larger group to their birthday parties, friended each other online, and so on.

And how did they meet?  All of them, excluding me and a couple of others, had connections to the Hillel group at NYU, where they had either attended college, or dated people who had and been drawn into the group.  More remarkably, the network extended to hundreds of other young Jews in New York City.  You couldn’t go somewhere and not know someone, or not know someone who knew someone you knew.  The joke about “Jewish geography” (that you would always run into people you knew) wasn’t really a joke.  After college, my group of friends stayed friends, even when some moved beyond New York City.  They continued having gatherings, celebrating big moments (including when one became a rabbi) and attending each other’s weddings (I was in one of them).  I don’t know of very many groups, religious or not, who have such cohesion and have remained so close.

I couldn’t help but contrast this with the experience I had as a Catholic growing up.  The churches I went to had some youth groups, and family activities, but for the most part I ended up feeling more isolated than welcomed.  It’s different when you perceive something as a child, it’s true, but even now if I walk into a Catholic church, I don’t get the sense that most of the people know each other, or go out of their way to have relationships with each other or the church leaders.  Is this maybe because the church is so preoccupied with doctrine and scandals and politics (or so it seems to me) that it has little room for anything else?

This may be overstating the case a bit.  Judaism in America and around the world has its own problems, such as a decline in observant members just like many other religious organizations (including Catholicism, whose numbers are declining more rapidly than most according to some polls).  And the particularly close nature of the group of friends I happened to fall into (and remain part of, long after breaking up with that old boyfriend) might be some kind of anomaly.  But I never felt like the social foundations of the churches I attended were ever quite as strong as what I’ve experienced at numerous synagogues around New York City.  At the least, Catholic leaders increasingly concerned about attrition from the pews could take a few lessons from the close-knit Jewish community I stumbled into.

More than a social foundation, the Jewish social groups I found myself a part of are also a way to keep at least a nominal amount of faith alive.  I don’t know many groups of twenty- and thirty-somethings (few of them particularly devout or Orthodox) that regularly gather to socialize and also manage to incorporate an ancient religion a lot of the time.  In a way, it’s inspiring– even when so many people are losing faith in both religion and society, there’s still some hope.

Last night, as I fried shredded potatoes in 3 inches of oil, serving my shift in the kitchen at the latke party, the lights in the living room suddenly went down and a silence fell over the group.  Steve, our rabbi friend, was leading a prayer and lighting the fourth candle of the menorah.  Then the group broke into song. Everyone knew the song.  And everyone sang along.  I smiled as I flipped over another latke.

Tags: Jews, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, social groups

Wait, I’m defending polygamy?

For me, it started with a question: why exactly do we outlaw polygamy?  I was reading about a freedom of religion case currently unfolding in Canada.

A breakaway traditionalist Mormon sect in Bountiful, British Columbia, has practiced polygyny for years– men traditionally marry at last 3 women, in the belief that doing so helps guarantee their entry into heaven.

British Columbia has previously tried two men from this sect under anti-polygamy laws, but failed on technicalities.  Now, prosecutors have asked a British Columbian Supreme Court to decide whether outlawing polygamy is a violation of freedom of religion.

Many Americans have heard about our own country’s well-publicized prosecutions of polygamists (think Warren Jeffs) and are familiar with TV show about the topic, both fictional (Big Love) and true (Sister Wives).  And most Americans are probably against polygamy, if they’re anything like I am: raised Christian and steeped in the American tradition of one husband, one wife.

But I read the article and started wondering: why exactly do we outlaw polygamy?  Even if my instinct is to say polygamy is wrong, I couldn’t come up with a good reason why, other than an answer based in Christian doctrine or American custom.

Let me be absolutely clear: I do not condone, in any way, the underage and forced marriages that seem all too common among ultraconservative religious groups that do practice polygamy.  I also, personally, don’t like the idea of polygamy and would never take part in it or promote it.  I don’t think it’s fair to have to share a relationship as significant as marriage, for one thing.  But that’s just my opinion.

Statutory rape, rape, forced and underage marriage and other crimes are already illegal and are already prosecutable (and should be aggressively pursued).  What’s not clear is what good it does to go one step more and outlaw polygamy.  After all, people can live with whomever they want.  They can form relationships with whomever they want (polyamory, loving and forming relationships with many people, is common around the world).  Furthermore, there are plenty of other things that are not illegal that can lead to bad things, too– should we outlaw all of them?  Of course not.

So why do we outlaw polygamy?

Some people say it’s to clear up what would be extremely complicated legal cases if someone married multiple people.  (Which wife gets to decide if a husband is taken off life support?)  But in reality, we already face those extremely complicated legal cases in regular marriages and situations (remember Teri Schiavo?).  And has anyone seen the tax code lately?  It’s thousands of page long.  I don’t think anyone can really argue complicated laws and complicated situations don’t already exist.

There’s the moral reason: in a country heavily based on Judeo-Christian values, most Americans probably recoil at the idea of polygamy because of moral or ethical values.  No major Christian or Jewish denomination endorses polygamy.

There’s also the “civilizing” rationale: marriage is the pinnacle of civilization and enlightenment, and only “backward” cultures practice polygamy.  But that’s a pretty Euro-centric view.  Some Islamic cultures allow polygamous marriages, as well as some African ethnic groups, for starters.  (For more details, see the information in the International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, or the footnote references in this Wikipedia entry).  The scenario most of us are familiar with is polygyny, when a man has multiple wives.    But polyandry (in which a woman has more than one husband) has also existed in various cultures around the world for centuries (an article from just a few years ago profiled a small community in Nepal where it had been the norm for years until economics of the region changed).

As much as it might go against my instinct, there’s no good legal reason to make polygamy a crime, and certainly no good reason that outweighs the possibility of trampling on genuine religious beliefs that proclaim polygamy a good thing, or even a required practice.  At the least, we shouldn’t pursue criminal charges against people who practice polygamy when no other crimes have been committed.

Tags: Canada, court case, freedom of religion, Fundamentalist Mormon Church, polygamy

A Crack in the Wall?

Excerpts of a book of interviews with the pope have been released in which the pope is quoted as saying there are certain cases where a moral justification could be made for using condoms. While it’s not an outright endorsement of the use of condoms (in particular, the pope did not say that couples could or should use condoms), it’s viewed by many as a huge step for a conservative pontiff, and indeed a whole church, who had outright condemned the use of contraception or sexual protection in virtually any way, shape or form.  Is this the beginning of a new attitude from the Vatican?

Let’s not break out the champagne yet.

The Catholic Church’s hierarchy is still, for the most part, wildly out of sync with the views of the majority of the people it professes to lead.  This is probably true about a great many topics, but let’s just stick with contraception for the moment.  A survey in England and Wales in 2008 found 73% of Catholics had used or would consider using condoms.  Eighty-five percent of US Catholic women have had their partners use a condom.   Even in Latin America, where Catholicism is particularly strong, a 2004 study found the vast majority of Catholics in three countries thought contraception was morally acceptable.

(Yes, it’s true that the pope and the higher-ups believe that they have the moral authority to say what they say, even though in a democratic system they would never be in charge with so few people in agreement with them.  But if their goal is convince people to agree with them, eventually, they’re not doing a very good job.)

So, in the face of all this, the pope has finally come out, for the first time in the history of the papacy, and said something positive about contraception!  This should be great news!  Except that the one (and ONLY) example that the pope gave about when it might be permissible or morally justifiable or something to use contraception was for….. male prostitutes.  What?  Since when does the pope even acknowledge male prostitution, except to say it’s a no-no? (That was my first thought).

On second blush, it appears the pope just can’t budge more than an inch at a time on something so monumental in Catholic doctrine.  Or at least, that’s the only thing I can figure out.  But despite the fact that this was really not a big announcement, if you think about it (couples still have to submit to God’s will to have as many children as possible, basically), it made headlines all over the world.  Essentially, that’s how stubborn the pope and the Catholic Church has been: one little announcement that doesn’t actually change any church doctrine, or even apply to the majority of its congregants, and people are tripping all over themselves in awe that the pope even mentioned the world “condoms” in a positive way (this is the pope who, after all, said using condoms could make the AIDS epidemic worse).

Here are Pope Benedict’s exact words, as related in the NYTimes:

In the book, Benedict said condoms were not “a real or moral solution” to the AIDS epidemic, adding, “that can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.” But he also said that “there may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.”

Tags: bishops, condoms, contraception, pope, Roman Catholicism