A
while back, the NAMI Indiana newsletter summarized a Huffington Post
article that claimed, based on a sample of 87 respondents, mostly Catholic and
Buddhist, that a sense of “spirituality” was integral to mental health, and
upheld that position itself. Needless to
say, and self-evident to anyone with a statistics background (which I, as
holder of a university degree in economics definitely have), such a small
sample size is grotesquely too tiny to have any statistical validity at all;
and that the sample was skewed toward Catholic and Buddhist respondents
undermines the statistical necessity that the sample taken must be random,
which obviously in this case it is not—so such a conclusion has no legitimacy
whatsoever. Also, the recent and current
events of Catholic priest-pedophilia and Catholic priests and bishops using Catholic
nuns and convents as harems and sources of sex slaves, along with the Catholic
bishops’ and cardinals’ deliberate cover-up of decades of priest-pedophilia, and
coupled with the ethnic cleansing of non-Buddhists carried out under the aegis
of Buddhist monks in Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Sri Lanka, denies any moral
authority whatsoever for either Catholicism or Buddhism to claim any “moral
high ground” when it comes to “spirituality,” the alleged necessity of
“spirituality” to mental health, or the tenets of morality!
Psychiatrist
Eli Chesen, in his book Religion May Be Hazardous to Your Health (New
York: Collier Books, 1972), very admirably points out the perils and
deleterious effects of too great an attachment to religion and “spirituality.” But he still upholds, in my mind, a psychologism,
a simple “belief in belief,” with his notion that religion can do some good by
teaching appropriate moral values. However,
drawing on my experience as both a Catholic child and adolescent and later
atheist adult, I think that appropriate moral values flow more readily from
secular humanism than they do from any religion, no matter how “enlightened;”
and that “enlightened" religions are such precisely because they’ve been
positively influenced by—secular humanism!
(Secular, of course, does not mean atheist; it simply means indifference
to religious claims. Humanism means, of
course, human-centered.) My direct
experience with the Catholicism I was born and raised in, and which was
inculcated in my through twelve years of Catholic schooling, has taught me that
the values religions promulgate and teach are often quite arbitrary and
selective—and I’ve seen the same thing in those raised in other religious
traditions. As a key example, within
Catholicism, and within Christianity in general, it’s specifically noted that
Jesus himself admonished his followers that this commandment was “like unto”
the first, of loving God with one’s whole mind, body, and soul, and every bit
as important—loving one’s neighbor “as thyself.” Yet, “Hate thy neighbor” is quite common within
Christianity, especially when one’s neighbor is different: of a different creed, or different sexual
orientation, or of a different race or ethnicity, or a “nerd,” or otherwise
deemed an undesirable person. Indeed, I,
myself, suffered as a Catholic child and adolescent from my Catholic
classmates’ bullying and social ostracism because I was “different”—too
physically weak and non-athletic, too “nerdy,” too much given to reading! Same with my Catholic parents—too much not
a “chip off the old block,” too “nonconforming,” too much into intellectual
pursuits, not athletic or interested in sports enough. These were enough to make my Catholic
childhood and adolescence, especially from the ages 10 through 18, a living
hell! Also, racism was widespread among
my white Catholic classmates, as was disdain for the Civil Rights Movement
among both my Catholic classmates and my Catholic parents—a disdain I did not
share, and was thus punished for and screamed at for rejecting! Further, what “values” that were taught us in
the Catholic schools were arbitrary, selective, very conforming to right-wing
viewpoints, were rigidly upheld, and above all, were quite different and
distinct from any notion of “Love thy neighbor as thyself;” which, as I recall,
was never taught us in the Catholic schools I attended from 1953 through
1965! Instead, we were taught a simplistic,
totalizing anticommunism, a disdain for Protestants and all other
non-Catholics, hostility toward Jews as Christ-killers who had really shady
ethics (something Catholicism did not change until the early 1960s at Vatican
II!), and above all, once we reached adolescence, the absolute necessity of
constantly policing our genitals and romantic/sexual attachments, lest we fall
into perdition! Along with absolute obedience and unquestioning allegiance to
Catholic authorities and Catholic moral, “spiritual,” and even temporal,
authority. The Church was first, all
else was strictly secondary. Those
were the Catholic “values” I was raised on, the Catholic values my classmates
and I were specifically taught. No
mention ever of “love thy neighbor.”
So
it seems to me that when NAMI embraces “spirituality” as necessary for mental
health, it’s really saying that, for some reason, simply a belief in some sort
of otherworldly, anthropomorphic but supra-human, benign father figure is
somehow beneficial to mental health. Yet
NAMI does not answer how such a father figure could be benign and yet punish
transgressors with eternal punishment in hell, which is taught specifically by
Christianity (at least historically for about the last 2,000 years) and Islam,
and certainly implied in some forms of Judaism; while Hinduism posits an
equivalent cycle of endless reincarnations into undesirable animals for such
transgressors! All at the hands of an
allegedly benign God or gods who somehow love us humans, but whose sense of
justice requires very severe, even unending, punishment. Not exactly consistent with Logic 101, to say
the very least! NAMI’s adherence to such
is thus certainly naïve, if not outright false.
In fact, as I state at the bottom of this essay, it’s directly
contradictory to the positive peace and humane morality I’ve found as a mental
health consumer who’s specifically an—ex-Catholic atheist without an ounce of
“spirituality”!
Then
there are those expressions of religion, of “spirituality,” that are mental
illnesses themselves. As in people who
believe they are God, or Jesus, or some saint, or have been given a specific
divine mission to carry out by God, even if it is to harm others; not to
mention people who believe, are convinced, that God is directly talking to
them! There are also mental health
consumers, among them people I’ve known personally, of a New Age “spiritual”
bent, who advise other mental health consumers, “Go off your psychotropic
medication and let God heal you!”
Indeed, there are many mental health consumers, and even some prominent
“mental health professionals” (author Seth Farber, for example, comes to mind,
as do those associated with the group MindFreedom) for whom the quintessence of
mental health “recovery” is—going off one’s psychotropic medication! Even just quitting it, cold turkey! Further, many mental health consumers, both
recovering and non-so-recovering, are drawn to evangelical, even fundamentalist,
Christian sects and denominations that teach that mental illness, poverty,
homelessness, and other adversities in life are God’s punishment for “sin,” and
which demand, or at least strongly pressure, their adherents to tithe, i.e.,
give 10% of their income to the church, even when they have only a
poverty-level income. These, too, all
these above, are also “spirituality.”
Chesen’s
book cited above relates a very moving case history (pp. 75-76) of someone fatally blinded, led to
desperation, by his religion, his “spirituality”: a struggling married Catholic
computer programmer with eleven children when he and his wife had wanted only
four, but both of whom followed the Church and didn’t use birth control, and who
committed suicide when it was apparent he could not support such a large family
on his and his wife’s already-stretched-to-the-limit income; after which his
wife went on welfare and gave the two youngest children up to foster homes![1] (Yes, I know, that invidious, “nasty”
question pops up, at least to this atheist:
Just where was God when all this was happening?)
When
I was a Catholic child, I used to pray to God to protect me from those
tormenting me, not realizing, in my naivete, that I was asking God to protect
me from—his professed followers! For
indeed, as I attended four different Catholic grade and high schools with
different student bodies, had professed Catholic parents and Catholic relatives
on my mother’s side, and professed Protestant relatives on my father’s side,
and have of course known or been acquainted with Catholic, Protestant, Jewish
and Muslim religious believers in adulthood, I’ve specifically known, or
acquainted with, over 500-700 professed Christians or students at Catholic schools
in my lifetime; of these, I can say that only 60 of these were what I would
consider morally admirable. Or, only
about 8-11% of the whole. Moreover, of
the rest, overwhelmingly they were cruel, insensitive, malicious, or slighting
of me personally, and not uncommonly sanctimonious, self-righteous, and in
complete denial they were doing anything harmful or hurtful to me, even when
they were, and I called them on it! I
had only one-two friends at a time throughout my grade- and high-school years,
and didn’t develop any real friendships until I was of college age and
older—and with precious few exceptions, those who did befriend me were all “immoral” atheists who really saw merit in me
and actually practiced “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” even as Christians
maintained that people were atheists only because they wanted to sin, and
rationalize their sin away! (But then,
to Christians overwhelmingly, “sin” has solely to do with how one uses one’s
genitalia, and has no relation whatsoever, except in a very abstract, formal,
sense, to “love thy neighbor.”) So, yes,
I do have “problems” with cruel, insensitive, sanctimonious,
self-righteous, and morally blind religious believers! Among whom are many such who are absolute bigots
toward those they deem “mentally ill”!
But I have no problems whatsoever with humane and humanistic religious
believers of any stripe, among whom are some close friends of mine and very
admirable, moral people, long-time fighters for social and individual
justice—but who, I’ve found, are preciously few and far between among religious
believers generally! So, I content and
devote myself to trying to live a conscientious life that is morally upright
and admirable, living my life without God or gods, not as one still ruefully
“worshipping” a malignant anti-God! Such
is now my positive life as an ex-Catholic atheist who has found full peace and
contentment in a life lived without “spirituality,” someone who finds a deep
“awe at the universe” more in the magnificent photographs taken by the Hubble
telescope than in any notions taken from theology, no matter how allegedly
“sublime” they’re portrayed to be.
[1] Catholics, of course, are
forbidden by the Catholic Church itself from using any form of “artificial
birth control” (condoms, the Pill, diaphragms, IUDs, etc.) and must rely for
family planning only on the rhythm method (often sarcastically referred to as
“Vatican roulette”!), or else, abstinence from sexual intercourse entirely, to
prevent pregnancy. However, since the
Church sees the purpose of sexuality as solely for reproduction, Catholics may
not engage primarily in sexual activities (cunnilingus, fellatio, manual sex)
that thwart reproduction, although Catholic married couples (sexual activity
outside of marriage is strictly forbidden by the Church; that includes
masturbation) may use such in foreplay only.
Such is determined by the Catholic Church authorities themselves, from
the Pope on down, all of whom are (at least theoretically) celibate males who
have been ordained as Catholic priests! (And only males can be ordained as
Catholic priests.) Nuns, by Catholic
canon law, are subordinate within the Church to male priests (only from whose
ranks may come valid Catholic bishops, Cardinals, and Popes); and lay Catholics
are specifically designated as powerless, as their purpose in the Church is
only to obey Church authorities. Such is
the reality of the Catholic Church that I, myself, was specifically taught and
directly experienced, along with the duty of all Catholics, lay and clergy
alike, to uphold these unquestioningly.
Although many Catholics do not hold such rigid views on sexuality, they
are deemed illegitimate and “sinning” when they do so. So, to remain good Catholics, they must not
make such views public. If they do
express such views publicly they are deemed as “causing scandal” to the Church,
and can be excommunicated.
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