NAMI and “Spirituality”: an ex-Catholic Atheist’s Perspective

 

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.

 

               

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[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.    

Confessions of a "Misogynist" Feminist

We’ll start out with confession number one:  the two worst persons in my life were both women, and one of them was—my own mother!  Both of them have been written about previously in “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blogs, this one about my mother penned by myself appropriately on Mother’s Day:  http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-mothers-day-for-those-mothers-who.html.  The other, on a very sanctimonious, self-righteous Quaker woman, Jane Haldeman, who was correctly characterized by a mutual friend of both of us as “abusive, manipulative, emasculating,” was penned by another mutual friend of ours, John Williams, in the form of a short story, with names changed, but with personas and events described accurately, as they had occurred: http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2011/05/guest-blog-from-my-friend-john-williams.html.  I urgently insist that all feminists, especially those considering themselves left feminists, read these, and pointedly note, if you don’t it will only be for willful blindness.  Though both women are now (thankfully) dead, their destructive legacies toward me live on, just proving that real women, as opposed to ideological stereotypes, can be very destructive to men, and though perhaps products, in a hidebound way, of patriarchy, can be every bit as destructive as male-dominated, male-generated patriarchy!

Further, and this properly reflects on my deep-seated atheism, which not only objects to faith in God or in gods, also pointedly notes the crass immorality, the convenient sinning, the winking at “divine” moral laws, admonitions, and strictures, of God- or gods-believers themselves.  My mother was Catholic, Jane Haldeman was Quaker:  yet both had an abiding belief in the Christian God and this God’s supposedly unbreakable and abiding love for all, which they effectively translated as “I can do whatever I want, as God, the Indulgent Sugar Daddy in the Sky, will certainly approve of all that I do.”  But both, as the blogs demonstrate, engaged in behaviors that can only be characterized as immoral, self-indulgent, cruel, insensitive, and responded to criticism of their behaviors with indignation and rationalizations! 

Confession number two:  I am a true feminist, believing and acting fully in accord with the notion that men and women are equal, deserve equal rights and protections under law, and have certainly been discriminated against in the past, some now which continues into the present, and that the harmful effects of such discrimination must be corrected and alleviated.  No one should be invidiously judged and slighted because of his/her sex or gender.  Equal rights for all.  Period.   Beyond that, however, I also believe women are equal to men in these respects as well:  they are every bit as capable as men in venality, stupidity, hypocrisy, cruelty, insensitivity, abuse, manipulation, special pleading, rationalization and outright lying, cheating, and every other moral vice as men are, and often act out such vices, same as men, and often to the same degree or more as men themselves!  They are not angels on a pedestal!  Furthermore, women are just as capable and culpable as men in parental child abuse, including “mere” verbal and emotional child abuse, as opposed to physical abuse (of which they are also fully capable, as the incarceration of women attests).  In fact, my mother was actually more abusive toward me than my father, who was also abusive, in this significant regard—as I knew my father was abusive and not to be trusted, my equally-abusive mother had a thin veneer of culture and intellect that beguiled me into trusting her, only to be betrayed by her over and over.  Yes, she differed from my father in being more treacherous, and her guile in this sucked me into her abusive vortex over and over again!

Then, taking a page from Lenin’s Imperialism, and analogous to his concept of the comprador bourgeoisie, is the matter of comprador women, women who, themselves victims of patriarchy, take the attitude of “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em,” and become agents of anti-woman patriarchy as women themselves!  Just as Chiang Kai-shek and the comprador Chinese under Guomindang rule, themselves victims of anti-Chinese racism from the Western colonialist powers and the Japanese, became effectively agents of these same racist powers!  Numerous examples, of course, abound in real life, of whom we might name just some of the more prominent:  Sarah Palin, Joni Ernst, Ann Coulter, Condoleeza Rice, and all those supermodel-looking female talking heads on Fox News.  Then there were those glass-ceiling-breaking neoliberal centrist feminists who avidly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, even those of avowedly “progressive” and “leftist” credentials such as Joan Walsh, Amanda Marcotte, and the man-trashing Sady Doyle, who tagged the Bernie Sanders candidacy as a chauvinistic white male campaign fueled by woman-hating “Bernie Bros,” and did so in the name of—allegedly “real feminism”!  Even going so far as to cavalierly and condescendingly dismiss those women who supported Bernie Sanders publicly—as did Madeleine Albright, who notably remarked, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” (i.e., Hillary Clinton); or former feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s (my, how the mighty have fallen!) dismissal of Bernie-supporting young women being in his campaign only because “That’s where the boys are,” i.e., they’re just boy-crazy and want to meet young men!

Sheesh!

Confession number three:  although feminism has (unevenly, to be sure) made discussion-worthy and raised individual and societal understanding of sexism, rape and rape culture, patriarchy, and sexual discrimination and harassment, its seduction by the siren calls of Postmodernism (a series of logical and material fallacies searching vainly to establish itself as a true philosophy), Political Correctness, and intersectionality/identity politics have only muddled and undermined these understandings, and reduced “sexism,” “rape and rape culture,” “male privilege,” (I do not like the word “privilege,” as real privilege is socio-economic—“advantage,” or even better, “comparative advantage,” are much superior terms) to hyperbolic swear words with which to label anyone who disagrees with, or even questions, our now massively self-righteous left.  This is especially revealing when we “unpack” (a word used by my former academic advisor) what they really mean as opposed to what they allegedly mean, and when we discuss what is actually sexism, rape, rape culture, and patriarchy form what they have come to mean by a most destructive Political Correctness.

Which brings me to my objection to #metoo’s “Believe all women.”  Even LeAnn Tweeden?  Or maybe precisely, don’t believe LeeAnn Tweeden!   Because of her public record and persona, readily available, as a pro-Trump Republican; a friend of Sean Hannity’s, and a frequent guest on his Fox News program; and an Obama Birther.  Not to mention that Tweeden herself has crafted her own professional persona as a raunchy woman, is a former Playboy nude model, frequently appears as a scantily-clad cheesecake model, is seen at that infamous 2006 USO show patting a male country singer on the buttocks (the same USO show she blasted Al Franken for, alleging he sexually abused her in a publicity photo of the kind common just a decade or more ago, before being “woke” came into fashion), and how conveniently her 7:00 AM radio broadcast on a sports station in Los Angeles was publicized 24 hours in advance by Republican operative Roger Stone, and served the purpose admirably of deflecting attention from 2018 Republican Alabama Senatorial candidate and established sexual predator Roy Moore onto Democrat and outspoken liberal Senator Al Franken!  Whereupon, Kristen Gillibrand and other incensed women Democrats formed a circular firing squad and demanded Franken’s resignation without even a hearing, a hearing Franken wanted and vowed to testify at!  I would say here, “woke” #metoo fell directly into a Republican trap carefully crafted for precisely that purpose; assuring that Democrats would finish the dirty work already undertaken by the Republicans!  Such naïvete, if it can be called that, and not horribly misplaced sanctimoniousness, among supposed political professionals, is indeed stupid.  As is the assumption, automatically assumed, that women themselves can never lie, dissemble, be partisan or opportunistic, or disingenuously shade the truth to make commonplaces for the time direct symbols of egregious guilt in these present “woke” times.  And of course, without giving Franken the opportunity to say anything in his defense or in explanation.  Such is indeed on par with the request made to a woman author to write an essay on “The Feminist Case against Due Process” (the woman writer, to her credit, turned down this assignment, and instead spoke out for freedom of speech and not automatic guilt-by-association). 

Unfortunately, our feminist “left,” like so much of what passes for “leftism” nowadays, clamors for “safe spaces” away from controversy and anything that might give “offense,” such as any views, no matter how polite or humanist in their expression (e.g., inclusive of both men as well as women, or pointing out the vulnerabilities that men themselves also face in their socially-stereotyped roles as “providers,” in being emotionally “stoic,” the rampant discrimination against males in divorce court and in child-custody matters, as women are automatically stereotyped as “better” because they’re more “maternal,” etc.) is frequently subjected to shouting-down, hostile and even violent counter-demonstrations, and other manifestations of what can only be called “left” thuggery and hooliganism.  Which is also ultimately counterproductive.  Want to give your opponent the air of sanctity, of simply defending “free speech” against tyrannical censorship?  Simply move to silence his/her expression of ideas and threaten and attempt to intimidate him/her with implicit or explicit violence and rage!  Why else do you think the right has been so effective in making the “left” today look like enemies of “free speech,” of fear of expressing “unpopular” ideas?  And really, feminists, do you think you and your causes are so threatened by speakers merely speaking against your viewpoints, or expressing what they might term a man’s point of view, or challenging your ideological premises or your carefully chosen and specially picked facts?  If these intimidate and scare you, feminists, then you are indeed no match intellectually or ethically to your opponents!

All this and more was brought home to me by seeing the 2016 documentary on the Men’s Rights Movement produced and narrated by a young feminist woman, The Red Pill.  Not only does the documentary reviewer bend over backward to be fair to both Men’s Rights advocates and their feminist critics (though, let it be mentioned, the Men’s Rights activists, when allowed to speak in their own words, come across not as misogynists, but as inclusive humanists who wish to give voice to both men’s as well as women’s concerns).  But, as the film pointedly notes, for a certain   of “far left” feminists, the enemy is not merely discrimination, or capitalism, or even class society (for in many a “socialist” country, both gender and massive economic inequality persisted, and even do so today), but instead, “patriarchy,” which not only has persisted since time immemorial, is present today almost totally unchallenged, and will persist in the future unless women become dominant, it is also males themselves, who are automatically “oppressors.”  Whereas women are not?  Not even Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Theresa May, or Angela Merkel?  And surely it is nonsense to talk of such heroic males and champions of all downtrodden as Eugene Debs, Bernie Sanders, Fighting Bob Lafollette, and others as “oppressors” by simple accident of birth!  Just as it is facile in the extreme to talk of women such as Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Melania Trump, Ivanka (Trump) Kushner, and by benefit of “intersectionality,” Condoleeza Rice, Candace Owens, and the two Trump-supporting African American sisters who host “Diamonds and Silk,” thus endearing themselves to Fox News, as all—victims of patriarchy! 

Fortunately, a woman with irreproachable feminist and humanistic credentials, Meryl Streep, has but it well and succinctly.   In a June 2019 interview with the magazine In Style, Streep pointedly stated: 

Sometimes, I think we’re hurt. We hurt our boys by calling something toxic masculinity. I do. And I don’t find [that] putting those two words together … because women can be pretty fucking toxic. It’s toxic people. We have our good angles, and we have our bad ones. I think the labels are less helpful than what we’re trying to get to, which is a communication, direct, between human beings. We’re all on the boat together. We’ve got to make it work.

And this sense of personhood, of it being not just a matter of male vs. female, but of persons of both genders and all sexual orientations and persuasions, trying to find their way to freedom, equality, dignity, and respect, is the humanist essence of why I call myself a male feminist, albeit, in some eyes, and with a sense of wryness, a “misogynist” one!