By Ron Scott Smith
I had to see what the fuss was all about, so the other day that was me in the corner, the corner of Temple and Grand, downtown, getting a first hand look at the grand new Catholic monument to the life and works of Jesus.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels occupies two full city blocks and there’s something about it I can’t put my finger on. It’s all straight lines and strong walls. They proudly announce that the elements making up the structure total 151 million pounds, with each of the magnificent bronze doors weighing in at 25,000 pounds. What an amazing and transcendent life Jesus lived, to be revered by millions of us — 25,000 pounds per door and 2000 years later. To be honored with such monumental opulence, I wonder what he’d say.
The church opened for business on Sept. 2, and the timing was probably not the best, this being a not so good year for Catholics. The $200 million spent to build it has suddenly become money that may have been better used settling lawsuits brought by countless faithful, who as innocent children, were sexually violated by robed men of God in the back rooms of parishes across this nation. And now scores of social workers on the LA Catholic payrolls are being laid off in an effort to close a $4.3 million deficit brought on in large part by said lawsuits and said building costs. Hopefully none of these newly unemployed will end up with the thousands already sleeping in the imposing shadows of the new church — out there in cardboard boxes on the street.
Houston, we have a problem. New York, LA, and Boston, too. Cardinal Law — your Boston. Name that city. Miami, Kabul, London, Ramallah, Paris, Tel Aviv … we have a problem. Baghdad, you don’t even want to know. So what’s the problem? Not the economy … it’s the religion, stupid.
It’s been a bad year for religion everywhere on earth.
Little things like guys flying commercial jetliners into buildings in the name of Allah. Things like terrorist boys and girls strapping bombs to their chests and blowing themselves — and anybody else who may have happened to be enjoying a slice of pizza at any given moment in any town in Israel — to smithereens — in the name of the same Allah. These lost young humans do this because the bad guys on the other side — in the name of their own holy Moses — have stolen their homeland, so they say, and use the even more lethal state-sanctioned terrorism to hold onto it. Meanwhile, Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims aren’t being real neighborly or divine, as they sit with fully loaded nuclear arsenals aimed at each other to protect and defend self-assured visions of their respective Gods.
But this worldwide mayhem in the name of religion isn’t anything new, and Christians aren’t without their share of shame and blame. The blood they spilled and walked through in the Crusades long ago is not yet forgotten and in fact still motivates the radical part of Islam in their holy Jihad to destroy the “infidels.” Tell me. How does it feel to be an “infidel?”
GW Bush, exactly the wrong man in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, used that “C” word to characterize what the U.S. response to the deadly 9/11 attacks would be. Repeatedly declaring the current crisis as a battle between Good and Evil, he sets the stage for the kind of intercivilizational holy war that Muslim leaders like Bin Laden are already said to be longing for. The true-believing Al Qaeda suicide soldiers don’t need fuel added to their fire by the true-believing Texan.
So Bush began — and apparently it’s only the beginning — by blasting the Taliban out of Afghanistan. Not that any rational human being was sorry to see them go. Not a real nice group of fellows these Taliban. They provided a homeland for the training of international murderous zealots. But the terror they inflicted on their own women by forcing them to hide their faces from the sun beneath long sexless blue robes, under the threat of physical beatings, was even more sinister. And all done in the name of — there he is again — Allah.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Christian leaders and prophets such as Falwell and Robertson preach to millions of followers in their own Taliban-like style. In the name of love they lash out at any lifestyle deemed to be outside their parameters, their God-given parameters. In fact, the 9/11 atrocities, so they said, were brought on by the decadence befalling our left-leaning campuses and our barely leaning inner cities. God was mad at the adulterers and the gays, the thieves and the shiftless, and so this was His response. Under public fire, those hateful words spoken in the name of Jesus were taken back, but you know where they came from.
Only good intentions led Bin Laden to plot the mass murder of our thousands on September 11. And only good intentions propelled the 19 killer hijackers to take control of those jets and turn them into deadly missiles full of people. The suicide bombers in Palestine? Only the best intentions. India and Pakistan, Falwell and Robertson, even the pedophile priests? Good intentions — all in the name of their chosen prophet.
But somewhere tonight, Jesus and Muhammad, Moses and Buddha too, may be weeping for their over-zealous, good-intentioned minions, and for the absolute sorry mess they’re making out of this planet in their name. They know where the road paved with good intentions too often leads.
My road led me home from that new cathedral last Sunday, past an old auto repair shop on Pico. Instead of 25,000 pound bronze ones, it had those cheap metal rollup doors where broken down cars used to pull in for new water pumps or timing chains. Those doors were painted over with these words: “Iglesia de Dios.” It was a church. Every bit the church as the much bigger one a few blocks back. Jesus would probably love it at least as much. It made me think about the giant new Cathedral one last time, and now I could put my finger on it.
It looked like a fortress, ready for battle. (To reach Ron Scott Smith )
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 25, 2002. Read the original PDF.