Psychology Today Blogs - Saints and Scoundrels

The Way Obama Speaks

John E. Portmann, Ph.D. — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:56:55 -0700

The preachy tone of Obama will not appeal to many Roman Catholic voters in Pennsylvania or elsewhere. The media has made much of "the black vote" in the run-up to the 2008 election, but little has been said about "the Catholic vote." Roman Catholics comprise a much, much larger slice of the electorate than African-Americans, which can make it even more difficult to generalize about "the Catholic vote" than it is to generalize about "the black vote." Still, though, we try endlessly.

Obama narrowly won the state of Connecticut, which is particularly rich in Catholic voters. But Hillary has won the Catholic strongholds of Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and California. Pennsylvania is likely to go her way as well. While Mrs. Clinton is not a Catholic, she avoids the preachy tone Obama has often used.

Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants differ in many ways. Until gay marriage became a burning social issue in the late 1990s, Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants rarely banded together. When it seemed that Hawaii might legalize gay marriage, though, Conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants agreed to join forces to fight not only gay marriage but abortion as well. That political alliance overcame more than a century of distrust and distance between American Catholics and Protestants.

One of many differences between these two cultures is preaching style. Obama follows the example of many black preachers and civil rights leaders in the way he speaks; this style will strike many Catholics as foreign. It's not so much that Catholics don't like it (although they don't much care for it) as it is that they just aren't used to it. The tone will strike many Catholics as self-righteous, accusing, holier-than-thou. At the same time, the emotional tone of many Protestant preachers will appeal to many, for the way it spoons out emotion and conviction. Catholics, generally speaking, are accustomed to a solemn monotone which communicates a different kind of certainty - it's almost as if (mostly white) Catholic priests say "I have God on my side, and so I don't need to try to persuade you."

How very interesting that when Obama gave his much-discussed speech in Philadelphia, a denunciation of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he abandoned the evangelizing tone and spoke like an ordinary guy from New Jersey. Obama clearly knows what he is doing, and he will drop the preachy tone when it suits him. The potential problem here is that Obama's inconsistent tone may feed into cultural confusion, as he sometimes sounds like Martin Luther King, Jr. and, at other times, like many a white politician.

To the extent that voters choose to back someone they feel comfortable with, Obama would do well to approach Catholic voters in Pennsylvania in the vocal tone he used to great effect in the Philadelphia speech prompted by Rev. Wright. In order to distance himself from Wright, Obama spoke in a tone that contrasted with, rather than mirrored, his own pastor's. Catholic voters in Pennsylvania -perhaps as many as one out of every three who turn out on the 22nd- are noticing the way Obama speaks to them.

A Pope in a Synagogue?

John E. Portmann, Ph.D. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:53:05 -0700

The Vatican recently announced that Pope Benedict XVI will squeeze into his bulging New York schedule a visit to a prominent synagogue on Park Avenue. What do Jews want from him? Why will the visit take place? A pope would seem to be as out of place in a synagogue as Jews are in Catholic heaven.

It turns out that Benedict's entrance to the sacred space on Park Avenue will mark only the third papal visit to a synagogue in modern history. It was John Paul II (d. 2005) who made the other visits (John XXIII, "the good pope," as he is called by Italians, was driven to the synagogue of Rome in the early 1960s but never actually entered it). Praised by some Jewish leaders for his repeated efforts to repair Jewish-Catholic relations and for various apologies to the international Jewish community (most notably in 2000), John Paul II can be said to have paved the way to Benedict's synagogue visit next week.

The Jews in the Park Avenue synagogue will surely not pester the pontiff with questions about why the papal states forced Jews to live in ghettos for centuries, why the Vatican declared Edith Stein a saint against the wishes of the international Jewish community, or the possible canonization of Pope Pius XII ("Hitler's Pope," as the English journalist John Cornwell has perhaps unfairly called him). The Jews on Park Avenue may be thinking about the sad history of Catholic anti-Semitism, but they will not speak about it in plain terms. Instead, the New Yorkers in that synagogue will reflect on the curious atonement of their would-be Catholic friends.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) transformed contemporary Catholicism. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the current pope and his well-informed flock are still sorting through the considerable changes wrought by that historic "aggiornomento" (updating). The council document Nostra Aetate (In Our Time, 1965) strictly forbids violence toward or hatred of Jews. No Catholic may call a Jew "Christ-killer." That document was published / released a year after Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 1964). Nostra Aetate deepens the ecumenical message of Lumen Gentium, perhaps the most frequently cited document of Vatican II. According to Lumen Gentium:

those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways. There is, first that people to which the covenants and promises were made, and from which Christ was born according to the flesh (cf. Romans 9:4-5): in view of the divine choice, they are a people most dear from the sake of the fathers, for the gifts of God are without repentance (cf. Romans 11:29-29).

Referring not explicitly to Jews, Lumen Gentium states:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience -- those too may achieve eternal salvation.

I believe it is possible to read Lumen Gentium in such a way as to conclude that the Vatican was opening itself to the possibility that Jews could get to heaven too -- not by converting to Catholicism, as they Church had long insisted, but simply by being good Jews.

Opening up Catholic heaven to pious Jews should strike even hardened cynics as a remarkably generous gesture, one that indicates the extent to which the Catholic Church is willing to reach in order to atone for the past. Anyone who wonders why on earth Jews would care to be admitted to a place in which they patently do not believe (that is, Catholic heaven) will have a hard time understanding why the synagogue on Park Avenue waits with some enthusiasm to welcome Benedict to their holy space.

Hillary Schadenfreude

John E. Portmann, Ph.D. — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:08:27 -0700

Why are so many Americans enjoying the struggle of Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee for the presidency? She may be down, but she is not out. Even if she pulls through, still it remains that plenty of bystanders enjoyed the prospect of her defeat.

The German word Schadenfreude made its way into the English language despite the efforts of a nineteenth-century English bishop to bar the gates to it. This prelate thought that if Britons were to have a word for pleasure in the misery of another person, suddenly good souls all over England -and indeed the English-speaking world- would start feeling gleeful when bad things happened to other people. What is remarkable about his efforts is that he used the word in the course of instructing English speakers never to learn it and, moreover, that he assumed only Germans had ever felt this pleasure. Not bloody likely.

Schadenfreude must be a universal emotion, occurring to nearly everyone on a fairly regular basis. Although some moral thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, have vilified the emotion and suggested that only evil people feel it, other philosophers, such as Kant, have insisted that it is only natural to feel good when bad people get their just desserts. The big trouble remains deciding on what other people deserve. Our understanding of what, say, black people or gay people or Jewish people deserve has evolved over time.

We hardly need a poll to confirm that many Americans believe Hillary Clinton does not deserve to be president. It seems some people also believe she needs to be taken down a peg or two as well. Is it justice that demands she suffer public defeat, even humiliation? Or is it envy? Could it be that a woman with the best education money can buy and a well of ambition deeper than the lake of George Bush's blunders has intimidated some Americans? When bad things happen to Barack, we bite our tongue; when bad things happen to Hillary, we smile.

It seems hard to pinpoint precisely what she has done wrong, precisely why some of us (even Maureen Dowd?) want to see her brought low. The other day NPR broadcast a lengthy interview with individual Pennsylvanians on the issue of the upcoming primary. One man stated openly that he simply could not forgive Hillary for having stood by her husband during the Monica Lewinsky brouhaha. How can we justify such a position? And how many American women have stood beside philandering husbands? Who will blame Coretta Scott King for her patience? Who will kick Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the pantheon of American role models because of his "weakness for the ladies"? And who can blame Hillary Clinton for what was likely a very difficult decision (one which was, of course, none of our business)?

Schadenfreude provides a window on contemporary culture as useful as any Gallup poll. It is one thing to celebrate the suffering of a hypocrite such as Eliot Spitzer, but quite another to celebrate the uphill battle of Hillary Clinton. The Schadenfreude she has kicked up on American television and radio reflects very badly on us. The glee points up our sense of inferiority. Should she eventually be forced out of the race, some Americans will feel not just satisfaction but outright joy. The smiles of those who would uncork champagne bottles over her tumble should prompt all Americans to ponder whether a woman even had a chance. It hardly seems fair to blame Hillary for our own character flaws.