By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
When you hear someone use the term “schadenfreude,” you are not hearing a compliment. The standard definition of the German word (literally translated “harm-joy”) is “taking pleasure in the misfortune of another.” It is a frame of mind that implies mean-spiritedness, envy, insecurity.
But it is not that simple. While engaging in schadenfreude may indicate a character flaw, we use other words and expressions with a similar meaning to denote a more lofty frame of mind, figures of speech that send the message that it is entirely proper for us to take satisfaction in watching the tables get turned on those who deserve it.
There are many examples: When we say someone was “knocked off his high horse,” experienced some “comeuppance,” or learned that “what goes around, comes around,” we are making the point that there is nothing wrong with taking some pleasure in the spectacle of a holier-than-thou individual being brought down to earth.
One of my favorite examples took place in the old 1970s All in the Family television program. You may remember the episode. It featured “Meathead,” the term used by Archie Bunker for his son-in-law, played by Rob Reiner. Meathead was a textbook example of the self-righteous bearded, booted, beaded leftists of the time, constantly mocking Archie for his prejudices about blacks and the poor, a walking encyclopedia of the behaviorist, criminal-as-victim explanations for urban crime. One night, two black burglars break into Archie’s house, holding guns on the family, while demanding the family’s possessions. Archie sits there bristling in anger.
But not Meathead. He attempts to win the burglars’ sympathy with an earnest recitation of the stock clichés about the societal causes of crime. One of the burglars raises his eyebrows and exclaims, “We have a liberal!” — and orders Meathead to hand over whatever is in his pockets. The studio audience laughed uproariously. One must assume that even liberals joined in the merriment. Everyone got the point: that not every criminal was a misunderstood youth. Some were just bad guys.
I have no intention of putting Pope Francis in the same category as Meathead; no interest in using terms such as “comeuppance” in reference to him. None. But there are certain parallels that deserve to be noted. The Magisterium does not extend to making sound judgments about the best way to interact with those who openly define themselves as adversaries of Catholicism.
I submit that there is nothing out of line about hoping that the Pope went through a teachable moment when he sat down at the White House with President Obama in late September — and discovered who was invited to share the evening with him; that he, like Meathead, learned quickly that some bad guys are just bad guys, and that while it may be nice to be nice, there are times when it can be ill-advised.
There is nothing disrespectful about an individual Catholic hoping that the White House experience will show Pope Francis why the Popes who preceded him did not assume that a deferential posture toward critics of the Church always made more sense that a firm defense of the Church and its teachings; why they never assumed that all that was necessary for a new era of peace and reconciliation was for the Church to ease up and present a kinder and gentler face to the world, along with the hint of an eagerness to “reform” itself.
There is nothing wrong with us hoping that Pope Francis realized sometime during that night in the White House there are people who wish us ill, and who know it, and are proud of it; that it is not just a misunderstanding brought on by historical circumstances that keeps us apart, but their fundamental hostility to what the Church represents; that they do not want reconciliation with Rome, but surrender; that they do not want to “dialogue” with a Pope — until he says something along the lines of, “Oops, you were right. The Church was wrong an all these things all along, and it is now time to admit it.”
You have to give Obama credit. He may lack the backbone needed to stand tall against men like Vladimir Putin and the leaders of ISIS, but he is willing to get in your face with the Catholic Church. There is no other way to interpret the guest list he put together to greet the Pontiff. It was a slap in the face to Francis and America’s Catholics. (His recent appointment of an open homosexual as the civilian secretary of the U.S. Army is not unrelated.)
Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson was one of the invitees. He is the first openly homosexual episcopal bishop. Robinson recently divorced his “partner,” after divorcing his wife to marry him. Also on the list was Mateo Williamson, a cross-dressing woman and former co-chairman of the Transgender Caucus for Dignity USA. Sr. Simone Campbell was invited too. She is the pro-abortion rights executive director of NETWORK, the social justice lobby that organized the “Nuns on the Bus” tour to promote the Democratic Party’s social agenda.
There’s more. Vivian Taylor was invited. She is the male transvestite who until recently headed Integrity USA, a homosexual and transgender activist wing of the Episcopal Church. “A few months ago,” Taylor told CNS News, “I received an invitation from the White House to attend the reception for Pope Francis, and was told I could bring some LGBT friends with me.”
If these invitations did not actually go out, you would think you were looking at the script for a Saturday Night Live spoof of the Pope’s reception. But they did go out.
To appreciate the enormity of this insult to the Church, make some comparisons. Do you think Obama would invite to a conference with Muslim leaders a group of publishers who have organized a campaign to make the world aware of the killing of editorial cartoonists by militant Muslims? Do you think Obama would invite to a conference with Jewish leaders representatives of the Jews for Jesus movement? Or a committee dedicated to the canonization of Fr. Junipero Serra to White House conference on Native American concerns? You get the point.
Obama would not make these invitations. He would have too much respect for the religious leaders in question. He would have too much respect for their followers. He would realize that a White House dinner honoring a religious leader is not the place to imply a moral equivalence between the views of that leader and the religion he represents and those of dissenters.
Moreover, Obama would not do that because he would intuit correctly that those leaders would not stand for such a public display of disrespect; that they would speak out forcefully to the media. He would take it for granted that they take seriously their beliefs and their responsibility to defend them. (If the Pope did not take umbrage at how he was treated by Obama, he should have, if not for his own sake, for the sake of the world’s faithful Catholics.)
I am not charging Pope Francis with intending to give Obama and those who helped him put together this guest list the impression that he is any less committed to defend the Church and its teachings than the leaders of the world’s other great religions are committed to their religious beliefs, but it seems to me clear that such an impression has been conveyed.
It is a situation that needs some attending to.
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