Angry, scary men in black

So - I went to the Muvico Egyptian 24 at Arundel Mills today to see A Prarie Home Companion (which I enjoyed very much), and on road outside the mall proper (which is private property) there was a large group of men (possibly some women, across the street, but I couldn't tell) wearing black suits and carrying black and red banners and chanting one line over and over (Holy Mary pray for us sinners! now and at the hour of our death (emphasis very definitely theirs)), and carrying signs and posters urging us to honk if we hated the blasphemous film The DaVinci Code, telling us that blasphemy in fiction was still blasphemy, and other such slogans.

I don't know who they were. I presume they were Catholics. I wonder if they were from Opus Dei, or some other group.

I was sorely tempted to pick up several copies of the book at the BAM there and hand (or toss) them to the guys when we left (just as well I didn't, as they were gone by the time we left the mall). But there were far too many of them, and they were intimidating - all these guys, dressed alike, chanting and waving signs, and getting angry when we didn't honk (we were stuck there for the entire cycle of the light, trying to make a left turn, and they were on the median strip, not a yard away, so we couldn't avoid eye-contact entirely) - any interaction with them was definitely contra-indicated. They didn't want a conversation: they wanted compliance.

So we didn't talk to them. But what I thought - and said to my friend - was, "This is why we don't want them in charge of the country."

I mean - blasphemy? They want the movie banned because it's blasphemous? What next - shutting down the Harry Potter franchise? Plenty of Christians feel that's blasphemous, after all.

I get it: they feel their faith has been insulted by the movie (the book, too, I imagine, though they aren't out there picketing bookstores). But it's not enough for them to refuse to watch the movie. Those guys want to shut that movie down. They probably want to ban the book as well, but again, these fellows weren't out there saying "Honk if you hate the blasphemous book". It's the movie that has them agitated.

I understand that - a picture's worth a thousand words, and more people watch movies than read books, even best-selling novels. You don't have to be a reader-for-pleasure (and many people aren't) to see a movie. You don't even have to be literate. Movies are pictures, and pictures are 'realer' than mere words. Movies are a much, much bigger threat than books.

That's why they picket the movie, but not the book, though several of their signs aren't true of the movie. It doesn't deny Jesus's divinity (question it, yes, but not deny it), and neither of them deny the Crucifixion. The source material may deny that, but nowhere in Dan Brown's stuff is the charge made that Jesus faked his death. Mary Magdalene fled to Europe "after the Crucifixion" and alone, not with her husband... But of course, to question is, for people like this, tantamount to denial. And questioning cannot be allowed.

I imagine that these guys wish they were back in charge of movies, with the "Hays" Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency, but it's been since the early 50s that they had that kind of clout - and since the movies were considered not to have First Amendment status, for that matter. So they have the right not to watch the movie, or buy the book, but that's not good enough. They don't want anyone else to watch or read, either.

I'm sorry their faith is so easily bruised. But that's their problem. And I mean that: it's not my problem. If I don't believe in their god I can't blaspheme; blasphemy is "indignity offered to God in speaking, writing, or signs" according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. (Merriam-Webster, 2002) and you can't offer an idignity to something that doesn't exist. Or do they admit that their (Catholic, as evidenced by the DECLARATION "DOMINUS IESUS" ON THE UNICITY AND SALVIFIC UNIVERSALITY OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE CHURCH made by Pope John Paul II in 2000, which explicitly calls the Roman Catholic Church the "one true religion") opposition and condemnation of other gods is, indeed, blasphemy against them?

Blasphemy should not be a crime that the state is concerned with. As Thomas Jefferson remarked, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." In this country, a person's religion is between himself and his god(s) and is no one else's business. Setting up blasphemy laws - even such mild ones as the Production Code - violates the firm belief of our Founders that the further government was held from religion, the better off religion would be. After all, the power to sanction cuts both ways, and once government is allowed to choose one religion, it's been granted the power to choose another.

The arrogance of groups like these picketeers apparently prohibits them from seeing that they could fall victim to this themselves - what happens if the country tilts way to the fundamentalist Protestant side? Praying to Mary as they were doing (even though such mindless chanting is far from prayer in my book) is blasphemous to many Protestants - an irony of the whole DaVinci Code phenomenon is that with all its talk of "the sacred feminine" Mary the mother of Christ, whose devotion is the Catholic answer to goddess worship, is completely ignored (although the Magdalene is merely the sacred womb, mother of Jesus's heir, not a divinity in her own right, just Mary at one remove). The mere existence of a statue or a crucifix could become blasphemous - many's the Protestant theologian who thinks Catholic saints' statues are idols and prohibited by the Ten Commandments. They don't think like that - they (and their Protestant brethren (cousins?)) refuse to understand the wisdom of the Founders' decision to quarantine religion from the government - for the protection of both institutions. Instead, they want the right to force everyone to behave as if they were members of their sect(s).

Blasphemy is an internal religious offense. It is not a civil offense, much less a criminal one, not in this country at any rate, not now. And never again. Never again must any religion be able to force others to speak as though they believe its tenets.

(The good news is, only one car passing them in that entire time actually honked.)