{"id":109,"date":"2010-11-10T09:16:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T09:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/why-catholics-dont-like-park51.html"},"modified":"2010-11-10T09:16:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T09:16:39","slug":"why-catholics-dont-like-park51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/why-catholics-dont-like-park51.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Catholics don’t like Park51"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like Josh Marshall<\/a>, I’ve been pondering the Gallup finding<\/a>
\nthat Catholics are significantly more likely than “Protestants\/Other
\nChristians” to favor finding another location for the Park51 Islamic
\nCenter. Given that Protestants in the aggregate are, on most public
\nissues, more conservative than Catholics–and given that American
\nCatholics tend to recollect their own disfavored religious status in
\nthis country–why do 63 percent of Catholics want to see Park51 moved,
\nas opposed to 49 percent of the Protestants\/Other Christians?<\/p>\n

I posed this question to my learned sidekick Andrew Walsh, who
\nimmediately replied with what seems to me the right answer: Catholicism
\nvery much regards the creation of a place of worship as the
\nestablishment of spiritual control over territory. Consider all the
\npagan temples that were transformed into–or built over as–Christian
\nchurches in Rome. Or the Grand Mosque in Cordoba<\/a>–consecrated
\nas a cathedral after Cordoba’s reconquest in 13th century (setting the
\nstage for the mosquification of Hagia Sophia after the Turkish conquest
\nof Constantinople in 1453). <\/p>\n

Closer to home, the difficulty of decommissioning Catholic churches in
\nAmerica these days is precisely related to the fact that these churches
\nwere built to be permanent markers of geographic parishes. Catholics
\nrecognize the closing of a church as a species of spiritual surrender.
\nBy contrast, Protestants consider houses of worship more as convenient
\nhomes for where the congregants happen to be. For Jews, it’s all about
\nthe where the Torahs are, and Torahs are all about being marched from
\nplace to place. (These facts lie at the core of Gerald Gamm’s fine
\nstudy, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed<\/a>.) Jews are somewhat less inclined than Protestants to favor moving Park51.<\/p>\n

In a word, Catholics are more likely than most of the rest of us to see
\nPark51 as an assertion of power over territory beyond itself–extending
\nto Ground Zero–and they don’t like it. Interestingly, Mormons favor
\nmoving Park51 almost as much as Catholics do–perhaps reflecting the LDS
\nunderstanding of what it means to build a new temple for their Zionic
\ncommunities. (Mormons are least interested in changing it to an
\ninterfaith institution because, well, Mormons don’t do interfaith.) As
\nfor the Muslims themselves, a 43 percent plurality favored building
\nPark51 as planned–which doesn’t say anything much about how Muslims
\nview mosque-building as such.<\/p>\n

Of course, in America, you pretty much have a right to build your house
\nof worship wherever you want, and to keep it open for as long as you
\ncare to and can afford to. Your understanding of the symbolic
\nsignificance of doing so–or anyone else’s–is, legally, irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Josh Marshall, I’ve been pondering the Gallup finding that Catholics are significantly more likely than “Protestants\/Other Christians” to favor finding another location for the Park51 Islamic Center. Given that Protestants in the aggregate are, on most public issues, more conservative than Catholics–and given that American Catholics tend to recollect their own disfavored religious status…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Catholics don't like Park51 - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/why-catholics-dont-like-park51.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Catholics don't like Park51 - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Like Josh Marshall, I’ve been pondering the Gallup finding that Catholics are significantly more likely than “Protestants\/Other Christians” to favor finding another location for the Park51 Islamic Center. Given that Protestants in the aggregate are, on most public issues, more conservative than Catholics–and given that American Catholics tend to recollect their own disfavored religious status…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/why-catholics-dont-like-park51.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-10T09:16:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why Catholics don't like Park51 - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/why-catholics-dont-like-park51.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Catholics don't like Park51 - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Like Josh Marshall, I’ve been pondering the Gallup finding that Catholics are significantly more likely than “Protestants\/Other Christians” to favor finding another location for the Park51 Islamic Center. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}