History Forum / General / British History / December 2003

PEGGY NOONAN

"The Banners
Why are rich people afraid of the Virgin Mary?"

Monday, December 29, 2003
The Wall Street Journal

"We have all seen the stories this Christmas season--they are not new,
they are only more so--of the local struggles between what I suppose
might be called the forces of modernity versus the forces of faith.
Tussles in schools and townships over the Christmas display, the prayer,
the T-shirt, the cross, the statue of Mary. It's all a continuation of
what Michael Kinsley once sardonically referred to as the creche menace.
But it has moved beyond the creche: It is increasingly a movement to ban
on all public property--and pretty much in public, period--the signs and
symbols of a religious holiday that roughly 90% of Americans celebrate.
It doesn't even have to be Christmas-related. Last week there was the
story of the Florida housing group that banned a statue of the Virgin
Mary from the front of a house in the community.

They are very busy, The Banners. They seemed to have calmed down after
9/11, when half the country exploded with spontaneously put-forward
religious symbols (crosses, votive candles, cards with saints' faces),
and it was somehow . . . allowed. Shock shook The Banners into
reasonableness; tragedy concentrated their minds; they retreated. But
now they are back, and it is the meaning and actuality of 9/11 that has
receded.

The motives of The Banners are mixed. Some seem to have aesthetic
distaste for religious symbolism that is the outward and visible
expression of an inner distaste for religion itself--it's old fashioned,
unworldly, very booga booga woo woo, which can't be helpful, can it?
Some of The Banners seem driven by malice and the impulse to bully--your
religion is not my religion, so it will not be mentioned in public, bub,
no matter what the holiday or how many celebrate it.
But some of The Banners mean well and believe their efforts are
constructive. They believe that assertions of religious belief are
inherently divisive, that to put forward the symbols of belief is
threatening to society's peace. They believe that the displaying of the
symbols of one faith is an implicit denial of the beliefs of another
faith. They do not think that faith is part of the answer; they think it
is a big part of the problem (see fundamentalist Islam; see the
protracted war in Northern Ireland). They think that if only people
would stop being religious, we wouldn't have religion around roiling
people's emotions and making them violent. (If you say to them, "Man is
prone to violence, and one of the things that tends to make his heart
gentle is faith in God," their eyes widen in shock: That couldn't
possibly be true!)

I have witnessed these arguments close up--I suppose everyone in the
country has--and I have learned something. And I didn't want to let the
season end without saying it. I learned what I learned by talking to
mothers as they debated these issues outside school. This was years ago,
when my son was in grade school.
This is what I learned: Censoring doesn't work. Accommodation does. But
a particular kind of accommodation.

The answer is not banning religious symbols. This brings resentment and
engenders a quiet seething that does not encourage peace and
understanding.

The answer is not to banish religious symbols from the public square.
The answer--the pro-peace position if you will--is to fill the public
square with the signs and symbols of faith. It is not to banish them
from the schools, it is to teach them in the schools.

The answer is not to present in the school's display case the sorry
little compromise of the 1990s--the tired little Santa and the dusty
dreidel. The answer is to display a menorah and explain what it is, and
its history, and what it means to Jews. The answer is to display a
crucifix or a cross and explain what it means to Christians. And, yes,
the answer is to show a Koran and explain what it is. The answer is not
to ban Christmas carols from the school pageant but to sing them; they
are part of our culture and history, and they are beautiful. And there
are other religious songs that are not Christian. Sing them too.

The answer is not to banish belief but to bring it in and explain it in
loving terms to our hungry-minded children. This will truly teach them
appreciation and diversity and respect and regard for others. We, their
parents, are limiting them and harming them by hiding the things of
faith, or forcing them underground. They deserve light.

I'll end with a happy story. A few years back I had a small patch of
patio in Manhattan, in an apartment building up in the 90s off Park
Avenue. It was a little outdoor area overlooked by scores of apartments.
The patio was empty and sad looking when I got there, so I started to
put in some flowers and bushes and then I put out a two-foot-high
plaster statue of the Blessed Mother. It was as if I'd summoned the
forces of hell. Maybe I had. One neighbor started putting flyers under
my door explaining that idolatry and Mary-worship consigns its
unfortunate devotees to hell. Other neighbors complained about the
garden. People got mad.

I was taken aback. I think part of it had to do with class. You can tool
the streets of working class Lodi, N.J., and see little Marys in the
front and back yards and no one says boo. But you can go from one end of
Park Avenue to the other, and never--and I mean never--see a Virgin Mary
in a window or a roof garden. I know. I have searched. There are
Catholics on Park Avenue, but mostly there are rich people. And believe
me the rich of Manhattan seem either not to like religious symbols or
they know to keep them to themselves. Display is vulgar (and
working-class).

The rich are lucky, but they are also human. Like most humans they think
they have what they have only because of their efforts; or, as is often
the case in America, they've been lucky so long they think they deserve
it. They think they got it because they made better decisions and more
sober choices. I think they forget God had anything to do with it.
Displaying the signs and symbols of faith is just not very . . . Park
Avenue.

Anyway, putting Mary out there in a public space engendered resentment.
Mary--poor Mary, the most peaceful and loving of women--was causing
quite a fuss. So I took Mary into the house, and she lived for three
years in a closet. Then I moved to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn there was
another patch of land, another patio area. With flowers and bushes it
could be beautiful. So I hired a local landscaper, and I showed her
Mary. I told her I really wanted to put the statue outside but I didn't
want to cause trouble with the neighbors. I told her of my problems in
Manhattan. The landscaper looked at me, perplexed. Finally she spoke.
"This is Brooklyn," she said. "You can do Mary here." And so I did, and
she is out there now.

There's a big Mary of Fatima across the street at the local church, too,
so I am surrounded by Mary. My having her there is my way of saying, "A
likeness of the beauty and sweetness of the mother of God is here in my
garden and I hope it brings you peace." No one has complained. No one
has said a thing.

When the PC talking points came out in 1985 no one sent Brooklyn the
memo. We have mezuzahs and Marys all over the place. We have a vital
synagogue and social center just down the block, and the headquarters of
the Jehovah's witnesses down the other; the synagogue is next to a home
for Franciscan priests. A few blocks away on Atlantic Avenue the mosques
are next to the Baptist churches. One of my neighbors is an ardent
Lebanese Maronite, and another is a lover of Buddha. He keeps a statue
in the window.

This is actual diversity. Everyone gets to be, we don't fear faith. May
the world in 2004 be more like Brooklyn, and may its arguments over
religion and the public square be solved the Brooklyn way."

"Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and
author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal
Books/Simon & Schuster)...."
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Deus Vult

D. Spencer Hines

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Vires et Honor