Wicca Smackdown: Starhawk calls out the Pope!
Tuesday April 14, 2009
She demands: Apologize or...Well, not sure what the stick is, but I wouldn't want to find out. Starhawk, one of the nation's most prominent advocates for Wicca, the modern-day reincarnation of neo-paganism, has an "On Faith" column at the WaPo today...
Filed Under: Africa, apology, Catholic Church, Christianity, Pope Benedict XVI, Starhawk, superstition, Wicca, witches
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About Pontifications
This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Catholicism in our Catholic forums.
David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer who specializes in writing about the Catholic Church, which he joined as a convert at the age of 30. He is the author The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. He also wrote The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism. He has written about Catholicism for leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Boston magazine, Fortune, Commonweal, and America. Gibson worked in Rome for Vatican Radio for several years and traveled frequently with Pope John Paul II. He later covered religion for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He has co-written several recent documentaries on Christianity for CNN. For further information check out his website at dgibson.com.Search This Blog
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I think you are right. She said nothing about the abuse of children who are accused of being witches in Africa. I think this is her big chance for a fifteen minute shot at fame, by taking a pot shot at the pope who at least tried to do something positive.
David,
Several Pagans have commented on the ongoing problem of witch-killings in places like Africa, India, and the Middle-East. That you "didn't see it" is most likely a symptom of you not bothering to look, not that we haven't been trying to grapple with this issue. In fact, there are modern Pagan communities in South Africa and India that are directly affected by these issues.
You criticize Starhawk for not admitting that "imagination, intution, and magic" can fuel abuses, but I could just as readily level the same sort of criticism at Benedict for not admitting how a hierarchal and patriarchal religious system can lead to the abuses the Catholic Church has been dealing with for the past twenty years. Benedict also doesn't address how many of the "witch-hunters" and witch-accusers identify as Christian themselves. Wasn't faith in Jesus supposed to eliminate fear of the "occult"?
in Africa, we have seen a spate of killings done by witches (as the word witch is understood in African culture). So called Muti killings, the murder of albinos for their body parts, and so forth are not instances of anti-wirchcraft violence, but instances of witches committing violence. What moves them to commit this violence is a perverted version of precisely the "imagination, intuition, and magic" that Starhawk seems so enamoured with. If people in your community were killing children so they could use their eyes in magic rituals designed to reveal lotto numbers (I'm not making this up), you might react violently as well.
To Gerrit D: The spate of killings in Africa has not just been done by witches, but to witches too.
What you seem to be missing is that the Catholic church has apologized for many of the bad things they have done over the centuries, but this is one of the things they haven't.
It might actually in the future help those in Africa, India, etc.; which was described by the Church as evil (you remember when the white man came to these lands, before they indgienous peoples didn't see witchcraft as evil).
I have rarely seen Starhawk refer to herself as practicing "Wicca." Are you perhaps not doing your own research? Because Wicca and Witchcraft in modern day usage are not the same thing.
Dear "Your Name"
I think any objective study of folklore and myth involving witches or practitioners of magic in almost all world cultures would find that they were at best considered capable of either help or great harm, and that they have always been viewed with at least some suspicion. Your claim that they were only regarded as evil in Africa as a result of European influence strikes me as extremely suspicious.
I never denied that there is violence being done to innocent people in the nae of witch hunts, by the way, I only pointed out that there is also violence being done to innocent people by self-professed witches in Africa as well. Things are nowhere near as one-sided as Starhawk would like us to believe.
Not sure why Gibson focuses on witches from within Starhawk's column as she calls for a catholic apology to "...Witches, Pagans and those they deemed 'heretics'." Heretics, of course, being the christian sects that suffered the same fate for refusing the Roman emperor/pope and his minions their self-righteous dues.
The "various apologies" offered thus far read like "yeah it was all bad behavior except for the the behavior that wasn't." Examinations of conscience - what a dim-bulb cop out.
The fact remains the Abrahamic belief (and that of all sects that ride the coat tail of Abraham's covenant with a lesser Semitic god) holds woman was made from man and therefore second to him. And we don't walk with "Yahweh" and Jesus in Paradise because that bimbo got us all thrown out of the Garden. As long as that perverted version of creation and humans' first days remains mainstream, women will always suffer.
well the blanket were sorry for all those things we did and everyone (except the infallible pope)are going to do penance and pray for it. the appology is one of the least sincere and vague i'm sorry's ive ever heard in my life. it was the equivilent of me saying sorry white people did those things to blacks can we forget it now? they will never admit they had corrupt and violent people at thier head because they support that the pope is infallible so to say he is wrong is to break that.
my 2cp thanks
To: Haakon Northman
What I find interesting is that it states in the Bible that man AND woman were created by God in his image...then it says (paraphrasing here, as I don't have a Bible near by) that when God got up from his day of rest, he saw that nothing had grown b/c he had forgotten to make it rain, so then *poof* there was the garden of eden and THEN he made Adam out of soil, Eve from his rib, all that jazz...
Why don't feminists use that verse from the Bible, before adam and eve were even created...or does it not count because God therefore screwed up and that can't be?
Anyhow, jumping out of the pit before the flames start....
"Did Starhawk? Perhaps she or her clan spoke out against abusive withcraft and superstition and neo-paganism during the papal visit to Africa, but I didn't see it."
I don't see any 'abusive neo-paganism' in Africa: I see Biblical labels of 'Witchcraft' being placed upon what's left of unbroken practices, if unsavory ones, and what the 'witch hunts' do. (Frankly, ask Sarah Palin about reimporting the ideas of African 'Witch Hunts' to America and applying them to Pagan folk *here.*
There are a lot of practices in Africa which Wiccans would certainly not approve of or participate in. But it's largely Christian missionaries who *taught Africans to call these things witchcraft and associate them with evil characters derived from the Bible in the first place. So they can call people 'witches' as they will.
I don't personally call myself a witch, running around in public, as an American Wiccan, anyway, ...I certainly wouldn't go to the barrio or Africa and say 'I'm a Witch' and expect them to think 'I'm a nice modern Pagan' ...the word means something else, there, originally, a destructive practitioner rather than say a healer.
Starhawk certainly doesn't speak with all Pagans, but she's not asking for an apology for *us* so much as the 'witch hunt mentality' itself. Many Pagans take on the name, because, like so many non-Christians, we'd just end up being called 'witches' *anyway.* (look at the whole Harry Potter flap. It's ridiculous till someone's screaming at you or trying to take away your civil rights over the idea it's a 'Satanic Wiccan' conspiracy, or some other nonsense.
Starhawk's well aware of the history: the 'witch hunt' myths not having been true *then* doesn't mean the untruth of them stops anyone *now.* It *is* a residual cultural trauma, one we see played out plenty in modern culture. Even you trying to associate 'Neopaganism' with people being persecuted as 'witches' in some African/missionary crossover context seems to support the notion that maybe the Pope ought to, rather than *retract* John Paul II's blanket apology for the Inquisition, take things in hand and renounce these abuses.
In Africa, Fundamentalist and hardline mainstream missionaries add fuel to certain fires, which, yes, the unscrupulous might seek to use for various purposes.
Don't reimport it to America like it says something about Wiccans.
Sometimes Starhawk can be quoted to sound... pretty shrill and old-feminist. That doesn't mean there's anything to be so shrill and mocking about, yourself, sir.
Western Pagans *do* often sympathize greatly with those subjected to persecutions for their traditional ways. Cause the people who come after *us* are rarely people who check footnotes.
Let's go back to this part:
"But she doesn't seem aware that Pope John Paul II and the church as a whole and Joseph Ratzinger, when he was one of JP2's lieutenants, launched several examinations of conscience in this regard and issued various apologies, most sweepingly during the Jubilee Year of 2000."
Do you honestly think they didn't fabricate any evidence or lack thereof just to make themselves look better? News flash: This is the world's biggest death cult and propoganda machine she "called out."
http://www.lafond.us/pagans/Papal_Apology/index.htm
While you are obviously a well researched towards the Pope, your Wiccan/Neo Pagan research needs some assistance.
We have been working on the Papal Apology for YEARS, and this is not new news.
Please go and look up the work of Oberon Zell and Selena Fox over the Papal Apology. A large committee was formed in 2000 and a worldwide petition was created. It's probably one of the best organized Pagan projects outside of the Veteran's Administration lawsuit to get Wiccans the pentacle on their tombstones.
As for "playing victim"-- how can we not play victim when the secretary of the VA was a knight of the Holy See and refused to allow Pagans their equal right to a headstone. Tell me... Does the Pope encourage American citizens to discriminate against American soldiers and their wives? children? next of kin?? seems to me he does.
Aggie
Aggie
Pentecostalism and superstition have merged in Africa to fuel witchcraft persecutions there and in immigrant communities in Britain. Children are often the victims. Sarah Palin's associate, Thomas Muthee brags about how he forced an old woman out of her home by raising a witch hunt against her.
the Catholic church is still promoting exorcism. Catholic Charismatics practice it to deal with anyone who is troubled or struggling to fit in to their group, such as gay people.
Starhawk is less superstitious and more ethical than the Catholic leadership. I've met her, and I'm an ex-Catholic so I know what I'm talking about.
"Starhawk does seem behind the curve" Interesting comments.
Interesting comments here, like a some people apparently have no clue as to the difference between Protestant and Catholic. Also glad to see people are still up in arms about the so-called "Burning Times".
Starhawk did NOT "demand: Apologize or..."
The Washington Post structures it's On Faith blog by asking the various folks there a question.
The question for 30 March was:
Pope's Apologies Accepted?
Pope Benedict XVI has offered a number of apologies recently, for clergy sex abuse, for promoting a Holocaust denier, for statements about Islam. What does it mean that a Pope has started doing that? Should those apologies be accepted? Should more religious leaders do that?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/2009/03/popes_apologies_accepted/all.html
9 different bloggers responded to that question w/ titles varying from "The Power of Apology" to "A Papal Cry of Pain". "Time to Apologize to Witches" was right in there.
Part of the problem of the internet, is that it's so easy to loose context.
Tho, I guess that's a little like walking up to a group at a party. One doesn't hear the previous conversation of the group.......so reacts only to what was being said when one joins the group.
Somebody seems to be trying to make this an "Elijah v. Priests of Baal, et al." contest. It seems to be a much more genteel discussion than that. I doubt b16 could call down fire or outrun Starhawk's Mustang (or whatever she drives, probably something very sensible like a small hybrid). Journalists love to make a volcano out of an anthill, but that is the way it has always been.
If Starhawk needs to mention Africa, we also need to tell the tale of John Paul's complicity in the genocide of Central Americans and his suppression of that political truth and many others. We also need to discuss how the Vatican's Orwellian definitions of a "culture of life" actively destroy the lives of millions today and perpetuate a culture of bigotry that passes under the name "Christian love". This doesn't begin to address the moral depravity of teaching children doctrines of original sin or blood atonement, which are perverse by any standard. The Roman Catholic church is a behemoth of organized crime and systematic pedophilia, and it's committing it's worst crimes without apology today.
What would Jesus say?
This author is yet another in a long line of Christians who misrepresent the word of Jesus and the Christian community at large by speaking disrespectfully and without love or understanding about someone of a different faith. This article drips with sarcasm and arrogance.
I read Starhawk's article, and I didn't see it as a demand and certainly there was no implied threat. A request, yes. To do the right thing. But there wasn't a stick involved. To imply there was is yet another insult on the people of the Wiccan faith.
The "various apologies most sweepingly during the Jubilee year" do nothing about for today's modern witches but sweep them under the rug. They must be acknowledged as persons of faith, equal to those who follow Jesus, (or those who merely claim to.) The gesture would demonstrate that the Catholics agree that the Wiccans are worthy of coexistence, dialogue, and respect.
Disrespectful articles like this one merely widen the interfaith gap. Shame on you, Mr. Gibson.
I am the Wiccan Pope. I worship the Lord Jehovah and Lady Wisdom. Wisdom is the Goddess who was the God's daily delight. She became pregnant by Jehovah. Christ was in her womb as an angel of God. Wisdom possessed the egg. The Their egg possessed the unfertilized egg of Mary the Jew. To learn more Google Wiccan Pope. You will find the "Wiccan Bible" called "Alpha Primate". Named after the male God.
To speak to me personally use yahoo messenger to message "witchpope".
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