Revised Apr. 7, 2016

I received the following letter from Robert J. Carlson, the Catholic archbishop of St. Louis.  In it he claims it’s legal to establish religion.  That view is diametrically opposed by Constitutional scholars.  This is a rare instance of candor by the Catholic church regarding its objectives in the United States.

He’s right—we didn’t understand.  The Catholic church thinks it’s “Special.”  I don’t think Carlson believes his argument would succeed—it’s a transparent attempt at intimidation.  Obviously he’s twisting the language of the First Amendment to suit his own purpose.  Nonetheless, it should be taken seriously.

I urge readers to share this letter with others who want to preserve Religious Freedom in America.  Look the other way and it’s lost.

[To download letter, right click on letter and choose “Save Image As…”]

Some readers might think I’m just a rabid Anti-Catholic.

So what does the Catholic church really think about Buddhism?  The following is a quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia written by Charles F. Aiken, as found on the “Catholic Answers” website. This is the most hateful diatribe I’ve ever read.  Aiken had absolutely no understanding of Buddhism.  It shows the Catholic church pays lip service to high ideals of ecumenism and tolerance, but what happens at street level is quite different.

“The fundamental tenets of Buddhism are marked by grave defects that not only betray its inadequacy to become a religion of enlightened humanity, but also bring into bold relief its inferiority to the religion of Jesus Christ. In the first place, the very foundation on which Buddhism rests—the doctrine of karma with its implied transmigrations—is gratuitous and false. This pretended law of nature, by which the myriads of gods, demons, men, and animals are but the transient forms of rational beings essentially the same, but forced to this diversity in consequence of varying degrees of merit and demerit in former lives, is a huge superstition in flat contradiction to the recognized laws of nature, and hence ignored by men of science. Another basic defect in primitive Buddhism is its failure to recognize man’s dependence on a supreme God. By ignoring God and by making salvation rest solely on personal effort, Buddha substituted for the Brahmin religion a cold and colorless system of philosophy. It is entirely lacking in those powerful motives to right conduct, particularly the motive of love, that spring from the sense of dependence on a personal all-loving God. Hence it is that Buddhist morality is in the last analysis a selfish utilitarianism. There is no sense of duty, as in the religion of Christ, prompted by reverence for a supreme Lawgiver, by love for a merciful Father, by personal allegiance to a Redeemer. Karma, the basis of Buddhist morality, is like any other law of nature, the observance of which is prompted by prudential considerations. Not infrequently one meets the assertion that Buddha surpassed Jesus in holding out to struggling humanity an end utterly unselfish. This is a mistake. Not to speak of the popular Swarga, or heaven, with its positive, even sensual delights, the fact that Nirvana is a negative ideal of bliss does not make it the less an object of interested desire. Far from being an unselfish end, Nirvana is based wholly on the motive of self-love. It thus stands on a much lower level than the Christian ideal, which, being primarily and essentially a union of friendship with God in heaven, appeals to motives of disinterested as well as interested love.

Another fatal defect of Buddhism is its false pessimism. A strong and healthy mind revolts against the morbid view that life is not worth living, that every form of conscious existence is an evil. Buddhism stands condemned by the voice of nature, the dominant tone of which is hope and joy. It is a protest against nature for possessing the perfection of rational life. The highest ambition of Buddhism is to destroy that perfection by bringing all living beings to the unconscious repose of Nirvana. Buddhism is thus guilty of a capital crime against nature, and in consequence does injustice to the individual. All legitimate desires must be repressed. Innocent recreations are condemned. The cultivation of music is forbidden. Researches in natural science are discountenanced. The development of the mind is limited to the memorizing of Buddhist texts and the study of Buddhist metaphysics, only a minimum of which is of any value. The Buddhist ideal on earth is a state of passive indifference to everything. How different is the teaching of Him who came that men might have life and have it more abundantly. Again Buddhist pessimism is unjust to the family. Marriage is held in contempt and even abhorrence as leading to the procreation of life. In thus branding marriage as a state unworthy of man, Buddhism betrays its inferiority to Christianity, which recommends virginity, but at the same time teaches that marriage is a sacred union and a source of sanctification. Buddhist pessimism likewise does injustice to society. It has set the seal of approval on the Brahmin prejudice against manual labor. Since life is not worth living, to labor for the comforts and refinements of civilized life is a delusion. The perfect man is to subsist not by the labor of his hands, but on the alms of inferior men. In the religion of Christ, “the carpenter’s son”, a healthier view prevails. The dignity of labor is upheld, and every form of industry is encouraged that tends to promote man’s welfare.

Buddhism has accomplished but little for the uplifting of humanity in comparison with Christianity. One of its most attractive features, which, unfortunately, has become well-nigh obsolete, was its practice of benevolence towards the sick and needy. Between Buddhists and Brahmins there was a commendable rivalry in maintaining dispensaries of food and medicine. But this charity did not, like the Christian form, extend to the prolonged nursing of unfortunates stricken with contagious and incurable diseases, to the protection of foundlings, to the bringing up of orphans, to the rescue of fallen women, to the care of the aged and insane. Asylums and hospitals in this sense are unknown to Buddhism. The consecration of religious men and women to the lifelong service of afflicted humanity is foreign to dreamy Buddhist monasticism. Again, the wonderful efficacy displayed by the religion of Christ in purifying the morals of pagan Europe has no parallel in Buddhist annals. Wherever the religion of Buddha has prevailed, it has proved singularly inefficient to lift society to a high standard of morality. It has not weaned the people of Tibet and Mongolia from the custom of abandoning the aged, nor the Chinese from the practice of infanticide. Outside the establishment of the order of nuns, it has done next to nothing to raise woman from her state of degradation in Oriental lands. It has shown itself utterly helpless to cope with the moral plagues of humanity. The consentient [complete agreement] testimony of witnesses above the suspicion of prejudice establishes the fact that at the present day Buddhist monks are everywhere strikingly deficient in that moral earnestness and exemplary conduct which distinguished the early followers of Buddha. In short, Buddhism is all but dead. In its huge organism the faint pulsations of life are still discernible, but its power of activity is gone. The spread of European civilization over the East will inevitably bring about its extinction.”

Charles Francis Aiken (1863–1925) was a renowned Catholic priest, apologist, and a professor in the Theology Dept. at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  The University maintains a collection of his papers.  He held particular antipathy for Buddhism.

Aiken wasn’t a crackpot.  He was a vicious attack dog and imperialist who regarded the East as degenerate.  The prevailing Catholic attitude is “Might Makes Right.”

Here’s a link to the entire article:

http://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/buddhism

I also object to Catholic priests leading “Zen Catholicism” retreats as if “Zen Catholicism” is authentic Zen.  It’s an attempt by the church to hi-jack and co-opt Zen for its own purposes.  As Roshi Philip Kapleau once said, you can’t be a good Catholic and practice Zen Buddhism.  Meditation on any object or concept, including “emptiness,” is worthless, because it’s not true Emptiness. 

The problem here is that Catholic mysticism, like “The Cloud of Unknowing,” isn’t compatible with Zen Buddhism.  The object of Zen Buddhism is not a mystical union with The Other, regardless of how diffuse The Other may be conceived.  The Catholic church insists that The Other, which is God, is an entity who interacts with humanity.  For the Catholic, The Other cannot actually be Emptiness, regardless of how subtle or nuanced The Other is imagined.

Catholicism posits an objective reality.  Generally, Catholic scholars reject the notion that Zen Buddhism and Catholicism are equivalent: “Catholics see it differently. We believe that the truths which we cling onto as unchangeable and ineffable, offer us stability and make our lives connected to the God who has chosen to share his identity with us.  We see ourselves as being able to be tolerant while at the same time uncompromising when it comes to what we believe.”  (Father Walter Kedjierski)

Obviously Catholicism on any level isn’t Zen.

In Buddhism, nothing we perceive has self-reality.  It’s incapable of manifesting itself.  This is what Buddhists mean by “Emptiness.”  The Universe is an illusion, and clinging to illusion is pointless.  Clinging can’t make the illusory real.  Buddhism isn’t pantheism.  A rock is a rock, not a deity.

There is this world of illusion and there is the medium in which it appears.  The ancients likened the medium to the binder in paint that holds the paint together.  That’s not a bad analogy.  Or a mirror.  I prefer the term “Mind.”  But regardless of what you call it, without it there would be nothing.

Although everything we perceive is impermanent, lacking self-reality, the medium which gives form to formlessness and motion to motionless never changes.  It’s permanent.  If the Universe imploded, the medium would not be destroyed.  The medium is what gives the Universe life.

Zen challenges you to discover this “Mind.”  The way to discovering “Mind” is to give up following everything with intellection.  Intellection is a tool, not the final destination.  Intellection can help us find ways of working with the environment, but since nothing has self-reality, ultimately there’s nothing to understand.  We experience what there is to experience—thought, emotion, sensation—and let it go.

When your mind is sufficiently calm, not disturbed by clinging, it will be like the sky.  And at that point you will see that “Mind” and your mind are identical.  You are that which gives form to formlessness and motion to motionless.  You are the medium in which all of this appears.

Aiken’s claim that Buddhism is a religion of pessimism isn’t true.  That’s why his column is so offensive—it was written by an ignorant man with zero understanding of his subject.  His prejudice, based upon the teachings of his church, was that Buddhism is rubbish.  That’s what he saw.  And then he shared his ignorance with others.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2010 there were 3,860,000 Buddhists in the United States.