|
 ne of the cultural
Left's articles of faith is that religious people are really hypocrites
behind closed doors, and that
public
morals and piety are nothing more than a screen for furtive, often
sexual, misdeeds. The recent film Chocolat epitomized this
view, as did the Oscar-winning American Beauty, which celebrated
the ideal of suburban fathers ditching their responsibility, featured
a closet-case Marine, and took place in a white-picket-fence neighborhood
where the only normal couple were the two gay guys with the same first
name. How cute, and really, how predictable. So perhaps it shouldn't
be surprising that the East Coast headquarters of this school of thought,
the New York Times, took out against Robert Philip Hanssen,
the treacherous spy now being called the Kim Philby of the FBI, this
Sunday in a front-page piece, "Much Piety but Not Polish From Spy
Suspect."
"For a man accused of betraying his country to the godless leadership
of the Soviet Communist Party," Philip Shenon's article begins,
and here you can clearly imagine him rolling his eyeballs, much
as liberals everywhere did whenever Ronald Reagan called the U.S.S.R.
an evil empire, "Robert Philip Hanssen could not have seemed a more
devout follower of the Roman Catholic Church — or a more committed
anti-
| “Could
one imagine the paper doing a large take-out on Jonathan
Pollard's commitment to Judaism?” |
|
Communist.
He often told his friends in the counterintelligence division of
the FBI where he worked for most of his 25-year career with the
bureau, that he loathed Communism and that the teachings of Lenin
were incompatible with those of Jesus Christ." Not only that, but
the 'burbs-dwelling Hanssen — whose church-going ways have
already been widely reported in the media — eschewed going-away
parties for colleagues at strip clubs (a car-pool buddy said the
spy called such events "an occasion of sin"), and would sometimes
slip out of the office to attend Mass. Filling out the Times
indictment, Hanssen and his family were even "adherents of Opus
Dei, an elite conservative Catholic order. Opus Dei urges its members
to attend daily Mass, and Mr. Hanssen also regularly appeared for
evening prayer and confession sessions known as recollections."
The rest of the article concentrates on potential motivations for
Hanssen's crimes, as well as his dour demeanor and his apparently
incredible ability to bifurcate and compartmentalize his life. But
the real meat of the story, which the Times reports gleefully,
is the delicious notion of Hanssen as devout Catholic hypocrite,
making him a character tailor-made for the biases of West 43rd Street.
Of course, there have been plenty — too many — Americans
who have betrayed their country for foreign governments, yet the
Times has never focused on their piety. Could one imagine
the paper doing a large take-out on Jonathan Pollard's commitment
to Judaism? Or on the worship habits of Aldrich Ames (if they've
ever even been reported)? No way. But the Times is happy
enough to trumpet evidence of the theory that if you scratch a Christian,
you'll find a hypocrite — so long as his name's not Jesse Jackson.
|
