Perhaps this is why it seems so offensive to watch the Bush administration self-consciously pursuing and consulting what it calls “the Catholic vote.” Most recently this has been applied to whether the White House will support stem-cell research, which could lead to a cure for any number of serious illnesses. One of the administration’s house Catholics quipped not long ago, “In 1960 John Kennedy went from Washington down to Texas to assure Protestant preachers that he would not obey the pope. In 2001 George Bush came from Texas up to Washington to assure a group of Catholic bishops that he would.” The speaker seemed unaware that both courses of action are distasteful and essentially un-American.
Let us begin with this simple fact: there is no such thing as the Catholic vote. Once upon a time there was something like it; every obituary of Rep. Joe Moakley included his famous quote about the Boston Irish, “As soon as we’re born, we’re baptized into the Catholic Church, we’re sworn into the Democratic Party and we’re given union cards.” But that was a lifetime ago, at a time informed by what the Catholic writer Eugene Kennedy calls “a potent mix of pride, politics and poor people.” American Catholics are no longer uniformly struggling immigrants, they no longer uniformly attend closely to the pronouncements of the church hierarchy and they do not uniformly vote as a bloc. There has been nothing uniform about most of our lives since parochial school.
There is no consistent body of thought among Catholics about capital punishment, welfare reform, abortion or a host of other political and moral issues. Catholics are as diverse and as various as the rest of the American population, in what they believe and in how they behave. Despite the church emphasis on matters gynecological, American Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as women of other faiths. And as I look around my parish church at all the families with just two children, it is clear that either we have been astonishingly adept at playing the fertility odds or we are personally overriding the church ban on contraception.
So when administration officials speak of the Catholic vote, they are speaking in code. We Catholics are familiar with code where our faith is concerned; once it was shorthand for ignorance and superstition. And there’s still enough intellectual snobbery about the church to make some people believe it when Karl Rove, the current White House Rasputin, says that Catholics are “socially and politically conservative.” But that’s the gospel according to George W; no polling data supports that blanket conclusion. When the White House talks about courting Catholics, it is code for conservatives who are sympathetic to Republican positions and likely to be swing voters.
Those of us who disagree with church pronouncements on birth control, abortion and the ordination of women are often accused of picking and choosing what we like from the church and discarding what we do not. The president is doing precisely the same thing, but with no concomitant criticism. As George W. Bush makes well-publicized calls on bishops and expresses his admiration for “the culture of life,” he conveniently sidesteps the many positions on which he diverges sharply from the church. The hierarchy has distinguished itself by speaking out against the death penalty, in favor of a living wage and in support of ameliorating the effects of global-climate change. The greatest glory of the Catholic Church has been its service to the poor and the disenfranchised.
It is unfortunate that some of the bishops who have excoriated Catholic politicians who support legal abortion have not spoken out about the Bush administration’s conspicuous shortcomings in these other areas, as well as the president’s flagrant attempts to sanctify his political positions by associating them with the spiritual concerns of a church to which he does not belong. I pray that this is not because the bishops recognize in the Bush plan to offer federal money to church organizations and his support of vouchers for schools an unprecedented government windfall. If George W. Bush wants to explain how his faith has led to his political positions, that’s fine; after all, I suspect I am a liberal largely because I am Catholic, because I believed the New Testament story about giving my second cloak to the man who had none. But it’s ridiculous to suggest that somehow “the Catholic vote” helps determine the president’s principles regarding stem-cell research. (For the record, polls show that, like most Americans, Catholics support it.) Dressing up conservative politics in a borrowed cassock is calculation masquerading as consecration.
One of the most dispiriting moments in my almost half-century career as a Catholic was the Sunday just before the last presidential election when our pastor, with barely disguised distaste, informed us from the pulpit that he had been told to read a letter from the archbishop. This said in part: “In the coming election, in addition to issues of basic human rights, there will also be addressed the questions of parents’ rights to decide how their children are to be educated.” After delivering this free advertisement for school vouchers and, by extension, the Republican candidates, Father was expected to dust the dirt of lobbying off his hands and move seamlessly to transubstantiation. It was impossible not to think of the money changers in the temple, and how an enraged Christ threw them out, or to remember that the separation of church and state grew out of a desire, not so much to protect government from religion, but to protect religion from government.
title: “In The Name Of The Father” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Thomas Yancey”
Ironically, it’s through his father that Mario, 47, may have found his chance. His latest film, “Baadasssss!” is a loving tribute to his father’s struggle to make “Sweetback.” Even though Melvin Van Peebles had just starred in the 1970 hit comedy “The Watermelon Man” and had a deal at Columbia, Hollywood wasn’t interested in his pitch about a sexy black antihero who goes on the lam after stomping a couple of racist white cops into the pavement. At a time when most scripts portrayed African-Americans as helpless slaves or “super-Negroes” a la Sidney Poitier, “Sweetback”–with its opening dedication, “To all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man”–was a celebration of urban black power. “It’s pretty amazing what my father accomplished,” says Mario, who plays Melvin in “Baadasssss!” “It really takes you a while to understand all that became because of his vision.”
Now 71, Melvin explains his inspiration this way: “I got tired of white people telling me what black folks want and don’t want, and how we were and were not. They told me that black people didn’t want to see a movie like ‘Sweetback,’ where the main character kicked the Man’s ass. I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ " Hollywood’s refusal to finance the film turned out to be a blessing. Executives would surely have balked at the violence and the graphic sex (Melvin wound up with a venereal disease while making the film, which was, as the ads proclaimed, “Rated X by an All White Jury”). But the movie struck a chord with an urban generation still reeling from the deaths of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. With the help of friends, including Bill Cosby, the elder Van Peebles raised $500,000 and shot the film in just 19 days. “I remember that time so clearly, because I was about 12, and that was the first time I really got to know my father,” says Mario, whose parents divorced when he was 8. “Which was great in one sense but weird in another, because trying to get that film made nearly drove him nuts.”
Mario began his career in “Sweetback,” playing his father’s character as a boy in the opening sequence. Even by today’s standards the scene is shocking, with its depiction of the young Sweetback having sex with an aging prostitute. “That got a lot of attention, but it didn’t really faze me,” Mario says. “Me and my family had lived around the world and seen so many different things that we were confused about why there was so much fuss. I was more upset that I had to cut my Afro for the part.”
Though it initially played in just two theaters, crowds flocked to see the gutsy film, thanks to word of mouth and to Van Peebles’s savvy marketing to black radio stations and newspapers. The movie made $14 million–a killing in 1971–and forced Hollywood to rethink black audiences. " ‘Sweetback’ was the film that black audiences wanted but didn’t really know they wanted,” says film historian Donald Bogle. “It was a complete backlash to Sidney Poitier’s characters. Sidney was often asexual and very middle-class and firmly in the white world. Sweetback was from the street, and Van Peebles made him ooze with sexuality and an attitude that said, ‘I’m a mad n—– and I ain’t gonna take it no more’.” Melvin is fond of saying, “I brought the ‘hood to Hollywood.” What followed was a succession of black heroes, from Shaft to Superfly.
Breaking into Hollywood as the son of an icon is not easy. After appearing in another of his father’s movies–“Identity Crisis”–Mario directed and starred in 1991’s “New Jack City” and 1993’s “Posse,” an all-black Western. But in recent years he’s been relegated to character-actor turns, popping up as Malcolm X in “Ali” and in TV movies. “One night I had John Singleton, Reggie Hudlin and a couple of other black filmmakers over to my house,” Mario recalls. “We were all laughing and talking. And it hit us: why don’t they make movies about people like us? Regular guys doing their thing and trying to make a difference? Instead we get ‘Soul Plane.’ I mean no disrespect to that film, but that’s not the majority of the black community.”
Though Mario hesitates to admit it, “Baadasssss!” is a valentine to Dad–a son’s attempt to make sure his old man gets his props. “I wanted to show the hell he went through to get that film made and what kind of impact it had on him and his family,” Mario says. “What really amazes me is that my father never became angry at people, just at the system, and he didn’t let it eat him up.” Mario captures his father right down to the Mark Twain sideburns. Such nuance, combined with raw filmmaking reminiscent of the original movie, makes for a fascinating ride down memory lane for those who’ve seen “Sweetback,” and a mind-blowing history lesson for those who haven’t.
Maybe in his autobiography, “Spanking the Monkey for the Man,” Melvin will tell more of his tale. Or maybe not. “I’m writing an unauthorized biography, because I don’t agree with myself about myself,” he says, laughing. One thing is for certain. He’ll always remain his son’s inspiration.
