Max Rossi/Reuters

The Issue

Last week the Vatican invited Anglicans who are, as The New York Times put it, “uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops” to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church. If a secular institution, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example, made a similar offer — Tired of leadership positions being open to women and gay employees? Join us! — it would be slammed for appealing to bigotry. Some criticism was directed at the church, but it was faint. Are we right to speak softly when discussing a subject as sensitive as religion?

The Argument

Etiquette holds that religion, especially another person’s religion, should be treated with deference or, better still, silence by nonbelievers. Hence the familiar dinner-party injunction: don’t discuss religion or politics. Even at a table full of co-religionists, feelings can run high, and there is a reluctance to combine digestion with discord (particularly where knives are nearby). To the observant, a nonbeliever’s comments on church doctrine can feel less like a discussion of theology than a personal attack.

Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others — courteously and vigorously. This is a mark of respect, an indication that we take such ideas seriously. To slip on the kid gloves is condescending, akin to the way you would treat children or the frail or cats.

The passionate intensity unleashed by religious matters is evinced in responses to The Ethicist, my other column for The Times Magazine. When I take up a secular question that provokes broad disagreement, I typically receive a few hundred responses by e-mail that begin: “Dear Sir, I am appalled…” When I write about religion, I cause a tidal wave. The week I rebuked an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent whose beliefs forbade his shaking the hand of a female client, I stopped counting after receiving 4,000 ferocious messages, lambasting not only my argument but my character, my appearance and my parentage: it was speculated that dogs played a part.

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.

Some of my most indignant critics have declared religious practice a matter of free association: what people do voluntarily among themselves is nobody else’s business. But children raised in a particular faith did not choose it. And sometimes one spouse is pushed into a pew by the other. Even when membership is truly volitional, once a group reaches a certain size and acquires power and influence in the larger community, to treat it like four people getting together in someone’s rec room to play bridge is disingenuous. Its actions are still subject to moral scrutiny, whether the group is the Boy Scouts or Nascar or the Roman Catholic Church.

Other of my critics have argued that actions undertaken as a religious duty occupy a privileged place. But merely designating something “religious” does not exempt it from ethical analysis. The roster of historic enormities justified by religious doctrine is too long and too familiar to bear repeating. These things must be judged on their impact. (O.K., just a few: the Crusades, the Inquisition, colonialism, slavery, Stryper.)

We do accord special status to religious groups, even writing it into our Constitution. Some actions that are generally forbidden are permitted if undertaken as a religious obligation: for instance, Sikh transit workers in New York may wear turbans. But not everything goes. Polygamy is outlawed. Nor would we allow human sacrifice, even if requested by a deeply observant Aztec. That is, we do not regard these things uncritically. And remember: it is not just religious practice but free expression that the Constitution protects. To muffle our discussion of religiously motivated acts is to dilute the discourse that is essential to democracy.

And so it is disheartening that the editorial pages of our most important newspapers did not castigate the Vatican’s invitation to misogyny and homophobia. Some blogs did so. Daily Kos headlined its coverage, “Vatican Welcomes Bigoted Anglicans.” But the discussion provided by, say, network news barely rose above the demure. That’s not courtesy; it’s cowardice. Perhaps the networks fear being charged with anti-Catholic bias. This is not an unreasonable concern. When I reproved that real estate agent, my surname was no shield against accusations of anti-Semitism. But surely it is possible to disagree respectfully. To criticize a particular practice of Orthodox Jews need not be anti-Semitism. To denounce this Vatican policy need not be anti-Catholic bigotry. Criticism is not contempt.

One group has produced a lively discussion of this pronouncement — the religious press. (You can find a roundup of opinions at Headline Bistro under the banner “Because Catholics Need to Know.”) Some of the sharpest writing comes from those critical of their own church — the Rev. George Rutler, for example, a convert from Anglicanism who wrote: “It is a dramatic slap-down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism.” Incidentally, Father Rutler does not think the secular media are too timid but too thickheaded: “The press, uninformed and always tabloid in matters of religion, will zoom in on the permission for married priests.”

He may have something. Perhaps both the mainstream media and the secular public do not fear being branded as bigots so much as being exposed as doofuses. Nevertheless, we should stop talking about religious matters only in diffident whispers, and the observant should stop expecting us to do so.