Fun at the airport

My experience at Midway Saturday morning reminded me of a conversation I had recently during a walk I took around the Bridgeport neighborhood (in habit). A group of young people were hanging around in front of a building as I passed, and one of them hollered out, "Whoa, man! What's that [thing] you're wearing?!" I stopped and replied in a friendly manner, "It is called a religious habit. This is a tunic and this is what is called a scapular."

"So are you one of those guys who blows people up?"

Now recall that Bridgeport is traditionally and still nominally overwhelmingly Catholic. I do get the regular, "Hey, Father!" on my perambulations. But this was the most astounding question I have gotten yet. My response: "No. I serve the Prince of Peace. I am a Christian!"

I normally travel in clericals for the sake of simplicity at security, but since I am travelling with Mother Mary Clare who has no choice but to wear her habit, I opted for Benedictine solidarity and wore mine. This was the cause of consternation for the fellow who had to frisk me at security. "This is a baggy outfit!" My inconvenience was shared, of course, by Mother Mary Clare. Two baggy outfits! Worn by the worst sort, religious zealots! Who obviously blow people up!

That a teenager in Chicago could assume that anyone in traditional religious garb is to be linked with fanatical violence shows just how well the Enlightenment (or as Fr. Roach, SJ, used to say, the Endarkenment) has succeeded in controlloing public discourse. All religion is automatically superstitious unreason, linked to oppression and the restriction of freedom. No religious display can be tolerated in public. Only people in immodest and revealing (secular) clothing can pass easily through airport check-points; persons who insist on the mysterious power of the body and its proper veiling are suspect.

You can find, in a matter of seconds, stories on the internet about journalists in everyday clothes sneaking all kinds of dangerous objects onto airplanes right now. The alleged 9/11 highjackers 'disguised' themselves as regular Americans, forsaking baggy outfits (a la Bin Laden) and turbans. But religious display gets singled out for special opprobrium. People who believe in God are assumed to be more dangerous than those who do not. Have we forgotten the Soviet threat so thoroughly?