Like Josh Marshall, I’ve been pondering the Gallup finding
that Catholics are significantly more likely than “Protestants/Other
Christians” to favor finding another location for the Park51 Islamic
Center. Given that Protestants in the aggregate are, on most public
issues, more conservative than Catholics–and given that American
Catholics tend to recollect their own disfavored religious status in
this country–why do 63 percent of Catholics want to see Park51 moved,
as opposed to 49 percent of the Protestants/Other Christians?

I posed this question to my learned sidekick Andrew Walsh, who
immediately replied with what seems to me the right answer: Catholicism
very much regards the creation of a place of worship as the
establishment of spiritual control over territory. Consider all the
pagan temples that were transformed into–or built over as–Christian
churches in Rome. Or the Grand Mosque in Cordoba–consecrated
as a cathedral after Cordoba’s reconquest in 13th century (setting the
stage for the mosquification of Hagia Sophia after the Turkish conquest
of Constantinople in 1453).

Closer to home, the difficulty of decommissioning Catholic churches in
America these days is precisely related to the fact that these churches
were built to be permanent markers of geographic parishes. Catholics
recognize the closing of a church as a species of spiritual surrender.
By contrast, Protestants consider houses of worship more as convenient
homes for where the congregants happen to be. For Jews, it’s all about
the where the Torahs are, and Torahs are all about being marched from
place to place. (These facts lie at the core of Gerald Gamm’s fine
study, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed.) Jews are somewhat less inclined than Protestants to favor moving Park51.

In a word, Catholics are more likely than most of the rest of us to see
Park51 as an assertion of power over territory beyond itself–extending
to Ground Zero–and they don’t like it. Interestingly, Mormons favor
moving Park51 almost as much as Catholics do–perhaps reflecting the LDS
understanding of what it means to build a new temple for their Zionic
communities. (Mormons are least interested in changing it to an
interfaith institution because, well, Mormons don’t do interfaith.) As
for the Muslims themselves, a 43 percent plurality favored building
Park51 as planned–which doesn’t say anything much about how Muslims
view mosque-building as such.

Of course, in America, you pretty much have a right to build your house
of worship wherever you want, and to keep it open for as long as you
care to and can afford to. Your understanding of the symbolic
significance of doing so–or anyone else’s–is, legally, irrelevant.