I began blogging as a reaction against the venom spewed in com-boxes. Not the venom against the Church by those outside it – that, I can understand and even (in a prideful and totally inappropriate reaction) delight in. Generally, such venom is based on total misinformation and often on wilful misunderstanding. Even those who are informed betray a double-standard about morality that shows, deep down, the commenter expects the Church to be better. Which is a compliment, in a twisted, backhanded kind of a way.
My reaction was to the venom of Catholic commenters against anyone who didn’t agree with their views. It seemed to me that there was a scale to the nasty, insulting, cruel comments. Agnostics were treated with reasonable compassion; atheists got it with both barrels; Protestant Christians received both barrels plus grenades; but all out war was reserved for other Catholics whose views on what it was to be Catholic differed from those of the commenter.
This isn’t a nice way to behave, folks. It isn’t productive. It isn’t a good witness for Catholicism. All in all, it sucks big time.
Yesterday’s readings sum up the way we should be with everyone we meet: showing good judgement (of course), but not judgemental. The worst persecutor of the young Christian community doesn’t spend the rest of his life apologising for his misdeeds, but instead works himself to the bone to spread the Christian message. Jesus doesn’t condone the sin of the adulteress, but neither does he condemn her.
Please read a beautiful post by Calah Alexander on why we Catholics shouldn’t be tearing the Pope (and one another) apart in com boxes. It’s a powerful argument for a cease fire. Here’s a snippet:
We had Benedict because we needed him. We have Francis now, I think, because we also need him. We need beauty in the liturgy. We also need to help the poor. These two forces seem so ludicrously opposed to each other in American Catholicism. Either you’re a conservative, rad-trad, pro-Liturgy Catholic or you’re a liberal, social-justice, pro-guitars-and-holding-hands-during-the-Our-Father-Catholic. And anyone who takes the blogosphere as an example probably thinks we Catholics spend all our time hunkered down in our trenches, lobbing carefully-worded-blog-post-bombs at each other, waiting for the other side to go over the top so we can mow them down and cleanse the Church of that crap for once and for all.
We’re waging a pointless and counterproductive war on each other. Both sides are defending deposits of the faith. Good, beautiful, true things that we have learned through our mutual faith, things which our faith needs equally in order to flourish. Can you imagine what might happen if we stopped haunting each other’s comboxes, accusing each other of heresy, and instead spent that energy working together to make the Church better? Maybe we could even *deep breath* try and see what’s true, good, and beautiful about the other. Like, maybe I could go to a Tridentine Mass and viciously repress my inner Jan Hus and really, really try to see the beauty in that ancient liturgy that bequeathed to me the faith I hold so dear today. And maybe whoever runs Rorate Caeli could go to a Novus Ordo Mass in Spanish in Immokalee, the town down the street from me, and instead of being horrified at the abuses in the liturgy really, really try to see the beauty in these migrant workers shuffling into the pews after a day of back-breaking work in the Florida sun, sweaty and dirty and wearing jeans, but resisting the urge to go home and collapse until they’ve seen Jesus.
Our faith is so multi-faceted. That’s why we have a gazillion saints. They’re all doing something different, giving us different examples to follow. Not everyone can be Francis of Assisi, living in blissful poverty, fasting and praying. Someone had to be St. Thomas Aquinas, puzzling out the finest points of theology while remaining very very well-fed. And our Church would be infinitely poorer if Francis and Thomas Aquinas had spent all their time arguing over whose way was better instead of just doing the work God had set before them. We all have different work to do in the Church, and God wants all of us to help make his Church complete. But we can’t very well do that if we’re busy tearing each other to shreds.
As an old (literally) Agnostic, who believes maybe everything is metaphysically possible, and – then again – maybe nothing is – Toad thinks the problem lies in the interpretation of dogma.
And, as far as he can tell, everyone who believes in religion is deeply dogmatic about it.
You will never reconcile these factions.
Dogma says I’m right, and you’re wrong.
No argument. No discussion.
No point.
Sure, we kick stuff around on here in a friendly fashion.
But it’s futile.
Still, it keeps us from watching the telly.
We all have things we believe to be right, and things we believe to be wrong. Even elderly Toads. The question is how we behave towards those who hold different views. It seems to me that our Lord’s model – neither to condemn nor condone – is seldom followed (either inside or outside the Church, but my concern is with inside). All too often, we take the older son in the Prodigal Son story as our model, rather than the father; the Pharisee in prayer at the temple, rather than the Publican. I think this is an inherent element in human nature, rather than an inherent flaw in religion. People will fight to defend their deeply held beliefs, whether their passion is Catholic liturgy, the rules of double-entry book-keeping, or whether to use the Oxford comma. The sad thing is that Christians fall for it, and even convince themselves that it’s okay, despite the example and teachings of our Master.
I dunno Toad.
I think if we are open and humble enough to listen to others then we can modify our position and avoid the danger of a conservative rigidity. The Holy Father Pope Francis has given an excellent example of how to do that (read the whole thing) :
The gay community here remembers Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, as the man who launched “a war of God” against the move to approve gay marriage.
“He was the visible face of the Catholic Church’s opposition to equal marriage and he approached it from a fundamentalist position, posturing that he had to wage a war of God against what he considered a plan of the devil,” said Esteban Paulon, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals.
But that isn’t the whole story.
Before the Argentine Congress approved gay marriage in July 2010, some provinces in the country and individual judges had already begun allowing it.
With that reality and the pro-gay marriage stance of President Cristina Fernandez, the church had to decide what to do.
According to the new pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn’t win a straight-on fight against gay marriage, so he urged his bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead. It wasn’t until his proposal was shot down by the bishops’ conference that he publicly declared what Paulon described as the “war of God” — and the church lost the issue altogether.
Despite his conservatism, “Bergoglio is known for being moderate and finding a balance between reactionary and progressive sectors,” Paulon said. “When he came out strongly against gay marriage, he did it under pressure from the conservatives.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/argentine-gays-remember-new-popes-war-against-gay-marriage-when-he-was-cardinal/2013/03/15/1829b218-8d96-11e2-adca-74ab31da3399_story.html
Cdl Bergoglio was also instrumental in the Argentine Bishops making a public apology for not speaking out more strongly for human rights under the Videla dictatorship during the Argentine dirty war. That openness and humility to admit one’s mistakes is very important.
Perhaps a certain degree of “agnosticism” is a very healthy thing ?
God Bless
More here:
In a 2007 interview with the international magazine “30 Days,” highly revealing on how he sees his mission as pastor of the Church, the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires suddenly asked the interviewer, Stefania Falasca:
“Do you know the biblical episode of the prophet Jonah?”.
“I don’t remember it. Tell us”, the interviewer replied.
And Bergoglio:
“Jonah had everything clear. He had clear ideas about God, very clear ideas about good and evil. On what God does and on what He wants, on who was faithful to the Covenant and who instead was outside the Covenant. He had the recipe for being a good prophet. God broke into his life like a torrent. He sent him to Nineveh. Nineveh was the symbol of all the separated, the lost, of all the peripheries of humanity. Of all those who are outside, forlorn. Jonah saw that the task set on him was only to tell all those people that the arms of God were still open, that the patience of God was there and waiting, to heal them with His forgiveness and nourish them with His tenderness. Only for that had God sent him. He sent him to Nineveh, but he instead ran off in the opposite direction, toward Tarshish”.
“Running away from a difficult mission…” said the interviewer.
“No. What he was fleeing was not so much Nineveh as the boundless love of God for those people. It was that that didn’t come into his plans. God had come once… ‘and I’ll see to the rest’: that’s what Jonah told himself. He wanted to do things his way, he wanted to steer it all. His stubbornness shut him in his own structures of evaluation, in his pre-ordained methods, in his righteous opinions. He had fenced his soul off with the barbed wire of those certainties that instead of giving freedom with God and opening horizons of greater service to others had finished by deafening his heart. How the isolated conscience hardens the heart! Jonah no longer knew that God leads His people with the heart of a Father”.
“A great many of us can identify with Jonah”, the interviewer remarked.
Bergoglio: “Our certainties can become a wall, a jail that imprisons the Holy Spirit. Those who isolate their conscience from the path of the people of God don’t know the joy of the Holy Spirit that sustains hope. That is the risk run by the isolated conscience. Of those who from the closed world of their Tarshish complain about everything or, feeling their identity threatened, launch themselves into battles only in the end to be still more self-concerned and self-referential”.
“What should one do?”
Bergoglio: “Look at our people not for what they should be but for what they are and see what is necessary. Without preconceptions and recipes but with generous openness. For the wounds and the frailty God have spoken. Allowing the Lord to speak… In a world that we can’t manage to interest with the words we say, only His presence that loves us, saves us, can be of interest. Apostolic fervor renews itself in order to testify to Him who has loved us from the beginning”.
Last question: “For you, then, what is the worst thing that can happen in the Church?”
Bergoglio: “It is what De Lubac calls ‘spiritual worldliness’. It is the greatest danger for the Church, for us, who are in the Church. ‘It is worse’, says De Lubac, ‘more disastrous than the infamous leprosy that disfigured the dearly beloved Bride at the time of the libertine popes’. Spiritual worldliness is putting oneself at the center. It is what Jesus saw going on among the Pharisees: ‘You who glorify yourselves. Who give glory to yourselves, the ones to the others’”.
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350469?eng=y
God Bless
“I think if we are open and humble enough to listen to others then we can modify our position…” ….The key, indeed weasel word, here is “if,” Chris.
Naturally, Toad believes that…
“..a certain degree of “agnosticism” is a very healthy thing ?”
…Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
Actually, he believes it’s the only thing. But he might be wrong. He’s not dogmatic about it.
Not easy to be a dedicated, fanatical agnostic. With Toad, there’s always the possibility that in a few hours, or even minutes, time, he might convert to Islam, or re-convert to Christianity.
Unlikely, but possible. Can you, or JP, entertain that possibility?
And he wishes everyone could read, “What I believe,” by Anthony Kenny. It’s not very long, because he doesn’t believe all that much
I have no difficulty in believing in – even expecting – the impossible. It’s the improbable that I’m agnostic about.
How about an unhappy atheist?
My prejudices prompt me to suggest that on a scale of improbability, unhappy is slightly more probable than happy.
That comment ended up in the wrong place altogether. Oh well. Hope you’re all well.
Lovely to see you back, Jerry
For Toad to become a Muslim is certainly not impossible. It is, however, highly improbable.
Likewise for a JoyfulPapist to become a HappyAtheist.
“I have no difficulty in believing in – even expecting – the impossible. It’s the improbable that I’m agnostic about.”
Well done JP!
Oscar lives!
Toad wishes he’d said that. He will, he will…
We live in hope that Toad might convert to Islam, or re-convert to Christianity. And find that they are both paths with a great deal in common.
But he might be wrong. He’s not dogmatic about it.
It’s good to be open to the possibility that some things really are true. In practice it’s kinda hard to live one’s daily life without believing that. There is a practical basis for dogma.
God Bless
Toad believes in all sorts of things, Chris. He just doesn’t know for sure if a great many of them are true or not.
What is the practical basis for dogma, then?
We need to live our lives as if we believe in things: for example, that our spouse is faithful to us, that our children are decent people, that food will nourish. We can’t wait for these things to proven before we act on them. Certainly, they can be disproven – and that way lies grief and tragedy. But if we assume them to be untrue, we’ll be right. If we treat our spouse as a betrayer, our children as evil; if we refuse to eat because we treat food as poison; we create a world in which we cannot flourish and grow.
I choose to live my life as if the Credo is true. I believe it on the basis of various bits of evidence, including historical record, the witness of others, and my personal experience of a God who is consistent with the God in the Credo. But for all that, it is not impossible that I’m wrong. Improbable, I think, but then I would, wouldn’t I.
I like my life and I like who I am. So here I stand; I can do no else.
To life a practical life, one needs to believe that certain things are real. Such beliefs are dogmas. EG the dogma that the world is real; without such a belief it would be difficult to do much worthwhile in life; even get out of bed in the morning !
There is also a practical basis for dogmas in the spiritual life.
God Bless