Sentire Cum Ecclesia

I am a little amused by the confluence of three things I have read in recent days on arguments for atheism.

It seems that there are three kinds of atheism out there – not mutually exclusive: stroppy, sloppy and soppy.

Stroppy

Melanie Philips, an English journalist with the Spectator, had a piece in The Australian about a month ago after the Global Atheists Conferance in Melbourne: “Dawkins preaches to the deluded against the divine.” In this piece she wrote:

For someone who has made a career out of telling everyone how much more tolerant the world would be if only religion were obliterated from the human psyche, Dawkins manages to appear remarkably intolerant towards anyone who disagrees with him…

[H]e seems almost to believe that, since everyone who believes in God is stupid or evil and Christians are stupid and evil because they believe in God, those who oppose him must be Christian and can be treated with contempt.

I had first-hand experience of this when, addressing an audience of US atheists, he accused me of “lying for Jesus” by misquoting him. This came as something of a surprise since I am a Jew. …

This anecdote raises in turn the most intriguing question of all about Dawkins. Just why is he so angry and why does he hate religion so much? After all, as many religious scientists can attest, science and religion are – contrary to his claim – not incompatible at all.

A clue lies in his insistence that a principal reason for believing that there could be no intelligence behind the origin of life is that the alternative – God – is unthinkable. This terror of such an alternative was summed up by a similarly minded geneticist as the fear that pursuing such thinking to its logical ends might allow “the divine foot in the door”.

Such concern is telling because it suggests a lack of confidence by the Dawkins camp in its own position and a corresponding fear of rigorous thinking.

To stamp out the terrifying possibility of even a divine toe peeping over the threshold, all opposition has to be shut down. And so the great paradox is that the arch-hater of religious intolerance himself behaves with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist and, despite excoriating religion for stifling debate, does this in spades.

Ms Phillips has just published a book on the subject of “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power”. See her website for more info here.

Sloppy

Picking up the “fear of rigorous thinking” suggestion is David B. Hart in the current edition of First Things: “Believe it or not”. He writes about “New Atheism” (on which he is also about to publish a book: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies ) in general that it:

has by now proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment, and popular culture always tires of its diversions sooner or later and moves on to other, equally ephemeral toys.
Take, for instance, the recently published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists . Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God. Certainly that was my hope in picking it up. Instead, I came away from the whole drab assemblage of preachments and preenings feeling rather as if I had just left a large banquet at which I had been made to dine entirely on crushed ice and water vapor.
…I am not—honestly, I am not—simply being dismissive here. The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture—some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.

…A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

Soppy

And finally, to round off the trio, let’s hear something from a man who is himself an atheist, even if, as he himself admits, not an entirely “happy” one. Julian Barnes is one of my favourite authors (see here for a list of his writings). I find his writing thought-provoking, unpredictable, and even a little “musical”. I can listen to his writing (and, BTW, I best like to digest novels through the medium of the audio book) like listening to a creative piece of music – it inspires my to follow my own thoughts and meditations. I am currently reading – or rather, he is reading to me – his book “Nothing to be frightened of”. It is not memoirs or an autobiography, but it is recollective and auto-reflective. In any case, here is a great section (I can’t tell you what page it is on – it is on disc two!). I will quote it at length.

I ask him [my brother] to elaborate on his dismissal of my line “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him” as “soppy”. He admits that he isn’t really sure how to take my statement.

“I suppose as a way of saying ‘I don’t believe there are any gods but I wish there were’; or perhaps ‘but I wish I did’. I can see how someone might say something like that. Try putting ‘dodos’ or ‘yetis’ for ‘gods’; though for my part I’m quite content with the way things are.”

You can tell he teaches philosophy, can’t you? I ask him about a specific matter; he breaks down the proposition logically, and supplies alternative nouns to display its absurdity or weakness or soppiness. But his answer seems just as strange to me as my question did to him. I hadn’t asked him what he thought about someone missing dodos or yetis or even “gods” in the lower case plural. But God.

I check whether he has ever had any religious feelings or yearnings. “No” and “no”, is his reply. “Unless you count being moved by the Messiah, or Donne’s sacred Sonnets.”

I wonder if this certainty has been passed on to his two daughters, now in their thirties. Any religious sentiments, faith, supernatural longings, I ask? “No, never, not at all,” replies the younger, “unless you count not walking on the lines on the pavement as a supernatural longing.” We agree that we don’t.

Her sister admits to “a brief yearning to be religious when I was about 11. But this was because my friends were, because I wanted to pray as a way of getting things, and because the girl guides pressured you to be Christian. This went away fairly quickly when my prayers went unanswered. I suppose I am agnostic, or even atheist.”

I am glad she has maintained the family tradition of giving up religion on trivial grounds. My brother because he suspected George VI had not gone to heaven. Me in order not to be distracted from masturbation. My niece because the stuff she prayed for wasn’t immediately delivered.

But I suspect that such breezy illogic is quite normal.
Here for instance, is the biologist Lewis Wolpert:

“I was quite a religious child, saying my prayers at night and asking God for help on various occasions. It did not seem to help and I gave it all up around 16 and have been an atheist ever since.”

No subsequent reflection from any of us that perhaps God’s main business were he to exist might not be as an adolescent help-line, goods provider or masturbation scourge. No, out with him! once and for all!

A common response in surveys of religious attitudes is to say something like “I don’t go to church, but I have my own personal idea of God”

Thus kind of statement makes me in turn react like a philosopher. “Soppy!” I cry! You may have your own personal idea of God, but does God have his own personal idea of you? Because that’s what matters. Whether he is an old man with an white beard sitting in the sky, or a life force or a disinterested prime mover, or a clock maker or a woman or a nebulous moral force or nothing at all – what count as is what he/she/it or nothing thinks of you rather than you of them.

The notion of redefining the deity into something that “works for you” is grotesque. It also doesn’t matter that God is just or benevolent or even observant of which there seems startlingly little proof, only that he exists.

So. Soppy, perhaps. But not stroppy or sloppy. Insightful. Why are so many atheists – and even more agnostics – content with sloppy illogic when it comes to their disregard for God (in the singular uppercase)? At least Barnes recognises sloppy atheism for what it is – even if he is reluctant to condemn it.

I’ve added an “Anima Education” page to my blog – you can access it by clicking “Anima Education” in the bar at the top of the page.

I intend to use this to advertise all upcoming courses for Anima. Currently, I seem to be teaching them all, but that’s because I’ve only put up the ones that I had the details for. I will add others as I get the information from Joan who manages our little project.

I have just started a new (or rather the second part of an ongoing) course on the Sacraments of Healing. It’s not too late to join us, as we only started last Monday, and this Monday night is a holiday. Next class will be on May 3rd at 6:30pm at Mary Glowrey House (132 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy).

I finally got around to reading Hans Küng’s “Open Letter” in the Irish Times the other day. I thought I had better read it before reading George Weigel’s reply.

Certainly it was completely scurilous of Prof. Küng to provide the Irish Times with the opportunity to run a by-line which read:

Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops

. Every statement of that by-line is false – except perhaps for the bit following “according to” etc.

But Küng’s letter covers much wider ground than that in which the Irish Times is interested. It is nothing less than a manifesto for everything he has written and called for in the last 45 years since the close of the Council. Wiegel’s reply is on the money, focusing as it does on the divergent interpretations of the Second Vatican Council represented by Joseph Ratzinger’s Ying and Hans Küng’s Yang. He also replies to the charges enunciated in the by-line. But he treats only very lightly two other lists in Küng’s letter: his complaints against Benedict’s pontificate and his agenda for the reform of the Church.

The list of complaints are a collection of what the media likes to call Benedict’s “gaffs”. Most of these have been simply and summarily dealt with by Sandro Magister (The passion of Benedict: Six accusations, one question). They are accusations of “missed opportunities” launched by someone who, as Weigel puts it so well, has “not been paying much attention”. They are the newspaper headlines without the background (or consequent) facts. He talks of “missed opportunities”, when in fact, Benedict has not “missed” any of these “opportunities” but has built upon them constructively in the last five years.

Opportunity One: rapprochement with the Protestant churches

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Küng claims the Holy Father has denied Protestants “the status of churches in the proper sense of the term”. This is, of course, not a reference to anything that has happened during BXVI’s pontificate, but to Dominus Iesus issued in 2000 by the CDF (admittedly, under Ratzinger’s watch). In the last ten years, as a result of this “gaff”, there has been an enormous and fruitful amount of attention given to ecclesiology in ecumenical theology, mostly as a result of this. It is an important and essential element of the discussion, without which ecumenism would really have little or no meaning. As for the statement that “their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible”, well, that can hardly be laid at Benedict’s door. I think discussion of this matter began with Leo XIII over a hundred years ago, and unfortunately there has been little that might be called progress in the years since. Things were looking brighter for a patch – say from the 1930’s till the mid-70’s – but the adoption of women’s ordination by a very large proportion of protestant communions (including women bishops) has muddied the waters even further. We know what Küng’s position is on this matter, but it is not the position of the Catholic Church – or the Orthodox Churches for that matter. All commentators alike are agreed that Benedict has done much for rapproachment with the Orthodox, and unfortunately – given the gulf between Orthodox and Protestant ecclesiologies – it is extremely difficult to seek both at the same time (the greatest amount of work on seeking a shared ecclesiology has, be it noted, been done with the Orthodox, who at least have one). The fact of the matter is that Küng favours ecumenism with Protestants – Benedict favours ecumenism with the Orthodox. And fair enough too, given the high degree of shared faith we have with the latter, and the fact that the overwhelming number of non-Catholic Christians in the world are Orthodox.

All of which is not to say that Benedict has not also done a lot of positive work with building rapproachment with Protestants – although not with the variety that Prof. Küng would like to favour. The dialogue with Pentecostals is bearing surprising fruit, and Benedict’s own emphasis on Christology and Augustinian expressions of faith have led to many admirers of his teaching within conservative Protestant folds also.

Opportunity Two: long-term reconciliation with the Jews

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

Well, “long-term reconciliation [of Christians] with the Jews” is precisely that: long-term. So long term, in fact, that it is in reality an eschatological hope. The relationship between Christians and Jews – or even Catholics and Jews in particular – can always be improved, but there will always be “issues”. It was St Paul’s hope that the “dividing wall” had been broken down in Christ, but ironically Christ himself has been, from the very beginning, the point of division between Christians and Jews. Over the centuries we drifted far apart and great hostility grew up between the two religions – at least from the Christian side. Catholics have done a lot to better that situation over the last fifty years, but it will always be one of those family relationships where disagreements will arise. Such are the traditional Good Friday prayer, the lifting of the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops, and the ongoing cause of Pius XII. None of these were or were intended as attacks upon the Jewish people. On the contrary, Benedict has continued warm relations with the Jews. He has made official visits to three Synagogues, an official trip to Israel, invited a rabbi to address the Synod of Bishops. These are not the actions of someone who has “missed the opportunity” for enhancing relationships with the Jews. Contrary to Küng’s accusation, Benedict sees Judaism as far more than “only the historic root of Christianity”, although he is right to say that Benedict has not endorsed the “two-paths-of-salvation” theory that some have in the Jewish-Catholic dialogue. This is because the Catholic Church has not endorsed this theory.

Opportunity three: with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

He didn’t, but I’m not going to argue that case here. Suffice it to say that Catholic Muslim dialogue has never been at a deeper or more sincere level than it is today, and part of this is a direct – if unexpected – outcome of the Regensburg lecture. Küng cannot possibly be ignorant of the high level of dialogue that has emerged between the Vatican and Muslims during the aftermath of Regensburg and through the Common Word Project, so I can only think that he is being deliberately duplicitous here in making this accusation.

Opportunity Four: “reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America”

Well, I don’t know anything about that. It surprises me that it is an area which Küng highlights at this point. Perhaps he is better informed on this issue than I am. But it is a “left-field” accusation.

Opportunity Five: “to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV”
Again, the reason the Pope hasn’t endorsed condoms as a means of fighting HIV in Africa (or anywhere else or that matter) is not only the questionable success of the strategy, but fundamentally because the Catholic Church does not endorse the use of condoms in sexual relations. Is Küng forgetting who the Pope is and what his role in the Church is? It certainly isn’t to make up the rules as he goes along.

Opportunity Six: “to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research”

I wasn’t particularly aware that the Church was at war with “modern science” nor that “affirming the theory of evolution” was the business of the Church any more than affirming the doctrine of Creation is the business of science. Prof. Küng seems a little confused here. As for “stem-cell” research, as Weigel points out, the Church has nothing against stem-cell research – just against destroying living human embryos in order to obtain said stem-cells. I wonder why Küng singles out this issue? There are plenty of other bioethical subjects he could have named. Same conclusion, of course.

Opportunity Seven: “to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.”
Okay, and – as Weigel recognises – this is where the whole thing was headed from the start and the rest of what he talks about is largely his idea of “reform”. It is almost as if he is using the current situation in the Church as an excuse to push this old agenda. For Benedict on the Second Vatican Council, see Weigel’s comments. For the rest of us, we recognise that Benedict is completely a pope of the Council. Just ask any traditionalist Catholic. Heck, just ask the Lefebvrist bishops why they are not currently in full communion with the Catholic Church. Should be obvious, I would have thought.

But the problem with calls to “reform” is always, as Chesterton noted, that the would-be reformer is usually right about what is wrong in the Church but wrong about what is right. In this case, it would seem that Prof. Küng doesn’t even get right what is wrong.

Does the Church need “reform”? Well, yes, probably, and in many different areas – but what do we mean by the word? I prefer the Catholic idea of “ecclesia semper purificanda” to the Protestant idea of “ecclesia semper reformanda”, but let’s not quibble about that. A lot of people at the moment are looking for “reform” at the top of the Church, with “the hierarchy”. I see the need far more fundamentally to be in our parishes and schools at a local level: a need for a thorough-going reform (or purification) in the area evangelisation and catechesis. The New Evangelisation, no less. And that isn’t something that I just point the finger and say “they should be doing that”, but I look at what I can be doing to make a difference in the Church.

But the “reformers” are scathing about such things. Küng’s list looks like it was culled from Catholica’s website (although in reality the influence is probably the other way around). There is a theme in his “reforms”, which seems to be all about lessening the governing and magisterial role of the Papacy.

Actually, I agree with him when he says:

Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.

But I don’t agree with his solution (probably because we disagree on what actually needs reforming). As I said, evangelisation and catechesis, using our God-given talents faithfully in authentic vocations, these are the things that every “bishop, priest, layman or laywoman” is called to do. But this cannot be done rightly in a spirit of opposition to the Successor of Peter. The Catholic Church is Catholic BECAUSE it acts in communion with the Petrine Ministry, not counter to it or regardless of it.

This is where Küng is seriously confused. He asserts that:

Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country.

That is a direct rejection of the meaning of the vow in the episcopal ordination rite. Bishops vow unconditional obedience to the Bishop of Rome not as a “human authority” but as one authorised to speak in the name of Christ for his Church. No where else in the letter is is Küng’s agenda so clear. It is thoroughly Protestant in its appeal, EXCEPT that at least the Protestant reformers put the Scriptures up as an alternative authoritative source of directives concerning God’s will. Küng doesn’t even do that. It is all very well to say that one should be “obedient to God not man”, but how, in Küng’s book, does one determine what is or what is not the will of God? From the mouth of his servant, Fr Küng?

But we get the crux of the matter with the final demand in Küng’s reform: “Call for a council”. It really is a bit of a let down. In this letter, as if we needed it, we are reminded that Küng is a thorough-going 15th Century conciliarist. He seriously suggests a return to the idea from the Council of Constance of 5 year ecumenical councils. It is quite clear that he hasn’t even stopped to consider the practical, let alone theological, problems with such a scheme. Let alone the logistics of housing the 5000+ bishops, has he even paused to think of what a drain on the time and energy of bishops such a regular series of councils would require? When would they ever be in their dioceses? It is the job of a bishop to govern his diocese – not the universal Church. THAT is why we have the ministry of Peter.

But Weigel is right, it all comes down to a question of what the Second Vatican Council was all about. Benedict has one idea, and Küng another. Never the twain shall meet. It is a bit sad that Prof. Küng should choose to use the current situation in the Church as an opportunity for reworking his vendetta against the Office of the Papacy. That, it appears, is one opportunity that Küng at least has not missed.

We seem to be on a roll publicising books at the moment, but this just came in from Connor Court Publishers:

Cardinal George Pell’s new book and launches in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Ballarat

Test Everything; Hold Fast to What is Good by Cardinal George Pell
Click here to order the Paperback

Click here to order the hardback

AT a time when “the God question” has rarely been as controversial, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good puts the case that: “It is more reasonable to believe in God than to reject the hypothesis of God by appealing to chance. Goodness, truth and beauty call for an explanation as do the principles of mathematics, physics, and the purpose-driven miracles of biology which run through our universe.” Regardless of whether readers share his values and outlook, Cardinal George Pell has given them a provocative incitement to think and wonder about life’s biggest questions that confront us all, sooner or later. Connor Court is proud to publish the Cardinal’s new book, a collection of 80 pieces that are incisive, often unpredictable, sometimes sensitive, occasionally hard-hitting, always engaging and never, ever dull. Readers will feel closer to Christ, and feel that they know Him a little better after exploring His life, teachings and what they mean for our lives and our loved ones in the cyber age. Order online now for $34.95. Or get in early, at the special price of $49.95 for one of 500 hardback collectors’ limited editions, personally signed.

Launch dates:

Sydney- To be launched by Fr Paul Stenhouse mscFriday, 14 May 2010 at 5.30pm, At the Crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral, Cathedral Street, Sydney.

Melbourne- To be chaired by John Roskam and launched by Professor Claudio Véliz
Monday, 17 May 2010 at 6.30pm, At the Celtic Club, 1st Floor, 316-320 Queen Street, Melbourne
(Hosted by the Institute of Public Affairs)

Ballarat- To be launched by Bishop Peter Connors & Michael Gilchrist, Tuesday, 18 May 2010 at 7pm At Nazareth House, 218 Mill Street, Ballarat

Brisbane- To be launched by Fr Tim Norris, Saturday, 19 June 2010, at 7pm, At St Kevin’s Parish Hall, Glendalough, 251 Newman Rd, Geebung

Cardinal George Pell will be present at these launches and available to sign copies of his book

RSVP: anthony@connorcourt.com or by phone (03) 9005 9167

There is a popular notion that we all hear all the time from people who haven’t given much thought to the matter: “We all worship the same God, after all – don’t we?” It goes along with the popular presumption that “All spiritual paths lead to the same goal.” As a popular presumption, it is both inaccurate and not very helpful in interreligious dialogue.

Precisely because this is a popular notion, books that try to give voice to an alternative theory of religions – that is, that they are more characterised by their distinctions than their similarities – are generally not, therefore, popular. Joseph Ratzinger’s “Truth and Tolerance: Christian belief and the World Religions”, for instance, carries a masterful analysis of the differences between Western/Abrahamic and Eastern religions. But Karen Armstrong’s irenic books tend to sell better.

Bit of a surprise then to see this from the popular press: “God Is Not One:
The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter” by Stephen Prothero.

Here is the book description from Harpers Collins website:

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet’s problems. So why do we pretend that the world’s religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naïve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences.

In Religious Literacy, Prothero demonstrated how little Americans know about their own religious traditions and why the world’s religions should be taught in public schools. Now, in God Is Not One, Prothero provides readers with this much-needed content about each of the eight great religions. To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example:

–Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
–Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
–Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order
–Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening
–Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God

Prothero reveals each of these traditions on its own terms to create an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand the big questions human beings have asked for millennia—and the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today. A bold polemical response to a generation of misguided scholarship, God Is Not One creates a new context for understanding religion in the twenty-first century and disproves the assumptions most of us make about the way the world’s religions work.

Sounds interesting. May be worth a look. I especially like his (perhaps simplistic, but nevertheless interesting) analysis of the “problem/solution” each religion is trying to address. VERY interesting that he identifies “exile” as the problem for the Jewish religion. Tom Wright would have something to say on this, I think… As this Pontificate has taught us, in dialogue with others it is sometimes more productive to address and clarify differences rather than simply seek commonalities. The commonalities are there, but will be read inaccurately if the fundamental differences are not first completely understood.

Yesterday, Cathnews ran a “featured website” piece on the author Lisa Miller, whose new book is called “Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With The Afterlife”.

Having taught a subject for Anima Education last year on “The Last Things” – which attracted a record number of students (for me anyway) – I am absolutely convinced that Ms Miller is correct to say that we have “an enduring fascination” with the hereafter. It is an area on which there is much speculation (given that only one person we know of has come back from the grave to reliably report on the situation after death) but on which the Church has quite definite teachings (based on the same evidence just referred to). Unfortunately, very little catechesis actually focuses on this area – meaning that there is a gap between the “enduring fascination” and our response in providing clear teaching about it.

Here is what Ms Miller’s website says about the book:

What is heaven? Eighty percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, yet very few of them can articulate anything specific about their belief. Numerous questions surrounding the concept of heaven have existed for ages, and Americans continue to grapple with these ideas. In her new book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife (Harper; March 23, 2010; Hardcover; $25.99), Newsweek Religion editor Lisa Miller provides a groundbreaking history of the afterlife and offers a new understanding of this cherished spiritual ideal.

Notions of what heaven is vary widely, but the desire for afterlife has remained universal across all religious traditions throughout history. In Heaven, Miller journeys back over 2000 years to explore the roots of different beliefs in heaven. Drawing on her interviews with religious leaders, academics, and everyday Americans, Miller sheds light on many of the intriguing topics that influence our perceptions of heaven, including the ideas of resurrection, prophets and visionaries, and salvation. By exploring the earliest biblical conceptions of the afterlife and ancient theologies as well as modern-day views of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian believers, Miller examines what exactly these beliefs in the afterlife are, how they have impacted one another, and how they have evolved to meet the needs of their followers – for both good and evil – throughout the ages.

In tackling the many intriguing and enduring questions about the afterlife, Heaven addresses this complex notion in an accessible and engaging manner. Miller’s enlightening work offers a definitive look at a shared religious ideal and allows Americans to reflect on how their own views of heaven compare to both traditional and popular ideas on the afterlife.

Anyone wanting to teach about this subject needs not only to be informed about “what the Church really teaches” on the subject, but also about the prevailing popular notions of heaven. The best book for the former is certainly Joseph Ratzinger’s “Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life”, which should be read from start to finish by any prospective teacher in the area. But for the latter, it seems to me that this book by Miller might be worth purchasing.

Her website also gives an extract from the book, and here it is with my comments in [italics]. The line of argumentation regarding the resurrection is interesting to say the least:

Excerpt from “Heaven”
March 25, 2010 by admin

It’s Easter—that most pleasant of springtime holidays—when children stuff themselves with marshmallows and stain their fingers with pastel dyes. In reality, of course, Easter is about something darker and more fantastic. It’s a celebration of the final act of the Passion, in which Jesus rose from his tomb in his body three days after his execution, to reside in heaven with God. The Gospels insist on the veracity of this supernatural event. The risen Lord “ate barbecued fish [Luke] and walked through doors [John],” is how a friend of mine, an Episcopalian priest, puts it. This rising—the Resurrection—remains at the center of the Christian faith, the narrative climax of every creed. Jesus died and rose again so that all his followers could, eventually, do the same. This story has strained the credulity of even the most devoted believer. For, truly, it’s unbelievable. [No, it isn’t, in fact. Billions have believed since it was first proclaimed.]

Resurrection—the physical reality, not the metaphorical interpretation [an important distinction to which she will come in a moment]—puts everything we imagine about heaven to the test. My new book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife, argues that while 80 percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, few of us have the slightest clue about what we mean. Heaven, everyone agrees, is the good place you go after death, a reward for struggle and faithfulness on earth. In most of our popular conceptions, we have bodies in heaven: selves, consciousness, identity. We do things. People yearn for reunions in heaven with friends and relatives—and even with their pets. “I want to lay my head on Grandma Lucy’s lap,” the Christian memoirist Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in an essay. “I want to shell field peas with Fannie Belle and listen to Schubert with Earl.” Some people imagine heaven as the place where their most material yearnings are fulfilled [it is interesting that it is virtually impossible to imagine pleasure – which is a commonly expected experience in heaven – without a material body to experience it]. The evangelist Billy Graham once spoke of driving a yellow Cadillac in heaven; the heroine of Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones eats peppermint ice cream; suicide bombers in the Middle East fantasize about the sexual ministrations of 72 dark-eyed virgins. In all these visions, embodiment is the crux of the matter. If you don’t have a body in heaven, then what kind of heaven are you hoping for? [An important question.]

Despite the insistence of the most conservative branches of all three Western religions on resurrection as an incontrovertible fact, most of us are circumspect. The number of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has dropped 10 points since 2003 to 70 percent, according to the most recent Harris poll; only 26 percent of Americans think that they’ll have bodies in heaven, according to a 1997 Time/CNN poll. [This suggests an interesting gap between the popular belief of a material body in the afterlife and the belief in the historical veracity of Jesus’ own physical resurrection.] Thanks to the growth here of Eastern religions, reincarnation—the belief that after death a soul returns to earth in another body—is gaining adherents. [This is certainly the source of a lot of changing beliefs in the hereafter.] Nearly 30 percent of 2003 Harris poll respondents said they believed in reincarnation; of self-professed Christians, that number was 21 percent. Reincarnation and resurrection have, traditionally, been mutually exclusive. Among Christian conservatives, a private hope of reincarnation would be seen as not just illogical but heretical. [Or, more to the point, the other way around: not just heretical, but illogical. They are mutually exclusive ideas simply on the basis of pure logic.]

Cremation, once viewed as the ultimate desecration of the human body, an insult to God who makes the resurrection happen, will soon surpass burial as Americans’ preferred way to dispose of a corpse. [Interestingly, at our recent Interfaith Symposium on Death and Dying, the Muslims and the Jews – and indigenous Australians – are still quite opposed to cremation. Cremation is more common in Eastern religions, which have a totally different attitude toward the relationship between body and soul.] Already, a third of Americans are cremated, not buried, and that trend line is headed straight up. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University and author of the forthcoming God Is Not One, believes that the rise in cremation is linked to a growing disregard for the doctrine of resurrection. “It seems fantastic and irrational that we’re going to have a body in heaven,” he says. Even the Roman Catholic Church has softened its stance on cremation: bodies are better, it said in 1997, but ashes will do in a pinch. [While God can and will resurrect bodies in whatever state they finally end up here on earth, this change in our practice has done nothing for our affirmation of the importance of the body. It is at least as questionable as many other changes in our practice in recent years. Memo to anyone responsible for my disposal when I die: Bury me.]

Resurrection presented credibility problems from the outset. Who, the Sadducees taunted Jesus, does the man who married seven wives in succession reside with in heaven? The subtext of their teasing is obvious: if the resurrection is true, as Jesus promised, then in heaven you must have your wife, and all the things that go along with wives: sex, arguments, dinner. Jesus responds in a typically cranky way: “You just don’t get it,” he says (my paraphrase) [and a good one]. “You are wrong,” he said in Matthew’s Gospel, “because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” [Precisely.]

Even in biblical times, resurrection deniers who hoped for an afterlife took an alternative route. This is what scholars call “the immortality of the soul.” Embraced by Plato and popular today especially among progressive believers (Reform Jews and liberal Protestants, for example) and people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious,” the immortality of the soul is easier to swallow than resurrection. [I have confessed before on this blog, that as a Lutheran I rejected the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. As a Catholic, I have realised – with the help of Professor Ratzinger – that the Catholic doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not only quite different from the Platonic – or Eastern – doctrines, but is absolutely essential to make sense of the doctrine of the resurrection as well.] After death, the soul—unique and indestructible—ascends to heaven to be with God while the corpse, the locus of our senses and all our low human desires, stays behind to rot. This more reasonable view, perhaps, has a serious defect: a disembodied soul attaching itself to God in heaven offers no more comfort or inspiration than an escaped balloon. [ROTFL! What a great analogy. Puts me in mind of those secular ceremonies that actually release balloons as a sign of this at funerals. Actually it is more serious than that though. The disembodied soul is not the whole self – the body is essential to the fullness of our identity, which is what God has promised to resurrect!] Consolation was not the goal of Plato’s afterlife. Without sight or hearing, taste or touch, a soul in heaven can no more enjoy the “green, green pastures” of the Muslim paradise, or the God light of Dante’s cantos, than it can play a Bach cello suite or hit a home run. Rationalistic visions of heaven fail to satisfy. [Quite.]

Another popular way out of the Easter conundrum—”I want to believe in heaven but can’t get my head around the revivification of human flesh”—is to imagine “resurrection” as a metaphor for something else: an inexplicable event, a new kind of life, the birth of the Christian community on earth, the renewal of a people, an individual’s spiritual rebirth, a bodiless ascension to God. Progressives frequently fall back on resurrection-as-metaphor, for it allows them to celebrate Easter while also expressing a reasonable [or what appears “reasonable” at the unthinking level of those who are deep divers at the shallow end of the pool] agnosticism. They quote that great theological cop-out: “We cannot know what God has in store for us.” [And this is indeed a cop-out, because we have a lot of revealed information about what God has in store from us from Christ and his apostles and the Scriptures.]

The intellectual flabbiness of this approach [that’s calling it as it is] causes agonies for such orthodox Christians as N. T. Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, England [let’s hear a cheer for Bishop Tom!]. “People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor,” he once told my editor Jon Meacham and me in an interview for this magazine. “In other words, [Jesus] went to heaven, whatever that means. And they’ve never realized that the word ‘resurrection’ simply didn’t mean that. If people [in the first century] had wanted to say that he died and went to heaven, they had perfectly good ways of saying that.” The whole point of the Christian story is that the Resurrection really happened, Wright insists. The disciples rolled back the rock on the third day, and Jesus’ body was gone. [The two main features of the Easter accounts in the Gospels are the bodily appearances of Jesus and the empty tomb. They go hand in hand.] This insistence on the veracity of resurrection is no less sure in Judaism, where the Orthodox pray thrice a day to a God “who causes the dead to come to life,” or in Islam. “I swear by the day of resurrection!” proclaims the Quran. “Yes, Indeed!”

And so, the paradox. Resurrection may be unbelievable [as I have pointed out, it isn’t], but belief in a traditional heaven requires it. I think often of Jon D. Levenson, a Jewish scholar at Harvard Divinity School who hopes to bring the idea of resurrection back to mainstream Judaism, where it has been lost in practice for generations. [This is true: even among the orthodox. I once queried an orthodox Jewish friend who had just returned from a funeral about this: resurrection, he said, didn’t even rate a mention at this or at most Jewish funerals he had been to.] I visited him one cold November afternoon because, as a literal-minded skeptic, I wanted him to explain to me how it works. How does God put bodies—burned in fire or pulverized in war—back together again? Levenson looked at me, eyes twinkling, and said, “It’s no use to ask, ‘If I had a lab at MIT, how would I try to resurrect a body?’ The belief in resurrection is more radical. It’s a supernatural event. It’s a special act of grace or of kindness on God’s part.” [Doesn’t that put it very well?] For my part, I don’t buy it. [One could ask, at this point and after so much of the above argument, why not? I suspect that it is doubt about what Jesus called “the power of God”.] I do, however, leave the door open a crack for radical acts of grace and kindness—and for humbling ourselves before all that we don’t understand. [And that’s nice. Openness to God’s grace and kindness is always a good thing.]

I am curious (they say it killed the cat – and it is an attribute that sometimes gets me into trouble too – but which perhaps makes me more suited than some would think to be involved in dialogue with non-Catholics!). Two stories that Cathnews ran this morning seem to me to need more information.

The first story is the news of the death of the atheist philosopher turned “believer” Anthony Flew. Cathnews picks up an obituary from Sydney’s Catholic Communications in which it is said that:

With an academic career spanning 60 years with stints at universities across Britain and the US, Antony Flew will be remembered not only as one of the outstanding philosophers of his time, but as the man who preached atheism but died a believer.

My question to anyone who knows is: What kind of “believer” was Professor Flew? The very same article says that “Flew supported the idea of a God along the lines of the philosophy espoused by Greek philosopher, Aristotle who believed God had characteristics of both power and intelligence” but that “until his death while convinced God did exist, he remained sceptical about an afterlife”. So was he a Christian or a Deist? If you have more information on this, I would be interested to hear it.

The other story is also interesting, in the light of our recent discussion on “sacking” bishops. It is a short report concerning the “sacking” of the Bishop of Same in Tanzania. All the article says is that

The Vatican has sacked Tanzanian Bishop Jakob Koda for alleged violation of church moral teachings. Vatican Apostolic Nuncio to Tanzania, Archbishop Joseph Chennoth, told the Daily News that Bishop Koda of Same diocese in the Kilimanjaro region has now been “advised to take time for rest, reflection and personal study”. Following Bishop Koda’s removal, Archbishop Chennoth said that the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Fr Rogath Kimaryo CSSp to be Apostolic Administrator. Without elaborating, Archbishop Chennoth said that the Catholic Church normally grants such occasion to its leaders “when necessary”. “We have advised him to leave the Diocese, and Fr Kimaryo will lead the See for a short while, until the Holy Father announces (the appointment of) a new bishop,” he said.

Does anyone know what Bishop Koda’s actual moral errors were? It seems to me that they would have to have been pretty obvious and pretty serious – and even regularly repeated – for this sort of response. Again, does anyone have any more information?

Celebrate the Holy Father’s 5th Anniversary by reading the good news of his pontificate from this Catholic World Report round table, written by those who know him best – including our “local girl”, Tracey Rowland.

Update: A couple of other articles reviewing the pontificate worthy of reading:

Sandro Magister: The Passion of Pope Benedict. Six Accusations, One Question

Vincent Twomey: Despite media smears, world and faithful have warmed to Benedict

I laughed out loud when I read the final paragraph of “The Impossible Dream” by Ruth Williams in the Sunday Age.

Question: “What is the solution to the housing affordability problem?”

Answer: “Cheaper houses”.

The full paragraph reads:

”Ultimately, the solution to the housing affordability problem is cheaper houses,” Eslake says. ”We have a belief in this country that governments must always try to keep house prices going up. It’s time we questioned that.”

It isn’t rocket science. Hell, it’s hardly even economic science.

But that may be the point. Economic science – and political science too it would seem – has worked on the idea that rising property prices are a good thing for the economy. The Age has been running something of a campaign lately to help our economists and politicians see that this is not necessarily so. It is self-evidently a bad thing for first home buyers, and it is even becoming evident that it really doesn’t profit home owners either – since they have to live somewhere it is capital that is never realised.

We are really facing a crisis here in this country in the area of housing. I feel it acutely because I am one of those caught in the rental market with no way out into the home ownership market. The fact is that currently the median house price is eight times the median annual salary in this country, and the estimation is that we are about 202,000 houses short for our population.

So you may not have a degree in economics or be a town planner or a Canberra politician, but you don’t need any of that to know the answer to the problem of housing affordability. The answer is cheaper housing.

Slowly the facts are starting to get through.

In today’s regular “The Pope and The Scandal” article in The Age, Paolo Totaro reports, amid all the other inuendo, that there may be some “nuance and context” required to understand the facts:

As always, nuance and context are easily lost in deeply emotional stories. John Allen in the very same paper [ie. the National Catholic Reporter – which had an editorial calling for the papal “disclosure”] argues succinctly that while there is an urgent need for answers, Pope Benedict has undertaken reform of the church’s response to sexual abuse among priests, and warns that the structures of the Vatican have meant he has only had direct responsibility in this area since 2001, or four years before he became Pope: ”One certainly can question how Ratzinger’s office handled those exceptional cases, and the record seems painfully slow and ambivalent in comparison with how similar accusations would be dealt with today …” he wrote.

”[But] to suggest that Ratzinger was the Vatican’s ‘point man’ on sex abuse for almost 25 years, and to fault him for the mishandling of every case that arose between 1981 and 2001, is misleading.”

Well, John Allen isn’t the only prominent journalist to try to get the facts out on this story. Others include Miranda Devine and David Gibson.

Our Miranda is daughter of the late great Australian newspaper man Frank Devine. Her piece in the Sydney Morning Herald (The Age’s northern sister) was published a couple of days ago and entitled “Evildoers, not Pope, to blame”. Some snippets (but please read the whole article):

The pursuit of the Pope reached absurd heights this week with news that atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have asked the Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson to draw up a case to arrest Benedict XVI for alleged cover-up of paedophilia in the Catholic Church.

That these exhibitionist atheists should seize on the tragedy of child sexual abuse by a small minority of Catholic priests to pursue their vendetta against religion is stomach-turning. Dawkins has become shrill with excitement, describing the Pope as ”a leering old villain in a frock”.

He said the Pope ”should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gouging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, around his ears”. From what deep cesspool of hatred do those words spring?

…It is the Catholic Church that has been most vocal about the breakdown of moral order, from paedophilia to abortion. And this has made it a target of those who object to moralising they regard as an infringement of their freedoms.

…The Pope may have made mistakes, but his letter to Irish Catholics last month could not have been more frank, humbly penitent, or condemnatory of predator priests and the bishops who failed to stop them.

…Yet the baying from atheists and fellow travellers for the biggest scalp of all has only escalated. …The struggle against religion has taken the form of a new religion. Its new priests ”find their greatest ideological enemies in priests, religious brothers, and sisters. They cannot physically destroy them (as was done in communist countries), so they try other methods.”

What is the motive: to destroy the credibility of the strongest moral voice left? Would the world be a better place without the Catholic Church? Without Christianity? That is the end point of this game, which should frighten everyone, whether religious or not.

David Gibson, on the other hand, is an American. Not particularly conservative as far as I can make out, like Allen he too has a better clue of what is going on in the Eternal City than your average journo. He is the religion journo at PoliticsDaily.com author of a couple of books on the Pope and the Church “The Rule of Benedict” and “The Coming Catholic Church”. No Vatican toady, you can read what he has to say in a couple of articles online: At NJ.com, there is a short edited interview (“Pope Benedict XVI and the church pedophile scandal: Q&A with David Gibson”) and in the Washington Post there is an article called “Five myths about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal”. In the latter article, his five “myths” include:

1. Pope Benedict is the primary culprit in the coverup of the abuse scandal.
2. Gay priests are to blame.
3. Sexual abuse is more pervasive in the Catholic Church than in other institutions.
4. Media outlets are biased against the Catholic Church.
5. The crisis will compel U.S. Catholics to leave the church.

In the interview, Gibson says the “new” factor in this latest round of stories is that it

touches on the credibility of the pope. We haven’t had that in a long time. The last time was with Pius XII and the allegations that he did not take sufficient action to protect Jews during the Holocaust, and that was 60 years ago.

He also says that there is “no evidence that there are more pedophiles in the Catholic Church than in other institutions, such as teaching or the Boy Scouts” and that “[s]ince bishops revamped the seminaries in the early 1980s and introduced better psychological screening, abuse in the Catholic Church has dropped sharply.” When asked whether the pope will resign, he replies:

No, the pope won’t resign unless something cataclysmic happens. But will he be permanently wounded in terms of credibility, that’s the big question. This has been a very tough stretch for the pope, and how much he recovers from it, I don’t know. He remains the pope and over time he may recover, but this has done his reputation grievous harm.

Well, that is what our prayers are for, I guess.

On the Bertone comment, by the way, there was a rather puzzling article in The Age yesterday by Tablet journalist and one time press secretary for the Archbishop of Westminster, Austen Invereigh. The article was headed “Cardinal error to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia”. That headline was rather at odds with the piece itself which, while saying the Cardinal was imprudent in his comment, nevertheless manages to get the facts of the matter out on the table. Worth reading in full.

So. We have a long way to go on this, but we are relieved to find that not all who work in the print media are as blind to “nuance and context” as others.

Update: Following Pastor Weedon’s link in the com box led me to this piece in The Guardian from April 15: The mob should lay off. The pope is innocent | Jack Valero. It is as succinct and factual a case for the defense of the Holy Father as you could ask for.