Skeptical Faith

  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...

 Google Image Belief in God is comparable to belief in Santa Claus, say some skeptics. It’s childish and nothing but wishful thinking.   I respect their views, and given the fact that my faith includes doubt, I understand their skepticism. But for many reasons, it’s really not a good comparison.   For one thing, belief in Santa Claus is a relatively recent phenomenon and is culturally specific. That’s in contrast to belief in a supreme being, which is universal and dates to the beginning of history. Secondly, few people past the age of 10 continue to believe in Santa Claus, whereas over 85 percent of adult Americans say they believe in God.   There are no ancient writings on which to base a belief in Santa Claus; there’s no huge body of literature, music and art devoted to him; no one has ever claimed that Santa Claus is the author of life or is in us and around us. After the Christmas season, at least, people aren’t comforted by the idea that Sa...

Google Image  A few months ago I wrote a two-and-a-half page letter to the liturgy committee at the church my wife and I attend. For those unfamiliar with the term, “liturgy” refers to public worship, in this case, the Masses that are held in Catholic parishes. My letter contained a half dozen or so suggestions on how to make the weekend liturgy more people friendly, more welcoming and more relevant to the lives of parishioners. I was subsequently invited to speak to the committee and during the discussion of my suggestions, the parish priest asked me what I believed to be the point of the Mass. “Prayer,” I answered. “Community prayer.” He seemed satisfied with that answer and I thought about that when I recently stumbled across a notebook compiled by my deceased brother, Richard Carney, who for 53 years was a priest in the Kansas City- St. Joseph Catholic Diocese. The notebook contains his notes on “centering prayer,” which incorporates silence and meditation – or...

   Google Image A curious thing happened after the close of the Democratic National Convention last month. Sales of pocket-sized versions of the U.S. Constitution skyrocketed. That’s right, the document, sold for $1 by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, became the second-best-selling book on Amazon, according to the Washington Post. And Google searches for the pocket constitution increased ten-fold the day after the convention. The unlikely increase is ascribed to the image of Khizr Khan, father of fallen Muslim U.S. soldier Captain Humayun Khan, waving his pocket-sized constitution in the air at the convention. Responding to Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration, he took the document from his breast pocket and asked Trump, “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.” It’s easy to see why the constitution hasn’t always been a best-seller. Written in the English of 225 years ago, it’s a formidable rea...