Skeptical Faith

Google Image “If people say they just love the smell of books, I always want to pull them aside and ask, to be clear, do you know how reading works?” I found this one-liner on the Internet recently. Besides being funny, it illustrates how we often miss the obvious. It also reminded me of a scene in the 1991 movie, Black Robe, a film adaptation of the book of the same name written by Brian Moore. The story is about French Jesuit priests who, in unbelievably impossible conditions, tried to convert native Canadian tribes, some of whom were considered barbarous even for the 1600s. One of the priests was traveling with a French layman and a small group of tribesman in the Canadian wilderness. Some of the tribesmen had learned French and the priest began explaining reading and writing, a “technology” with which the natives were completely unfamiliar. To illustrate, the priest wrote something on a tablet, whispered what he wrote to a nearby native, then handed the tablet to the n...

Google Image I recently met my beautiful, new great, great niece (Yes, I’m that old.). It was close to feeding time during a recent visit and her mother – like most mothers who don’t have feeding schedules down to the minute - gave the baby a pacifier. And like most babies, she was “pacified,” until she realized the pacifier wasn’t the real thing.    As I was watching her, it occurred to me how we humans are so often satisfied with pacifiers, how often we fall for what the Jesuit, Richard Leonard, calls “the narcotics of modern living.” He includes among them drugs, alcohol, sex, work, gambling, technology, and shopping. I would add the preoccupation with technology, sports, exercise and the cult of the body, the fascination with “stuff,” and the idolization of food. These allures, which can be substitutes for religion, “never take away the pain of living but temporarily mask its effects,” Leonard writes, and many of us eventually – sometimes late in life – reali...

Google Image The newspaper I read allows readers to submit anonymous comments without having to take ownership of what they write. They write about everything from politics to trends to crime news. “I believe in ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’” wrote one recent contributor. “The family that abused and tortured their (sic) foster child should receive the same treatment!” The writer is referring to a recent case in which foster parents are accused of abusing and neglecting a teen aged girl, resulting in her death. He didn’t bother to explain the “eye for an eye” passage from the Hebrew Bible or add the rest of what Jesus said. Meant to Restrict Retaliation In the Hebrew Bible, "an eye for an eye" was meant to restrict retaliation to no more than that, according to some Scripture scholars. And Jesus used the passage to teach that his followers should not seek retaliation but should, in scriptural hyperbole, “turn the other cheek.”   I know nothing...

Google Image A news article a while back noted that “in an effort to ensure transparency as well as historical and scientific accuracy,” Pope Francis approved revised norms on healings alleged to be miracles. The norms have to do with the composition and procedures of panels of medical and other experts the Vatican uses to try to determine whether an alleged healing has a “natural or scientific explanation.” I’m sure many cynics had a field day with this announcement. “Miracles?” they may ask! “No contemporary, informed person could believe in them.” There’s reason for skepticism, if not cynicism. People easily see the face of Christ or the image of Mary on gnarled trees, sides of cliffs, in the clouds and on deformed carrots. They say that the survival of their cousin with cancer is “a miracle.” They declare that their remaining alive after that horrible auto accident is a miracle. Sometimes, these phrases are simply figures of speech, meant to say that the incidents a...

Google Image Tracey, a young, healthy nurse working among the disadvantaged, is driving from one town to another when the engine of her car dies. Passersby offer to tow her car, and as that is happening, she drives over the tow rope, which flips her car over and into a ditch. “I cannot move a muscle and feel as if the entire roof of the car is pressing down on my head,” she recalls in her book about the accident and its consequences. “Many hours later… all I can feel is the most excruciating pain in my neck…and my brain knows that I can’t feel anything below my shoulders….” Soon she feels “a stabbing pain at the back of my head.” This turns out to be caused by a sharp twig encased there. Tracey would never walk again or regain the use of her arms or hands. She had to resign herself to being a quadriplegic for life. Bitter Questions Richard Leonard tells this story about his sister in his own book, saying that after he and his mother went to see Tracey in the hospital afte...