Skeptical Faith

Google Image If you visit the small, Central American country of El Salvador, you’ll notice in prominent places huge images of Oscar Romero, sometimes alongside an image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. “Che” is a hero to many leftists in Latin America. An Argentinian by birth and a medical school graduate, he joined Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution and later attempted to foment revolution in South America. He was killed by the Bolivian military in 1967. He became a “ ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion ,” according to Wikipedia. And, it is said, the association in the popular mind between the leftist causes of people like Guevara and Oscar Romero, the murdered archbishop of San Salvador, is the reason the Catholic Church took so long to canonize Romero. Gunned Down Many Salvadorans believe the archbishop, who was gunned down while saying Mass in 1980, should have been canonized long before now. But others within the Church argued that Romero’s martyrdom was for...

Google Image Archie Bunker, the character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” had his own take on the traditional Christian doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. “God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.” For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, "Commies," gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, "women's libbers," and Polish-Americans….” Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….” An Anonymous Contributor Sister Mary Matilda, my eighth grade teacher, would accuse me of being uncharitable but I imagine that an anonymous contributor to a recent newspaper column is an “Archie Bunke...

Google Image There’s a story in the Acts of the Apostles – in my view, the most interesting book in the Bible – about the Apostle Paul walking around the Areopagus in Athens, a sort of open-air courtroom/forum/temple. Images of Greek gods were on display there, and Acts describes a speech Paul gave to “the men of Athens” who were presumably there to discuss weighty matters of state or religion. Paul tells them he noticed an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god” and says that’s the God he is proclaiming – the God of Christians and Jews, who was unknown to the Greeks. Impenetrable Mystery That God is still unknown, theologians tell us, because he/she is unknowable. As much as we may pray and talk about God, we really don’t know who he/she is. We can theologize and philosophize all we want, but God will always be an impenetrable mystery. And the mystery is why we need faith to have a “relationship” with him/her. But Paul goes on to quote Greek poets to say th...

Google Image A few weeks ago, I watched a film on Netflix called “The End of the Tour.” Released in 2015, it “ received widespread acclaim from critics,” according to Wikipedia, and in my view, with good reason. It is the story of David Foster Wallace, an American writer. His novel Infinite Jest (1996) was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His last novel, The Pale King , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012. I’ve read none of his books but was fascinated by the filmed story of his life. Wallace struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicidal tendencies. He was often depressed and was several times committed to psychiatric wards. In 2008, at age 46, Wallace wrote a suicide note, arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King and hanged himself from a rafter of his house. Agonizingly Uncomfortable I know, it doesn’t sound like a fun film, but it was well done and pro...