Skeptical Faith

Google Image During my time as a priest among the indigenous people of a remote area of Bolivia, I often thought that one of my jobs was trying to undo the spiritual damage done by Spanish missionaries several centuries before. Truth is, I didn’t know what exactly was taught by the Spaniards, but I saw evidence that despite what they taught, a residue of people’s native religions remained.  After Catholic funerals, which they valued highly, they would gather for parties in which a lot of alcohol was consumed (much like the Irish of my parents' and grandparents' generations). And they would always pour a small portion of a drink onto the ground in honor of “Pacha Mama” or “Mother Earth.” Llama Fetuses When walking along the crests of the small mountains surrounding the village where I lived – which was in name, overwhelming Catholic - I would often find small “shrines” to the gods, complete with llama fetuses and other pagan objects. The differences between where and how...

Google Image The famous theologian and Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had a lot of time on his hands as he sat in a Nazi prison in 1943. Before prison, he was a very active person so among his frequent thoughts while incarcerated was that he was “wasting” a lot of his life in a prison cell. “Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer;” he wrote in a collection of his prison writings; “it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.” He may have felt that, but he didn’t waste his prison time, writing and reading extensively and leaving a treasure of wisdom for the rest of us. Felt Numbed Besides time, Bonhoeffer also thought a lot about the world outside, and the struggles against Nazism – for which he was confined to prison and for which he would pay with his life – and the fellow Germans who felt numbed in the face of the overwhelming popularity of a brutal regime. “Disappointed by the w...

Google Image I’m a weekly volunteer at a social services agency, where my duties include interpreting from Spanish to English, and vice versa, for recent immigrants. If they qualify financially and otherwise, we provide temporary rent assistance, help with payment of utilities, vouchers for gasoline, food and emergency housing. This past winter we needed to provide most of the above for a family of four from Mexico who were sleeping in their old car. Besides a mom and dad, the family included two small children. The car’s windows didn’t shut properly, so they used rolled-up towels in the windows to protect their children from the intense cold. They had no jobs and nowhere to go for help. We helped them with food, fuel and emergency housing. As a matter of policy, we don’t ask about clients’ legal status, their religion - if they have one - or any other such questions. We just try to help them in their need. "Illegal Aliens" The agency is part of the mission of a Catholi...

Google Image One of the most solemn and ancient rituals of the Catholic Church is the Easter Vigil. As the name implies, it is held on the Saturday evening before Easter and following a long tradition of anticipating a feast day on the day before, it includes the first Easter Mass. My wife, Amparo, and I hadn’t gone to an Easter vigil for several years, mostly because it is the longest Catholic service of the year and at our age, the frequent standing, sitting and kneeling is not easy. But since we’re in a new parish in a new state, we decided to try it again this year. It was beautiful and inspiring, outweighing, for me at least, its length. The ritual includes lighting of the “new fire” and Easter candle, symbolizing Jesus’ new life as light of the world, lots of readings from new and old testaments, baptisms and reception of newcomers into the church and Mass of the Resurrection.   Renewed Interest? During the Easter vigil this year in thoroughly secular France, according ...

Google Image I recently watched “Freud’s Last Session” on Netflix, a movie set in England at the start of WW2. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, the famous pioneer in psychoanalysis and psychology, and Matthew Goode as C.S. Lewis, the renowned English professor, author and lay theologian. I recommend it. The movie portrays a fictitious meeting between the two, Freud, the dyed-in-the-wool atheist, and Lewis, the author of 30 books selling millions of copies,  whose wartime radio broadcasts promoting faith captivated the minds and hearts of thousands of people during that critical era in British history. Although the two men undoubtedly knew of each other and each other’s work, historians doubt they ever met. Can Doubt Strengthen Faith? And doubt, in a way, is the principal subject of the movie: each other’s doubt about their atheism and faith while outwardly trying to show how firm they were in their belief and unbelief. In my view, the movie shows that faith and dou...