Skeptical Faith

Google Image I was recently on a week-long eco-tourist expedition to the Amazonia region of Colombia, on the border with Venezuela. I saw and did lots of interesting things and among them was extended contact with indigenous communities. I listened to a couple of legendary stories, one of which is widely known in the communities around the small city of Inírida in the department, or state, of Guainia. The city is surrounded by wide, fast-flowing rivers, thick jungle and broad savannas. For most of the year, the only way in or out is by plane or boat. The rivers are full of fish which are continuously chased by frequently breeching river dolphins. The stories I heard had striking similarities to those in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and I was struck by the similarity in their moral messages as well, as in the story of Princess Inídira. "Little Mirror" According to the legend of the Puinave people, Inídira, whose name means “Little Mirror of the Sun,” ...

Google Image Tiffany Haddish was “the breakout star of last summer's raucous hit movie, Girl's Trip, and last month became the first African-American woman stand-up comedian to host Saturday Night Live ,” according to a recent article on the National Public Radio (NPR) web site. In an interview, she recalled times of struggle. "Life happened for me," she said. "But I just kept pushing 'cause I know what I'm supposed to do here on this earth." Imagine what “this earth” would be like if more people had a sense of purpose. I haven’t read the  “The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” by Rick Warren – which Amazon calls the  “best-selling non-fiction hardback in history” – but I like the title. It asks a question everyone should ask, but few do. The question is intimidating. But it must be asked because it has so much to do with our search for God. Among those searching for God in the Christian tradition, we should, perhaps...

Google Image This blog is published every Thursday. But for the first time in five years, I won’t be publishing Skeptical Faith next Thursday, Jan. 11. I’ll be on a week-long expedition to an ecologically rich area on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. I hope to publish again on Jan. 18. As a graduate student in Journalism/Mass Communications in the late 1970s, I surveyed Catholic students about their religious beliefs and practices. I partnered with the Catholic student parish and fortunately, with a professor in the Sociology Department who was the university’s expert on polling. In the process, I learned a lot about sampling, most of which I’ve forgotten. But I was much more interested in how students would respond. In general, the results were encouraging for the parish. The students were fairly orthodox in their beliefs and by today’s standards, conservative in their practices and behaviors. Most attended Mass regularly. Most were drug-free. Most agre...

Google Image I grew up in a deeply religious family, but neither my parents nor my four older siblings were showy about it. My father was a practical sort of guy and rarely, if ever, talked about his faith. But I was impressed as a child that he never went to bed without kneeling to pray, and neither he nor my mother ever missed Sunday mass. My mother was devoted to Mary, and was also a pray-er. She and my Dad made sure we attended church and received the sacraments and sent us to parochial school, and they were obviously eager for us to know right from wrong and to always choose the former. But I don’t remember them ever saying why they were believers, let alone preaching to us. All the recent reports of emptying church pews have brought on a slew of articles about what people believe and why. Many have focused on the “spiritual versus religious” controversy; that is, people – especially young people – who say they’re spiritual but not religious. Self-identify in Four Cat...

Google Image When I worked as a priest among the Aymara-speaking people of Bolivia, it wasn’t unusual when walking to communities high in the mountains to find remnants of pagan worship. Among the most commonly-found items were dried-up llama and alpaca fetuses and small, clay, handmade statues of various gods. We who worked in the parish knew that many of the people who left them there also participated in our masses and other religious functions. It didn’t bother us. The people’s lives were hard and they figured they needed all the help they could get. We also speculated that this confusion of deities was one of the results of the Spanish conquest of the 15 th and 16 th centuries. It included the forced baptism of thousands, maybe millions, of indigenous people. They and their descendants had scant access to religious education, and the term “implied consent” hadn’t been invented. One of our jobs, some of us thought, was to compensate for that by making sure people kne...

Google Image When I was a kid, starting when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I believe, my friends and I used to be gone from our houses for hours without our parents knowing exactly where we were. In the summer, we spent whole mornings or afternoons in a huge nearby park, which had hills and woods with a creek running through it. We would, of course, make sure we were home for meals. The neighborhood was filled with kids, and besides playing sports and games together, we had plenty of disagreements and even some fights. But we almost always worked things out without our parents’ help. These are different times, not necessarily worse times. But nowadays, this kind of independence by children could bring charges of parental neglect. Back then, I think it gave us a good start in life, in resolving our own problems, overcoming obstacles, learning the give and take you need to live with other people. How Resilient Are We? I recently read an article in the magazine “Living C...

Google Image Around this time of year, I grumble about the lights and decorations at the malls and in neighborhoods, about the Christmas music that will have to be endured for more than a month, about the incessant sales that urge us to buy stuff we and the recipients of our gifts don’t need. If I were Pope, I would get together with other Christian leaders and try to change the date of the Christian Christmas, conceding Dec. 25 to the Walmarts, Amazons and Macys. They could proceed with their sales and promotions and we could quietly celebrate the birth of Jesus at another time. Am I the “Grinch who Stole Christmas?” I don’t think so. I dislike this time of the year not because I’m against the joy of Christmas expressed in gift-giving and reunions of family and friends or because I dislike the happiness brought to some of our children. I would like Christmas trees and the decorations if they all went up a few days before Christmas and if they were truly meaningful. To me, it...