<< On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> ... Is this any more unbelievable than the idea that devils sometimes
> take up residence in human bodies and can be exorcised by priests who
> incant the proper formulas? Or is the Jesus story true and the
> possession/exorcism story superstition? I ask this as someone who is
> not immune to the beauties of Catholic ritual and icongraphy. Doug
It's a question I suppose of whom/what one chooses to trust, just as
(sometimes) we choose people to trust. --C. G. Estabrook
>> I preface this my remarking that I am irreligious Jew who belongs to an atheist congregation, but I went to Catholic school for some years. I grew up in the South (Virginia), so I know a bit about American religiosity.
The tropes that Doug is rehearsing ("The Virgin Birth, wotta joke!) are old stuff, Tom Paine made enemes with them in The Age of Reason, which was political dynamite in the 1780s and even the 1830s. Attacks on religion can be liberating: Marx started that way. And in a country with the kind of Prepare to Meet Thy God wackiness we have, it still may.
Still, I would not overdo it. Most American religiosity is a civil religion without hard theological content, hence the real shock when the Pope recently proclaimed that Catholicism really is better than other religion, a quite reasonable propistion from God's representative here on earth and the chief interpreter of the revealed truth. Here we don't believe that sort of thing, unless we really are in the Bible Belt: rather, we all worship God in our own way, and if my God is nonexistent (the official view of my synagogue), well that is OK too, as longa s we worship him. I know lots of ministers who think that belief in supernatural beings is primitive superstition, but think that squares with Christianity (or whatever). That was Hegel's view too, and he was no naif.
As for the actual rationality of believing in the literal truth of Catholic dogma, it's not supposed to be rational. The mysteries of the Church are _mysteries_; we're not supposed to get them. Is it irrational to accept a faith that has mysteries? I am not so sure. I think quantum physics is true, and I once could do the maths (can't any more), so I can tell you, you want real mysteries, check out quantum physics. Or indeed, Marxism, with the transmogrifications of Value that have been getting some play here lately, the faith in the planned rational society, and the conviction that the working class Messiah will rise to bring on that glorious day. I am not making fun of Marxsim any more than I am making fun of quantum mechanics. My point is rather just that there is a lot of mystery and faith in things even irreligious people here accept. Why not Catholicism?
However, demonic possession is over the top. That's just too silly. I don't understand how any sensible person could take that seriously.
--jks