Skeptical Faith

Google Image Back in 1983, Joseph Girzone, a Carmelite priest, wrote his first book. It was self-published and his advertising was by word-of-mouth, but the book became wildly popular and was eventually a national best-seller. Called Joshua, A Parable for Today, it was about a strange man who moved into a small cabin in the outskirts of a little town. A carpenter and furniture maker, he made beautiful stuff, but he attracted attention, and suspicion, from townspeople because of the simple and loving way he lived. The book, as simply written as Joshua’s life, is relevant today and I recommend it. Joshua, of course, is one of the Hebrew names for Jesus, and the fact that the Joshua of the novel is a carpenter is among what makes the comparison obvious. Like Jesus 2,000 years earlier, Joshua is distrusted by the religious establishment of the late 20th century. His simple message of love contrasted with the dogma-laced religion known by many people then and now. Here’s what a

Google Image I grew up in a loving family but we never said we loved each other and rarely showed it physically. That all changed for our family, and I believe for many families, in the 80s or 90s. I can’t recall exactly when but we became much more willing to express our love verbally and physically. Among my siblings, it became common – even among the men – to hug on arrival or departure from a family gathering and to end telephone conversations with, “Love you,” something that would have been unheard of even 10 years earlier. I don’t know what brought about the change. We may have become more aware of our bonds and their fragility. And maybe we began to think that we would later regret not taking the opportunity to tell and show people we loved them when we had the chance. One reason for our previous timidity, I think, was an aversion to sentimentality, an embarrassing human trait. We thought words and physical expression were unnecessary, and, of course, they a

I traveled to Europe as a young seminary student and had my first encounters with non-believers. They awakened a sense of the fragility of my faith with which I have been dealing all my life. Having grown up in a Catholic family and attended Catholic elementary and high schools, I was pretty sure of myself and had given little thought to people who struggled with faith or were not believers. Three encounters changed all that. One was with a physics professor from a university in Texas who happened to be seated with a group of us at a dining table on the ship from Montreal to Le Havre. He described himself as an atheist, the first I had ever met, and during the six-day crossing, at which we sat in the same assigned places at the table, he argued against belief in God. I really wasn’t impressed with his arguments – one being that “love” is a function of the liver – but was impressed that he had the courage to reject faith and say so. A second encounter was at Speakers’ Corner in

Google Image As a missionary years ago among the Aymara people of Bolivia, I was struck by the popularity of a statue in the church I served. It was by far the most popular in the church, which in the Spanish colonial style, was filled with often bloody images of Jesus, and of Mary and the saints. The statue depicted “Santiago Matamoros,” or St. James the Moor Killer, who according to legend, miraculously appeared in a ninth century battle in which the Spanish defeated the Moors, Muslims who ruled all or parts of Spain for nearly 800 years. Parishioners burning candles in front of the statue, I learned, prayed to this saint to intercede with God to punish their enemies – people who they believed had stolen beans or other crops from their fields or had offended them in other ways. Learning this, I knew I had my work cut out for me. This idea of a punitive God was, for me, among the burdens and distortions of faith laid on the native people

Google Image The Pope is back in Rome, and everything’s back to normal. Whew! Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives can go back to attacking each other, ignoring the poor, the unborn, the environment and the common good. We can all go back to separating our “religious” or “spiritual” lives from our “real” ones, basing our decisions on finances, the dominant views of our age group, our politics, our personal likes and dislikes, the desperate need to “be ourselves.” Listening to the pope, we almost believed that things could change, that we have a higher calling, that hostility, apathy and indifference aren’t the norm. Sorry if this sounds cynical. I don’t really want it to be. But after nearly three-quarters of a century of life on this earth, it’s hard to be optimistic. Still, I agree with the media that the pope exuded optimism and hope. Let’s review a few of those hopeful messages from this pope, whom I believe to be a prophet for our time. Maybe we can in