Is science now approaching this frontier of awareness? It seems so. For already we are seeing reductionism out-manoeuvred and a physicist (Freeman Dyson, in Nature’s Imagination, OUP 1995, pp8 and 11) stating that science is closer to art than to philosophy = Lorna Marsden is a Quaker writer whose last two books were The Descent of the God, 1991 and The Singing of New Songs, 1995 (Sessions, York) A PERSONAL VIEW Do I still believe in Jesus?
Which Jesus?
OFTEN, IN THE PAGES OF THE SoF magazine, it has been remarked that many of its contributors are “advanced” in years although one should add that in many cases the tone of their contributions has a fresh youthful feel! But should this surprise us? As I rapidly approach the special-ratesfor-OAPs stage I look back on my life and realize that while physically I had been growing towards old age, mentally I had remained stunted for quite some time. Why was this? Had my religious background anything to with it?
I reckon the Christian religion played a greater part in my life than I suspected. It began back in the last war in a Scottish Presbyterian boarding school. I recall a sort of liquorice allsorts mixture of bible stories, in which unreal people behaved in the most unreal ways, dreary hymns and prayers addressed to a god who came across as anything but all-caring and loveable. This divine being, who had to be spoken to ina special sort of “thee, thou, hast vouchsafed” sort of language, presented a god who in no way matched the realities of my life. Odd what religious experiences one remembers from childhood. Mine is a memory of our wartime pangs of hunger extremely aggravated at Harvest Thanksgiving when the windows of the church we attended were overflowing with fruits and vegetables of all kinds and we never got so much as a bruised apple. We sat during the service with mouths watering and I wondered where it all went afterwards. I expect to “the poor and hungry”.
I passed the 11-plus at that school and was due to go to Watford Grammar but then my local parish priest told my mother that I had been baptised in the Catholic church and therefore should attend a Catholic grammar school. When | informed the ex-Black Watch warden of my Scottish school that I would be leaving and going to a Catholic school his only comment was, “Stinking Catholics”. What did he mean by that? Did Catholics not wash, I wondered. “The Sea of Faith was like a breath of mountain air. It gave me the opportunity, with no condemnations or tut-tuts, to work out my own philosophy of life.” Like being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool, I was plunged into “the Catholic faith” with its “Hail Marys”, holy water, rosary beads, the “Sunday Missal” (Latin down one side and English down the other), Litanies of Mary, Joseph and the saints. Strange though all this was to me after my cold Presbyterian beginnings, in which even crucifixes were looked on as idolatrous objects, it appealed to me in a curious way.
Was it its quality of “tangibility’?
I made a decision at the age of 14 to become a priest and a few years later entered a seminary. I have written a book about my experiences there. They were happy times, days full of fun and laughter but it was the beginning of my doubts.
Various lecturers were hinting in very carefully disguised language that if Jesus was around today, he would have kicked over more than a couple of tables in the present day church.
After four years, I called it a day, much to the disappointment of the parish priest and the Italian nuns attached to my parish church, whom I feel sure regarded me as some sort of fallen angel. I decided to take up teaching as a career and finished up a Head of a Catholic primary school. After 23 years of worrying — not that I wasn’t getting the Catholic message across to young children but that I was stuffing their little heads with nonsense — I took the bull by the horns and decided to publish an article on original sin. Quite simply, I just did not believe in this doctrine any longer and refused to teach it to children. There’s one thing about the Catholic church: you can choose not to believe in any of its teachings — contraception, rejected by many of the faithful, is a good example — as long as you keep it to yourself. Write something on paper and have it published and by jingo, an ecclesiastical weight of enormous proportions comes crashing down on your head.
It was very frustrating. My researches had shown quite clearly that Augustine had concocted the original sin theory partly to explain his own well known sexual problems. The theory also ensured the church of absolute control of the faithful from the cradle to the grave. “There is no salvation outside the church” he wrote. He was condemned in his own time by many of his contemporaries but he had his way in the end.
The whole doctrinal structure of the Catholic church is like the Forth bridge. The rivets are the dogmas. I discovered that a few of them were dangerously rusty and, while a bridge can to all appearances seem safe and solid, there will come a time when the corroded rivets will no longer keep the structure together. Sadly, many of the church’ s own surveyors who have tried to warn of the dangers are condemned for their troubles. Authority and power in the Catholic church override any other considerations. It is not so much “heresies” which are anathama but free thinking. Personally, I gave up the struggle and walked out of it.
No-one wanted to listen or discuss. I was described as “paranoid” but it seemed to me that no institution is more paranoid than the church itself.
The Sea of Faith was like a breath of mountain air. It gave me the opportunity, with no condemnations or tut-tuts, to work out my own philosophy of life. Most importantly, I got the chance to start again, to view the whole thing from another perspective. It has been extremely refreshing.
My fellow Christians love to ask, “Do you still believe in Jesus?”. My reply is, “Which Jesus do you mean? The one put about by the institutional church or the one found by reading between the lines of the gospels?”.
The two persons are not the same # Derek Chorley S > You’re Telling Us!