Dear friends,

What I find constantly fascinating about this business of writing is how, almost imperceptibly slowly over time, even though we might be writing again and again on the same broad subject matter our views slowly change. New breakthroughs come and we are able to see something we have been staring at, or meditating on for years suddenly comes to be seen in some fresh perspective.

Why do people write?

	Why do people write? Photo: Steve Woods www.sxc.hu

George Orwell wrote a wonderful essay on the subject entitled "why I write". He ended up coming to the conclusion that it was seemingly some force deep down inside himself that he couldn't explain rationally. I can relate to that. At one level writing is a form of therapy but, at another, I know I write because I am trying to better understand things. The discipline of writing, and the discipline that the speed of writing places on our mental processes, somehow enables me to slowly come to a better understanding of various things. It is far better, I find, than sitting under a tree trying to think some question through. The answers come from the conversation that is set up with other human beings and, I suspect, the conversation that is set up with our own souls and this Being who lives at the heart of our lives whom we try to describe with the word, God.

Earlier this morning I quickly penned a response to Expat on the CathNews board. Lo and behold I later found that what I'd written did in fact provide a better summary than anything I have written in the last ten years on some stuff I've been thinking about for as long as ten years. I wasn't consciously setting out to better summarise my thoughts. In fact I feel pretty lousy at the moment as I seem to have picked up a dose of the flu. What I think I set out to do was simply continue a conversation Expat and I have been having both privately and publicly in the last week or so about the incompatability of our perspectives on all this faith business and theology. I was trying to find "common ground" with a person whom I find I actually have very little "common ground" with in our understanding of what this whole "Catholic" endeavour is about.

I sincerely doubt that my post ended up answering any of Expat's thoughts directed at me. What I did find happened is that somehow I reached a better summary than I have been able to do before in some of the things I believe and have been trying to work out why I believe them. Here's what I wrote, with some slight further additions:

Trying to better understand what I believe and why I believe it...

I do think the great divide in the Church (and in religion generally today) comes down to two different interpretations of what the core objective is. Both sides claim they are searching for "truth" or the ultimate meaning of life. One side invest all their marbles in a belief that their religious leaders have all the answers and their duty is to accept those answers "on faith" come hell or high water. The other side — and this is basically where I would put myself today — believe the ultimate truths exist elsewhere and we are all searching for them. i.e. all human beings are engaged in the search. I certainly believe the institutional Church has a role as both a repository of truth and in encouraging the ongoing discernment of what those ultimate truths are. I no longer believe though, particularly given the knowledge coming to us in recent decades from the abuse scandals, that our priests and bishops are beyond error or are somehow "graced" with God to have special abilities in discerning truth. I think they are basically all flawed human beings like the rest of us, battling with their egos, their wanting to be loved, their wanting to acquire power and influence, and also intrigued by wanting to know the meaning to these big questions "who are we, where did we come from, where are we going to, what's the meaning of these things called 'Life' and 'Creation'". As importantly, I believe they also battle, like the rest of us do, with this Christian imperative for humility and not wishing to appear as some know-all.

I basically believe there is a sea-change shift going on in wider human society today as to how we discern these ultimate truths. That's basically what the premise was in the final episode of Professor Robert Winston's program, The Story of God, screened down here last night. It's at the nub of this great difference of opinion between religion and science. I no more believe scientists are infallible than I do that Popes are infallible. When looked at from the perspective God might have there is actually not that much difference between the humblest person who cleans the smelliest latrines in the most remote province of the poorest nation in Africa and the Pope or the President of the United States. Basically we are all equal — and all flawed and all struggling no matter how much wealth or power or learning we may each think we have. The challenge we have as a human family is to recognise this and to somehow work together in a spirit of cooperation and love to realise the ultimate vision of our Creator God who thought this whole thing, Creation, up.

The great challenge we all face as human beings is that we forget over time. We forget the knowledge previous civilisations acquired. We tend to forget bits of the accumulated wisdom that are acquired down through time both through Divine Revelation and through human experience and enquiry. We do need structures — like religious institutions — to help us "re-member". Neither the institutions though, nor their members or leaders, are themselves God. They are structures that help us find this great mystery we try to condense into the word God.

I can appreciate the point of view that we have to invest all of our marbles in a certain level of confidence that our religious leaders and spiritual guides are beyond error otherwise we are all lost and adrift. I do not share that perspective though. Our ultimate obedience has to be to God and the Truths that only God is the ultimate holder of. It is not to the various human structures we set up to help us discern or remember "Truth".

One of the reasons why, of all human institutions, I am so attracted to the Catholic Church is that in her humility and wisdom, and when behaving and thinking at her best, she actually believes and postulates an understanding of what I have just endeavoured to describe. It is the idea encapsulated in this notion of Primacy of Conscience. I'm sure you appreciate that some people in high places in this country actually believe this idea of Primacy of Conscience is a bunch of donkey snot and want to ditch it.

Blessings, Brian

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

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©2007 Brian Coyne

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