Friday, 22 May 2009

Some interesting thoughts today...

Dear Friends,

The main news today is that I can finally give you a squiz at the new Catholica Forum and invite you to try it out. For the next 48 hours it will be open for anyone to post and check out although the already registered 450 members have the ability to edit their profiles and look deeper inside the works.

This development intersects with something else I was thinking this morning. For my morning reflection I was reading a little more of John Selby Spong's book. It was this marvellous section — which could effectively be a hymn or homily on the entire Creation Story. It's probably the most exciting account I've read anywhere. It also reminded me that I haven't heard any Catholic priest or bishop with the temerity to go anywhere near this territory for decades. Why not? I think the reason is simple. Most people are dead scared of offending those who are deeply wedded to the idea that, as the Bible tells us, there was an original man and woman (called Adam and Eve) who looked just like us and who thought just like us. They get very, very offended if you tell them that that story is a myth and the process of human beings evolving to look, and think — and feel — just like you and I took millions of years. Yes there was an origin to thought, and sentient matter — and us human beings and human families. Our "first parents" probably didn't look like the two people pictured in the Adam and Eve story though. Now what Bishop today would have the guts to come out and say something like that in a homily? He'd be putting his career on the line, wouldn't he, because of the fury that would be stirred up in the neaderthal sectors of the church? You don't need to be Albert Einstein to look at the treatment dished out to the likes of John Shelby Spong to appreciate that. Or the treatment dished out to Jesus himself for upsetting the pharisees and zealots of his age. The reason fewer and fewer people go to church these days is because most of our priests and bishops have become very afraid to actually say anything that excites the spiritual imagination. Most people perceive what they have to say as "boring as batshit" — or "I've heard it all before!"

Which brings me back to the Catholica Forum. If we (the Christian or Catholic Church) are to start exciting the world about Jesus again we have to start talking. I have worked for bishops and people in high places in the institution who are literally petrified of placing their names to anything in print — and others in those positions who write long papers, almost as long as the encyclicals put out by the Vatican itself (which few read), so that they can cross every i and dot every t which will prevent the neanderthal sector "coming back at them". (One bishop actually told me that is why his pastorals were so long and so detailed. He actually named the people who he was trying to "short circuit". Ask yourself: who's the audience he's writing for? Is it "the general public out there"? Or, if you can accept what he disclosed to me, is he principally writing not to upset some tiny little faction within Catholicism?)

Could I make a plea to you: the reality in life is that the ability to communicate in public is actually limited to a few. Most people are fearful of writing and placing their names to their opinions in ways that can be recalled later — such as by writing, speaking on radio or appearing on television. Just think of the number of weddings you've been to and how petrified the happy couple are when it comes to standing up and making their speeches.. If you have the talent to write and communicate in ways that excite the wider world — and not just appease the insecurities of the fearful sector of humanity — we need to be hearing your voice. That is ultimately why the Catholica Forum exists.

Wishing you a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life and in our world.

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher