Yours is an interesting comment, Nicholas and it reminds me of a comment made by Patrick White that one of the things he regretted is not having a Catholic childhood because his friends who had long since given the faith away continued to luxuriate in it. However, there is a problem with being with the Catholic clan, as distinct, for example the Jewish clan. I have Jewish friends who tell me that amongst their community are rabid atheists right down to those who won't cut their hair around their temples because of a biblical prohibition. But they are all regarded as Jews and there is no such thing as being "outside the faith" or being "excommunicated". This may have something to do with their community being based, if not on race, then at least on being somehow tribal. On the other hand, Catholicism, Islam etc, is based entirely on a belief system and if you cannot accept that belief system anymore, then you are out. Indeed you are regarded as being worse than those who never were Catholic, because you are had the "gift of faith" and then threw it away. From the little I know of Islam (or at least some forms of it), it is even worse in its attitude to apostasy. One of the things about this site that I find interesting is that those who use it do not seem to have that same fundamentalist attitude towards disbelief that makes a lot of religion these days both depressing and dangerous.

The point for a lot of us that it was our cradle, it has links to our cultural heritage. The values by which we are able to critisize it were, ironicaly, inculcated in us through it, to a large extent. There are strong heritage links with our grandparents, fathers, and mothers who have passed on, so our 'patrimony' is somehow associated with it. It's family. There may be 'better' families in terms of integrity or other values -- let's not kid ourselves -- but they are not my family. This is my family. Love it or hate it (at times), I stick with it like I stick with my blood family. I fight with it because I care about it. Within it I criticize, but outside it I defend it. It has hurt me, but I still have loyalty to it. I was formed around it.

I don't let it order me around, and don't always 'obey' it. But it has a power over me that results in me spending time on sites like Catholica trying to understand it better. There are infuriating contradictions within it, and with my relationship with it. My whole relationship with it is paradoxical. The church itself is a living paradox. How else can I explain it? It makes me feel warm and it makes me feel cold, satisfied and dissatisfied. It's hypocritical but, at the same time, so rich in essential messsages and symbols.

It makes me laugh and it makes my cry. But I can't leave it alone.

James,

Everything you say is consistent with my experience of Church.

Unfortunately, everything you say is also consistent with my own behaviour.

I don't like the behaviour of those others: I don't like my own behaviour.

However, I find in the two VERY RICH articles provided by Rich, a challenge, a motivation and a power to work for improved behaviour in both them and me.

In case you missed the links, they are:

Alison article "An atonement update"

http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research...ology/ejournal/aejt_8/alison.htm

Komonchak article "The violence of the cross: A mystery not a theory"
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_2_132/ai_n14819429/pg_1

The quote (in the second link) from Martin Luther King has been for me the best example I have known of life experience being interpreted in the light of the scriptures. He is not just making up an analogy: he is consciously aware by faith that Christ is re-living his passion and death in King's own life. That's the Christian-faith challenge for me too.

My thanks to Rich for providing those links. I shall add them to my "need to be re-read and re-enjoyed" list.

Peter

Personally, I don't think there is any point. Every time I read any news about the Church (the latest about the hostility to Eastern rite married priests), the more I realise that this institution is no different than any other on earth with its pettiness, bureacracy, and with its equal share of very good and highly motivated people and on the other hand those who let the reptilian brain come to the top a bit too often. But you can point to any group of people, even unorganized atheists to find the same mixture. So where does this leave divine inspiration, let alone vicars of the son of God etc?

Human beings are the only animals on earth (apart from chimpanzees, it has recently been found) that kill mercilessly members of their own species. Nor do they kill each other when fighting over the same things like we fight for, such as territory or females. Other animals have developed highly sophisticated ways of dissolving aggression, such as when wolves and dogs give up a fight by lying on their back. The stronger one doesn't bite the loser's entrails out, whereas we run them through with whatever weapon is at hand. In this sense, they are really superior to us. Recently a new tribe was found in the Brazilian amazon, and when they saw the helicopter, they got their bows and arrows out to try and shoot it down. They were no different to the rest of us. We always shoot to kill. Civilization is the art of keeping this fiery beast in check. The history of the Church has shown that it is no better than any other institution in doing that, and has been just as bad as all of the worst ones. And now in Africa, we are seeing the consequences of Humanae Vitae with its denunciation of the use of condoms and the births of thousands of children with HIV, offering them nothing more than a miserable life. A future Pope will apologise for Humanae Vitae, just has the more recent one apologised for Galileo, Giordano Bruno, the silence during the Holocaust and all the other myriad and properly made apologies of recent decades.

Well one might ask: what is the point?

Three quotes that occurred to me reading John's letter.

For John Dewey, 'we are participants in an unfinished
universe rather than spectators of a finished universe'.
Jim Garrison in Educational Researcher. 23 (1), P8.

We’re out in a country that has no language,
no laws…
whatever we do together is pure invention,
the maps they gave us were out of date
by years.
Adrienne Rich, Poem XXIII in Twenty-One Love Poems

What is at stake is the freedom to entertain new ideas
in a context free of constraint from authority and power.
Robert Young in Intercultural Communication, 1996.

Of course we have some language, some texts and some exemplars, but few of the certainties we thought we had. Too often it is like trying to find our way across a vaste desert using a 1949 guide to the streets of London.

Letter to the Editor.

I feel that a basic question before reflecting on the papal pill [Papal pill remains a Mass turnoff. SMH May 23] is "What is the importance of being Roman Catholic? What is the point of it all?" The question is all the more painful because the answer no longer comes easily. If the question comes out of the lived experience of a Catholic people then the answer must arise out of that experience. The problem is that the lived experience of Australian Roman Catholics has been in the process of rapid transformation since the release of Humanae Vitae in 1968. The old theological perspectives are no longer pertinent. The new experiences demand new answers. It is to do with giving witness to Christ's love and improving the human conditions of the people and far less on conversions to the faith, hastening about the world to save souls from hell-fire, weekly attendance at mass or joining the throng for WYD.

John Hill

Link to Chris McGillion's original article in the SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2008/05/22/121...