"Beyond Literal Thinking in Religion" - David Tacey (Main Forum)

I am a speed reader - and sometimes I go over the limit!!

Apologies to David.

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

Me too, Peter!

Here's a couple of quotes:

I sometimes fantasise that the churches will apologise to the world and confess that they made a wrong turn a very long time ago. I imagine waking up one morning to the headline: ‘Sorry, we made a big mistake and need to make it up’. No, I am not thinking about child sexual abuse, but about literalism. The churches are dying, and everyone knows why, but no-one seems to want to address the elephant in the room: that the faith is not ‘true’ as conventionally believed. To gain supporters these days, the churches rely on the following of the uneducated, and on those who are prepared to swallow the miracles and wonders and a lot of supernatural machinery. I saw through the supernaturalism of religion over forty years ago, but at that stage did not have the education or courage to say anything about it. I have waited forty years for the chance, and now I am ready. The churches have failed to understand that the scriptures are primarily poetry and myth, not history. They have misread mythology as metaphysics and we have been stuck ever since with a religion that few can believe in.

The historicity of the scriptures is in grave doubt, the authority of the literal-minded churches is in doubt, and we are left in an existential situation that few Christians can cope with, because they are used to being supported, or bolstered. We have to do it for ourselves, and many are unable to cross over to the other side. In Matthew, Jesus says ‘Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’.16 We are asked to ‘become’ as children, which means that we are to recover the gift of imagination, which children have in plentiful supply. If we don’t achieve a second innocence, and look upon things through the eyes of imagination, we have no hope of entering the kingdom, that is, of experiencing the world as a spiritual cosmos. However, the churches have asked the faithful to remain as children, not to become children, and this is what is killing religion today. We are not allowed to grow up, which means asking questions and doubting the literalism that may have been appropriate for us as children. What we need is a religion that is prepared to grow up, so we can grow up with it.

Brilliant stuff!

Musica delenit bestiam feram.

Cathy, that takes courage - even if I don't agree with you as obviously I don't, I still admire your strenght of character to go against the tide so to speak.

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

When I reflect on the Word of God, I believe in faith that God is speaking to me.

It is amazing the depths of my spirit that he addresses and touches when he speaks.

Read very, very slowly; stop very, very often; in deep, deep silence; and listen oh so carefully.

Just a suggestion.

Peter

Hi Cathy

I thought that people in the ancient world - especially rural people, like Jesus, his disciples and his original listeners - DID literally believe in angels, demons, the possibility of divine intervention, etc.

No need for apologies, Cathy. We're all in the same boat, and the journey we're on, the essential journey, is not effected by book learning. The spirit speaks to EVERY person in their own language. But there is a role for scholarship and a job for those who have been given the chance to develop their thinking and some ability to explain things.

Your remark I quote above is what led me to realise that Jesus was fighting the very same battle as Tacey is engaged in - and all of us, for that matter. Yes the people did literally believe in angels, and in direct divine intervention. But did Jesus go along with that, or did he challenge it? That's my question.

Jesus repeatedly said the people were starving, and he blamed their teachers and leaders. They were fed plenty of "religion", but they were starving in the midst of that feast of formal observance and literalism: spiritually they were mal-nourished exactly as we are today. Jesus said this devil had to be cast out, and warned that it could come back, find the house vacant, and bring in seven others more evil than itself. I think that is exactly what has happened.

Still, I can understand how you might find David Tacey's presentation hard to swallow. I found some things "a bit much" in various ways, but I strongly agree with the main thrust of his ideas and won't criticise his style.

I think Jesus was very close to the ordinary people. ("little", "simple", "uneducated" - a bit devalued and grubby.) He tried to nourish them with what they could assimilate, and did not condemn them at all. Teaching in parables was a method that could lead to ideas slowly taking shape in the mind, whereas clean-cut "dogmatic" statements would leave people cold.

He also gave signs (however they might be explained) for encouragement, to open up possibilities of healing, life, growth - in a word, to lift them out of enslaving dependency. If they listened to his word and assimilated it they would not experience that hunger again.

I wish David had included the fact that the journey he describes from naive faith through 'atheism' to a mystic awareness is par for the course. Not only is it everyone's journey, but it has been told and re-told down the ages, e.g., John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. The Dark Night is the growing up through a-theism to communion in the spirit, and it is not something we achieve through technical know-how. It is the GIFT of grace: common as the air we breathe, and as gratuitous.

tony

'TonyL
"A post is a free gift, and it will go where it pleases."'

Thanks for your view Cathy. Actually I found Tacey’s article sort of dry, although I appreciate much of what he says. It is a bit like having an engineer explain a mightily cascading waterfall. I like David Tacey, think he is a decent and sincere bloke, and I am sure what he writes is very accessible and important for many, but I have never found what he writes inspiring or exciting. What is missing is the WOW!

And that is the same as what is missing in most experiences I have of the institutional church, especially of sermons that explain this week’s gospel and how it ties in with the OT reading and the epistle, perhaps even the psalm, all tied together with some quote from a 19th century writer, most of us have never heard of—all to demonstrate some doctrine or other. That is how many learn about what is in the bible, unless we are enthusiastic and energetic enough to go off and do some discovery for ourselves. Whether it is literal or metaphorical hardly enters into it for many, I suspect. I like the quote Tacey gives from Frye who said that the bible is a "source of vision rather than doctrine." YES! YES! YES!

What is the WOW we could experience? The bible is full of shocking bits that could raise the hairs on the backs of our necks and cause us to wonder where God could be in all that disaster. There is beautiful poetry that could move us to tears. There is witty humour that might raise a smile, even throw us slightly off balance. There are rousing calls to action, to go out and change the world, even if that means making big and sacrificial changes in our lives, moving us out of our comfort zones. There are deeply reassuring parts, that soothe us when we are in dark places, in deep despair. I think PeterR gets at it in his post about how he reads the Bible, not puzzling about whether it is literal or metaphorical, but listening to God speaking through the words.

Today I skipped church and went instead to the growers’ market, where people were wandering around excluding a sort of quiet cheeriness, not too hurried, sitting together to drink coffee, happy to talk to strangers, gradually amassing the food they wanted for the week and whatever other bits and pieces of clothing or jewellery that caught their fancy. Met a couple of friends and had good conversations. I suddenly realised that it all felt more meaningful than the church service would have been. Isn’t that sad?

As for whether people in biblical times believed in angels, demons and divine intervention, I reckon they did, and people still do today. We have a “fairy” shop in our town, full of stuff about angels and spiritual influences. Out along the road are signs where some teenager or other has died in a car crash, often with a reference to “Our beautiful angel who has gone to heaven.” Theologians and atheists alike can write all the reasonable stuff they like, but, on the ground, belief in the metaphysical is still very strong. And good thing too, I reckon. Without having an appreciation of the metaphysical, the spirit, all we have is dead, dry, materialism. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the church could tap into that belief in the spirit, put it into the context that Christianity is all about, that is, the context of Love.

As for the resurrection, I actually believe in it as an event. I am not sure whether I want to argue that it is a fact, or a metaphor, I just know that something very amazing happened and changed people’s lives forever.

Thomas Acquinas uses the wonderful expression

Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur

that is

“whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver.” Applying a Thomist Principle

We understand through our own experiences. We relate to others based on what we already know. We don't suddenly "see the truth" because someone else tells us. We come to the understanding of truth by walking our own path. By not getting stuck at any certain point and demand that it be the truth so that we can stop walking. By not demanding that everyone see the truth as we see it.

It is impossible for others to understand as we understand because of "Quidquid recipitur ...". That makes it frightening - we are alone on our respective paths - as well as exhilarating - we are free on our respective paths.

Do not be sorry Cathy. You are following your conscience. And you express it so very well. My understanding is very much closer to yours.

If only we could let go of the need to be right. To accept that "being right" is all relative to where I am on my path. What we learned as children, what we believed to be right, does not now have to be wrong because our beliefs have grown.

I believed in angels as a child.
I believe in angels now.
The only difference is that I have a deeper more spiritual understanding of them.

Cathy, you are not "the odd one out" because we are all in this together.
Each with our own experiences - Quidquid recipitur ...

Go with Love, Go with God

Tony and all,

I have only just gotten around to reading David Tacey's essay in full. For ease of reading I made myself a better pdf copy with a bit of spacing between paragraphs and highlighted sub-heads. I won't put it online at the moment until I obtain permission from Dr Tacey or give it to him to put online, but if anybody would like a copy please email me. It is much easier to read than the original.

This is one of the richest articles I have read in recent times that (a) helps explain why so many have 'given up' religious practice and listening to religious leaders; and (b) if offers a 'way forward'. Bravo to David Tacey. I suspect this essay will be widely read — and eventually right around the globe.

He argues many of the conclusions that I have come to about my own beliefs. For example that Jesus didn't come to bring us creeds but a "way" of negotiating life. David uses different words to mine but is essentially making the same point in his more succinct line which I have made the subject line for this post: "As an adult, I have recovered faith, but it is completely different from the naïve gospel I received as a child and that most churches continue to promulgate. I would call the third stage, faith without reliance on belief."

A little further on I think he makes an important distinction in distancing himself from the alternative offered by Don Cupitt and the "Sea of Faith" movement:

For many thinking people, the old literalism has fallen away, and is replaced by nothing except a barren intellectual understanding. Jesus is no longer a supernatural figure, or a son of God, but merely a decent kind of bloke, a local community worker. Such people have reached a partial enlightenment, in which the metaphorical is conceded, but it does not actually convey any spiritual power. The metaphors are not alive, not spiritually 'true', but seen as literary adornments or decorations.

Don Cupitt of Cambridge University and his 'Sea of Faith' movement are exponents of this outlook, with which my own position is sometimes confused. I am nothing like Cupitt, but if comparisons are to be made, I am much closer to Spong. Cupitt and his followers have seen through the literalism, are progressive and unconventional, but not spiritual. His thirty books about his journey into post-Christianity and unbelief is a testimony to the dangers that await us as we leave the guideposts of the past. If we leave the conventions, we have to find reliable guides to steer us through the dangers, but Cupitt succumbs, in my view, to all the perils: intellectualism, rationalism, reductionism, relativism. His books are lifeless and barren, and his 'sea of faith' is permanently at ebb tide. To reach the third stage, faith without belief, one has to become mystical, not merely intellectual. Without the mystical, God cannot be redeemed, but remains an odd piece of the old mythology which needs to be discarded. I meet large numbers of ex-Catholic priests and ex-Protestant ministers who are in this state, and I find it terribly sad. They think they are on my wave-length but they are not. They abandon the old magical thinking – having outgrown it – but cannot cross over to a spiritual perception. There are, as yet, no institutional channels to help them make the journey.

I'd also like to highlight some things in this paragraph towards the end which I think is a superb exploration of the challenge that is to be faced:

The problem is that we have to make this leap of faith by ourselves, there are no props to rely on. The historicity of the scriptures is in grave doubt, the authority of the literal-minded churches is in doubt, and we are left in an existential situation that few Christians can cope with, because they are used to being supported, or bolstered. We have to do it for ourselves, and many are unable to cross over to the other side. In Matthew, Jesus says 'Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven'. We are asked to 'become' as children, which means that we are to recover the gift of imagination, which children have in plentiful supply. If we don't achieve a second innocence, and look upon things through the eyes of imagination, we have no hope of entering the kingdom, that is, of experiencing the world as a spiritual cosmos. However, the churches have asked the faithful to remain as children, not to become children, and this is what is killing religion today. We are not allowed to grow up, which means asking questions and doubting the literalism that may have been appropriate for us as children. What we need is a religion that is prepared to grow up, so we can grow up with it.

I have to say though that I remain totally pessimistic about any future for institutional Catholicism. Reading Jane Cadzow's feature in the Sydney Morning Herald today [LINK] I honestly think the entire institutional endeavour is cactus under the leadership of the likes of George Pell and Benedict Ratzinger. These men are like "petrified pieces of wood" in the face of the challenges humanity faces today. The myths they are defending are their own authority — not the authority of Jesus Christ or God the Almighty. They are petrified of losing the allegiance of those whom Benedict himself has described as "the little people" and "the simple people". They literally do not care how many in the educated ranks in society cease listening and practising. Institutional religion has been transformed into another version of secular politics when it talks of "building the kingdom". These institutional leaders want this world of "childish, socially conformist clones" who cannot think for themselves and are driven primarily by their emotions, and their primitive, lizard brain level drives of the ego and need for someone, anyone, to love and respect them — just like the "love" hungered for by little children and puppy dogs. They are no longer interested in "educating the great unwashed masses of society" to "follow Christ". Instead they want the great "unwashed masses" to follow them as though they are God Almighty or Jesus himself. The trouble is that the people who lead institutional Catholicism (or any of the institutional religions) today are unlikely to be reading David Tacey — or if they do it sails above their heads at about the level of an Airbus 380 at cruising altitude. For the rest of humankind it is like dreaming of being able to extinguish the light of our Sun to dream of removing these people from the positions of power in which they have no so deeply entrenched themselves. There are no arguments that might be capable of getting through to them and there is no power in the whole of creation capable of ejecting them from their positions of power. Even a Second Appearance from Jesus himself would be incapable of moving them. They'd be more than likely the ones to be calling for his crucifixion all over again!

Reading David Tacey though I become optimistic for the future spiritual health of humankind. There is a great "spiritual searching" underway. Yesterday afternoon, Amanda and myself, attended an interfaith group meeting at Lawson in the Blue Mountains. It was exciting being there. The hall we were in was comfortably full — and with a diversity in age ranges. Three of the four keynote speakers were in their 30s — Jacqui Rémond, Director of Catholic Earthcare [pictured at right], representing the Catholic perspective. I hope to write more about that in coming days. I do have a growing sense that when this annihilation of institutional religion is complete and the "smaller, purer churches" have been established what will emerge is some great healing of the religious divisions that have characterised human civilisation for so long. Our "faith" is not some kindergarten-level game of running around trying to prove our "God" is bigger or better than anyone else's God — and that is essentially the "game" the fundamentalists in all religions are playing. Our "faith" is meant to be leading us into the Godhead or the Mystery of the Divine. It is meant to lead to a healing of the religious divisions in society, not exacerbating and deepening them.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

for your in depth discussion for those of us who are less talented in that area.

At least it gives a new perspective when reading articles such as David Tacey's.

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

Faith, I believe, is one's relationship with God. I don't see faith as a series of statements about God. Faith is a quality of life in Christ who is Son of God - shared living in Christ.

Most people on Catholica seem to be in a loving relationship.

As such, we experience the difference between believing a statement about the other person in that relationship and believing in the person. Christians believe in Christ and believe in His way of life and in His teachings, correctly understood - Christians are in a relationship with Christ in and through their relationships with others.

If we reflect on the early stages of a relationship I suspect there were times when we didn't understand what the other was saying - or doing, or being - but, over time, we grew together, we changed perhaps (conversion in faith)- we knew each other more deeply. We discussed - we prayed. .....

Whilst the one-to-one relationship is the deepest, it is in community that we experience a wider exposure to such a personal relationship event. In Catholica, for example, we probably experience more varied and different relationships with other members. That is what a parish as a faith community is supposed to be: a community experience of growing in Christ, in, with and for one another - and the wider community.

It is in this context that I see the importance of the Paschal Mystery as a quality of life, of Christian life.

Existentialists would define a human being as a person-in-relation-to-others.

A Christian person, thus, is a person-in-a-Death/Resurrection-relationship-with-others

It is in our dying to self (to sin) to live for others that we establish and mature as a Christian person in community. A community that lives the Paschal Mystery in thought, word and action becomes a growing Christian community. The "others" are both those in the community and out to all creatures, human and non-human. The non-human incorporates our environmental attitudes, for example. That Death/Resurrection quality of relationships is the essence of our Christian lives: it is our way of life, lived each day and celebrated in Eucharist.

The years in which I was politically active were amongst the most existentially educational faith years of my life. Death and Resurrection were constant experiences of dying to self in thought, word and deed to live for the others in the community.

The same is true of family life, isn't it.

The scriptures teach us spirituality based on our living Christ's Death and Resurrection in union with Him - at home, at work, at leisure, everywhere. Does not this passage, for example, give us a living guide:

"We are in difficulties on all sides, but never cornered; we see no answer to our problems, but never despair; we have been persecuted, but never deserted; knocked down but never killed; always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may always be seen in our body. Indeed, while we are still alive, we are consigned to our death every day, for the sake of Jesus, so that in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus, too, may be openly shown. So death is at work in us, but life in you." (2 Cor.4:8-12)

Once we see the death spoken of is our personal death to sin, to selfishness ... and the rising is our growth in Christ's mode of living inspired by the Spirit, we have a different spirituality from a merely devotional one. On one occasion I was looking for that passage quoted above, but I mistakenly opened at Galations (4:8 ff):

"Once you were ignorant of God, and enslaved to 'gods' who are not really gods at all; but now that you have come to acknowledge God - rather, now that God has acknowledged you - how can you want to go back to elemental things like these, that can do nothing and give nothing, and be their slaves? You and your special days and months and seasons and years! You make me feel I have wasted my times with you."

Not a bad comment on liturgical spirituality versus pious devotional stuff.

Peter

Welcome Paul, the Catholica family is certainly growing.

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

Thanks for your post which I appreciated.

Let's have more of your thoughts, please.

Peter

Cathy, thanks for going to some extended effort to express your point of view. I do appreciate it even if I end up disagreeing with it.

To me David Tacey is concerned about the sort of things that primarily concern myself. The harsh, harsh reality is that nearly 90% of the core constituency who are supposed to be the recipients of the "Jesus message" in our part of the world — the highly educated, affluent, socially sophisticated, so-called "first world" — have ceased listening to the institutional church, and ceased participating in the communal life and "communion" of the faithful. I don't know if David Tacey has children or not. I do. While I am not trying to "convert" my children to any points of view that I might have, I am simply intrigued at how an institution that has survived for so long and which, for a considerable time, exercised such sway and leadership over such a large section of humanity, has seemingly, and relatively suddenly (like in the space of about a century), suddenly lost its appeal so spectacularly. I'm simply interested as an observer of the situation in my own extended family where, I'd guess (as I've never done a highly detailed survey), the pattern in my extended family reflects roughly what has been going on in the wider world — 90% of the descendants of my Catholic grandfather and grandmother who came from Ireland just over a century ago no longer "practice" the "faith of their fathers living still".

The people and the institutional leaders, if you listen to them, blame all this apostacy on the world outside the doors of the church. They pin the blame on things like secularism, consumerism, communism, atheism — and things like relativism and indifferentism. They never seem to hold up to scrutiny any failings in their own communication methods — or whether, perhaps, they might have misinterpreted "the way" or "message" of Jesus and perhaps that is why the "so many" have become indifferent or apostate.

As far as my own children are concerned — and Amanda's and all their cousins — the ones whom we interact with most — there is only one who engages in any sort of "practise" that might be vaguely familiar to his grandfather or great grandfather ... and I suspect that is tenuous for a complex of social setting reasons that I can't go into publicly. Both of us at various stages in our lives have worked extensively with young people in a wider educational setting as well — and Amanda continues to do so. I mention that only for the reason that our experience is wider than the feedback we receive from our immediate family and offspring. Back within our immediate experience though, our sense is that the vast majority of our offspring and their cousins have not gone off to become atheists and total disbelievers. I can only think of one who would call himself a "total atheist" but even he I'd classify more as an agnostic rather than a literal atheist. They all believe in some form of "spirit" or "force" outside of, or greater than themselves. All of them hunger for a "better world" than the one we inhabit. They believe human society should be a lot better than it often is and, in a sense, like Jesus suggested even if they wouldn't use his words, they want to "build some 'kingdom'" better than the one we presently inhabit.

David Tacey is interested in the question: why have things turned out like this? So am I. It is simply a matter of intellectual, or professional, curiosity as much as anything that might be motivated by our own personal "salvation", or what you might call the ultimate objective of believing or practicing.

I don't believe the bishops, and the pope, when they rattle on about secularism, consumerism, relativism, too much sex, the devil, and whatever is being held responsible for this great "slide into apostacy" that appears to be going on right across Western society — right across Europe, and the North American continent, and in Australia. Their arguments simply fail to convince me — or have the slightest impact on my own offspring even if they were listening to their (the bishops' and the pope's) arguments any longer. (And yes, we do come across a small subset of young people who still do seem to interact with their "faith" in a similar way to the ways my father or grandfather and grandmother did [I leave my own mother out because she never became a 'Catholic']. They though tend to be a tiny minority and they can be fairly easily identified by a number of features. The evidence to us is that that small minority have no influence whatsoever in "evangelising" or convincing the vast majority of their peers in wider society.)

Not endeavouring to re-argue, or simplify, Tacey's arguments...

In what I am writing in this post I am not endeavouring to re-argue any of David Tacey's arguments, or try and make them clearer. I don't believe they can be actually made any more "clear" than how clear he has made them. He, like myself, seems of the belief that the "God message" or the "Jesus message" still has something to offer humanity. He asks, effectively, what is that "something" — how can the "message" be presented in ways that communicate more effectively than what all the bishops have been saying or doing — and those dwindling faithful who still do "practice" or participate in the sort of ways our parents and grandparents might have done? Myself, I still believe in God; I still believe we need "community" and a sense of "communion" for the advancement of humankind; I still believe Jesus, or Christianity, has something to offer humankind — and my own offspring and family. I also believe though that if we continue following the pathway most of our bishops have been on very soon it won't be "nearly 90%" who have ceased participating but something closer to either 95% or 99%. When does anyone say "stop, let us examine what has been going wrong with our communication styles here?" When the exit rate reaches 95% or 99%?

So rather than trying to re-argue David Tacey's arguments, or endeavour to make them simpler or more easily comprehended, I want to refer to the stages of faith ideas of James Fowler that David Tacey mentioned, and try and explain that more practically.

Most of us can remember back to when we first started to walk, or learn to ride a bike, or drive a motor car, or undertake some new, more complex task such as learning how to use a computer, or email or the internet. Sometimes we have experienced having to teach another person how to do something more complex than they were previously used to. It is often very frustrating to the teacher because whatever it is — walking, riding a bike, driving a car, or using email or a mobile phone — seems "so easy" when we have mastered whatever it is. For the person learning though it can seem even more frustrating. I still get like that with a lot of the technologies that I come across, and need to master simply to keep Catholica "up with it all", and I feel like a complete babe in the woods or beginner all over again. Once we have mastered the skill though we look back and wonder how in the dickens could we have been so thick, so dumb or so incompetent not to understand or master it?

A humourous example...

Let me give you a humourous example. My late mother-in-law (my first wife's mother) was a formidable intellect. One of the early women in her State to have had a university education. She was a senior English teacher in the education department. She didn't learn to drive though until in advanced age — thinking back it's probably about the age I am now or a little younger, early 60s. At the best of times she was never a very practical person — as a cook or housewife for example — but heavily "intellectual" about everything. If she cooked something she needed to follow the recipe "to the letter" whereas a skilled cook often adds the ingredients "by feel or intuition" rather than having to meticulously weigh everything out. Roni (Veronica was her full name) had the same approach to driving a motor car. I can remember years after she had learned to drive asking me how many metres she had to drive before changing from first gear into second gear. Most people, after they've been driving for a while do not measure how many light poles they have passed before changing gears, they learn to change gears by the sound the engine is making and the "feel" of when the lower gear has achieved all it can achieve in giving the car momentum. Not for Roni though. I think even when she died she was still computing it by the number of electricity poles she passed. (The only driving she ever actually did was from home to school and back. That was down our street, turn right on to the highway and proceed for three streets and then turn left off the highway and the school was down the end of that third street. Her concern always was with the 'busy highway' and how many electricity poles she had to pass on it before she changed gears.)

The funny part of the story we remember is this. At the time her grandchildren were very small pre-schoolers. Her house was on a small rise three from the corner and at the corner was a stop sign and each afternoon Roni had to stop at the stop sign and then make this "hill start" to get across the intersection and finally "home". Like puppy dogs having a sixth sense when their master was returning home, her grandchildren seemed to have this "sixth sense" as to when "Nana" was about to arrive home. For a while we couldn't work out what it was and then one day "the penny dropped". Each afternoon just after 3.30 when school had finished these little kids would pick up the feint sound of this old Holden "revving to the heavens" while Roni negotiated this "hill start" at the intersection a few hundred metres from the loungeroom. Hearing this they'd all rush to the window exclaiming "Nana's home, Nana's home". Their hearing, being more acute than any of ours was picking up the knowledge that Roni was about to arrive home a minute or so before us adults.

Faith or belief is a bit like that...

Faith, argues David Tacey, or James Fowler, is a bit like that. Once you have advanced to level two or three (there are seven steps in Fowler's scale) it is very difficult to remember what it is like for the person at level one — and so on up the scale. Looking the other way though it is almost impossible for the person at level one to understand how it all looks from level two or three. And the same applies at every higher step up the scale. According to Fowler's classification, I'd put myself at stage four or five and I still have a couple of further stages of enlightenment to go.

You can read more about Fowler's Stages of Faith Development on Wikipedia for anyone who is interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%27s_stages_of_faith_development.

The great challenge in these sort of discussions is for people like David Tacey to argue their case without seeming to be condescending to people who do not follow his arguments. Very often we simply choose to remain silent because it is very difficult to explain what is meant in any "simpler" language. A person can really only understand "how to walk" by actually walking. It is very difficult for anyone to write out some set of logical instructions about "how to walk" — or "how to drive a motor car", or use a computer, or master all of the things an iPhone is capable of facilitating!

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Cathy, surprise, surprise, I have to say, after listening the ABC,s Philosophers' Zone last night, that I think I agree with you.

I think Tacey is actually trying to provide a bridge between non-mystics and mystics. I suspect that might not be possible for the very reasons that you say. Someone may find themselves on that path, but that was probably quite unintentional anyway, and once there they have to keep going, despite the suffering the mystics tell us about.

As for the rest of us, we can choose whether to believe in God or not. If we are to choose the former, then we should not listen to mystics as they will just undermine everything - and that has been the Church's attitude anyway for hundreds of years. Mystics are the enemy of the Christian religion. Suddenly it all makes sense!

Sue.

Cathy, I really appreciated reading your post- a powerful piece of thinking and writing, and passionate, too. Passion is so much missing in much of theological discussion.

I really agree with this section of your post:

The important thing, I would've thought, is that our focus is on the meaning underlying the Biblical texts, regardless of whether we take the text literally or not. Certainly, when I think of people I've known, or read about, it's the people who live out the Gospel in every aspect of their lives, and who radiate God's love on to everyone around them - they're the ones I think of who truly understand, and have fully embraced, Jesus' message

The old saying, Christianity is caught, not taught, is very true.

The Church may claim to be Jesus' continued presence in the world, but all too often it fails to provide the community of love and healing that Jesus initiated, and that so many people yearn for.

True, true. Which is what our friend Macbee lives out. She listened to the "something or someone" who told her to go to the video shop, she encountered a woman there who felt lost and anxious, and gave that woman a big, gentle, reassuring hug, told her God loves her, and stayed talking with her for 20 mintes. That is Jesus' continued presence in the world.

well-educated, intellectual people . . . I can't help getting the impression that these are the only people that really matter in Tacey's world.

Sadly, you might be right.

the Church very often supported the values, structure and prejudices of mainstream society

and still does. Church schools, hospitals, welfare agencies have sold out to the mainstream. Just one small example: Our local school wants the kids to do well in the Naplan tests, to get vouchers from Coles and Woolies (big corporations that are busy screwing the small retailers, and, in the process, all of us). And when we get to the really big issues, like war and peace, we know which side much of the official church is on. Oh that we were all like Fr John Dear who goes to jail for protesting against the war machine.

Though of course, as I said, the Church leadership seems to have ignored the radical challenge of many Gospel texts anyway. In fact, I'd criticise the Church not for taking the Bible too literally, but, in some instances, not taking it literally enough!

Cathy, if the leadership took the serious radical challenges of the Gospel texts seriously, that would be one sure way to get a "smaller, purer church". Not many would want to join up. We'd all be sidelined as wierdos or criminalised as dissidents or terrorists.

Thinking again about what I just wrote, maybe if we took the Gospel seriously, we'd all be like St Mary MacKillop, working tirelessly for the poor, and being excommunicated by our bishops.

Anyway, Cathy, I want to thank you for the thought you have put into your response to Tacey, and the challenges you pose to us all in doing so.

Cathy, although I am inclined to think you 'overthink' what David Tacy has written I am gob smacked by your ability to analyze and clearly state your reasons for disagreeing.

What a gift -this applies to the many others on the forum who share this gift with you.

May I say I must have been standing behind the door when this particular gift was handed out - you lot have it in spades!

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

Cathy, I'm a bit done in at this stage, but I would like to offer some comment to your excellent post. This is such a useful exchange that I think we might all grow a little just from reading the various points of view.

The important thing, I would've thought, is that our focus is on the meaning underlying the Biblical texts, regardless of whether we take the text literally or not.

Agree fully that the focus is on the underlying meaning, but that is the whole issue. If the catechism puts the focus on the miracle and says the narrative is literally true and you'd better believe it, then the young mind will stop there and be stalled until, approaching adulthood, she/he thinks Wait on: what the blazes does that mean?

One little example: In the annuntiation narrative the angel says to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and the child to be born will be called holy." These words, I believe, contain the MEANING, which Luke then elaborates a little more with the "I am a virgin" or in some translations "I know not man". The significant religious point is that the spirit overshadowed her, the way the cloud overshadowed the mountain (cf. Moses at Sinai), and filled the temple at its consecration - so that no man could enter there because God's presence filled the temple.

To make something of all that is the work of a life time of wonder and awe. I have no time to think about physical virginity because it is not relevant at the level of religious meaning. Except in this: In as much as this is the beginning of the New Covenant (or New Creation if you will), then it is ALL GOD'S WORK. There is no room for mankind to take pride in what he has achieved: it is God's work.

And yet, of course, we have to do our part. The spiritual point is that if we have that perspective, that it is God's work and nothing is impossible to God, then we may find the courage to do extraordinary things, like standing up for the truth and bending down to help the one in need, etc. We will never lose hope because nothing is impossible to God.

To move through these considerations I have to focus on the mythical, the symbolic, the nourishing spiritual content, which I can only do if I start off looking for the meaning under what seems like an absurdity if taken literally.

I think this is the kind of thing that David Tacey called a mistake: namely, to so focus on the "miracle" of Mary's physical virginity that the REAL MEANINGS don't get a chance.

+++

I won't go on. This is a pretty big journey we're all on, and we need to go gently. I hope I don't sound dogmatic. In writing we can try to be gentle and end up just beating around the bush. Time to sit quietly with PeterR and let the mystery flow from the words... slowly...

God bless,
tony

'TonyL
"A post is a free gift, and it will go where it pleases."'