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In this final extract from the concluding section to his manuscript, Tom Lee shares some personal reflections on where his exploration has led him and his own beliefs today…

The Future of Christianity and the Papacy
21st Century Projections Part 31.4
by Tom Lee
A personal summing up…

A vision of peace…

Peace is at the heart of all sacred texts. The Jesus of the Gospels spoke of it constantly and gave us a vision of peace, among individuals and among peoples, that is radically different from anything that went before. It is a peace that anticipates the unearned forgiveness of God, that teaches the forgiveness of enemies and that assumes the inherent worth of every human without qualification. It is a peace that defies logic. We don't hear much of it from our pulpits and even less from our civic leaders, except as the platitudinous denouement to speeches about war.

C.S. Lewis

Many Christian apologists and propagandists are really not very convincing. The 17th century French philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal experienced the human condition as a tragic tension between greatness and misery. He concluded that it was safer to be a good Catholic as life after death was the ultimate no-win wager that can't be settled until you're dead, and if you lose, you go to hell. Paradoxically, he also concluded: "Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from religious conviction".

Famous Anglican convert in the 1930s, C.S. Lewis's favorite argument for the truth of Christianity is that either Jesus had to be crazy to say the things he did or what he said must be true, and since he doesn't sound like someone who is crazy, he must be right. "The story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened." Lewis's conversion seemed odd to people then, and it still does. Reviewing the most recent biography of Lewis for the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik concluded: "Lewis ended up in a state of uncertain personal faith that seems to the unbeliever comfortingly like doubt".

Writing in a 2006 NCR editorial, Tom Roberts opined: "Many American 'values' present an extreme challenge to the Christian Gospel. But I'd also venture that the most serious challenge to the Gospel may well be the many sanctuaries where some of those same values are treated as sacred text, where ministers advance the gospel of prosperity and the beatitudes of comfort and create a Jesus who winks knowingly at our need to make war". To believe that God is on our side against others is blasphemy.

Demonstrating just how beneficial religious certainty can be…

Equally, if not more worrying in these times is the emergence of militant Islam, intent on creating a forceful theocracy, intolerant of any other belief system, and willing to murder innocent people to advance its cause. September 11, 2001, was the day that nineteen pious young men demonstrated just how beneficial religious certainty can be. Their religion was a haven for dogmatism and false certainty, the ball-and-chain of an absurd religious fanaticism. Though abhorred by moderate Muslims, the extremists continue to gain recruits, mostly in reaction to the inept actions and rhetoric of those Western leaders who threateningly try to impose their culture on the reluctant, and favor armed intervention to enforce their views rather than diplomatic dialogue aimed at making peace.

Whatever Jesus one believes in, the fact that a great religion grew from such humble beginnings may, in itself, suggest a divine plan. As H.H. Munro (Saki) wrote: "People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die."

Nowadays it appears to many that the church is clinging to unprovable and improbable hypotheses at the expense of proven scientific and historical facts. I have read so much about the Church and its history that I now know too much to be too sure about anything. But I am certain that we should question everything and learn to make fun of what seems to be ridiculous. We need to see the Gospels in a clear glass that falsifies and distorts nothing.

There is a story told of a 19th century Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim:

Astonished to see that the rabbi's home was only a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a bench, a tourist asked, "Rabbi, where is your furniture?"

"Where is yours?" replied the rabbi.

"Mine?" asked the puzzled tourist.

"But I'm a visitor here. I'm just passing through."

"So am I," said Hofetz Chaim.

I doubt that the rabbi would have approved a dubious loophole in scripture practiced by farmers in Israel to avoid losing income in the fallow seventh year. In the early years of the Zionist re-settlement of Israel senior rabbis ruled that halakha or religious law permitted Jewish farmers to work their land in this fallow year provided the land was temporarily sold to a non-Jew, a shmita goy. Otherwise none of the produce from Jewish­owned fields and greenhouses would be considered kosher in the shmita year.

Reality check…

Pope Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger, stated in a 1984 interview that Limbo "has never been a definitive truth of faith," and that as far as he personally was concerned, he would "let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis". Subsequently a theological panel concurred and Limbo was quietly dropped. But, as Notre Dame theologian, Fr. Richard P. McBrien pointed out in an NCR article:

"The theological stakes are high because, if Limbo goes, so, too, does the traditional view of original sin. It may be that everyone is born in a state of grace, and that grace is ours to lose through mortal sin alone."

Monica Hellwig wrote: "It is the theologians who are in limbo. The (unbaptised) babies are safe in the arms of God".

A trade union official recently had a go at reading a papal encyclical Laborem Exercens (loosely Fruitful Work). It was, he said, an uphill plod and he failed to stay the course. The matter, he said, was dense, but it was the language that defeated him, "Like driving a car with a stained-glass windscreen". But for better or worse, historians of the Papacy can now read original documents of the early Popes without going to Rome, in a digitized collection of documents mounted by the Vatican Secret Archives.

Many Catholics were not reassured about the Church's future when Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he silenced, disciplined or otherwise punished as many as 100 theologians — all in complete secrecy and based on anonymous denunciations.

More than a hundred German theologians have expressed support for a call from an emeritus professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Tubingen calling for "an intelligent restructuring" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This is not the first time. In 1989, an international group of 163 theologians signed a document known as the "Cologne Declaration", sparked by the decision of Pope John Paul II to appoint conservative and rigidly doctrinaire Joachim Meisner as archbishop of Cologne.

The heart of that statement was a defense of the right of free and open discussion in the church and decried a new Roman centralism, making use of questionable forms of control and intolerable interference.

At the time, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rejected the Cologne Declaration, stating that "there is no right of dissent" in the church, and he suggested that the theologians who signed the declaration were engaged in a "political power ploy".

Critics of Ratzinger viewed those statements as ironic, given that in 1968, another group of mainly German-speaking theologians issued a similar call for reform, known as the "Nijmegen Declaration". Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, then a member of the faculty at the University of Tubingen, was a signatory. The document asserted "the freedom of theologians, and theology in the service of the church, regained by Vatican II, must not be jeopardized again".

As they say in America, "Whatever".

Searching for greater truths, not claiming to end the search!

When one hears arguments between theologians, it's a little like believers in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny lecturing Santa Claus followers about their gullibility. Dogmas and miracles in the end are stories that can't be verified. An analysis of the lives of Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, Sidartha Gautama, Jesus and Mohammed leads to the conclusion that they were searching for greater truths, not claiming to end the search.

Joan of Arc Painting, c.1485. Artist's interpretation; the only portrait for which she is known to have sat has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490) Source: Wikipedia

The necrophile belief in the efficacy of relics of the saints, a borrowing from pagan practice, has been contested by people of reason as blasphemous idolatry from the earliest centuries of the church. In 2006, Joan of Arc's believed remains were found to be much older than they should be. Researchers found that relics kept in a museum of the Archdiocese of Tours, including the fifteenth-century martyr's purported rib bone, actually came from an Egyptian mummy dating from between the third and sixth centuries BCE. Pieces of mummies were once used in Europe as folk remedies.

The cadaver of Santa Catalina of Mallorca in a glass coffin at the church in Palma where she served - described in the guide books as a perfectly preserved body - is a wizened horror liable to give children nightmares.

Supposed healings at religious shrines, of whatever faith, are typically held to be miraculous because they appear to be medically inexplicable. Claimants rarely acknowledge that they are arguing from ignorance. Though they may be unexplainable at this time, that is not the same as proof of supernatural intervention. Touted healings are more likely to be attributable to prior misdiagnosis, spontaneous remission, psychosomatic conditions, prior medical treatment kicking-in, or the body's own healing power.

I sometimes think I may end up like W.C. Fields, discovered by a friend reading the Bible as he lay on his last hospital bed. The friend asked why he was reading it, to which Fields replied: "I'm looking for loopholes". As comedienne Loretta La Roche reminds us: "We aren't getting out of here alive". Death is the ultimate adventure.

Like novelist William Kelley, "My faith now is a thin wire wrapped in a cord of hope". I have left the world of miracles behind, but not, I trust, my sense of wonder. I look forward to my ultimate death, free of dogmatic optimism, and without dread. I am wistful for faith, but can only stand with the Buddhists who leave the existence of God as an open question.

Superstition has reigned for all of our known human history, and that kind of thinking seems to have led us to the brink of global destruction, the likes of which no previous generation has witnessed.

Supernatural explanations are useless to science. Mysteries are not explanations. They provide no direction for research and suggest no testable hypotheses and give no prospect of any satisfactory result from observation or experiment, despite some pseudo-scientific attempts to measure ESP or the power of prayer. In the present age when even school children are cognizant of scientific certitudes, the frankly incredible dogmatic claims of Christianity have lost their previous credulous audience.

Tom Lee

Science discovers the principles upon which the universe operates, it doesn't construct them, and it's not free to ignore them. It establishes truth beyond a reasonable doubt with precise methodologies and a respect for evidence. Yet, faced with scientific explanations for what many regard as God's creation, we can only ask, why? Is there a purpose? Any experience of what might be deemed "God" is an experience of the Mystery that governs our lives both within and without.

Though I admit many doctrinal doubts and if faced with chronic heart trouble or cancer I'd opt for surgery before miracles, I hope that the end is not an end and can happily join in the favorite ditty of the late Irish character actor Noel Purcell:

"When e're a church I'm passin'
I pay a little visit
So that when I'm carried in
The Lord won't say `Who is it?'"

Is it cheating to have donated my cadaver to medical science? Why is it that we suddenly lose the ability to stay alive? Is reincarnation making a comeback?

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PART 5.1 | PART 5.2 | PART 5.3 | PART 5.4 | PART 5.5 | PART 6.2 | PART 6.3 | PART 7.1
PART 31.1 | PART 31.2 | PART 31.3 | PART 31.4
Acknowledgements | Bibliography

PHOTO CREDITS: The "Earth Rising" image we are using for this segment of the serialisation of Tom Lee's book has been adapted from a NASA photograph taken by the Apollo 8 Astronauts of the Earth Rising over the Lunar landscape. The original image can be found at: www.nasa.gov/lb/vision/earth/features/bm_gallery_4_prt.htm Clicking on the other images will take you to the original source of the image.

Tom Lee is an Australian, now semi-retired in Phoenix, Arizona, who has had an illustrious international career as an actor, writer, and broadcast commentator. He does not claim to be a professional theologian, nor an historian, but he undertook this study because, like many of the people who are attracted to what we're doing here at Catholica Australia, he was simply inquisitive about the history of Christianity and trying to better understand what he had been brought up to believe. In a sense, his book is a one-man journey seeking to better understand who Jesus was and what his own faith was about.

What are your thoughts on this commentary? You can contribute to the discussion in our forum.

©2008 Tom Lee (Star Concepts LLC) 15633 N. 17* Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85023-3409

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