From Eternal Life: A New Vision:
The drive to survive seems to motivate human life so deeply that perhaps the time has to come to face openly and honestly the question of whether the human hope and yearning for life after death might will turn out to be just one more manifestation of this biologically driven survival desire that is present in all living things....It cannot be denied that this is at least a possibility.
If Christianity is just "wishful thinking" then, like Saint Paul said, If Christ didn't rise from the dead then we are still in our sins and are to be pitied.
ReplyDeleteI feel about this like Flannery O'Connor famously said at Mary McCarthy's dinner party when McCarthy said that the Eucharist was a beautiful symbol. Fiesty Miss Mary Flannery said "If it's just a symbol then I say to Hell with it."
If its all just wishful thinking then I can find something much better to do on Sunday morning.
lol, a great anecdote Bad Catholic, and I think it encapsulates many problems with Spong's theology. I was really into him for a while, particularly because he helped to give me some space from Christian dogmatism so I could consider some fundamental questions about myself. But, in the end, I could only respond to him with "why, then?"
ReplyDeleteHe appears to be a well intentioned and good hearted man who has lost all faith. I wish he would stop trying to persuade us that he is advocating Christianity.
One of the most beautiful gifts we have received from God is the human mind, whose capacity for exploration and imagimation is seemingly limitless. It is only the Church that prescribes our beliefs and asks us to check our curiosity and imagination at the church door. Unlike some members of the clergy - and others -I am unable to determine the will of God, but I cannot imagine that God would give us such a powerful and blessed gift and then tell us not to use it. Thank God for Mozart and Galileo and John Shelby Spong.
ReplyDeleteIf JSB discovers when he dies that there really is a heaven, I wonder if God is going to say to him, "Sorry, JSB, but you went over the line with your book about death and the afterlife, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you to that other place you didn't believe in."
Even Blessed John XXIII wondered if there really would be a heaven waiting for him when he died.
So Jesus was fibbing? And in fact he pulled off the biggest con-trick in the history of the world?
ReplyDeleteI actually don't find Spong creative or all that smart. I actually find other atheists quite engaging- like Slavoj Zizek for one, or Andre Comte Sponville. So the problem for me is not one of "checking the mind at the door".
ReplyDeleteThere is ample room in the Christian faith for profound doubts about Christian mysteries. It's when someone tries to turn those doubts into their own personal, systematic a-theology and writes books trying to convince practicing theists that their faith is outdated, that Jesus did not die for one's sins and that God is not anything more than an impersonal Ground of Being that I tend to have some kind of issue.
I don't think Spong simply questions or doubts, I think he has also made up his mind, yet he wants to remain an authority figure in the Church, a bishop even, whereas bishops are entrusted with the duty of transmitting and guarding the faith. For me, that is a significant difference. I don't think he should have this role.
Hi,
ReplyDeletedo you think the CC should change it's policy on abortion to pro-choice?
Thanks
Bernd
Bernd:
ReplyDeleteI am personally pro-life, so I do not think that the Catholic Church should become pro-choice across the board. However, the scandalous treatment of Sister Margaret Mary McBride in Phoenix (see my article in Life as a Human http://lifeasahuman.com/2010/mind-spirit/spirituality-and-religion/the-common-sense-of-mercy/) underscores the need for the Church to take a more balanced and humane position on this issue.
Hi Ross,
ReplyDeleteThe case of Sister McBride happens very seldom. 98.5% of abortions are done on healthy babies. I'm referring to those.
why shouldn't the catholic church be pro-choice across the board?
Thanks
Bernd
Bernd:
ReplyDeleteI can only reiterate my personal view as essentially pro-life, but I do recognize that the isssue is not simple or straight-forward.
It's odd to me that, as soon as someone hints at views within the Church that we might disagree with, people feel the need to go straight to that "criteria" question of abortion--- as though we confess the willingness to ban abortion in civil society in the Nicene Creed or something.
ReplyDeleteYet, so consistently do such people fail to go straight to other questions of social justice. Abortion may be unjust, but we so called Christians have all been complicit in the creation of societies that are quite evidently contrary to the dignity of human life. You don't have to be a Liberation theologian to understand this.
As Catholics, we must respect the dignity and uniqueness of individual life, but that is not the question we hear being asked, it is always immediately political. It is the politicization of the Creed, I do believe. You might think that those who fail to crusade in March for Life or express unease at a broad ban of abortion in a post-modern, pluralist society are espousing poor political philosophy, but that's not the same thing as being an unfaithful Christians.
God has not called us to reform the legislature. Not to say Christians are forbidden to engage in this in accordance with their faith, but it is not the divine mandate of the Church to direct us so.
I don't think the Church can ever say that abortion is permissible, but when we begin talking about the theology of Spong and life after death, and the first place the mind goes to is an attempt to secure a politically orthodox confession about abortion, I would say the Church has truly lob-sided its discourse.
I'm beginning to wonder if the abortion question really is not fuelled by a leit-motif of power, control and identity, clothed in a noble, selfless cause.
I don't think that the Catholic Church could ever be pro-choice. It would lose even more credibility. An abortion takes an innocent human life. Someone is being killed in an abortion. It may be an unwanted and unloved someone but it is a human being. I stand with the Church on her protection of human life. Now if only the Church could be more of an advocate for children. It has really dropped the ball here.
ReplyDelete"I'm beginning to wonder if the abortion question really is not fuelled by a leit-motif of power, control and identity, clothed in a noble, selfless cause."
ReplyDeleteMy reponse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-qGlo6p9A&feature=player_embedded