I grew up Catholic, which should not be surprising given that my full name is Ryan Daniel Mulderig. This has given me a little bit of an insiders view of the faith I left behind. One of the things that has always struck me about the religion is that while it will produce some marvelous thinkers with very intriguing ideas, most of it is either ignored or suppressed by the hierarchy. They also suffer under the weight of history. Being a 1500+ year old organization means that you are going to have made a lot of mistakes in the past. It would be nice if the church would learn from them, but it does not seem too, repeating some of them over and over again. Its relation to Judaism comes to mind. Of all places, the onion caught some of my thinking in this article: http://www.theonion.com/3942/top_story.html.
Don't get me wrong. There is a great deal of Catholicism I don't like at all. Don't even get me started on the official line on birth control, abortion, ordination of women, and homosexuality. Then there's the Inquisition, crusades, anti-Semitism and the whole raft of others. I'm not particularly fond of the impression most of them give that the laity requires the mediation of the priesthood to reach God, and that a layperson can not speak to God on his or her own. I don't like the exclusion of non-members from the Eucharist (Jesus certainly never told someone "You can't share my table"!) The Catholic church is in desperate need of reform.
My point was that prior to the last month or so, that's *all* that I saw of the Catholic church. I'm seeing another side of it in some of the theologians we've been reading, not to mention in my professor and many of my classmates (I'm in an ecumenical program hosted by a Catholic university). Simply coming from the Catholic tradition is not grounds for automatic dismissal.
Re: CatholicismcookingwithgasNovember 4 2003, 05:58:35 UTC
I certainly do not dispute your indictment of the sins of the church. Were I still interested in organized religion, they would be enough that I would find another church. I would remain even to seek reform, since, as far as I can tell, there is better chance of seeing world peace than there is in seeing the Catholic church undertake the kind of sweeping reforms that would both restore its connection to the underlying faith and renew its relevance in the modern world
( ... )
i've also been surprised that some of the most radical christian theology is coming out of the catholic church -- particularly in the areas of feminist and liberation theology.
i recommend she who is by elizabeth johnson and in memory of her by elisabeth schussler-fiorenza if you haven't read them yet. they're both pretty hardcore academic theology, but very very good. (i had thought s-f was protestant, but read something recently that suggested she's catholic, so i'm confused now. but she's pretty foundational in any case.)
"She Who Is" is actaully one of our texts in the course, although we're only reading a part of it. I'm looking forward to completing it later. I've had "In Memory of Her" on my shelves for years. Like you, I had first assumed ES-F was Protestant.
It's actually a fairly severe failure of imagination to believe that an institution as large and as old as the Catholic Church would have a homogenous culture -- even if that's the impression it likes to give to the world.
Comments 5
name is Ryan Daniel Mulderig. This has given me a little bit of an
insiders view of the faith I left behind. One of the things that has
always struck me about the religion is that while it will produce some
marvelous thinkers with very intriguing ideas, most of it is either
ignored or suppressed by the hierarchy. They also suffer under the weight
of history. Being a 1500+ year old organization means that you are
going to have made a lot of mistakes in the past. It would be nice if
the church would learn from them, but it does not seem too, repeating
some of them over and over again. Its relation to Judaism comes to
mind. Of all places, the onion caught some of my thinking in this
article: http://www.theonion.com/3942/top_story.html.
Reply
My point was that prior to the last month or so, that's *all* that I saw of the Catholic church. I'm seeing another side of it in some of the theologians we've been reading, not to mention in my professor and many of my classmates (I'm in an ecumenical program hosted by a Catholic university). Simply coming from the Catholic tradition is not grounds for automatic dismissal.
Reply
Reply
i recommend she who is by elizabeth johnson and in memory of her by elisabeth schussler-fiorenza if you haven't read them yet. they're both pretty hardcore academic theology, but very very good. (i had thought s-f was protestant, but read something recently that suggested she's catholic, so i'm confused now. but she's pretty foundational in any case.)
Reply
It's actually a fairly severe failure of imagination to believe that an institution as large and as old as the Catholic Church would have a homogenous culture -- even if that's the impression it likes to give to the world.
Reply
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