The Cardinal, the student, the godless and Professor Dawkins

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O"Connor's speech on Friday is worth reading in full on the Catholic website.   THe interesting thing is that he speaks up for mystery against literalism, an unpopular view in this scientific age , and a view promptly rubbished by Professor Dawkins, never slow with a quote. The Cardinal  also speaks aganst religious arrogance about its "truths" and asks believers to respect unbelievers:
   ""If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative.
    I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe."
   It had an echo for me, of a poem in "The Silence at the Song's End",  the book written by my late son Nicholas Heiney, an 18 year old's rage against bossy centralized religiosity:
  "The church, the charms,
The chanting psalms
Perhaps the church has missed
The strength of every living God
In every Atheist?"

Comments

[Fatpie42]

When O'Connor speaks of Church as "home" and as "the place where they always have to take you in" he seems to set a bad start for the dialogue with non-believers he sounded so keen to embrace. For many non-believers Church is an abusive place not just in the case of the scandals where that abuse is physical, but also in the cases where people feel psychologically scarred.

O'Connor's approach to non-believers looks worryingly like the appeals of a husband to his wife after he has just sent her to hospital with a beating. And let's not forget that for many people, admitting to their lack of faith to their family has caused strains in their relationship with their parents, so the analogy of the Church with 'home' is perhaps a little close to home (if you'll excuse the expression).

[Coel]

For Richard Dawkins's response (in a 3-min interview) go to http://richarddawkins.net/article,2553,n,n

[Carl Waring]

"this scientific age"

Wha.....? I take it you haven't read any other papers than the unusually balanced 'Times' recently?

In just about every other paper there appear articles decrying science and scientists as 'out of touch' because they 'waste public money' on things such as public health ('Should I eat eggs or not?'), particle physics (the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, at a cost of b/w US $5-10 bilion, a snip when compared to the Iraq war) and the slack jawed backlash over climate change (which the noted scientists Kelvin Mackenzie and Jeremy Clarkson deny entirely).

Hardly a 'scientific age', I fear - despite the irony of the anti-scientists using such mediums as the internet to gather, research and post their claims.

"It had an echo for me, of a poem in "The Silence at the Song's End", the book written by my late son Nicholas Heiney, an 18 year old's rage against bossy centralized religiosity"

He is among good company,if you don't mind me saying so Libby: the talented but troubled singer Nick Drake made many such references, not least in the wonderful Made to Love Magic (otherwise entitled 'Magic').

[iain rae]

Libby The mystery to me is how you make sense of religious leaders attempt to convince themselves and others of supernatural beliefs. Having blind faith is one thing,but believing it is good for us is most odd.