Beautifully written and thoughtfully reasoned. I especially loved your baseball metaphor. I’ve struggled with these issues over the years and have listened to some of your homilies. I’m thankful for the vision you bring. It’s sensible and hopeful. Continuing to pray for you and your work there!
When I think of my own previous agnosticism, the issue was that the concept of God explained everything, and consequently nothing. And clearly, if He were the puppet master in control of everything, as we were led to believe as children, He was making a grand mess of things. I began to believe priests and nuns were on a par with used car salesmen, towing ineffective party lines. They could not explain who God was, and should be able to I thought. And liturgy had no effect on me, or on any of the other people that I could see who went to the same Church. So I asked myself as a young Jesuit college student: Was God a doppelganger for the previous Bishop of Turkey? I did not know, and I did not care. I had a life to organize and had become fascinated with science. Science could answer the Why! So I went the path of science as an alternate for a couple decades much to the consternation of my parents. Just as it was beginning to dawn on me that science did not hold certain answers either, my dissertation chair just out of the blue happened to mention that he had gone with his family to a specific church for Easter. Since my mother's dying wish was that I would return to the Church, and I had been impressed with Saint Pope JP II's success with Solidarnosc, I decided to drop in myself, but with the caveat that if there was a lot of nonsense, I would stop. I made a conscious effort to understand what mystified me previously, instead of dismissing it as nonsense. And this bore fruit. Christ DID have the answers, if I gave what He said more thought. And all of a sudden I could KNOW that there was a force of some kind that created trees, for example. And I began to think I had an idea who Christ really was and what He was about. I enrolled in several priest-led Bible studies and Jesus began to make more sense to me. I dug deeper into theology. And it didn't hurt that I began reading scientists' concept of God and their journeys to understanding - e.g. Francis Collins, in The Language of God. (He converted himself when he realized that he hadn't given his atheism the thought he had given to his scientific work.) True Christianity began to fascinate me and I tried to find my feet in Christian advocacy, following JP II though with little success except in helping to stop the death penalty. I still have the same problem with liturgy that I had as a youngster - except for the readings and the homily. The latter keep me going to Mass, either online (during the pandemic) or in person. And now, it doesn't alter my own faith to see nominal Christians eschew true Christianity. But I do think that young people need to see Catholic Christians leading successful efforts to restore cultural harmony - to show that Catholics are on the right path to understanding God, that Catholics make a positive difference in the world (the way Christ did (not by burning heretics)). I think it would be difficult to interest them in pomp and circumstance when there is so much else to do with better effect. Parish community projects would make a good start. The other alternative for would-be congregants is to continue acting in the world at their jobs, expressing themselves - without the help of Christian resonance.
You make a very good point that Atheism as a philosophy is boring. It is only of interest when it collides with the rich intellectual tradition of the Church. But I hear another more emotional strand in the voice of Christopher Hitchens for example. Atheists are so mad at God that He doesn't exist! He created this terrible world and then left them to stew in it. They are so mad that He got them to believe in him when they were little and then didn't provide miraculous skywriting to show Himself! (An Atheist professor of mine used to say that he would believe in God when He revealed himself in that way...a professor of philosophy of religion)
Beautifully written and thoughtfully reasoned. I especially loved your baseball metaphor. I’ve struggled with these issues over the years and have listened to some of your homilies. I’m thankful for the vision you bring. It’s sensible and hopeful. Continuing to pray for you and your work there!
When I think of my own previous agnosticism, the issue was that the concept of God explained everything, and consequently nothing. And clearly, if He were the puppet master in control of everything, as we were led to believe as children, He was making a grand mess of things. I began to believe priests and nuns were on a par with used car salesmen, towing ineffective party lines. They could not explain who God was, and should be able to I thought. And liturgy had no effect on me, or on any of the other people that I could see who went to the same Church. So I asked myself as a young Jesuit college student: Was God a doppelganger for the previous Bishop of Turkey? I did not know, and I did not care. I had a life to organize and had become fascinated with science. Science could answer the Why! So I went the path of science as an alternate for a couple decades much to the consternation of my parents. Just as it was beginning to dawn on me that science did not hold certain answers either, my dissertation chair just out of the blue happened to mention that he had gone with his family to a specific church for Easter. Since my mother's dying wish was that I would return to the Church, and I had been impressed with Saint Pope JP II's success with Solidarnosc, I decided to drop in myself, but with the caveat that if there was a lot of nonsense, I would stop. I made a conscious effort to understand what mystified me previously, instead of dismissing it as nonsense. And this bore fruit. Christ DID have the answers, if I gave what He said more thought. And all of a sudden I could KNOW that there was a force of some kind that created trees, for example. And I began to think I had an idea who Christ really was and what He was about. I enrolled in several priest-led Bible studies and Jesus began to make more sense to me. I dug deeper into theology. And it didn't hurt that I began reading scientists' concept of God and their journeys to understanding - e.g. Francis Collins, in The Language of God. (He converted himself when he realized that he hadn't given his atheism the thought he had given to his scientific work.) True Christianity began to fascinate me and I tried to find my feet in Christian advocacy, following JP II though with little success except in helping to stop the death penalty. I still have the same problem with liturgy that I had as a youngster - except for the readings and the homily. The latter keep me going to Mass, either online (during the pandemic) or in person. And now, it doesn't alter my own faith to see nominal Christians eschew true Christianity. But I do think that young people need to see Catholic Christians leading successful efforts to restore cultural harmony - to show that Catholics are on the right path to understanding God, that Catholics make a positive difference in the world (the way Christ did (not by burning heretics)). I think it would be difficult to interest them in pomp and circumstance when there is so much else to do with better effect. Parish community projects would make a good start. The other alternative for would-be congregants is to continue acting in the world at their jobs, expressing themselves - without the help of Christian resonance.
You make a very good point that Atheism as a philosophy is boring. It is only of interest when it collides with the rich intellectual tradition of the Church. But I hear another more emotional strand in the voice of Christopher Hitchens for example. Atheists are so mad at God that He doesn't exist! He created this terrible world and then left them to stew in it. They are so mad that He got them to believe in him when they were little and then didn't provide miraculous skywriting to show Himself! (An Atheist professor of mine used to say that he would believe in God when He revealed himself in that way...a professor of philosophy of religion)