Thursday, October 29, 2009
Oh yes, it's very easy to mock
A letter from yesterday's Irish Times:
Madam, – I’m a little confused that the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, is discouraging people from gathering at Knock to witness apparitions which he believes “risk misleading God’s people and undermining faith”.
This is the the same “faith” that believes that a cosmic Jew who was his own father by a virgin can enable you to live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from something invisible called your soul that is present because a woman made from a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple from a magical tree. – Yours, etc,
LIAM MEEHAN
Hat tip: Sweary
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Yes it is. It's easy to describe any meaningful-for-some ritual in such cringe-inducing reductive fashion.
Harder for others is an acceptance of the fact that some people continue to have a belief in something ineffable.
Indeed. You can describe a soccer match as 22 men kicking a pig's bladder around a field, but then those who find meaning in it don't imagine that it's anything more than a human construction.
And I'm happy to accept that some people continue to believe in the ineffable, and for a variety of reasons. That doesn't mean that their beliefs are any less ridiculous or that we aren't entitled to subject them to scrutiny, though.
We have a saying here on Earth:- "if you can't take it, don't dish it out". In this case, the original disher-outer,53degrees please note, was the Archbishop.
Post a Comment