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Notes -
A poster here recommended a book to us all called “Introduction to Christianity”, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI) a few weeks ago. I recently got a copy of it.
I wanted to share with you all the first few paragraphs from the book, because I found them very interesting:
I’m sure we’ve all felt like that clown at some point or another. Especially with regards to ideas like “just kids on college campuses”.
Here’s a quote, this one from Saint Anthony The Great, one of The Desert Fathers (Early Christian precursors to Christian monks who lived in Egypt in about 300AD).
Anyway I think the relevance to the culture war is obvious here, and could be taken any of many directions. I just read this today and wanted to share. To pull on one culture war thread (perhaps one of the oldest culture war) it is profoundly depressing to me that these parts of our history, especially the history of The Catholic Church, seem to be suppressed or at the very least ignore in modern western society.
Those quotes say nothing more than “I’m right but people won’t listen to me.” Just because something is dressed up as “The Parable of the X and the Y” or is quoting someone from 2000 years ago doesn’t really make it fundamentally different from just leaving it at “I’m right you’re wrong”
Ratzinger is not attempting to persuade atheists here. This is a passage about how a theologian might feel conveying truth in “religious language” to atheists unfamiliar with how religious language works. It’s saying a lot, and should not be seen as an attempt to persuade atheists.
Importantly, he notes the “classifying away” of religion as a category distinct from everyday life, and how this leads to the public seeing religious rituals as something performative and distinct from everyday moral and psychological concerns.
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