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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.
The first analogy doesn't really work, the fire is entirely separate from the clown's job or attire. Whereas to a modern atheist, the christian faith (among others) is the circus, and there's no fire. Or, if the fire is some modern moral failing, any theological arguments on preventing it are like the clown, instead of breaking character and pleading for help, hoping that if he's just funny enough the people will do what he says. Whether or not you also dress up in millennia of navel gazing is secondary to that base disagreement.
I took the analogy to be an attempt to explain the experience of a Christian trying to argue for their beliefs with people who are not experts in the things you learn to be a priest, monk, nun etc.
I get that. I'm saying that the analogy doesn't work because their beliefs and theology are directly linked, unlike the fire and the circus in the analogy. Not relating to the specific theological trappings isn't the fundamental cause of not being taken seriously by nonbelievers. They might be if the analogy is to converting non-catholic christians (back) to catholicism, though.
A Catholic is warning you that the society is collapsing. You don’t take them seriously or listen to any of their reasoning because you see them as a clown and ignore anything beyond the clown.
A mottizan is warning you that you this stuff is not going to remain as just a few kooky kids on college campuses. You ignore the them because you see them as a clown, and ignore the substance of what they are saying because you don’t see anything behind the clown.
I don't see how this follows. I'm a mottizan - why do I think the mottizan is a clown unless he is making bad arguments and saying stuff that isn't true?
Similarly, there are plenty of Catholics who I take quite seriously. The ones I don't take seriously are the ones who are acting like clowns.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I mean a mottizan may have the experience of the clown when talking to non mottizans. I didn’t mean you literally. (I’m away from my computer so typing on my phone. Sorry about that).
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