Religious Strife
Published September 07, 2007
I was taught as a child that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true apostolic religious faith in the world. Protestantism certainly wasn’t it, and I assume that the various Jesuit, Franciscan, and secular priests who asserted all this were just as unaccepting of other heresies like Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, Jainism, Shinto, Baha’i ... whatever.
You were lucky to be born Catholic, and God help you if you ever decided that Rome and its legions were anything other than representatives of The True Word of God.
That was good enough for me. My whole family was steeped in the traditions of Catholicism that had been brought across the great water by my great grandparents from Ireland. The Church provided the social glue to us that it had already provided to millions of other itinerant Irish in the United States. While the pub had been for those original immigrant men the place where business was done, the church had been the place where social contacts were established, children were made to be sociable and rules were handed down to them for proper behavior. My grandfathers and my father spent very little time in pubs (much less than I myself was to spend in such places), but the church colored and shaped my upbringing very significantly. I toed the line until I was seventeen years old.
But then a remarkable event took place in my life, something that basically shattered this faithful acceptance of platitude and dogma, which was that I enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley.
I went to the Newman Center frequently during my first year there, the place where young Catholic faithful prepared to be fed the defense of their beliefs by the resident priests. But I also saw that my scrubbed, clean-cut appearance, and that of my fellow Catholic freshmen, was not the only possibility in Berkeley. For one, there were all sorts of slovenly students walking around in beatnik black, with copies of books like The Communist Manifesto in their wrinkled coat pockets. Other books too, like Howl and Other Poems by Alan Ginsberg (which, as it happens, I had already read), Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs and, the most shocking of all, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. I surveyed the title of this book, which was at the time de rigueur reading for anyone with an anarchist or bohemian soul at the University of California, as it passed by, peeping at me from so many jacket pockets. No one in my teenage circles had ever read such a book, and once I did read it (in secret), I understood why.
- Religious Strife
- Published: September 07, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Religion, Culture: History, Culture: Arts, Books: Spirituality, Books: Religion, Books: Poetry, Books: Philosophy, Books: Original Fiction, Books: Nonfiction, Books: Literature and Fiction, Books: History, Books: Arts
- Writer: Terence Clarke
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Interesting, because I work 5 days a week in much the same enviroment you described in that cafeteria.
On any given day, I can be working with a dear maven of an older Jewish lady,who smokes like a smoke stack,uses her finger to emphasize all her points (which are many and in which she is usely right),cusses like a sailor, observes Yom Kippur but eats as she pleases,and is as honest as the day is long.I adore her.
She does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, my God.
On my other side is a Muslim girl, who came from Iraq before 9/11. (Her cousin also works at this company in another area). She is a beautiful girl, quite, and a very hard worker who does not sherk her duties, and becomes hugely annoyed when others do. She dresses as young women do, but there is something about this darling girl that is wise beyond her years.She is special, and inside I'm pulling for her to get ahead in this company.
She does not believe in my God, Jesus Christ.
How do we do it, well, we know where the other stands, then we accept our differences and get along. Maybe thats what we need to learn to do, because if Faith has been around this long, it aint going anywhere anytime soon, and if attempts are made to suppress it, it just goes underground.
I'm so sad that each religion seems to think that they have a God who is better than your God. How did we disect that Eternal Beauty into pieces? One God is the reality. He has represented Himself through the ages with a different Personage Who speaks His Word at a time and place where He is needed most urgently. His Personage inhabits a new and different body, He appears in a desperately needful area of the world. He calls Himself by a new Name, teaches necessary laws for the age, sets the standards of behavior and promises His return when the assigned tasks have been completed and the need arises for Him to return. He is the same Spirit. He adds to the truths of the Former Representative. How very sad that generations through the ages have clung to tradition rather than to seek the truth for themselves.
Dear Mr. Clarke,
Thank you for your heartfelt article. I too had a similar experience where my Christian upbringing suddenly seemed narrow and insufficient to describe the diversity of the world. For example, what happened to the souls of all those children of God who did not live in a time or place to learn about Jesus Christ?
I share your apprehension about the future of our planet that is so divided. But the divisions I see are between religious organizations, not Religion. I think it's useful to distinguish between a religion and the actions of the 'religionists'. True Religion has been revealed by God to different communities at different times in human history. Religion should be the cause of the unity, love and progress of humanity, not the source of conflict and hate.
"If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it were better to be without it, and to withdraw from such a religion would be a truly religious act" - `Abdu'l-Baha
Best wishes on your journey.
I too think that Catholicism is a fallacy or any other outfit that makes a declaration of having a moral superior stance on matters. A grasp on reality clearly does demonstrate the inconsistencies of dogmatic idealism and proprietorial consolations of a Pius nature as, highly irrelevant and with out value substance and,. or credentials to validate there doctranizations as substantive. The practicality of reason would clearly state otherwise. Perhaps it's do to the very fact that Christianity has more in common with Paganistic teachings than anything close to resembling the Christianity of the first century in which it was founded
But was it from the firepan and into the fire you went? Two places the searching young heart must use discernment: 1)in a church 2) in one's "first survey course in European history" especially if it is taught at Berkely.
I wonder if your professor had even heard of William Wilberforce.
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Dear Terrence,
This is the saddest article I have ever read. You have completely forgotten about prayer. Your sacraments will come alive when you start praying.