> Amara writes:
>Do you think that these several devout catholics are typical?
St. Anslem's College (near me in Southern New Hampshire) has just
done one of those wonderfully weird things that the Catholic church
does sometimes through having the goal of being catholic. In full
understanding, they hired an atheist friend of mine who just got her
theology Phd, to teach theology. Theology with an outside
perspective. That's the kind of thing you don't see "insecure"
faiths doing.
I agree about education making a difference. Catholicism has a much
stronger intellectual bent than most religions, though you don't tend
to run into it in the average adherent, who is, in fact, allowed
to be quite ignorant even of the faith itself, which I find
completely amazing.
It's interesting, by becoming focused on itself rather than
scripture, Catholicism has become one of the most versatile of the
major religions, but that self-focus is also really vulnerable to
horrifying abuses like the Inquisition, since it weakens the original
meme-set.
Eirikur
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:33:59 MDT