Saturday, May 17, 2008

A glimmer...

Tonight, at my cousin's high school graduation, I heard something that gave me a little hope for our current faith/science problems.

My cousin goes to an all-boys Catholic high school in Baton Rouge. The Bishop of Baton Rouge was officiating the mass. This is the same bishop that, 16 years and two weeks ago, got drunk with me and my friends in a bar we rented after our all-boys Catholic high school graduation in New Orleans. (Stop it. We had girls there, too.) He was just a lowly auxiliary bishop back then, not the full-fledged head of a major Diocese that he is now.

During the homily, he brings up the Hubble telescope and the wonders of the universe and, of course, how God made all of that and he also made us and isn't all of that so wonderful. In the middle of it all, he says that "scientists" (you all know those guys, right) say that not only is the universe 13 billion years old but one can see the beginnings of the universe through the Hubble.

He attributes it all to the Glory of God(c), of course. Still, in a time when even the most powerful Christian on Earth, the leader of hundreds of millions of Catholics, is giving legitimacy to the ridiculous notion of "Intelligent Design," a bishop down here in Protestant-gutted Louisiana (especially Baton Rouge - don't even get me started) is talking up science to a room full of conservative Christians. Mostly Catholics, but still.

It's something.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Catholics are generally more accepting of evolution than conservative Protestants are. Catholics are not hung up on the Bible, particularly literal interpretations of it where such interpretations clearly don't fit, like some of the Prods.

bullet said...

That's what I've always thought, too. The Catholics down here have been increasingly infiltrated by Protestants and Protestant thought. Things that are decidely not "Catholic" have started to show up in masses. It was just starting when I left the church and was one of the reasons I did.

Add to that the Pope endorsing ID and it seems like Catholics are heading down the same road as Christians.

Only to ultimately burn in Hell as heretics, the poor bastards.

Anonymous said...

I guess the increasing similarity between the Catholic and Protestant churches may be due to the increased ecumenicalism of the past couple of decades. I know there's been something of an evangelical or charismatic movement in some Catholic churches. It doesn't matter much anyway - they're all full of baloney.