Idiocy Undisturbed
Across our desks has come The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism by Bob O’Gorman and Mary Faulkner, a hip duo with degrees in “Religious Education.” Gorman, whose wife is a hospital “chaplain,” teaches at Loyola University Chicago and spends “weekends and summers with his family in Nashville.” Faulkner has studied at the International Institute of Women’s Studies and Matthew Fox’s Institute of Creation-Centered Spirituality.
Our foes would no doubt say that this is just the book we need to read. Did someone have it sent to us as a prank?
The book was published this year by Alpha Books, a subsidiary of Macmillan, and it is 409 pages long — encyclopedic, you might say.
Given the clever title, we couldn’t resist dipping into it. So we looked up “orthodoxy” in the Index. No listing. We looked up “dissent.” No listing. Hmm.
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The temptation to be religiously promiscuous is simply how Protestantism works. Once the individual is the axis, the whole world takes the shape of the ego exalted.
Douthat is correct that people come to faith in various ways. But his message is that Christianity is simply one path among many, all of which are suitable.
Here’s your Pope: When pagan idols are removed from a sacred space, he apologizes; when his belief in the divinity of Christ is questioned, he’s silent.