{"id":10157,"date":"2006-03-04T21:25:12","date_gmt":"2006-03-05T02:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/03\/04\/10157.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:54:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:54:47","slug":"book-report-belief-or-nonbelie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/03\/04\/book-report-belief-or-nonbelie\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Belief or Nonbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I happened to come across Belief or Nonbelief<\/a> at the library, and as I am a reasonably big fan of Umberto Eco, who is one of the authors, I thought I would pick it up. These are translations of, well, dueling op-ed pieces, I guess you would call them, between Mr. Eco and Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini<\/a>, S.J., who was at the time Archbishop of Milan. In 1995, a Milanese newspaper decided to run a sort of dialogue between these two prominent local intellectuals. One would essay a question on a topic, the other would essay to answer it. In the process, they would make clear their very different world views, the “secularist” and the Prince of the Church.\n

The problem, for me, is that they don’t in fact have very different world views. Oh, Mr. Eco is not a believer, really, but he is scarcely anti-clerical, and it’s clear that the church he doesn’t follow is Cardinal Martini’s church. And the Archbishop is clearly a believer, but a rationalist, a Jesuit in fact, and it’s clear that the humanism he rejects is Mr. Eco’s humanism. In other words, they are talking each other’s language. Which, on one level, is nice, because it allows them to converse at a high level, respectfully, and with a great deal of understanding. On another level, though, it’s clear that neither particularly wants<\/I> to persuade the other of anything, nor do they care, particularly, if the reader follows the other’s precepts. It’s so civil it avoids confrontation; there is no clash. Of course, the format, which does not allow a rebuttal, but which requires each answer to be followed by a change of subject, makes clash even less likely.\n

The thing I wanted to talk about, though, was a thing Mr. Eco said which struck me as rather stupid. Since Mr. Eco is not stupid, I rather wonder what he actually meant. He was reaffirming that he asked a doctrinal question out of curiosity, rather than challenge, saying that as a non-Catholic, he had no standing to challenge the doctrine. Here’s the quote:\n

“If you want to be Catholic, don’t get a divorce. If you want a divorce, become Protestant. You only have the right to protest if you are not Catholic and the Church wants to keep you from getting a divorce. I confess that homosexuals who want to be recognized by the Church and priests who want to get married exasperate me.”<\/blockquote>\n

Now, I understand that, as an outsider, I haven’t the right to demand the Church change its doctrine. However, what he appears to be saying is that even insiders don’t have that right. Further, and even more annoyingly, he appears to be saying that the Church is defined by, and is rightly defined by, their restrictions rather than their blessings. Do you want a church that sanctions divorce and also believes in transubstantiation? Do you want a church that treats women as equals and also believes in the priestly power to absolve sin after confession? Well, screw you. If you want a divorce, become a Protestant, and give up apostolic succession, the throne of St. Peter, and the pontifical guidance of the Bishop of Rome.\n

And, of course, Mr. Eco does not seem to think that people outside the church have any right to protest if Church dogma is actually hurting people, if, for instance, they counsel against condoms even if one’s spouse has AIDS. No, no, such ideas exasperate him.\n

Perhaps it’s just because I like the man that I can’t believe he means all that. I suspect, frankly, that he’s pulling the Cardinal’s leg (which, for all I know, has bells on). I suspect he’s getting a nasty little dig in there, leaving it for the reader to say wait a minute...<\/I> and come to the conclusion I did: of course<\/I> I have the standing, whoever I am, to object to the Church’s teachings, and of course<\/I> the Church’s teaching are wrong on these topics (whichever they are for the individual reader), and of course<\/I> nonbelief is better, if the choice is believing stupid shit like that. But perhaps that’s just what I would have preferred he say, or rather what I would have preferred he meant. There’s semiotics there, I’m sure.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I happened to come across Belief or Nonbelief at the library, and as I am a reasonably big fan of Umberto Eco, who is one of the authors, I thought I would pick it up. These are translations of, well,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17697,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10157\/revisions\/17697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}