Frthom's Blog

During my first day of class in the masters program at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, Father Catania strode assertively into the classroom, nodded acknowledgement to the students in front of him and then, with increased passion, asked:

“Is there anyone in this room who believes that the Bible is God’s verbatim word to man, all true, chronicled events, God-said-it/I believe-it?  If so, please raise your hand.”  We were a bit too shocked to respond so there were no raised hands.

“Good.  Anyone who thinks that way doesn’t belong in graduate school.”

And so began my formal journey into the world of theology.  Having an eclectic background in a wide-range of religious cultures, I had dabbled in theology, both in some independent study classes prior to my work at the Seminary as well as while covering some God-related stories for the NY Times.  In actuality, it was via an assignment for the Times that I stumbled upon the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in the first place.

The Old Testament (or the more politically correct term “Hebrew Scriptures”) seems to provide chronicles of Jewish suffering—weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, to utilize Biblical idiom. Because the Jewish people moreover believed in one God instead of multiple deities or any one ruling king,  they were with great frequency exiled, enslaved, demeaned, and persecuted throughout their early history. So perilous was their plight that the prophet Jeremiah predicted that things were taking a turn for the better for the Jews (because things couldn’t get much worse,) that a messiah would lead the Jews to the Promised Land, thus replacing the covenant of Moses and bringing an end to centuries of suffering and persecution.  

Subsequent to Jesus’ all-too-brief speaking tour, his trial and crucifixion, someone, some thing, some force appears to have moved the rock that was used to block the cave in which the executed prophet had been placed, and his corpse disappeared.  Jesus is alleged to have reappeared to a chosen few and, in the early part of the first century, at least one small enclave on our planet had found its savior.  The curse of the Garden of Eden had been lifted; the Jews would no longer be enslaved and forced to build pyramids; and death had been replaced by eternal life. 

Those who believed that Christ was the savior became Christians and those who said that this guy who came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey just couldn’t possibly have been the Son of God remained Jewish, still hoping that some other descendant of King David might yet happen along soon and fulfill Scriptural prognostications.

That was a bit of a prelude to 5000 years of religious history that I did NOT learn in the Seminary. 

What do I believe after five years of theological study?  Pretty much what I did as I entered the Seminary in 1992: the Bible is historical anecdotes organized to present some religious themes that may or may not be supported by context or fact.  I believe that some of what is written in the Bible can provide a smattering of relief to some who are troubled by life as much as they are by the prospects of their death.  In seminary classes that focused on the two primary volumes of Judeo-Christian scriptures, terms such as “myth, fables, cautionary tales,” etc. were used to provide some context to questions about what happened in the Bible, when, and why.

There are other Biblical naysayers whose views are a bit more contentious than mine.  

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled,” said founding father Thomas Paine, “It would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God.”

“Something is wrong here, ” said the late George Carlin, a comedian, an actor, an author, and an acerbic social critic, “War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. If this is the best god can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being.”

The New Testament is very much a book of persuasion, “rhetoric” as we were taught in class, written by first-century theologians determined to sell Christianity and displace Judaism with the words and promises of the New Covenant.  To support their case that Jesus did indeed fulfill some of the prophecies offered in the Hebrew Scriptures, evangelists placed on the lips of Jesus some of the words put forth by the earliest Biblical scholars.  Perhaps the earliest evidence of lip-syncing.

It is an understatement to say that Thomas Jefferson had issues with the New Testament.

“The teachings of Jesus have been more disfigured by the corruptions of his followers who found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines which he taught,” said Jefferson who actually authored his own bible to exclude anything other than words and doctrine which appeared to come directly from Jesus. 

As an alleged theologian, the greatest conundrum that I’ve observed over the years has been the confusion between the concepts of God and Santa Claus.  We pretty much learned growing up that God was watching all, knew when you were doing something wrong, had a list, was checking it twice, and was going to find out who was naughty or nice. 

This same God/Santa Claus could be “petitioned” (despite Jim Morrison’s contention to the contrary in “Soft Parade”) and asked that we be forgiven our sins and adolescent transgressions, that he intercede and help the Mets win another world series, that I pass the test I never studied for, that I win the lottery, that someone we so dearly care about might recover from illness.  Religious icons and canonized saints have become almost helpers in Santa’s workshop.

I really don’t see God as Santa, although a large preponderance of people who believe in God do envision him that way, an old guy with a white beard, sitting on a cloud with a clipboard and a medium point Bic pen.  And to those who say that God will answer all prayers, let them be aware that some of His answers may include: “No, not now, or figure it out yourself.”

I once read of a survey that suggested that nuns who used the word “joy” and “happiness” were shown to live ten years longer than those who did not.  Although I am not a nun and the word “joy” is not often in my vocabulary, I decided to change the ring on my cell phone to “Ode to Joy.”  I’m suggesting that, apart from all the superstition and mindless ritual associated with religion, there may be some benefits to certain aspects of spirituality and prayer.  Some of those benefits may be due to the power of suggestion, the undoing of psychosomatic trauma, or some ion transfer or shifts in magnetic fields that we may not yet fully comprehend.

I took a course in Church doctrine that was taught by the rector of the Seminary who was about to leave his post and go back to running a parish.  He was a brilliant scholar, having studied in Rome about the time of Vatican II, was a consultant for CNN on papal matters.  Because our class was his last before his departure, his interaction was a bit less formal than it might have normally been.  I had the opportunity to ask him about intercessory prayer.  His response was that it primarily benefited those who are doing the praying, giving them some form of inner strength, some sense of purpose when things are looking on the glum side.  This acquired inner strength can by itself work miracles, but he agreed with my non-Santa theory.

I see ancient religion as more than occasionally trying to find some primitive–almost childlike– explanations for life forces and phenomena that people didn’t understand way back then nor may not fully understand now. Modern religion seems to be perpetually trying to catch up with modern science and culture and, by all measurements, seems to be losing that race. 

Speaking of magnetic fields, going into the Seminary, I harbored a theory that, if humans had a soul, it very likely was in the form of a magnetic field.  And my final course in Christology seemed to espouse a theory from noted Catholic theologian Karl Rahner who basically stated something along the same lines. Hence, the concept of an enduring soul may be wishful thinking or science fiction. Or maybe this theory or others like it just haven’t been completely figured out yet.

Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist and geologist who developed his theories of evolution within the context of spiritual development. He was among a group of 20th century scholars who provided some scientific validity to the mysteries of conceptual metaphysics.

The benefits of prayer may very well take on more characteristics of science that we just don’t yet understand, e.g., more similar to sonic or electronic wave transfer than anything having to do with intercession from a heavenly source.  Similarly, the healing miracles attributed to Christ in the Bible may very well have just been mere foreshadowing of the medical miracles we read about today, where science helps the blind to see, helps the lame to walk, or a patient with cancer to miraculously heal with the help of medicine or inner strength or forces unknown.

Harkening back to my decade or so studying with the Lloyd Harbor Quaker Meeting, I learned how to silently pray, seeking an inner light, a unique sense of spiritual calm that I have yet to find elsewhere in any other religious setting.  When I pray, I try to forget any preconceived notions that I may have brought along with me to adulthood from childhood.  No Santa, no clipboard, no magic wand, no clicking of my heels, no man behind the curtain.  I appeal to the inner workings of me, the nebulous life force that somehow started and keeps ticking in ways and for reasons that aren’t truly clear to me. I also am sometimes hopeful that, through prayer, some positive vibes or some mini ion-storm might somehow affect someone I care about in some productive ways.

I don’t know whether changing the ring on my cell phone will make me more joyous and consequently live longer. I don’t know if a focused, inward, prayerful appeal on your part or by those around you will have any effect on whatever you’re going through.  But it probably can’t hurt.

I originally wrote this essay in the form of a letter to an old friend, Marie, who was dying of cancer.  I was suggesting to her that praying might ease some of her pain if not bring about some divine insight to her disease.  I’ve always known my friend to be stubborn and that her 12 years of parochial school had turned her off to organized religion and to that God that West Wing’s Josiah Bartlett once called a “feckless thug.” Indeed, she had become an agnostic, perhaps an atheist, most certainly a lapsed Catholic.  I wrote the aforementioned with tongue partially in cheek to try to assuage her concerns that I might evangelically try to reconnect her with her estranged deity.  My primary goal was to use some reverse psychology to get my friend to pray, if only to bring her some inner peace.  In the eight months that followed, as death drew nearer with each passing day, Marie seemed to be doing just that.   The day she died she told me that she used a fine point Bic pen, not the medium point…