Embedded Files
( - previous issue - )
Apologia Report 15:20 (1,025)
May 26, 2010
Subject: Roman Catholicism experiencing "institutional crisis"
In this issue:
ORIGINS - Bruce Waltke resigns over evolution statement
RELIGIOUS PLURALISM - Stephen Prothero exposes "pretend pluralism"
ROMAN CATHOLICISM - estimating the sex-abuse scandals' damage
SCIENCE - psyc prof warns "soft science" fields: Beware "the problem of hubris"
-----
PLEASE NOTE: Our office will be closed this week. As a result, the next issue of AR is scheduled for the week beginning June 6.
------
ORIGINS
"An evolving story or not?" by Sarah Pulliam Bailey -- "Almost
immediately after posting a video that included [his statement that
'If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that
reality will make us a cult - some odd group that is not really
interacting with the world'] on the Internet three weeks ago, [a
leading evangelical patriarch of Old Testament theology, Bruce] Waltke was labeled a heretic, and called 'anti-Christian.'" Bailey notes that "The odd part about this quote is that while the web version posts this full quote, the [ABC] television version cuts out the 'if,' which Waltke said later is an important distinction. ...
"Even though Waltke had the video that supported evolution pulled down, and repeatedly explained that he believes one can believe in both evolution and biblical inerrancy (the position that the Bible is accurate), the attacks have kept coming.
"After deciding he'd had enough, two weeks ago Waltke resigned from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Florida where he'd taught for more than a decade. ...
"Peter Enns, who lost his job at an evangelical seminary in
Philadelphia under similar circumstances, says a refusal to accept evolution is likely to turn away future generations of Christians. ...
"Moderate evangelical Randal Balmer says conservative evangelicals are starting to close ranks in the face of mounting evidence supporting the theory of evolution.
"It's unclear why the reporters interviewed Peter Enns, whose
departure from Westminster Theological Seminary didn't have anything to do with evolution and focused on whether his book [1] adhered to a specific confession of faith that faculty must sign. The ABC story should have at least disclosed that Enns now works for the Biologos Foundation, which was the same group that posted the video of Waltke."
There are significantly more complexities to this debate than what you see above. Bailey provides a helpful service by detailing many of them. GetReligion, Apr 20 '10, <www.tinyurl.com/2cupx7s>
---
RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
"All Religions Are Not Alike" by Rich Barlow -- "How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions - and then dismissing that message as garbage.
"Stephen Prothero's God Is Not One [2], which hits bookstores
today, argues that the globe's eight major religions hold different
and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. ...
"The notion of 'pretend pluralism,' as Prothero derides it, may be
nobly intentioned, but it is 'dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.'
It blinds us to understanding, and therefore solving"
religiously-driven political conflict, for example.
"Harvard's Harvey Cox, gives Prothero qualified support. 'Steve is
right that the 'unity' of religions has been exaggerated,' says Cox
'He helps us all see that in interfaith dialogue, we converse with a
genuine "other." What he may overlook is that religions are changing, sometimes quite rapidly - the lines between them are becoming more porous - and that a considerable amount of borrowing back and forth has been going on." ...
"So how, at this point, to defang religious animosity? The book
argues that understanding their differences is the start of accepting them.
"The book cites only one example of Prothero's strategy: Chicago's Interfaith Youth Core, which assembles young people from diverse religions to rub shoulders on community service projects.
"'I don't give many examples because there aren't many examples,' he admits. He acknowledges that homicidal fanatics like Osama bin Laden aren't open to embracing differences and must be forcibly stopped. But he's convinced that we'll never stop the crazies by following what he calls ineffectual naïfs cawing about religious solidarity. His Third Way, whether extremists can accept it or not, is humility about one's views...." BU Today (Boston Univ.), Apr 20 '10, <www.tinyurl.com/2cply65>
---
ROMAN CATHOLICISM
"Catholics in crisis" (no byline) -- asks: "How severe is the
[sex-abuse scandals] crisis?
"It's 'the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in
church history,' says the National Catholic Reporter. ...
"Since the 1960s, four American-born Catholics have left the church for every one who has converted, according to a 2009 Pew study. ... More than 1,000 parishes have closed since 1995, and the number of priests has fallen from about 49,000 to 40,000 during that same period. Some 3,400 Catholic parishes in the U.S. now lack a resident priest. 'Catholicism is in decline across America,' says sociologist David Carlin. ...
"In 1991, 84 percent of the Irish population attended Mass at least once a week. Today the weekly attendance figure is less than 50 percent."
On the other hand, "The African church has grown from 55 million in 1978 to 150 million today. 'The church has provided, in many cases, the voice that stands on behalf of the voiceless,' says the Rev. Emmanuel Katongole, a leader in the Ugandan church. In Asia, church membership increased 80 percent since 1978, while the number of priests rose 74 percent. In fact, Africa and Asia now supply priests to the rest of the world.... But the church faces problems in the developing world, too. Evangelical Protestantism is making inroads, and many African priests live openly with wives and children, in defiance of the Vatican's celibacy requirement." The Week, May 7 '10, p11. <www.tinyurl.com/26e97yy>
---
SCIENCE
"Hard Questions from 'Soft' Sciences" by Christopher F. Chabris --
with "soft" referring to fields less "rigorous and substantial" than
biology and chemistry, explains Chabris, who reports that "over the past decade the study of human behavior has shaken off some of its science-lite reputation and acquired a new cachet with the general public." As an example, Chabris notes that "some old baggage has been jettisoned for good. In my own field of psychology, for instance, the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner have been replaced by cognitive neuroscience as the dominant approach to understanding the human mind." In addition, "the experimental method has spread to fields such as economics and political science,
and even to anthropology. The net result is that the proclamations of social scientists are becoming more trustworthy, and more trusted."
Recently, "Harvard hosted a conference on 'Hard Problems in Social Science' [and] invited the public to propose and discuss new problems, and ultimately to vote on what the hardest ones really are. ... "Listening to the speakers, I was impressed by the range of their ideas and by how much I was learning from them. But I was struck by the nearly complete lack of overlap among their proposals. ...
"There was at least one problem that went unmentioned at Harvard: the problem of hubris. Social science is not immune to the general decline of public confidence in science and scientists, and the occasional arrogant disdain for lay people among scientists and academics, that was illustrated by the 'Climategate' episode last year. Compared to institutions like the government, organized religion and the legal profession, science still retains tremendous respect. Yet this precious commodity is in danger.
"Social scientists should be well-placed to figure out ways of
protecting their own credibility, and they might start by opening up
some distance between themselves and the political arena. They could be more modest in their policy prescriptions, and they should do some critical thinking of their own about whether 'education' is really a panacea for social ills, and the hidden dangers inherent in trying to engineer large-scale changes in human behavior.
"Mr. Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College and the
co-author of The Invisible Gorilla, and Other Ways Our Intuitions
Deceive Us." [3] Wall Street Journal, Apr 16 '10,
-------
SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Inspiration and Incarnation? by Peter Enns (Baker, 2005,
paperback, 208 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2a6b8cn>
2 - God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World - and Why Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero (HarperOne, 2010, hardcover, 400 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/yjfppww>
3 - The Invisible Gorilla, and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel Simons (Crown, 2010, hardcover, 320 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2anon2k>
-----
( - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse