Religion - for children not old enough to properly think things through and the dying afraid of what lies beyond. I still wonder what the hell everybody else could be thinking though. The power of self-delusion I guess.

I see you changed it. I have worked with confirmation preparation for twenty years in several parishes. I always hoped they were confirming their faith, while the Church was confirming its desire to initiate them fully. With many students, both spellings are accurate.

What is it about Christian mothers wanting their sons to be close to God by being literally close to the altar? I was an altar boy in my early to mid-teens. I did it because I genuinely believed that that being a good boy meant being involved in church activities. The Philippines is more than 80% Catholic, so it's quite normal to be associated with some church group at one point in time or another in our lives.

My father, though quite the agnostic I knew growing up, also was an altar boy when he was young. He knew his church readings by heart, reciting them to me from memory even in his late 50s. I too grew up with the exact same questions you did and found it immensely disconcerting knowing that as much as I tried to be "pure of thought" I could not pull it off, no matter how noble my intentions.

I thank a lot of people for egging me on to question my system of beliefs. My dad would constantly joke that priests were the biggest bunch of wankers that existed (with my mom scolding him disapprovingly each time). My cousin-in-law used to calm me down every time I would tell him about some End-of-the-world interpretation Pat Robertson would spew (the 700 Club had an immense following in the early 80s in the Philippines).

But I owe my inquisitiveness most of all to my Uncle Samir, a Brit of Iraqi descent who married my aunt who has lived most of his life in Saudi Arabia. When he was young and childless he felt compelled to try and "enlighten" me and my family on the ideas of God. Whenever he would visit us he would show me videos of religious debates on Christian ideas between a famous imam (I think) and noted Christian evangelists (if you can call Jimmy Swaggart a holy man). And time and again in those videos, I found that Islamic criticisms of Catholic doctrive had some good points (take note that this is from a 12-year old's point of view). Samir wasn't demanding, he asked me to really think about these things. And I did. Those questions raised stayed with me for years.

I read more about the Islamic faith, and found many many admirable things about its central tenets. But I too found things that I could not reconcile. And in the end, when I read upon more and more books on religion, I found there was none of them I could adhere to. For the first time, I was able to make sense of things.

For that I am deeply indebted to Samir. I invited him to my wedding a few years ago, and he did come. As the years went by after he had child after child, his own religious rigidness also fell away. When the realities of life and parenthood hit you, it doesn't matter where you live, you realize that a strict ideology is just that: ideal. Hardly rooted in reality.

Ebert: I know we live in a global culture, but i think Jimmy Swaggart making it to the Philippines and Saudi Arabia is carrying things too far.

I like how you said "It didn't make sense to me any longer. There was no crisis of conscience. It simply all fell away." That is EXACTLY how it felt for me when I realized I no longer believed.

I was raised Episcopalian and went to church weekly until about age 16, and at that age, I realized a couple things. I realized that my fondest memories of church had almost nothing to do with religion. I certainly enjoyed debating with my pastor during confirmation, but I recall acting in the Christmas pageant every year (including the year I was Joseph and one of the Wise Men and had solos) and the field trips I took as a teenager with my youth group into Chicago with much more clarity. I also realized that outside of the two hours a week I spent there (hour of Sunday school, hour of mass) I didn't really think about anything church related.

It's almost like one day, a switch just flipped off. Much to my mothers chagrin, I began reading Dawkins and Hitchens, stopped going to church except for major holidays, labeled myself as an agnostic and a humanist. I always find it interesting reading accounts like this, of people who were deeply immersed in the church, because it's something that I never really experienced, but I'm completely fascinated by it. Good stuff.

(By the way, your anecdote about crying in the lap of a priest and how that wouldn't happen today reminds me of a story my mother once told me. My grandma accidentally knocked into her, and she fell on the concrete an got a black eye. When the doctor asked what had happened, my mother said "Mommy pushed me," to which the doctor laughed and replied "I'm sure she didn't mean it." To live in the age of innocence again.)

My father, the latest in a long line of Lutherans of German ancestry, had married his first wife in a Catholic cemetary. Her transgressions of that marriage robbed my father of his trust in her, and eventually lead to their divorce.

Years later he met my mother, a good Irish Catholic, and they decided upon getting married. Her family was dead set on a Catholic ceremony, but his divorce presented a problem because it was not recognized by the Catholic church. They eventually settled on a Lutheran ceremony, because it pleased my dad's family and allowed them to do the damn thing already. Nearly 27 years later, they're still going strong -- and my mother still feels guilty about it.

My mother insisted I be baptized but, thanks to the rigid dogma of the Church, that's as far as my religious upbringing ever went. Growing up, my mother grandmother would fondly remind me on occasion that she was praying regularly for the salvation of my heathen soul.

Eventually I found my own way to God on my own terms. I am not a regular churchgoer, but I find myself in a pew more frequently than either of my parents do. Being deprived of the cultural Catholicism robbed me of a set of communal experiences that would have made relating to my classmates easier. But being deprived of the cultural Catholicism also meant being deprived of the guilt that burdens my mother and the set of prejudices that burdens many of my relatives. For better or for worse, I am the man I have chosen to be.

Ebert: Does the Church still believe there is no salvation outside the Church? I have the impression that has been relaxed.

I was not raised Catholic but in many ways my childhood was like yours with many days spent in church and high expectations for a life in service to the church as an adult.

Before I finished high school I was a confirmed atheist and have remained so for over 20 years.

But when I visit my family the tradition of church and all that is something I sometimes do from nostalgia more than anything. It reminds me of my childhood, and even though I no longer believe it the ritual is familiar and it makes my parents happy. And isn't that what a visit home is all about?

Thanks for sharing your stories, Roger. I love reading them.

Another article that hits so very close to home. I hear rumors that there is a Catholic Church in Volo, Illinois that still holds one mass every weekend in Latin. I plan on taking my children some day to see how different and sort of "exotic" Things were back in the day!

I love reading these essays; they are windows into a history I was not part of. You transport me, and to a reader there is nothing more important than being transported to somewhere unfamiliar and returning with a new view of the world. Thanks.

I often think that a mother or father's greatest (and most painful, for them) gift to their child is that of quiet acquiescence -- the ability to let us be who we are, separate from their own beliefs, no matter how abstract or alien it is to their own sense of good.

We become who we are by embracing or avoiding that which our parents hold dear. And when we sense, implicitly, that such a choice is, if not endorsed, at least accepted, with a quiet, steady love, we can grow, and grow, and grow.

I was raised Mormon, but haven't been to church since I was 19. Everyone just seemed so damn happy all the time. To be clear, it wasn't a creepy Stepford Wives kind of happy, just a plain, glad to be around like-minded people kind of happy. I just knew that I didn't share their faith and felt like a fake.

When I was 20, I had a son (out of wedlock) who died when he was eight months old. I don't want to go back to church, but if I did, I would have to meet with the head of my local church, make what is basically a confession, and ask forgiveness of my sins, including the sin of fornication that led to the creation of my son. The idea of apologizing, even to God, for the best thing that I ever did makes me want to tear someones throat out with my teeth. So I doubt I'll be doing that anytime soon.

Fascinating blog post as always!
"Protestants and even Jews were victims, I suppose, of sensory deprivation." I think Judaism has great rituals. Putting on Tefillin, for example. And Havdalah candles and spices on Saturday nights. Hebrew is a great language to pray in. I think it sounds so awkward to say phrases like "Blessed are you, God" in English.

Ebert: Point well taken.

Roger, I love these blog posts of yours. They're insightful and sympathetic -- there's no condescension, and they're very contemplative. Whenever I see pieces written about religion, either it's something I cannot relate to because the writer is preaching to the choir, so to speak, or the writer is looking down on religion. The latter appeals to me as a teenager, but your post here is far more refreshing and rewarding. And considering how I've lived my life, I think that says a lot of how gifted you are as a writer.

My father has always described me as a person who marched to the beat of his own drum. At times, you could certainly call it stubbornness, but quite often I went against the popular trend growing up simply because I had my interests and that was it. I really had no other reason for it; I cared little for sports or other physical and competitive activities (which lead to problems down the road -- weight gain). I was an avid reader for a long time, mostly of the typical children's books put out every year, but I absorbed them with such intensity that I was often left alone in the elementary school cafeteria because I failed to notice that everybody left.

Probably the most important book of my childhood that I can think of is Madeleine L'engle's "A Wrinkle in Time": it dealt with ideas that were certainly above me, above all of us. There was an awe and fear to it that was very tangible in me, even if I couldn't quite grasp the physics presented in the story. It even included religious themes, and I find those interesting even as one who never subscribed to religion; the unknowable as being wonderful, mysterious and terrifying. I think it's something I've looked for ever since then.

I feel sad now that I neglected such intense reading for many of my teenage years, but I don't think I could help it -- I was trying to find my way, too, and I struggled to see what was in front of my own eyes. It is only just this past year that my insight has become more and more intense again, as if a switch had been flipped. I must of read over ten books in the past three months, which I have not done in a long time -- quite a few for a summer college course, yes, but they're rewarding to me.

If our stories have anything in common, it is at least that we're trying to put traditions behind us -- ways of seeing passed on by our parents and what we learn as children -- and forge our own way. I guess you could say I was made to do that, but a child must first become a man in order to really know all things. Thank you for this piece.

Mr Ebert,
I am a practicing Eastern Orthodox Christian, and like you, I find it difficult to understand how someone can maintain "conservative," libertarian or authoritarian/fascist beliefs in the face of not only the Gospels, but the Book Of Acts. I mean, the early church was a kibbutz, right? Or am I missing something? How can people like Francisco Franco, John Hagee, Pat Robertson and George Bush call themselves Christians?
I sometimes think that maybe the Jefferson Bible has at least one advantage, and that is that it appeals to people attracted by Jesus' ethics and morality, rather than the "evil and adulterous generation, that seeketh after a sign."
If the Church is the Bride of Christ, and I believe that it is, then wouldn't Jesus prefer a bride that loves him, than a bride that loves what he can do for them?
This is why I have sometimes been troubled by the carrot vs stick/salvation vs damnation form of evangelizing.
Christ told us that the Apostles (modern term : bishops)are to evangelize, while the rest of us (disciples) are to model Christianity, without speaking up about others faults.
Why is this so seldom what I see? Is it because of the types of people attracted by the "carrot and stick" method? What are your thoughts?
Rock on,
John

P S Ironic, that so many people from the religious right hate Michael Moore so much, when not only are the beliefs he espouses more in line with Christ's teachings, but he's a former Roman Ctholic seminarian, who sees his film work as a ministry.

My favorite spiritual justification of the "If God is perfect, then how can he permit evil?" argument is the interpretation that God--though benevolent--has a half-witted brother who is constantly mucking things up. I cannot express in words how delightful I find this idea. It makes so much sense. God is merely the straight man, and all our ills are the fault of a cosmic Chris Farley who accidentally trips over his own feet, causing tsunamis, hurricanes and oil rig disasters, all while shouting out in a horribly obnoxious voice "OH MY GOD!" before causing even more untold devastation while trying to clean up his mess.

Of course, this was exactly the kind of input that got me into trouble in CCD class.

Your life continues to intrigue me, Roger. I had the experience growing up of being an altar boy in the Eastern Orthodox Church, so there's a few touchstones between you and I. I, too, lost my faith -- in a way -- and have since regained it. Or, perhaps, He regained me. There is a beauty to the old churches (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) that instills a respect for the physical world and for the power of the senses that is lacking in most Western religion. It all ties together; perhaps this sacramental worldview is why they tend to be open to "secular" science and ideas.

The term I've heard that best described/encouraged utilizing the moral and ethical guidelines espoused by the Catholic Church without having to adhere to all the religious obligations is "Cathnostic."

The way you describe the falling away of your faith hit home with me and my own experience with growing up Lutheran. It never really made sense to me but I went along with it, like you, because of my mother. I even cheated on my confirmation exam!

Late in high school I had what I my two drunk friends interpreted as a spiritual experience. We were sitting in a circle passing a bottle of wine around when one of us -- I forget who -- said he felt a presence. Then we all did, and, presto! I was on a path to serious religiosity that lasted in various incarnations well into adulthood.

And then my son started hammering away at faith with a relentless and passionate logic. I had been in many debates over the years, and even had spent five years in an evangelical college ministry, so I was very well versed in apologetics. But you know what? It slowly dawned on me that I just shouldn't have to work so hard to defend something that, if true, would surely have more concrete evidence to support it. Occam's Razor (All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best) became my main tool for slicing away the fictions that held up my faith and religiosity.

There just isn't any clear, incontrovertible evidence that any of it's true, except in cultural or historical sense. Anecdotes abound, of course, as well as elaborate theological and philosophical scaffolding. But it seems so clear to me now that all religion, ALL, is nothing more than a subjective wish dream for defying death and a rationale for claiming 'objective' -- that is, outside of oneself and originating with the divine -- authority for exerting control over people's thoughts and behavior.

I am now what I call a "Christo-Agnostic," by which I mean, "I don't know who thought up the ethic voiced by the person called Jesus in the New Testament, and don't care. Fact is, some human being, or beings, thought this stuff up at some point and the words -- stripped of the fairy tale mythology (virgin birth, resurrection) and theology (incarnation of god, trinity, god-inspired scripture) and eschatology (second coming) -- articulate one of the best humane ideals for living together that humanity's come up with."

It'll do. It'll do.

The theory of evolution is a great scientific theory, which Creationism is not. But to call it a substitute or superceder of religion is vague, since religion in the last analysis has served as a source of values and a yardstick for conduct, adequately or not. Does the theory of evolution have caring for others as a corollary?

Ebert: Well, it notices how some species, such as bees, practice self-sacrifice for the common good, but I don't believe bees think of it in moral terms.

I am not and have never been a Catholic. But the richness of Catholic tradition pre-Vatican II has always been appealing to me, even as so much of what the church has historically actually stood for has repulsed me. I admire the cathedrals and the costumes and the ceremony while thanking the God I don't believe in that I didn't have the famous Catholic guilt drilled into my head repeatedly for every nonsensical thing the Catholic church considers a sin.

And Latin! I share the fondness for Latin, even while barely being able to speak a word of it. I wish every faith would take a dead language and bring it alive again within its ranks, but none could do so with the deep historical roots of the Catholic church and Latin. If I had all the time in the world and no other languages I was interested in, I would like to learn Latin, if only so the ominous Latin chanting so many film soundtracks seem to enjoy would go from being spooky to being semi-comical as I pick out what they're actually trying to say.

*sigh*

All of this belies that deep down I really don't like Catholicism and have, in the past, cited it as my least favorite religion...well, ok, one up from Islam, anyway, but still pretty low. I could perhaps agree that it is difficult to subscribe to the teachings of the church in theory and not be a liberal. In practice, you should check out web sites devoted to 'traditionalist' Catholics these days. It's like they've been sitting in a dark corner ever since the French Revolution, rocking back and forth and telling themselves everything that has happened since has just been one long, bad dream. But even beyond that minority, there's a reason why Clerical Fascism became a popular term to describe the regimes of Francisco Franco, Antonio Salazar, the Croatian Ustasha, and others. Given the structure of the church and its historical behavior, Authoritarianism and Catholicism seem a natural fit with one another, just so long as the dictator in question doesn't persecute the church as a competitor.

But even beyond the contradiction between dogma and reality, I find the same revulsion in Catholicism that I find in most other Christian belief systems: the belief in hell, a place where people are sentenced to be eternally punished for their sins. Not 'punished until their bad karma has been excised' like in some forms of Buddhism, or 'mercifully destroyed completely for their sins' like in some other branches of Christianity; permanently sentenced to pain and torment, often on the basis of 'sins' (like...well, not accepting the authority of the church) which are not immediately obvious.

I am of the opinion that anyone who thinks about this concept...really thinks about it...and is not immediately filled with the deepest revulsion against a God who would set up such an injust system is either a moral coward, a monster or not fully wrapping their mind around the idea. It is far, far worse than the most terrible concentration or death camp, as at least there death eventually provided a release. It is the concept of an unrepentant sadist, and if hell were accepted to be as real a place as...say, Australia, there would be absolutely nothing in the long history of human monstrosity, from Hitler and Auschwitz to Stalin and the Holodomor, to set against it. Any evil we humans could do would be like a candle against a firestorm.

I could never worship an entity capable of such an idea from love, but only from abject terror. It amazes me how many others can read about the concept of hell and still find any teachings of God's love palatable.

Though never a Catholic, I have a little overlap with your experience: at Glendale High School the Latin teacher, Miss Nelson, was every bit the cutie that your Mrs. Link was; consequently I used Latin to fill my foreign language requirement, and took two years. Hick, Hike, Hoke; Hooyuss Hooyuss Hooyuss...absum abesse afui afuturus...amazing what still seethes in the brain after forty years...

Amazing also is the twisty journey of an evolving Church of any stripe. Stipulating that Jesus is slated for return, what kind of hat will He wear?

I'm an atheist and I only go to church in weddings and funerals, but being a Catalan, I'm also a cultural catholic. It's simply part of my background as a person, specially now that I'm living in the protestant northern Europe. My parents are also atheists but sadly had to experience harder times: they were raised in the 1950s during the Franco dictatorship, supported by the Church.

Maybe because of this background I like collecting recordings of classical music with a Latin religious text. Vivaldi's Stabat Mater and Fauré's Requiem (that ethereal Sanctus!) are two of my lifelong companions.

One of my top favorite composers is Henryk Gorecki. This is a small part from his stunning Miserere, a piece that's around 33 minutes long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_BgG9b9KrE

I think this is sung in Latin. Here are the liner notes from the album:

"the circumstances which precipitated the composition of Miserere are unusal in Gorecki's output in that they were of an overtly political nature. On March 19, 1981, following a sit-in at the headquarters of the United Peasant party of Bydgoszcz by members of Rural Solidarity, some 200 members of the militia burst in on the demonstrators. In the ensuing violence, when the protesters were forced to run the ' path of health' of militia batons, over 20 union members were injured, several of them very seriously. Pictures of this provocative incident were soon seen all over Poland, unrest spread to the nearby towns of Torun and Wtoctawek and suddenly there was a dangerous national crises. The world looked on with grave concern, surpassed only by the imposition of the 'state of war' by General Jaruzelski nine months later.

Gorecki's response was immediate. With a text of only five words -- 'Domine Deus noster, Miserere nobis'* -- 'Lord our God, have mercy on us' -- and a simple dedication to Bydgoszcz, Gorecki wrote his most important work for unaccompanied chorus as his personal protest at this act of violence. With heavy governmental restrictions in force after December 13, 1981, no performance of Miserere was possible or planned. In the spring of 1987, Gorecki worked again on the piece in preparation for the premiere which was given later that year on September 10 in Wtoctawek and a day later in Bydgoszcz itself."

http://www.amazon.com/Miserere-Gorecki/dp/B000005J2Z/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1277283143&sr=1-2

It's worth every penny, I think.

* The words 'Miserere Nobis' are saved until the final three minutes.

Ebert: The words "'Miserere Nobis" ("have mercy on us") really strike a chord within me.

Is there a Pulitzer for blogging? If there is, I smell another one coming your way for this entry (as if the body of work were not enough ten times over). You are so gifted and use your gift so well. I hope your mother will forgive me for this, but thank you for not becoming a priest. Your “pulpit” is much more far-reaching this way. And besides, once you discovered Playboy, that was all she wrote anyway.

“Logically I was choosing eternal torment over a minute's embarrassment.” That one line could be the take-off point for a course in comparative theology. Confession, soul, spirit and flesh, pleasure and pain, sexuality vs. purity. It’s all in there.

If it weren’t for the fact that you were seven years older and grew up in a different Midwestern town, I’d swear I knew you as a kid. I was the Protestant kid who went to the public school on the other side of the big field that separated us. You were taught that we were condemned to eternal damnation. We thought you were already in hell. But that was only when we gazed on each others’ schools. At recess, we needed 18 to make a baseball game and it came down to who could hit. If only we could have learned to stay in the game. Sigh.

I too, for a time, thought I might enter the clergy. Around age 12 or so. Our parents sound very much alike regarding religion and their views on it. Protestant mothers don’t want to give their sons to the church but they’d still be mighty proud to have a minister in the family. I viewed my Dad’s willingness to go to church on occasion for my Mom’s sake as a demonstration of love and kindness that was an object lesson in the importance of choosing to act the way the church was teaching me to. It never occurred to me that my Father was going to go to hell for it. And if that’s where he is as a result, then we are going to be reunited someday. Maybe like you, it was the process of pursuing my faith that eventually led me away from the church itself. Not permanently or vehemently. I come and go. Not casually at all. As an adult I was a Deacon for a spell. And I loved the helping part of that. But I hated the conflict of having to say that I believed in the Bible literally which I do not. I love the Bible, but I learned full well during my days at the U of I how it was actually pulled together and the notion that it was divinely inspired to be those words in that order vanished forever. That does not make the teachings any less inspiring, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to thump anybody with it. Especially not after I read Playboy (for the interviews, of course).

I too was raised Roman Catholic and from a young age I was in awe of the Almighty, in the truest sense of the word. I remember that my aunt had a picture of the Shroud of Turin in her living room. During the day it looked fine, but at night, dimly lit, I felt as if it would open it's eyes and look at me.

I would have dreams where I'd be walking to school and would see Jesus on the street, his robes soiled black from being among us sinners. When I would see God in my dreams, I saw him in the traditional sense of the old man with the beard, but he would speak like earthquakes and his eyes were like the sun.

To those who aren't Catholic this just sounds like I thought of God as the Boogeyman. Not at all, it was the weight of pure honest absolute belief. To me, when I was a kid, the Holy Trinity was as real as the keyboard I'm typing on right now. There was no doubt in my heart as a boy. None.

However, as I grew older, this belief began to wane until I realized one day that I just never thought of God or Jesus anymore. Even worse was that it didn't bother me. It was hard saying goodbye, they had been with me through a lot, but I also felt like a kid putting his teddy bear away for the last time. It was sadness and relief in equal measures.

What turned me off religion wasn't my own doubt, but other people's. It all started when I went to a funeral and heard one of the bereaved wail "I'll NEVER SEE HER AGAIN!!!", later I heard adults talk quietly about how they were afraid to die. Little by little, after that, I began to see the cracks in the facade. Like how people looked away when you asked them too many questions. How they would pause for just a little bit too long before answering something that should have been obvious and immediate. Every word, every action, every thought they had spoke it's own horrible truth. These people didn't see their lack of faith, but I did. They were just so terrified of suffering or dying that they lied to themselves about God.

Even today, you don't have to look far and wide to find people who use God as a kind of genie of the lamp. They pray for guidance, they pray for luck, they pray for money, they pray for gifts. When I was a kid I would tell people that God was only concerned about their soul, that His focus was on man's celestial afterlife, not our time on Earth. God didn't care if we won the lottery or scored in the big game. God didn't care if we were happy or sad, or even care if we lived or died. All this was inconsequential. The mortal coil only existed to purify our souls through trial and suffering to prepare us for Heaven, to burn away all our childish human wants and desires and to free the perfect spirit within.

Needless to say, I did not waver because religion didn't give me a cookie ever morning.

It took a while, but seeing all this doubt in everyone else's heart eventually made me take a long hard look at my Faith. What I saw was that it was a mirror. God was what man wanted and needed, no more. God, as he was portrayed in the bible, was too tied to the flesh and to the Earth to be infinite. The stories began to seem like just stories, the symbols lost their magic, the prayers felt pointless, and I ceased to have dreams of the Trinity.

...and so it ended.

I do have to say that I miss the traditions and the mystery of it all. This is probably why I've been following Buddhism for the last couple of years. Another wonderful and ancient religion steeped in tradition. I'm not sure I believe in it any more than I did Christianity, but I feel fulfilled by practicing it and it speaks to me in ways that even the Catholic church never did when I was a child.

Does this mean I'm religious again? I don't know. What I do know is that whether there is a God or not, whether the Buddhas exist or not, it's much worse to be a religious coward than a fearless atheist.

Ebert: Leaving religion entirely out of it, I think we have a human need for traditions. Sometimes I go to places I've been before for no better reason than that I've been there before.

I have more chant recordings in Latin than anything else in my music collection, despite being almost Buddhist and the father of a famous evolutionary biologist.

Ebert: Gregorian Chant seems to exist somewhere above and beyond. Tonally, it can be sung by almost anyone. Because it is not in a language I, at least, can interpret when heard, it speaks on another plane. It is very reconciling.

I am glad you didn't go into the priesthood because I would have missed out on 40 years of informative movie reviews and this blog!

So simply put. How you lose your faith.

I am from Spain, raised as a Catholic of course. To this day, some of my friends ask me why I lost my faith. For me it finalised at a later age, when at University, but it had started much earlier, and you explained how so well.

Faith simply faded away little by little, when confronted with everyday small (and big) moral choices, with the variety of modern life, with the honest and heartfelt behaviour of others that do not live by religious principles and yet are just. With rational thinking.

To me the avoidance of Confession also had a lot to do with falling apart with Catholicism. The burden of having sinned against God, in addition to human remorse, was too much. And it felt unfair.

Like you, I attended mass on Sundays when I visited my mother for a long time. I do not any more, partly because of laziness, partly because if felt a bit hypocritical and silly going through the moves. I am fond of Catholic rituals though, and I like going into churches. It feels like home.

We have a four month old baby, she's asleep next to me as I type. I am puzzled about how to infuse her with a morality to live by, because I cannot simply stick to the Catholic tradition as my parents did. I live away from my country and my family too, and I am not part of a community they way I used to be as a child, when I went to Sunday School and the seasons were dictated by the Liturgy. It is funny how tempting it can be going back to the herd, but I cannot fool myself and pretend to believe in fairytales again.

I still sometimes pray when in need of help. Out of habit, for comfort.

(All the best!)

Ebert: Now you are in Scotland. Often in the UK I have attended Evensong services in small towns. They fill me with happiness.

Back in the days when I was a believer and still went to Sunday school, as I now suspect more interested in a certain blond girl that also went there than in the Catholic faith, the priest approached me once and started talking about seminar and following a vocation, and despite my negative he went on, smiling and winking in full used car salesman mode, giving me pamphlets I didn't want (and a DVD of something called 'Godspeed: The speed of God', with a smiling kid in the cover, which to this day I still don't know what is) and asking me to give it some thought and reconsider. It was creepy, and I was distressed for some weeks wondering what the heck had the priest seen in me to consider I would be interested in becoming a priest and accepting a celibate life; also worried because if there was something of the sort that he could see in me, that lovely girl I was trying to approach would see it too.

I was extraordinarily relieved when some pals confided to me, months later, that the priest had also approached them one by one in the same manner, and the nun did the same thing with the girls to guide them to a femenine vocation. I didn't date the girl; she stopped going to church, and I think she moved out of the neighborhood, for I never saw her again. However, some months later, having dropped out of Sunday school, I was interested in another girl, in college, whom I finally didn't ask out and more or less forgot about. Years later, a friend told me she had suddenly abandoned her engineer career, with a few subjects left to complete it, to become a nun and enter a convent. And now I ask myself what did I see in her back then, or failed to see, to still have a hard time believing the out-of-the-blue news of her decision.

Another friend of mine introduced me to the music of a Canadian band called Godspeed You, Black Emperor. They rule, but somehow it doesn't look like they have anything to do with a certain DVD in my possession...

Kneeling on the cobblestones of St. Peter's Square I heard the choir at the funeral of Pope John Paul II begin the Requiem.The rusty hinges of my mind creaked as the Gregorian chant emerged and I joined the choir in singing Latin words that had gone unspoken for forty years.

In the end it is all part of a Church that no longer exists and part of the DNA of those of us who were raised in the era before Vatican II.

Thanks for the memories. Between Bill Bryson's "Thunderbolt Kid" and your writing I realize I was part of a Midwestern fraternity schooled in values and life experiences that will always haunt and inspire us.

Ebert: There is a Gregorian Chant channel on iTunes Radio that is great to play softly while going to sleep.

Thanks for the resonant post Roger. This is something my friends who still identify as cultural Catholics and me find ourselves discussing with surprising frequency. While my parents are not regular churchgoers anymore, my grandmother is. As such, we all find ourselves going to mass almost exclusively while in her presence.

I have come to see my Catholicism primarily through a familial prism, specifically with my grandmother. To this day I wear the medallion of my patron saint that she gave me on my confirmation, despite being a non-observant Catholic since practically before that event. I always wonder if she thinks I just go through the motions when I go to mass with her, and I suspect that on some logical level she certainly does. But there is something else that allows her to convince herself on a spiritual level that she can convince herself otherwise, and I have no problem putting a small amount of effort into preserving that.

Dear Roger;

Lest we forget I have provided this link to the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Catholic Church Abuse Scandal in Boston.

http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/overview/

Jeez, Roger, you think YOU had it bad?

I come from a long line of pastors and missionaries. My father, father's brother, and mother's father were ministers. My entire family on my mother's side were missionaries, including my mother who did service in both Africa and Brazil!

But you know, the funny thing is that I was never pushed into being a minister. There was never any pressure, and my faith is all the stronger for it. I am of the personal belief that faith shouldn't be forced. Coercion does not happy converts make.

If you can accept the musings of a humble Protestant, I hope that no matter what you do in life, you will find your own path, even if you find that it leads you away from Him.

God bless, Roger.

Mr Ebert,
Another beautiful entry. But do you think your Catholic childhood equipped you with morality better than a secular upbringing may have? Would you prefer to have been brought up free from the imposition of religious traditions, or do you feel it was in some way beneficial?
Ben

Ebert: It's hard for me to say. I do believe discussing religion (i.e., morality, the good and the bad) in grade school was excellent preparation for adulthood.

This is one of the greatest entries I have ever read...
Interesting to know about your childhood. Thanks for sharing

Hi Roger,

Excellent! Well-written and heartfelt. I enjoyed reading it immensely.

Here's another essay on the same topic that I admire because of the writer's heartfelt narrative and excellent prose.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/RantMode/Deconversion.html

My father was an altar boy growing up, a fact I did not learn until I was 30, about seven years ago. He somehow went three decades without mentioning it at all. Once he finally did start to talk about it, it was immediately clear that he's still pissed off about much of the whole experience. No, he was never abused, strictly speaking, but to this day he refuses to ever eat fish or macaroni and cheese, having been forced to eat one or the other every single Friday all year round for the first 20+ years of his life. That last bit I always knew, I just never knew why.

Good morning, Mr. Ebert:

When in certain reviews you took umbrage at films that belittled or trivialized Catholicism, I gleaned the impression that you were a fairly devout acolyte. This blog splinters that misconception. Like many other Catholics, you appear to have "lapsed". Perhaps "lapsed" is an austere word; you just "stopped", instead. I suspect you did so because too many Catholic tenets were too fatuously inconsistent to support your belief.

Believe me, I can relate. I was raised, and am nominally, Greek Orthodox. For many formative years of Sundays I was subjected to the Greek Orthodox Church's unchanging drone of a liturgy. I have heard it so often that I, like you, could conduct the liturgy myself. However, I also "have stopped". Beyond mere boredom and incomprehensibility (since liturgies are conducted in Ancient Greek), I was disillusioned because I found Greek Orthodoxy irrelevant in dealing with life issues. "Pista kai mia revna (Believe and do not question)" is often the Greek Orthodox Church's pat, platitudinnous response to any problem you may have. Rare is the Greek Orthodox priest who can apply Church teachings productively, meaningfully, and substantially.

Therefore, I have practically stopped going to church altogether. The only time I attend is when my 82-year-old mother wishes to go. As with you, "[w]hat I was doing, I suppose, was going through the motions to respect a tradition that was more important to her than to me." Furthermore, I have no desire to slight her feelings although she, too, knows of my religious disaffection. Surprisingly, she also has been somewhat disillusioned with Greek Orthodoxy, but its influence has been inculcated not only into her brain but also her genetic code, she probably can't consciously stop. Since my mother is intelligent and well-educated, I am somewhat astounded.

However, being disillusioned with religion is not necessarily the equivalent of lacking spirituality. I still consider myself spiritual, since I still believe in a Supreme Being because SOMETHING created this ultimately rhythmical and orderly universe. I merely wish that this Supreme Being were a bit less inscrutable sometimes and more like the "Old Testament" conception (or even George Burns): overt in his motives, and maybe stentorian. Occasionally I have my doubts, but so far whatever faith I have prevails and keeps me going. I imagine you possess a still-strong latent core of spirituality that keeps you going as well.

This latest blog prompts me to offer yet another possible contribution to your Movie Glossary:

Apocalyptic Chant Rule: If a film features a Gregorian chant or Catholic hymn, it will be either a 1) horror movie or 2) doomsday, end-of-the-world movie. Very seldom will the film be a strictly religious one.

Fascinating entry, Roger. I particularly liked your phrase "cultural Catholic". I've been searching for some time for a way to describe my own faith, which I've now found to be "cultural Presbyterian". I was raised a Presbyterian and have occasionally attended a Methodist or even a couple of Catholic services, but I cannot bring myself to adopt without question Christianity's doctrine that one must believe in Jesus to be saved. That makes no logical or emotional sense to me.

I fell in love with and married a Jewish man. He attends his services each Saturday, and I mine each Sunday. We have debated theology many times, and celebrated Christmas (in a secular fashion; both our children were raised as Jews, although one has professed atheism) and Passover, as well as many other religious holidays. Some people say that interfaith marriages can't work unless one partner converts, or doesn't attend services. We're the exception which proves the rule, perhaps.

If you may forgive my presumption to comment as a non-Catholic: I have met many priests and nuns who seem to me admirable and devout followers of God. My issues are with the Catholic Church itself. It needs to wake up and make some changes if it wants to survive in the new millenium.

Oh, and just to add: I love singing "Ave Verum Corpus". My choir director when I was growing up had a fondness for Episcopalian church music. I still can't warm up to all those traditional Methodist hymns ("How Great Thou Art", "In The Garden", etc.)

Ebert: My own favorite hymn:

http://j.mp/dfCS0G

Roger,

I served as an altar boy in the early 1970s, and had a similar trajectory as you regarding my involvement with the church. I don't think my mother ever believed the priesthood was in my future, but I can't say the same for my mother-in-law. Six sons in an Irish-Catholic family in Massachusetts? You gotta figure at least ONE would wear the vestments. Never happened. Even worse, three are confirmed bachelors.

- Jim

I was mercifully spared a call to the priesthood by the fact that, as one Dominican priest observed, I "couldn't pass the physical." That fact, along with the usual logical and theological reservations, eventually drove me away from the Church, but not from Latin. I ended up with a doctorate in Medieval Studies, with specialty in Medieval Latin. (It's laetificat up there, by the way.)

The beauty of the language is so much a part of the beauty of the ritual. The Church needed Vatican II for many reasons, and I understand the rationale of liturgy in the vernacular, but still. Oh, still.

Ebert: Darn. I got my spelling from teh web to be sure it was correct. Laetificat, you say.

I agree with you: "Oh, still." And besides, everyone knew what the Latin meant. That's what missals were for.

Thanks for another wonderful piece.

If you like Gregorian chant you should also check out Eastern Orthodox chant. Ancient Faith radio plays a wonderful selection of different styles of Eastern chants: www.ancientfaithradio.org

I am an Eastern Orthodox priest and an avid fan of your writing. I appreciate the candor of your account. I often see the children of a devout mother and a non-practicing father drift away from their childhood faith. It is not at all uncommon, and in fact, I can almost guarantee that unless the father of a family is practicing, the children will inevitably lose their faith, no matter how faithful the mother is. I don't know why that is, except that my experience has borne it out consistently.

Faith, by the way, is not just believing mindlessly. Faith flows from a realization of personal powerlessness over one's life. As soon as I come to the place where I recognize that I am not the master of my own destiny, I am the potential place where I may recognize the Power greater than myself who somehow cares personally for my ultimate destiny. Giving that Power the historical name of Jesus is the result of a careful exploration of all faiths and belief systems with an eye to finding a Power who truly loves us. Everyone must embark on that quest for him or her self.

Thank you for your humane and insightful posts. I do not know you personally, but your writing opens a crack in the window of your soul.

Ebert: The theory of AA is also that one must ask for help from a Power Greater than Oneself. All alcoholics think they can control their own drinking by themselves, and if they are truly alcoholics they cannot.For me (emphasis on "me"), the crucial element there is humility. The Power need not be God or even religious in nature, but it must not be Oneself. For me personally, it matters not how you describe your Higher Power, but there must be one.

Damn, Roger.

We're a generation or so apart, but I can relate to so much of what you experienced. I was enchanted by the mood, the aesthetics, the pageantry of the religion even as I questioned their relevance to Jesus's teachings. My father's excuse for never attending Mass was that he'd gone to enough Masses when he was a child. I realized he was agnostic shortly after I realized I was. I wish I could talk to him about that now.

About halfway through the column, I started seriously considering e-mailing it to my mother as a prologue to a long-overdue discussion. I began to wonder how you'd "come out" to your own mother.

Your final paragraphs gave me pause. I feel exactly as you do. She knows I'm a non-believer, I know she knows, but I fib, obfuscate and play along because I love her, and the assurance of my salvation comforts her. Regardless of what little weight I place on it, my mother's faith carried our family through hard times, and it's made her a good, loving person.

I think...I think I'll keep it this way for now.

Do you ever regret not telling your mother, Roger?

Ebert: There are lots of things parents and children know that go unsaid. I didn't fear her anger or disapproval. I feared her tears.

when I was a teenager going through some kind of a spiritual crisis struggling between Islam and atheism/agnosticism I wanted to become a nun. nuns appealed to me because they seemed so content and happy. at that time, I wished there was some kinda similar vocation for Muslim females who could live in a convent and devote their lives to Allah and be involved in charity work. various Muslims told me I didn't need to live in a convent and devote my life to Allah-- I could just do that with my everyday life.

then later, I found out about a nun who was so unhappy with being a nun, so she left the convent, quit Catholicism, and became a porn star.

Roger, if the words "Miserere nobis" resonate in you, then by all means pick up a copy of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" Op. 123, and not just any copy, but the recording by Carlo Maria Giulini and the London Philharmonic Orchestra done in the late 70s - here

http://www.amazon.com/Missa-Solemnis-Beetoven/dp/B0013D8K5U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1277303374&sr=1-2

The "Agnus Dei" in this performance is one of the most bone-chilling, awesome things ever put on vinyl. And the "Credo" will make you come off your chair.

-drl

Good morning, Roger, and thank you for the post. I have two questions for you--questions that I have asked many, butnever received a coherent answer:
1.) Why is it that Evolution is used as a tool to strike down the concept of a divine creator? Am I the only one that feels like to two concepts make sense together?

2.) You mentioned that your faith fell away because you could not "just believe." Why is that? Isn't "just believing" the entire point? Isn't faith belief without proof? Isn't faith in the same realm of love? Science tells us love in the brain is similar to eating chocolate--which may be true from a scientific standpoint, but that doesn't come close to telling the story. Faith is the same way--its ethereal and non-tangible.

Anyway, I have started to ramble, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts.

Best wishes,

Mark

Ebert: Evolution is compatible with religion but not with Creationism. To believe in Creationism using faith alone, in the face of common sense, would mean believing God deliberately created a universe intended to be a falsification.

I'm reading a fine book, "Quantum," by Manjit Kumar on the early debate between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of quantum physics. Early on, no one believed in the quanta; they just assumed it was a temporarily useful mathematical device to describe various otherwise unexplainable phenomena.

But, darn it, it turns out that quantum physics is all true. And provable.

The point: I think it's a mistake to reject, however respectfully, a religion because it doesn't square with science or experience. Even science doesn't square with science at times. Granted, religions tend to claim way too much doctrinally; but their great strength is their ability to assemble us in worshipful groups in collective humility before the great mysteries of human existence. Roman Catholicism, especially with its Latin Mass, is particularly impressive in that regard.

By the way, I'm Christian, though not Catholic. And I'll just add that I greatly admire your mother's faith. Thank you very much for sharing these thoughts.

Ebert: Although Judaism predates it, the Catholic church is the longest surviving institution in history, I believe. (I'm speaking of the institution, not the faith.) Certainly it has been carried along through the centuries by some remarkably flawed humans. Annie Dillard wrote that in any strange place, she looks for a long-established church, which has had more experience in not being struck by lightning.

Being a priest of one year I had to click on your blog while checking the reviews. How strange I found it that you started with so much and ended with so little. Many people of your generation probably could tell the same story. While many of my generation have grown up with so little religion and now are discovering the richness of the past. I grew up with no latin, no smells and bells, no teachings of Hell, and I yearned for more. How can I really be free if I cannot reject God totally and eternally? Going to "my own place" as it is described for Judas. Do any of my actions have real lasting consequences? Or will all creation eventually return to God even the rebellious angels though that is not their wish? Those teachings that you fell away from are the arms of the loving Father that I fell into. How far the pendulum swings, and if it were a sickle we would all be cut under the blade.

My prayers for you and your wife. You are fulfilling your vocation. It might not have been the wishes of your mother, but it may be what God wanted all along.

Fr. Joshua

Ebert: I am sure that faith freely arrived at, as in your case, can be a joy. I started with a job and it has over the years deepened into a vocation. I'm not sure I could describe it clearly, but it gives my life more meaning.

You ask, "Do any of my actions have real lasting consequences?" One thing that is certain is that they have consequences for us ourselves. If our actions do not seem to us to be the right thing, we can hardly be happy. Yet some evil people (Hitler is the cliche) seem to have been happy. How? Why? It's when you regard Hitler that you contemplate all possible definitions of sin.

What a tender, beautiful piece Mr. Ebert. You have reminded me of sneaking away with my childhood friend Mary to her magnificent Catholic church with all of the statues, paintings, dramatic goings on.I so wanted to be Catholic if only for the pagentry. Or to be a nun who took a vow of silence, hiding away forever in the beautiful convent standing behind the high orchard walls overlooking Mission Valley. In the convent,my young mind thought, I could hide my shyness and fear of people yet still do good works.A match made in Heaven?

Thank you for the dreams and memories Mr. Ebert. Oh and the Catholic church? Didn't work out, but a 30 year marriage to the perfect guy,and our 3 wonderful kids did..so maybe the prayers I said in that church with my friend Mary where heard and definately answered.

Yes yes and yes. From a family of many many children, I too, was the chosen priest. No longer a catholic, the only time I attend is when I am with my mother. (Incidentally, I did have THE CONVERSATION, where i explained that I could no longer be catholic. O how I wish you could write about that, but i would wish that conversation on no enemy of mine)

What is it about Catholicism that has such a grip on mothers? Why is it the glory of any mother to give her son to the church? Surely the identification with Mary in the giving of her son to God. Or for that matter, like Abraham in the literal sacrifice of his son.

Great article. Your articles seem Reminds me of my time in the Rabbinical College, becoming a rabbi.

As Ultra-Orthodox Jews it was my mother's and my father's dream that their six sons would be practicing rabbis.

Going to a Jewish school upstate New York, Rabbinical College in London, U.K and then ultimately receiving my diploma and certification in Pretoria, S.A was an exercise I went through entirely for my parents.

When I was thirteen, a rabbi of mine walked into our dormitory to find a group of friends and myself playing cards and drinking beer on the Sabbath. He considered the scene for nearly a minute, before turning and walking out of the room. We never heard of the incident from him, but we knew he was sad. That was punishment enough.

Never treated poorly or with abuse, I was always approached with respect and kindness. For me, the problem was not so much the ideas within Judaism, because from where I stand Judaism can instill a proper value system. I had no problem with a Higher Power, nor did I feel that Evolution had the authority to discredit a religion for its followers. I just had different interests.

This is not to say that I am no longer practicing. But instead of being the rabbi my father expected me to be, I am a liberal Democrat defense attorney. But, perhaps most surprising for me is that he seems just as proud of me as he is of my brothers.

Such a beautiful entry, Roger.

My own upbringing was almost completely secular. When I was in primary school, my mother arranged for me to attend scripture. She thought that it'd be a terrible thing for me to be completely unfamiliar with the faith of so many. I certainly didn't mind. Scripture was a jolly affair. The stories of the Bible were transformed by a sweet Salvation Army volunteer (with the delightful name of 'Miss Kazoo') into a series of coloring pages and sing-alongs and opportunities for winning candy by correctly answering simple questions ("Who was found in the reeds?" "Moses!"). Sure, I was pretty precocious, demanding to know why the snake was ever put in the garden, how Abraham ever got that old, why God kept making mistakes. But Miss Kazoo was a good sport. Now that I think about it, I don't think she ever mentioned hell or warned us not to sin. Maybe that was reserved for the giant kids in higher grades.

As I grew up, I became increasingly aware of my own atheism. There was nothing really deliberate about this process. Initially, I simply realized that I have no natural inclination towards faith, nor the will to cultivate one. It was only afterward that I became an evolutionist, realized that I had probably always been a humanist and acknowledged the many problems that the Church had, and has, with my sexual identity. Don't get me wrong. I still love Poulenc's 'Gloria', Bach's 'St. Mathew Passion', Mozart's 'Requiem' and so on. If Mozart's Lacrimosa doesn't move you to tears, I don't know what will.

A few years ago, a close friend invited me to join her for a Latin Easter Vigil in a small, sparsely decorated chapel. The smell of bitter herbs, the solemnity of the recitations, the fragile wavering of the flame as it was carried inside, the surprise of strangers shaking my hand and earnestly wishing me long life - I wasn't converted but I was grateful that she shared the experience with me. I learned that there is beauty, compelling passion, and a gripping sense of mysticism in a Latin service. It is profoundly moving.

More recently, I have engaged with some of the more acerbic literature on the modern role of the Church. Sometimes when I read through a hot-headed passage I wonder if I'm not passionate enough myself. I don't want to equivocate here. I'm quite often incensed by the Church and its position on, and influence over, a range of social issues. And yet, I can't help but feel that the gift of such experiences as that one exalting night in St. Francis has tempered my secularism in a good way. So many of the Christians I have met - and who are my friends- are smarter and more open-minded than the books give them credit for. And, like this article, my own experiences remind me that the Church can indeed be a place of beauty.

Thanks Robert for sharing :)

Mozart's Lacrimosa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsppsK4cRAE
Philip Larkin on visiting to a church: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm

Ebert: The Larkin is one of my favorites of his.

Reply to: I am of the opinion that anyone who thinks about this concept...really thinks about it...and is not immediately filled with the deepest revulsion against a God who would set up such an injust system is either a moral coward, a monster or not fully wrapping their mind around the idea. - Ivan

I read Roger's essay. Didn't read anything that would have required Roger to think.

Remember, yes. So nice to remember what happened to him as a boy.

But... thinK? Wrap your mind around an idea?

Reply to: Ebert: In school every morning, the first period was given over to Religion, and especially in seventh and eighth grade Sister Rosanne permitted free-wheeling discussions in which we debated degrees of sin and salvation and had heated theological discussions. She didn't pound dogma into us.

And it didn't dawn on you that a discussion about "salvation" was actually dogma being pounded into you?

Every time you enter a cathedral, you participate in a hoax designed to present you with phony evidence that Catholicism has logic at its core, and you're entitled to call yourself "intelligent" by taking part in the experience.

Walk away. How much of your life have you wasted by pondering these questions? The answers are so obvious.

I'm reminded of an exchange in "Star Trek: First Contact" where the Borg Queen offered to let Data experience new emotions:

Data: She brought me closer to humanity than I ever thought possible, and for a time...I was tempted by her offer.

Jean-Luc Picard: How long a time?

Data: Zero point six eight seconds, sir. For an android, that is nearly an eternity.

That's all the time that Catholicism deserves. Then, as Data did, reject the offer and walk away.

Or, as Captain Picard said,

Lily Sloane: Jean-Luc, blow up the damn ship!

Picard: NO! NOOOOOOOOO!!!
[smashes a display case in anger; Both pause, shocked]
I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, and no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!

Drawing a line, refusing to give up "our space" when invaded by a foreign enemy... makes Picard a racist, right? Depends on who defines the term "racist," I guess.

When he confronted the Borg Queen, did Captain Picard actually say "Lighten up." Not in the final version of the script.

Ebert: Thinking about such questions is one of the purposes of intelligence. I don't consider any of my life to have been wasted on them.

You're always great, Roger, yet here, you're classic.

Me too. An altar boy, must-be-priest, spent 2 weeks at Borromeo Seminary age 12 (after I returned, a crush I had on a girl had me easing my way discreetly out of the door to priesthood).

Local Boy Scout leader named Murphy was notorious for sneaking into boys' tents and molesting them. Years later a priest picked me up hitchhiking. It was Murphy.

@edgarhopper and I have been exchanging a little latin on Twitter. Tho' Ed's classy, quoting Horace.

I think the advantage knowing Latin had in this society, is bloody few people even know a second language. It makes them think far too rigidly. I hear these a-hole "Christian" radio squawkers squawking about immigration and sarcastically mispronouncing the few Spanish words they know. How sinful to know any other language but drawling pidgin-and-bible-parroting English.

I don't believe in the "supernatural," by the way. I think the human race has been descending into the sub-natural with great fanfare.

Almost forgot! Ready? (arms around each others' shoulders) A-one! A-two! A-three!

Tan-toom errrr-go Sac-rah-men-tuuum
Vay-nay remur cer-nu-eee!
Et antiquum do-cu-mentum
No-vo chay-dat reee-tu-eee!
Pray-stat fee-des sup-ploo-men-tum
Sen-suum day-ay--fec-too-eee!

Sniffle.

I've never looked it up, but I've always suspected this was originally a hymn to Saturn.

I also remember:

Adeste Fideles, govum govum gaa-vum,
But that was from a D.H. Lawrence story.

This is so beautiful and poignant, it almost makes me wish I had been raised in the Catholic Church! Instead, I was raised by a lapsed Methodist father and lapsed Baptist mother. I love what Fr. Richard Rene says in the comment above about faith. That was my experience as I searched for God through my teen years and as a young wife and mother. A search that took me to many churches and explored many faiths. What I found eventually was not just religion (although I am a member of specific denomination), but I found HIM. And His presence is as real and palpable to me as any 'real' person. Have all of my questions been answered? No...but enough have been, and I have faith that the rest will be answered in His time. The answers I have found have led to knowing God a way that is as intimate as the Hebrew word 'know' intends to describe. And relax, I'll spare you my ramblings on the Biblical symbolism of sex and our relationship with God.

Thank you, Roger, for a beautiful and thought-provoking commentary.

Yes, how easily the mundane talks us out of the divine. As your story attests, the demands of faith, of “the assurance of things hoped for and conviction about things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), are many. One of the most significant of such demands should rest well with all who pursue intellect - the requirement of forming your conscious, continually, over time. This involves seeking the things that will aid you in your journey to know God (for you cannot love what you don't know), and therefore yourself.
As any newspaper or street corner will remind us-- our human condition is fallible. Fortunately, this means that as much as we would like to believe that we can, we cannot reason and logic our way through all that we will confront in life. The limits of our finite minds and corruptible bodies can not comprehend, or trump, the infinite.
As someone so in-tuned with art, Roger, you have, through your childhood and currently, an appreciation of one of the truest mediums with which we humans reflect our sacred nature, and thus echo the mystery of the ultimate Creator. Your story, and even the replies you've given to the comments it inspired, resounds a timeless Truth: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

Hi Roger,

Wow--it was amazing reading your article and reflecting on a crisis of faith I had about two years ago (I'm a Christian, the kind that saw "Fireproof" out of social obligation).

I felt many of the same things you describe, and am certainly not the same kind of Christian I was, but I remember the call to self-identity... I knew that unless something changed, I'd spend the rest of my life shadowboxing with my own conscience. I had a big imagination, and therefore a big conscience. It was an interesting year. When it was over, I was still a main of faith, and that's too long a story to post in a blog comment.

It's stinks how religion, at its worst, seems designed to kill faith. I've been extremely fortunate in my church experiences, as you were. You wrote with sensitivity and affection toward the church moved me deeply. Have a great day!

I wouldn't worry about your dad--
Like teen girls going all gooey over "Twilight", Catholicism has a wide-eyed appeal for the young who are at the age of just being wooed by the idea of Serious Morality being more (or as) important than Baseball--But has too many theological caveats to its gold-plated Gothic trappings and cool syllabic Latin.
(Not the least of which being its preoccupation with Dante--or its condescending downstaging of Jesus to depict Him at only two moments in his life, neither one talking--but also the belief that you're not personally qualified enough to handle your beliefs, and that God would rather have you direct your questions through licensed service representatives.)

The article brought up the old quip by Christopher Durang: "I used to be in Catholic school as a kid...At least, I don't know any adult Catholics." :)
Which is one of the perils: With Catholicism teaching that there are no other "competing brands", dissatisfied grumblers who find fault with some of the teachings convince themselves they've found fault with All Religion--without even a hint that Martin Luther might've brought a few of the same grumbles up five hundred years before--and go out on the new thrill that they must be One of Those Dangerous Bad-Boy Atheists, for kicks. Heaven help us, we don't need another Bill Maher braying the wrong half the story because he had mixed parents or hated Catholic school.

Very moving, Roger. It's interesting our different takes on Latin. I'm about as religious as this keyboard, but took Latin for years and loved it. It always struck me as the perfect language for engineers and practical people, because it's so darned logical. I've never associated it with religion, more with Julius Caesar and Vitruvius. It's no wonder they conquered the known world, they had a language for eminently clear thinking.

And yet for so many people it's associated with blind faith (the only kind there is). Shows what I know...

Reading this only makes me even happier that your autobiography is in the works Rog (if the news report I read is correct).
I obviously love this story very much. You would be surprised how much more of a deeper preparation you received in your youth than I ever did but of course, I was raised post-Vatican II. Besides I’ve notices the existence of an invisible barrier with the clergy down here, priests don’t visit your home, they don’t know most of the names of the members of their parrish. Perhaps due to the anti-clerical violence and laws, in the early 20th. Century.
I hope I haven’t given you the impression of being religious nut. I guess a normal fear for any Christian is identifying himself with St. Peter by shutting up when the topic of Christ comes up.
I've often asked myself many of the questions you did but have only concluded mine and every human mind are too limited to completely make sense of things, perhaps for a reason. Darwinism doesn't really explain anything new me, yes, it's an obvious force of change but how can a force itself exist without a higher power to have put it in motion in the first place. Evolution to me even shows signs of a creative intelligence that only the existence a higher being can explain. At any rate, every man should have his own beliefs but I think your friend Gene nailed it when he suggested one shouldn’t think about these things too much.
Is the church too severe when it comes to sexual matters? That might be up for discussion but Jesus was very clear about a right and a wrong in this subject, besides, when wrongfully handled by man, sexuality can lead to terrible consequences. Let’s face it, sin exists everywhere and being severe about it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be exempt from it. What does bother me greatly about the media is how they’ve pointed a magnifying glass on the Catholic church, happily omitting every other religion, giving the impression abuse is a Catholic problem. If the following Newsweek article (not precisely L’Osservatore Romano) is accurate in the sense that the National Center for Risk Management & the National Center for Exploited Children are both right in regard to the fact that these incidents occur proportionally in every religion, I would welcome any explanation on why the media focuses on the Catholic church the way it does.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/07/mean-men.html

In any case I think your Mom was right, you would have made one great priest, maybe she would be a bit surprised about the way things eventually turned out but I have no doubt she would have been very proud anyway. I hope an essay about her, similar to the one about your father, will see the light very soon.

This piece reminds me of my pilgrimage to mecca or Hajj. This memory may add nothing to your piece but I'd like to share it with you anyway, as it is also a vivid religous memory.

I remember one day I was on a bus. I must have been eight or nine years old. The bus was heading to the front of the mosque. My brothers beat me to the empty seats next to my mother and father, and so I looked elsewhere. Finally, I sat next to an American. He had a long blond beard and was reading an English translation of the Qur'an.

He read a verse out loud, closed the book, and repeated the verse in "old" Arabic. I don't remember how the conversation started, but I do remember me feet didn't reach the floor and me playfully swinging them. I remember asking him something in Arabic and him replying in English. "I don't speak Arabic" he said and smiled.

I grew up thinking he was lying because I heard him chanting a verse in Arabic in a beautiful singing voice. The Latin bit of your piece reminds me of the reason why he said it in Arabic. There's a beautiful ring to religion in its original context.

Anyway, I was eager to see the Kaaba and walking around it seven times. "It will remove all your sins.", the grown-ups kept telling me. For that, I was excited.

In the weeks prior to that visit, Omar (my twin) and I cornered the Disney video cassettes. As they collected dust, we paid attention to the more mature videos we had. "JAWS" was one, but more importantly "The Terminator" was another. The latter exposed us to Linda Hamilton's breasts. We stared, laughed, watched again, and had no worries. After all, we were heading to the Kaaba in a few weeks and our sins would vanish.

Anyway, my father held my hand and walked into the mosque. I remember that part very vividly. Everything was white and brightly lighted. My father recently told me as a child I twice asked him if I was in heaven. This was one time, the other time was during the "It's a Small World" ride in Disneyland.

I remember looking up at this huge black cube in the midst of whiteness. I haven't seen a single picture that gives its real life presence any justice.

As we moved closer to join the body of a moving crowd. My father leaned down, pointed to the sky and said "look at the birds". I never saw anything like it. Hundreds of birds were flying over the Kaaba. They weren't just flying over them, like the walking crowd, they flew in a counter-clockwise direction without passing across.

I read a lot about this but still can't find a scientific explanation to the behavior of those birds above the Kaaba.

Some say it's because of the seeds on the grounds, but then why are people still astonished by the fact that they don't land on the ground and feed on it like the pigeons in London. Instead they fly in circles.

Anyway, I hope I didn't wast your time, Roger. I just wanted to share this with you.

S M Rana wrote: "Does the theory of evolution have caring for others as a corollary?"
_______________

Actually, it does. Mankind is a social animal, and we are most comfortable in small tribal units of a few dozen people, similar to those which would have existed on the African savannah eons ago. This is why we have trouble socially identifying with much larger groups than this, except in an abstract sense. You can say something proud like "I identify with all Americans", but it's really not the same as the way you feel about a small close-knit group.

Now, given this fact, we also know that members of tribal units had to take care of each other. A tribe in which members protected each other would have a much greater chance of survival and prosperity than one in which it was "every man for himself".

Tribes which practiced group survival techniques survived, while tribes which practiced only individual survival techniques perished. As a result, due to natural selection, we actually EVOLVED group survival techniques. They are a part of our very nature, and they do NOT contradict the theory of evolution. They only contradict an extremely simplistic interpretation of it.

In fact, most of the universal moral values in human society (ie- those which are found in virtually every society) can be traced back to our tribal origins. If you look at the common values, they all enhanced the likelihood that a small close-knit tribal group would survive and prosper.

Many of the moral dilemmas we have today are due to the fact that we no longer exist as small close-knit tribal groups in subsistence conditions, and we are making the uncomfortable transition to large organized high-tech societies of millions of people and vast collective resources.

In short, evolution does NOT tell us that we should be brutish selfish people. It does, however, explain why so many of our attitudes are so stubbornly tribalistic.

The last time I went home, I had lunch with my grandmother, one of the last times I saw her alive. She proudly introduced me around to the other residents of her assisted living facility, where the visit of a grandchild for more than a few minutes was a Big Deal. And then, as we sat there talking, my grandmother asked the question--"Are you still Catholic?"

Now, I loved my grandmother a great deal. And she was an Irish Catholic woman older than then-Pope John Paul II. So "No, Grandma, I'm a Pagan priestess" was the wrong answer. I said, "Well . . . I believe in the teachings of Jesus. I think Jesus was a really cool guy. But I can't agree with the Pope and so I can't consider myself Catholic."

To which my grandmother responded, "Well, he's old." And so you see why I loved my grandmother.

My own childhood relationship with the Church was a complicated one. In third grade, I wanted to be a nun. I went to Sunday school faithfully, making friends there I remember with fondness even now, nearly twenty years after I last saw most of them. On the other hand, there was my persistent belief that the Church wasn't treating people right. Oh, not the molestation thing as all the tedious jokes suggest--I was an altar server for several years, and I can't imagine any of the priests who went through our parish molesting anyone. (Though I did take Communion from Archbishop Mahoney once.) No, there was the message board up in the patio during "Right to Life Month" showing those aborted fetuses--as a pro-choicer, I have no excuse for not thinking of them, but I didn't think the very young children the Church was so protective of in other ways needed to see that.

My mother still thinks I'm Catholic, it turns out. I have not yet disabused her of that notion; once my sisters and I lost the faith, dealing with Mom became, in some ways, very difficult indeed. She let me skip Confirmation classes, and I think my older sister did as well, because there were so many other things in our schedules. But she made my older sister go to Confession the day she found out her house had been broken into and many of her things stolen. (She told the priest she was too upset to think of confessing to anything, and he suggested she just sit quietly for a minute and pretend to Mom that things had gone the way they normally did.) The last time I was home, she made me go to Midnight Mass despite the severe back spasms I was having. It's not a conversation I feel the need to have just now; it's not a conversation I feel my mother can have reasonably.

But ah, yes, Latin. I've never taken it, but as an etymology buff, I've picked up a fair amount. And, oh, the music. It is our greatest lack, we Pagans. Catholics have Gregorian chant and "Ave Maria." We have the interminable "We all come from the Goddess" chant. It's not the same, somehow.

Ebert: So you believe in...paganism? That seems somehow...well, never mind. As the Irish say, "Good on ya."

Have you ever read the short stories of J. F. Powers? He was quite a brilliant writer and his subject was almost solely the lives of Chicago priests. Always rendered affectionately, never disparagingly. Your post reminded me of something he might've written.
http://tinyurl.com/2br7p39

Ebert: A fine writer.

When I was an altar boy, it was $5 for a wedding... for funerals, zilch.

Despite a rigid Catholic upbringing, I, too, was never abused by a priest. The coolest person I knew in my youth was a hip young priest who looked like Paul Michael Glaser in Starsky & Hutch. He had a beautiful Irish Setter, and I'd go to the rectory almost every day in the summer to play with his dog. I found out later he left the priesthood to get married.

In elementary school, maybe grade five, one of the nuns pulled out a yardstick and, wielding it light a lightsaber, smashed my fingers for throwing pebbles in a puddle on a rainy day during recess. A simple "stop that" would have sufficed. I blame it on the unfortunate circumstance of celibacy. Had she her own children, she certainly would not have abused her charges as she regularly did.

Hi Roger-

I really enjoy your posts, regardless of the fact that we differ in a great many of our basic beliefs. I think it's pretty common for young adults to drift from the religion of their parents. Maybe a young person realizes that they never really made any choices regarding their belief structure and that some or all of the religion they have been so "committed" to now seems quite foolish.

My sister and I went through similar processes with different results. She has rejected our former beliefs and replaced them with some form of secular humanism (I think). I meanwhile have spent a lot of time and energy on the various issues of religion and modified my views on each. An amalgamation of various authors and a humorous world view marinated in various translations of the New Testament have left me with the basics of Christianity, removed from everything that is not immediately relevant. Created or evolved? Doesn't matter.

Growing up is an odd process, isn't it?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use."

Galileo

I was lucky enough to be born right around Vatican II. My Catholic experience, while recognizable from your description was quite different.

Cultural Catholics--all of those in our family kept attending Catholic schools long after my parents and my siblings stopped regular attendance at mass. Near the end of my years at a Jesuit high school, one of the priests pulled me aside and asked me if I had ever considered entering the seminary. I respected this guy, so I didn't immediately scoff at his suggestion, but I said that I hadn't been to going to mass for a few years and despite 12 years of Catholic school, I never once felt anything that felt like faith. This didn't dissuade him. "The Jesuits are looking for smart people; the faith will come later." I was flattered, but still declined.

Ebert: Give us the infidel. We will give you back the Jesuit.

Our stories sound similar, though mine continues when I realized the 'shame' of being gay. I not only lost my faith, but grew contempt for people with it, who seem to make it their job to make me miserable. Though I've never told my parents about my sexuality, they know. It's not something we talk about. They say they support me, but I don't see how that's possible when they've openly expressed dislike of gay marriage for 'moral' reasons, and their continued participation in and defense of an institution that finds it fitting to cover up abuse scandals.

I find that over the years, I'm becoming just as intolerant of people of faith, as many of them are of me. It's not a trait I'm proud of.

Reply to: Ebert: Thinking about such questions is one of the purposes of intelligence. I don't consider any of my life to have been wasted on them.

My point was, you don't seem to have come up with an answer. Didn't see the answer in your entry. Maybe you want to leave room for discussion before you weigh in.

Let me show you what the hoax looks like. If I find enough examples, maybe you'll be able to recognize a "hoax."

Reply to: as much as we would like to believe that we can, we cannot reason and logic our way through all that we will confront in life. The limits of our finite minds and corruptible bodies can not comprehend, or trump, the infinite.-Audreya

When someone says "corruptible bodies," that's a red flag for "hoax."

I was watching "Criminal Minds" last night, and the case involved teenagers who had been lured into a cult with a leader who wanted to start a race war.

Hotch said, "Members of the cult will appear to speak in their own language. They will use phrases that only other members of the cult will understand. That's one way the leader controls the group, by creating a barrier between children and their parents."

Reply to: the priest approached me once and... asking me to reconsider. It was creepy, and I was distressed for some weeks wondering what the heck had the priest seen in me to consider I would be interested in becoming a priest and accepting a celibate life - Miguel

The OT verse was "Be fruitful and mutiply."

How in the world do you rationalize the rule that a life serving God invoves celibacy?

Hoax. Scam. A cult leader raises artificial barriers that separate victims from their parents, relatives and family group, so the cult becomes their "new family."

The Catholic Church is so wealthy, with so many members, all they ask is an occasional journal entry with a photo of someone as an altar boy. The illusion of credibility is all they ask. Maintain the illusion. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Spending years wondering about simple questions doesn't make you intelligent. Discovering that the Correct Answer is the one they spend a lot of time trying to discredit... well, the sign of true intelligence is just being able to answer the question. With an answer, not another question.

Miguel, the priest wasn't basing his request on anything he observed about you. You simply fit the demographic. Priests have to recruit, and find original and creative ways to recruit, or they don't have a purpose. As you said, a used car salesman uses the same tactics. Doesn't matter if the car runs or not. A used car salesman only gets a commission if he makes a sale. A priest has a sense of self-importance that requires him to convince other people that he belongs to a worthwhile organization.

Ebert: Atheism is your fundamentalist religion.

Roger --

This has nothing to do with this post, and I hope you'll forgive that. I just read your review of "The Wild Hunt" and was disappointed by your renewed attack on people who enjoy video games as a form of art.

I don't understand why you see a guy laying still for several days or getting shot as a work of art, but not video games. I mean that, I honestly don't; but I suppose it's because, in my mind, it's possible to reduce the content of what you described in a post here to the level of "a guy laying still for several days" whereas in your mind it says something more. Presumably you encounter a similar reduction in evaluating video games, though I'm sure you would argue otherwise.

I stayed away from the video-game debate when it happened. I didn't want to watch. I've been reading your movie reviews for several years now, and I enjoy them; I've been playing video games on occasion for longer than that, and I enjoy those, too. I think you're wrong about video games, but I also think it doesn't matter. I had no desire to watch you collide with people who enjoy video games as a modern art form, who make a living from video games. I didn't want to see you blindly tearing down their world and I didn't want to see them blindly condemning you as an irrelevant and possibly senile outsider. Nobody's mind was going to be changed, and nobody was willing to concede anything to the other position, and everybody would soon be angry and belligerent.

So it was.

So it still is, apparently! I'm sorry you got 4,000 comments on your blog. Apparently a lot of people see artistic expression in video games? I'm sorry that so many of them were, presumably, indefensibly rude to you. That probably sounds sarcastic, but I mean it. I wish it hadn't played out that way. People are stupid, movie critics and video-game fans alike, and easily roused when they feel threatened.

I could say that many geeks, of the video-game variety and others, are pretty normal people with unusual interests. I could argue that these interests provide a creative outlet for people who provide many useful things for society. I could argue that it doesn't sound like the movie provides anywhere near the best possible sample of LARPers, even granting that LARP is pretty well out on the fringe even by geek standards. I could argue that the video-game people and the LARPers are, by and large, entirely separate populations. I feel like these would all be potentially useful starting points, if only you were willing to listen. But I have the uneasy and deeply disappointing feeling that you'll ignore any remarks I make that don't agree with your espoused view that Video Games Are Dumb And People Who Play Them Are Dumber.

I wish I could tell you how sad it makes me that an obviously intelligent, creative, and exploration-minded person like you won't even give the time of day to an interesting subset of the population you seem to have decided you don't like on the basis of their interests. Really I do. But I don't think it will register, so I'll just say: Please, please. Don't go on twisting your reviews to bitch about your poor experiences with these people. Of course you have no reason to indulge me on this, of course you can mark this Comment #4001 "insisting that you must not have an opinion" and go on your merry way -- and, honestly, that's basically what I expect at this point -- but it twists my stomach every time I see the man who explored London so thoroughly and documented it for the rest of us making badly-informed, inaccurate, and really quite personal attacks against a population I associate with those kinds of activities.

I'm perfectly happy for you to enjoy your art and for them to enjoy theirs. I don't care if you ever agree with each other about the God. Damned. Video games. I just want the inane, deeply-flawed back-and-forth to quit. You're all wearing earplugs and shouting angrily and it's painful to watch.

(PS. I haven't seen the movie, and can't get even a basic feel for the characters from your review, but it sounds like maybe Erik should get off his duff and do something interesting with his girlfriend instead of trying to "talk sense to her"?)

PPS. Because I imagine this comment will read as a thinly-disguised attempt by a video-game nerd to come across as a closer-to-neutral third party, I'll nail my social context down for you: I'm a PhD student in computer science, which puts me in pretty direct contact with nerds of all varieties, but I'm one of the quieter ones -- I play classical violin as an outlet. I play video games, but not that often. I have friends, talented and skilled professionals, in the much-maligned "antisocial and unwashed" Dungeons & Dragons crowd. Friends of friends are occasional LARPers.

Ebert: Say what? That review specifically sidesteps renewing my dissent on video games.

The memories of forth grade altar boy classes are rushing past; memorizing sheets of Latin without a real clue as to their meaning. There is something about the cadence and rhythm of Latin as it rolls off the tongue. We always worked in pairs, and it was often a contest to see how rapidly we could zip through the prayers, particularly at the dreaded 6am mass, where speed mattered.

We faced the altar, with our backs to the attending faithful. Once, during the Confiteor, we were both deeply bowed when I looked over at my partner. He had lost his balance and tipped forward so that his head was resting on the step in front of us. Not once did he stop praying, even when I reached over and tipped him back upright.

There was a mystical element to the duties of altar boys. It felt that we were junior members of a club privy to some, but not all the secrets. We got to hang around the sacristy, and talk out loud during practices when the church seemed to be less church and more building. While I am no longer a practicing Catholic, I recall the altar boy days each time I attend a Catholic wedding, or a celebratory mass to remember my father's passing.

And I do so with a fondness for a time that no longer exists.

Hello again, and good afternoon, Mr. Ebert:

I forgot to mention another reason for my disaffection with the Greek Orthodox Church. As a pre-teenager I served as an altar boy at the Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Father [deleted] was the priest at the time. I intensely disliked the experience because of the frequent nightly practice sessions, my condescending fellow altar boys, and most of all, the priest's humorless, dictatorial attitude. When one screwed up, he made that person feel like a fool. I remember one time when, after standing before the altar across from another altar boy with our lanterns, I signaled for both of us to go back inside the altar. I signaled too soon. Father [deleted] chewed me out. After one semester of that religious humiliation, I informed Father [deleted] that I was no longer interested in serving as an altar boy. "Why?" he responded in his heavily Greek-accented English, "Don't you like serrving Gaaad?" If I ever have the misfortune of seeing this wretched man again, I will remind him of that episode and say, "No, Father, I did not like serving YOU!"

By the way, as you are probably aware, "despot" is a synonym for "tyrant". In Greek, the word "despotee" means "archbishop". Interesting, is it not?

Brought up in a fairly fundamentalist evangelical church by fervently believing parents, my faith took a slightly different arc. I too began questioning everything at a similar age, but instead of dropping my faith altogether, it became heavily modified.

Still a Christian, I've shed most of the more, shall we say, rigid of my parents' beliefs. I attend a "liberal" Episcopal church, though what most attracted me to it wasn't its social message (though that fits my beliefs well), but the high church-style worship. I had been brought up with the worst of all Christian music traditions--bland modern evangelical "chorus" music, which lacks the mystery and majesty of liturgical Catholic/Episcopal worship on one end of the spectrum, and the thumping, joyful traditional hymns and gospel songs on the other. Turns out my objections to my religious upbringing were partly theological, but mostly aesthetic.

I'm rather sorry to read here that some seem to have missed your point: you were sharing your fond early memories of Catholicism and your own personal journey away from it (theologically, not socially). You weren't advocating the wholesale rejection of religion. Yet some respondents here have missed the point and taken it upon themselves to make lazy, simplistic comments regarding the religious. The only people as obnoxious as strident fundamentalists are arrogant atheists. They share in common the delusion that they have learned all there is to know. Belief and non-belief are fine, as long as we keep open minds and respect each other.

Ebert: Tolerance. A belief system that doesn't teach that teaches nothing.

Well, now I have to make room on my list of Roger Ebert's Top Twenty journal entries. Something in this post makes me want to tell my own story, so I guess I will, though it was not what I had planned for today.

I'm not Catholic, though I'm red-haired and originally from the Boston area (Malden, actually, like Mr. Panagapolous above), so I could pass for Irish. I'm actually half-Armenian -- according to some, "the least Armenian-looking person in the world," though in fact my father's family were mostly quite light-skinned. I was christened in the Armenian Apostolic church, which is much like the Greek Orthodox: ornate decorations, heavy vestments, a service in a language I can't understand. My godfather Oscar was holding me for the christening when suddenly I began peeing: not an unobtrusive leak but a golden, arcing stream that hit the back of poor Father Hagopian's robes with a sound "like rain hitting a tarp," according to my mother, and went on for an absurdly long time, while my godfather hung on to me as if I were a firehose that had unexpectedly erupted. Father Hagopian, being in the midst of the service, reacted with perfect stoicism, which is to say not at all.

I learned later what a lovely man he was (still is, I think), and with what a puckish sense of humor. My mother and great-aunt went to a church bazaar to buy some ingredients for holiday cooking, and seeing him, my great aunt said, "Father Hagopian! I haven't seen you for so long!" With a perfectly timed shrug, and in a voice ringing with the incredulity of a Borscht belt comedian, he replied, "Come to church -- you'll see me." I should note that as long as they don't want to move up the church hierarchy, Armenian priests can marry, and Father Hagopian was apparently not professionally ambitious.

Except for weddings and funerals, my exposure to religion as a child was minimal. Yet I was curious. When I was six or maybe seven, I saw that a neighborhood church around the corner from my grandparents' house was offering a summer bible school, or vacation camp. I asked to attend, and my mother enrolled me. A week later, the people running the school told my mother I could finish out the next week, but that I would not be welcome back in the future.

My crime, of course, was asking too many questions. To this day, I remember quite clearly what led to the informal ringing of the bell, closing of the book, and snuffing of the candle on my religious life. I was told to color a picture. On the left side, it showed a wealthy man dumping a sack of gold in the church coffers. On the right, an ancient and bent woman with a stick as gnarled as herself reached forward with her right hand -- one I imagine shaking with palsy -- to offer a single coin. The lesson, the teacher informed us, was that the rich man's gift was meaningless because he was not sacrificing anything; he had plenty more gold where that came from. But God loved the old woman for giving all she had.

My hand went up, and doubtless the teacher later regretted calling upon me, because I spilled a whole paragraph of questions onto her lap. "But I don't understand. How much of his gold would the rich man have to give? If he gives it all, wouldn't he be just as poor as the old woman, and wouldn't the church have to then take care of him? And if all the old woman has is one coin, shouldn't she keep it or buy food with it or something? If the church has all the gold from the rich man, does it really need her last coin? And now that she has no money, won't the church have to just spend that money to feed her anyway? And wouldn't the rich man's gold allow them to feel all the poor people like the old woman who have nothing?" I asked all of those questions, though I can't be sure I remember the order correctly.

Oh, they were not happy with me. They told me just to color the picture and be quiet. I told my mother later that day what happened. I was confused, and unsure whether I should be apologetic. She just smiled and said that some people don't like questions but that I should always feel free to ask them. I asked her what she believed. She said she didn't want to tell me that, but she would happily get me any books I wanted. I started reading the bible in two different translations. As time went on I read the Qur'an, parts of the Bhavagad Gita and Upanishads, books on Buddhism and Taoism, philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas -- all before I was a teenager. Later I read Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Teilhard de Chardin, Simone Weil, Julian(a) of Norwich, and many others. I became fascinated by mysticism of various stripes, for reasons too complex to go into here. Professionally I became a Romanticist and immersed myself in the pantheism of Shelley, Emerson, and Whitman.

What did I seek? I felt no real hunger to believe in any one system of thought. Although (or perhaps because of being) sickly as a child, I was not particularly afraid of death. I was an agnostic, an eclectic. I could even be called an atheist, if by that one means someone who doesn't believe in an entity or entities one can address or petition by name.

Yet I was unwilling to dismiss it all as hooey, and to this day I have little patience with what I call fundamentalist atheists (Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens especially), for the same reason I dislike fundamentalists of any stripe: their incuriosity, their intellectual complacency, their condescension. The very first comment in this thread is typical of that attitude. People who believe that there is something -- anything -- more than we can see are "children" and "afraid" and suffering from "self-delusion."

Well, I have had a few experiences in my life that simply cannot be explained by a strictly materialist view of the universe. They haven't been frequent, but they have been real, at least as real as any other experience in my life. Meanwhile, it's demonstrably true that the sense of the material universe that we derive from our senses is false. On a molecular level, let alone a sub-atomic one, the universe is a very different place from the one that our senses perceive and our brains process.

I, too, reject any claims of an anthropomorphic (whether physically or psychologically) deity. An Italian paints God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and He ends up looking like an older Italian man with really good abs (apparently God owns a Bowflex). What are the odds? Men are in charge of the sky-god religions, and all imagine God as male. Again, what are the odds, and what does that even mean? God has a Y-chromosome? A penis? More body hair? He makes more noise when he belches? People who go looking for God usually end up staring in a kind of fun-house mirror. They see a distorted vision of themselves.

Yet those who insist with absolute certainty that there is nothing out there seem to me to suffer from either a lack of imagination, in the broadest sense of the term, or a desperate desire to avoid a sense of wonder. Wonder makes us feel small. Moments of wonder make the rest of our lives seem mundane in comparison.

Religions are ultimately structures built by human beings, usually men, and those structures are deeply flawed. They consist of doctrine, which is a virtually naked expression of power, a way to control people' behavior for better or worse. But that function is more rationally served by philosophy. They have cosmology, a way of explaining the nature of the universe. But that function is something science does much better, at least until one gets to ultimate questions such as "why did the Big Bang happen, and what was there before it?" They have, in some cases, cultural history. But given that the protocols for writing history had not yet been established when the major religions (other than Mormonism) developed, that history is hardly reliable.

But somewhere in each religion's core, one finds an attempt to make sense of authentic spiritual or mystical experience. That sense of spirituality or the mystical is not something that could have even been created out of whole cloth. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, defines it as experience that is transient, passive, ineffable, and has a noetic quality ("noetic" being related to perception). In other words, the experience passes quickly, we can't do anything else during it, we can't express it in words, but we perceive things that we can't in normal experience.

After all the reading I've done in different religious traditions, I'm left with something the Neo-Platonist Dionysius the Areopagite wrote. I'm paraphrasing a translation, but his argument was effectively that one could not say "God exists" because both the word "God" and the word "exists" were inadequate to what they were meant to to represent. In effect, he was arguing that the divine is not reducible to language, and so the only justifiable response to the divine is silent contemplation. Think of how much harm could be avoided if everyone followed that advice.

Ebert: I come to these comments, and am in awe.

a religion with nothing to fear or hide should welcome questions.

You have reminded me that reading Walt Whitman often feels like a form of prayer.

The older I get, the more I come to suspect that losing one's faith has little to do with one's intelligence; or even with one's experience. I think it simply boils down to personality traits that we are probably born with.

Although raised Protestant (and I suspect you're right about Protestants suffering from sensory deprivation in comparison with Catholics) my experience mirrored yours in one important way. I never had a crisis of faith, or a sudden revelation. Faith, like childhood, was something I didn't notice leaving; I simply looked back one day and realized, in retrospect as it were, that it had gone. I was about 16.

Mind you, signs were there much much earlier. When I was five, my parents were sternly informed that I would not be welcomed back to our church's Sunday School classes. I wish I had a story about asking tough questions of the teacher, but I honestly don't remember. The truth is, it was probably mere rambunctiousness that got me thrown out. In the first grade, I did ask a teacher how Man could have been created the day after animals, if dinosaurs had died out millions of years before we showed up. Even then, I could sense a qualitative difference between the authority of science and the authority of religion, although it would be quite some time before it would occur to me to choose one over the other. My first grade self was satisfied with the teacher's answer that 'days' weren't necessarily literal days.

I was very lucky to have a compassionate and open-minded high school principal at the private Christian school I attended. The closest thing I have to a transformational story of losing faith happened in the twelfth grade, when everybody was applying for colleges. The principal, Al Boerma, called me to his office (an inherently intimidating venue) to discuss my plans for the future. In particular, he was concerned about my intention to attend a secular university instead of the Christian academy most of my classmates were being steered towards. He told me that he was concerned that going to a secular university would turn me into a Marxist and an atheist.

It was a moment of truth. I'd never told anybody before that I no longer believed, but I told Mr. Boerma. He listened, and then with great concern, asked me how I'd come to fall from my faith; and in the flash of annoyance I felt at his use of the word 'fall', the perfect answer came to me.

"Luck?"

He laughed, and no more was said on the matter.

I hate hypocrisy. And it was hypocrisy that drove a wedge between myself and the Vatican which no amount of good press can remove. An ironic fact, as it was hammered deep by the very God they preach but rarely emulate.

Do unto others. That's what did it. The best part of the teachings of Christ. Be a nice person. And you can't do that if you're drawing lines and making distinctions and more concerned with protecting an institution which at its birth, started off on a bad footing; ie: a religion which favored men. A religion of a time and place. Of customs and culture. All of it embedded and why it often fights tooth and nail against change.

I love Cathedrals and stained glass. I like the smell of yellow beeswax. I like how those places often feel and the view from the top where the gargoyles perch. Notre Dame, Chartes, too many to list. But they're like spiritual repositories for all the hopes, dreams and prayers of those who'd silently bared their souls inside them and to forces felt but unseen.

And then there's management.

And the wedge.

I've met some wonderful priests and nuns while in school - but they were actually following the teachings of Christ in spirit aka: be a nice person. Don't lie, cheat, be selfish or unkind. All that good stuff. They weren't hammering you with the dogma. If anything, they taught me to think in terms of "what would Jesus do?" And where all the trouble started.

Jesus was a Feminist. :)

The Vatican is not.

The turning point for me, arrived when I was 12 years old. By then, I'd seen so many examples of self-serving Faith that I'd all but lost mine to it. And then something wonderful happened.

I took a leap of faith. And what I lept from was the Vatican. I took spiritual breath and then went BUNGEEE..!

Into the unseen forces. Into the good I could see it people. Into beacons of truth and all that lifts and elevates and for believing that God is in the light. My artistic sensibilities saved me, in other words.

As for evil, I reasoned it thus:

I know up because of down. Down is the measuring stick of up. White needs black. Sun needs rain. Full cookie jar needs empty cookie jar, and all that. Otherwise you can't experience joy; how would you be able to tell you were feeling it? I mean, you gotta compare it to something, eh?

And so evil serves a purpose.

The trick is not to let it seduce you, in the process of doing its job. There's nothing to be learned at the bottom of the pit save for "here lies the foolishness of lost souls." Even as a child, I could see that much. Or rather, I could sense it. It's a black hole or void. A vacuum. And it draws you in with lies you tell yourself. It's clever like that.

I think empathy and compassion, but in measured amounts - as a bit of self-preservation is required too, is how to best make your journey. To live in the world with both good and evil but not making more evil than is required.

I think to think otherwise is where most religions go wrong. It's certainly the case with the Vatican. Control vs teaching "live and let live."

I attended private Catholic schools from kindergarden to high-school graduation. 18 years inside Catholic institutions. And where I learned I could never be a priest. Or the Pope. For while all men are created equal in the eyes of God, it doesn't extend to women when it comes to religion.

And therein lies the wedge.

Roger of course, is not a girl. And so his experience was different. But however you arrive at the crossroads of faith, it seems to me that "reasoning" is ultimately what makes you take this way as opposed to that. So too, what you reason with. Thoughts or feelings or a combination thereof.

I don't need to be the Pope, but I sure as Hell wanted the option. Otherwise, my faith as a Catholic would be based on the belief that men know better than women. And I don't think either gender does, but rather, that knowledge is derived from the truth of one's experiences shared.

I've digressed a great deal, I see; chuckle! But it's hard not to. Blog postings about Catholicism tends to bring out the dissident-minded 12 year old in me.

Smile.

Ebert: Speaking of God, I'm sure she would agree with you.

Roger,
I think your mother got her wish, you are a priest of film, leading your readers to a deeper understanding of cinema. You do your calling proud.

I was raised in the Catholic Church and went to Catholic high school and college. I have to say that I think the ballsiest the Catholic Church ever did/does is teach honest theology. They run the risk that people (like myself) with a fair dose of skepticism and common sense will say, "Wait a minute... none of this makes any sense." And yet, they're willing to educate, to teach honestly, and to accept the consequences. Certainly this doesn't apply to all of the Catholic Church, but the parts of it I've been exposed to have always impressed me for this reason.

Ebert: To be sure, one must believe in God. But Aquinas and his heirs tried to reason out everything else.

"I remained a cultural Catholic, which I interpret as believing in the Social Contract and the Corporal Works of Mercy. I ... don't believe ... that it is easy to subscribe to the teachings of the church and not consider yourself a liberal. "

I agree wholeheartedly with you, that it is not easy to do; but it is very doable when you accept the separation of church and state. The US was never a Catholic country, though it has always been a deeply religious one, which is one of the reasons the Europeans look at us as if we're crazy. But charity in the US dwarfs anything given by any other nations of the world (and typically all of them combined).

When there is an earthquake, a flood, a tsunami, we are the ones on the scene helping "brown people", as the term is so casually tossed around.

The reason I cannot be a liberal is that the liberal vision is one that is imposed on non-believers for the purpose of taking what they've earned to use for liberal purposes (see Obama's new BP slush fund czar).

As Thomas Sowell has written: The liberal "vision so permeates the media and academia, and has made such major inroads into the religious community, that many grow into adulthood unaware that there is any other way of looking at things, or that evidence might be relevant to checking out the sweeping assumptions of so-called "thinking people".

It makes it hard to see clearly when you have blinders on.

I do believe that there is a huge place for social works, but it needs to be done through private means, the charity of individuals, not the enforceable exaction of taxation.

P.S. In your review of Toy Story 3 you mentioned that you suspect Ken is gay. They point it out very clearly in the film. . . Ken is a girls toy. He's an accessory. Boys don't buy Ken dolls, girls do. Ergo, the worlds first Metrosexual, who dated a woman with her own house before John Kerry did.

I found proof of the existence of God the day I realized he hates me.

Ebert: Now, now.

Dear Roger.

What just happened is something phenomenal. I put someone I know on the black list of my Yahoo's and deleted his contact in my cellphone, why? I no longer want a connection to that person, why? He told me that I have to do something with my life, that I'm bad, because I don't pray.
See I'm Muslim, and for those who don't pray, Hell is waiting. I've already identified myself as liberal .. no religion for me.
What seems to be a quandary here, is if I'm asked about my creed, I have to declare (Because I can never tell a lie) that I don't believe in Islam, and that, eventually, will get my head eradicated, for converters should be decapitated.

I thank you again for this article after "How I believe in God", for it was a scream for freedom of speech and thought. I was profoundly relieved that there are still people like you who speaks their mind without boundaries.

Now, put yourself in my shoes and tell me what shall I do in a place that forbids almost everything ..... nothing.

Ebert: Another argument for separation of church and state.

I haven't thought about Catholicism much for years, but Andrew Sullivan's stories from abuse victims and your black-and-white picture with the wavy edges brought up some childhood memories of my own. This seems like an excellent place to share them; forgive me if it is too long.

My dad was the oldest child in a family I consider "psychotic Catholics." They believed every word the Pope said was straight from God and not to be questioned. He was born in 1914 and at the age of 12 put into the seminary, without being given a choice in the matter.

He was an excellent baseball player at Georgetown and was offered minor league contracts by the White Sox and the Yankees. He was a minor and his parents refused to even consider it.

He became a Jesuit. When WWII broke out, he wanted to serve as a chaplain, but the church wouldn't allow it.

In the early 50s, his discontent continuing to grow, he went to see a production of "The King and I," starring Yul Brynner in Chicago, where he sat next to a young woman who was to become his wife and my mother. She was a career woman in her 30s who had been engaged a couple of times but never made it to the altar and wasn't looking for it either. It was love at first sight.

Leaving the church to get married would become fairly commonplace in later years, but at the time, it was simply not done. Both families (my mom was a Southern Baptist as a child) harassed them unceasingly.

It got so bad they moved to California. The situation settled down some - my mother's family let it go the minute I was born, but every time they moved, the local Catholic priest would be dispatched to see if my dad had come to his senses and would agree to leave the sinful harlot and her little bastard (me) and return to the church and a state of grace.

The last one came when I was five. We went into the living room. Father "C" pulled me onto his lap, which I found insulting at my advanced age. Mom went into the kitchen to dig up some food to offer him and my dad went into his study to take a phone call.

The door had hardly closed behind him when Father "C" took the opportunity to pull up my skirt and try to get his hands down my panties. They were a bit tight since we were poor and I had to wear things as long as they could be forced on, and I was struggling to get away when we heard my dad returning.

Father "C" pulled down my skirt and put his coat over his lap and greeted him like nothing had even happened. I was excused and they had a couple of drinks and a lovely chat. My mother adored him because he was charming and made no mention of scarlet women or whores.

The next morning at breakfast I told my parents. I was proud of myself for remembering the "people shouldn't touch you there" rule. I expected praise of the kind when I brushed my teeth without being reminded.

My mother refused to believe it. We had had that talk not long before and she said I was making it up to "get attention". I had such a "vivid imagination," after all. My dad said nothing at all.

I have been furious with both of them for the best part of 50 years, but I realize now that I was never allowed in the same room with any priest ever again and Father "C" was banished from the guest list my mom wrote up for cocktail party soon after.

I never understood it, but my dad did believe me. He just didn't know how to say so. I have forgiven them after carrying a grudge for so long and it is a burden off my soul.

Ebert: The cruel thing is that you suffered at their expense. Father C should have suffered.

I honestly think that this is one of your best blog postings yet. While very different I can relate to questioning one's religious upbringing. I was raised as a Protestant Christian but eventually became a Bahai. You can read more about it here at http://www.bahai.us/justin-cecil.

**For anyone wanting to hear a Latin mass - the Society of Saint Pius X has churches in many states (5 here in Michigan). http://www.sspx.org/chapels.htm

I realize after reading this, how I miss the Latin like I miss my childhood. I have had such anger with the church for changing things. But I would not be the open minded person I am today if it hadn't.

You can mark me down as one of those "cultural Catholics".

Also known as "lapsed", "fallen-away", "cafeteria Catholics", and so many other names to simplify something that even we can't explain about ourselves.

My Catholic education was in the late '50s-early '60s. Our two big deals were the papacy of John XXIII and the election of John Kennedy. Pope John wanted to "throw open the windows of the Church and let the sunshine and fresh air in" - and so set in motion the Second Vatican Council. JFK was the first of Our Guys to make President (of course we weren't aware that he had at least two Commandments on the critical list). If there was an ideal time to Catholic in the USA, this was it.

That was Then ... and This, sadly, is Now.

Strangely, I don't recall ever getting that "only Catholics go to Heaven" line that so many others speak of. Maybe our priests didn't get that memo. We were taught to respect other faiths. This led to our having a more casual approach to the Church, which some would say probably led to our drifting away from it as we got older.

Personally, I was never approached to be an altar boy, and was never scouted for the priesthood. As far as I'm aware, nobody in my family was. My mother was the regular churchgoer, while my father stayed home on Sunday. Who was going to Heaven or Hell? We sort of let that ride.

I haven't attended Mass in years; my last times in Church were for my parents's memorial services, about ten years apart. Neither of my sisters is a regular churchgoer, nor are their families (as far as I know; I'm not in close touch with them, so I could be wrong).

And yet... I suspect that, if asked, we would all still identify ourselves as Catholic.

In my case, I get an uneasy feeling when I hear Catholicism attacked. These attacks can come from outside, as with some off-brand Protestants like the Jack Chick organization, or from militant anticlericals like our friend Bill Hays. Lately, I'm getting more chilled by the rise of right-wing political Catholics like William Donohue and Brent Bozell, who have devoted themselves to nailing shut the windows that John XXIII wanted to open. These two, and others of their ilk, have driven more people from the Church than all the doctrinal disagreements and the scandals ever could.
*I used the word "ilk" right, didn't I?*

It's getting late and I'm getting scrambled.
Think I'll give this another try tomorrow.

Ebert: "No salvation outside the Church." In Latin, extra ecclesiam, nulla salus.

I looked it up. The Church doesn't teach that. It believes anyone can be saved. But it does teach that if you know the Church is Christ's instrument for salvation and reject that knowledge, then you're a goner.

It seems to me that leaves a loophole: What if you know what the Church says, but don't agree? Do you then have the obligation to become convinced?

It's all here: http://j.mp/9KdTmJ

At 28, I'm a liar. There are those that know I'm a secularist, an evolutionist, a free-thinker, but there are those I know I will never tell. Because, if an instant of hate came from them, I would never forgive myself. I'm sure I'm being too sensitive, that perhaps they will be very forgiving, and do as Christ. But if they don't?

I can live my life this way because I do not see them regularly. We do not have a community between us, no Church events where I'm forced to bow my head and "pretend."

Your story here reminded me of my own Catholic Upbringing. Though post Vatican-II, our little South Texas Parish was all in English. I was an altar boy, and I was never abused either. Although there were stories about a visiting Priest, and how he kept vigil by his window, with a pair of binoculars and a full view onto an elementary school playground.

When you tapered off, going to church, I became more involved. I felt myself asking many questions, not getting the right answers and taking them elsewhere. I went to the church of everyone I knew, and gave them all a shot. In a span of about two years, I must have gone through forty different congregations. I read, and interviewed and went on retreats. But, it wasn't until an Anthropology class in my Sophomore year of college that sealed it.

I just couldn't lie to myself anymore.

Ebert: Does the Church still believe there is no salvation outside the Church? I have the impression that has been relaxed.

According to this(and any other news report on the same document), Mr. Benedict says the non-catholic denominations lack the "means of salvation." So as far as dogma goes, that's the last I heard. See all you guys in hell I guess!

Reply to: Ebert: Atheism is your fundamentalist religion.

Another Defense Mechanism. Just for the record, Roger, atheism doesn't have a Rule Book. It doesn't have a Holy Book. It doesn't have a Qur'an or a Torah.

The term "fundamentalist" applies to people who think arguments that were compelling in 633 AD in Mecca still apply to women who not only know how to read, but have a driver's license AND a diploma from a grad school.

I'm not a fundamentalist, Roger. If you knew more about atheism, you would not keep making that mistake. But it means you don't have to think too hard about my points, I guess, so you keep hiding behind it.

Reply to: Yet I was unwilling to dismiss it all as hooey, and to this day I have little patience with what I call fundamentalist atheists (Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens especially), for the same reason I dislike fundamentalists of any stripe: their incuriosity, their intellectual complacency, their condescension. - Richard N

Are those really good reasons to dismiss what they're trying to explain? Of course not. What you're missing is, The Answer Is Obvious. And they're condescening toward people who claim to be intelligent, but refuse to admit the obvious answer.

Reply to: Well, I have had a few experiences in my life that simply cannot be explained by a strictly materialist view of the universe.

Yes, they can. The flight of a hummingbird is easily explained if you do the math right.

Our minds store information in a random manner. At times, a brain will bring out a memory that was sitting on an open shelf. When you kneel in a church and ask, "Does God love me?" you can easily get a memory from the first time you experienced the feeling of love. From your parents. The memory is real. The love you feel is a love you remember, but it isn't god.

Reply to: Yet those who insist with absolute certainty that there is nothing out there seem to me to suffer from either a lack of imagination, in the broadest sense of the term, or a desperate desire to avoid a sense of wonder.

Not a very compelling rebuttal.

The people who don't see "Puff the Magic Dragon" suffer from a lack of imagination?

The people who don't see the face of Jesus in a slice of burned toast suffer from a lack of imagination?

The people who walk into a cathedral and dont feel the hand of God suffer from a lack of imagination?

Let me show you my sense of wonder. For the next 24 hours, I will ask to be addressed as "Madhi."

Madhi is the Savior that some Muslims believe will appear.

You may call me Madhi. If Mohammed is The Prophet, and Jesus is the Son of God, maybe you just need a catchy name before people will read your stuff.

And if you won't acknowledge me as The Madhi, its because YOU lack a sense of wonder. (Or, you're simply dealing with reality instead of a silly delusion.)

Atheists, when they look at religion, start from the atheist position. God does not exist, and any book that claims to contain the "Word of God" is.... (I'm sure you can finish the thought.)

Ebert: Exactly what is it a defense mechanism against?

I too thought I was destined for the priesthood. Unfortunately, the semester that altar boy candidates were being chosen at Christ the King Parish in Columbus, Ohio I sat next to Danny McDonald (no relation) in grade school class. We were totally incorrigible as we had the same tastes in movies, TV, and music. Because of our behavior we both got an "E" in conduct on our report card and as a result I was disqualified from becoming an altar boy. Thus began my loss of faith which was finally finished off when I discovered girls. Thanks for the memories, Roger. (I too miss the Latin. I took four years of it in high school and am eternally grateful I did.)

Can I just say I think this is hilarious and ironic considering that I see you as a Holy Man of Cinema? Like a prophet who interprets Scripture for the rest of us. Before I started calling you Daddy-O on Twitter, I used to call you Padre Ebert.

This is I think because of my affinity for the blasphemous, being an ex-Catholic, I think, and also because I consider my religion to be one of the most theatrical ever. My connection to Church as a child was as a spectator to a performance. I was so jealous of the Priest and basically considered him a protagonist in the most flamboyant live pageant I was exposed to on a regular basis. But we did regularly go to the movies on Sundays. I also never understood how only boys were allowed on the stage.

I think your mother got her wish, you are a priest of film, leading your readers to a deeper understanding of cinema. You do your calling proud.

I'll do better than that: Mr. Ebert, I've read your movie reviews for thirty years, and you have the makings of a BORN Protestant: That is to say, the Smartypantses and the Script-Nitpickers. ;) Protestants, by their very nature, definition, and founder, hold up an optimistic ideal, and try to break it down in terms the common democratic folk can understand, but know enough to look gift horses in the mouths and quibble over finer details before any confusion erupts. The details are certainly there for the curious quibbler to find, and anyone who says they aren't, to quote the Princess Bride line, is selling something.

What Catholicism largely sells is miracles, guilt, and a general sense of overawe that keeps one from asking too many questions or assigning personal responsibility where personal responsibility is due. If someone, as in a movie, were to point out the boom mike in the shot or the zipper up the back of the costume, it would not be seen as the fault of the cameraman, but as the fault of the audience member for pointing it out, and not knowing enough to enjoy the movie. Any studio that tried that as an excuse would be seen as, frankly, desperate.

Anyone who can create the Little Movie Glossary is someone who can be aware of common cliche' being taken too culturally for granted, and questioned for its better improvement--
I remember reading you post 95 theses against the lapses in film logic of "Milk Money" and "The Concorde: Airport '79", and frankly, what's Martin Luther got that you ain't got? :)

I have been a Catholic all my life, but I've been watching or reading your work longer than I've had my faith. Mine came around the age you were losing yours.
Though I should pick Communion as my favorite sacrament, it has always been reconciliation. There is no greater freedom than being forgiven.
I thank you for this piece. Roman Catholicism is the most misunderstood faith (with Islam running a close second), and I always appreciate it when someone reveals it in a true light.
Love and Blessings.

Ebert: So you believe in...paganism? That seems somehow...well, never mind. As the Irish say, "Good on ya."

Oh, there are plenty of us about. We just had one of our big holidays the other day, too, with the Solstice. However, I think that, for many of us, it's just a variation on Unitarianism. (Which my Methodist minister grandfather--my father's father--referred to as believing in "one God at the most.") We generally refer to our deity as a Goddess, though for a lot of us, that's not a literal intention at assigning a gender to the Divine. I tend to paraphrase Will Rogers on it; "I belong to no organized religion--I'm a Pagan." My best friends are both Pagans, but none of us believe quite the same thing. It's a much looser structure.

It makes it all the more frustrating to discuss theology with a lot of Christians. When I was still Catholic, I read a lot of the Bible, and I have done even more theological study since losing the faith. (Which is, presumably, under the couch; it's always the last place you look!) I firmly believe that you should look around at religion before settling on one, which is pretty much the opposite of what a lot of Americans do--they settle on a religion and never look outside it. (One of my Pagan friends, raised Pagan by a mother who was raised Unitarian, had to explain what the Tower of Babel was to a couple of Evangelical coworkers.) Someone a friend of a friend knows online was a Biblical literalist who confused Martin Luther, the Crusades, and Constantine as all being contemporary to one another.

I have as much frustration with ignorant atheists as with ignorant anyone else. More so, if they're preaching tolerance and using it as an excuse to bash a religion and all its adherents. My mother is not a persecutor; I found out that she rented our back house to a gay couple when I was a kid. She made a square for the AIDS quilt for a coworker. And so forth. She's not tolerant with the idea of her children's falling outside the ways of the Church, but what parent is okay with their child going against the parent's morals?

I'm fond of the saying (I think from Andrew Greely) that the best proof of God is that the Catholic Church has somehow survived, because surely an institution run so badly could not survive without God's grace.

(I'm not even culturally Catholic, it just amuses me.)

What a beautifully written story. And, in it's way, tribute to your Mother.

My mother, were she alive, would have been 80 yesterday. I am a Christian today in large part because of my mother. Most are, I think.

Protestants and even Jews were victims, I suppose, of sensory deprivation.

Good line.

There is, I think, quite a difference in growing up Catholic and growing up Protestant. Sensory differences among them.

Ebert: Does the Church still believe there is no salvation outside the Church? I have the impression that has been relaxed.

The Church doesn't leave "some guy doing eternity in hell on a meat rap", as George Carlin used to say, either. But you still won't catch my grandmother eating meat on Friday, God bless her. She did it once to show support for the Pope, and that was it. The only thing that ever shook her faith was when Boston Globe blew the lid of the child abuse scandal.

My experience has been exactly the opposite. My mother, a lapsed Catholic, found the Unitarian Universalist Church. We were all baptised Catholic but raised Unitarian. In graduate school, I had an awakening of sorts and began to explore my faith. I knew there was more out there than the UU's liked to think. When I met my husband, who was raised Southern Baptist and would never go back, I wanted to go back to my roots and go to the Catholic Church, but we settled on the Methodist Church. My faith grew, I started participating in Christian education and learning how to speak like an evangelical Christian. I started out fairly fundamentalist. However, over the years, I had some great teachers, friends who were also progressive liberal clergy and my faith blossomed in new ways and I learned more about the teachings of Jesus and other Christians and scholars that you almost never hear about from the pulpit. I have since left the Methodist Church and now attend an Episcopal Church. I believe this is as close as I will get to my Catholic roots. You are right that you truly cannot be a follower of Christ and not be a liberal (I paraphrase you probably poorly here). I went from being a liberal agnostic to a liberal progressive Christian. I'm not saying I buy all of the tenets of the faith, but I'm ok with mystery and know there is a spiritual dimension to life. Jesus was the closest to God another human being can become. That's what we learn from him--among other things. Catholicism has been tainted by the sexual abuse scandals and rigidly held doctrine and traditions and Protestant Christianity has been tainted by fundamentalism and the conservative right, making the word Christian almost a dirty word, with connotations not at all worthy of Christ.

Whoa, whoa, Mike Doran. You're missing one big significant deal from those times: The Children of Fatima!

Don'tcha remember John XXIII read the third message from Lucy (aka Saint Mary) and fainted dead away? And how that news got out first, THEN the Vatican claimed he'd... had the flu... while reading it?

Why have we here failed to join in the fun? Fatima has been a cottage industry in all places but Fatima, Portugal, where it's been a billion-dollar-industry since the 50s.

"The Da Vinci Code?" Piffle. It's still all the rage throughout South America and Africa and wherever Catholics are sold.

Ebert: Here, for those interested, is the Third Secret of Fatima:

http://j.mp/bTMlWf

Roger,

Wonderful post. You are truly a gifted writer.

I do believe that all accounts of people losinger their faith must be followed with some sort of a prepositional phrase (i.e. 'in God', 'in the Church', 'in Mankind'). No one ever loses faith itself, they just place their faith in a different object. As such, you, me, and everyone else still 'has faith' (including fundamentalists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins), whether it is in a Deity, Mankind, scientific knowledge, etc.

I post this not to chastise you. :) Only to point out that you still have faith...just in something (or some things) different. Or, to put it a different way, there are still beliefs you hold that can never be proven. In fact, whatever it is you believe about God right at this very moment (his/its existence or non-existence, theism, pantheism, atheism, etc.) is an exercise in faith.

And so it is for everyone who speaks of losing their faith. Faith is not something we lose. It's just the object of our faith that changes. Everyone, at bottom, 'just believes' in their view of the world and cannot 'prove' it (at least in the mathematical/necessary/must since of a proof), though contingent proofs are possible. And this doesn't automatically mean our beliefs have become non-rational or irrational - we should and many more than you think do draw our conclusions after much rational thought and investigation. The presence of faith in no way results in the abandonment of reason (at least this is unnecessary and not advised).

You still just believe and have faith - just in something else that also cannot be proven either.

This is a consistent theme I have seen in the replies and just wanted to respond to it. Losing faith in God does not by any means lead to having greater certainty from the new beliefs, in terms of ultimate origins, purpose/meaning or lack thereof, objective morality or lack thereof, and ultimate destiny or lack thereof. All the conclusions now drawn based on the new belief are also exercises in faith.

Thanks!

I've been a Catholic all my life, raised in a very big catholic family, nuns, priests and all. Same as everybody, I stopped going to church as soon as I was able to. But, I took Latin, and Philosophy in college, Aristotle, Augustin, Thomas Aquinas... and here we are, 30 something yrs later, appreciating the Latin, the Faith, the tradition, the incense and the deep sense and connection of it all, the answers, the universality of the Church- Mass is the same in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, LA, the Grand Canyon- And yes, of course, the hope and comfort it brings. I believe, warts and all. There is nothing like it. To those who went away and are still searching for answers- give it a second chance.

It doesn't seem like anyone really loses their faith, in the sense of not believing in anything. It's more like replacing one faith with a faith in something else. Either there is a God or there isn't; either God cares what I do with my life or not. These are binary questions.

Regarding Catholicism, either it is true or it isn't. If it is, then one ought to believe it, and if it isn't, then one should not believe it. As a Catholic, before I could give up the Faith, I'd have to ask myself what I would believe that makes more sense, that is more likely to be true. I could never simply say what I don't believe; I'd have to say what I do believe.

Reading your story, it seems less that you lost your faith than that you thought you simply couldn't live up to the demands of the faith. It has been said that if you don't live how you believe, then you'll start believing the way you live. That seems to be what happened to you.

There is another way, though. You can simply understand that maybe now, at this moment, you can't seem to live up to your Faith. But, you can go to confession, every day if necessary, and try again. You can believe that someday, with the grace of God, you can live as you believe.

Funny thing about confession, too. Priests aren't hard on you. In my experience, priests are way too easy. If you had gone to confession after the Playboys, you might have been momentarily embarrassed, but you would have felt better. You'd have felt better because you would have realized that God's grace is stronger than your failings. You'd have felt better because you would be trying, even if you didn't always succeed.

There's always room in the Church if you want to come back. I'm sure your Mom would love to see you there.

In response to the couple of people I've seen bring up the idea of you gaining morality from the church: I don't think moral lessons can come solely from the church. I was raised in a by atheist parents, who in turn were also raised by atheist parents. My brothers and I are all to some degree agnostics or atheists. But each and every one of us were always given the choice of our faith. Non-belief was never pushed on us, and not until our later years was our parents' distaste for religion really discussed. I can only assume my parents were extended that same choice. But each of us, in our own ways, decided the whole God thing wasn't where it was at for us. But here's my main point: As far as the general rules and views of society go, we are all good people. My family is filled with healthy, happy people. Gainfully employed, married, no children out of wedlock, no criminal records. That's not to say we don't have our problems, but they can all be traced back to the human condition, or the choices we make (which in many cases may be one in the same). And yet there has never been a bible cracked among us. I think it's a major consideration for the whole nature vs nurture argument, because simply put, no one ever taught me how to be good. I'm not saying I'm a great person, or that I won't do some horrible things in the future (I believe with age not only comes wisdom, but more creative ways to be horrible to one another), but as far as my religious friends go, I don't lead a very different life from them (absence of Jesus notwithstanding).
So my question for you Roger (because if you've bothered to read any of my ramblings you might bother to respond, which would be pretty cool), is do you think you would be the type of person you are now (good, bad, or otherwise), without having such a religious presence in your childhood? In other words, how much of you comes from the church, and how much is just you? Can you even tell?

In many ways, Mr. Ebert, this entry reminds me of a conversation with Gene Siskel you mentioned in your entry on him. A conversation in which he basically said, "we Jews have stayed together doing these things for thousands of years and it is important we continue and respect what came before, regardless of theology."

I don't necessarily agree with that idea, but I think many, many Catholics view things in the same way. Or at least I've encountered so many who seem to embrace this attitude and cling to the church even when everything I know about them suggests they should simply leave it altogether. 'Cultural Catholics', as you call them, who are pretty fuzzy at best on whether all of what they're being taught is reality but continue on nonetheless. Their upbringing is soaked in this tradition and they can't just leave it, even when their ideas start to drift from orthodox Catholic teaching.

Take Scorsese, for example. I've read at least one review of The Last Temptation of Christ (http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/lasttemptation.html) from a devout Catholic, in which he notes that the film is a product of collaboration between a Greek Orthodox writer and an Italian Catholic director, and basically claims no nonreligious, or even lapsed Protestant, filmmaker could possibly have included more images and ideas that were more of a direct assault on Catholic belief than Scorsese did.

And yet, even if we accept that to be true, everything I've read or heard about Scorsese suggests that Catholicism runs to the marrow of his bones. It is part of who he is, and will be even if he were to suddenly come out tomorrow and declare himself an atheist. The writer of the above review and Scorsese are separated by an enormous gulf and yet, at bottom, they are both Catholic.

It is something I can personally only understand on an intellectual level, alas, though I'm not really sorry for it, given all the dead weight that comes along with that rich tradition.

>

Absolutely true. But if you believe that Christianity does not provide answers, I would suggest the writings of William Lane Craig, among many others. While I'm sure not everyone will agree with his conclusions or his arguments in favor of the existence of God, one cannot deny that they are intelligently presented. Craig, incidentally, has also made a career out of visiting college campuses and debating the most prominent atheists who accept his challenge. I only wish the Cubs had the same winning record that he has amassed.

My mother was a Sister of Mercy, and then she wasn't. Five boys later (six including Dad), she's the queen of a robust Irish-Catholic family.

None of her boys are Catholics, I'm afraid. It doesn't bother her like you'd expect. Her life has been filled with trauma- alcoholic, abusive father, a mother inured to its accompanying horror- and she takes great comfort in one particular element of the Trinity: God the Father. Her protector, if you will, when no one else was. She prays that we one day find the spiritual comfort she found.

I don't think she cares where.

When my father left her with five boys and a Catholic school teacher's salary ($6000), she went into her room and she shook. I imagine it was a panic attack. She asked for help from her Father. I asked her once if she felt she received it. Of course, she said, sometimes he helps just by being there.

She switched from a teacher to social worker late in life. She works exclusively with the urban poor. She feels a closeness to God when with them that she feels nowhere else.

She has read countless Dporothy Day and Thomas Merton biographies. She attends daily mass has assigned a day of the week to each one of her boys (including dad)- my day is Thursday. She saves Sunday for herself.

'Seems awful selfish, ma, giving yourself Sunday.'

'I need the big one, sweetheart,' she'll say.

She has long, hard days filled with honest care and tenderness. She lets not the left hand know what the the right hand doeth. An honest appraisal of her faith would probably marry the East with the West. She is evolved, she is progressive, but- Roger- don't think for a moment she didn't want all of us (at one point or another) to be a priest. To our mothers, everywhere.

Reply to: I went to Catholic high school and college. They run the risk that people (like myself) with a fair dose of skepticism and common sense will say, "Wait a minute... none of this makes any sense." Thomas Howard

If any good is going to come from this discussion, it's making Catholics understand why Atheists behave the way they do.

Thomas, your statement was absolutely correct.

Anyone with intelligence and common sense will eventually say, "None of this makes any sense."

Nothing in Catholicism makes sense. Atheists know that. Atheists live in "that" world where we see things clearly.

And it's very difficult to treat people who lack intelligence and common sense with respect. sometimes, I try. But if they insult atheism, I don't even try. I just give it right back to them.

Catholics do NOT have a right to insult atheists. and yet, Roger uses phrases like "fundamentalist atheist" that...

well, atheism doesn't have a rule book. (I said this in a previous post, but it doesn't seem to have been posted.)

I was just thinking about Roger's view of racism, and how an elementary school principal who said "Let's put some more light on those faces so they look happier" was accused of racism.

And then I thought about Captain Picard.

And how he was always using "photon torpedoes."

Roger, you really need to write an entry about the racist implications of using photons against dark-skinned villains. You could get a ton of mileage out of that.

Racism is everywhere... if you use the logic of Catholicism, where no matter what anyone says, the Catholic church is always right.

Reply to: The Church does teach that if you know the Church is Christ's instrument for salvation and reject that knowledge, then you're a goner. It seems to me that leaves a loophole: What if you know what the Church says, but don't agree? Do you then have the obligation to become convinced? - Ebert

Only a boy raised in a Catholic environment would bother asking that question. Atheists would say, "Why are you wasting your time with that nonsense?"

Because it IS nonsense. All of it. The idea that a God has set rules that humans can obey, or disobey, is nonsense.

Look at the world around us. We have unlimited options. Only con men would say "Well, if you do that, God will punish you."

Reply to: He told me that I'm bad, because I don't pray. See I'm Muslim, and for those who don't pray, Hell is waiting. I've already identified myself as liberal .. no religion for me. What seems to be a quandary here, is if I'm asked about my creed, I have to declare (Because I can never tell a lie) that I don't believe in Islam, and that, eventually, will get my head eradicated, for converters should be decapitated.

(1) If you don't believe in Islam, you're NOT a Muslim. Congratulations.

(2) if I declare that I don't believe in Islam, eventually, will get my head eradicated, for converters should be decapitated

Well, we have a salesman named Omer who says that won't happen. Of course, Omer lies about anything that has to do with Islam, so maybe... well, maybe, they will cut your head off if you announce that you don't believe in Islam.

Fortunately, Roger doesn't think this is a problem. Follow Roger's advice. Go off into la-la land, tell everyone that you don't believe in Islam, and keep living in that Imaginary World where your head is still connected to the rest of your body.

I asked Roger to post an entry about the death of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Instead, he wrote an entry about his lovely past as an altar boy. Obviously, Roger doesn't live in the real world.

The death of Theo Van Gogh is a crime story. It's a story about movies. Hiding behind "I can't write about religion" is a cop-out. Of course you can write about religion. It's just that the threat of one of your readers having his head cut off because he tries to leave Islam isn't part of "your reality."

"I had lost my faith. It didn't make sense to me any longer. There was no crisis of conscience. It simply all fell away."

Roger, you may have left the Church, but your childhood sympathy for this peculiar institution stills shows. Here are a few corrections of your defenses of it:

Salvation outside the church: If you're an unrepentant heretic, you'll burn forever. Catholic Answers: "those who knowingly and deliberately (that is, not out of innocent ignorance) commit the sins of heresy (rejecting divinely revealed doctrine) or schism (separating from the Catholic Church and/or joining a schismatic church), no salvation would be possible".

If you've committed an unabsolved Mortal Sin, you'll burn forever. Mortal Sins include blasphemy and masturbation, so any young boys or girls that masturbate even once and do not seek absolution, as you imply for yourself, are damned.

You can use Google to see that the Church's depraved teachings are warping the lives of people today. Here's a post from an eighteen-year-old woman asking on a Catholic forum "Am I going to hell because I masturbate?" The answer: yes, unless you confess.

Confess or burn: we call this blackmail anywhere else.

Also, you've written incorrectly in another post that "Hitler was an atheist." Actually, Hitler was Catholic, saying, for example in 1942, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." Hitler's Nazi government was first given international legitimacy by the Vatican and its Concordant with the Nazis. Hitler's genocidal book Mein Kampf was never banned by the Vatican, nor was Hitler ever excommunicated: Hitler died a good Catholic and is now with the angels if we are to believe Catholic Doctrine on salvation. In contrast, Hitler and his Nazi government explicitly condemned atheism in word and law. In no way can Hitler be called an atheist.

You may have left the Church, but you haven't abandoned all its myths.

I admire the fact that your epiphany came early. Mine came at 44 after a lifetime of Catholicism starting with a nana who wore 4 crosses around her neck (her "burdens" she called them - we suspected they were the 4 members of her family - self included) and 7 years of Catholic school.

Growing up, religion served its purpose for me - the face on my miraculous medal was worn off by high school from rubbing it to get good grades. And those 20 "Hail Mary, PLEASE don't let me be pregnant..." prayers in the college dorm bathroom produced a thankfully belated period.

But then, I began to realize that after 12 years of catechism and catholic schooling, I could not articulate why Jesus died for our sins - or for that matter, what sins he was dying for. Yes, I had memorized all the answers (what good Catholic doesn't have a great memory) but the answers were never discussed nor explained - just memorized.

Then I met my (non-practicing Jewish) husband whose POV from the outside looking in was "how can you possibly belong to a religion that you disagree with more than half the time?" By then, I was rabidly pro-choice and pro-birth control. His comment sent me on a spiritual journey that wove its way through Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism...

Then one day a Jehovah's Witness came to my porch where I sat and I took the time to ask her what she believed. She told me, "We believe that when we die, we die, but that soon will be a day of judgement and everyone will rise from the dead and be judged, and the true believers will live in paradise on Earth."

Of course my rational mind was already debunking the idea of an Earth with no death becoming quite crowded. But that night my subconscious mind ruminated on another thing she had said: "When you die, you die."
Having been raised Catholic and always having the concept of an afterlife, it was those words that affected me most. The idea was so foreign, so unsettling to me, that I tossed and turned. And then, it happened. I had my epiphany. Like the buddhist picture of the reclining man, the real image suddenly came clear. And at that moment, I fully embraced the concept that "when you die - you die," and became an atheist.

And the feeling was not what I expected. I felt a sense of freedom and empowerment. And I instantly no longer feared death.

So that's my story. Thank you for the Tantum Ergo Gregorian Chant - it made me smile and I could almost smell the pungent sweet incense. Very hypnotic-- perhaps that was calculated? My nine year old has elected to be a Humanistic Jew to enable her to identify culturally with her cousins, but without the dogma. I am teaching her to be tolerant to all beliefs as I find nothing more unappealing than a belligerent atheist (Richard..?, Christopher..?).

After all, my "Hail Mary's" did give me the confidence to succeed - today I realize the confidence came from within, but at the time, the prayers gave it a boost. And I still say a prayer or two as I believe in the ability to channel positive energies. Perhaps with string theory there is something valid to collective prayer since we're all theoretically comprised of vibrations.

So I'll send a prayer your way, Rog. An atheist's prayer from the heart, that you stay well and keep writing these thoughtful, thoroughly enjoyable essays. YOU inspire me - not the myth with the beard.

Ebert: That's what I believe, too, When you die, you die.

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

--Waiting for Godot.

It may seem depressing to many people, but the thought of living forever terrifies me.

"It didn't make sense to me any longer. There was no crisis of conscience. It simply all fell away."

That's EXACTLY how I felt around age 16-17. I realized that I had never really had much emotional investment in church (I was raised Episcopalian by parents who were very Christian, although they weren't militant about it) and that most of my fondest memories of going there were of the social aspects: seeing my friends in Sunday school, going on mission trips to Chicago to work in soup kitchens, the yearly "blessing of the animals" where we brought our pets to be blessed by Father Bob, acting in the yearly Christmas pageant where I had solos for two years.

I don't know if I was just hard wired to not get on board with religion, but after reading Dawkins, Hitchens, and Darwin, I couldn't imagine anyone believing. I became an agnostic and humanist, much to the chagrin of my mother. She continues to encourage me to pray. Truth be told, I still pray sometimes, although I'm not entirely sure who I'm praying to.

I can't say that I have any

Kudos to Richard Nanian for a contribution to this blog as fine as Roger's original entry. My father's side of the family is Greek Orthodox. Although my father never practiced, I am familiar with the pungent incense, the gilt altars, the foreign tongue, the finger-thin candles and the gruesome iconography of an Orthodox Church. Each year, I experience the confusion of Yaya wishing me a happy Easter after I thought it had past. I particularly liked the thoughtfulness of your criticism of the new 'fundamentalist atheists'. It's the lack of intellectual curiosity which I've been trying to put my finger on. It's such a frustratingly blinkered position. Far better, I think, the soaring, secular spirituality of Carl Sagan in 'The Varieties of Scientific Experience' as he ponders the cosmos or the charming humbleness of Darwin himself. I am an atheist in the sense that you described but if I believed in God I'd beseech him to forever preserve my curiosity.

Reply to: If you believe that Christianity does not provide answers, I would suggest the writings of William Lane Craig, - David H

I took on Mr. Craig at UCLA. He was sponsored by a Korean Church. The representative of that Church told me that if I "took over the conversation," he would call security and have me arrested.

I destroyed Craig with a single question. "Isn't the best explanation for the stories of Jesus being able to cast out demons is that some of Jesus' friends PRETENDED to be possessed, so Jesus could make a rep for himself as an exorcist?"

Craig babbled for over five minutes, trying to pretend he didn't understand my question.

Reply to: I'm sure not everyone will agree with his conclusions or his arguments in favor of the existence of God, one cannot deny that they are intelligently presented.

I can deny it.

Look: I deny that anything in William Lane Craig's exhaustive collection of writings is intelligent. He starts from false presumptions. Every one of his conclusions is invalid.

Reply to: Craig, incidentally, has also made a career out of visiting college campuses and debating the most prominent atheists who accept his challenge.

Yup, he did that all right. And he lost. I made him look like a fool.

I didn't treat the problem of Saad El-Asha properly. He asked a serious quesiton and he deserves a serious answer.

Reply to: What seems to be a quandary here, is if I'm asked about my creed, I have to declare (Because I can never tell a lie) that I don't believe in Islam, and that, eventually, will get my head eradicated, for converters should be decapitated...Now, put yourself in my shoes and tell me what shall I do in a place that forbids almost everything .

I had to ask myself that question a few times. Didn't have a great answer.

I have a possible answer...

Read the note left on the body of Theo Van Gogh. Write a note that a Muslim in your city might leave on the body of a "converter"...

In other words, write out a note that might be left on a body after the head was cut off, warning that anyone who leaves Islam will be punished in the same way.

Then, find the five Muslims who are most likely to give an order to cut off someone's head.... cut off THEIR heads... and leave the note on their bodies. Make sure you don't leave fingerprints.

If five of the most outspoken, devout Muslims are murdered, beheaded, and accused of "leaving the faith".... I don't think anyone will be asking you about your beliefs for a few years.

In other words, start the reign of terror with FALSE accusations.

When you're living in a city where the NutJobs are actually cutting off heads, you have the right to be sneaky and kill them first.

Also, you've written incorrectly in another post that "Hitler was an atheist." Actually, Hitler was Catholic, saying, for example in 1942, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." Hitler's Nazi government was first given international legitimacy by the Vatican and its Concordant with the Nazis. Hitler's genocidal book Mein Kampf was never banned by the Vatican, nor was Hitler ever excommunicated: Hitler died a good Catholic and is now with the angels if we are to believe Catholic Doctrine on salvation. In contrast, Hitler and his Nazi government explicitly condemned atheism in word and law. In no way can Hitler be called an atheist.

I'm no defender of the Catholic Church, but this is gross simplification of Hitler's beliefs, which tends to happen on both sides of the fence because...well, the fact that 'Argumentum ad Hitlerum' is a logical fallacy has apparently not quite sunk in for a lot of people. If Hitler was a theist or an atheist, that must 'prove' something unsavory about one or the other.

Hitler was inconsistent. He often used religious ideas as propaganda in a Germany that was overwhelmingly theist, as well as to separate himself from the atheist Soviet Union after the invasion of Russia began (somewhat ironic, since the German invasion proved the catalyst for a brief resurgence of tolerance for the Russian Orthodox Church by Stalin), but his recorded remarks behind closed doors are far less clear.
Goebbels records in his diary, for example, that he stated, "The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race."

So no, let's not go all Jack Chick and claim that Nazism was a product of Catholicism.

@ Richard Nanian on June 23, 2010 3:41 PM
[I'm contemplating your comment in reverent awe]

My family was the exact opposite of yours, Roger, in that my mom was raised Lutheran, whereas my dad was raised Catholic. I'm sure you and he would have some stories to share. He went to Catholic school, too, though his school didn't sound as open-minded as yours. Also, he passed on his questioning nature to me.

Interestingly enough, the facade around religion began to crumble for me due to Lord Byron. Perhaps it had started a little earlier, when I took a religions of the world class and so learned about religions outside of Christianity, but it was Lord Byron that put the first significant chink in the armor.

In a letter that he wrote to a friend, he questioned how a "kind and just God" could allow people to go to hell, just because they hadn't heard of Jesus Christ. How could they be punished, Byron argued, for something they didn't know? And why punish them for something that wasn't their fault?

The second (and much larger) crack in the armor, the one that sent the whole deck of cards crumbling down, happened when I was studying the history of India. Do you know that the caste system was put in place by early conquerors of the indigenous people there? By using which part of Brahma each caste came from as an excuse to grab power from the natives and make them "unmentionables," these invaders were able to justify their power, and justify discrimination. When I read that, my question (in my mind) was, "If Hinduism could be manipulated in this way, then what about other religions?"

And then you have Buddhism, which split in two because one sect (Mahayana) wished to make Buddha a god, rather than an extraordinary mortal, which further strengthened my belief.

One thing I will never give up from my religion, however, is the music. That's the main reason I like going to the Christmas service every year: to sing the glorious music that has been written about Jesus's birth (which probably occurred in springtime, anyway). It's why I love J.S. Bach, the religious music of Mozart (the Great Mass in C, Requiem, and Ave Verum Corpus), Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, and other requiems and masses.

Speaking about losing one's religion, how many people here have read Blankets? There's a great review of it here: http://etheriel.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/blankets/

Also, you mentioned Whitman, but I always think of Dickinson when it comes to religion, and this poem:

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last --
I'm going, all along.

@ Marie Haws

Check out the Gospel of Mary, an apocryphal book of the Bible. Apparently, Peter did not like women, which is why they were excluded from the early church, and are still excluded (to a lesser extent) today. Click on the link here: http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm

I am a Catholic. I thought about being priest both as a child and an adult. Now I have a fiance.

And the thought of living forever doesn't just terrify you, Roger. Trying to fathom it has always scared me since childhood. I don't want to live forever. I want to have a long and happy life, and then die, and be done.

Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett: The Sequel to Gone With the Wind is forgettable except for two lines -

"I'd bet on the Roman Catholic Church, Rhett said to himself. It thinks of time in aeons, not weeks."

stvs writes: "Hitler died a good Catholic and is now with the angels if we are to believe Catholic Doctrine on salvation"

I'm fairly sure suicide is a mortal sin, and because it can never be repented (in this life) actually worse, doctrinally, than murder.

In any case, resorting to the "ad Hitlerum" fallacy doesn't advance the conversation any.

Thank you Roger for that great article; brought back memories of my own life. I was also an altar boy and for a time I desired to become a priest. I was highly devout and at young ages, particularly from eleven to fifteen, I was rather dogmatic and had little tolerance for opposing viewpoints or dissent from Church doctrine. I read St. Augustine's Confessions probably at around thirteen (though it was quite a struggle) and studied Catholicism and Catholic history, and while most people my age were probably watching MTV I was watching Catholic TV stations like EWTN. As often happens with religion it shaped my political views and because I was learning about the Catholic religion from conservatives I, unlike Roger, could not comprehend how anyone could be a Catholic and not a conservative. During those years I remember almost believing that the U.S. was in a sort of pact with Satan because abortion was legal and the U.S. was multi-cultural and tolerated all religions. Being that I am now quite liberal, pro-choice and fond of diversity it is hard to believe now that I ever held such views.

At around sixteen I slowly moved towards atheism. I learned a bit more about other religions and-shockingly- came to like people who held other beliefs. I started to analyze religion a bit more closely until I began to gradually lose faith in it. I could list the reasons why I became an atheist but they would not be overly profound or unique.

I did for a few years return to Catholicism, mostly due to nostalgia and feelings of guilt over loved ones who expected me to be Catholic; perhaps the same sorts of feelings that Roger seems to express in the article. I was still very much attracted to the empathetic teachings of Jesus towards the poor, much like Roger's point about how he still believes in the Church's social teachings. But gradually this regression passed; my doubts about religion and my logical discomfort with it had not departed, particularly after reading the entire Bible for the first time. Reading the Bible is often a sure path to atheism, and I indeed became an atheist again and remain so. I also came to realize that most of what Jesus taught was not particularly original, so even that admiration for Jesus' ethics, which even many non-Christians would feel, was no longer there.

Another reason for my second 'apostasy' was the ugly side of Catholicism, the side of it that had appeared in my youth. Catholicism may preach love but it is difficult to be a Catholic without feeling nudged into a subtle crypto-hatred of others. Yes, gays are one group, but hardly the only one. When you are Catholic you have to have some level of hated for yourself as well, of your behaviors, desires, natural instincts, private thoughts. Naturally any devout Catholic would deny this and would state that I say this out of ignorance, but that is my view. Perhaps this dislike of others and of yourself would be a fair trade if the faith actually had some evidence to support it and perhaps if the Church hierarchy which taught these moral precepts did not have a history of crime and depravity, both in past and present centuries; but that is not the case.

Catholicism has its good side, as most religions likely do, and anything that reminds us of our youth will always stay with us- whether it is the religion or the house or the cartoons we were brought up with- but to quote St. Paul "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Religion, as Christopher Hitchens would say, belongs to the youth of our species. For all its charms, its logical and ethical faults are ever present, and to cling to it is to cling to the fears and naivete of our internal selves; there is more beauty and awe in living a sober life of reason and honesty than in following the mythical and the superstitious. I cannot be honest with myself and cannot consider myself a truth seeker if I am not an atheist, and while this may be difficult for some believers who equate atheism with hedonism and relativism to understand, that is the reason why most people leave the faith of their youth to become atheists.

Catholicism's a tricky subject for me. I've designated myself an ex-Catholic for two years now, and I still get uncomfortable when my mom refers to me as an atheist, mostly because of the disdain she has for the word. Mind you, I've actually been to church more than her in the past two years, but I think my faltering faith kind of hurt her because I was, to certain family members, destined to become a priest.

And it almost happened. From age six to sixteen, that was the goal. Church, the bible, the ritual mass--it mesmerized me. The two priests I grew up listening to every Sunday, Fr. Child and Fr. Don, were the two nicest men I'd ever met. They helped people. They were unafraid. I alter served for ten years, could recite Mass forward and backward, and chose to learn Latin when I was enrolled in Catholic grad school. On a good day, I can still recite a few prayers.

I think Catholic school is what killed my desire to be a priest. For years, I blindly wanted to do it, not really knowing what it'd entail. The Jesuit education I'd received encouraged hard questions. I began asking them. Were it not for my earning a scholarship (to a Catholic college), I probably would have gone to a seminary and learned the hard way. Instead, I went away to school, started going to Mass on my own, and felt a loss of connection. It just wasn't there anymore. I went without telling anybody for a year. My mom found out when she came to visit, we went to Mass, and I didn't take communion. Once, she told me that I'd come back, and I've heard her use the word "phase" to describe it, but we've never really had a discussion. If she asks what I believe in, I'll quote Whitman and tell her that if I follow that quote, I'll be doing pretty good for myself:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants...have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

I LOVED your essay. Yes, I get the part about losing your faith, but what I appreciated more were the reminiscences. I could have written most of them and I would have added the terror of going to confession. In my case, in advance of my first confession I struggled to come up with the number of occasions for my most common sin. I was 6, and agonised over it for quite some time, well aware of the future of my immortal soul if I blew it. It had to be an enormous number, but believable to the priest and presumably to God.
"Bless me Father for I have sinned. I confess to Almighty God and to you Father. This is my first confession. (gulp!) I disobeyed my parents ONE HUNDRED TIMES!"
You know what? Unlike some others who have posted, I believe I am a better person for the way I was raised. I have an Irish friend who says to me, "You didn't lick up off the street".
Oh, and Roger, you should have written "JMJ" (for Jesus, Mary and Joseph) on the top of your essasy somewhere!

Cheers,

ob

David H: Craig, incidentally, has also made a career out of visiting college campuses and debating the most prominent atheists who accept his challenge. I only wish the Cubs had the same winning record that he has amassed.

I've never seen a theist debate an atheist and not treat the debate as if it were a game of dodgeball, with the balls replaced with questions. This is because a theist can't win a straight debate with straight questions and straight answers against a well-informed atheist. Their position is logically indefensible, with the only thing sustaining it being faith, which is irrelevant to logic.

The internet is rife with bickering between atheists and theists, most of which amounts to theists sallying forth valiantly to do battle on the fields of rational thought only to be completely routed, as religion isn't designed for that kind of testing. At this point they declare they have 'faith' and scurry back behind the thick fortress walls of that 'faith', unmovable by its very nature by critical thought. Good for them, I guess, but it would really be best if they stayed in there and stopped pretending they can defend their views logically. They really, really can't.

I have fond memories of the nuns that served my Catholic School upbringing. Four wonderful woman taught me during those times.

My first grade teacher -- one of two Irish nuns I had -- would have us stand in front of the crucifix and ask Jesus for forgiveness for wrongs done. The other Irish lassie who taught me geometery would always espouse "tell the truth and shame the devil."

Our French teacher let us know what "kif" was, as it was one of the few French "k" words we could get scrabble points on. She also made a killer peanut brittle and invited us over to the convent for lunch and to finish off the wine as the remaining two sisters were leaving our school after my class graduated high school. I will never forget my second grade teacher shedding tears at my graduation. What a loss to my school.

My experience at the Catholic school was probably my best as a Catholic.

I started to become wary as an adult. One part was the sex scandals... and not the ones in Boston. My diocese was the first one in the states to be rocked by the scandal. To pay out the multi-million dollar settlements, a second collections at churches in the diocese -- under the veil of "bishop's services appeal" was started. As rich as the Catholic Church is (with all it's priceless Vatican pieces) and it was putting the burden on its own people.

My disillusion grew with marriage. I married a wonderful Southern Baptist. My marriage took place in the Catholic Church... While waiting to walk down the aisle, the priest approached me with a document to sign, stating that I would raise my kids Catholic. If I did not sign, there would be no marrying in the church.

And then, it's whole stance on reproduction... well... I think that business is between me and my "higher power" and doesn't need a middle man.

Years later, in an effort to reach a happy medium, we joined the United Methodist church. (I probably have a one way ticket to H-E-double hockey sticks since I signed the Catholic or else document when I got married.) Anyway, we loved the Methodist church. They let ANYONE who was a baptized Christian partake in communion, including my 3 and 4 year olds. We really loved their philosphy of helping everyone and anyone, no matter what your religious leanings are. If more denomiations -- and religions -- would take that attitude, I think the world would be a much better place...

Hi sir. I can't reiterate enough how much I love your writings, how much of a constant and source of joy they've been for me. Your blog, your reviews, and especially your Great Movies list. You've been a guide towards so many beautiful things.

This statement, "I remained a cultural Catholic, which I interpret as believing in the Social Contract and the Corporal Works of Mercy," reminded me of my favorite story in the New Testament. It's almost cliched to bring up, except that few seem to really delve into it. I'm talking about the Story of the Good Samaritan.

You have a Priest and a Levite (the spiritual powerhouses of the day) ignore the wounded man, and a Samaritan take care of him. To my knowledge (and I'm no expert), at that point in time, a Jew might look at a Samaritan the way the Southern Baptist pastor I grew up with might look at a heroin-addicted, homosexual liberal prostitute (I'm playing on stereotypes, I know, but please bear with me).

My point is, Christ was against the two guys who "believed the right thing," but he was for the one guy who didn't necessarily believe "correctly." I think this is because, to Christ, belief WAS action, and action meant service, selflessness. In light of this story, what one thinks about God seems irrelevant in the light of how one treats the people around them. And in the Bible, I think Christ makes this point a lot, though I'll spare you (if you've read this far you're a saint (ha!) and i appreciate it).

I know "Christian" means a lot of things to a lot of people, and you could smother under all that cultural baggage, so I use that term carefully. I guess one of the best expressions of Christian faith I've ever seen has been the movie Magnolia. I mean that it is (as I see it, and I could always be a wrong) a movie about brokenness, the need to humbled and reconciled. It's about forgiveness and human kindness (which in my book IS divine), and maybe, just maybe, the possibility of a second chance. That's what Jesus has always meant to me.

Sorry for the rant. Hope I didn't waste too much of your time. And yes, I know Magnolia wasn't made by a Christian. Maybe that's why Paul Thomas Anderson nailed it exactly, when that Left Behind movie (and hell, even Passion of the Christ) flubbed it so hard. Sort of like the Samaritan, I guess.

Cheers,
Jimmy
Again, I'm no expert.

Once again, Roger, I loved reading your blog.

At my parents insistence I went to Methodist church and Sunday school up through high school, even though I had "lost my faith" when I was six, which was about the same age that I stopped believing in Santa Clause, and for pretty much the same reason: it didn't make any sense.

I was told what our family believed, and my mother said that I must believe it too. When I asked questions about the many illogical details I was told that it doesn't have to make any sense, it just is..."belief" was the basic answer. Questions of faith or belief were never mentioned in church that I can remember.

I was a confirmed athiest until about 30 years ago, when I had what I can only describe as an encounter with a ghost. It sounds silly, even to me, but there it is. I don't expect anyone to believe me, nor can I even prove it.

That experience didn't drive me back to the church, it simply gave me an awareness to the possibility that there may be more going on than can meet the eye. I still don't trust organized religion, because, cynic that I am, I find that too many people use religion for doing or saying what they would have done or said anyway. I have come to believe that, like the six blind men of Hindustan who went to see an elephant, we are all just touching a tiny portion of what there is, and interpreting it in a way we can understand, and then declaring that this is the only answer.

I don't have any answers, just a lot more questions. And you know what? I can live with that. It makes life interesting. The knowledge that I may never get answers isn't so bad. I've gone nearly sixty years without the Cubs in the World Series, so I can handle a little theological uncertainty.

I've always had a distaste for organized religion, and an absolute affinity for faith.

I also love being in churches. When I travel I always visit the local churches. I find a certain tranquility in all that holy space. It soothes me. There is something about a place that holds so many hopes, fears, guilt and wishes...inspiring. Not for what they are being subjected to, but for what they bring together, humanity's best and worse, I guess.

When I was in Berlin, I happened to walk by the Berliner Dom at dusk after a day at the museum, and the chamber music drew me in. I sat in on the evening mass, deserted all but for a handful of people, and the enormous organs chanted and hummed, and the notes vibrated through the walls and spiraled up the columns all the way to the tip of the dom. Tipping my head up, I fell into something timeless and inexplicable at once. As I walked out of the heavy doors afterwards, the moon had risen, a fierce gust of wind bellowed, and a flock of birds flew through the icicle-clad tree branches across the tip of the Dom. It was like straight out of a Harry Potter movie.

I had a crisis of conscience, at the age of 14. In fact I fasted for seven days asking God for understanding that never came. Some weeks later I renounced my faith altogether - to myself. To this day (I am now 23) I have not had a frank discussion with my family about religion. I simply cannot reconcile the concept of a loving God with the barbarity contained in the Bible. Passages like Deuteronomy 13:6-11, which tells you under what circumstances you must kill your own daughter. I have trouble understanding the mindset of those like my family who can believe such a book to be divinely inspired.

To any believers reading this: Please, have a little sympathy for us apostates, who have unwillingly severed some part of the relationship with our families by remaining true to our convictions. It's a hard path to follow.

Roger,

You talk about a world and experiences I never knew, but I can greatly empathize with you. Like your mom, my grandma was religious and also very kind with anyone, irrespective of race, color, background, religion. She was just good. Between the lines I read about your kindness, understanding and vulnerability as a human being. You are a good man. Thank you for sharing this with us, you do make the world a better place trough your words, I enjoy reading your essays.

Dear mr. Ebert,

Thank you for this piece. Thank you for recognizing, that while you for a long time haven't been a "man of the faith", others who would disagree with you (such as myself) when it comes to faith matters are still capable of being somewhat decent human beings.

Your testimony about your mother was particularly beautiful. She was a woman who wanted good things to happen for her son, and since she herself found solace in the faith, this is where she wanted her son to be as well. These days you get the feeling that the parents that raise their children Christian are manipulating their kids to be soldiers in an army, brainwashing their off spring with ridiculous dogma. This is not always the case. Sometimes, it is just about giving your children the best that you've got.

As a Christian, a Lutheran, myself, I honestly feel a bit sorry that you lost your faith, and I wonder if you ever were in that faith relationship with the Lord that I myself find so valuable and fullfilling.

It saddens me that you left the church, but so it is. You're still Roger Ebert, my favorite film critic and an all-round great person. Maybe I'll say a prayer for you if I feel really pious. Maybe I'll just let my sentiments go and enjoy your writing. Right now, I think I did both.

Sincerely,

Thomas

All this is pretty foreign to me because I grew up in a religion that didn't believe in priests or confession.

There was a comment about the self-sacrifice of bees. I'm guessing you mean honey bees which are a female society. You don't need religion to have self-sacrifice. Mothers and good fathers everywhere practice that for love. Sisters and brothers, when not squabbling, should also give more than they take.

The best religious practices are the ones that encourage people to see everyone as brothers, sisters, sons and daughters--one large family.

I wrote: "Well, I have had a few experiences in my life that simply cannot be explained by a strictly materialist view of the universe."

Bill Hays writes: Yes, they can. The flight of a hummingbird is easily explained if you do the math right.

I wasn't talking about the flight of a hummingbird. Nor would my experiences of the spiritual or mystical impress you if I attempted to explain them to you. Again, see William James on Mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience: ineffable, transient, passive, and noetic describes it as well as it can be described.

Ironically, I agree with most of what you say -- by strict definition, for example, I'm an atheist, since I don't believe in a divine being (again, see my comments on Dionysius the Areopagite) -- but you are the epitome of someone whom I would never want on my side in any debate because you cannot see or won't acknowledge the limits of your argument. Conversely, I disagree with about 90% of what Randy Masters says, but at least he doesn't sneer when he says it, and more importantly I don't believe I have ever seen him willfully distort what others say, which you do when you take my comment about a "sense of wonder" and say,

The people who don't see "Puff the Magic Dragon" suffer from a lack of imagination?
The people who don't see the face of Jesus in a slice of burned toast suffer from a lack of imagination?
The people who walk into a cathedral and don't feel the hand of God suffer from a lack of imagination?

Talk about a straw man! I'm not defending seeing Jesus in toast, I don't believe in a hand or any other appendage of God, I think cathedrals are nothing more than impressive architecture, and "Puff the Magic Dragon" -- really? That's not even a good straw man.

Look, I cannot truly engage you in conversation because I've read enough of your posts to know you don't obey the rules of logical debate. It's easy to put words in other people's mouths and then ridicule them for positions they don't hold, but that has the same relationship to debate as masturbation has to actual sex with a willing partner. Both presume a minimal degree of good will and respect. I teach logical argument -- this is basic stuff covered in the first hour.

On an even more basic level, we cannot debate because not only do we start from different premises, but you refuse to admit you start from any premises at all. No logical argument can start from zero, nor can it be based solely on factual observation because those observations themselves depend on certain assumptions. People of good will acknowledge the premises in their arguments, and that that they are premises. Fundamentalists of all stripes assume that their assumptions are truths universally acknowledged by all right-thinking people, and that therefore anyone who does not share their assumptions is wrong. You don't have to be a Jew, Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Mormon, Christian Scientist, or Scientologist to believe that. You just have to lack humility or be intolerant of dissent, or both.

Christopher Hitchens is a great example. I read God Is Not Great and admired much of it. But his entire argument against eastern religion is based on the story of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his Rolls-Royce collection. Dismissing the entire eastern spiritual tradition because of one Indian ex-professor con-man is such an unsophisticated ad hominem attack that I'd fail a freshman for doing something similar.

That is what I mean (and I assume something like what Roger means) by a Fundamentalist Atheist: atheists who don't acknowledge their position begins, as all positions must, with unprovable premises.

Ebert: Exactly. It is futile to debate the truth or falsity of the unknowable.

Roger writes: You have reminded me that reading Walt Whitman often feels like a form of prayer.

Oh, that's quite intentional on his part. Read Emerson's essay called "The Poet"; Whitman did. In that essay, Emerson took on the role of an American John the Baptist, announcing the coming of a new American poet who could articulate a new faith for a new country, free of the superstition and inegalitarian traditions of Europe.

By the way, you have to love Emerson. He says that the stories of Christ's miracles are fairy tales meant to impress children, and that they obscure the true divinity of Christ, which is the divinity of which all people are capable. He says that any prayer except that for absolute, universal good is "vicious." He was a Unitarian minister who left the pulpit because he decided Unitarianism was too authoritarian(!), in the sense that he thought no one, including himself, had a special right to act as an intermediary between the individual and God. Unitarianism too authoritarian? I taught in a building used as a Unitarian church once, and in the kitchen hung a sign that said "Church membes are responsible for their own dishes and their own theology." Then there's the wonderful episode of The Simpsons in which the hyper-Christian children Rod and Todd invite Bart to play a videogame called "Convert the Heathen." Bart is firing a gun at the TV and says, "Hey! I shot him!" but one of the brothers replies, "No, you just winged him. Now he's a Unitarian."

Anyway, in "The Poet," published in 1844, Emerson's argument is that a true poet and a true prophet are indistinguishable, and, as I mentioned, he announces that soon America would give birth to a poet who could articulate a new American faith.

Cue Whitman. In his long, ellipsis-filled introduction to the 1855 Leaves of Grass, he takes Emerson's argument and prediction (though he doesn't mention the man or the essay) and decides to step into those shoes by responding to them almost literally point by point. And then he begins his essential poem with the following three lines.

I celebrate myself.
And what I assume you shall assume.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Look at the second and third lines. The second is a commandment, the voice of the Old Testament father ordering our obedience. The third is an offering of communion, Christ offering up his body and blood to be consumed. And that's all it takes Whitman to dispense with the entire Bible and announce his own new American testament -- dispense with it in the sense of referring to it, that is, since in terms of literary technique he employs a lot of anaphora (series of lines or verses beginning the same way), just as the Bible does.

Within two pages, he describes God in a shockingly intimate way: "As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the peep of the day." Whitman works out Emerson's idea of the Oversoul with a kind of syllogism:

1) The Oversoul, or God, is infinite
2) My soul is a piece of the Oversoul
3) Any division of the infinite being also infinite, I am boundless.

He refuses to accept that there are any boundaries to the self --

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

-- which is how a poem about literally everything can end up being called "Song of Myself." It's also how he can write lines such as

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

I remember how strongly I reacted to those lines the first time I read them. My thought was something along the lines of "Get away from me, you disgusting creep." I understand him better now.

As for God and the issue of mortality, Whitman is direct:

And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.
I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm me.

Given the height of his ambition, it's amazing how well Whitman pulls it off. Of course, some might say the the meaning of a phrase such as "in the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass" is far from clear, but Whitman has an answer for that. In my favorite series of lines, Whitman rebukes any urge he might have to articulate his ideas more clearly:

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.

It provokes me forever,
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough . . . . why don't you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.

And so he refuses to be tempted, deciding that sounding his "barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world" is the better approach.

Or at least, he refuses to be tempted then. But as the years pass, he keeps changing the poem. He takes out all the ellipses. He divides the poem into 52 numbered sections, then 366 numbered sections -- for what reason other than to attempt to turn it into a weekly or daily devotional reader? -- and eventually back to 52. He even changes the "As God comes a loving bedfellow" line to "As the hugging and loving bedfellow." He titles the poem: first "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," then "Walt Whitman," and finally "Song of Myself.

Why? My own belief is that he was surprised that he was not greeted immediately as the poet/prophet/founder of a new American religion. Then the Civil War intervened, and put his beliefs through terrible trial. (He spent much of the war in a military hospital, tending to the wounded and watching over many who died of infections and fevers. In any case, Whitman was never again as bold and direct as he was in that 1855 edition. Yet he should have remembered his own claim:

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you.

When I was eighteen I loathed Whitman. At twenty-five I had a grudging respect for him. At thirty I began to like him. At thirty-five I wrote about him extensively. Now, at forty-five, I find myself reading him more often than any poet except Keats, and maybe Yeats. But if I am still reading poetry on my death-bed, I think the odds are good it will be Whitman.

Son of a bitch -- he was right!

Ebert: The more I read him, the more I believe he was a Good Soul. There is no system of belief which could not improve by reading him.

"It may seem depressing to many people, but the thought of living forever terrifies me."

The thought of being invincible terrifies me. The thought of being immortal... living forever if I want but also being able to choose when I go, being able to keep reading the newspapers each year, go for walks... I dunno, that sounds like a pretty good gig to me. I wouldn't pass that offer up. Of course, I'd have to read the fine print: will I develop Alzheimer's? Do I age and become a decomposing skeleton? Am I immortal but trapped in a bottomless pit for eternity? (Or some other painful catch.) If all those things were not included, I would sign that deal. Life's too interesting. When I go, I'll accept it just cause I have to, not cause I see it as part of any sort of lovely cycle. It sucks. And so it goes.

But then I'm still young... maybe someday my heart will be too broken to go on or something. Or just in too much pain. The aging process doesn't seem like much fun.

In reply to Bill Hays:

The people who you're talking about, the religious fanatics, believe in a god about as much as you do. Which is to say, not at all. Look at them more closely, look at the desperation in their eyes, hear the fear in their voices. Why else do you think they're so terrified of a dissenting opinion?

Atheists, when they look at religion, start from the atheist position. God does not exist

So they do like nutjob christians who start with the position that "God created the world in seven days" when they look at evolution? To me, there's not a lot of difference between beliefs when both sides use the same methods.

As for the people who do terrible things in the name of religion. Trust me, the desire to do terrible things comes first, the religion is just a useful scapegoat. It's like those parents who starved their baby to death, then said they were vegans when they got caught. Or like when a drunk husband comes home and beats his wife with a crowbar, then blames it on the booze. Or like when a teenaged boy kills a homeless man with a brick, then blames it on heavy metal music.

In fact, the more inhuman the act, the less the person tends to realize why they really did it. Because the real reason is hidden so deep in their subconscious that they'll never admit it to themselves. Not in a million years. "It's GOD'S law!" is a lot more pleasant to believe than "I enjoy hurting the innocent when someone else pisses me off because I'm too much of a coward to fight people who fight back."

The problem I have with Atheists (...and I'm not talking about you, so please don't take this personally...) isn't their position. I don't believe in God either. No, it's that so many of them seem like angry, dissapointed ex-believers whose goal is to punish and coerce those around them to Atheism as a way to get revenge on the priests and parents who got their hopes up as kids. Also, the fact that a lot of Atheists use the same methods as religious fanatics (bullying, shame, propaganda) to preach their ideals doesn't exactly help discredit my thoughts about them.

Pardon me for being way off-topic.

Thank you for the excellent review of one of the best films I've seen in years - "Winter's Bone". One nit though: I'm sure you intended to reference the Depression-era photographer "Walker Evans" but mistakenly cited the much more recent novelist "Walker Percy" instead.

No need to publish this note. I just wanted to bring the matter to your attention as I saw no place to respond on the Sun Times site.

FYI, I was extremely heartened that "Winter's Bone" had a nearly full house in the largest theater of our Pleasant Hill CA suburban art-plex at a full-price Saturday matinee. I love when an underdog film of such quality is able to find its audience.

Keep up the great work on the reviews. Yours are always the ones we turn to.

Best wishes,

David Wiegleb
Pleasant Hill, CA

Pardon for all the responses, but I just remembered one of the most eloquent summations of the problems faced by any of the religions which accept the Old Testament as canon ever put to film. This is from near the end of a British TV movie called 'God on Trial', and placed in the mouth of a Rabbi in Auschwitz, shortly after his arrival, reflecting on exactly what it is he has studied and learned of his God over the course of his life.

When I first saw it, it was running through my head the rest of the day. An amazing performance. If you haven't seen the movie yet, the rest is just as good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A5MM9XBGT8

Since becoming agnostic, I've often said that I preferred it when I believed in a god, because it meant believing in a magical afterlife.

Now I believe that when you die, you die, and on top of being scary, there's no magic to it at all. It's par for the course, I suppose, and I'm comfortable in what I believe now. But the idea of being reunited with the people I've loved and having the world's secrets revealed to me upon dying? That was comforting too.

Still, I've gone to church with my grandmother on a couple of occasions, for no other reason than to give her joy. It mattered more to her than it did to me, and since I remembered all the little Catholic rituals and responses, it was easy. I would see her so seldom that it seemed like a nice little gesture. And unlike Protestant services, ours only takes one hour. My grandmother would also use the opportunity to introduce me to her friends. "My granddaughter...from Montreal," she'd boast. The big city was a big deal in Sault Saint Marie. It was tantamount to having a college degree. All this was followed by breakfast at Muio's, where I'd meet some of the most colourful people the Sault had to offer.

That's the other thing that a church does: it creates a community. Anyone can call organized religion a mockery, a lie and the like, and they might be right. But to me, there are two kinds of Catholic churches: the one that belongs to the Vatican, and the one that belongs to its county. Before the advent of self-help, my grandmother settled every dilemma of her life by talking to her priest, and I can't say that he gave her bad advice, nor can I say that the advice was self-serving to either him or the church. (To quote one of my favourite French movies, Chouchou, "Before, you had confession, now you've got psychotherapy.")

Recently, one of my neighbours, an 80-year-old woman, told me she had been near death a couple of times in the last decade, and that propelled her to get out of the secular and get into sacred. "Dying is the most frightening thing," she said. "You want to believe that something is out there to give you a bit of peace."

When I die, I probably still won't believe in god, at least not with any certainty. But I will no doubt wish that I did.

Ebert: I was perfectly content before I was born, and have no doubt I will be the same after I die.

Off topic: You have read Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock, have you not?

Mr. Ebert:

A hypothetical question: When you die and meet God, and he turns out to be anthropomorphic, will you be relieved, or disappointed?

P.S.: Incidentally, I would contend that Greek (Ancient or Modern) is as a rich or richer source of more English words than Latin. Examples: hypothetical, anthropomorphic, deleterious, bibliophile, ophthalmologist, brachiate, anathema. Becoming fluent in Greek has aided my English studies and writing immeasurably.

To Mr. Richard Nanian: "I'm not Catholic, though I'm red-haired and originally from the Boston area (Malden, actually, like Mr. Panagapolous above), so I could pass for Irish." Thank you for your acknowledgment. ANY acknowledgment by ANYONE on Mr. Ebert's blogs is profoundly appreciated. However, my surname is spelled "Panagopoulos". Do not fret; I have encountered my last name in various permutations, so I have become accustomed to it. It ain't easy being Greek!:D

Response to Ebert: The theory of AA is also that one must ask for help from a Power Greater than Oneself. All alcoholics think they can control their own drinking by themselves, and if they are truly alcoholics they cannot.For me (emphasis on "me"), the crucial element there is humility. The Power need not be God or even religious in nature, but it must not be Oneself. For me personally, it matters not how you describe your Higher Power, but there must be one.

I am quite familiar with the 12 Step program, and the humility component is crucial to faith. There is one parameter for describing the Higher Power, as I am sure you know: "For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience."

"Loving Higher Power" restricts the description of the Higher Power, does it not. It implies personality, relationship and love. According to the AA Tradition at least, the Higher Power can't just be an abstract, indifferent force, let alone a God who "hates" us. Rather, the Higher Power must love us personally, or there is no point in recovery.

Further, I would argue that a personal, loving Higher Power is necessarily a historical being, because personal human relationships can only exist in time, in history.

Great comments on the whole. To your Greek Orthodox commentator (I am a "Greek Orthodox" priest who serves everything in English), I would offer my sympathy. If I had to listen to the liturgy in Ancient Greek from childhood, I probably would have dropped out too!

Ebert: AA has no requirement to believe in God as we commonly use the term.

"Holy God We Praise Thy Name": My favorite, too; makes me teary-eyed if I'm in a nostalgic mood--which is more frequent as years go by. (For Christmas, it's "Oh Holy Night": I like the imperative of "Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angels' voices.")

I'm always--what? impressed by? envious of? mystified by?--people who can say for certain they have found or lost their faith. I started in Catholic school in kindergarten, and finished with my undergrad degree at St. Joe's--where I was part of the honor guard for our guest of honor, Princess Grace of Monaco; could a Catholic cinephile ask for a better capstone? By the time I was a junior in high school I had made my way toward agnosticism, and gave myself a chance to feel a kind of freedom mixed with a new uncertainty. At St. Joe's in Philadelphia, everyone had to take 3 semesters of philosophy and 3 of Catholic theology. My friends were a mixture of believers (in history, biology and physics) and non-believers (math). We talked endlessly about Everything.

And then there was Phil Rosato, S.J., who taught Theology of the Spirit. Every class would begin the same way: a clean blackboard, Dr. Rosato, young and, as I recall him, broad-shouldered, smiling in black. By the end, the board was covered in what can best be described as semi-automatic writing, piled all over itself in the course of an hour, as ecstatic as the cured and the risen. And there would Phil stand, streaked in chalk, all but panting, having summoned up the Spirit once more.

To this day, going on 35 years later, that image remains with me. A part of me is still that junior in high school, while another wants to live in a cloud of holy chalk dust, building Jacob's ladder. Again, I don't think I could ever say I do or do not believe absolutely. The greatest human quality lies in our ability to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously in our infinitely complex brains. At its worst, this ability leads to whited sepulchers, hypocrites who drag us down to smoke and ruin. At its best, the surrender to love, to "the faith that looks through death" (and to quantum mechanics).

I prefer this middle space, even though it is sometimes a shadowland. At least I can see both sides from here.

p.s. Sorry for going on; your writing inspires fits, like flashing lights or a visitation. Oh, you former altar boys: between you and Scorsese and Michael Moore and Springsteen, I'm exhausted.

Ebert: "It may seem depressing to many people, but the thought of living forever terrifies me."

Therefore, you do not fear your non-existence?

I disagree. Again, as Mel Brooks intoned, "Everything comes from fear.." If I may embellish upon that, "Everything comes from fear of non-existence." Even people who commit suicide do not want to not exist, but to escape to an existence with no pain. Can you even conceive of non-existence at all? I cannot.

Consider a scientific analogy: when water evaporates, it does not disappear. It is converted to water vapor, which reconstitutes itself in another place. If inanimate water can do that, imagine of what the human spirit, or soul, or animus is capable.

Ebert: I don't find that a convincing analogy.

You know, come to think of it, now that you show us the pictures, you DO look like the kid in "Up!"

Ebert: That would be an improvement. I'm often told I'm a dead ringer for Carl Fredricksen.

Often when somebody finds out I am an atheist, I get asked "When did you stop believing?" or variations thereof.

Truth be told, I never started. Church was something to endure on Sunday mornings with Mom (Dad stayed home in bed enjoying his day of rest) until I finally realized, at about age 8 or 9, I didn't have to sit through all this silliness (though I liked the singing). Mom went to church for a little while after that, but she eventually decided that having horrible Christian-music CDs in the car stereo was just as good.

On my Sunday morning walks (which I find are more spiritually and intellectually stimulating than any church service) I'm always taken aback by how full the parking lots of all the churches are. To me, atheism is the default human state, but all those cars tell me that I am still in the minority, must be interrogated regularly as to why I "chose" the path I did.

My favourite question to be asked: "How can you NOT believe in God?"

Being the smartass that I am, I reply "Like this." and stand perfectly still, content with existing.

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing. I've always appreciated your conversance with the Catholic experience. Many eschew talk of religion, but whether we subscribe to a religion or not, it still plays an important role in society and in the arts, both in the past and in the present. Ignoring it altogether leaves an unfortunate void in our understanding of life and of each other. Your personal viewpoint has provided me with much food for thought.

Forgive me, Roger, for I have

nailed you to a cross, of sorts.

It's because I really think you are a wise man, a thinker, a learner.

But in regard to your chosen profession, which is about a most influential art in our country, you have lagged. The country needs you, though most people don't know it yet. And that's why they need you.

You haven't responded to my other appeals. So, I've made a tentative conclusion about you, which I'm still keeping mostly suppressed -- publicly.

Please read my open letter to you. You may even enjoy it. (Link on my name.)

Ebert: Hoo, boy. Maybe you could reply to people calling me a leftist socialist Marxist liar, etc.

Roger,

I'm a young Anglican seminarian and I see a lot of myself in your story. Similarly, my mother always wanted me to be "in the ministry" or "a man of God" (as it would have been said in my non-denominational setting). I had my own crisis of faith in my young teens over the same issue--the discovery of sexuality meant a great deal of guilt and confusion. I would be remiss to pretend that, as an unmarried seminarian, sex or "impurity" does not still present that problem.

I plumbed the depths, at least internally, of atheistic apostasy during the first few years of high school. The answer to my doubts--if not the pat solution to all my problems--came through a mystical experience I had in my late teens which, categorically, cannot be admitted as evidence in a public form such as this. But I do want to say that I have lived with the tension of mind, body and spirit ever since and find that part of spirituality is living with that tension. I have recently been reading the Catholic psychologist-monk Henri Nouwen on subjects along these lines and have found his words on the persistence of life's problems comforting.

Interesting that some of the later comments refer to William Lane Craig. I heard him speak at a forum that sounds similar to what Bill Hays refers to in his post. I remember him being mostly self-consistent, except that all his points were moot as argument because they presupposed a Christian framework. Any Philosophy 101 student could have seen through his ruse.

It's at the level of framework, then, that I find the most interesting discussions take place. Christian books like The Universe Next Door (Sire) or Simply Christian (Wright) or, more famously, a secular book like The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn) all point out the inescapably subjective nature of our knowledge. As in Pan's Labyrinth--another film whose visual style bears the deep marks of its director's Catholic upbringing, and one of my favorites--it's difficult to say whether the stories we tell ourselves to invest our world with meaning are "true" or merely inventions born of the necessity to not be insane. Rationally I find it hard to acknowledge anything but the latter. Rational people are free to call mystical convictions such as my own a form of insanity, but it doesn't mean that they are not also beholden to some contrivance of meaning for their own psychological well being. Please forgive me a little cynicism on these points.

But if I approach God or Jesus phenomenologically--here is an event which happened, that I have somehow experienced trans-rationally--then I can speak of transcendent truth within an existential framework. I hardly expect someone else--especially via internet message board--to put any stock in my knowledge of transcendence, yet it does not lose its potency (to me) as a result. And if I place truth within an existential framework, then I can sidestep these treacherous dichotomies of science and faith and breathe the fresh air of freedom from such embattled controversies such as that of creation vs. evolution. I imagine some kind of theistic evolution possible; ironically, Arthur Clarke's 2001 gave me the idea by suggesting an evolutionary process punctuated by alien influence--such a fantasy might easily substitute God and come up with similar results.

All this to say that I would like to see the public conversation move past Bush era polarizations and towards something more gently post-modern. I think, however, that both the Pat Robertson's and the Richard Dawkins' of the world might find such a proposition anathema.

Ebert: I experience a sense of transcendence, rarely, and it is real to me. I interpret it more as transcending from the mundane rather than transcending toward the divine.

I suggest reading or finding a review of Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Belknap-Harvard, 2003). Koonz outlines National Socialism's intentional and systematic manipulation of German piety (both Protestant and Catholic) to serve Nazi ends.

The following comes from a paper I wrote for an undergraduate history seminar; several of the quotes are from The Nazi Conscience.

Hitler had no respect for Christianity beyond the institutional stability of the Vatican. “Taken to its logical extreme,” he said, “Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.”[1] Ever politically keen, however, he understood that ninety percent of his subjects were Christians. Before 1939, “Hitler virtually never mentioned three controversial themes that shaped his political agenda: crude anti-Semitism, contempt for Christianity, and preparation for a war of conquest.”[2] Instead of expressing his contempt, he spoke of “Positive Christianity,” meaning “something vague and undoctrinal… love of neighbor, social welfare, and so on… It was useful to put it in, because it committed nobody to anything and at the same time sounded attractive to all who were against atheism, blasphemy, sacrilege, and loose morals.”[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it this way: “The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts…”[4] It was in this way that Hitler subverted Germany’s moral world with “The National Socialist gospel… of manipulability and manipulation.”[5]

[1] Koonz, 381.
[2] Ibid., 79.
[3] Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Religion and Resistance to Nazism (Princeton, New Jersey: Center of International Studies, 1971), 3.
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. Reginald Fuller (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1967). [Sorry, no page #]
[5] von Oppen, 68.

Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist on June 23, 2010 9:30 AM said:
then later, I found out about a nun who was so unhappy with being a nun, so she left the convent, quit Catholicism, and became a porn star.

Everyone knows nuns make the best porn stars. Link please.

I was raised Catholic. Turning out to be gay put a stop to that. It's one thing to grow out of religion, but quite another to find out that your very nature is anathema to religion. But I didn't have a severe religious crisis. I can't even remember a point when I believed the literal truth of the Catholic faith, even in childhood. I do remember anticipating the transubstantiation during my First Communion and then being a bit nonplussed when the Body and Blood still looked and tasted like bread and wine. I wouldn't call that a loss of faith exactly, but that might have been a tipping point where I starting thinking of the Catholic rituals more as metaphor than a path to heaven.

Still, it always nagged me in the back of my mind, "Well, what if I really am going to hell?" And I had some anxiety buried under the surface for a while, but that too has sloughed off. I now consider myself agnostic, with atheist leanings. I don't know what's in the Great Beyond, but find fascination in the speculation of it, and believe that if God sends a kind, goodhearted person to hell for believing in, say, Buddha, Krishna, Allah, or nothing at all, then He's not really worth spending eternity with. Live a reasonably good life, do well by others, and if there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow called heaven, that should be enough.

The biggest problem with Christianity is not what its followers believe per se, but that they don't realize how those beliefs colour their perceptions of other issues, ranging from the environment to marriage and racism and their own personal behaviour.

For example, creationism is not just harmful because it promotes ignorance, but because it tells people that we have no kinship with animals and the environment. While science (not to mention many non-Christian religions) makes it clear that we share a lineage with animals, Christianity tells us that we do not, and that they exist only for our use.

For another example, Tara Parker-Pope's book "For Better" mentions studies which have shown that married couples need to have roughly 5 positive interactions for every negative interaction, in order to be happy over the long term. This is useful information, but it is also perfectly predictable if you accept that Pavlovian conditioning response affects humans just as well as it affects dogs: a natural conclusion if you recognize that we share kinship with dogs and that our brains work basically the same way. Basically, marriages thrive when the participants are conditioned to find them comforting and positive, by constant repetition of comforting and positive experiences with their spouses. All of this makes sense if you admit that we have animal brains, rather than being magical creatures of light which only inhabit a clumsy physical body.

Then there's racism: a perfectly natural outgrowth of our evolutionary past as tribal primitives, in which small-group survival strategies (including hostility toward outsiders) would have been naturally selected. This means that we are ALL racist by nature, and that education is required in order to combat this tendency. This stands in contrast to the Christian notion that racism comes from Satan: a very childish way of approaching it and one which does not lead to constructive solutions.

And of course, there's The Big One: abortion. Christianity teaches us that there's some magical thing called a "soul" which enters the body at some moment, and of course, they assume that moment to be the moment of conception. Biology, on the other hand, teaches that human consciousness comes from the physical brain, so until the brain develops to a fairly high level, you do not have a person. This debate, which falls along religious lines, affects billions of people: access to abortion is a major public health issue in the developing world.

I wouldn't mind Catholicism if it didn't affect peoples' approaches to other issues. Even people who abandon the church tend to retain some of these basic mindsets. As some have noted, Americans who are raised in a Christian tradition with a "personal relationship with God" tend to be completely befuddled by eastern cultural morality, which emphasizes duty to society rather than personal salvation. Americans treat "individualism" as an unvarnished good, and "collectivism" as some sort of evil. They cannot grasp the concept of cultures which do not share this basic assumption. This only leads to more misunderstandings and confusion whenever venturing outside one's own cultural bubble.

Ebert: To be fair, most Christians do not believe in Creationism.

Thought you'd get away with it, didn't you?

Thought you were writing a warm, fuzzy, philosophical piece, and we'd get all misty, maybe a little sad, link up the past and present .. something like that?

Welcome back to HOLY WARS!

I think I got as personal as I care to in the earlier comment, so consider this a break from the serious.
*Uh-oh, here he goes with his dumb anecdotes*

-- From Stiller & Meara:
Hershey Horowitz: Want to have a hamburger with me on Friday?
Mary Elizabeth Doyle:Not a hamburger, sorry.
Hershey: I thought Catholics were allowed to do that now.
Mary Elizabeth: Not in our family. We're Orthodox.

-- William DeAndrea was a mystery writer who found himself dying of cancer at age 44.
He was what we call a "lapsed Catholic".
On his deathbed, he told his devout mother that she could have a funeral Mass for him, but only if she promised that the opening hymn would be "Leader Of The Pack".
This story comes from DeAndrea's widow, who did not mention whether his mother honored that request.

-- I recall mentioning in an earlier post that quite a few prominent people were accorded full-scale Catholic Requiem Masses (They're called something different nowadays, I can't remember what), despite not being known for their rigorous observance of RC doctrine.
My examples included Frank Sinatra, Merv Griffin, Sonny Bono, Harry Caray, Ed McMahon, Uncle Bobby Collins, and just recently Dennis Hopper.
Fair warning, Roger: if Andy Greeley outlives you, he'll probably sneak a Mass of the Resurrection (just remembered the new name) in there for you, sort of a spiritual CYA.

-- By the way, how is Fr. Greeley lately? I really miss his weekly column, especially in light of so many recent events that, as Charlie Chan used to say, "have permitted themselves the luxury of occurring."

-- With regard to the reference to the Third Fatima letter above:
Instead of providing a link, you put in a URL.
As I once complained in an earlier post, these things just look to me like comic-book profanity. This one is no different (is that a lower-case 'l' or an upper-case 'I'?).
Please don't bother sending me detailed instructions that I have slim to no chances of comprehending.

-- Turning serious at the end here, I feel a need to take a few last licks at America's self-anointed Grand Inquisitors, L. Brent Bozell and William Donohue.
If either of these unworthy gentlemen really wants to know why so many people in this country are down on Christianity, they need look no farther than their own mirrors.
I'll let it go at that.

Reply to Bill Hays:
"Isn't the best explanation for the stories of Jesus being able to cast out demons is that some of Jesus' friends PRETENDED to be possessed, so Jesus could make a rep for himself as an exorcist?"

I have to admit, I don't understand your question either. Actually, the best explanation is that the gospel writers made all that shit up about Jesus exorcising demons. I know that doesn't fit in with your picture of Jesus as a con-artist, but it's the likelier scenario. Most of the miraculous stuff is probably a way of the writers buffing and shining Jesus' reputation postmortem, trying to make him more godlike.
Regardless, I don't see how this "destroys" your debate opponent. Of course I don't pretend to know anything about your debate and I'm assuming you didn't debate a fundamentalist, but I would imagine that most non-fundie types think the question of whether he really did or did not exorcise demons is not really the key to their salvation.
The resurrection, on the other hand, is a trickier subject for your average Lukewarmer. For many, that's the dealbreaker.

There is a wonderful Langston Hughes "essay," which reads more like a short story, called "Salvation" which discusses the subject of children and "faith." He talks about being hauled to church on Sundays where he was told he would "see" Jesus and be saved, or...words to that effect. And he talks of the guilt he felt when this just never happened. He felt he would die a sinner, and...all that. As the child of Baptists, whose godfather built one of the more popular black churches on the Southside back in the 50s, I felt the same pressure. And the same confusion. The sistahs would dance and scream and faint in a ritual more akin to Vodun than Christianity, and I would sit there wondering what in the world was wrong with me. I didn't feel--or SEE--anything.

Later, through travel and living with cultures quite different than those of my youth, I began to piece together a kind of belief system which included the teachings of many...but did not resemble anything like a "religion." I think you know what I'm getting at there. There are things I've seen...and things I haven't. What I've witnessed has given me a kind of faith...but I will never be like my mother who was absolutely certain that there was a Heaven to which she wanted to go.

Twain once wrote that he didn't want to wind up in Heaven because he couldn't stand most of the people he knew who were supposed to be going there. I'm not quite that cynical...but then, I don't believe there is one, so I guess I'm safe!

Still thinking this through, of course. And your take on the matter will add even more to ponder!

Ebert: I once started idly speculating on who we might meet in heaven, and the problems that could arise:

http://j.mp/chlBSQ

I was raised as a Protestant. Church for me was 3+ hours (from 9 AM to however late after 12 PM the sermon ran) of tedium Sunday morning plus another half-hour at the "Youth Service" from 7 to 7:30 PM Sunday night.

It may be different for different people, or I may not be recalling everything correctly, but here's what I think religion did for me morally:

1) It conditioned me that you had to be in Church every Sunday, or you were a bad person. So I found a church to go to at college my first week there, and again when I graduated from college and moved to the city where the company that hired me was located. But I never enjoyed going and went less and less and I think by now that conditioning has worn off and the guilt is gone.

2) It conditioned me that you had to say a "blessing" before each meal. In my house, kids were taught, "GodBlessThisFoodWhichNowWeTakeToDoUsGoodForJesusSakeAmen," at about that speed. I've gotten over that one too.

3) We had to say a prayer at neight before going to sleep: "NowILayMeDownToSleep, IPrayTheLordMySoulToKeep," et cetera. That one is still with me. It is still hard to get to sleep without it.

Most of the moral instruction which stuck with me, I got from my parents and teachers at a young age, in the same way that you would train a puppy, and with as much reference to religion. That is, I was taught not to lie or take things that didn't belong to me, not because God or Jesus wouldn't like it, but because my parents or teachers wouldn't like it.

Later on I got more training from my peers at school: don't be a snitch, stand up to bullies, et cetera.

Last but not least, my first two managers in my career taught me how to be a professional on the job. How to answer the phone professionally, to get work done on time, not to make excuses, and so on. Here's one of dozens of little tips my first engineering manager gave me: every now and then (not often), you might have to leave work before 5 PM (work was 8 AM to 5 PM, I've never had one of those "9 to 5" jobs I've heard about) because of a dentist's appointment or something. Don't leave at quarter to 5 when everybody will notice you and give the office a bad name. Leave at 4 PM, like you're going to a meeting. (He didn't bother to say "and make up the time another day", we usually worked from 7 AM to 5:30 or 6 PM, often more.)

A lot of people argue that religion, even if empirically false, serves a good and necessary purpose to instill morality. I don't get it myself. I think I got my morality from people, not from religion. (Not from singing "Zachias was a wee little man," in Sunday School, nor from listening to sermons.)

Of course others say that it provides a source of social bonds. I can't argue with that, at least not with people who are active in their churches. Sitting in a pew for hours never did anything for my social bonds though. Sports teams and Bridge games worked better for me.

Maybe Catholicism would have been an improvement that way. On the other hand, I don't like fish, and I when I grew up that was what Catholics had to eat on Fridays.

Michael Wong on June 24, 2010 11:34 AM: "Biology ... teaches that human consciousness comes from the physical brain, so until the brain develops to a fairly high level, you do not have a person."

Michael, your comment reminded me of a Philip K. Dick story in which one is legally not a person until one can do algebra. The post-partum abortion age is 13.

I'm not trying to start anything--but in this case I do know Dick about life. [insert winking emoticon HERE]

Dick Durbin commented on this post on June 23rd at 7:07 AM. Is that THE senator, Dick Durbin? The mind boggles. How would it feel, Roger, to have powerful members of the Washington elite comment on your blog?

Ebert: I have no reason to believe it was the senator. I believe Sen. Durbin to be one of the greats.

Roger,

I've silently followed your writing for almost three years now, always wishing to comment but lacking the drive. This topic, however, goes even further than addressed here. I feel obligated to respond. The Vatican calmed down and made people only partially guilt-ridden, but the protestants never stopped upping the ante; particularly those "Born Again" in their own eyes. I was raised in the church of Elim, a place filled with self-delusion, showmanship, and outright lies.

"Liberal" education has found its way into many of the college generation. It's a shame we can't agree to call it what it is: Humanism. Many conservative Christians decry this as a tragedy, failing to realize that society has reached a level of education that allows cultural and religious relativity to transcend theory and become observable facts.

The millstone of Catholicism has changed weight under nearly ever Pope. Generally, however, sermons are weightier than scripture; a tradition that even the Vulgate couldn't stop.

Many branches of Protestantism, however, advocate heavily that every Christian read their Bibles regularly in search of God's truth. The end result of this is sad. My Parents, as conservative members of their generation, are unwilling to consider any logical examination of the text.

This leads to a paradoxical life in which they read scripture like drones, forgetting what happened in Genesis 1 before they read Genesis 2; too bad, since they directly contradict one another. George Orwell might help here. "Doublethink" is easily observed.

Through the seventies, Catholic children largely behaved for fear of Hell on the basis of mortal sins. Today, Born Again christian denominations, and the educational institutes they fund, create one of two general prototypes; One without Humanistic utility, and one with neurosis. "Relative" is a curse word in the baptist middle school from which I graduated. After 2 years of College at Calvin College (Named for the exclusionary genius John Calvin), I've yet to meet someone who can reconcile their core doctrine of predestination to a benevolent concept of god in any real (read: logical) way.

The current problem, at least as I see it, is that the Christian who reads without examination is a failure even by Aristotle's ancient standards. On the other hand those who apply logic and critical thinking, in my own personal experience, are able to step back from the literal lie; but they remain saddled with a lifelong subconscious tendency to categorize things in absolutes. White is White, Black is Black, and gray doesn't exist.

This is the modern Protestant's version of the commonly referenced concept of "Catholic guilt" that has gone largely undescribed.

Finally, I hate to reconnect this to the world of cinema with a line from a movie of such questionable quality; but I have to believe the younger Obi-Wan when he quips, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

-Phil

What do you call it when you pray, "Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen," before the guy's even dead?

A premature ejaculation.

(An oldie but a goodie for da altar boys.)

I had a very similar religious connection-only in Canada. I went the altarboy route and never experienced any sexual abuse from the many clergy that live in the rectory. In fact, I even worked in the rectory by answering the door and phone at off hours. Religion seems to be a potluck or birthright type invention. I would love to know the stats on those persons who truly changed or converted from their birth religion to another. I'm sure the most common reason is a marriage that the conversion is to appease family which is bs completely. Also, your religious awakening to avoid the priesthood due to your own epiphany concerning evolution or even common sense. The religious fairytales that abound are laughable. Anyhow, you could have been born into a Hindu family and you wouldn't even be writing this blog. That's how out of touch with reality most religions should be treated. Do you ever wonder if priests regret their call to religious duty? The wonderful film (I believe its Australian) "The Devil's Playground" certainly addresses the confusion by the different age levels of the priesthood. I especially liked the middleaged priest who everyone revered as the perfect priest got his jollies on his weekly visits to the YM-YWCA and caught glimpses of the women in various undressing modes through a small sliver of doorway. I had gone to New York to study and was returning to visit family one summer and lo and behold, at the JFK terminal, I ran into Father C. who was on his way back to Halifax, Canada. I was a graduate student and we were able to sit together on the flight. His first question was "How is your faith?" My response was "I grew up"
This answer resulted in tears swelling in his eyes which deeply affected me. I couldn't tell whether the tears were for my loss of faith or his being stuck in it. In any case, as we exited the plane to go our separate ways, he handed me a business card with the name of a weekend retreat he was hosting. I had quite a laugh over this. This is part of the Catholic faith. In your case, you didn't want to disappoint your mother and the faith itself lays such a heavy guilt trip as well.

Ebert: Actually, I believe I could have grown up in a Hindu family and be writing this blog. Innumerable great writers, poets, scientists and philosophers grew up in Hindu families. Even some great bloggers.

Roger, thanks for sharing your heart. What do you think about those who believe that God allowed humankind the ability to choose to go against his will, just so that he can show them how merciful he is? They believe that God's primary purpose in our lives is to show grace to us, and if we were perfect then we wouldn't require grace.

I don't think Hitler was happy, he seemed clinically depressed. Stalin seemed like the happy evil dictator to me, not Adolf who lived a world of self-pity.

On the topic of Catholic directors ...

I once did an informal and highly subjective survey of my own favorite director's religious beliefs/upbringing. I found that an overwhelming majority of my favorite directors did not have their religion listed on Wikipedia or on a quick Google search. Of the filmmakers whose religions are easily found, roughly a third of them were Jewish, a third were Catholic, and the remaining third were made up of mostly Protestants and agnostics/atheists.

Growing up in a Mormon home, I often felt myself struggling to believe--actually believe--any of what I was taught in church. When I turned seventeen I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which caused a massive paradigm-shift for me; I realized that I should consider my feelings and thoughts as having true value, whereas any doubts or unanswered questions (which I did earnestly seek answers for) had previously been brushed aside as symptoms of my imperfect faith. At nineteen I became an atheist and have been firm in my convictions ever since (I'm twenty-five now). Oh...and Ulysses caused an even more paramount change, but that's another story.

I truly weep for Ebert. I don't really care if he became a priest or not, but to ditch Jesus for his new religion, movies, is to ditch the truth for what are almost always completely made up stories i.e. lies. So he believes the Bible is made up and then switches to spending all his time watching and writing about stories that are definitely made up? I almost pity him.

Ebert: The Bible was written by men. Some of it is perfectly factual.

To Mr. Panagopoulous -- My apologies for misspelling your name. Being half-Armenian, I really should be more careful, given that the two cultures have about an eighth of a degree of separation. (You baklava, me paklava, you kataif with nuts, me kataif with cream, and a hell of a lot of grape leaves and lamb in both cases.)

litdreamer wrote: Also, you mentioned Whitman, but I always think of Dickinson when it comes to religion

I think of her as well. In fact, I used to teach a course on Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson because I think the most interesting approach to reading them is to read them together.

Emerson comes out of English Romanticism. His "Nature" essay is a clear response to Wordsworth, for example, and his version of faith is simply one particularly brilliant articulation of pantheism. The Oversoul is Emerson's term for the universal, non-anthropomorphic spirit the Romantics sought in Nature.

Whitman comes along and, as I post I wrote last night (which hasn't appeared yet but which I assume will before this one does) explains, takes Emerson's ideas of the poet/prophet of a new American religion and consciously attempts to fulfill them. After reading Leaves of Grass, Emerson writes to Whitman and virtually proclaims that Whitman is the poet he was anticipating -- though later, he has second thoughts. Whitman's sexuality as presented in his poems is the prototype of the polymorphously perverse and seemed to freak poor Waldo out.

Meanwhile, Dickinson read Emerson studiously. She may even have attended his lecture in Amherst; when he visited he stayed at the house of her brother, Austin, which is literally a stone's throw from her own (her family's, that is). She uses Emersonian terminology and imagery, such as using the word "Circumference" as a substitute for God, because Emerson had quoted Augustine's definition of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Now, what's fascinating is that Whitman and Dickinson both take Emerson absolutely seriously, but they end up drawing diametrically opposed conclusions from him. Whitman, as I've mentioned, says in effect that God is an infinite soul, his own soul is a portion of that infinite, any portion of the infinite is also infinite, and so God is his equal. When he dies his soul will simply merge with God/the universe on equal terms. Indeed, the boundaries of the self for Whitman are not only permeable, they are illusory. Also, because God is universal and universally good, literally everything is beautiful -- men, women, the body, the soul, children, nature, sex, life, death, everything. He insists that even the dead body of a suicide is beautiful. When the Civil War comes, he starts out thinking it will be a good thing because it will expurgate America's one flaw, slavery. The war changes him, and makes him change his poetry too. And though it leads to what is probably his most perfect poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," which is not the same thing as his greatest poem (which remains the 1855 poem that later became "Song of Myself"), it undercuts his confidence in his own vision.

Dickinson also says God is an infinite soul, her soul is a portion of that infinite, and she too will merge with God upon death. But she imagines two problems. First, she sees herself as infinitely small next to the idea of the Oversoul. How can she merge with a universal spirit and retain any part of her own identity? For Dickinson, soul and brain are virtually indistinguishable (she loves the word brain, mostly avoids the word mind ). She is her intellect, her consciousness, and that would have to be overwhelmed in any merging with the divine. Then, too, she defines herself in terms of pain. She is her pain, and she is jealously competitive about it. She questions whether anyone can hurt as much as she does. Now, if her pain is that essential to her identity, eternal existence in the form of a merging with the Oversoul offers only two possibilities: her pain remains, in which case any eternity is an eternity of suffering, or her pain is relieved, in which case she has lost what defines her as an individual consciousness. Plus, she read the Old Testament and thinks God is something of a bully.

When Austin's wife Susan insisted the Dickinson family join the church (they had never been members), Dickinson refused, and the strain this put on her relationship with Susan probably had something to do with her increasing isolation. Susan was not, apparently, motivated by strong faith but by a desire to re-establish the family's social pre-eminence Dickinson's ancestors had been one of the founding families of Amherst several generations back, her grandfather had helped found Amherst College, which was probably the best, most progressive college in the country during Emily Dickinson's youth (and she attended a high school run by the college where all the young, most brilliant college faculty taught), but he had spent them into near-bankruptcy and Dickinson's father had had to work hard for years to recover the family fortune and re-purchase the house in which Dickinson had been born but which had had to be sold.

Dickinson's world of experience was much different from Whitman's, of course. She saw death from a much earlier age. She served vigils, as most young girls did then. She lost people close to her, starting with her favorite teacher who died unexpectedly quite young. She may have had a lover at some point (evidence in the poems is there, but we can't even be sure who it was), but Whitman was apparently -- despite his claim late in life of having fathered a whole brood of children -- spending most of his time with the same kind of young men that would have appealed to Auden or Jean Genet, i.e. the kind known as "rough trade." She also lived through the Civil War, and in fact those were her most prolific years, yet it forms no part of her subject matter, at least not overtly.

The most peculiar thing is that these two poets, inarguably the greatest the U.S. had produced to that time, and maybe still, were contemporaries. They both took Emerson as their inspiration. Whitman met Emerson and Dickinson may have. Yet they were almost completely unaware of one another. Dickinson's poems, with the exception of a few printed in local papers without her permission, did not begin to appear until after her death and within a few years of Whitman's. Dickinson, on the other hand, could have read Whitman's poems, but apparently she had no desire to because she was told they were obscene. And even if she had, their style is so different from hers -- her work is tightly compacted, his expansive; she operates by exclusion, he by inclusion; hers has the purity of math or a geometric proof, while his is intoxicating and dreamlike -- I doubt very much she'd have read him for long.

That a country's two greatest poets can be contemporaries, can take their inspiration from the same philosopher, and yet write without any sort of cross-pollination is a unique circumstance as far as I know.

Ebert: I took a course with the great Sherman Paul on the Organic Tradition in American Literature: Whitman, Emerson, Louis Sullivan, Randolph Bourne and some Dickinson. The thing about Emily is, it's all right there. It may be deep as the ocean, but seems perfectly clear.

Reply to: Ebert: Atheism is your fundamentalist religion.

ME: Another Defense Mechanism.

Ebert: Exactly what is it a defense mechanism against?

If you apply a LABEL, then you can dismiss the person. for example

"Don't listen to him, he's a racist."

"Don't listen to him, he's a Fundamentalist."

"Don't listen to him, he's a Muslim."

"Don't listen to him, he's been possessed by Satan."

when you use a label... when you place a label on the person who asks a question or represents a position, it relieves you of having to actually THINK about what they're saying.

(2) I really want to give Saad El-Asha a serious answer. Maybe a better one than I posted.

Reply to: What seems to be a quandary here, is if I'm asked about my creed, I have to declare (Because I can never tell a lie) that I don't believe in Islam, and that, eventually, will get my head eradicated, for converters should be decapitated...Now, put yourself in my shoes and tell me what shall I do in a place that forbids almost everything .

I wonder if cutting off the head of apostates, Muslims who leave Islam for another religion, would count as a Defense Mechanism?

Instead of thinking about the reasons why a close friend leaves Islam, you get to attend their funeral instead.

If you're a citizen of a country with an islamic government, the moral and ethical position is to get rid of the government and install a new one.

The United States did that. We had to fight a war, where lots of good men died, but we got rid of the King.

I don't see a less drastic solution.

A great blog here.....it makes me so thankful that I am a Authentic Catholic with faith. Faith in God, belief in what the Church teaches, belief in a God who created all of us. We are fallible and that is why there have been some mistakes-- even Jesus himself chose Judas as a friend. My family was all raised with the traditions mentioned above. Some have become lazy and stopped attending, some have become too smart-- they read too much! My father always attended Mass and I find interesting that this is a stong point for children's faith as my husband attends too (and carries a Rosary).
Of one thing I am sure-- the killing of children is wrong wheter it happens outside the uterus or in it. The Catholic Church almost stands alone in defense of Life. So many bright people on this blog...what do they need to understand this great tragedy? Maybe pictures.. so go to 1000 abortion pictures . com. Anyway that comes first in my life and we can move onto discussion of other things from there.. they are not as important. When I die I will not meet my creator and say I supported destruction.
I am happy to be in the Catholic Church with all its faults.

"I didn't believe then, and don't believe now, that it is easy to subscribe to the teachings of the church and not consider yourself a liberal."

And that is why conservatives are re-writing/-interpreting the Bible to suit their world-view, just as they did with the text books, instead of adjusting their world-view to accommodate reality (or the Bible).

This piece raises a few points in my mind. At the forefront is *not* the question of faith, but the innate desire we often have to fulfill our parents' dreams for us.

I don't know too many Muslim parents of my parents' generation who hoped that their children would become Islamic scholars. But, the overwhelming majority did, however, push their children toward a career in healthcare. And, there are many of us who did not take that route because, it just wasn't for us. And, in the years since making those choices, we still think about it, from the perspective of fulfilling our parents' aspirations. I still sometimes think I should have gone to med school. But, we can't live our lives according to those ideas.

There are many parents who put their kids through Hafiz school -- to memorize the Qur'an -- perhaps with afterlife hopes similar to the hopes of a mother hoping her son becomes a priest. This analogy might be the closest. Hafiz school is typically 1-3 years, and kids are often sent when they are young. In environments where there is less Islamic literacy, a Hafiz might take on a clergy-type role, even though the only skill is memorization (often phonetic) of the Qur'an.

Having said that, I don't know what it means to "lose faith." That's what I'm wrestling with. Obviously, two definitions are prominent. One is that you just don't "buy" the system being presented to you. The other is that you trusted the system, and it hasn't fulfilled your trust. But, I suspect it's something much deeper than either of these.

Likewise, when people ask me if I'm religious, I don't know the answer. Naturally, because of my rhetoric and activities, many assume that I am. I've embraced an ethos, not a checklist.

Insightful and beautifully written, as usual. I get so tired of the shallow debates on religion that usually take place in these fora -- this piece is a welcome break. I don't think any answer regarding religion comes easily to anyone with a brain. The Medieval mystics, right up to the modern day saints like Mother Theresa all struggled with gripping feelings of doubt. As a Catholic born into a strongly Irish-American Catholic family, I've certainly experienced the fluctuations between faith and doubt. I never felt I had the luxury to fall away like you did though... I fall away periodically, but perhaps I can't live with the uncertainty, and I'm always drawn back to prayer in quiet moments. I'm going to be honest -- I think most Catholics these days are self-righteous lemmings who parrot the political teachings of the church and become infatuated over political questions on sexuality and abortion at the expense of the more important spiritual side. I still consider myself a Catholic, but I wish that the church were full of more people like you and fewer who seem so disgustingly self-righteous.

Fascinating!
A common theme for most of these comments...I WILL NOT SERVE! The freedom to choose to love God or not love God is the same freedom that allows the passion of pride to establish itself firmly in ones mind. Pride with out grace is stronger than the will.

Thanks for all the examples so perfectly rationalized for my youth group to read and understand.

P.S. Remember, eternity is a long time...

>Emily Dickinson

Found this most interesting article on Emily's mid life romance with her father's best friend.

Google: Emily's secret love-The Boston Globe

Just a note before I read the rest. I have long observed that Bill Hays usually begins by "bashing all religion," then focuses in on his central job, demonizing muslims to make a case for war against muslim-culture dominated countries. He's been doing this since day one. That's a methodical procedure. It's not a civilian with an opinion or, as he always appears to be, a paranoid obsessive.

You want to watch how the Pentagon program internet works, instituted September '01, just keep watching this guy. Don't trouble yourselves to argue. Just count your frigging tax dollars.

Roger, thanks for the post. I didn’t grow up in the Catholic faith, but I think my upbringing in my protestant church means similar things to me. I lost my faith when I was about 14, somewhere between Marc Twain and Darwin. I became a smartass, and religion became a fun target, but the sincerity in members of my family express softened my criticism. Recently, I overheard my four year old sister chatting about how God had created the tree she was playing with, and it made me happy to know she was content.

"Why I Am Not A Christian", Bertrand Russell's quintessential refutation of the Abrahamic religions, mentions a similar natural trajectory towards disbelief:

Audio, four parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFDTCy8Dwm0

Text:

http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

When I was 14, I was walking to a friends house near dusk. The swallows were swooping over the park as the sun set. I remember standing there watching the birds and the entire world made sense for that instant. Everything seemed to freeze. Then the moment passed and I went on with my life.

Spiritual moments like that have strengthened me more over the years, even when the world has seemed a dark and uncaring place. When I was 28 and held my dead son in my arms the opposite was true. Nothing made sense and I felt like there was no way I could go on.

But, the next morning, leaving the hospital in the muggy Texas air the swallows and the flycatchers dipped and dived. The mist rose. The darkness faded a little.

Nanian said:

//No logical argument can start from zero, nor can it be based solely on factual observation because those observations themselves depend on certain assumptions.//

Establishing that the self exists--"cogito, ergo sum", though "I am" is sufficient--establishes the dichotomy between the self and the non-self, which subsequently establishes the reality of the self: the self and the non-self, combined; from there, it's a matter of examining that reality via the hypothetico-deductive model. Questioning the self instantiates the self, thereby providing the requisite consequence for the theory that the self exists; that is, instantiation simultaneously formulates and satisfies the hypothetico-deductive model, providing the consequence required by the proposition. In short, a perfect logical system is established without any presupposed predicates.

Ebert: I don't find that a convincing analogy.

I do, Mr. Ebert. To each his/her own approach to immortality, or lack of belief thereof, I suppose. I was referring, if obliquely and clumsily, to the cyclical nature of life, which, to me at least, provides reassurance that we will not cease to exist, but will continue. In what dimension or form that will occur, only the Enigmatic Being knows. However, whatever it is, it will be certainly be interesting and thought-provoking.

Also, how about that lil' ol' circle of life? Or, life finds a way? Or, the thing that made your dead dog move, it had to go somewhere, didn't it? Or, there's a hell of an afterlife next door; let's go?

Richard Nanian, you may be interested to know that I coached Emerson's great great etc. Granddaughter for a year with music. She knew just about nothing of Ralph Waldo; when I'd mention a quote or two she'd say "I hope he didn't say that!" She looked very much like him, but wasn't what you'd call a pleasant young lady nor particularly reflective of anything at all. The Emersons eventually turned to Catholicism and moved to Missouri.

A young scholar named Dan Bullen wrote an essay on Emerson's romance with his brilliant paramour, whose name regrettably escapes me at the moment. She turned Catholic owing to her marriage to an Italian do-well, but died in a shipwreck before she returned to the U.S. to see Ralph Waldo again. I've wondered for some time if in some way this had something to do with the family's reversion to Catholicism.

I don't believe that Emerson's ideas originated solely from his reading matter, nor was his as-yet-inadequate-today influence upon this country solely a matter of reading his essays (or word-of-mouth from his lectures, which gathered transfixed audiences). I think that Great Speakers strike Great Chords, which are rather like "standing waves" in their minds in the first place. They are ignored in the minds of many occupied with mundanities, until so struck. There are of course great abusive charlatans, who strike angry fantasies among those who can't tell the difference. These aren't the chords I mean, but bottled-up visceral noises.

A "standing wave" is a term from recording technology. Every room reverberates in various ways when a sound is generated through it, owing to its shape and furniture and so on. So too are people's minds that way, albeit far more complex.

Whatever the current shallow media myths, people have been leaving the religions of their youths in droves for generations because the sounds of the sacerdotes no longer reverberate much in the rooms of their minds. In monitoring a number of "Christian" radio programs the last few weeks, I hear largely the noises of emotional blackmail calling out to emotionally damaged people, who are projecting their damaged feelings upon social issues they don't much understand.

It isn't mere lack of intellectual explanations that are missing, but intuitive sensations which have no need of explanation -- except perhaps to communicate in so many ways that they are there, despite their invisibility. The lack is felt more strongly in some than in others.

Omer, kudos to the line: "I've embraced an ethos, not a checklist."

Some still find "checklist" religions comforting. Although I have no intention of joining any organization since walking out of Catholic Church at 13, I periodically contemplate what "faith" is. Have been doing that lately. There's a vast gulf between what it's supposed to be and what it is among the mansion rooms of one's mind.

Faith is no checklist either. A question like "what is your faith?" is basically nonsensical.

There come points in every life, and perhaps every day, when one doesn't know something for sure, but nevertheless knows. "I knew that would happen," or like sentiments, are hardly the exclusive province of corrugated bible-beaters, economists or pessimists without portfolio.

In the same way, religion is hardly the exclusive province of churches. We're religious in nature, the simple penchant to gather together over anything.

It's that the tolling bells, the calls to prayer and so on, have ceased capturing very many people's imaginations. Neither the current arrogant droning of science nor the contrived explosive jabber of ambitious, frustrated sacerdotes will call those imaginations back. An intuitive human reality, described a little above, has been shunned in favor of the shallow appearances of social respectability.

It's raining now and the horses are dancing in it. Maybe it'll help put out the 10,000+ acre fire that's been smoking up Abiquiu for a few weeks.

I suppose my experience was the reverse of many here. I went from atheism for about ten years to Catholic convert. I've been reading philosophy since I was twelve, and am currently in math. I always find it amusing when people arbitrarily, and vaguely, cite "logic" and "common sense" as what amounts to contemplative tools of atheistic revelation. Anyway, the purpose of my comment is tell Roger: FYI, there are still Churches in the Chicago area that offer the Tridentine Latin Mass, and slowly, I think, the old Mass will be celebrated more. I'm sure you are aware of the trends moving in that direction in the Church at the moment. The traditional resurgence in the Church Militant that we see today is made up largely of young people. I attend St. John Cantius, which offers the Tridentine Mass every day (Low Mass every day, and High Mass on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays). We also still practice the old devotions, Gregorian chant, often full orchestra for Mass, calendar, etc. Here's the link to the parish:
http://www.cantius.org/

God keep you.

RE: Off topic: You have read Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock, have you not?

I have not, but I will now.