Sunday, March 16, 2008

Rod Dreher talks about changing his mind on his church:
There was a time when I thought nothing could change my mind about the Roman Catholic Church, of which I was a staunch and intellectually convinced communicant.

What more fundamentally changed for me was my faith in man's ability to say he will never change his mind about anything.

See, I believed in the truth of Catholicism as firmly as I believed there's a sun in the sky. And was I ever proud of my religion!

And now I can see that the pain and humiliation of losing my religion broke my intellectual pride, and led me to a deeper, truer faith.

... having discovered the fragility of certainty and the finitude of reason, I see the freedom to change one's mind as an ambiguous blessing.
Could he, like the rest of us, have swallowed his pride? But staying means the temptation to pride is there yet. We have to keep remembering ...

I'm not clear what became untrue about Catholicism as a result of the sex-abuse scandal. Perhaps something about the office of bishops, like Paragraph 862:
Hence the Church teaches that "the bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ."
I strive to change my mind earnestly on beliefs and opinions. I wasn't born knowing anything. Maybe I wasn't even taught the right stuff. I'm parochial.

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