Follow up thoughts on “Hearers” 2-14

Writing is a process that gives me great pleasure but also costs me a lot of restlessness and worry. No sooner that something goes to print I immediately begin to second guess myself. I suppose that’s a sign that I take seriously the subject matter.

I can stare at something for a week, make several revisions, and still fail to see things that only become apparent to me once it goes out to 90,000 readers.  I just hope that my readers know I take the responsibility of writing very seriously and I try, to the best of my ability, to get things right and to be fair.  

I feel passionately about the subject of this week’s Hearers of the Word. I think I made a fair and valid point, but, I wonder if at least one phrase is an overstatement.

I implied that the Catholic Church had viewed the modern world as its enemy. That’s an overstatement. Certainly the church viewed the cultural and philosophical movement called “modernism” as its enemy, but to equate that with the entire “modern world” is a little sloppy. I suppose I felt it was an economy of language just to say “the modern world,” but,  to those who are more precisely keyed into the theological nuance of the matter, it might have seemed sloppy. The church has never viewed the world as its enemy. That’s just an unfair thing to say.

Also, I’m not sure everyone would agree with me that, through Vatican II, the Catholic Church was “embracing a pluralistic modern world.” Again, “embracing” is probably an overstatement. “Acknowledging,” “ coming to terms with,” or “ authentically engaging in dialogue with”–these phrases might be more accurate. Again, trying to fit huge ideas into small space sometimes handcuffs me.

Still, despite these turn of phrases that could have been sharpened, the essential thesis of the column holds, that is that fringe groups often misrepresent the larger religions that they claim to represent.