Religion: Two Links and a Short Thought
Jun. 11th, 2008 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirl[I probably shouldn't post this today, but I wrote it over the weekend, with embellishments added day by day, and waiting for the perfect day to post it just isn't making sense. So.]
A billboard in the Philly area calls atheists together and An Italian bishop has refused a couple a church wedding because the young man is impotent due to paraplegia.
And as for me, after a lot of thinking, I think I may finally have a name for where I personally am.
I think I'm an agnostic. I really just don't know.(Which is what the word means.) I can't call myself an atheist, because I do feel there's Something other than the physical universe; however, I'm still not sure if that conviction is an artifact of my cognition or a true sense of something beyond the visible. So.
And... when I think of religion I don't think first of God by whatever name. I think first of people, what we do with religion and what we do to each other because of religion. I think of how convictions get set above people and people get broken on intangibles. I think of how I feel when I see things done in the name of Christianity that I think are wrong, even though I left fully by several years ago.And I think of Omelas.
Religion has never been about God for me. It's always been about people, how we live our own lives, and how and why we affect, control, and even end each other's lives.
So I think I am an agnostic right now. Maybe I will eventually come to a kind of knowledge that leads me to a different classification. Maybe the journey will see me shed my need for a label. Maybe I'll go places I can't even imagine. Here's to looking forward.
A billboard in the Philly area calls atheists together and An Italian bishop has refused a couple a church wedding because the young man is impotent due to paraplegia.
And as for me, after a lot of thinking, I think I may finally have a name for where I personally am.
I think I'm an agnostic. I really just don't know.(Which is what the word means.) I can't call myself an atheist, because I do feel there's Something other than the physical universe; however, I'm still not sure if that conviction is an artifact of my cognition or a true sense of something beyond the visible. So.
And... when I think of religion I don't think first of God by whatever name. I think first of people, what we do with religion and what we do to each other because of religion. I think of how convictions get set above people and people get broken on intangibles. I think of how I feel when I see things done in the name of Christianity that I think are wrong, even though I left fully by several years ago.And I think of Omelas.
Religion has never been about God for me. It's always been about people, how we live our own lives, and how and why we affect, control, and even end each other's lives.
So I think I am an agnostic right now. Maybe I will eventually come to a kind of knowledge that leads me to a different classification. Maybe the journey will see me shed my need for a label. Maybe I'll go places I can't even imagine. Here's to looking forward.
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This position doesn't surprise me for an Italian priest, actually
Date: 2008-06-11 01:40 pm (UTC)Lots of more liberal American Catholic priests would have, and probably do, marry couples like this every day, often defying their bishops and the Curia in order to do so.
Apropos of nothing, it seems odd to me that I've been a neopagan for 30 years, yet I keep pointing out positive aspects of American Catholicism. The negatives were what drove me away, yet they, and the bright and shining positives, were part of what built my soul.