From: 15942@brahms.udel.edu (Stephen Barr)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: arrogance
Date: 12 Nov 92 18:30:11 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware


    I must confess to being completely amazed
by the serene, unclouded, unwavering, and
untroubled faith some people have in themselves.
You know in physics one comes across this kind
of thing from time to time: some guy comes in
to a Physics Department with his own theory
showing that Einstein was wrong, or that the
whole Physics "establishment" is wrong. Usually
they are just harmless nuts. But anyone who 
undertakes to really learn any deep or difficult
subject quickly learns humility. The "establishment"
includes a lot of very smart people, many of whom
are at least as smart as oneself! They are not all
stupid, perverse, blind, ignorant fools. It
is the same in theology. Over the last two thousand
years there have been a lot of Christians. Many
of them underwent persecution and martyrdom. 
Many of them knew something about life and its
problems. Many learned wisdom from suffering. 
Among them were many learned, many devout, many
holy, many profound, many brilliant people. 
They were assuredly not all fools! And yet
with astonishing insouciance along come our
modern prophets and sages: they are right, and so
cocksure that they are right that they are supremely
uninterested in what twenty centuries of Christians
before them had to say. "What do you expect from
such benighted people?", they seem to say. I am
reminded of what Erasmus of Rotterdam said in his
debate with Luther on free will. On one side (believing
in free will) there are all the holy Fathers, councils, 
doctors, and saints of old, many whose sanctity was 
confirmed by miracles. On the other a bunch of 
preachers who have no miracles to show, who have not
"even been able to cure one lame horse!" What
surprises me is not that they should think themselves
right, that is reasonable, but that they do not
imagine that there is anything worth considering
to be said on the other side. Someone dismissed
the careful, thoughtful reflections of "Inter Insignores"
as just a lot of pretty words. The best understanding
of eighty generations of Christians just so much piffle.
Enter by the narrow gate!! If you want to learn you
must bend your neck. I, for one, do not think St. Paul
was a fool. When God knocks me off my horse and speaks
to me aloud and makes me an apostle I will feel I have
a right to condescend to St. Paul--- no, not even then:
because St. Paul was a helluva lot smarter than me.
And here are a few other smart people: St. Augustine,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, John Henry Newman. I am
no idiot. I suppose a Ph.D. from Princeton in theoretical
Physics would attest to that, as would many other things I 
could mention. But I know that these men far exceeded
me in intellect. And in holiness, living the Christian faith?
No contest! Mr. Dick Murphy (was that the name) is upset
and perhaps a little surprised that God has not yet 
answered his prayer and has allowed twenty centuries of
Christians to stumble around without the benefit of the
great light of understanding God has vouchsafed to him!
    Bertrand Russell pointed out that to understand a
philosophy so as to be able to criticize it you must
first understand it from within, as its adherents
understand it. You must enter into the philosophy. You
must see through the eyes of the other. Criticism comes
later. HUMILITY! It is an intellectual virtue also.
You know what? In physics you see a lot of students
with the "Einstein complex". They are not interested
in patiently learning what is known at present; no! 
they are the great solitary and revolutionary thinkers.
They will see without any work what has eluded others.
These students, unless they are broken of this childish
fantasy, never amount to anything. Learning requires
humility. At least Mr. Jim McIntosh, and Mr. David Harwood
seem to understand that the Christians who went before
us are worth listening to. But some of the other people
well to them historic Christianity is just something to
be outgrown. "patriarchy", "sexist", "cultural limitations",
...... Hey! The burden of proof is on YOU! When you 
show that you have paid the slightest attention to what
other people are saying, and grappled with their 
arguments, we will swubmit to your angry, prophetic
denunciations. 
C
c
hhumility.