| date: | 2011 — 2012 |
| preliminary remark: | A selection of my Facebook posts about religion. |
8 January 2012 (reply to a Catholic friend of mine)
As to miracles — I don’t believe in the occurrence of any exceptional event of special significance that violates the laws of nature. Nature itself is glorious enough to operate on its own and not by the particular volition of a certain deity or external agent. I don’t think the Church’s caution and meticulous examination into the historical account or personal testimony are sufficient conditions for a supposed miracle to be plausible, let alone real. Besides, instances of healing through intercessory prayer really sound like consequence of placebo effect to me.
22 November 2011 (question to a Catholic, scientifically-trained friend after reading this article on Neanderthal neuroscience)
Tomorrow I want to bother you — opps, I mean to borrow your wisdom — about the dispute we have not fully settled, concerning the great schism dividing humans from the rest of animal kingdom. I have never been able to accept the extremely anthropocentric perspective offered by Christianity.
I want to know what the acceptable ethical conducts towards the Old World hominins would be, were they still living. Did your God create them in His image as well? Are they of the same kind of moral agents and subject to the same set of moral codes as you? Are they mere animals serving instrumental purpose for the promotion of human interests or are they humans waiting for salvation?
Fanciful as my example may be, it looks reasonable to me for Neanderthals may just be as capable as homo sapiens of the sophisticated language ability the latter are know for (they too have the human version of FoxP2), and maybe of the same level of articity / religiousity /etc if the remaining genes deviates only very negligibly from human genome.
If you think it is futile to construct a hypothetical scenario based on the unrepeatable past, well, let us step into the future and imagine that over the next n billion(s) years (for n < 5) the viability of planetary life-support systems increases on Mars to the point that now Mars can cradle new form(s) of life and highly developed civilisation akin to human civilisation on Earth. Assume, without lost of generality, that Martians are capable of sophisticated cognitive faculty, including intellectual works, ethical contemplation, that they have only one religion so far which is also monotheistic. Then by chance — or miracle, whichever you prefer — humans come into successful communication with these super smart creatures, are you going to evangelise and preach your Good News to them? What will your arguments be in convincing them to forsake their Messiah in the Martian form and to welcome your Messiah in the human form? If they commit what by human standard would be deemed atrocity, are you going to apply moral absolutism and make them accountable — by whatever means — for their brutal immorality?
Well, this is another fancy example I have constructed. I just don’t understand why ‘human-chauvinism’ dominates environmental ethics for so long …
British royals finally rid themselves of the outdated anachronism of male-preference primogeniture, and paid their overdue respect to a monarch wanting to marry a Roman Catholic. Perhaps the next step for Britain to fully enter the modern world is to endorse state-church separation.
It is quite an obsolete idea for a caesaropapist ruler to claim the ‘divine right’ to intervene ecclesiastic matters. Would it do much harm to England if no constitutional recognition of a state religion is maintained, if the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith leave the titular leadership to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or if their bishops cease to sit in the upper house of the Parliament as Lords Spiritual? To quote from Rowan Williams, ‘it would not be the end of the world if the established church disappeared’.
(The current constitution of the Church of England let me feel that the Crown has kidnapped the Church…)
Also, I think those who complain about that Roman Catholics continue to be banned from the throne has missed the point. The point is rather, that only members of a few privileged religious groups are entitled to ascend to the throne, and hence to become the head of state of 16 Commonwealth realms, Canada included.
If the situation remains unchanged, the British monarch can be Anglican, Old Catholic, Episcopal, possibly Methodist and Lutheran one day; yet cannot be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Presbyterian, Quaker, Baptist, Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim, Jain, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, atheist, etc.
I feel mildly offended that Canada’s head of state has to be, by force, a member of the Christendom, due to the establishment of the Church of England.
Another alternative to end the head of our country being forbidden to embrace another religion or to renounce any religious affiliation if he/she should so wish, is to sever Canada’s ties with the British monarchy (of which I am by no means a loyal supporter).
2 October 2011 (to a Catholic friend of mine)
You were definitely wrong in asserting that I do not believe in anything: that no religion in this world truly models my system of belief does not necessarily led to this conclusion. The fact is, I believe in the existence of abstract mathematical objects that are ontologically independent of us. I used to be very Platonic but I have slowly leaned towards a less extreme form of mathematical realism, which I have been tempted to deem a religion, in a non-religious sense of the word, and which in my opinion is more logically consistent than your Catholicism. Perhaps Pythagoreanism is the closest known doctrine that I am willing to be more intimately associated with (I have always been profoundly mystic).
I (‘L’) had the following conversation with a Catholic girl — denoted by ‘G’ below — two days ago:
L: ‘Your birthday is coming in two days’
G [shocked]: ‘How did you know that !?’
L [index finger pointing upward]: ‘I received divine revelation from (your) God.’
G [not believing a word L said]: ‘No, I mean, seriously — How did you know that?’
I have been wondering what the implication of my acquaintance’s scepticism may be. Maybe this means that a non-Catholic/Christian cannot hear an angel’s voice nor be inspired by the Holy Spirit to foresee the future. Or maybe this means that the whole doctrine of divine inspiration is untenable.
Hmm, next time someone tells me that he or she receives words from God, or a certain biblical story such as that of Daniel being inspired to save the innocent Susanna from false accusation, I should be allowed to raise an eyebrow and say: ‘Jesus, you cannot be serious!’
2 May 2011 (conversation between me and a Catholic friend of mine)
Linda: Jesus, I don’t think St. Matthew Passion sounds very great in English — Do you?
(I was referring to the annual performance of St Matthew Passion by the London-based Bach Choir. They have had a long tradition of singing the complete Passion in English since Adrian Boult’s appointment as the music director some 80 years ago.)
My Catholic friend: Was that a prayer? 
Linda: Although my original intention was not to pray, you are mostly welcome to interpret it in any light that pleases you the most (or the least). In the worst case, I will offer my special prayer for the frightened soul of anyone who should itch to accuse me of sacrilegious profanation, for taking Jesus’ name out of appropriate context.
I confess that in the absence of my Christian friends/acquaintances, my ordinary language is not purified of secular influence: I take your God’s/Lord’s name in vain all the time, and I feel no shame for violating one of the commandments I don’t feel compelled to observe. My use of the proper noun ‘Jesus’ as an interjection, an expression of surprise and exclamation in ordinary speech may be deemed swearing by some people, but it was barely so considered during my formative years in a milieu of ubiquitous profanity. Alongside the badly received sacrilege in colloquial Quebec French, there was a host of innocuous expletives of religious origin — mon Dieu Signeur, O my God/goodness, thanks God, for God’s sake, Heaven helps, good Lord, Jesus/geez — which the school authorities neither encouraged nor proscribed. I admit that without a well-articulated body of baseline expectations for the ethical use of this everyday ubiquity, we, students and educators alike, employ some expressive locutions sometimes too freely in the public. I am sorry if that has offended you and your people.
My curiosity was so strong about this subject that I thought of performing a quick etymological research on certain interjective locutions mentioned in the dictionary Le Petit Robert:
(1) Jésus — interj. Marquant la surprise, la peur, l’admiration. Jésus! Doux Jésus! Jésus Marie!
(2) Seigneur — interj. Seigneur! Seigneur Dieu! Seigneur Jésus.
(3) Dieu — interj. Dieu! Ah, mon Dieu! Pour l’amour de Dieu! Grand Dieu! Dieu du ciel! Tonnerre de Dieu!
[Following these is a series of expressions derived from the very word ‘Dieu’, classified as ‘jurons/vulgaire’, which I shall not list.]
Surprisingly, #3 made its first appearance long time ago, in La Chanson de Roland (circa 1100): ‘Deus ! que purrat ço estre ?’ (ll. 334) [1]. #1 and #2 dated back to at least mid-19th century, were employed by writers Flaubert (‘Seigneur Dieu!’, 1869) and Verlaine (‘doux Jésus!’, 1893) who are said to be Catholic (believe or not) [2].
As for the English counterparts, according to OED, the interjection ‘Oh God!’ and its variations appeared as early as 1340, and notably in 1623 in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3: ‘Who’s this? Oh God! It is my Father’s face.’ (Act II, Scene V, l. 61). Shakespeare had committed another incidence of profanity in Romeo and Julliet (1599): ‘Iesu [Jesus] what haste, can you not stay a while?’ (Act II, Scene IV, l. 29). And the American exclamatory use of ‘Jeez/Geez/etc’ showed up in the written record in 1923. Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang classifies both ‘Jeez’ and ‘Jesus’ as expression of surprise/etc but the former is considered milder than the latter.
(Maybe this etymological exegesis proves no surprise to you, but I am quite shocked at the long history of some of these terms, which I originally thought would be banned from the ‘elevated’ discourse of literature. Was there not a period of time when theatrical representation of the ineffably holy was disproved, hence all related words must not be mentioned?)
The most incomprehensible and obscure part of the whole matter now seems to me the way the psychological and linguistic border line of profanity between an emotional addition and a cultural taboo is drawn. How do dictionary editors decide the degree of offensiveness associated with an expression of religious origin, which can vary from the most blasphemous expression of sacrilege to the mildest form of exclamation? Why would some words phonetically derived from ecclesiastical terms be considered euphemisms (e.g. geez < Jesus), whereas others vulgar and more offensive than the original (e.g. ‘les sacres’ in Quebec French [3]; some expressions involving ‘Dieu‘ are interjective, some others vulgar, according to my dictionary)? Are god-free words that are unsuitable for acceptable social use in modern society necessarily less coarse because they make no reference to the kind of anticlerical sentiment the Church might have hoped to put an end to?
I gather that my attempt to contexualise the common use of certain linguistic entities results once again in unanswerable questions, if such a use may be yet another instance of human messiness that is not subject to dictionary rules or rational analysis. To speak a few last words for my contemporaries, I would venture to guess that the probability remains small of ordinary people still employing those expletives as symbols of apostasy, although I know not for sure whether the kind of utterance that would put us in danger of being imprisoned or burnt in the worst days of the Holy Inquisition owes its popularity to the defunct Catholic hegemony. The problematically sounding expressions may simply be part of a ‘slovenly’ register of language favoured by the youths of our days, for whom the original meaning may bears little significance in their fashioning a new repertoire of vocabularies as their modern heritage. Well, this is my hypothesis.
I notice that the content of this reply may not be judged appropriate for you and your people. I swear upon my honour that I didn’t mean to swear, but it may be wiser not to pay too much attention to my utterance; my language can be profane.
P.S. The tendency to trivialise sacred entities seems to be a peculiar practice in the Christian (or post-Christian) culture; I have never heard in a language I can understand anyone yelling ‘Buddha!’, ‘Dalai Lama!’ or ‘Muhammad!’ as emotional additions to his/her utterance. Why do people hate the poor little babe, the son of Mary so much that his name should take on the form of a minced oath … ?
__________
[1] http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/dieu
[2] http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/jesus
[3] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacre_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois
[4] Bassler, V. (2008). ‘Du tabou à la grammaire. Les sacres en français québécois dans une perspective interactionnelle’. Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, pp. 657-669. https://doi.org/10.1051/cmlf08162
My goodness, I am seriously confused and bewildered to see the names of Université Laval, Université de Montréal, and Université de Sherbrooke on the list of Catholic universities! What does the Church have to do with our education? I am almost certain that there is nearly zero religious activity in these institutions.
(The following is my reply to a friend)
Thank you for your input. I am still trying to understand how your main criticism of my ‘personal bias’ has arisen. By my original question, I didn’t mean to convey a particle of ‘anti-Catholic’ attitude, or to suggest there is a unbridgeable conflict between contemporary science and Christian faith (I am no scientist by the way; I am a mathematician); nor did I mean to say that those who are responsible for the university’s business affairs and academic matters, institution governance and administration cannot have personal faith in one way or another.
I was confused by my ‘bewildering discovery’ because since the Quiet Revolution which had dramatically altered the social landscape of Quebec, our province’s educational system have undergone a phase of modernisation and secularisation, in a way that the Catholic Church no longer interferes public teaching and public educational institutions have ceased to be subjected to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. [This is from my high school history class, please do correct me if my memory is wrong.]
The Church retreated (*) from the educational scene for some socio-historical reasons I don’t really remember in details, but I am sure that our public schools are not run by clerical organisations anymore: All rectors of Université Laval have ceased to be clergymen since 1972 (Mgr. Louis-Albert Vachon being the last one); Université de Montréal had its first secular rector in 1965 (Roger Gaudry), and Université de Sherbrooke in 1975 (Yves Martin). That these are by and large secular institutions, except maybe their school of theology/faculty of religious studies which may still retain their original religious affiliation as Richard pointed out, I have no doubt. Moreover, both Commission des écoles catholiques de Montréal and Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal were abolished more than 10 years ago. In the French high school I attended between 2000 to 2004, students had the choice between taking religion course or general ethics course. (+)
Someone just told me that students at a Catholic university in Belgium are obliged to take courses related to Catholicism in order to graduate, and the official head of the university is their Archbishop. This reminds me of a private Catholic high school in my native city which I had the chance to attend (but didn’t in the end): there they would have morning and evening prayers, regular masses, and the nuns (it was a single-gender school) live with the students (methinks). These are the examples of the kind of ‘religious activities’ I had in mind when posting my questions.
What strikes me the most in that Wikipedia article is the opening phrase ‘A Catholic University is a private university run by the Catholic Church or by catholic organizations […]’ — this is definitely false when applied to the 3 universities in question. Although none of them is an affiliated institution in the provincially-run network of public universities, Université du Québec, they are still public schools, publicly-funded, operated by a board of governors independent of the Catholic Church. (I would be very surprised if any Catholic priest or church minister is on the board of governors of any of these 3 universities.)
Lastly, to throw a few words on my ‘personal bias’ — not about the false dichotomy between science and religion, but about Christianity in general —, I shall profess that the most erroneous prejudice I used to harbour is the misconception that francophones are necessarily Catholic, and anglophones are most likely to be Protestant, if they are religious at all. And indeed, as you might have guessed, for me the word Catholic used to conjure up a rather negative image, if only slightly, which wrought through years of hearing countless criticisms on the dominant and ‘corrupting’ influence of Catholic Church in many aspects of the society (many of which I don’t necessarily believe). I am still trying to understand what terrible endeavours the Church have done in our province that made so many people more than happy to usher the end of Catholic hegemony (I am guessing this may has something to do with the notorious Maurice Duplessis). My personal bias also makes my stance quite ‘extreme’ on the issue of public education: although in general I share sympathy with those who have been subjects of suspicion, contempt, and sometimes hostility because of their religious conviction, public school is not the place to disseminate religious values or enforce mandatory practices of worship. Sorry folks, for one who has spent her entire life in the secular world, it is well-nigh impossible to not speak in favour of the secularisation of public education; that the Church should dominate all educational, health care, and social services is not an ideology I can uphold.
____________________
(*) ‘Retreat’ may not be the most appropriate word but I am trying to adopt softer wordings in this response to avoid possible offense. Coming from an environment that is not always friendly to the Catholics, I somehow remember this episode in the history of Catholicism in our province as a kind of ‘exodus’ (i.e. it used to be said that secular people ‘expelled’ the Church out of the sphere of public services).
(+) I would venture to guess that similarly, very few hospitals in Montreal maintain their original religious characters, though about this I am not sure.
LINDA’S ARTWORLD 