![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It has been reassuring to see the Catholic Church getting a lot of critical blowback for its hunting down of liberal nuns, who exercise a more inclusive and caring role, as the Church insists on absolute intolerance when it comes to reproductive rights and gay marriage. George Weigel, a conservative thinker at National Review responds in defense of the Church, lambasting liberal thought as relativistic post-modern tripe:
The American mainstream media, reflecting deeper currents in American culture, typically treats “religion” as a private lifestyle choice: a personal option one may exercise to make sense out of life (and death) through certain rituals embodied in communities. That the “choice” in question has anything to do with adherence to the truth, as one is grasped and transformed by that truth; that those rituals embody religious truth in a unique way that links the believer to the very life of God; that those communities are formed by, and accountable to, truths that can be rationally explicated in a body of knowledge called “theology” — say what? To treat religion as a lifestyle choice leaves little room for the very concept of “truth,” unless it be the anorexic postmodern notion of “your truth” and “my truth” (which means that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s “truth” is just as much “truth” as Pope Benedict XVI’s). In the sandbox of self-absorption that is so much of postmodern culture, there is little or no room for the truth.
Or, if there really is a Christian truth with respect to a living God, it may be that we don't believe that your fundamentalist take is the absolute truth that we are seeking to understand. If the only choice we have for truth is between Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI, I would rather be lost in post-modern meaninglessness.
The American mainstream media, reflecting deeper currents in American culture, typically treats “religion” as a private lifestyle choice: a personal option one may exercise to make sense out of life (and death) through certain rituals embodied in communities. That the “choice” in question has anything to do with adherence to the truth, as one is grasped and transformed by that truth; that those rituals embody religious truth in a unique way that links the believer to the very life of God; that those communities are formed by, and accountable to, truths that can be rationally explicated in a body of knowledge called “theology” — say what? To treat religion as a lifestyle choice leaves little room for the very concept of “truth,” unless it be the anorexic postmodern notion of “your truth” and “my truth” (which means that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s “truth” is just as much “truth” as Pope Benedict XVI’s). In the sandbox of self-absorption that is so much of postmodern culture, there is little or no room for the truth.
Or, if there really is a Christian truth with respect to a living God, it may be that we don't believe that your fundamentalist take is the absolute truth that we are seeking to understand. If the only choice we have for truth is between Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI, I would rather be lost in post-modern meaninglessness.
