Can we all get along?
The Vatican knows how it wants this “bring in the atheists” party to go. It wants it to go well for the Vatican.
“The aim is to help to ensure that the great questions about human existence, especially the spiritual questions, are borne in mind and discussed in our societies, using our common reason,” Cardinal Ravasi said.
See? Like that. It wants atheists to pretend to think that the Vatican uses reason when it discusses the great questions about human existence.
Ideally, Cardinal Ravasi said, the conversations begun by this project should resemble not a “duel” but a “duet,” with believers and non-believers offering complementary ideas and helping each other to refine their views.
See? The non-believers are supposed to pretend to think that Vatican ideas are “complementary” to secular ideas and that the Vatican can help atheists refine their views.
No doubt it will have chosen its non-believers carefully. The non-believers I know don’t think for a second that the Vatican is a reason-based institution or that its ideas are “complementary” in any meaningful sense. The Vatican, like the Templeton Foundation, apparently wants to borrow some of the respectability of rational people and ways of thinking while maintaining its own anti-rational ways.
If they invite you to the party, I urge you to decline.
I’m guessing you haven’t had your invitation?
Nor has Ayaan Hirsi Ali, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Susan Blackmore, Christopher Hitchens, Rebecca Goldstein, Susan Jacoby or anyone else who might be considered by the loosely affiliated quasi community of atheists as an atheist worth hearing from.
Do you think that they might be going to only invite accommodationists as opposed to actual atheists? Either that or Vatican Mail is just not what it used to be.
I think if you are invited you should go.
They need to know what they don’t.
They need to be told what you just said. And there needs to be a public accounting of this. They need to be told to their face (s) that there is to be no dance.
How are you going to encourage conversation between Catholics and non-believers if you won’t welcome any Catholics?
I’m glad only open-minded people will be participating — I’m sure that the Catholic invitees are not convinced of already possessing all the answers to the issues of abortion, gay marriage, contraception, women in the priesthood, theistic evolution, etc. etc. etc.
Yes I suppose they won’t be inviting the bishop of Phoenix…or will they.
Benedict:
I thought mescaline was no longer a sacrament.
“and helping each other to refine their views.”
All pure cynical vatican bullshit. Pure windowdressing to make RCC Inc look just a little like ‘reasonable’ and willing to meet critics partway!
First: RCCInc. doesn’t believe for a terasecond that its views need to be, or can be “refined”. Since they are, by their own admission, the sole repository of ‘Truth’, always have been and always will be, no refinement is possible.
Second: who believes for that same terasecond that RCC Inc. is the least interested in discussing anything with secularists, humanists or atheists?
“but what the ‘Courtyard of the Gentiles’ wishes to propose is, by contrast, a duet. A duet in which the sound of the voices may be at antipodes – such as a bass and a soprano – yet manage to create a harmony without renouncing their own identity; in other words, … without fading away into a vague ideological syncretism”.
Isn’t this kind of language right up the accommodationist street. You know the bass and the soprano are so very far removed from each other in song, yet, they do harmonise and synchronise beautifully with each other. It wouldn’t do to have a soprano (aggressive atheist) that was completely out of tune or in unison with the bass or vice versa, as they’ll clash dreadfully with each other and thus thrown out of the choir.
Wait, if I go do I get to be a Gentile? Then what are the bishops, the Jews? Or do I have it backwards? Who wrote this script?!?
As Ken Pidcock #3 pointed out, the Vatican will therefore need to be excluded.
How can any organization who assumes their leader is infallible state this with a straight face? Oh, I forgot, rational thought or consistency isn’t their strong suit.
According to a report from a well-connected Italian Vatican writer, Pope Benedict XVI will shortly announce the creation of a “Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation,” to be presided over by Italian Archbishop Rino Fisichella. The office will be dedicated to rekindling the faith in the developed West, above all Europe and North America. There is already a New Evangelisation Fund set in place. The Opus Dei Church is fighting back, after all the clerical child abuse cases, that has thrown it to the ground over these past decades.
“New Evangelisation” is gaining traction in the United States. St. John’s Seminary, which serves the Boston archdiocese, announced the launch of a Theological Institute for the New Evangelisation which will offer a Master’s of Theological Studies for the New Evangelisation. I wonder is that the reason why Cardinal Sean O’ Malley had to rush back to Boston after washing the feet of survivors of institutional child abuse at the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.
Rino Fisichella came out against a law in Luxembourg allowing for euthanasia. On 24 January 2009, he urged US President Barack Obama to listen to all voices in America without “the arrogance of those who, being in power, believe they can decide of life and death.
He was involved in a 2009 controversy concerning the public announcement of excommunication by Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife of a woman and the doctors connected with the abortion performed on the woman’s nine-year-old daughter, who had become pregnant after reportedly being raped by her stepfather, and whose mother arranged for an abortion.
“While the initiative is not evangelical per se, Benedict has made re-evangelising Europe a priority of his pontificate. He has frequently lamented that in an increasingly secular world, many people feel as if they can live without God.”
The Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, P Zed’s, Jerry Coynes and OB’s of the world had best watch out, as the pope and his evangelical lot will be coming after you with forked sprongs.
This means that any atheists will be booted out very swiftly. The only “non-believers” welcome will be Catholics who have recently started wavering in their ability to toe the papal line.
Although I agree with almost all of the criticism in the previous comments, we have to respect the Church’s request that these planned dialogues remain “duets” and not descent into “duels”.
It isn’t like when the RCC wielded the power of the state that they shunned a civil debate or forced their views on the heretics.
Both the Canadian Press and National Catholic Reporter articles specifically reference Richard Dawkins as someone with whom such dialogue would be totally inappropriate. Let’s see, a high profile intellectual with a warm personality and eloquent conversational manner. That’s not the person we wish to engage.
There can be no stronger signal that this isn’t meant to be conversation at all. It’s obvious that the people they will be engaging, such as Julia Kristeva, are in it solely for the entertainment and meals. And perhaps some book sales.
I would be happy to learn that Catholics no longer believed they had all the answers and that they would therefore cease to attempt to impose them. Is an announcement pending?
I want to know who is going to be on the list of someone who doesn’t know god but wants to know god?
Someone with a brain defect that leaves them with no long-term memory?
Sort of like Drew Barrymore in “50 First Dates”?
This isn’t new.
During the cold war, and for cold war type reasons, the Catholic Church ran a long running programme of dialogues with unbelievers. I guess this was mainly aimed at Marxists, but non-Marxist secular humanists were sometimes involved. And it was exactly as controversial as it is now.
Dan
Ah, that’s interesting. See, I wasn’t paying enough attention then. That’s why I’m a gnu now.