Metaphor or Myth

One important conclusion in Creationism and the Catechism, by Joan Acker, H.M. (12/16)that God creates suffering and death (evil?)is empirical tunnel vision. We need to look outside the tunnel to see metaphysical reality.

Focusing our vision of sin on chronological events turns sin into a material action rather than the relationship that it is. The discovery of death in the universe chronologically prior to the existence of humanity is not the intractable problem that Sister Acker’s writing suggests. The real problem is the attempt to judge the relationships of human spirits, such as sin and innocence, within the restrictions that empiricism imposes on human understanding. A more appropriate forum would be a metaphorical courtroom where we can examine a broader range of evidence without being hampered by the prejudice that intangible equals unreal.

For example, there is the common human perception, which cuts across cultures centuries before the Hebrew Scriptures, that two forces are at work in the universe: a good, creative one, and a bad, destructive one, which leads humans into evil. Complementary to that is the common human experience of being born into the relative paradise of innocence, then in two or three years beginning to succumb to the apple of rebellion, and in a few more years beginning to recognize our nakedness. After that we spend a good portion of our lives attempting to convince ourselves and others, especially the One out there, that the devil made me do it.

Are these perceptions and experiences myth, or are we seeing reality through a glass, darkly? Wisps of perfume, or simply nostalgia? I think we make more complete use of our human powers when we recognize that these perceptions and experiences have probative value and make a good circumstantial case. We should look at fallen angels and Adam and Eve as metaphors for reality, not myths. Theologians would do us all a service by working to dispel the notion that God creates suffering and death, an idea that itself fits more neatly into the category of myth.

James Crafton

Literate Praise

Thank you for America. Especially for its coverage of literature. Nofor all of it.

We’re made for God, we live and vote and allocate time and money in the world. No other publication speaks fully to our condition. Also, you are the last publication to use correct grammar. That you do all this in New York City astounds me.

Annie Dillard

Peculiar Concepts

Valerie Schultz (Renew the Face of the Earth! 1/8) should not be amazed at the outrageous attack the journal Crisis made about the Renew program. It is par for the course. Any time a work in the church, no matter how fine it may be, does not fit into their peculiar definition of Catholic, it will be attacked.

Renew is one of the finest programs both for evangelization and the continuing education of people that has been developed in the church over the past 20 years.

I have been following the course of Renew and have found its programs well formulated and fitting into the finest of Catholic thought. Msgr. Tom Kleisler, the founder of Renew, is one of the most intelligent and zealous priests in the U.S. The editors of Crisis have peculiar concepts of what Catholic thought and action aretoday, or truly in any day in the history of the church.

(Rev. Msgr.) John J. Egan

Much Missed

A word of thanks to you for the wonderful Of Many Things column by James Martin, S.J., about women as disciples (1/8). It both humbles and energizes me to read your words. I live and pray with the belief that the church will experience a conversion and recognize how much is missed without the direct leadership of women, both lay and religious.

Ellen Smith, R.S.M.

In Good Faith

In his carefully reasoned examination of the recent case of the conjoined twins Jodie and Mary (12/2), Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M., M.D., criticizes British medical arrogance, narrow pastoral advice and judicial bullying. This is unfair.

I too deplore the doctors and courts removing this excruciating moral dilemma from the parents. And I regret that the courts supported the surgeons’ conviction that sacrificing Mary to save Jodie was the lesser evil. But the doctors and the judges, no less than the parents, acted in good faith.

First, the surgeons, bound by their profession to save life wherever possible and to seek the maximum good, acted out of this conviction and not from anti-religious prejudice. (Indeed, as we have just learned, one of the three surgeons at St. Mary’s Hospital is Catholic and another is evangelical.)

Second, while it is true the British judicial system is excessively influenced by utilitarianism and consequentialism, the appeal court made strenuous efforts to accommodate sanctity-of-life premises, and even took the unprecedented step of receiving ethical guidance from the Catholic Church. The judges accepted four out of five of the arguments made by Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminsteralthough they used them to come to a different conclusion.

As for narrow pastoral advice, I cannot see how the counsel offered by the church to the parents of the Siamese twins, either here or in their native Malta, could have been different. As Sulmasy accepts, double-effect doctrine does not apply in this case: Mary’s death was the means of prolonging Jodie’s life.

The basic Catholic premiseexplicitly upheld in European but not British lawis that the prohibition against taking innocent life trumps the obligation to preserve life whenever possible. If this view is narrow, the bedrock of civilization may not be as broad as we believe.

Austen Ivereigh