"I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me…."

Matthew 25

Preface

As a youth in the 1940s and 50s I spent nine years in a Jesuit college. Of a morning it was not unusual to have the Dean of Discipline stand before our assembly of four hundred students and proclaim in a strong Bostonian twang: "If you fail to do as you are told out of love, you will do it out of fear." It was natural to the Soldiers of Christ that pedagogy be founded in obedience. Those were the years following World War II when it was fashionable for the older generation to wear puritan morality on their sleeves while looking over their shoulders in trepidation for nuclear war, communists and other assorted evils, including recently discovered “juvenile delinquents.” Fifty years later the nemeses are new, but narrow mindedness and fear are not.

As its sub-title suggests this book does not pretend to be an academic treatise. Neither does it aspire to grand solutions for the problems and disconnects discussed. Among other things, the book is a personal reflection on what are "glaring irrationalities" in both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Christianity - with a few ideas for Catholic lay action thrown in for good measure. It makes no attempt at being objective, if only because I do not believe objectivity as generally understood is a meaningful term where religion is concerned.

Today we can find accredited “academics” to support or refute almost any religious or quasi-religious position imaginable. A plethora of experts write books, host web sites and chair conferences on issues as diverse as the "young earth" theory and papal infallibility. In this climate the only option is to testify to one’s convictions, or lack of them, recognizing that people committed to a priori truth will look down their noses at anything that does not confirm what they already believe, irrespective of proponents' credentials.

For those church goers who wrestle on one hand, with the unacceptability of marginalization within the Catholic Church, and on the other, with the pedestrian thinking inherent in alternatives to the Church, I hope this meager offering provides a reason to rant rather than despair.

This book is a tribute to the patience and forbearance of my wife, Birgitta, and our four amazing children who, by throwing back at me the premise that one does not know what one thinks until one tries to write it down, challenged me to do just that. I hope they got some peace and quiet in the process.

DCS
July 2007

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