I hit the wrong numerical combination on my TV remote this morning and found myself listening to a sermon on EWTN, the very conservative Catholic network. "The next time you are challenged about the authority of holy mother church," the priest was saying, "ask them about the resurrection of Jesus and the empty tomb and the thousands of Christians eaten by the lions in Rome."
The camera panned the audience: stoic faces, absorbing the pap like an ink blotter.
Authority of the church; holy mother church. A church where mothers are not welcome behind the altar rail and their daughters need not apply for the deaconate, let alone the priesthood. But, mothers, send us your sons for sex.
The authority of the Bible, as the Baptists and evangelicals teach, is just as firm, just as stoic, just as mind-numbing.
Who gave away the 'authority' in the first place? Why do some kowtow to mystery, magic and myth? Where is their humanity, their will, their common sense? I can't, for the life of me, understand how otherwise perfectly intelligent people numb their gray matter with this spiritualistic voodoo. The Bible as authority? Bunk. It is a mythology loosely wrapped around the misadventures of a hapless nomadic, Semitic tribe wandering the deserts, rocks and plains of the Middle East. A mythology not even theirs, but plagiarized from the Egyptians, Indians and Sumerians.
Biblical authority, church authority, and tripe. Quelle différence?
