Former Irish diplomat, Bobby McDonagh wrote a piece in The Irish Times yesterday on his once teacher and headmaster, Jesuit priest Paul Adams, who died.
He writes how more than a third of his class attended the funeral, which says something about the man given that his stint at the school ended 47 years ago.
This is an excerpt from the piece.
On the one hand, there are those who see Christianity and other religions as being in contradiction with science and even with rational thought. Inspired by the observation that some religious beliefs, such as creationism, can indeed be irrational mumbo jumbo, they make the mistake of tarring all religious belief with the same brush.
This requires them to ignore the great philosophers, scientists and writers who have seen no contradiction between their work and their religious faith.
On the other hand, there are those within the church who believe that there are clear unambiguous answers to all the great questions of life and that these answers are available through what they consider official church teaching. They act as if such teaching is not to be questioned.
Thus, coming from the opposite point of view, they likewise see some contradiction between faith, on the one hand, and rational thought and secular culture on the other.
It is this view which in the distant past gave us the hauling of Galileo before the Inquisition, in the more recent past the censorship of great literature, and today, for example, a dismissal out of hand of the strong case for women priests and for gay marriage.
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