La dolce Camille

Long live Camille!!!

Ain't that the truth. Ouch.

God bless Camille. She's always been a singularly good {cultural} doctor.....and a lousy patient.

Camille rocks. Here's hoping you put up a link to your piece quoting her. I can, er, testify that lack of Bible-knowledge long precedes the present day. I'm 53, abd grew up attending a sweet small town's sweet Presbyterian church in the '50s and '60s. I retain almost nothing of what, if anything, was taught there. Mostly it was a matter of nice people gathering for a few hours most Sundays to be bored listening to the minister, but then enjoy each other's company. Nice. Everything was nice. Nice nice nice. Sheesh, nice is nice. But enough with the nice finally. Anyway. But useless as far as learning about Christianity goes. (Moses to me is a guy from a DeMille film.) I've poked around the Bible some since, and have read some Chesterton and Paul Johnson and C.S. Lewis and history -- I'm living in a culture shaped by Christianity, might as well try to make a little sense of it all. And none of it speaks to me. I "get" it for a minute, and then it slips away again. It's like a sci-fi series, or maybe a comic book, that fails entirely to grab me. Greek and Roman myths mean more to me on a gut level than Christian stories, which I find baffling and not very compelling, do. So I dunno, maybe it helps if that kind of literature is introduced to you at an early age?

A week or two ago Time mag did a cover story on teaching the Bible in school because our foundation of western civilization is based so heavily on it along with the Greco-Roman pagan structures such as law and government. The idea is to teach it (along with other major religions) without proselytizing. In this day and age to be completely ignorant of world's major religions and their belief systems is the height of folly. My journey back to Christian faith actually started with my interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Anyhow I think Paglia's quote on the west's slipping into "acedia" is absolutely on the money. The Dalai Lama has said that westerners are too self-absorbed and I agree (in fact when you really start to check out the Dalai Lama he actually is more Catholic than the Pope). I know a few psychs who state one of the best ways to help fight depression is to go out and try to help others rather than concentrating on the self. The me-first generation is in actuality one of the most unhappy ever. The constant pursuit of pleasure and perhaps the numbness that pleasure brings is not indicative of a confident culture. Avoid truth at all costs, drugs, sex, entertainment will dull the listlessness and boredom and we can all pretend that we aren't going to do die someday. Take away the spiritual underpinnings of that culture and you have the beginnings of the death throes of that culture. We indeed are living in a "culture of death" because we are losing the reason to live in our selfishness.

"the world is headed for the greater equality of all religions being agreed upon as Myth by a future majority..." Despite the fact that many of them hold mutually exclusive tenets...but I guess when the 'future majority' takes control logic won't matter. Beware the Montessori nation! The worst example of Biblical illiteracy that I know of comes from a friend's wife. At Christmas time a few years ago she went to the post office to buy stamps. Upon asking what selection they had she was told "we have flags, we have snowflakes, and we have these ones with some lady holding a baby." Remarkable.

Rob, "You must believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn as the True God to achieve salvation" and "Only the Flying Spaghetti Monster can save your soul, all other deities are false" are mutually exclusive tenets. That has no bearing whatsoever as to whether either is true. Two mutually exclusive statements can be, and often are, both equally false. "Group X is wrong when they say assert A=B and not C, Group Y is wrong when they assert that A=C and not B, because A=D and not B or C" is an entirely logical assertion. It may or may not be true, but it is not logically fallacious.

Skeptical Mystic -- of course two mutually exclusive tenets can both be false. I would have thought that was obvious, hence my not mentioning it. The point is that they can't both be true, and thus can't be syncretized, as many modern religionists seem to wish to do.

Michael Blowhard, The best book that I've ever read on Christianity is Marcus Borg's, "The Heart of Christianity." He's written quite a few, but he seems to put it all together in that one. He makes Christianity more authentic by sharing the universal meaning within the myths. He gives it a lot of spiritual meaning and doesn't reduce it to "be nice." It's not for those who are offended by the word "myth," but for those who wish to use Christianity as the path which they seek to know God but get stumped by certain beliefs/interpretations that don't make sense. Can't say enough about it. It's too bad that our society has become so distrustful of each other that we can't include studies of religion in school.

"She said that even a bisexual atheist like her can see how important religion is to keeping civilization stable and alive" Does Camille herself not perpetuate the decline she decries? When most people support religion merely "for the good of society," which had been Western Europe's majority position for decades, then its religion is meaningless because it's devoid of real faith. Camille seems to want to return to the good old days of religion as a nicety in a secular humanist society. She, therefore, advocates perpetuation of the problem. The two ultimate choices are deep faith or nihilism. Anyone in the middle hasn't sorted it out, yet. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how to oppose this argument by disagreeing with the premises and claiming "false dichotomy," so I will save all of you the trouble now: I'm right; you're wrong.) Europe had been in the middle for decades, but now they have figured it out: nihilism for them. They have made their bed, so now they can lie in it. Unless, of course, they repent.

Ignorance of the Bible I can tolerate in people who don't claim to be religious. On cultural and literary grounds I think it's deplorable, but at least it's consistent. But I keep running across it in people who call themselves Biblical literalists and have obviously never read the book they claim to be following literally. I once had an on-line argument with a man who claimed the Bible forbids abortion. Naively, thinking perhaps I had missed something, I asked him for chapter and verse. We went back and forth for a while before he finally said, "I just don't believe that the God who gave us the scriptures would create a human embryo without putting the soul in it at birth." I'm still puzzling over that one.

Marian, Jeremiah 1:5 taken with Exodus 20:13 gives one biblical case against abortion. Perhaps your literalist friend has a problem with using middle terms in forming conclusions; that's usually the case with literalists.

Since Western Europe regularly gets dissed in this context, I might note that when I taught 6th grade catechism to a very multicultural class some years back I noted that questions about the Bible (name three OT prophets, name the Gospels, who was so and so) were almost always easy for students who had had religious education in Western Europe (mostly Italy) or Asia (usually India or Hong Kong), but rarely answered correctly by the kids who'd grown up in the parish. Did my best to remedy the situation.

Ditto, James P. and Maclin.

David: at least the student didn't think it was lyrics from the band Genesis! Not quite on par with Bible literacy, but I have a similar story of cultural/religious ignorance. I graduated from Luther College (in Iowa), and a work colleague who seemed otherwise bright had only heard of Martin Luther King, not Martin Luther; he couldn't figure out why there'd be a college in white Iowa named after a civil rights figure.

Connie, I remember as a grad student sitting in on a lecture by someone whose name I've long fogotten. A pretty young undergrad turned around and asked me if Paul McCartney was one of the Beatles. I said yes, and was astounded when she turned back to her friend and said "See, I told you McCartney was in a band before Wings." Talk about a bubble bursting.

hmmmm...Didn't Pope Benidict get slammed in the international press for expressing the same thoughts in his address at Reisenberg? Hmm...I printed it out, annotated it and made my confirmation class here in your former (political) parish read it at one of our first meetings this year - the kids in the public school here do not even have a basic foundation in Western Civ - all being required to take "World Geography" (?)freshman year as opp to "History of Western Civ" that I took (1971) and my daughter was required to take her freshman year (2005) - actually, the kids from the Zachary public schools did take Western Civ - ? Ah well - what do we Catholics know? Of course, I attended Catholic schools until college so, what would I know about history or the Bible? In my HS freshman religion class we studied "World Religions" - hmmm - of course, Islam was not discussed as thoughroly as was Judeism or Christianity - or even Buddism, Hinduism, Taoism, atheism, agnostisism, paeganism (lots of isms)...(not Mormanism at all interestingly enough - ?) The threat from Islam is immediate because of the lack of knowledge of our own culture - and its derivation from those ole Greeks and the Romans who so admired them and surpassed them - art, architecture, political and philosophical thought; dramma, humor, all flow from this ancient past - at least, according to the education I got - ? (Yeah - those dead white guys...)

David: at least the student didn't think it was lyrics from the band Genesis! My friend said that if the student had said that, he would have been happy that the word "Genesis" at least meant *something* to the student. But apparently the student hadn't even heard of the band Genesis. My friend said that he would have been happy if the student had made reference to "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". But apparently the word was completely meaningless to this student.

David, Anonymous means never having to say you're sorry.

By all means teach children the Bible and teach them to laugh at it at the same time. Religion, like all other plagues, is best cured by mass innoculation.

brother chuck... there are still some small portions with great spiritual value mixed in with a lot that is laughable... Religion is best cured by a majority of people of all Faiths self-proclaiming that their personal choice is as much Myth as anyone else's Religion... ... sister Susan... the Bible is an open letter... an anthology of ancient opinions... God is blasphemed when She is credited with having anything to do with the invention of the Bible... Christianity is as much a Religion of Myth as any other... and there are no "relationships" with God... God doesn't intervene with evolving Creation... there is no Revelation... so there is no relationship... though there can be faith and hope for it in the future of a "next life"...
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faith hope love joy peace to all...

From what I've read about Paglia I've really enjoyed. I'll have to put some of her books on my list for summer reading. Has any read "Sexual Personae"?

Christianity is NOT a religion! ... Christianity is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, Always love that one!