It appears that the Vatican owns some very nice art, including the Pieta, worth -- well, worth whatever a Michelangelo goes for these days, one supposes. Treslan dumps on the Romists for not selling the thing and giving the net proceeds to the poor.
Attack on Vatican a cheap shot
Editor:
Apart from good manners, the most immediate victim of Erroll Treslan's in your face atheism is his golf game.
That his unorthodox back-swing and risible short game will be deprived of divine intervention is not an immoderate loss. I leave it to other readers to lament the odds of his personal salvation, as they have. As one with a more expansive view of who all gets in, my guess is that his ticket will be punched any-ways and I look forward to him eating crow while Saint Paul opts for rack of lamb.
By my count, his Irreligiosity columns have veered from the gratuitous insult to the banal book review and landed firmly in the realm of the hypocritical put down. Let us take these in reverse order.
I mentioned the hypocritical. It appears that the Vatican owns some very nice art, including the Pieta, worth -- well, worth whatever a Michelangelo goes for these days, one supposes. Treslan dumps on the Romists for not selling the thing and giving the net proceeds to the poor. Specifically, we are told that the proceeds could buy an awful lot of pediatric facial surgery in sub- Saharan Africa. I leave aside whether enough has been spent on that continent (though on reading Dambisa Moyo's critique of Third World help, Dead Aid, I think one trillion spent on Africa since 1962 with virtually nothing to show for it is in fact quite enough).
The attack on the Vatican is a cheap shot. I would take all that Catholics have done to combat poverty relative to what Ontario humanists have managed in a New York minute. If an ethic compels the sale of a sculpture, one wonders why ample RRSPs, 3,500-square-foot homes and annual vacations are somehow exempt from that same moral imperative. A Scotiabank GIC can buy a kid a smile as easily as can some Renaissance marble.
I spoke of the banal. Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life is a decent if pedantic read for those already convinced of its core message; it is thin when it comes to apologetics, that is, the effort to provide an incisive defence of the faith. For Treslan to tackle that book is a little like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer takes on the class of 10- year-old karate students. If he wishes to pick on someone his own size, the Catholic Hans Kung would be a better foe. Kung reviews the evidence in support of a resurrection and concludes that it is reasonably reliable (so, as Bill Murray would have it, we got that going for us). Or, Erroll, have a go at N.T. Wright, the brill i a nt Anglican scholar who makes a compelling case that the resurrection of the body and the vibrant continuation of a personality after death (contrasted, say, with a generic land of the dead) was a radical rupture with virtually all pagan thought and was unique to the message of Christ and his followers. In other words, rather than seeing the faith as the residue of an ancient era of fairy tales, its explosive growth and staying power should be seen as rooted in its newness. This may be a little much for a general circ u l at i o n paper like The Sun Times but at least it would be a fair fight.
Lastly, I noted the gratuitous insult. I simply don't get the relish with which Treslan attacks the Christian Church. I have yet to meet a Pentecostal who longs to blow up skyscrapers, or a Presbyterian who encourages addictions or a Lutheran congregation that turns its back on the elderly. On the contrary, many of Christianity's adherents promote a pacifism that would make a humanist blush. AA was started by two devout Methodists and locally few have cared for the elderly of as well have the Lutherans. Treslan concedes all this good work on the one hand, but such concessions drown in the sarcasm and disdain with which he holds the Christian adventure. Besides, the church is hardly the power it once was. St. Andrews is half empty and the rapid decline of the Alliance Church too suggests a weakened Christian presence, compared even with 50 years ago. Updike once wrote that he never understood the anti-church sentiment of the 60s; as he helped his deacon father pass collection in his sparse New England congregation, it was less a threatening power than a fragile gathering that one would not consider attacking.
I end with this reflection. Treslan depicts Christians as cartoon characters, credulous fools who bumble forward in life animated by fairy tales that they do not question. That may be true of some. But I have hung around the church for almost half a century now. And I have learned that most Christians are properly shot through with doubt, that those who utter the Apostles Creed and say the Lord's Prayer as they place their mother or their son or their wife in the earth of Greenwood do so with the prayer of Augustine not far from their thoughts -- I believe Lord, help thou my unbelief. Some remain believers out of custom or out of habit but most believe because they have witnessed in faith what 500 Jerusalem citizens witnessed with their eyes and because beside all of that, the Christian adventure is for them the most compelling and interesting way to lead a life.
John A. Tamming
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