DR. CUMMINGS: Please don’t read this
I mean it. If you’re a church-going Catholic or Christian with no questions about your faith and no desire to hear any questions, please don’t read this column. It’s not meant for you. If you feel that you — or your priest or your Bible — have the “truth” all tied up in a neat package and you don’t want to untie that package and take a look, you have no valid reason to dip into this column. Because if you do, you’ll just get angry.
My critics call me a “bitter ex-priest.” Actually, I’m really not bitter at all. I have no regrets and nothing to be bitter about. I loved my 22 years in the monastery and the active priesthood and my studies in Rome with Pope John XXIII. Besides — “once a priest, always a priest”: there are no “ex-priests;” that’s Catholic dogma.
However, when I raise questions about the church, I’m a “latter-day Voltaire, trying to dismantle our Western Civilization,” or “an aging octogenarian” (now that’s true) who has no answers for putting it back together again. I’m the one who makes the “most ridiculous, asinine, and irresponsible statements ever made,” and who also “arrogantly pontificates.” When it comes to the Council of Vatican II (which was designed while I was living in the Vatican) I am “dead wrong.”
So please, don’t read my stuff.
Unless, of course, you like to question tantalizing topics like these:
Why do some Baptists think all Catholics are going to hell, and must be converted?
Why do some Catholics think all Baptists are going to hell, and must be converted?
Do the Eastern Catholic priests, who are married, have the same problem with pedophilia as the Roman Catholic priests who are celibate?
Who started the Christian church, Paul or Jesus?
Why are some Catholics so upset with Pope Francis when he asks questions like “Who am I to judge?”
Questions without answers — and I certainly don’t have all the answers — can be very uncomfortable. Some of my Catholic questions were asked by my hero, Pope John XXIII back in 1960 and the church still hasn’t answered them, like:
Why does the Roman Church continue to enforce priestly celibacy? (Surely, the drastic shortage of American priests far outweighs the ancient fear of sex.)
Why won’t the church ordain women? (Haven’t all the Pauline objections been mis-proven?)
Why does the church punish couples who are divorced and re-married? (Why don’t they punish those who stay married and destroy each other and their children?)
I love Christianity and the Judaism that birthed it. I always have. I ask questions, not to tear it down but to build it up. If you believe that religions are man-made and not God-made — like I do — then you know they’re all prone to errors and contradictions which need to be purged from time to time.
Where would Christianity be if it had not questioned the Christian acceptance of slavery and anti-Semitism? How many educated Christians would still read the many myths in the Bible if they were forced to accept them as history — without question? How could we ever study European history and not question the un-Christian policies and dogmas of all those Christian popes and rulers?
There is no doubt that church-going Christianity is declining (even my vociferous and angry critics begrudgingly admit this), but there seems to be a resurgence of intelligent, questioning Christians springing up all over, people who do not believe their religion and every dogma and statement in it, comes directly from the lips of the immutable and unchangeable God. These loving and forgiving men and women believe, instead, that it all flows from the well-intentioned but ever-human frailties of man. And they question it to make it better, not worse.
If this describes you — read my columns. They’re meant for you. If not, please skip over to the Letters to the Editors.
Dr. Bill Cummings is the CEO of Cummings Consolidated Corporation and Cummings Management Consultants. His website is www.billcummings.org.
This story was originally published September 6, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "DR. CUMMINGS: Please don’t read this ."