The Diane Rehm Show; Reader's Review; Part 1

Good morning and welcome back to The Diane Rehm Show on Eighty-eight, five a.m., one of the most surprising books to hit the top of the bestseller list this year is Crossing the Threshold of Hope by His Holiness Pope John Paul the second. The book is the first ever written by a sitting pope for a general audience and deals with issues like the existence of God and the dignity of man. He speaks about pain, suffering and evil, and he talks about the relationship of Christianity to other faiths. I've asked several people to read the book and then come in to share their own ideas and impressions. We all have our readers review and invite you to join us as well. Now, let me introduce some of the folks here in the studio. In fact, I'll introduce all of them first, Cokie Roberts of NPR and ABC News. Good morning, Cokie. Diane. Nice to be here. Loved hearing you sing. You Are My Sunshine Prairie Home. I could do a little Gregorian chant of Linda Chavez of the Manhattan Institute has also been a guest on this program several

times. Good morning to you, Linda. Good to be with you. Gustav Niebuhr writes about religious matters for The New York Times. Welcome, guest. Good morning. Ron Walters is professor of political science at Howard University. I'm so glad you could join us. Good morning. And John Rehm is an attorney. He holds a master's degree in theology. He also happens to be my husband. Good morning to you, John. Good morning to you. And I'm so glad to have you all here. We've got so many people in the studio this morning. It's going to be hard to get a word in edgewise, but perhaps that's exactly the way it is with most bookclub. So just feel free to jump in. Let's start by going around the room. Tell me in just a couple of minutes what you thought about the book, starting with you, Cokie, and why it has become so popular. Well, I think it probably has become popular just because of the name on the cover that there are 50 million American Catholics and that they are probably responding

to a book by a pope. It's not a terribly accessible book just to a lay reader. I am an educated Catholic. I have no degree in theology, but and could follow pretty well, but certainly not everything in the book. What I'm most struck by, though, is, is how much John Paul's personal experience inform his theology. And in places where he has had a personal experience, whether it was the war or growing up in Poland with Jewish families in the synagogue behind him or communism or whatever, the personal or Vatican two most especially, and his experience in writing that great document of Vatican two Gaudium its best, which is joy and hope that he that those those places where he is personally involved and touched, he has a more modern, I suppose,

or compassionate view of the world than in the places where it seems more distant to him. Linda Chavez. Well, I'd have to agree with Cokie that the book is not terribly accessible for the lay reader. And in fact, a friend of mine recently said he was thinking of buying it for his wife, who is Catholic, and he is not. And I suggested that it probably isn't the best book. I mean, if I were counseling somebody who wanted to understand Catholicism better, I'd probably point to a non Catholic like C.S. Lewis and suggest Mere Christianity is a book to read. This is I think what makes this book inaccessible is not so much the traditional theology in it, which I found much more comforting as somebody who went to Catholic schools for 12 years, but rather the way he infuses 19th and 20th century philosophy in it. This is a philosophy book and like most philosophy books, for those who are not trained in the discipline, it's difficult, it requires concentration and it requires a lot of knowledge of the subject that is outside of

the book. So for that reason, I think it's it's maybe surprising that this book's going to be on so many bookshelves. But frankly, when Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, made it to the bestseller list and somebody who read every word and understood only about a tenth of it, I can say I think the same thing will happen with this book. You know, it's interesting because the last time I invited my husband to be on this program was because of Stephen Hawking book. John Raymont, what was your own reaction to the book? Well, to answer your question as to why it appears to be so popular, I was going up to New York on the plane yesterday rereading certain passages and the stewardess came by and said, oh, you're reading that book, tell me about it. And then the woman next. To me, as I was jotting down some notes, said, oh, yes, I've heard of that book. Tell me about it. Um, accessible, inaccessible. I think I hope that there is a continuing, I'd like to think, growing interest in these issues.

They are so fundamental. And yet, isn't it true that so often we're somehow embarrassed to talk about as that marvelous Greek word has it, the eschatological issues? I mean, death and mortality, heaven, hell. I think there is a tremendous curiosity, interest in these issues. And I think that this book has taken hold of some of those deep feelings that we rarely talk about with much, much comfort. I admire the pope enormously for doing this. As I think you pointed out, it probably is unprecedented in all the popes. We've had over 200 since the beginning because in a sense, he really renders himself, I think, particularly vulnerable. The questions are posed, he answers, but he's not in a position to respond to the person who says, well, that doesn't make sense, or you certainly haven't established that or what have you. There's a degree of vulnerability here that I think is

rather special. He's opened himself. You might even argue, possibly as a kind of final will and testament because he is growing older. And whether he makes the year 2000 or not remains to be seen. So I give him high marks for the effort and much of the theology I find the rigidity that we've talked about. We now have had two articles, New York Times, about this, most recently, the Cardinals. And I think the schism, if you will, between compassion on the one hand and law and the other for me, emerges emerges in this book and troubles Ron Walters. Well, yes, I think that this harkened back to my college days when I was reading an ancient Asian philosophy. There's a little something in here for everybody. There's a little saying in here for everybody. And I think that I read it with sort of particular interest because I'm sort of deal with politics on the boundary between the philosophical treatise on it and how it connected to the real world. And in that sense, I find that this is this book is part of a

series of discussions that he sort of having with various populations in the world. And if you look at some of the other writings, some of the other books that he's had, this is sort of a continuing series of them here. He sets out a number of of principles and and he is really sort of something for everyone in that sense. I read it also trying to look at the fact I'm a professor. And what does he have to say about the younger generation? I found particular interest some of the things he had to say about youth and their evolution and their responsibility and so forth. And then the final thing is that I wanted to see if he returned to some of the more difficult issues that face the Catholic Church like slavery, strikingly, four or five years ago. He went to the Congo and apologized for slavery. And I sort of expected a full blown sort of at least one chapter discussion that I didn't get it in here. But I was interested that I find that this book finally is

a relatively personal book. It does sort of hew the line of theological interest and it is very personal. It doesn't really get into a lot of the full-blown issues of society. For example, a full-blown discussion of abortion. You know, you don't get that in this book. So to that extent, I think one has to extrapolate a great deal from the meaning that one finds and it gets Niebuhr. Well, I may play a devil's advocate, at least to a degree here. Um, having read some of the other writings from the pope and also having covered him and listen to his speeches, I find the book to be more accessible than will say, his encyclicals. He's I think he's making a real effort to write for a lay audience and a first reading. I think it is a little bit tough. It's dense in places. But a second reading actually, it seems to flow more, or at least it did for me. What I found most interesting about the book is really its first half. I think what the pope is trying to do is frame

Catholicism in a world context. He is, after all, a man who has traveled tremendously. He's had something like 60 trips to different parts of the world. And what he does in many places is compare the Catholic Christian message against other religions. And I think this is very interesting. Obviously, he's writing not just for Catholics, not just for Christians, but for a world audience. And what he has to say about Buddhism and Islam and Judaism is. Very interesting, particularly when he offers personal insights. I thought the most moving part of the book was where he talked about growing up in a village in Poland in which at least a quarter of the population was Jewish. And then he talked about how a friend who a Jewish friend who had survived the Holocaust came to him when he was pope and talked about a memorial that was going to be made to the synagogue, which had been destroyed by the

Nazis in that Polish village, and how he wrote a personal letter for that occasion. It's moments like that. I think that the book really resonates with the spirit of who the pope is and what he's trying to say to the world. Gustav Niebuhr writes about religious matters for The New York Times. If you'd like to join us to go to eight eight five eight eight fifty this today's programing is made possible in part by a gift from Paul Gady, Martha Moore and family in recognition of the wonderful people of Arlington County. This broadcast to The Diane Rehm Show is made possible in part by the only theater where Rodgers and Hammerstein musical version of the classic Cinderella is playing throughout the holiday season. The number to call is three oh one nine two four three four one hundred. And I hope you'll join us this morning with your own ideas. Call us on 202 eight eight five eight eight fifty. I was fascinated with the first question, and we

ought to say that the book is really, as you said, John, a response to a series of questions put to the pope by a very prominent Italian journalist. I gather from reading the introduction that initially what had been planned was a series of television interviews and then the pope was not able to live up to that commitment. So he said he'd be interested in responding, in writing. And that first question, whether the pope had ever, quote, hesitated in his belief in his relationship with Christ and therefore with God and the truth of this creed, which is repeated at Mass and the pope's response, be not afraid, which goes back to his own elevation as pope. And the statement he made at the time, I thought that that was a fascinating response and and yet perhaps disappointing to some of us who have wrestled with these issues right

along. So I think that that was a moving response. Be not afraid. And he talks about Peter being reproached but not rejected when he denied Jesus. And I hope that you can come to faith, you can leave faith, you can come back to face all of that. But he never does deal with the central concept question of faith. And I think he doesn't also deal with the central question of is there does God exist and why is there evil in the world? And all of these things that are the questions of humanity. Now, I don't much blame him. I have to tell you, I think that he has this is well traveled territory. And for him to say, you know, in answer to does God exist, why don't you go back and read Thomas Aquinas, I think is a perfectly good answer, frankly. I mean, why should this pope have to do that again, reinvent this wheel? And so in some ways, the questions were disappointing. I think that Ron's point about the modern world, I do want to point out he did talk about the Holocaust of the slave trade and in that sense, but in

a sense, then in a sentence, obviously, like women didn't get much shrift either. But I think that that might have been, again, speaking as a journalist, the questions I might have asked, as opposed to going back to the very fundamental questions of faith in God, because clearly he was sort of annoyed with those questions. I felt by saying, read your Summa Theologica and be done with it, you know? Well, I mean, could you put a finger on what for me is the biggest disappointment in the book? Perhaps unlike Cokie, I think these were the right questions. And I made a list of the instances where he did not respond, at least to my way of thinking. And just a few of them were, as Cokie as mentioned, does God really exist? How can one be certain that Jesus is the son of God? And then the issue of theodicy, if God is omnipotent, why hasn't he eliminated suffering? Those are for me, the telling and valid and proper questions coming out

of his mindset, his theology, his absolutism, if I may use that word, perhaps, as Cokie said, he was sort of held. He didn't have to answer. But for me, when I picked up those questions. I wanted to see a man wrestle with attempting to answer questions, which perhaps are unanswerable, but nevertheless, it's the effort, the effort of trying to answer those questions, which is the spiritual journey, which is, I think, why I prefer C.S. Lewis to John Paul in this instance, because I think he does give more satisfactory answers. I guess the other thing that maybe as an American I responded to, we're such we're in such confessional literature here, that when that first question was posed about whether or not he had ever had doubts, I find it difficult to believe that anyone growing up in the 20th century doesn't have doubts, no matter how religious one might be. And because he didn't directly answer that, I think it would have been some comfort

to the rest of us. I think if if he had been more forthright and and admitted to doubts and admitted and then shared with us how it is that he resolved those doubts. And I guess I was looking a little bit for more of that. And while it's true that he did bring in anecdotes and descriptions of of his early life, it didn't have quite that confessional quality to say that St. Augustine's work had. I think, you know, I think that what was being expressed here is something that I think he does talk about, and that is the tension between rationalism on the one hand. And I think that where we have to admit that our students have sort of a Western academic science, we are rationalists. We go looking for the answers. Explain what you mean. All right. Well, he talks about that sort of the the struggle between the church, which resides a great deal on faith and a certain parameter of faith. And on the other hand, the emergence in the 16th and 17th

century of the rationalist philosophers who believed in reason and the fact that the church really lost out in that struggle historically. And I think that what we are sort of opining here is the fact that we don't have the answers. That is the rationalist tradition. And what he gives us is sort of the philosophical, reflective tradition of the church and where you don't have the instructions, which is sort of the catechism. Then he relies on that other tradition. Also, I think it should be said that we don't, of course, live in the same position of tension as the pope does, where he's being looked to, perhaps all others and Christian them for certain answers and is probably aware that admitting to doubt if he's had doubts could be used in a political sense, both within the church and in the world at large, too. He's someone who has grown up having to face totalitarian governments, the Nazis and the Communists in Poland. His experience has been one of being confrontative and presenting,

as he would say, the truth. He does also. I'm now looking at this section of the book and he does a long quotation from God him, my space. And then he does. Then he goes on and says, it's not just a question of intellect, it's a question of will, which I really liked this business of which we. All right. We can reason back and go through St. Thomas to the existence of a God. But but even once you've done that, you can always come back with the other arguments. And at some point you do make that leap of faith. And and he then says it's even a question of the human heart, the reason to curb Blaise Pascal. So I think that he's essentially saying, come on, this is this is well traveled territory. What is he saying about prayer? I was I wanted to understand how he the question was, how do you pray? How do you reach God? You know, how do you know that your prayers are being

heard? Um, I was I wanted perhaps and this goes back to your point, Ron, that maybe we're asking for something that is not being offered because it simply doesn't come out of where he speaks. And the pope is and always will be a mystery and and his thinking will always be mysterious in that sense. And yet, you know, we pray and we want to hear how he prays. Well, you know, that's an interesting point, because I think I was looking for him to talk more about the ritual of prayer, because, after all, the Catholic Church is extremely rich in ritual. And, in fact, for some of us who who wandered away and quit going to church for a period of time in our lives, I think it was at the very time when the Catholic Church began to abandon some of the ritual. And I think you're seeing now in the United States movement and more back toward some of the more formal ritual in the church.

And and he does make reference that, you know, he talks about the book of Psalms and other things, but but at least for Catholicism, it's. Seems to me the ritual of prayer, reciting words that are recited by others that are the same, that it isn't quite that sort of individualist Protestant way of prayer where it's a more sort of talking to God, but rather than to use formal language and that everyone recites the same words, that to me has always been an attraction of the Catholic Church rather than something that was Off-putting. But I would I would disagree just a little bit, because I think that the Catholic Church also has struggled with the need to to apply its teachings to a very culturally diverse world in the African-American community, 700000 Catholics people have for the last two or three decades developed a movement of trying to to make the Catholic Church more culturally relevant. Part of what this meant was a deep emphasis on a lot of the ritualistic aspects of the church. The same thing. I've just had a long sort of interest

in Latin America. And looking at the church there, there's the same sort of struggle to to say, can we be Brazilian Africans or Afro Brazilians and still be good Catholic without adopting all of the ritual of the church, the same thing in Asia. So there is at the same time this need to try to remain relevant where the Catholic Church and to do it by giving away parts of that very highly symbolic tradition. The German church was across the street from the Irish church and never the twain met. And I mean, there was they might have all been saying mass in Latin, but that was it. That commonality. And besides which, I think one of the things that the Catholic Church has always done brilliantly, in fact, better than most other religion has been to incorporate. I mean, if you go to church in Latin America, the way in which the feast stays very conveniently coincide with some of the previous rituals of the indigenous people there. And I think that's one of the reasons, by the way, the Catholic Church is having success in Africa. And the pope, you know, it was fascinating because this was the multicultural pope in this book talking about animism in the way which animes life also informs

its connection to Catholicism like priests. But I also think that he was also being part of the Western tradition in that statement about Animism and sort of the inferiority of African religions. And I think that that was really a cultural myopia that the church really has also suffered from. I want to pick up on that because I think Gus referred to the fact that the pope does discuss Judaism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and he's obviously trying to reach out, I think, and acknowledge their significance and their value and their importance. But inevitably, it has to be condescending because whatever they may stand for, whatever their set of beliefs, they're not Christo centric. They do not regard Jesus as the son of God. So whenever he gets into these waters, it seems to me necessarily by virtue of his position, his belief is theology.

He has to say, well, they are valid to a point, but of course, only we have the truth. Well, but I think it also goes back to the politics, frankly. I mean, he's got some serious problems in parts of the world with with Islam. And in fact, he talks about the problems of Muslim fundamentalism. But, you know, look, this is there's a finite number here and, you know, OK, OK, but you're right. There's a competition going on. I understand that very well. But is with I mean, most of the country is with Islam. But look at, you know, the world of the world where for a vast percentage of the conflict taking place and maybe even most of the conflict seems to boil down to religious differences, and we have face bitterly pitted against each other and destroying each other. Someone at some point has to stand up and say, you know, maybe the world religions are, in fact, moving in the same direction and maybe we can accept

the fact that the divine is manifested in different ways. And maybe, just maybe, God help me, not solely in the figure of Jesus Christ. Yeah, on that very point, though, of politics. And then I want to go to the phones. What about the introduction of this book now in this country, considering what's going on politically, considering the move to the right of the thinking of the country? So how do you see the coincidence there? Well, let me take that in just a second. But before we lose, we lose Africa. I just want to mention here one one very interesting thing, I think, is that there's a statement in here that he makes that perhaps Africa is the hope of Europe and that perhaps there will be a black Catholic missionaries evangelizing in Europe. And I think that if even a black pope. And, of course, yeah, that has a certain resonance now with so much focus on. Cardinal Arinze is perhaps the successor to John Paul, the second

as far as the introduction of the book now, I think in many ways it has to. The timing is most interesting in terms of it coming after he's been pope 15 or 16 years, that there is a certain last testament possibly about this. Is it directed toward the United States probably as much as it is to anywhere else. What's interesting, though, is that the what he has to say about burning questions in this country, particularly abortion and the role of women in society, come at the very end of the book. And they don't seem to me to be particularly impassioned. What he has to say about women is remarkably brief and abortion. I think he if I remember right, he ends by simply saying enough of this question. All right, let's go to the phones to two eight eight five eight eight fifty and look forward to hearing your questions and comments throughout the rest of the hour. Let's go first to Walter in Manassas. You're on The Diane Rehm Show.

Oh, good morning. Morning. I first wanted to thank you very much for your interview with the cardinal recently. Oh, yes. And an individual called later and said that they were upset with your questions. I thought you a very good, hard question. Thank you. And if I was just dissatisfied with his responses, that might play well. And that's much of what's being said here. A little division on the nature of the questions. But go ahead, Walter. I initially got on the phone because I had several questions on your panel is so excellent that they've actually raised the very questions that I've had for two. So number one, I am from New York City, born and raised, the Roman Catholic with 12 years of Catholic school suffering. I am now a atheist. I am also the descendant of African slaves on both sides of my family. So I, too, am concerned about the Catholic Church's reaction to the history of slavery. But the main point that has yet been brought up in any more detail is the question of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Catholic Church women and his encyclical. I had a chance to look at that encyclical.

I tried to read it twice. Even though I come from a liberal arts background, I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy. I am familiar with the inadequate answers provided by Frank Thomas Aquinas, who could not, for example, have predicted the great work of Russell and Darwin on the evolution by natural selection. So is there anybody there who has read the Pope's encyclical on the Blessed Virgin? And if they can try to explain what the Pope tried to say and what their criticism is? Because when I looked at it, I only saw the traditional answers provided by the church, which I was taught. He basically says, don't don't stray from the church women. You can't become any major power in the church. Follow the traditional view and use the Blessed Virgin Mary as your model. All right. Well, thanks for you. The question is what Blessed Virgin Mary. And that's the part. I mean, he and actually in this book talks about Mary as Eve and as co Redemptorist. He doesn't use that. I means not translated that way, but that's the way we all grew up

with it. And I'll tell you, my sister, who died a few years ago, was asked by a Catholic magazine to write a little essay, but with a bunch of other Catholics, the pope was coming to America. It was another time he was coming to America. If you had five minutes of the pope with the pope, what would you say? And I brought some of her little writing here because it does talk about this question of the blessed mother. And and she's basically saying, you know, bring her back, but don't bring her back as a simpering plaster virgin. I'm quoting here and do it excuse me, into which she had degenerated during the latter days of her pre Vatican to Hedgeman, Germany had me. I can never say that word. I never say it on the right of the Holy Virgin is other sinless and unattainable, has placed countless women through the centuries in a torturous double bind. If we imitated her, we were prudish, pretty rigid, unresponsive and therefore unwanted. If we acted like creatures with more fleshly cravings, we were scorned, humiliated, even beaten and jailed for not being like her.

And she goes on to say, we should welcome her and her original wholeness as Virgin and mother. The enchanting, sensual Jewish girl of catacomb art and the proud, insouciant mother queen of the Middle Ages body thrust out unselfconsciously to meld with her child. We need her back as ISIS, Demetre and Diana, lover and mother, but ever virgin because ever able to recover herself as herself apart and separate from lover and child, the female principle in the universe that it goes on. But that basic sense of Mary, I think is very alive and well in the church today. And and it's it's it's talked about in the United States a great deal. I talked to, as our caller referred to, with William Cardinal Keeler on Tuesday morning this week. And this whole notion of the difference in. Positioned between the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and that of the Vatican toward women and the efforts in this country to put forward possibilities for women here, while

the pope reiterates his own opposition to any more powerful role for women in the church, I think is very troubling to American Catholics, but not to all American Catholics. Diane is someone who is much more traditionalist Catholic. I think the one thing that would be very disconcerting for me in the Catholic Church would be for the Catholic Church to give up on the tradition of the male ministry and whether it's based on theological grounds or whether it's simply based on tradition and authority. There are, I think, a good many Catholics who would find this so troubling that we would feel pushed out. So there's division within the Catholic Church in the United States as well. It's not just a conservative Vatican foisting its views on a liberal American Catholic Church. The pope talks so often about the the church as being a sign of contradiction. And perhaps nowhere is that felt as keenly as in the United States.

People who are both within and particularly outside the church have a very difficult time understanding the the limitation of the of the priesthood to men, particularly when Protestant churches have have over the last 20 some years been opening the ministry to women and also among reform and conservative Jews as well. It's it's something that is just simply not going to be understood outside of adhering to the traditional position to ode two eight eight five eighty eight fifty in Gaithersburg. Good morning, Joseph. You're on The Diane Rehm Show. Diane. Hi. Hi. I just wanted to speak a little about the chapter on Buddhism that the pope had. And I was very struck in that I believe it's really misrepresenting what Buddhism is about. The pope says that it's just going to paraphrase, it's about escaping from the world and the Buddhism holds the world

as being a bad place, that there isn't a love for the world in Buddhism. And I think that those are inaccurate. But I don't want to go into trying to say what Buddhism is about. But I I just want to talk a little bit more about why why he may have said this. And I believe it might be because he may be into seeing a competition here where some people may be leaving or attracted away from the church because of the meditation practices and the power of those practices that they find and other places such as Buddhism, which enable people to move toward a direct relationship with Divine. And I think it's unfortunate because the church could take the approach of greater emphasis on contemplation within the church and to enable people to move toward that direction.

All right, Joseph, thanks for your call. Well, interestingly, of those religious orders that seem to be sort of holding on and still attracting members, it seems to be the contemplative orders that are doing best. The Carmelites, the Poor Clares and their counterparts among them among the various monasteries. But I think one of the things that it's very difficult for non Catholics to understand is that ecumenism can only go so far in the Catholic Church. I mean, the doctrine of the Catholic Church is that there is one holy Catholic Church and it and that the Catholic Church embodies the truth. Now, I don't expect everyone else to believe that, but you sort of have to understand that that is part of the tenets of faith that Catholics hold. And so when the priest when the pope rather reaches out to Buddhists or Confucians or any of the other various religions that he deals with in the book, he can only go so far and he can envision these religions as having people who are on the path towards that one true faith. But he is not going to give up on the notion that he

represents that true faith here on Earth, except for the Catholic in this situation is a small C. I mean, it's simply universal. And you can interpret universal in a variety of ways, like John McCain. I was just looking at the chapter on on Buddhism and was struck by the fact that in this chapter and in others, the pope refers to some of the great Christian mystics, particularly the Spanish mystics of the 17th century, like Saint John of the Cross, centuries and centuries, and indeed always get her in there. And indeed, of the two, she's probably. She wrote about women priests back then. Yeah, I would like to. Yeah, but the whole mystical movement is just one of my favorites, um, in the Christian religion as well as others. Um, and yet perhaps of necessity, given his position when he touches upon Christian mysticism, it's sort of well, that's something that's done by some special people who have special powers or insights.

And I just wish that the essence of mysticism, which is a scary word, I think, for a lot of people, um, if the notion that we're all capable of being mystics, we're all capable of achieving a direct communication with the Divine, I would like to see that in this. But then, of course, I have to tell myself. But if, of course, if you go too far, which is why the Christian church has historically been a little scared of mysticism, if you carry it to its full to its full conclusion, don't need the church. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I think the caller's right to to suggest that the, uh, feels that there is a competition out there, particularly in the West with Buddhism. If you look at this chapter, the way he begins that he talks about meeting the Dalai Lama in Bangkok and seeing around him a bunch of Americans who've become Buddhist monks. And then toward the end of the chapter, he does close it by saying one should know one's own spiritual heritage well and consider whether it is right to set it aside lightly.

He doesn't make any statements like that when he talks about Islam. All right. And let's go to Baltimore County. Good morning, John. You're on the air. Oh, hello. I hadn't read the book, but I've been following the conversation as the book has originally come out. And I had just developed my own understanding of Christianity that is somewhat logical understanding of life that I thought I would just give a quick offering of it in defining a God. You'd have to say it's both absolute and infinite, but the absolute has no definition as it has no division. So you'd have an existential structure arising from that into the infinite. So I would define that in my sense as the Trinity and the in that the father being the absolute the son being the existential structure and the Holy Ghost being the infinite. And the situation with that is that

you can have more than one structure arising theoretically. So it tends to pose some theological problems. And I've had a lot of trouble coming to terms with those. All right, John, thanks for your call. Any comments here, John? I have a comment, which is that the Trinity can be a valid metaphor because we're all dealing with metaphors here, aren't we? We're all trying to find words, turns, concepts to stand for something that we really can't articulate that is beyond the power of reason. So the Trinity is a valid paradigm. In my view. A unitary theory is an equally valid paradigm for me. It's the manner in which it is approached and then absorbed. Does it move you towards a sense of the divine or does it not? Guess the Pope spends a great deal of time in this book warning us away from an enlightenment concept of God, the impersonal God, and stressing the

the personal intervention of God in the world and the example of Jesus Christ. So he's acutely aware of sort of competing ideas of the divine. And one of the reasons for that, of course, is the opposition to sort of some group centered religious notion. And that being a critique of Marxism in particular, I found that really very interesting. So that even at this level, there is a competition between ideologies, secular and sacred color in Leesburg. Good morning, Berk's. You're on the air. Good morning, Diane. Is another one of those shows that could go on for about three months. And being an avid student of Catholicism in particular, I was just curious initially if this is a precedent or if other popes through history have been but ask these same questions, addressed these same issues. Is there a consistency which of course, all of these things lead to 8000 other questions? Sure, I'm sure. And I get to a basic question, which is

where does it show in Catholicism that it is or any organized religion, for that matter, any better a way of life than any other? I guess, basically, what's the sales pitch to put it in, you know, total street terminology? Well, Diane is looking at me, I have to try and I try and do this. It isn't a question of sort of where it's found. I guess the pope's answer would be in an observant Catholic, the answer would be that it is revealed truth and that is revealed in the scripture, and that when Christ founded his church on this rock, namely Peter, who Catholics consider the first pope, that that that is the direction that comes from above. It's not a question of looking at the tenets of Catholicism and saying, well, this suits one group better, suits me better than another.

It is that for those of us who are believers that this is something that is preordained. Ron Walters, do you have any comments on that? I really don't. As an agnostic, I have trouble with all the religions. But there's been a particular reminds me very much of the of the union between church and state. And I think that part of the part of the sales pitch, which we don't get in this and part of the understanding that we don't get is the connection between power, secular power and the rationale for for religion. I also sort of read this, trying to understand that connection. And I don't really come out with a firm idea of whether or not the church is ipso facto antithetical to that secular power or together with it. I think it depends upon the circumstances. Just as a footnote Chapter 21, by the way, I'm just amazed that there's no table of contents in this book that just I had to finally do my own and thirty five chapters, although paradoxically the the index

is excellent. Anyway, Chapter 21, by my count, raises the question why should the Catholic Church alone possess the fullness of the gospel? And that was the question posed by the listener. And that's on my list of unanswered questions to two eight eight five eighty eight fifty. You wanted to. I would disagree with Linda somewhat about the I think the Catholic Church, much less so than Protestant Christianity, believes in pre ordination and and in revelation being handed down. I mean, there's much more of the sense of the mystical body of Christ. The church is us. And it's not I mean, one of the one of the ongoing theological battles that is certainly not addressed in this book. The pope gives lip service to the to the church as us. But we are as much the church as he is. And this is this is the current tension that is going on between various bishops conferences and and the the church in Rome. And I understand the tension.

I think the tension should be there. I covered an extraordinary bishops synod and the anniversary of the of the Vatican, too, which is another story. I mean, talk about a weird thing to do covering a bishop Senate, Wolf. But the but really, when you looked at the bishops, particularly now they're they don't come in in two sexes, but they do come in every color. And when people would be in sort of native dress, which was happening, you really did see the incredible diversity. And so you do understand the need for the central city when you are at the Vatican and then realize that all of these men will go out into the ends of the Earth and that they will have the church of their place and time, wherever they are, so that that tension has got to be there to sort of have the central church saying one thing, knowing that these people will be saying something else. But that sense of of when the caller says, what's the sales pitch?

I mean, the pope actually has a good line, which is the world tired of ideology is opening itself to the truth. And I think the sales pitch is trying to find truth. The truth is in us, not just in in the in the Bible or in the teachings of various Vatican councils or councils of Trantor wherever over the centuries. This broadcast to The Diane Rehm Show is made possible in part by the Youth Street Business Association, including Millennium Decorative Arts at 15 28 U Street NW, specializing in 50s Decco and Pop open Monday and Thursday 40.