The Art of Letting Go

Extract

Every now and then the Church is handed a bouquet, over the fence as it were, by someone outside her fold. Professor Jung has done this and surely we can take it. He tells us that he finds ‘frequency of complexes … highest among the Jews, Protestants come second and Catholics only third’. But what is even more interesting is the reason for this state of things. This is not found specially in the psychological value of confession but rather in the way in which Catholic belief helps a man through the natural psychological crises of ordinary human life. Indeed the professor seems to show that as Christian morals help to keep people out of prisons, so Christian dogma is of value in keeping them out of asylums. For the life of man is normally a progress beginning as a child under the care of its parents passing through various stages till he attains to maturity and becomes himself a parent.