On Reflecting God

Extract

Many Catholics feel increasingly disturbed in their faith nowadays by the anthropological approach to religion. Anthropologists currently look upon religion as just one of the aspects of 'culture', as a psychological objectivation of man's subjective emotions, imaginations and explanations of reality. Gods, spirits, myths are therefore just as man-made, as are human institutions, customs, morals, say they.

May I suggest that in this, as in all other cases of disbelief and misbelief, it is quite wrong on our part (and not only tactically inexpedient) to throw the offered opinion into the waste-paper basket as totally unacceptable. We used to do so with Paganism and have only of late come to sec that Pagan beliefs are partial truths that need straightening out and being put in the proper perspective—truths which, when thus treated, enrich our own understanding by an emphasis on facts that often have hitherto escaped us.

When therefore we are told that man makes his god, I would accept this statement as quite true, as far as it goes, but add that unfortunately it does not go far enough. Does every puddle in the road make its own sun? Yes and no—poetically yes, scientifically no.