Saturday, April 10, 2021

"Scripture is not the property of the specialists"

"Scripture is not the property of the specialists.  It is a public garden in which all Christians have the right to wander. . . .  Why don't you, for your part, take a stroll, for example with one of your little daughters, to whom you could explain these marvellous images?"

"l'Écriture n'est pas la propriété des spécialistes.  C'est un jardin public où tous les chrétiens ont le droit de se promener. . . .  Pourquoi de ton côte n'y ferais-tu pas un tour, avec une de tes petites filles par exemple à qui tu expliquerais ces merveilleuses images?"

     Paul Claudel, Introduction à l'Apocalypse, Conférence lue à l'Institut catholique de Paris le 10 février 1946 (Paris:  Egloff, 1994), 9, as quoted by Philippe Cardinal Barbarin, in his "La liberté du théologien," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 113 (2012), 370 (365-384), translation mine.  Barbarin adds that "Naturally, our freedom to comment [(la liberté de notre commentaire)] does not dispense us from [the obligation] to do all of the [exegetical] work of which we are capable."  But note that he is discussing here one of the most difficult books in the whole of Scripture!

Friday, April 9, 2021

A psychiatrist who did not experience the five stages of Death and dying

"The process of dying cannot be adequately understood by applying a rigid phenomenological framework that does not do justice to the resource of biblical faith and the contribution that faith makes to the acceptance of death."

     Orville S. Walters, "A psychiatrist's approach to death," Christian Medical Society journal 6 (Fall 1975):  4-6, which is, presumably, the source of the INPM version online.  Walters composed this little essay in the final throes of stomach cancer.  He died on 18 February 1975.

Kübler-Ross’s "Death and Dying takes little notice of the resources of Christian faith for the dying."  For this reason "It is difficult to imagine the writer of these words working through anxiety over approaching death in the troubled stages currently associated with dying."