To the Editor:
I can understand why Doctor Falconer appreciates the “revelry and lawlessness of Saturnalia,” especially in light of his indifference to the secularization of Christ’s Mass. So have Saturnalia on the solstice, and there will be no confusion. (Say…wasn’t Kwanzaa supposed to have solved this problem?)
However, what I don’t understand is in his preface, “many of us who are traditional churchgoers”; which then leads into a litany of confessions such as, “doubt the veracity,” “sentimental myths,” “doubt existence of an omnipotent deity,” “little evidence of supernatural influence in the world,” and “know little about the nature of ‘God’ and suspect no one else does.”
I seem to have not gotten the memo about the radical shift wherein the meanings of both “traditional” and “church” have been stripped.
So if the “place of worship” has rendered obsolete and evicted the “traditional” recipient of worship; and if “going to church” is one of those “celebrating our traditions without clinging recklessly to them;” then Dr. Falconer seems to be expecting us to look at our Holy Days with the same mind-set as his.
What rude selfish effrontery we have for taking religious duties seriously. How dare we not celebrate something nice and fun like universal license… instead of bringing up savior stuff that implies baggage like guilt or judgment?
If I understand the pattern of what Dr. Falconer is saying – the spirit of inclusion and toleration silences and cancels out all outward manifestations of the existence of absolutes. In other words, it puts piety in the closet, and lets perversion out…because there is no such thing as either in his relativistic world.
Michael Bourland, Newcastle
